User talk:BarrelProof/Archive 7

Gates
Sir Microsoft, lol B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:26, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * FYI to any readers of my Talk page, that comment was a response to a remark I made in the edit summary of this edit, which followed this edit, which followed this edit, which followed this edit. Since then, the matter has continued to be a simmering issue, e.g., per this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and now this (by me again). The matter has also been discussed repeatedly on the Talk page of the article, and is addressed in an FAQ on the Talk page. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:12, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Steven Sasson
Hello BarrelProof,

You undid my revision to the page "Steven Sasson". Please confirm if you received this message. (I am unfamiliar with Wikipedia talk pages).

The reference source for the changes is the patent already cited on the page. The patent indicates that he invented the electronic still camera, not a digital camera. I realize that there are articles dated 2005 or after saying that he invented the digital camera but what is in his patent is not a digital camera. More clarification can be provided.

I was not aware that I changed the title of a published source. I did not intend to, even if the title is incorrect.

Please confirm if you receive this message. I now have an account and my username is Sunnyb7532.

Thanks. Sunnyb7532 (talk) 03:21, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, your edit did incorrectly change the title of one of the cited sources. While it may be the case that the term "digital camera" wasn't used at the time, many reliable sources say that his device was indeed what we now call a digital camera. The fact that he may have used different terminology 40 years ago than what we use today does not affect the validity of the statement. I personally have some problem with some aspects of his claimed milestone myself (e.g., because of the Cromemco Cyclops, which seems to have been invented before his device was). However, your edit changed the article to say something different from what the sources said, and you did not cite any sources to show that those existing sources were wrong. Even if you're convinced that you're right and the cited sources are wrong, you shouldn't just change what the Wikipedia article says unless you can cite sources to show that your understanding is the correct one. The mere fact that the cited sources were written long after Sasson's invention was developed does not mean they are incorrect.


 * In what way do you think that his device is not appropriately called a "digital camera"? The cited sources say it was one.


 * —BarrelProof (talk) 05:36, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

A digital camera is defined (by Wikipedia) as a camera that captures photographs in digital memory and throughout the page discusses digital cameras that way. It mentions Sasson's camera in the historical section as an electronic camera that is a precursor rather than a digital camera itself. The Steven Sasson article (on Wikipedia) states that the images were recorded onto a cassette tape, which is obviously not digital memory. So there is an internal inconsistency that should be addressed. Yes, I am discounting what articles some 40 years later claimed in lieu of the patent itself (which is a primary source document), which says that the images were recorded onto magnetic cassette tape. The patent itself uses the term electronic camera. So please don't undo my changes to the Steven Sasson page (except the inadvertent change to the title of one of the cited sources). Sunnyb7532 (talk) 16:14, 7 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I disagree with you about cassette tape not being digital memory. Also, Sasson's device included "a digital buffer memory". (That's a direct quote from the abstract of his patent.) A cassette tape isn't digital if it's used for analog music recording, but in the old days that is how digital data was typically stored in consumer-grade devices. Many early digital computers (e.g., Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80), which are obviously digital devices, used cassette tapes for their computer programs and data storage. The abstract of Sasson's patent makes it clear that his device used and recorded a digital representation of the picture: "A high speed analog-to-digital converter converts these pulses to multi-bit digital words in real time. A digital buffer memory temporarily stores these words, ..."
 * You should not change the article to say his device was not a digital camera unless you can cite some independent reliable source that says it was not a digital camera. I doubt you can find any such published source.
 * Also you should be aware that whatever definition Wikipedia uses for a "digital camera" is not a reliable or final word. Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source of information (especially for Wikipedia itself). Any random person can come along and change that definition, and not everyone is required to use the same definition – especially when it comes to fine details such as whether a "digital camera" must have on-device digital storage or whether a cassette tape is considered digital memory or what type of storage media needs to be used by a "digital camera". You could even question whether a hard drive is "digital memory" or not. (There are certainly hard drives that are sufficiently compact for use on portable devices.)
 * But I do have some difficulty with the idea that his camera was the first. There was also the work of Michael Francis Tompsett, and the Cromemco Cyclops. Both of those were before Sasson's device. So I have more of a problem with the idea that Sasson's device was the first digital camera than I do with the idea that his device was a digital camera at all. The history of some things tends to be more complex than what shows up in most press articles.
 * You could also question whether a "digital camera" must be a self-contained and portable device or not. Personally, I think the answer is no. A film camera doesn't need to be portable either, as far as I'm concerned. As the Camera article says, "A camera is an optical instrument for recording or capturing images, which may be stored locally, transmitted to another location, or both." That doesn't say anything about being portable or self-contained. And to me it seems self-evident that any camera that produces digital pictures is a digital camera.
 * A good way to address these concerns is to discuss them on the "Talk" pages of relevant articles. You can see that there is already some related conversation at Talk:Steven Sasson. That, of course, is not the only article that relates to these questions.
 * —BarrelProof (talk) 17:24, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

On the Steven Sasson thing, see my latest comments at Talk:Steven Sasson. I don't agree with your edits to the article that made his invention about it being self-contained. The battery and form factor had nothing to do with the claimed invention, which was about real-time digitizing of discrete pixel values (as opposed to digitizing a slow-scan vidicon output, or something like that); the Cromemco device also did not digitize in the sense described, at least in some subsidiary claims. I'm not a patent specialist, but I do have a bunch of patents in this space, I don't see any source supporting his invention as being about being self-contained. Rather, it's about the technology for digitizing on-the-fly into a buffer memory in real time before writing to storage; as I point out on the talk page, this was a bit of tech that essentially all of what we now call digital cameras adopted. It doesn't mean there were not previous things that could be called digital cameras. Dicklyon (talk) 17:48, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm certainly happy for the content of the article to be corrected if being self-contained is not really what made his camera something new and different. I just object to the oversimplification that was obvious in some versions of the article previously (and in some sources). If there were "previous things that could be called digital cameras" (and clearly there were), then it is clearly not proper to just flatly say he "invented the first digital camera". We need to identify what, specifically, distinguished his camera from previous cameras in some valuable way. Unfortunately, the sources seem sloppy. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:10, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed, sources are generally terrible around inventorship issues, and it takes some "original research" to try to interpret the patents. That's why I try to avoid saying who invented what.  But since his notability is due to inventing the digital camera, we can't avoid it in this case.  Maybe we can find some secondary source that says enough to help. Dicklyon (talk) 15:39, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * One possible approach, although it might not be very satisfying, would be to just change the article so that it says that some sources have credited Sasson with being the inventor and creator of the first digital camera while also making it clear that several other devices have existed that have been credited with that distinction. We could simply provide information both about his device and also about other devices and other people to whom the development of the first digital camera has been attributed. The reader might be somewhat confused by that approach, but some amount of confusion may be appropriate if there is no good way to resolve the confusion. I did find this source that seems to say that portability was the primary distinctive feature of Sasson's camera. It used batteries, so it was fully self-contained. Perhaps we should move the further discussion to Talk:Steven Sasson. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:13, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

En dashes are for ranges
I've undid your reversion of my changes to Quotation marks in English. I was a little obtuse in my edit comment, but in the deepest sense of typography, the rules in fact are based on what looks good to they eye, because that provides a very critical element of the interpretation of the meaning of language.

I was published on this topic more than 15 years ago (The Trouble with Em n' En), and researched extensively for the article (though the published bibliography is much shorter), but all of these sources still agree with these basic tenants:
 * hyphens are for joining compound words that are intimately related
 * en dashes are for connecting values in a range that are related, such as in a sequence of years, and in a few other very specialized cases (such as in place of a dash for open compounds, and in joining proper names that are part of a compound noun, as in Bose–Einstein condensate.
 * em dashes are used in place of commas or parenthesis to separate phrases (and in a few other specialized cases, such as an open-ended date range (Toby Keith, 1961–)

En dashes are clearly the most appropriate choice for the usage in the article in question. They are not used in place of the word "to" or "through", and en dashes are thus inappropriate.

Sources:
 * http://jkorpela.fi/dashes.html
 * http://www.punctuationmatters.com/hyphen-dash-n-dash-and-m-dash/
 * http://grammarist.com/grammar/en-dash/
 * http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/091502enem.htm
 * http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/en-dash.html
 * http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes/faq0002.html

— Preceding unsigned comment added by PetesGuide (talk • contribs) 22:25, 20 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I reviewed some of those sources, and at least some of them do not say what you seem to be saying that they say, and regardless of that, Wikipedia has not adopted such an opinion into its MoS. If you think Wikipedia's MoS should be changed, please propose to change it, and provide your evidence when making that proposal. In the meantime, I think that trying to impose your preferred style on some particular article is not appropriate. The proper place to propose a change of MOS:DASH is probably Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:00, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Applying of informational theory to the physiological systems
Hi BarrelProof,

From my point of view the application of informational theory to the living organisms, spatially to the human, is appropriate on the page about information theory. This page misses such important section. That's why I've restored the revision of previous editor. What do you think about this situation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.99.8.253 (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * That added material appears to have a relatively obscure relationship to information theory and does not seem at all important for understanding what information theory is. The article should be a brief introduction to information theory without attempting to cover every possible relatively obscure related work. I'm pretty sure that a person could easily spend their whole career studying information theory without encountering that topic at all. The language of that edit is also obviously promotional – for example, it describes someone's publication as "brilliantly evaluated". That does not seem at all appropriate, and there is no evidence that I know of that the promoted work has been highly influential. If you disagree, I suggest to start a discussion on the Talk page of the article. That way the community can engage in a thorough discussion of whether it is important to include a discussion of physiological system analysis in the article about information theory. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:03, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed explanation!

I still think that the section "Applications to other fields" misses such important part as application of information theory to biological objects. But, if you absolutely sure that this text is not appropriate for the "brief introduction to information theory", let it be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.99.8.253 (talk) 18:14, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

PDAB
Stop removing the shortcut notices from Partially disambiguated page names. I get that you are working on the page, but accurate representation of it is necessary. -- Netoholic @ 18:19, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think the template that you have added is accurate. Please see the Talk page of that essay. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:22, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Merge discussion at Talk:Mandarin orange
Since a year ago you participated in a rename discussion at Talk:Mandarin orange (fruit) you may want to participate in a merge discussion regarding the same pages at Talk:Mandarin orange. Agricolae (talk) 18:35, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

MOS:SINGULAR listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect MOS:SINGULAR. Since you had some involvement with the MOS:SINGULAR redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Pichpich (talk) 21:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I see that you self-reverted that RfD nomination. I created the redirect after using that link in an |edit summary, not realizing that WP:SINGULAR is not in the MOS. I may not be the only person to generate links to it that way, so I thought it would be best to redirect that to the place I had intended to refer to. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:21, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Awarding the WGU Barnstar
Thanks for helping to support the WGU Article. Paul Smith111977 (talk) 14:19, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, thanks a lot for that. It is a very nice gesture from you, especially since (from some of your prior comments) we may not agree on some aspects of the article content. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:55, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Your welcome, and you certainly earned it for your excellent work. Paul Smith111977 (talk) 10:49, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Garrison Brothers
Hi there, since Whiskey and Bourbons are a facet of your wheelhouse, I thought I’d ask you if you’ve heard of Garrison Brothers & their distillery in Hye, Texas. It’s a pretty cool place in the Texas Hill Country, near Fredericksburg, Texas and Luckenbach, Texas. They have an awesome tour, and I’ve been able to participate in their volunteer programs. They were featured on Texas Country Reporter, you can watch that segment on YouTube for free (could not post link).

Disclosure: I do not work for them or get paid to write articles for them, I’m just a fan.😊 MissTofATX (talk) 07:38, 20 May 2018 (UTC)MissTofATX


 * Thanks for the note. I hadn't heard of them. They seem to have been around for a while, and from what I could find, their product is improving (although rather highly priced). —BarrelProof (talk) 19:51, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It is definitely in a higher priced range. But it’s really good. We have several distilleries in Texas. One in San Antonio, TX, I can think of at the moment, Rebecca Creek Distillery, makes vodka and whiskey . I can’t always afford GB, so here’s my list of alternates: Forty Creek, Rebecca creek, Crown Royal, Makers Mark, Wild Turkey. (In no particular order). 😊


 * MissTofATX (talk) 06:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Please review Caillou Pettis
Can you please look over the draft available for the article on Caillou Pettis and see if it is good to submit for actual publication? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SimplyBatman22 (talk • contribs) 02:58, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Doria Ragland
Thanks for you edits to the Doria Ragland article. I have finished mine right now... and thanks so much for the change to the birth date template. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to format it correctly - apparently that's because there is no way to format just month and year.–CaroleHenson (talk) 19:23, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your gracious reaction to my later edit. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:25, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It's very appropriate, wish I had thought of it!--–CaroleHenson (talk) 19:26, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Mutual interest
Hey, I see we are generally in agreement and have some mutual interests. Not that I edit about whisky much, but I do consume a lot of it while editing. I'd be happy to help fix DBX Inc. if I notice it next time; they only lowercase it in their logo, not in info about the company. Thanks for your support on lots of other MOS-related RMs. Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Thanks for the note. —BarrelProof (talk) 04:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Elijah Craig (bourbon)
Hi BarrelProof, I'm a new editor with a strong interest in American whiskey. I have recently performed many edits to the Elijah Craig (bourbon) page and was wondering if you could provide a peer review? I am also interested in your feedback and any tips! Thanks for all that you've done for the American whiskey pages! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jclark754 (talk • contribs) 00:53, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Talk page lurker here. I made some case fixes and such.  It's not clear to me also that "Elijah Craig Small Batch Barrel Proof" is a proper name.  If it is, caps are OK; but is it? There are lots of such questions still.  Also, you should post at the bottom of a talk page, not the top, usually. Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note and for your efforts to improve the article. I did some editing and will probably do more. I'm glad to see Dicklyon involved as well. I think the capitalization question is a tough one, because phrases like "Small Batch", "Single Barrel", "Barrel Proof", and "20 Year Old" (and "Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey", and perhaps "Barrel Select") seem to sometimes be part of the identifying proper noun name of a specific product, but are also sometimes just adjectives or the common noun names of types of whiskey. I might tend to capitalize such a term when it is part of the identification of a specific bottling variant. "Barrel Select" seems more like part of a brand name than some of the others do, since I think there is no general category of whiskey known as "Barrel Select". —BarrelProof (talk) 17:54, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm surprised at the batch size that the company calls "Small Batch". That's the biggest batch size I've ever seen described as "small". See Small batch whiskey. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Comment Left on User talk:Riterchick1983 Page
Hi, BarrelProof. I wanted to respond to the comment you left on my talk page and open a line of communication regarding edits to some of the whiskey/distillery pages that I have started following and editing. To avoid confusion, let me insert your comments here so you can easily match my reply to each comment. You said, "Please try harder to maintain a Neutral point of view in what you write for Wikipedia. I also suspect that you may be introducing copyright violations by copying promotional marketing material, since some of what you have inserted into articles reads as if it was written as company advertising. Also please see WP:NOT. We generally do not provide exact street addresses, tour guide information, operating hours, etc. The goal is to be an objective encyclopedia, not promotional marketing material."

On the first point, I'm in the middle of going back through content I've written with a stricter look at adjective choices since I suspect those are the word choices causing the most problems. I'm a romance writer, and that tends to give my writing more creative flair than many other types of writing. I don't believe I used wording that blatantly promoted any particular product, but I may have used adjectives that had too much of a positive lean, and I will address that in my revisions and future writing. I also did some more digging and found some information about words to avoid that will be helpful, although frankly a few of the terms were surprising. I have to say it's hard to wrap my head around why we can talk about a product winning an award, but we can't call it an award-winning product. Facts are facts, so that's a head scratcher.

On the next point, I take copyright very seriously as an author, and I rewrite information in my own words. Now, to be clear, there are sometimes limitations to how much you can change the wording and still keep the meaning intact or avoid the ridiculous. For example, if a whiskey has a flavor profile that is described as bringing to mind caramel and coffee, then I would have to use some of those words in my own sentence in relation to the flavor. I can't say it has notes of melted butter, sugar, and milk blended with hot water filtered through ground Arabica beans. Certain words and phrases in descriptions can't realistically be changed and have to be repeated, but I make sure the overall sentence structure is worded differently, including using entirely different words when possible. I think this concern may again come back to my history and experience as a creative writer. I have never worked in advertising or done any promotional writing, so if my writing style resembles that type of writing, I would assume it's due to the adjectives and creativity that tend to filter into my writing. Again, I will work on eliminating questionable word choices.

On the final point, tours and tastings are core components of many of the small craft distilleries around the country. I can see how providing an address and hours is unnecessary and could possibly even imply you're nudging them to go, but I don't agree that we shouldn't include any information at all about tours. Noting that a distillery offers tours and/or tastings is valuable information to someone wanting to learn more about it.

I wanted to respond to your comments to note that I'm working on finding the right writing approach to better fit the neutral voice. Having said that, I see that in some cases, you made some edits to my changes, but in one case (Benjamin Prichard's Tennessee Whiskey), you completely reversed all my edits. As I understand it, when an article has a problem with neutral voice, we are encouraged to fix the wording ourselves, initiate a discussion with the editor to suggest he/she make the changes (for lengthier changes), or add a note or template (or something like that) in the text next to the non-neutral wording. We are discouraged from completely eliminating another editor's work when it can be revised to be usable, so I don't understand this action. After revising the text, I will now have to redo all the citation information again, and that is time consuming. In the interest of saving time, I will probably restore my previous version and then make all the necessary edits to that already cited version in order to not lose citation information that is still needed. I hope you can understand this reasoning. I will also post a note on that article page to explain my action when I'm ready to make the changes. Thanks! Riterchick1983 (talk) 11:43, 5 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for responding and explaining your perspective. I'm very glad to hear that I should not need to worry about copyright issues with your writing – I was just worried because I thought the tone and style of some of the writing reflected the possibility that it was being copied. I welcome your review of the changes I have made to your edits, and I do not suggest that my edits are perfect. Yes, the adjectives are a big part of the problem. I personally see a very big difference between saying that a product received an award and saying it is an award-winning product. I think that converting facts into adjectives tends to provide too much opportunity to be selective about the choices of adjectives and to somewhat gloss over the specifics. Often the same product that could be called "award-winning" could also be called "money-losing" or "highly priced", depending on which properties someone wants to select from when creating their adjectives. I come to Wikipedia for objective information, not poetic phrasing, and I get irritated when I sense that I might be getting some spin instead of "Just the facts" from an encyclopedia article. The selection of where something is said is also often an issue – e.g., whether something is in the lead section or down in a detailed sub-section, and in which sub-section. I have no objection to you reverting my revert of your edits at Benjamin Prichard's Tennessee Whiskey as a temporary measure. My revert was partly just because I wanted to save some of my own time and I didn't think the tone was acceptable (and I had noticed that another editor who I am familiar with, Oknazevad, had a similar feeling about your edits and had expressed that rather harshly in a prior edit summary). I had wanted to come back and review the edits some more to see what else could be done, but I might never get around to it. Prior content also remains accessible in the article history to avoid the need to rewrite content completely. One way of dealing with subjective commentary is to explicitly refer to what someone else says – either saying "so-and-so said that the ..." or quoting exactly what they said – with quote marks. That way the reader gets a more clear understanding of where the commentary is coming from and can think about its validity for themselves. Things like tasting notes are often very subjective – not everyone will describe a whiskey the same way (although they might all agree on some aspects – e.g., that Laphroaig and Ardbeg have a smoky taste). I agree that it is desirable to say whether a distillery has tours, but I don't think an article should go into detail about the tours. Generally, it is also best if articles are based primarily on what independent reliable sources say, rather than on what the company that makes a product says. (Even the independent sources often don't try very hard to be objective or to do good fact-checking.) There may also be some question about whether it is desirable to be very exhaustive in listing awards. I tend to think it is better to provide general remarks than to provide long lists of awards, if that is possible. Ultimately, awards are usually learned about from the producer themselves, and a producer would almost always omit any mention of negative commentary that has been published anywhere. Relying directly or indirectly on what the producer says can result in bias even if the facts are checked and verified by references to other sources. The awards themselves often border on being promotional, as the people who give out awards often do so as a way of encouraging producers to participate in their events and as a way of promoting their own credibility. Spirit ratings events generally don't provide any criticisms. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help. I haven't made much progress on the revisions yet. Very little time today. In browsing various pages related to whiskies and craft spirits, I've noticed that pages for the big guys don't have a lot of awards information, but a lot of the smaller craft distilleries tend to have varying levels of info about awards on their pages. (I'm guessing that's because news stories about them more frequently relate to awards, whereas Jack Daniel's gets a ton of press for lots of reasons.) It doesn't seem fair to completely omit award info when it's included on so many other distillery/craft spirit pages. Let me see what I can do to include award info but with a little less emphasis. Thanks! Riterchick1983 (talk) 09:24, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

RFLs
On the Lyon pages (wherever they end up), they'll need DAB hatnotes; at least the attorney page doesn't have one at the moment. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:38, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I moved them to where I think they belong. It appears to be a WP:TWODABS situation. As suggested by Randy Kryn, the engineer appears to be the primary topic, so that is the one at the base name Richard F. Lyon, and it has a hatnote to inform readers about the other one. I don't think the article about the attorney needs a hatnote, because it includes "(judge)" in its title. You shouldn't be able to land on that article without looking specifically for the judge. I also checked the links to both articles and I believe they are all now linking to the correct places. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Better to DAB them anyway. Someone may have encountered an "Accord to Richard Lyon ..." statement, and and come here but not be sure which they need because it wasn't a specifically legal or tech statement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:44, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I tend to remove hatnotes from articles that have parenthetical dismbiguators in their titles and don't have any incoming redirects from ambiguous names. I thought that was recommended by guidelines. The dab page at Richard Lyon lists both of them, of course. At WP:HATNOTE, I see "3. Mention other topics and articles only if there is a large possibility of a reader arriving at the article either by mistake or with another topic in mind." and a section called WP:NAMB entitled "Disambiguating article names that are not ambiguous" that says "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous." and provides an example where the presence of a parenthetical disambiguator is deemed sufficient by itself. —BarrelProof (talk) 22:28, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Opinion on WP:CAN
hello there, you commented on this matter over at the Rajneesh article, re:this comment, in the context of a page move discussion, is 50+ pings by a single editor unusual in your estimation? Acousmana (talk) 18:53, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess I don't have a problem with the number, but I can repeat the question I asked before: "How was that list of people to ping selected?" I've been thinking that I could dig into the user's edit history and see who was pinged and try to figure out why, but I doubt I will bother to devote the necessary time to that effort. I notice that the user is relatively new to Wikipedia and seems to have some communication difficulties. I'm not personally sure whether I think the article should be moved or not. Perhaps he has a very large following in India and is known there primarily by his latest selected name. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:36, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
 * fair enough, I simply haven't seen this kind of activity before so don't know what to make of it. Incidentally, the Hindi version of the article is titled रजनीश which is Rajneesh. I don't think he's actually that big in India, relative to other holymen there, and from the little I've read he appears to appeal to wealthier Indians and celebrity types. There are many more popular godmen/gurus there, for example Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev Baba, Swami Prabhupada, Jaggi Vasudev, Sathya Sai Baba, there's tons of them, Rajneesh is pretty far down the pecking order, he was known primarily in the West, and most particularity in the US - for obvious reasons - followed by Germany, Netherlands, and the UK. Whether his devotees like it or not he has come to be defined by his period in the US, and that's why there are so many academic sources on the subject, renaming to Osho is essentially a whitewash effort. Acousmana (talk) 21:45, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
 * That's very interesting. I might bring up the Hindi Wikipedia article at रजनीश. I myself have wondered whether his name change was similar to the renaming of some companies. Shankar and Prabhupada are very big in the U.S. too. (Another that comes to my own mind is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.) —BarrelProof (talk) 23:04, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
 * in India, initially, mid to late 60s, he had a primarily Indian following, but by standards there, is was very niche, then the Westerners started arriving to India in their droves in the 70s and the Puna ashram was pretty much dominated by them, very few Indians were followers. The move to the US was only feasible because there were so many American devotees. As you say, arguably, it's like when a company rebrands as part of a damage control exercise, a few sources view the name change in these terms. Of course his Indian following has grown since his death, but, it's still relatively small, and there's a never ending stream of godmen trying to be the next big thing. Funny actually, another one that had some minor popularity in the US, Chögyam Trungpa, coined a term that applies here: Spiritual materialism. It's essentially a spirituality marketplace, and there will always be someone willing to pay. Acousmana (talk) 07:41, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Sazerac Co. Refs in caps
Hi there, I just noticed your edit summary about removing obnoxious all caps from refs. Sorry about that, most of them were likely done by me. Many times, I’d copy and paste article headings directly from source, so if it was in caps, I didn’t change it. That being said, that editor Kendall removed the locations city/states from History section. I reverted to go back in a update reference names, and on the fly, I used caps to name references with 3 letters, sort of like airport codes, like <[ref name=CHI]>...nothing necessarily official. I saw your note about all caps after that, I promise. I didn’t want you to see those and think I was trying spite you! Hope you’re having a great weekend!

PS- if you ever come to the Texas/ the hill country and want to check out the Garrison Brothers distillery, let me know- I have some free tour passes I scored while working as a volunteer there.

MissTofATX (talk) 05:53, 24 June 2018 (UTC)MissTofATX MissTofATX (talk) 05:53, 24 June 2018 (UTC)


 * No problem, and thank you for fixing the Bittermens citation. All-caps in cited titles is better than having titles that are missing or citations that are missing. One issue, though, is that I can't easily find something on the cited website to support the Carson, California, location. I'll keep your invitation in mind if I find myself in that area – I'm pretty fond of Austin and San Antonio, but haven't been there in a long time. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you ....popcorn sutton...AMAZING JOB
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.69.59.4 (talk) 02:20, 9 July 2018‎ (UTC)


 * Thanks! —BarrelProof (talk) 02:35, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

you are welcome... POPCORN would lke the code..!!




 * just one more...A barnstar for you ....popcorn sutton...AMAZING JOB

POPCORN would lke the code..and you said thanks...so double down....

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.69.59.4 (talk) 10:13, 9 July 2018‎ (UTC)

Names in other scripts
I noticed an edit you made to the article about the Tham Luang cave rescue. (You reinstated สมาน กุนัน and wrote “Disagree; being the English Wikipedia does not imply ignoring other languages, and this man was probably primarily known by his Thai name.”) If you have time, perhaps you could contribute to this discussion. Many thanks. Khiikiat (talk) 22:46, 22 July 2018 (UTC).

Charles P. Finch
Thanks for your work on Charles P. Finch. Because the RM was a technical request from a new editor that is impossible to implement, I thought it best to close the RM before it got too far and discuss on User talk:Sophierizan instead. If you have any objection at all, please feel free to revert my close. Station1 (talk) 03:55, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That seems entirely appropriate. I have followed up in the conversation at User talk:Sophierizan. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:34, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

RMNAC
Re : I know the WP:RMCI rules, but I don't declare rmnac's on principle. I think that closes should be evaluated purely on merits, and not on the status of the user who closed it (which is two clicks away at Special:UserRights if anyone's interested). I do not believe that "administrator" : "mere user" dichotomy should be emphasized. I don't mind you going after and tagging the closes either, if you feel like it, just, I don't want to do that. Just FYI. Regards, No such user (talk) 15:36, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the comment. I respect your position, although my personal opinion is a bit different (as you probably already know). I am familiar enough with you that I believe there is no problem with you specifically in this regard, but I have the impression that there are some people who perform RM closures that don't really have an appropriate combination of expertise, experience and temperament. Of course it is possible for admins to demonstrate poor judgment as well, but admins are clearly people who have expertise and experience and have gone through a significant community screening process. I think that rmnac provides a helpful hint about how likely it is that the closure can be considered settled and precedent-setting. The requirement to use the template also might make someone think twice about whether they should really be doing what they're doing, and the omission of the template may sometimes indicate that someone is either not sufficiently experienced to be aware of the custom or is not respecting it for less-than-admirable reasons. Not everyone knows how to easily check whether someone is an admin (and I myself have been using much more than two clicks to do that; what I do is go up to the top of the page, click on the link with my username to go to User:BarrelProof, then search for "admin", click on the nearby link, then go find and copy the other person's username and paste it into the box, and then click on "Show" – is there a better way?). —BarrelProof (talk) 17:58, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I came here for another reason, but in the side bar of every user page, there is a tab labeled "view user groups". That will tell you what userrights the editor has including but not limited to, administrator. The other thing I came here for was regarding your recent post at ANI. You may want to notify WMF safety and security per WP:911. You should also remove your post at ANI per the page top instructions there. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 06:21, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the help on both topics. Anyhow, I think it should be clear that not everyone knows how to easily check whether someone is an admin or not. I don't recall ever noticing the "view user groups" link before, and I don't think it is completely obvious from the name of the link that it would indicate whether someone is an admin. Checking that also requires two page loads of navigation away from the Talk page where the question would arise in someone's mind, even if someone knows how. Regarding the other matter, I was unfortunately offline when you provided the ANI/911 information. ANI was the best I could think of at the time. Someone else took action in response to my ANI posting and that section of the ANI has been closed, and I don't plan to do anything further about that. Perhaps it was just vandalism. I'll keep your advice in mind if something like that happens again. I was rather concerned at the time, and really didn't know what to do. I hope I was just overreacting. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:34, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Good Heart Barnstar

 * Thank you. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Phoolan Devi
Thanks for bringing that to the noticeboard. The article has clearly been the target of disruptive editing for quite a while. I reverted all the way back to early August. Hopefully the page protection will discourage any would be vandals. If problems persist drop me a line. I'm off to bed for now. G'nite. -Ad Orientem (talk) 06:21, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for helping. That is the same version I reverted to. The page protection should help a lot. Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of the topic. —BarrelProof (talk) 13:32, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

DYK for John Hanger (banker)
Alex Shih (talk) 12:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Merry

 * Thanks so much, and to you and yours as well. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:15, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy Saturnalia

 * Thank you! Let us all celebrate with intoxicating beverages and play with freedom and merriment! —BarrelProof (talk) 00:43, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 * Hey, thanks! And back at you! —BarrelProof (talk) 17:12, 24 December 2018 (UTC)