User talk:Biruitorul/Archive3

Good work
Good work on Lake Ceauru. A fine job in one huge edit! This, that and the other 08:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

LOL
The story's getting a little twisted! I can't believe you turned us into island cannibals...ugh. While you're off retaking Constantinople, Dahn and I will figure out a way of getting off the island, and I suppose I'll have to bring KIDB and Panonian into the story pretty soon as well (look at the edit history on Greater Hungary.) Yes, some pictures of New York may indeed be forthcoming next week. More later... K. Lásztocska 17:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, here's a bit more:


 * "Though Lastochka would never admit it, she had been terribly shaken by what she witnessed that night on the island when Biruitorul slew Anonimu. She thought she had seen combat, at the Battle of Fantana Alba and the War of Liszt's Nationality, but none of that wild but precise sniper fire had prepared her for the sight of her old friend driving a sword with his bare hands deep into the bosom of their fierce enemy, the horribly contorted grimace on Anonimu's face as he drew his dying breath, the blood pouring everywhere, and worst of all, the cruel, twisted fire in Biruitorul's eyes, the maniacal laughter, the sudden bloodlust and ferocity that she had not known was possible in her slightly insane but essentially merciful and gentle-hearted comrade. This was not the way of the peaceful and merciful Christ whom Biruitorul had worshipped so devoutly, but an Old-Testament vengeful wrath, a Scourge of God, with all the cruelty of Genghis and Tamerlane....there was only one explanation for this terrible turn of events: Biruitorul had gone mad.
 * Lastochka awoke from her nightmares with a terrified scream. Through her uncontrollable shivers and tears, she noticed with horror that only one Romanian remained on the beach. Biruitorul was gone, and Lastochka knew immediately where he was headed.
 * She frantically shook Dahn awake. "Commander! Dahn, wake up! Captain Biruitorul has escaped with the Poles, and I know exactly what he's trying to do!"
 * "Eh...what? Where is he?" said Dahn groggily.
 * "He's trying to retake Constantinople! You remember, that's where he was headed when you tranquilized him, and now that Poland is nuclear he's gone with them! If I may, sir, I believe he's trying no less than to drive the Turks from Byzantium and perhaps even hasten Armageddon!"
 * Dahn's eyes grew wide. "Good God. We've got to stop him! ...but how?" We don't even have a ship!"
 * Lastochka quickly surveyed the scene. "Wait, look! There is the wreckage of the Dacia, and there what's left of the Hungaria. Between the two of them, we can probably salvage enough good wood to build a new ship. It will be a small one, but a good one."
 * And so the two remaining heroes got to work building a new ship by the light of the moon. As dawn broke, the red and gold rays of the sun cast themselves benevolently on the finished vessel, a small ship, but a good one.
 * "We should call it the Transylvania, Lastochka said solemnly. "The crossroads of our two countries, the land where our bloods and our languages intertwine, the heartland of both our histories, the womb from which our sister countries sprang."
 * Dahn gave Lastochka an odd look, a bit mystified by her grasp of Romanian history, but had to agree that it was a good name. "Transylvania it is then."
 * The sun rode high in the sky as the good ship Transylvania set off from the bloodstained island and across the wine-dark sea towards Istanbul. But back on the island, something terrible had happened...


 * Dahn and Lastochka didn't know it, but during the night they had been building their ship, a dreadful spectacle had taken place in the woods.
 * The remains of Anonimu's bloodied corpse lay in a heap in a small clearing. At exactly midnight, the full moon directly overhead, an unearthly cold wind began to blow and the very air turned dank and rotten with the smell of the grave. It was a witches' sabbath, and demons and devils all cackled in evil glee as they danced around the woods. Stalin and Hitler, reconciled at last, joined in the festivities with relish. But then suddenly all fell silent and looked with an almost reverent hush into the darkest part of the woods.
 * Out strode a tall man in a long rich cloak, his face pale and severe with a long hooked nose and burning dark eyes. His hair fell in long black curls around his face, and his face would have been almost handsome if it had not worn such an expression of unadulterated cruelty and malice. His lips were unnaturally red for his chalk-white face, and his pointed side teeth were oddly prominent.
 * "Vlad Ţepeş!" whispered all the demons and devils. "Vlad Dracula! The Impaler!"
 * "Yes, it is I," said Dracula coldly. "Look what we have here, my friends: a new foot soldier ready for the taking! Arise, my servant! Arise, my new lackey and minion!"
 * With a terrible shuddering and a smell of death and damnation, Anonimu's corpse began to stir. The missing bones and limbs formed themselves again out of dust and cruelty, and as he arose again, his face was not his own, but distorted with the evil and malice of Vlad Tepes. This was no longer Anonimu, but a horrid undead facsimile. He smiled wickedly and bowed before the Impaler. "At your service, my liege...."


 * (I just had to bring Dracula into the mix. I've just finished an excellent novel called "The Historian', by Elizabeth Kostova, which I highly reccomend--but beware it can get pretty damn creepy at times. :-) ) K. Lásztocska 16:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Omar Hayssam
Hi, Biruitorul. I will be adding the Arabic script shortly, but I am afraid I will not be able to scrutinize the matter. Sorry; it's a little late, I'm a little sleepy and don't feel up to it. I promise I will check it out tomorrow after work. In the meanwhile, you may consult with Fayssal; he may be of some help. Sorry again. Cheers,  An as  talk? 22:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

RFC on Petri Krohn
In response to calls to this effect on the talk page, I'm moving forward with the WP:RFC/U with only the last six weeks worth of edits fully classified. Please take a look at Requests for comment/Petri Krohn, which, after minor editing and addition of the most recent 'interesting' diffs, is supposed to become the main RFC around 21:00 UTC tonight. If there are reasons barring you from endorsing the current summary, I would like to learn about them as soon as possible so the main summary can be endorsed by as wide a coalition as possible.

Thanks in advance. Digwuren 15:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

RfA
Hi,

A wee bit of advice for your upcoming RfA: they always ask "have you had any major conflicts with other editors?" Since the answer is a resounding yes, you will of course have to mention this ongoing Anonimu mess, but if I may advise a tactic to keep things from going downhill: do NOT mention his political leanings or the fact that he is an avowed Communist, no matter how repulsive and morally repugnant you find those views. It would weaken your case tremendously. (Do, however, mention his baseless attacks on you, like calling you a fascist and a holocaust denier.) I think we will need to keep politics as much out of this ongoing dispute as possible.... K. Lásztocska 18:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * As I think about it, I come to the conclusion that you probably won't need to wait as long as 6 months to try again--there's been significantly less fallout from our misadventure on the high seas than I originally feared: a tempest in a teapot for a day or two, and then everyone basically seemed to forget about it. I wouldn't advise running again until September 1 at the earliest, but I don't think it's turned out seriously enough that you would need to wait for January. Besides, we've learned our lesson, publicly apologized, and promised never to do it again...surely wiki-forgiveness is possible? K. Lásztocska 01:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Not sure. I've not been feeling especially productive lately, maybe once I finally get Szigeti up to FA status and make some substantial improvements to other articles on my hit list...I try, I just keep getting distracted! (Usually by political wars or user conduct disputes...) Anyway, probably in a couple months, and probably after you. (I don't especially want us to be running at the same time, we'd really look like each others' groupies then.) ;-) K. Lásztocska 01:25, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Your story
Either way, I don't think its appropriate at all for Wikipedia. Fictional or not, you are to respect the other editors and not make up any stories of any sort pertaining to their bodily endangerment or death (this pretty much goes for society as well). However, I do believe you will do better next time and am more than willing to give you a warning. Please be civil. Both sides of this have done enough name-calling to warrant more than a few RFCs. Sasquatch t|c 22:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * ...you know, I have to say, I didn't like your latest installment either, and I figured it would lead to this sort of trouble. I feel terrible that I was a part of this nonsensical escapade since I am 50% responsible for getting you in trouble and ruining your chances at adminship!! Things could not be more screwed up right now. How can we clean up this mess we've made?!?! I admit I was considering running for admin sometime soon as well (probably delusional, I know) and now my name's just as tarred as yours. Pardon my French, but when you take a step back and actually look at this nonsense we've been writing, it's pretty clear that we have fucked up, and not a little, a lot. What a terrible, depressing, humiliating and disgusting end to our stupid fun. It got out of hand, we were being 110% unprofessional, and we paid the price. Maybe we should both just disappear from the Wiki for a while. I suppose it could be said that as you were on your way to Constantinople, one of your nukes accidentally went off, and meanwhile the Transylvania sprung a leak and sank. We're all sunk. I don't see how we can even continue contributing to Wikipedia now. K. Lásztocska 04:04, 20 June 2007 (UTC) PS I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to the admin noticeboard in time to back you up with whatever support I could. K. Lásztocska 04:06, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I like the Laurel-and-Hardy bathtub imagery. I would say let's get our mops, but...sigh. Incidentally, I came up with a real ending for the story last night: the Transylvania, intact and unsunk, catches up with you and Dahn and I persuade you to get your finger off the button. We enter Istanbul peacefully, where the most liberal elements of modern Turkish society allow us to hold an Orthodox service in Hagia Sophia, choirs and candles and the whole deal. The beauty and holiness of the whole spectacle moves you so deeply that you snap out of your violent madness and, weeping with overwhelming and conflicting emotions (wait, or is that me?), you turn back into the old Biruitorul we all knew and loved. A very happy reunion ensues. Meanwhile, whatever humanity is left in the Anonimu-vampire character rebels with elemental force against the wicked control of Vlad Tepes, and through what could only be a miracle, he turns back into a living human being. Though his political views don't change, he resolves to henceforth be a model of kindness and understanding. (please?) The Czechs finally come up for air (as it were), finish playing Ma Vlast, and mediate a peace treaty between all of us (including the Russians, who apparently were not killed in the conflagration of the Kornilov, but only lightly toasted.) The strains of Enescu's First Romanian Rhapsody, Chopin's Heroic Polonaise, Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia, Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and a really cool Serbian folk band all mix and mingle in the air around the celebration of the peace accords, creating a wonderful exuberant cacophony as we all sail off into the sunset.

In any event, I still do apologize for whatever percentage of this screw-up was my fault--you aren't entirely to blame, I must shoulder at least a bit of the responsibility. However, now that it's morning here and I've gotten some much-needed sleep, I can safely say that I will not be retiring from Wikipedia any time soon. Maybe a few days off to let this thing blow over, but I'll be back for sure. K. Lásztocska 13:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * LOL--look at the admin noticeboard now. Somebody apparently misinterpreted one of István's comments and now it looks like we have a case of mistaken identity on our hands! K. Lásztocska 00:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, probably. No Shakespeare comedies for us to write today, I guess...*sigh*... K. Lásztocska 00:48, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Hancock Manor
I don't have much information to add on Hancock Manor. It may have been intended for a governor's mansion as you said; the article mentions it was originally intended as the state house... It's a short article but it's not too bad - at least it has two sources! If I come across anything, I'll drop it in there. Sorry I can't be more helpful! --Midnightdreary 12:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Speeking of which, well done,

Hi, I think there was a small problem with your comment here: * is obviously a typo for #. I would have changed it myself, but... considering what the other side might have 'thought', I didn't. E.J. 06:45, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Tibby and stuff
Hi, and sorry for not replying sooner (I got caught up in this fascinating subject). Morea looks just beautiful (didn't really look into it, but I do believe will - I'm sure any edits I will make will be cosmetic and/or additions). I came across stuff on Tiburce when researching Horace - for one, the article when I found claimed that Horace defended Paris in 1848, which is what Tibby did. It seems that info on him is bound to be both complex and obscure, and I promised myself I would not look into these guys until I reluctantly redo the references for Horace (it seems that no one who objected bother to note that I would have to look into all the references a second time ijn order to accomplish that...).

I note there is a new Category:Eastern Orthodox monks out there, and it struck me that all high-ranking clergy categories would need to be included there as well. Did I get this right?

I'm genuinely sorry about your novel raising such controversy, and I sincerely hope that it did not ruin your would-be adminship (though I'm sure people who want to oppose it, like you know who, now have a weapon to use). You could have killed and eaten my character, I wouldn't have minded. But, let me stress this: you and the other Goncourt have exceptional writing skills. I was really enjoying the story, and I think you should preserve it somewhere as a whole.

I'm sorry for not picking up right away on the comments you left on Talk:Vasile Luca - though I think you're mistaken in assessing several things (for example, the Pale was actually English, not British; also, I was not implying that the Irish were not subjects of the Crown, just that linking to "Ireland" will and does do the trick for what was being discussed - as for Paisely and other such guys, the trick is usually accomplished by linking to, well, Northern Irish). However, I do accept that some points I made were sketchy and probably confusing.

Well, Kogălniceanu has seen the light of day - I'm pleased with it, and I can only hope it is to your liking as well. Dahn 23:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
If you have some time, please help preserve info in this article, and protect it from vandalism. :Dc76 17:59, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:EstonianPMs
Could you provide a reference to the source you used in creating EstonianPMs. -- Petri Krohn 14:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Monk
I liked the image, too, and I already fought against its replacement. I don't know where it was taken from, I can try to find out. Dpotop 18:17, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you know how to obtain the history of a deleted file? I did find the broken link on ro.wiki, in "Biserica Ortodoxa Romana". Dpotop 18:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Brown Cabinet Template
Just a quick message to say that I like the template for the Brown Cabinet.

Keep up the good work.

(Stephennarmstrong 22:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC))

Hiya-

In regards to your response about setting templates for previous administration, I think it would be best that it is just kept with the incumbent government as all other pages that feature Prime Ministers have a section about members of their government.

Stephennarmstrong 19:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Excommunication
Can't you have a talk with the guy who rules the Ro Church and ask him to excommunicate Anonimu? Thanks. --Thus Spake Anittas 13:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Kismet!
As I'm writing this, Asachi leads the DYK bunch; in a couple of hours, Heliade will be the FA. Uncanny. Bewildering. Astonishing. These two guys will not be split up! Dahn 03:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Question
Hi, I was wondering which will be the best name for the Romanian Air Force article - the exact translation would be "Romanian Air Forces" (from Forţele Aeriene Române). Now, should the article name remain like it is now ("Romanian Air Force", as almost all other air forces designations, at singular), or should be renamed as "Romanian Air Forces", the exact translation? I asked this because you are one of the best wiki Romanian editors, and I'd like to hear your opinion. Best, --Eurocopter tigre 18:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Roşiori
The Prunaru Charge sounds great (but believe me, I never heard of it), and I will mention it soon in the Romanian Land Forces article. Regarding the Roşiori, I will be very happy to create this article or help with it, but unfortunately I don't have any sources, that could help us. Just give me a few days, so I can set up the bases, and try to find some sources. Best, --Eurocopter tigre 20:19, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * so far I found this: - WWII Rosiori regiments and their role;

Proposal
Hi. How do you feel about this? Are you in for the ride? It promises to be fun. Dahn 22:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

History merger
Unfortunatly I don't know how to do it :( Try WP:AN, I am sure somebody will help.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 09:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Story
I felt it would stirr trouble, but nonetheless I applaud you for the attempt to turn our troubles into a joke - and if some cannot take it, it reflects bad only on them. Btw, I think you'll enjoy some statements found here :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Politician navbars
Hi there. I see that you are currently busy with producing a lot of navbars for various European politicians and I would like to make a number of suggestions:
 * If covering multiple periods (eg. SlovenePMs), you might like to use Navbox generic which makes it possible to create nice clear groups (eg. GermanChancellors uses this feature). Navbox generic also has the bonus of being collapsible.
 * Instead of using " •" as a divider, the less-bold · is encouraged.
 * By using nowrap, names are prevented from wrapping around line breaks.
 * Instead of categorising the navbar itself under "xxxx politicians", most countries have their own category for navbars - see Category:Navigational templates by region. Then you can use includeonly tags to place only the articles that use the navbar in the category "xxxx politicians"

To demonstrate, I have modified your recently-created SaxonyPMs - I was going to start making these German templates soon, but you beat me to it. Cheers. - 52 Pickup 10:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It is a shame that there are good and bad sides to both navbars and navboxes. I don't like the "v.d.e." thing present on navbars, but their autocollapsability is very handy when articles use a lot of these boxes. I'll take care of the remaining German ones if you like - I'm a bit busy at the moment, so it might take a while. - 52 Pickup 20:13, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Julian calendar
Thanks. That's interesting--I have an aunt who is Russian Orthodox, so that's how I knew about the January 7 thing, but I didn't know that only certain branches of Orthodoxy still use the Julian calendar. Actually, on a related but slightly random topic, I can't remember why I was wondering about this the other day but you can probably tell me the answer: what are the differences among all those many different branches of Eastern Orthodoxy? I know there is Russian Orthodox, Greek, Romanian, Serbian, Armenian and a whole bunch of others--are there significant doctrinal differences, or is it just a matter of language? Now, don't go off on a big history/theology lecture, (though I'm sure it's tempting to expound ad infinitum on such topics), I'd just like a brief, in-a-nutshell answer. :-) Again, I can't remember for the life of me what brought that to mind, but it's one of those odd little questions that have a habit of sticking in my brain and not leaving me alone until I find the answer. (Another one like that is, how did "Serbo-Croatian" split into Serbian and Croatian? Were they really two languages but mutually intelligible so everyone pretended they were one language, or were they really more like two dialects of the same language which were then deliberately split!? Ugh, I think too much!!) Cheers, K. Lásztocska 23:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi again. First of all, I LOVE the userbox you designed and have already added it to my page. It could probably use a little tweaking (as it stands, it takes up about twenty lines in an edit window--must be some way to condense that?!) but I think it's a terrific idea, and it looks damn spiffy as well. ;-) Thanks for the info on Orthodoxy and Balkan languages, it's really interesting stuff. I'm not especially religious myself (at least not at this point in my life) but I find religions of all sorts absolutely fascinating and I love learning about them. (I'm particularly fond of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Francis of Assisi.) Best, K. Lásztocska 04:17, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Eh, one more thing--I was looking through the Ceauşescu article earlier today and was slightly startled to see that picture of him lying dead in a ditch, eyes staring blankly and a pool of blood under his head. I commented on the talk page about it but I'm interested to hear your take on the issue. I'm not particularly worried about paying respect to him, it's not as if he deserved it....but then again, the other half of my brain replies, he was still a human being and all humans deserve at least a shred of respect, which probably includes not putting graphic pictures of their executed bodies all over the place. Also, I was pretty grossed out by it. I know it's iconic and historically very important, but perhaps a bit too R-rated for a public encyclopedia? K. Lásztocska 04:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool. I almost swiped that Romanian one as is (figuring I'd either translate it later or just keep it in Romanian for the fun of it) but something in the HTML code or something didn't want to work on EnWiki. We might want to put whatever finishing touches might be necessary on the big blue peace box before putting it up on the noticeboards, and I'm pretty sure a few people will have nicked it off our userpages by morning anyway. ;-) Uh, and speaking of "by morning", I had better log off now. I can see that we've ended up online at the same time, and knowing our tendency to get into long aimless discussions....I've also spent way too much time on here today anyway for someone who's supposed to be on wikibreak. (Priorities, Lastochka, priorities!!) I should be back pretty soon--although as soon as the new Harry Potter book comes out I am going to have to force myself to stay off the internet at all costs lest I find out the ending before I've finished reading it!! I'm practically developing a full-fledged phobia about getting the ending of that spoiled...anyway, thanks for the big blue peace box, and I'll be back soon. Cheers, K. Lásztocska 04:46, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I. C. Frimu and raise you...
Hi. I glanced at the Frimu article, and I have to say that sourcing it is bound to be problematic (since most modern sources tend to ignore him). But have you perchance looked through sources we already used (such as 110 ani de social democraţie and the PSD-Constantin Titel Petrescu essay)? Will get back to you on that. (I notice you may want to add him to the "Ro trade unionists" cat)

But no, sir, you shall not lay claim to the title of "king of broken promises". That title rightfully belongs to the House of Dahn! I'm looking forward to any edits or comments on the Caragiale project from your part, at any moment you may feel like making them. Btw: unfortunately, the caricatures I came upon in relation to him seem not to be PD by default (the two artists cited by name died between 1950 and 1960). Dahn 06:11, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Death of Nicolae Ceauşescu
Please explain the falsity you refer to in. Digwuren 15:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I found your explanation in User talk:K. Lastochka already. I was not aware that such a 'partial calendar change' phenomenon had occurred among the Orthodox churches. Digwuren 15:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:EstonianPMs
I don't see how I wrecked it, it is much smaller this way and if you would like to add distinctions like differing title, fine, but don't undo the edit because it looks so awful with that font and the size is erroneous. Therequiembellishere 06:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, and thank you, I was rather harsh on my own. Therequiembellishere 06:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Roman/Moldovean/Basarabean

 * The problem of calling roman/moldovean/basarabean is never occuring in practice. It is only in the WP talk. If a person wants to call his/her ethnicity, s/he says "I am Roman". If s/he wants to say the geographical area, "I am Basarabean/Bucovinean". If s/he wants to say the connection with Moldavian statality (both middle age and/or modern), "I am Moldovean". People from Budjak and from the northern Hotin county think that the border in 2 August 1940 was drown incorrectly. Some of them would like some territorial sweep with Ukraine (they say for example, Ukraine can take some part of Transnistria). But all of them identify themselves with medieval and modern (1917-1918, and current) Moldavian statality, although if you ask them what do they mean by this identification, you get the answer that grings you back to the question :-) "I am moldovean". The following is highly hypotetical, but just to understand: if a change would be possible, they would like them to live in Moldova, not in Romania. The majority do also support union with Romania, but again, inside Moldova/Bessarabia, not directly inside Romania. Do you understand the logic? Again, I only made a highly hypotetical supposition for the sole reason to explain how people think.
 * The majority of Bessarabians come from the middle age class of razasi, free peasants, also called "Arcasii lui Stefan", and have continued calling themselves Moldavians thoughout 1812-1918 because Bessarabia was part of the Principality of Moldavia before 1812. They also called themselves Romanians, even before 1812. When using "Moldavian language" they refered to "the language of the Moldavian Principality", not some language different from Romanian. Often, before 1746, the word "ruman" ("u" instead of "a") was used to denote serfs, and to "esti ruman?" people would reply "I am razes" or (the boyars only) "I am moldovean" (meaning the boyar class of Moldavia). Mazils (noble razesi, i.e. razesi captains) would say "sunt razes mazilit". But they would call themselves roman (when asked "what language do you speak?" the'd say "sunt roman") See for example Nicolae Costin and Ion Neculce for the usage of the word ruman/roman in 17th and 1st half of 18th century.
 * Also inside Bessarabia there is talk like this: Indeed, we did want union with Romania in 1918, but we did not want to disband our regional parliament, we wanted to preserve autonomy and have a regional government. People who avoid calling themselves Moldovean on all occasions sometimes get questioned "do you want to be inside Romania wiht no autonomy?" and then "Ah, you meant romanian as ethnic group. sorry, misunderstood." The call for a regional government is even stronger in view of 28 June 1940, b/c people say now "If in 1940 we'd have autonomy, there'd be war, b/c our regional government could not evecuate, the only choice it would have had was to fight, even if Bucharest wanted to retreat. So, not having local government also helped the Soviets to take over." :Dc76\talk 15:32, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Frimu stuff
I looked upon Frimu again, and it seems to have some major problems. For one, all the lengths the original contributor has went to in order to explain the events through the way of Bolshevik influence are OR, clashing with what respectable sources say (as I cited them in Socialist Party of Romania), and are simply nonsensical at times. I find it very hard to believe that Rakovsky published anything in România Muncitoare, given that the magazine had not been printed since 1916, and that he had been imprisoned for opposing the war and was in Russia at the time (having already attempted to topple the Romanian government in late 1917).

Also, I would avoid using Lumea as a reference for anything. It is not a respected journal, not peer reviewed, and it makes the wildest claims on a regular basis. Those "facts" it cites need to be verified against a reliable source (my attempts to do so indicate that there is no such source).

My proposal is to remove the paragraphs in question and see what we can source from the rest. i found a Mag Ist from 1971 which, leaving aside the usual agitprop, is reliable because it is mostly a collection of sizable quotes from various people who knew Frimu. Using sources we already used should cover the rest. Dahn 12:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool. I expanded it a bit, and reorganized some sections for flow. I also changed some names to a more common form. What do you think? Oh, btw, the two photos may or may not be technically PD (though I don't think anyone would actually care in other contexts); speaking of which: I have a much better photo of him scanned (well, at least one that is not bendy to one side...), but where to upload? Dahn 00:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I could upload the other as well, and let them coexist. The problem is that the template used is inaccurate, and this is likely to come up at some point. Oh: I was wandering around aimlessly and found this - I think you'll like it (even if it is rather schematic), and I think there's more where that came from. Dahn 02:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's a good idea. Since we're on the subject, I think this Épinal horror can make it into the future article on the labor movement. (After all, I promised you socialist kitsch) Dahn 03:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hm. I'm afraid I don't know what fair use rationale I can provide. We should really get a proper review of the copyright law in Ro, because I have a feeling that many of these docs are public domain by default. Dahn 03:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's not PD unless the guy who made it also died at least 70 years ago (and, of course, we don't know who the hell he was). I was going to use the same one as for Cristescu (which in turn I based on Khoikhoi's for the Valter Roman photo), but I do not know if it is ultimately correct. if I got it right, the fair use policy wants historical photographs to be themselves the topic of discussion in the article they are linked to... On the other hand, if we get around to creating a PD in Romania template (if it should apply), we're home free; of course, that is provided the law does say something relevant (I've checked through it, and it is simply weird - for a law that is apparently this tight, it sure gets interpreted creatively all over the net, and I would hope that wikipedia may get to part the waters in this gray area). Dahn 03:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed, it is common sense that nobody'll sue, but is our assurance that it is common sense enough? For the fair use policy, there is section on historical photos here (it is the only detailing I could find). Dahn 04:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Good thought. I'll ask tonight (I'm going to have to go soon; I'll probably log on rather soon, but it will not be from home). Dahn 04:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Question. There is a template that says works published before January 1, 1923 are PD in the US. I have always thought that it applies to "works published in the US", but, hey, I saw it was used for works by Edvard Munch. This could be a path to pursue. Whaddya think? Dahn 15:42, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

An unrelated issue
Could I have please ask you to express an opinion on the recent developments at Romanian language (including the re-creation of the deleted Category:Romanian-speaking countries and territories and the new "animation"? As far as I can tell, they are both based on OR and POV-pushing. Dahn 10:40, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about false map
If you want to see something interesting you must to look article Borders before and after Yugoslavia, PANONIAN map of Serbia in 1918 and our discussion about this map. Discussion is on discussion page of article for which I have given you link. In last week I am fighting with PANONIAN that this fantasy map in which even Pecs and Timisoara are Serbian territory be deleted on wiki. ---Rjecina 19:50, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Our labors
Great stuff! Haven't really looked into it, but I will add it to my to do (as I'm pretty sure I can sprinkle it with info from other sources). And, yes, both ideas on the peasant resistance seem good (perhaps as an article linked and summarized from an article?); I have only briefly looked into the anti-pinko resistance article (for one, it is discouragingly uncopyedited, and just thinking about who originally contributed the article makes me cringe), but I think I will pay more attention in the future. Dahn 05:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and: be back soon! In the meantime, I promise I'll ask about the Frimu picture. Dahn 05:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977
Hi, I've nominated an article you worked on, Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977, for consideration to appear on the Main Page as part of Did you know. You can see the hook for the article at Template talk:Did you know where you can improve it if you see fit. (I also added it to the list at WikiProject Organized Labour/New Articles.) Cheers, --Bookandcoffee 20:49, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome back!
Welcome back! This place was getting quite boring without you.

1. I agree about the nature of that info (the "likely true, just unsourced" part), and I'm sure we can eventually cover it as well. Upon further consideration, my own edits in that article have their share of problems (there is a rule I was not aware of then about not linking in titles). Oh, in case you want to revisit with a Sebastian, you could help with the old problem on Mircea Eliade (the one you raised in reference to the quote): in case it's the English edition, you could perhaps verify if the page by page citation is correct (I just assumed it was the edition used); in case it's the Romanian one, you could see exactly what words he argues Eliade used ("the j word"?). Of course, there's no rush.

2. Thank you. The Cathedral name is the result of an ad-hoc reasoning. I didn't feel like creating the template (I had little patience to search the whole recent "Cathedral Plaza" brouhaha, and then to try and google data about the cathedral that would not be related to the said brouhaha). Therefore, I though I'd link to the Romanian title, which is bound to be either a redirect or the title in case someone may wish to create the article in the meantime. Otherwise, I fully agree that it should be "Cathedral of Saint X, X city" (though I noticed we also have "St", and I believe we have "St." as well).

3. I like the template idea, but I would wait a bit to clarify some issues relating to structure. For example, aside from the recognized denominations, there are branches of them (should the doctrinal link between the two Lutheran Churches be highlighted? should the Armenian Vicariate be listed separately?), and I would not know where to place the new religious movements and articles such as the one on Hinduism. Precedents exist, but I would like us to have a full grasp of the issues involved before launching into it, and perhaps do something about the underdeveloped articles. As a side note, Religious education in Romania (which we could perhaps also link in the template) is quite shabby, woefully maladroit, and painfully Orthodox-centric.

4. Indeed. The only reason I did not nominate it myself was because I did not want to seem like I was "out to get it", and I also hoped it could catch people's attention. To "massive and unnecessary", I would add "repetitive" (it duplicates templates already there). I think it simply abuses the notion of a template. Speaking of abuses, check out the "infoboxes" here, here and especially here. I raised the issue, and both Anonimu and Turgidson agreed that the info belongs in the text (a first?); of course, two of my most avid readers thought they could go with an ad hoc version of WP:ILIKEIT (what else?), and that was the start of an entertaining discussion. This was quickly archived at Wikipedia talk:Romanian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive8. Can you add your rationalist approach on this issue?

5. Hm. I honestly don't know: to me, such lists would be relevant, but I'm not sure to what degree they are relevant on enwiki (though the few precedents have survived). So, your call. Since we're on the subject: a revert war has taken place on Romanian language during the past days; I didn't really look into it, but it seems to have been over the weight of Slavic words (which, btw, I think should have been elaborated upon in Romanian lexis rather than there). This brings up an interesting issue: consensus regarding Slavic influences was never reached (aside from what Romanians tend to think). Introducing a section or even an article on what the controversies and experiments were/are would be both honest and interesting. While Romanian is indisputably Romance, mentioning, at the very least, the Cihac-Hasdeu controversy, the Heliade-Laurian tango, and the Junimea guidelines is, I do believe, imperative to any proper article on the subject. Something to consider.

I failed you on the Frimu issue: I kept thinking "I'll do it next", but I was disenchanted by the "can of worms" potential it had. On the other hand, I'm proud it caught the eye of the Organized Labor Project - it's a featured anniversary there. That is just lovely.

I had other stuff to run by you, but I cannot remember it just now. In any case, there's this (and my comments here). I am anxiously waiting for feedback there, since this is bound to be one of the most interesting projects ever (to give you a glimpse, I read in Cioculescu that, in many of his plays, Caragiale actually satirizes his own youthful liberalism - he is even quoted saying "I'm Rică Venturiano"). Dahn 09:45, 1 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If and when you have the time, could you look over Gândirea and its associated talk page? I need someone to double-check the English, and I would like to have a second opinion about the other issues involved (defining terms, listing people etc.). The article received some criticism, but it does not seem valid to me. Dahn 13:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh, I didn't notice it was a gift to the world from one of our dearest friends - this should explain a lot about both the article and the troubled person who started it (I always suspected his claim to be a minority was a mere smoke screen, now I'm certain of it).

Some things are unclear to me, and you can perhaps help sort them out. One is: does the Romanian state recognize religions, or denominations, or both? By which I mean: should we perhaps go with "Eastern Orthodoxy: Romanian Orthodox Church...", "Lutheranism: Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession in Romania..." etc? In case it recognizes just (or mainly) denominations, we should perhaps list them with their full titles, instead of paraphrasing.

Also, I'm not sure if Protestant denominations are officially "ethnic something" - though we could go with colloquialism, we could also simply discuss this in the articles and use the full titles in the template. Do you happen to know what the usage is on the Armenian Catholics and their separate Vicariate? Are they only recognized through the Roman Catholic Church? And, if so, do you think they should go in the template? I guess I'm asking: do we take the liberty to add (in smaller print, perhaps) sections of various rites/languages/communions within each church, even if the state only recognizes them by proxy? In this case, are the Ukrainian Greek Catholics a section of the Romanian church, or are they not recognized at all?

You wrote: "About the newer religions like Mormonism or Hinduism: well, you're right that they exist in Romania, but where exactly does one stop?" Precisely my concern. On the other hand, the, so to say, rock bottom is already present through Hinduism in Romania (since I'm willing to bet that "Raelian Church in Romania" or "Ghost Dance in Romania", likely to contain the words "me and a friend of mine", will not survive for more than two hours after being created). So the question turns into one of inclusion in the enlarged template for articles on religious movements Hinduism and above. Though I can see this going either way, I do agree that "state recognition provides a useful, neutral benchmark". Ultimately, I will support any decision you make between the two. (And, if I haven't already, I must say I'm impressed by your template output!)

For the religious education article, you may find useful the details scattered around in Islam in Romania (upon consideration, I should have structured them into a separate section as well), and there's also the Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj (sourced from the official site - I didn't bother with citations). Of course, this is because I'm assuming that the article also covers the training of clergy and theologians. I admit I may be wrong.

No worries about the other issues. Whenever you have the time. Dahn 19:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Ahoy matey! Indeed, welcome back, I hope your wikibreak was nice and refreshing--a good vacation really can do wonders for one's state of mind. Unlike Dahn I unfortunately have no grand projects on Romania or anything else to propose a collaboration on, just wanted to say hello. Also, I suppose I should warn you that Anonimu just came off a (controversial) week-long block and is probably in an even worse mood than usual--be sure to give him a wide berth, or we'll all be caught in a tempest again. (Wow, don't you love how I'm still thinking in nautical metaphors?!) In other news, I've decided not to run for admin this fall, but may give it a try sometime early next year. I liked the idea of it, but was beset by too many nagging inner voices of doubt--figured I'd best wait until I'm 100% sure. Are you still planning to run sometime soon?
 * Anyway, best wishes as usual. I'm off to clean out some more muck from my very own Augean Stables... (don't tell anyone I called it that...) K. Lásztocska Review me? 17:05, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Point 1: Wow. All those Wikipedia-bashing pundits would do well to look at the wikis in other languages--from your examples and a few other I've seen elsewhere, enwiki appears to be among the worst-written and least serious of the bunch. How embarrassing--though I've always hated English, actually, I only bother to speak it because it happens to be my native language.
 * Point 2: Eh well, I guess that's why this place needs such brilliant writers as ourselves--not for nothing did Dahn refer to us as the Goncourts! ;-) (Should I have linked to fr.wiki instead?)
 * Point 3: Aaargh, I'm nostalgic for our adventures aboard the good ships Dacia and Hungaria. After l'affaire nuclear rowboats was dredged up again in one of the innumerable Anonimu disputes, I amused myself for a good fifteen minutes by re-reading our whole saga from start to ignominious finish, and I came to the conclusion that, as far as excruciatingly bad improvised purple-prose potboilers go, we wrote a pretty damn good one. ;-) And we should have no fear of the "threat" being brought up again--anyone who cares to read the whole story will see quite clearly that your character had totally snapped as a result of his torture at the hands of the island savages. You have a clear insanity defense! ;-)
 * Point 4: it was fun, but let's not try it again.
 * Point 5: as for Thalberg, the main problem is, shall we say, a personality conflict between yours truly and the author of that very long article: he's made quite sure everyone knows he has a PhD, for starters, which would be irritating even by itself, but add to that a certain pomposity, a very strong dislike of yours truly, a very strong dislike of Franz Liszt, a tendency towards praising Thalberg by tearing down Liszt, and most importantly, a lack of understanding of NPOV encyclopedic writing and general article conventions. And bad grammar. He's probably reading this right now, incidentally, as he has a disconcerting tendency toward following me around looking for evidence of my trollishness and immaturity--well, scholar, I hope I have not disappointed!
 * Point 6: I heard that Patriarch Teoctist died a few days ago--my condolences. All my Polish friends (as well as my large number of Catholic relatives!) were pretty depressed when John Paul II died, so I know at least second-hand what it's like to lose a spiritual leader.
 * Point 7: If you ever want to try translating some of those nice, thorough, detailed articles from fr.wiki or elsewhere I'd be happy to help--I'm enough of a linguist that I can more or less puzzle out French, Italian, Spanish and sometimes even Romanian (!), even if I can't actually speak the languages. Might be worth a shot sometime--although I really have to finish Szigeti first. I've really been honing my already world-class procrastination skills on that one...
 * Point 8: sorry for the loooong, rambling message, but I'm terribly afflicted lately with a serious case of summer boredom. I either have nothing better to do or, more likely, no initiative or motivation to do much of anything once hot, dreary August rolls around. Ah well, it's cucumber season, what can you do? K. Lásztocska Review me? 19:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

it seems i used your username when refering to a sock of the well known vandal bonaparte. the initial b and the boasting intention of both usernames, coupled with stress provoked by bonny brought this unexpected result. oricum stiu ca nu te'ai suparatAnonimu 19:53, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * oh anonimu, that was so dumb of you, more stress you'll have when you'll see the WP:RCU results ;) very dumb, very.Brickoceanmonth 20:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Hancock House
I see you're turned the page into a Disambig with two redlinks. Are you working on the articles for those two Hancock Houses? ThuranX 15:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Because disambigs to redlinks are bad; because it's the only one with an article, and because an 'if you're looking for' can go at the top to Hancock Manor. If someone writes the other articles, then make a disambig. ThuranX 04:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Not really, I'd rather see it restored, since you're not going to do the work, and since you're clearly mostly upset that it no longer redirects to your Hancock Manor article. I'm not going to bother discussing it any more, though. I'll just keep improving the article. ThuranX 21:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

In times of need
No need to apologize &mdash; I did flood your page recently. Looking over my last message, I guess the questions must have seen overwhelming - they are not an interrogation as much as things to look into (for us both).

Thank you for pruning Caragiale. When I'm done with using the bulk of the sources, I'll need your input on the non-biographical sections: I structured them into what seemed the least redundant and coherent way, but these are relative notions, and your critical eye may prove imperative. I hope Andrei and Turgidson (where is he?) also weigh in, and you are all encouraged to do much more than weighing in.

I've raised my walls up higher, and this probably had some ugly consequences for you and Anonimu: the malicious forces have to stand at the gate, so they seem to have flooded onto your pages instead. So, my sympathies to you both - I could not have foreseen this.

Thank you for the kind words, and I hope all is well. Dahn 23:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Excellentamente. I got trapped again in the sandbox, and I'm again tardy. Btw, I hope the "really should" emphasis does not mean to say that it is crap :). I have one eye on the religion template, and will eventually help with it, but I fully agree with all your potential moves.
 * About the person to watch... I was only partly aware. It gets worse: there is another guy who treads around here adding all sorts of Dacodavian theories (the milder kind, though I think he had some contribs on rowiki's most shameful Nazified articles). His English is extremely poor (all in all, maybe that doesn't matter as much), and he has recently flooded Commons with spread-eagle pictorials of ridiculous taste and copyrighted provenance). Me and him had a disagreement once which also involved Bogdan, if you've been following that. You might know him, perchance (since there are people who seem to get their wikipedia entertainment from stalking me, I'll not say more).
 * On Catholicism: I think that is a good idea, and I think info could eventually go/stay in(to) both articles (as main/summary). And yes, I believe the article should say much, much more, including on anti-Catholicism. Aside from the topics you mention: I found no clear reference to Catholic emancipation in Romania (though an otherwise discreditable site I bumped into said that it happened in 1859, and that particular info is true from what I know). I have tried to look into info about the Catholics in the interwar, but my bibliography doesn't seem to add much - it may do so, but it could be that I haven't been able to find it or rekindle the memory of having found it. Minor point: the article does say something about Ceauşescu, though I fully agree more is needed. Dahn 01:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. We are also going to need to fuse the two PNŢ articles in the future, because it is getting ridiculous. The amount of absurdities I've seen over the last days is sky-rocketing like in the good old days. If you plan to discuss that template, please link me.

A lot of those articles are oldish and most deal with the Communist period - they would do little to clarify the gaps you pointed out. But yes, they do provide some extra detail, so thank you. Dahn 08:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What do you think of my new weirdoes series? After the likes of Alexandru Hrisoverghi and Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, I brought the world Fantazaki and Cilibi. Dahn 21:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I actually did catch a bit of that. I do believe that "a rose by any other name" may work as an argument for that article, if need be, but the way in which Anonimu cited me is tendentious. One of the prerequisites of my "dissertation" was that there is at least another reputable source saying and explaining that it was not &mdash; while in the NC article one will easily find jurists arguing that the wasn't a legal mess (not very convincing, imho), I have yet to find one single material outside of the biased ones saying that the occupation was not an occupation (just ones not bothering to call it anything, for reasons that cannot be and should not be inferred).

Also, my main argument was about not using sources that say more to say less - I think that the best way, in any article, is to use sources that are available for thorough citation, not just for one-liners. In the NC case, a book that is largely about NC (and a very unflattering analysis it is), is only cited for what google has made available - better than to do this is not to use the source at all. But this is just me making an obscure point - it may or may not matter as an argument in either article (though I really wish it would matter in both). Dahn 22:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, btw: have you seen this gem? Dahn 10:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, it's good stuff, only it belongs into a section I'm going to have to rethink (and keep postponing it). I'm teaching someone to fish right now and, man, is it growing absurd! Dahn 22:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Navbox problem
Hey Biruitorul,

Could you check out User:CapitalR/Test3 to let me know if those templates appear correct to you. I made some modifications to the Navbox code and want to be sure it actually is fixing the right problem. In particular, let me know if the first one (the Presidents of the United States template) is working correctly, as that is most closely related to the ones you were having trouble with. Note that those templates are using a verison of Navbox in my sandbox, so other templates on real pages have not been modified yet. Thanks, --CapitalR 01:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Sports in Saskatchewan
I have replied to your question here. Thank you for your comment. SriMesh | talk  02:17, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Citing Wikipedia
I'm glad you asked, the prohibition against using Wikipedia articles as sources for other Wikipedia articles was in the guideline Citing sources. It seems to have been removed. I don't see a consensus for the removal, it may have been moved...but I don't see it. I've asked for clarification on the citing sources talk page. If the page weren't protected, I'd add it back immmediately. It's a signifiant part of how Wikipedia works. Dreadstar †  18:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

reply to a reply
Ja, I tink dat ve have much to learn from der Germans. Unfortunately German is probably the weakest of those languages that I "know without really knowing"--Italian is probably tops, then a tie between French and Romanian. I'd be glad to take a few swings at learning more of it in my spare time though. I always love another language to babble along in. :)

Ahh, so that's what "rope-a-dope" means. (Not being much of a boxing fan, I'd never really known quite what was meant by that phrase every time I heard it.) On that general topic, do you really think this was simply a Freudian slip? I mean, not only do "Bonaparte" and "Biruitorul" not look or sound remotely like each other except for both starting with "B", why did (____) then bother posting you a message about the aforementioned slip, throwing in a little dig about the "boasting intention" of your username to boot? If I'd made such a slip I'd probably just ignore it and wait for it to go away--but really, it doesn't smell like an honest mistake, more like a deliberate provocation. Yes, "cockup before conspiracy" is a good rule of thumb, but I've learned to assume the worst in certain cases.

In general though, your rope-a-dope plan sounds like a good one. You saw what I did yesterday (bored and having nothing better to do at the time)? He proved my point brilliantly--I was a little miffed that he referred to me as "it", though.

Finally, I'd be happy to help out on various religion-related articles, except that I'm terribly ignorant of most of the finer points of every religion. No need to get into the philosophical details of my upbringing--let's just say that for me, religion is still something I'm learning about myself, not really ready to write about it for the purpose of informing other people. I can help with ordinary style/grammar/clarity stuff though, no problem.

Cheers, etc., K. Lásztocska 16:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Olaf Van Cleef

 * VIP in India see Google Com
 * No commercial Artist see on Google.com

Paniagueg 11:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Good work

 * I was working on it some time ago now, but they were only minor changes. You have obviously managed to find an excellent source though. Cheers, -- Chris.B 18:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Longevity Myths
You stated that P.T. Barnum was 'not alive in the 1800's.' But he was born in 1810 and died in 1891.Ryoung122 10:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Barnum Right. The 1800s lasted from 1800 to 1809, so being born in 1810, he wasn't alive in the 1800s. Of course I'm aware "1800s" is popularly used to mean "19th century", but here, we should use the latter in order to avoid ambiguity. Biruitorul 22:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

That's the most-ridiculous explanation I've heard. You can't delete a word when it is using its 'most popular definition' because it doesn't fit definition 2. Try again.Ryoung122 12:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The Other Way Around
In regards to your below edit:

← Older edit Revision as of 01:50, 22 August 2007 (edit) (undo) Biruitorul (Talk | contribs) ("110 or more years ago" is a rather ephemeral phrase and becomes less accurate as time passes.)

Actually, it's the other way around. Suppose someone were born in 1907 and died in 2020. In 2020, '189O's' will be out of date, but that person would still have been born '110 or more years ago.' Think about it.Ryoung122 14:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian Reformed Church
Why did you revert my comment? The main point is missing from the text that Reformation was successful because of teh political vacum. Rudolph had no control on the country, only nominally. The vilayets of Buda, Eger and Varad were in Turkish hands. --Vargatamas 23:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Ben Bolt
I have nominated this article for deletion. I noticed you have edited the article before and would appreciate your thoughts on the article's deletion page. Scar ian Talk  20:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

}|Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents}} Discussion
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at regarding. You are free to comment at the discussion but please remember to keep your comments within the bounds of the civility and "no personal attack" policies. Thank you.

Anonimu 12:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * link - ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 13:12, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

...oh, not again...
I actually saw that earlier today, and only the fact that I had to dash off to a class prevented me from responding there on AN/I. Bit rich isn't it, him accusing you of politically-motivated slander? I seem to remember a lot of "discussion" centering on the words "fascist", "Iron Guard lover", and the infamous "holodeni", not to mention "groupie" which is of course another story. Incidentally, don't take this too hard, but I'm Dahn's groupie now. Apparently. (*bangs head repeatedly against wall.*) K. Lásztocska 23:08, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * No, you don't owe me anything--what are friends for if not to defend each other against false accusations of political extremism and fascist-motivated slander campaigns? ;-) I was more disturbed by that other thing he mentioned, but anyway. Yes, I do still consider "groupie" an insult, what with its vulgar sexual connotations and (by extension) somewhat misogynistic tone. I don't much care for "lackey" or "servant" either, but "groupie" particularly annoys me.
 * Also, did we really intend for the Dacia and Hungaria to be THIS unsinkable? I should have made that shipwreck a little more thorough. I just copy-pasted a previous explanation of our Dr.-Strangelove-meets-Horatio-Hornblower adventure (slightly tweaked for context) into the current trials and tribulations.
 * I must say I'm impressed with your resilience, btw. If I'd been the target of all this, I'd have run away from the Wiki sucking my thumb and crying like a baby long ago. K. Lásztocska 02:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Awww, did you write that whole article just for me? ;-) My weak reply is Franz von Vecsey--I've been sick of seeing that red link every time I go read my Szigeti article to tell myself how horrible I am for not finishing it. (This weekend, mark my words, you WILL finally see me making progress on that front again.) Basically just wrote it off the top of my head with a little help from huwiki, I'll look for sources tomorrow. :) K. Lásztocska 04:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Sheesh! And someday I'll write an article where you don't have to tie up all my sloppy loose ends for me! Thanks though, and sorry I missed the point on the Vincze reference... K. Lásztocska 04:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, the name has actually always been a point of confusion for me--I've heard him called Franz von Vecsey, Ferenc von Vecsey, and just Ferenc Vecsey. I don't know which one he actually preferred, and I'm pretty sure he was from a noble family so he might have been born with the "von" (depends on how Austrianized they were.) I can try looking it up in the library this weekend if I need a break from Szigeti.

As for the picture, I just got it from huwiki...it's old enough that I don't think there will be much problem. K. Lásztocska 05:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Me too--if it's in black and white (or better, sepia!) I just slap a PD-old tag on it and hope it sticks around for a while. :) Be Bold, they say...
 * I better log off, in my time zone it's so late it's early. Here's to surviving the storms at sea! :) K. Lásztocska 05:16, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this ever going to end?? I just wanted to say that I'm sorry you have to go through all this crap, you don't deserve it. I only wish there was something I could do to bring peace. K. Lásztocska 05:53, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Nice userbox. :) I nearly put it on my page right then and there, but it's probably not worth the trouble. I don't want to get a reputation as your sycophantic yes-woman or anything...oh wait, I already do have that reputation. Never mind. K. Lásztocska 17:41, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

If you'll pardon the expression--JESUS CHRIST. You'd think someone with that thin a skin would perhaps have the slightest bit of empathy for other people--I mean, if hearing someone call his preferred political system "deranged" offends him this much, you'd think he might catch on that calling people philofascists and lackeys doesn't exactly make them feel all warm and fuzzy either. I almost wonder if he ENJOYS this endless baiting and battling. K. Lásztocska 22:29, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * On a lighter note, I think you'll find this entertaining. :) K. Lásztocska 22:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

whoa! :) Not only is it now abundantly clear that you're totally stalking me :)--did you just write all that off the top of your head? How do you know more about a semi-obscure composer than I do? I thought I was the musician here... :P K. Lásztocska 04:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course I stalk you, did you expect any less from your loyal groupie? I stalk pretty much everybody, but I figured it was just a weird obsession of mine (picture me up late at night clicking Istvan's contribs list five times in a row and yelling "why is he still not back yet?!" Hmm...wiki-angst.) We're all one big happy Hungo-Romanian family, I'm up too late and just typing whatever random crap comes into my head. I should probably either do something productive or log off....as for the British archives password, I'm impressed. I don't have any need for it now, but if I ever get involved in a project concerning famous Englishmen, I'll take you up on that offer. :) K. Lásztocska 04:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Awright, my fellow co-conspirators: the first rule of this groupie club is that you do not talk about the groupie club :). Well, I have to catch up with you on some issues, but, for now, I may have a solution to several problems involving oldish images - I notice this is one of the topics above, and Biru and I also scratched our heads over this in the past. Have you seen this template? Bogdan told me it doesn't [still] work on commons, and I don't know how reliable the legal rationale is, but it may prove helpful. Dahn 01:55, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Yuck! I mean, yuck!!! Plus, why the hell did he create two articles on virtually the same topic?! (Don't tell me: it's because that's how they do it on rowiki...) And others wonder why I condescend when addressing some of my compatriots... Meanwhile, we still haven't figured out the "should we have articles on villages?" issue, nor the absurd infoboxes for rivers (which keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and uselesser and uselesser). But, you see, whenever I propose a radical if coherent solution, it's one of the two: I get no feedback at all or I have to stand a certain user giving me his childish lecture on Împărat şi proletar. I was going to bring such issues up as a package deal on the notice board, since it is absurd that we continue pushing and pulling on this without any ruling on the essentials. Alas, there are just to many bells attached to my body for the ensuing discussion to be in any way rational.
 * The rowiki discussion is indeed telling - I enjoyed it. And there are so many interesting things to say about GC! Dahn 15:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Article on Paul Bremer
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You're so right! There were no head(s) of state back then. I was caught up in the middle of this debate in 2004 when a Wikipedian tried to cat this fella under heads of state in the Science Po article. Alas! I can jump for glee from one cloud 9 to another! --Anonymous, August 31, 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.188.22.40 (talk) 02:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Diary of General Bandholtz
This is the link to the diary of the American General, in case you missed it in the project page on the Bloodthirsty Hungarians' article. DIARY Have fun! --KIDB 18:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

unrelated to the above
Does WP:STALK say something to you?Anonimu 12:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Your disruptive intervention in my punctual question about policy that didn't even mention your name is just another agression against me, using the typical strategy of burrying my questions under tons of rubbish by you and your supporters. This is even more deranging that your personal attacks.Anonimu 17:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course I asked him because he deleted the ANI. But as I said, you had no motivation to write there to reply to me (You could have gone there to ask something for yourslef, but what you did was just disruptive).Anonimu 20:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't ever mentioned your name, so your accusation are false and are a clear disruption. And anyway, you haven't been acquited, you just filled that thread with googolian messages to make sure no admin will ever read it. You were just gaming the system. And it's my right to inquire the dismissal of a relevant case based only on disruptive editing by you and your supporters.Anonimu 20:52, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey man, don't be so paranoid. If it would have been about you, I would have made it clear (my moral code says not to use "****", "______"'s or "you know who"'s when refering to third persons). That was just a question about policy, to know how to act in future situations. You're acting like I was behind a big conspiracy against you. Get real. And you were gaming the system, otherwise you would have replied to accusations without going to that huge essay about what you believe to be communism. That was not required, and was even condemned by the unwritten rules of wikipedia (the recomandation is clear: "Please make your comments concise.") Thus you were just gaming the sytem, as you acknowledge in your message (" A man does what he has to do to win a case" says everything). No, you were not acquited, you forced the admins to lokk in the other way. When your "innocence" is not questioned, you're insistence is disrupting the project.Anonimu 22:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You have to do something about that paranoia. Yep, so concise that you needed to attack people just because you had no real arguments. It was a clear organized strategy to game the system, organized by onwiki and maybe even offwiki messages. Nop, the "legal counsellors" advised a DR, and ultimately "the court" has dropped the case because you had transformed it in a political discussion. That's just a proof of bad faith from your part (not the first one). I have followed wiki guidelines to report extensive attacks to ANI, you were being disruptive by transforming a discussion about breaking the policies into a political battle, that had little connection with the case. And you continue to be disruptive by attacking and encouraging other's attacks against me.Anonimu 12:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Since you obviously still won't allow messages on your own talk page, I will comment here: Anonimu, I apologize for my bluntness, but GET A GRIP. K. Lásztocska 12:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect of Cult as in Forensic Psychiatry
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Lanny Davis Is Romanian?
This is the question that James Taranto asks in his OpinionJournal.com column from September 7, 2007, referring to this AfD debate. Well, what is the answer? Turgidson 11:01, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

THanks
For adding to Charles-Eusèbe Dionne. I can't believe I forgot that! Circeus 18:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Stuff
Didn't you also start one on the "Medical Service Heroes" (the one by the Military Academy)? I must apologize if I'm merely imagining this - my memory is pretty much swiss-cheesed.

Those links of yours are going to give me an ulcer one of these days... I wouldn't even know where to start - I mean, I still can't get myself to look into those Protochronist Easter eggs Greier has left for us all over this project. Dahn 19:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Christ, we really need to come to an arrangement on that issue - it's getting ridiculous, and, as usual, there is nobody considering the practical implications. Will you propose a resolution on this on the notice board? You've seen what happens when I attach my name to initial proposals... (I spared myself the heart attack by not clicking the link, but I take your word for it.) Dahn 21:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the statue. Btw, do you think we should get an article going on that as well sometime in the future? Dahn 21:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

My goodness, you're a veritable poet. :-) K. Lásztocska 04:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Union tuniso-libyenne
Dear Biruitorul, Regarding the translation of this article in French, I just found that a short version already exists under the name of the country that should have been created : Arab Islamic Republic. Most of the elements of the French article come from this book that you can put in the bibliography : Tahar Belkhodja, ''Les trois décennies Bourguiba. Témoignage'', éd. Publisud, Paris, 1998 Regards, Moumou82 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.108.64.1 (talk) 09:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Nathaniel Ames
I saw this article, liked it and was going to refer it to DYK, Seeing above I see this is not am unknown process. OK? Victuallers 08:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Romanian villages
I am upset about your statements about romanian villages. Maybe the existing articles do not - yet - have all the information. This may take time. But each village has its history and its importance. Look at the number of articles for villages in Germany, France etc. The number is quite significant. Therefore, your implication that villages in western countries deserve to have articles while there are only a few romanian ones which qualify is discrimatory. You are the last person I would have expected to come up with a theory against information regarding Romania. The issue is of developing the articles and of finding meaningful information. Not in presenting romanians as second class.

I have my disputes with the ro:wiki, but they have done a superb job in compiling the information. They need help to improve the articles. No reason to despise them.

Why on earth did you start the discussion? To have other wikipedians dig out dirt against the romanians? Afil 02:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Heh, it seems I have corrupted you, Biru. While you're enjoying your new cosmopolitan self, I'll be busy digging up some more dirt on the Romanians. Dahn 17:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Balaton
...and whoa! You got blogged about! (I love how he described you as "a Romanian anglophile who eats bananas"...) István and I had a brief, similar moment of triumph late last winter when, upon wandering through the archives of my favorite Budapesti blog, I came across an entry headlined "Oh my God, they fixed it!" about our effort to fix the 56 article. We left some comments, and the next day we were saluted on the front page. Good times.

And speaking of good times...OH NO, you did NOT just come up with a tantalizing new story setting...oh my, images and witticisms and twists of fate are flashing before my eyes...this one can be an understated, Havelesque tragicomedy with satirical and absurdist overtones...all in a Chekhovian pastoral setting...NO!!! MUST RESIST!!! NO MORE STORIES!!! Never mind the rich cast of characters, we MUST honor our promise to lay down our pens and spin tales no more.

...OK, so we're all there for the last days of summer at Annie and Bertalan's vacation house...Anonimu's taking the waters to recover from his unfortunate stint as a vampire on the island...you and Dahn have forgiven each other the mutiny on the Dacia and are busy building a gigantic, gorgeous monument to Romanian literature...I sit by the window every night writing, by candlelight, to István, who had been found alive and well by some of those rogue Czech musicians but still couldn't make it to Balaton, and a nameless stranger is skulking around making everyone a little nervous... NO!! DISREGARD THAT!!! AAAAAAAAH!

Anyhow, I'll be more productive over the weekend. I finally got my hands on some copies of old NY Times reviews of Szigeti concerts, so slowly but surely, that project is ooching towards completion. K. Lásztocska 03:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hoo boy. :) OK, but we might still get in trouble...I'll try and write a non-offensive chapter two sometime later. I'm sure my antagonist "Heinrich" will follow me over there and use our harmless fun as another excuse to torment me and tell me again how everything going wrong on Wikipedia is my fault. He's reading this message right now, I can assure you.
 * Aww, and I know you're not a fascist! :) I'm not really a swooning damsel in distress like I was in our previous misadventure, again, all for the greater glory of literary foolishness. K. Lásztocska 13:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh. Fear not, there shall be no libel and only minimal violence--I learned MY lesson out there on the high seas. :) No, this story will be concerned with our search for the Meaning of Life (in true Russian-literature style.) Our previous villain is out of the picture--as far as I'm concerned, he's in Moscow plotting with some fellow travelers and about to embark on a large proletariat-awakening tour of Central Asia.

Thanks for the suggestion about cleaning up trivia sections. I too am quite annoyed by such sections, and consider them one of the endemic problems of enwiki. I'll have some free time this weekend so I'll take a few whacks at some nonsensical paragraphs, and work on Szigeti. Soon perhaps my guilt at my recent uselessness here shall be alleviated? K. Lásztocska 22:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Haha, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're doing this again...but this time at least we're not breaking any damn rules and we're not going to get ourselves in trouble. (I could tell your literary itch needed to be scratched when I read your picturesque description of the Romanian village on the noticeboard the other day!) Anyway, as I'm too tired/lazy tonight to do any real work here on wiki, chapter 2 is up. :) No real plot development, because I couldn't think of anything, just a few humorous vignettes, character sketches and a few flights of poetic fancy. You can take the storm in the last few sentences literally or metaphorically, whichever floats your, erm, boat. K. Lásztocska 05:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Man, whacking trivia sections is fun! :) K. Lásztocska 00:59, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, now you see my secret ruthless side--to hell with trivia sections, exterminate them all! BWAHAHAhahahaha! Oh, and I saw that WW2-Estonia thing earlier today and ended up just shaking my head in disbelief. They're annoying enough in infoboxes, but in MAIN TEXT?! Good God, what is the Wiki coming to? K. Lásztocska 01:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything wrong with having articles on movies (even silly sci-fi ones, and I have to admit I did rather like GalaxyQuest) or even video game technologies--not being constrained by the limitations of paper and ink, we can write about many things that wouldn't pass muster for a paper encyclopedia. That, of course, is both a blessing and a curse. I too am irritated by the proliferation of articles detailing every single episode of every dumb TV show ever made, and it just makes us look like the whole encyclopedia is written by a bunch of geeky teenage boys with no lives. Argh.
 * Well, I only saw the Estonia thing because of your edit summary complaining about "pictograms" and I realized it had to have been part of the endless flag war. Jeez. K. Lásztocska 01:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Killingworth
I was wondering why you deleted the entire Trivia section of the Killingworth article. It was (*is*) a work in progress, and was going to be integrated into the rest of the article sometime soon. I am curious, however; figured I'd ask before I restored it. --Curious brain 03:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I wholeheartedly agree with your response. And I know the guidelines and what not, I had recently (well ... relatively, anyway :) overhauled the article and they were merely leftovers (although, I admit the street light thing was me). Regardless, I do (albeit, grudgingly) agree they did not advance any part of the article in any real sense. No harm done. Appreciate the response. --Curious brain 06:23, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Edwin S. Porter
Good work expanding the Porter article! — Walloon 06:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Featured article candidate
I've listed Parkman-Webster murder case - which you created - as a featured article candidate. It is a very good article. &mdash; Itai (talk) 14:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

oh my goodness.
For our ever-growing collection of "oh-my-God-what-is-this-nonsense-doing-on-Wikipedia" stuff:. ......*speechless and confused*..... K. Lásztocska 04:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Arthur Koestler
Please stop removing stuff from the Arthur Koestler page, e.g. REFERENCES!!! --MacRusgail 11:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Albanian PMs
Thank you very much for the template. It looks just fine and I will add/correct some minor things. I'll merge those two articles about the Communist Albania too.--Getoar 17:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No, in fact Hoxha was head of a provisional government established in 1944. Later in 1946, he was "appointed" to head the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic.--Getoar 18:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That means Hoxha was PM since '44.--Getoar 18:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

He wasn't really a prime minister; he just represented Albania in the International Control Commission in Albania. Fejzi Alizoti, on the other hand, headed the foreign-sponsored authority, and it is disputed if we should list him as PM. Thank you for the work! I was wondering, why would you be against Kosova's independence? You are Romanian, if I am not mistaken, and you are akin to the Albanians rather than Slavs.--Getoar 19:19, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The case is like a home you may be looking at. From the outside, you see the garden, the façade, and perhaps the clean or dirty curtains on the windows. However, from the inside, you see the people and how they interact; they are, altogether with their affairs, different from what they may be perceived in the yard, on the streets or elsewhere. Thus, born and raised in Kosova, I had the opportunity to see things differently. I know that my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents and all ancestors I may reach in my pedigree lived in Kosova.

As you may agree, the Slavs came to the Balkans, while our ancestors had lived here before. We were here even before the Roman invasion, even during the unremembered times of the Trojan Wars. Christianity has not been exclusive to Serbians either. The Albanians were Christians almost a millennium before the Serbs, while in reality, our ancestors had been in Kosova before any of the monotheistic religions came from the east.

We often confuse ourselves when studying and dealing with history. We try to avoid myths, but in the case of Kosova we follow them. This is how the Serbian history is written and fostered for the Serbian and international consumption. We know that empires are not ethnically pure, and as such, the Serbian Empire of Dusan or any other preceding Serbian state may have controlled Kosova, though the population there was never of Slavic majority.

I believe that the Albanians would find it hard to gain foreign support for independence if Milosevic was the only Serbian dictator to have oppressed the Albanians. There is a line from the earliest Serbian government controlling Kosova to the present one. People who served Milosevic still serve Kostunica today. I know the suffering of my people during the war in 1999 and older generations know what they had to go through earlier. So this does not take you a whole day to read I will stop, leaving many things unsaid.

Kosova must and shall be independent!--Getoar 05:35, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Diacritics
Hello. I see here that you have used a special kind of the romanian "ă", the one which unfortunately comes right after the correct "Ş ş" and "Ţ ţ" ("Ş ş Ţ ţ Đ đ Ů ů Ǎ ǎ Č č Ď ď") in the Insert box below (of course, there could be other reasons for those characters, but i guess you'd be much quicker than me at identifying the real reasons). I do believe the correct form to be the one a little further on, located at "ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ğ ğ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ". In case you haven't spotted (and solved) this issue already, i hope you will start using the better forms, at least from now on. Thank you. -- Jokes Free4Me 17:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Great!
Improvements? No, it's perfect! Good job.

Sorry about the as-of-late delays and inconsistencies: I was out of town and rather busy these days (no, not flying over a village in Oltenia...), but I'm prepared for my comeback. Since we're on the topic of religion: I was wondering if the Hinduism in Romania article should perhaps include (as a subarticle?) more on the Transcendental Meditation affair of the 1980s, and I'm also wondering if Romanian Romania people have experienced, to a notable degree, the revival through Hinduism that has left some traces in other Eastern European Romani communities. I'm not turning this search into a priority yet, but such details may be more relevant then all that is presently outlined in the article. Thoughts?

I'm also a bit annoyed because I took another glance through Călinescu's full-sized History of Romanian Literature, and its sheer value as a source dwarfed my contributions to various articles - there is still so much more to be said about people like Heliade, Caragiale, and even Hrisoverghi... It's also itching that the book is filled with extremely valuable PD illustrations - from Topârceanu's self-portrait to pictures of Heliade in a toga to the facsimile of a 1700s Roman Catholic book which uses an early (the earliest?) Latin alphabet version of Romanian. Unfortunately, my access to it is bound to be limited, at least for now. Dahn 19:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, minor point: perhaps Convention of the Hungarian Baptist Churches of Romania should be a small print-in brackets note to the Baptist Union (like the Armenian Vicariate). Dahn 19:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Btw: this should prolly make it into the "dire attention" list (note that at least one pic is a copyvio - one can plainly see the text on the other side of the page, and it's on commons!). And, jeez, i really wish someone would teach these guys how they're supposed to use the word "from"... Dahn 01:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree on all counts. Cioroianu also has some detailed coverage of the TM affair, so the material should not be a problem. I'll wade through Caragiale some more, and we can start something in the Hinduism article.

On atheism. I wondered about the category myself, but the issue seemed a bit complicated. In my view, the cat should be restricted to people who have made a special and documented point about being atheists, communists or not. That said, it is safe to assume that most were, but, in order for the cat to stand for them, we would need to have something in the articles pointing that way. That is mainly because the PCR was indeed very slick when it came to setting itself a perspective on the matter - for example, in Roman Catholicism in Romania, there is the issue of priests of all faiths being welcomed into the party (though I'm pretty sure the offer was merely on the table, and that virtually all or even all priests said "no thanks"). It also seems to me that most communists, even in the 1950s, were rather discreet about this issue - Bodnăraş seems to have caused a stir when he asked for a religious burial, and people like Gaston Marin may have even been genuinely devout. Even though I'm tempted to include all communists as a sunset, I think we should go with clear cases, where references are available - this may prove the case for the Paukers, for most unfortunate Romanian PCR members who died in the Great Terror, and even for Gheorghiu-Dej (though, at this stage, I honestly don't know). Given the ambiguous policies of the party, the rest, including Nick Ceau, could actually be described as "agnostics" or "skeptics". However: technically, if we also start a parent cat on "Atheism in Romania", articles on both the party and the regime would belong there as related subjects.

On the non-communist atheists, I also agree that we should stick to cases were views are identified as "atheist" in primary or secondary literature. If I have to evaluate who it could apply to: we have Take Ionescu (as you may remember - and Lord, I still have to do something about some of the references there!), the Feuerbachian Maiorescu (he apparently deemed himself "an atheist", and conferenced on the matter - but this subject should become part of a stringent expansion), Vasile Conta, and the group of late 19th-early 20th century socialists (Gherea, probably Mille, probably Ibrăileanu, and - you'd be surprised - A. C. Cuza). There is also the possibility of a Urmuz (I'm not sure to what measure this was discussed, but it corresponds with his "profile").

What do you think? Dahn 14:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * (Funny stuff about rowiki: it seems that, in virtually all articles that start as translations of ones I contributed here, the original text is censored to remove all the more problematic issues... Dahn 14:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC))

constitution, etc.
Ohmygah...there's no way I can take on a project that big right now. All I can do is whack trivia sections, bicker with Anonimu, and inexorably ooch towards progress on Szigeti. (This weekend. I swear.) And maybe the occasional edit on annoying stuff like species counterpoint or History of Music (which is taking over my damn LIFE.) Oh, and maybe some first-hand knowledge on common cold. Or whatever I have. *sneeze*...

Ugh, sorry for the griping. It's been a long day. I must say, I agree nearly 100% with the article you linked to about the problems with Wikipedia. I'm usually pretty optimistic in spite of all the garbage that we have to wade through, but other times it looks like the damn Augean Stables and I want to just throw down my shovel, throw in the towel, and give the heck up. K. Lásztocska 04:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Szigeti
Salut! Joseph Szigeti is finally reaching some semblance of the final stages of development! Would you mind taking a look at it and giving me some feedback before I humiliate myself by putting it up for peer review? Specifically, I'd like you to keep an eye out for peacock terms and unintentional editorializing--he's my favorite violinist by far, so sometimes I would end up writing some hagiographic garbage and then deleting it later in a fit of irritation at myself, but I half-suspect that a bit of breathless commentary may have found its way into the article anyway. The whole thing's just been percolating in my brain for so long that it's practically impossible for me to look objectively at it anymore, which is why I need a few fresh pairs of eyes! Thanks in advance, K. Lásztocska 02:01, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh dear--once again, I upload all my exuberant yet sloppy work and you have to go fix my links and tie up my loose ends. :) Someday I'll learn how we do things around here, really, I will. :) I don't mean to distract you from serious matters, but your goulash is getting cold out at Balaton, and I could use a little silliness to relieve stress lately... On a more serious topic: once Szigeti finally gets his FA place in the sun, would you be interested in working on an article about either Ionesco or Havel? Dahn and I were chatting a bit about them, you probably saw it (and the misplaced pronoun that briefly brought Ionesco back to life.) Might be fun...I think I'll always get the urge to start assiduously working on a potential FA once September/October rolls around... K. Lásztocska 02:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * LOL! That was actually quite good--very atmospheric and melodramatic. But oh dear, you had to go and make yourself go crazy again? Just one rule for this particular novel--nobody dies except purely fictional characters (or fictionalized representations of dimwitted Hungarian politicians, haha). K. Lásztocska 12:01, 4 October 2007 (UTC) And having nothing better to do for the last twenty minutes or so, a brief chapter 3 is up already. :) I LOVE a good melodrama! I would have written further and taken the story out into the woods the next morning, but time ran out. cheers, K. Lásztocska 12:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Seychellois templates
I see you've created both Template:SeychellesPresidents and Template:SeychellesPMs. I think these would be better off as one template, though. Could you please consider integrating them? Picaroon (t) 21:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Sillon industriel
I believe the dechristianization in question is the dechristianization that took place in revolutionary France, as Belgium was a part of France at the time. - Oreo Priest  14:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Huh?
I don't understand - is this account a joke? --PaxEquilibrium 23:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I really thought that after I saw your talk user page. Why do you keep it like that (controversially)? --PaxEquilibrium 11:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Those several templates... --PaxEquilibrium 11:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The long live Greater Serbia? --PaxEquilibrium 12:47, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * See this map of Croatia. That's crazy. --PaxEquilibrium 19:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * And this one's Bosnia-Herzegovina. --PaxEquilibrium 21:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's quite POV. :) Bosniaks are not simply Islamised Serbs. Lepa Brena is also an example. It can't be the duty of anyone to alter his/her opinion - this is a democratic world. Please define what's a "Serbian land". The Catholic Serbs mostly lost identity in Croatia and assimilated into Croats - but that happened largely before the Communists seized power. Again, the descendants of those people are free to be whatever they want - no one should try to convince them otherwise. Serbia has no great military - it's army is one of the poorest in the world, lacking everything from materials to expertise. Croatia is much more martially stronger. In Serbia even every year many recruits regularly get killed during training. Not for bloodshed, but for violence - I do not understand. Also, are you aware what happened in the 1990s? --PaxEquilibrium 11:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The territories inhabited by Serbs during the Empire can be seen here, the territories in orange. This doesn't include two territories Serb-inhabited: Herzegovina, which's coastal Bosnia on the map (yellow) and Macva near Belgrade, a part of Hungary (green). Those are the majority significant areas - other areas are distant or places where they are in minority. Even that area has huge non-Serb minorities, which could be seen in the south, with those black lines. This doesn't include most of the areas you thought of "Serbian lands". --PaxEquilibrium 19:24, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, unlike in Croatia, Serbs didn't suffer a greater "slaughter" in Bosnia at all. --PaxEquilibrium 19:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

O rugaminte
La discutia pe pagina lui PaxEquilibrium, noi am purtat o discutie putin mai incinsa, dar totusi sanatoasa. Credeam ca este posibil sa port o discutie din asta cu un roman, chiar daca o fi el din Oltenia sau Muntenia, si chiar daca o fi avand el mentalitate de sarb-ortodox fanatic. Acuma vad insa ca ai dat cateaua pe mine si deja a inceput sa ma latre. Daca mai continue sa latre, cred ca o sa treazeasca tot satul. Poti tu sa fi dragut si sa o chemi inapoi? Iar chiar daca nu ai dato pe mine, incearca sa-i explici ca deoarece tu esti multumit de faptul ca ea se ingrijoreaza de tine, tu esti baiat mare si poti sa te descurci singur, fara ajutorul ei. Ca doar nu ma vezi pe mine sa te parasc la mamica mea sau la taticutul meu--care si este politist, nu? --Thus Spake Anittas 16:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC) Translation ''At the discussion page of PaxEquilibrium, we had a hot, but healthy discussion. I thought it's not possible to have such a talk with a Romanian, even if one would be from Oltenia or Muntenia, and even if one would have a Serbian-Orthodox fanatic mentality. Now I see that you've put the dog on me and it already started to bark. If it will continue to bark, it will make up the whole village. Please be nice and call it back.'' --PaxEquilibrium 20:38, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, very nice. I guess I am the "dog" in question? (Thanks for the translation, Pax.) K. Lásztocska 20:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a very lousy translation and the "dog" translation is incorrect for this context. --Thus Spake Anittas 20:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I can read enough Romanian to know that the general meaning is fairly accurate. I do not appreciate being referred to as a dog, lackey, groupie or what-have-you. And the more these translations keep coming, the angrier I get at you. Shame on YOU for throwing around such virulent accusations! K. Lásztocska 21:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I figured it was you who did the translation. You got the dog part wrong. --Thus Spake Anittas 21:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually it wasn't me who translated it. I meant to say that, upon reading the English translation, I can see that it is accurate enough a translation from the Romanian. My Romanian isn't good enough to translate, but I can get the general idea. K. Lásztocska 21:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Atuncea mai bine iti spun ce am de spus aici. Tu spui ca ortodoximia e prima prioritate? Cum dracu? Pai si rusii sunt ortodoxi. Uite ce spun eu: lasa-i in pace pe sarbi, pe cefele groase si pe greci, ca ei nici nu le doare in cur de noi. Sarbii ca sarbi, dar cefele groase sunt niste draci: ne injosesc istoria si ne insulta; pe cand grecii...tu nu stii ce propaganda au facut contra aromanilor? Iar ce vrei ma sa faca sarbii? Tu nu vezi ce nebunii au facut in Bosnia si Kosovo? Aia adica sunt oameni de Dumnezeu? Nu am nimic cu ei si am cunoscut mai multi sarbi de treaba, dar cel mai bine e sa stai in patratica ta decat sa-ti manifesti pasiunea pe degeaba. Si vai, vai, cand am mai vazut ca iti pare bine ca Serbia a luat Banatul de parca vroiam sa te gatui. Tu nu stii cat au indurat romanii si romanii din Timoc bascaleala sarbeasca? Mult sarbi sunt cu doua fete, asa ca nu te lasa impresionat de ce zic prietenii tai sarbi. Lasa balcanismul in pace. Poate ai fi si tu in mercenar din Banat care s-a dus la lupte pe partea sarbilor, ucind femei si copii. Rusine! --Thus Spake Anittas 17:36, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Anittas, once and for all: stop it. Please. You're currently sitting in a glass house and won't stop throwing stones. Dahn 18:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * English, please. --PaxEquilibrium 19:09, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * My knowledge of Romanian, already flimsy to begin with, just utterly collapsed. In the interests of transparency and accountability, will both of you please translate your comments into English and proceed however much farther you like in English. E-mail is for private communications; on-wiki communications should be accessible to the community as a whole. K. Lásztocska 19:14, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Translation: Then it's better that I tell what I have to say here. You say that Orthodoxy is the first priority? What the hell? Even the Russians are orthodoxs. Here's what I say: let the Serbs alone, the thick napes and the Greek, because they don't give a shit about us. Serbians are OK, but the thick napes are devils: they belittle our history and they insult us; and the Greeks... you know what propaganda they have against the Aromanians? What do you want the Serbs to do? Can't you see what mad things they did in Bosnia and Kosovo? Are those believers in God? I have nothing against them and I met many nice Serbs, but it's better to stay in your side and don't be passionate for nothing. and when I saw that you're glad that Serbia got the Banat, I almost wanted to strangle you. You don't know how much mocking from the Serbs the Romanians and the Romanians of Timok had to endure? Many Serbs have two faces so don't be impressed by what your Serb friends tell you. Leave the Balkanism alone. Maybe you are a mercenary from the Banat who went to fight on the Serbs' side, killing women and children. Shame on you! --PaxEquilibrium 20:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This one is a little better, but it's still wrong in many places. Who is doing these translations? Did you find a translation site? --Thus Spake Anittas 21:08, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Courtesy of User:Bogdangiusca. --PaxEquilibrium 21:21, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't trust the words of a Muntenian, especially if he's from Bucharest. --Thus Spake Anittas 21:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I am one-sixteenth Moldavian. Do you trust me more? :-) bogdan 21:39, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Poate ca te tragi din Aron. Ce ai facut aici este un lucru fara onoare si rau. A fost odata cand erai un rolemodel pentru mine iar primul meu edit din 2004 a fost pe pagina ta de discutie, dar vad ca pui tot efortul ca sa fii bucurestean. --Thus Spake Anittas 21:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I beg your pardon? --PaxEquilibrium 21:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Historic comment: Petru Aron was a prince of Moldavia before Stephen the Great. His desires to retake the throne from Stephen promted tense relations with Hunagry and Poland for 11 years, and at least one major war. He also was the first prince to pay (albeit symbolic and only one time) tribute to the Otomans, which opened their taste for Moldavia. Aron was an ilegitimate son of a ilegitimate son of Alexander the Good, so he was 1/4 of royal blood. Yet, he is the most dispised person in the history of medieval Moldavia. You can find people even saying a nice word about Securitate, but you will never find anyone born of the terriroty of what was medieval Moldavia to say a nice word about Aron. It is like saying a nice word about Alexandru Draghici, Teohari Georgescu, or Pantiusha Bondarenko - you might be called mentally retarded by the most civilized person that will nevr say any bad word to anyone. :Dc76\talk 18:41, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Ti-am trimis mesaj prin email. --Thus Spake Anittas 20:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: Helen of Greece and Denmark
I see no reason whatsoever why mediation would be required to retain ancestral information, if anything it would be needed to argue for the removal of it. If the article rests on the ancestral information alone, in your opinion, then it should be expanded. Either way, the removal of the information solves nothing whatsoever and it is not in violation of any Wikipedia policy. Charles 05:19, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

TRAIASCA REGELE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=b1iv3UMtcUM

Trăiască Regele În pace şi onor De ţară iubitor Şi-apărător de ţară.

Fie Domn glorios Fie peste noi, Fie-n veci norocos În război, război.

O! Doamne Sfinte, Ceresc părinte, Susţine cu a ta mână Coroana Română!

Trăiască Patria Cât soarele ceresc, Rai vesel pământesc Cu mare, falnic nume.

Fie-n veci el ferit De nevoi, Fie-n veci locuit De eroi, eroi.

O! Doamne Sfinte, Ceresc Părinte, Întinde a Ta mână Pe Ţara Română —Preceding unsigned comment added by Diurpaneu (talk • contribs) 09:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

John Singleton Copley
Nobody called you an idiot. F-402 02:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I was going around fixing spelling errors. I make mistakes and sometimes I edit an article where the mistakes are intentional. I try to look out for these things like if they're in quotes, but sometimes a few intentional spelling errors get fixed. In those cases, a regular editor of that article just reverts them. When I fix spelling, I don't look at the article edit history, so I wouldn't know who initially spelled it that way. F-402 14:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Templates
Actually, I'm a bit tired to deal with editors who create a lot of templates and cluttering pages. It keeps coming and coming. Honestly, I don't object the template, but there are two templates now in each page that serve the same purpose. Either the succession box template or the navigational template, but not both, can be put in the article. So I give it up to you to which template you like to be placed on each article. &mdash; Indon ( reply ) &mdash; 07:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

audio clips, etc.
Salut,

(I was just wasting time on YouTube and found this--you seem to have had a rocky few days on-wiki so maybe you could use a few laughs...)

Anyway, the real reason I write right now is to ask you if you know anything about working with audio clips? I'm hoping to upload a few short clips of Szigeti's playing, but I couldn't even get farther than importing the file into Audacity--the format must have been wrong because what had been beautiful, sublime music was transformed into an electronic screech. Do you know anything about this kind of thing, or know anyone who does? K. Lásztocska 01:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Ugh, audio project is going nowhere at the moment--I have some exams and concerts coming up and my iPod is still behaving strangely, to give two reasons for the delay. I'll dive headlong into it next week or so.
 * Regarding the ancestry charts, I think there is a place for them somewhere on-wiki (family trees of that sort for various royal and noble families are nothing unusual, after all) but they don't need to go in main article space. They'd get a lot of "See Also" links: for example, articles about notable Habsburgs could have an unobtrusive little "See also: Family Tree of the House of Habsburg" link down at the bottom. So in a nutshell, my position is: family-tree charts can be valuable, interesting and useful, but we shouldn't clutter up main articles with them. K. Lásztocska 03:55, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, exactly like that. Well goodness, if all those family trees are already on the wiki then there is absolutely no need to keep the redundant ones in main articles. K. Lásztocska 23:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Eremia Grigorescu
Hello Biru, I just created the Eremia Grigorescu article, so you might want to have a look on it! Any ideas and contribs are welcome! Cheers, --Eurocopter tigre 14:42, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

WPMILHIST Romanian Task Force
Hi Biru, i'm trying to create the Romanian Military History task force on the Military History WikiProject, and I need some volunteers which will be the future members of the task force. The RO task force will be most probably created after this Polish task force model. Would you be interested in this? I'm sure that the Romanian history deserves this! --Eurocopter tigre 09:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Very well, i'll contact you as soon as i'll make further steps in this. Cheers, --Eurocopter tigre 12:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * It has just been created and lot of help is needed! here's the link - WikiProject Military history/Romanian military history task force. Best, --Eurocopter tigre 16:12, 16 October 2007 (UTC)


 * You could start helping by editing the task force template, which is very important. You can use this, as a model. --Eurocopter tigre 16:19, 16 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Could you please add your name here? Cheers, --Eurocopter tigre 12:00, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Nationalisms
Serbs are not the only ones who claim that - the Croatian nationalists claim it too. They claim the Bosnian Muslims are mostly of Croatian origin, consider Bosnia a Croatian state and claim the Montenegrins as "Red Croats" - see Red Croatia, claiming historical territory up to half of Albania. The Serbs they call mostly Vlachs, de-soulizing them, making it seem like they don't deserve to live. The most extreme nationalists consider the Serbian Empire a Croatian creation - claiming the territory all the way to Attica (e.g. Ante Starcevic).

Will you so likely believe to that as well, just like Serbian nationalistic propaganda? --PaxEquilibrium 19:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Just saying hello
Been a while since we've crossed paths, presumably because I haven't much been working on Romanian topics lately. - Jmabel | Talk 23:59, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Shahbandar
The Unreferenced tag that currently appears on the page was put there by User:SmackBot, replacing the verify tag I'd placed there. I put the verify tag on the article because I felt that it could use more than just a single source. I have put a comment on the talk page of the user who operates SmackBot about this issue and have fixed the template to refimprove. Thank you for your feedback. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 16:02, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm. That would complicate matters.  Are there any related books or journal articles that can easily be found on the subject?  Perhaps put as references in the Commins book?  If there's anything useful there, it should probably be added.  I've removed the refimprove tag, since you said it is a very good source.  The article could still probably use another source or two, but the tag isn't needed.  Happy editing. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 23:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Vrlika: What do you do?
You seem like an experience Wikipedian. I am new to this and I am trying to build a page within this community about Vrlika in Croatia. Anytime something Serbian comes up the whole insertion is erased by a posse of guys without logins. What do you do in a situation like this? Kukar 22:45, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks mate! I've been trying to utilize the discussion page and it has been working really well with Rjecina as we are having a civilized conversation and coming to an understanding as to how to make sure that the page is 1. Well written and 2. Referenced well. The problem is with the guys with the IP numbers coming in and erasing stuff. Kukar 01:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Is it considered a edit war if you revert an erase or vandalism by an IP number? Kukar 01:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Well...
Oh, we'll get to that "atheists" (I'm not so sure about "agnostics", which are even harder to pinpoint, and not just here). Btw: I'm not sure that, beyond common sense, there's any such certainty for the Paukers; what I said is that we need to find an adequate mention of it somewhere. But something tells me that mention will pop up eventually.

I'm simply bewildered by the genealogical templates and their uses: it seems that there is nothing stopping people who have little to contribute from compensating with all sorts of nonsense (the royalty articles and their offspring are turning into monstrous piles of colorful irrelevancies, and in some cases they seriously impede the text - in other cases, they are the text...). At times, it seems to me that wikipedia is turning into not an encyclopedia, but a collage of emoticon-like material and the editors' territorial pissing. I'm not sure if I want to take on my shoulders the anti-Ahnentafel crusade, because I'm clearly not willing to go and clean up the entire mess they left, but I'll consider taking this to a higher level (once we gather some reactions that are not just misunderstandings of what was argued to begin with). Still, I hope you're not serious about not contributing to articles on royalty: I would expect a loyalist like you to at least lend a hand when I'll start improving one of the articles on Romania's royalty (haven't yet decided which one, but it may be Ferdy) :).

For the moment, I'm staying out of Ceauşescu - there is just too much to take into consideration. But yes, that side of him needs to be highlighted (and let's bear in mind that the comparison between Ceauşescu's Romania and "those countries", like the comparison between it and the other Eastern Bloc satellites, has been the subject of some rather large books...).

Well, I'll get back to Caragiale for now - his mysterious ancestry was a headache at first, but now I can only see it as a blessing. ;) Dahn 02:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

A different topic
Say, I couldn't help but notice you upload a lot of pictures from ro wiki articles to here. Have you ever considered starting an account on Commons? When dealing with GFDLs and PDs, you only have to upload them once (once again, that is), and they are usable everywhere; plus, they can be categorized per what they show (which I've only too painstakingly done lately). Otherwise, we tend to get this:, ,. Eh?

Tell me, have you perchance seen ro:Wikipedia:Cafenea/Arhivă/2007/septembrie. It's not enough that they don't understand the proposal to begin with, they have to hallucinate a bit each time (specifically: "Nu înțeleg de ce ar trebui să suferim pentru ce spun cei de pe en. Cei doi care „ne-au dat ca exemplu negativ” nu au nicio legătură cu ro wikipedia, prin urmare nu sunt îndreptăţiți la critici.", "Noi avem aici cel mai frumos proiect al localităţilor dintre toate wikipediile.", "Nota din en:wiki este extrem de tendenţioasă şi este făcută cu totală reacredinţă. De fapt, ea implică următoarea afirmaţie - localităţile mici din Franţa, Germania, Statele Unite sau alte ţări merită să fie menţionate. Cele din România nu - nici dracul nu este interesat de mici localităţi din România.", "Nu vă lăsaţi intimidaţi de câţiva nemernici care urmăresc cine ştie ce agendă."). I tell you, the more of them congregate... The person who uses "nemernici" deserves to be called "an imbecile", but I shan't be calling him that. Dahn 07:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I bet you won't. We don't want Biru to lose the support of the people he usually canvasses...Anonimu 14:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Parca a fost discutat asta anul trecut si s-a determinat odata pentru totdeauna: articole pentru fiecare comuna si atat. Despre sate - in cadrul comunei. Unele exceptii remarcabile raman, dar asta-i altceva, sunt cazuri care pot fi numarate pe degete. Eu inca ii rugasem sa-mi spuna cand termina cu aranjatul localitatilor din romania, ca sa stiu ce fel de articole pentru localitatile din moldova trebuie sa avem. vazand insa ca nu prea sunt oameni interesati de localitatile din moldova inca, m-am lasat pagubas, eu unul nu incep 1000 de articole (bun 900, 100 exista), macar sa ma impuste, am ocupatie mai buna. "nemernic" nu e chiar cel mai rau cuvant pe care l-am auzit pe en.wiki, dar totusi spune multe despre capaciatea de stapanire de sine. sau poate pur si simplu scriu fara sa citeasca propria opera. :Dc76\talk 19:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Well!
I certainly "don't need another reason" - just post me when it comes to it, and I'll provide the liberal left-of-center support for your putsch and subsequent rule by decree :).

Ah, the royals... What I tended to do was to use stuff like Napoleon Bonaparte, just to avoid the clutter. In their defense, I guess one could say that Napoleon III was also a Bonaparte - and so was that guy who died fighting for the Brits in Africa, if I recall correctly; this is of course a marginal point, as the most resounding name is that of the original Corsican parvenu. About Victoria... jeez, the discussion there is indeed inspid... They could just as well use anything, but I agree that the less formal title argument is pretty solid (at least until they get a second Victoria to rule over what isn't the exact same realm).

So many pretty boxes, so many clutter, so little actual knowledge of who and what many of those people were... (as illustrated by the tentative expansions on the Helena article). This is why it is good news that you are not adverse to writing on royals in general: for all the attractive Ruritarianism projected on them (and only enhanced by the colorful tags), Romanian royals actually did things that are relevant for history and, in so many cases, for Europe. We're getting there. (Jeez, I'm still behind on Caragiale for now, so I'd better cut down on the visionary prospects. :))

I like all the MHP suggestions, but I think we should take them one at a time or risk generating tasks that could consume us (sourcing, linking from, linking to, dealing with potential controversies etc.). While my lazy nature wants to say "German occupation is covered by 'Romania during WWII'", you may have a point that it is needed (and I propose that, eventually, the RoWWII article become a summary of other articles, with the one you propose as one of the sections - we could have the FRN article, which covers both Carol's regime and the early years of WWII, as the first of these pieces).

There is this other RfC issue... I am preparing to weigh in, but there are some issues I want to look into first. For starters, I don't know if I count as "tried to resolve, but failed" or as a "third-party" (points could be raised in favor of both). Secondly, Anonimu has an acceptable side: when he wanted to, he contributed neutral content on various issues (granted, some of his activities have a potential to ruin that impression). The fact that he holds some article at ransom is, alas, by no means unprecedented - one of the articles in question, where I contributed a large section of text, is protected because yet another editor did all in his power to go against the MoS by making the lead contradict the text, and by proposing to simply reduce the lead to a paragraph. Thirdly, some of the versions reverted to from his version (and yes, reverted for just cause) may have some POV problems of their own.

I hope to see you on commons as well - it's pretty lonely out there, and I found plenty of stuff where I would need a second opinion. And categorizing pictures is pretty relaxing. Lest I forget: thank you for placing Charles de Gaulle's picture in the relevant article (I decided not to interwiki all my uploads and categories here, because it was bound to be a lengthy process; seeing it there was a pleasant surprise). Dahn 03:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, but as The Clash put it: Rudy can't fail! ;) Btw, this may amuse you: remember how you told me once that a certain writer contributes on wiki? I think you would be entertained by p.185 and 344-5 of this whatyoumacall it (btw, that stuff about Ionesco only traces back to Tricolorul and some local newspaper - oh and, of course, rowiki...). Dahn 12:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

This just occurred to me: there is a possibility that, in the future, we could develop a relatively long article on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Romania. Is this stuff for the template? (It's definitely more noteworthy than Hinduism...) Dahn 17:20, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right: it's better to have an article first (and there really is no urgency).
 * On the Iraqis thing: I commented on the talk page there. Dahn 00:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

History of Moldova
You should check it again. I improved the version yesterday, but our common knowledge Anonimu (helped by Irpen) is again POV-pushing. Dpotop 16:12, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Could you, please make a formal report about the last edits of Anonimu, and include the list of articles he does this in. I'm only following 3-4 of them, but I think the phenomenon is much larger. :Dc76\talk 22:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I editted some of that as well. Sorry, I do not have enough time, since I am also involved in another content dispute partically along similar issues, and I have to give proper arguments for 27 (!) issues. Cca 20 are small issues, but still many. Anyway, have you heard anything about Requests for arbitration/Digwuren/Proposed decision and Requests for arbitration/Digwuren ? Did anyone of you participate in that ?

Anyone wants to email? :Dc76\talk 18:20, 21 October 2007 (UTC) Oh my god, I've got Anonimu following me there already. Since when did he get interested in Balti? since I reverted 5 of his edits. :Dc76\talk 21:04, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Multumesc pentru raspuns. Si mai mult iti multumesc ca m-ai atentionat despre "enable email". De cand l-am setat cu un an in urma nu am umblat pe acolo, nu stiam ca e o problema. Scuze! :Dc76\talk 09:50, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

deletion of the essay
I support it. But should WP:DICK be nominated also? I don't like that one either. Chris! c t 03:07, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, you are right. We should focus on the current deletion. Thanks for the heads up. Chris!  c t 03:13, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Don't be a dick (3rd nomination)
I am wondering if you are interested to comment here. Chris! c t 21:38, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

changing image licensing between wikis
I noticed while reviewing Image:Monumentul Unirii din 1918.jpg that you had added licensing information that was included by the original ro.wiki uploader. You are not the copyright holder and do not have the ability to do this. Please refrain from changing licensing information for images for which you do not hold the copyright. Also, please upload free images to Commons. The CommonsHelper tool is extremely useful when transferring images across wikis. Thank you, BanyanTree 00:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The closest en.wiki equivalent is cc-by-sa-2.5, which is the only 'correct' tag. The other CC versions have slightly different wordings, while the GFDL tag, which you also added, has some significant differences that are the subject of periodic discussion between Wikimedia and CC foundation people on mailing lists.  As I mentioned on your talk, the Commons Helper tool makes all of this painless.  - BanyanTree 00:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It might also be worth noting that CC licenses are designed to be backwards-compatible, e.g. 2.5 should cover 2.0 and 1.0, but not necessarily 3.0. The GFDL is an entirely different creature. Interpreting licenses generally leads to poor results.  - BanyanTree 00:55, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

RfC
So it's come to this...about time, honestly. Ooooh, but this is going to get ugly. It'll make the Fantana Alba talkpage war look like a minor border skirmish.

Anyway, I've signed to give my official certification. I haven't written a statement yet, but I plan to tomorrow--I just have to think about it for a while to make sure I choose my words carefully. I've had too many ill-worded comments and throwaway remarks backfire on me in the past, and there's no room for sloppiness in something like this. K. Lásztocska 00:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Biru, did Anonimu pay you to do this? You have made his month.... There is a saying "Never mudwrestle with a pig; you both get dirty but the pig likes it". People like that are happiest when dissed, despondent when ignored. I will of course weigh in on your side as soon as the muse shows up with the pizza.... BTW KL, Im sure you meant "FA massacre talkpage" ;-) István 04:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Ohh geez, István, did you see the hot water I got myself into when I quoted that saying about mud wrestling pigs to the pretentious German musicologist who thankfully no longer haunts my talk page? :-)
 * Anyway, my statement is up. It's also 2:30 in the morning so I'm going to bed. Hopefully the Wiki won't have blown itself up by sunrise... K. Lásztocska 06:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't - got diffs?
 * Its telling how some people fret and worry when throwing down the gauntlet, whereas others are tossing them around casually, by second (or first) nature and never miss a moment of sleep over it. The gauntlet tosser (or "tosser" for short), like all tossers, is now reveling in the justification lent to his favourite activity. István 14:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Biru, when do you expect the present RfC to close?István 14:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Come Monday I'm not going to be around as much for a while--studies are getting pretty intense. I'll still check my messages so if you need my input on anything for the RfC, don't hesitate to ask. Meanwhile, I was really bored last night and the plot just thickened about a hundredfold. :) K. Lásztocska 22:54, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Biru, could I suggest something - I note that the body of evidence presented in the RfC is quite impressive and thorough - properly presented in an objective voice. However the two recent addenda are written in a markedly different voice - it may be beneficial to at least remove the adjectives; all the meaning may be preserved with a more objective voice which does not impeach the credibility of the other evidence you have presented. I would do it myself, yet you have signed them. (Its also a good thing that we have managed to shove all that manipulative sophistic distraction over to the talk page). István 15:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I kind of agree about the tone, I personally think that "anglo-american imperialists" shouldn't be ignored especially that he admited in the talk page he was referring to fellow editors. Thank you István for your support on this cause! -- AdrianTM 15:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Victorious February
Hello. Nice one, indeed. I've read it and must say it is a good one. Actually I've done a seminar work about KSČ 1948-1968 last year. The section about aftermath from the Western point of view is extensive, however more about aftermath in Czechoslovakia is still needed. - Darwinek 09:54, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Ktitor
Sorry, I don't. I see that en wiki doesn't have an article about it, perhaps we should start it? I can look around on the internet for more information for the article, but I don't have any with me.. Cheers, —dima/talk/ 02:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

RfC for Anittas?
Hi, do you think we need to open a RfC for Anittas? I mean I find this "Muntenians are of a different race from the rest of the mammals" offensive, just imagine this being said about other group of people... for example: "Jews are of a different race from the rest of the mammals" he would be banned in 2 seconds from Wikipedia. -- AdrianTM 02:21, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I won't start the RfC but that will be used as evidence in case somebody starts one. -- AdrianTM 12:31, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Nicolau Matoussi
Hi, I have seen you edited the page about Alchiviad Diamandi. I recently wrote an article about his successor, Matoussi, but I am not sure if I wrote his given name correctly. He was called in Greek sources Nikos and Nikolaos, while in English Nicholas. But he was an Aromanian, and I suppose the Aromanian form of his name would be Nicolau, but I am not sure. Maybe you know more about Aromanian language, please check it. Multumesc. --Koppany 09:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * OK. Thanks for your help. --Koppany 17:39, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Evil plans
Exactly... D'oh! Will (talk) 23:25, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you can ask your friends to guess again... István 02:35, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * What seems to be the problem? Dahn 05:13, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Dealul Mitropoliei - images
Re: Dealul Mitropoliei, a suggestion. Next time you are doing something like this, please put the images on Commons. They are clearly "free" images; we might as well make it easy to use them in Wikipedias in all languages. Also, Commons has a much better system to categorize images. (Probably all of these images belong in a single Commons category; you might yet want to revisit this one.) - Jmabel | Talk 16:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

2007 Romanian Air Force IAR-330 SOCAT crash
Hi Biru, I just created yesterday this article and I'm trying to expand it in the next days, as soon as new info is available. Would you be able to help with copyediting when you have some time? Cheers, --Eurocopter tigre 16:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Benjamin Gavin
Hey buddy. Please see my comment on the talk page of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Benjamin_Galvin

Jc4k 03:09, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey
Glad to see you've softened up your opinions. :) --PaxEquilibrium 10:38, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No, but in general, for example your comments on Getoar's talk page. --PaxEquilibrium 18:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Why do you trust nationalists? They're often bound to be biased.
 * Why would you pick a Serbian nationalist over a, say, Croatian nationalist? --PaxEquilibrium 22:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Racism from user:Anittas
Hi Biru, this is not the first time the user manifested racism, but take a look here: , this collaborated with "Muntenians are a different race of mammals" -- depending on how the RfC on user:Anonimu is resolved I think I will open a RfC on Anittas. -- AdrianTM 15:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * See my reply on the relevant talkpage and also to Adrian and Turgidson. I also emailed you. --Thus Spake Anittas 19:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

An article which you started, or significantly expanded, List of Swedish-speaking and bilingual municipalities of Finland, was selected for DYK!
Thanks for your contributions! Nishkid64 (talk) 21:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Anonimu
I've requested arbitration with regards to Anonimu's incivility. The request can be found here. Will (talk) 02:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It's required by arbcom. Will (talk) 02:16, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Congrats
Great job. Dahn (talk) 19:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, man... I can safely say ida lived a better life without the links. On the other hand: the prolific stubbing and the fixations observed during past encounters make me rather suspicious... (oh and: it appears that he tagged one of his own articles for cleanup!) Dahn (talk) 00:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Anonimu ArbCom
I am remotely following the ArbCom on Anonimu and I've been quite outraged by Irpen's intervention. I am mostly troubled by his proposal to delegate (arbitration) power to a "Eastern European Work Group" (detailed in a linked page, scroll down). This way, if Ghirla and Irpen make it to the group lead, all external oversight becomes impossible. A virtual Warsaw Pact, in a way, or should I call it Hegemony (cf. Ender's Game). I will not intervene in this thread directly, because it's not my ArbCom (I have not been invited), but his proposal is dangerous. Dpotop (talk) 22:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply
The page has a good start. The lead could use some bulking up, you should remove the links from the photographers without a page, and it might not hurt to give their nationality its own column. -- Scorpion0422 01:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Random
Nothing to do with Wiki matters, but you may find this intriguing/amusing/infuriating/all of the above... ;-) K. Lásztocska talk 11:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Eh, at least you've been as productive as ever on-Wiki...I've been kind of sparse lately. Perhaps the latest tensions in Transylvania will only add a new layer to all the many ridiculous plot twists I worked in on that long, insomnia-filled night a few weeks back? ;-) (did you like the "rightful King" bit?) ;-) K. Lásztocska talk 13:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Another fine article
right|100px
 * ...that Malcolm Browne won the World Press Photo of the Year for his picture of Thich Quang Duc setting himself ablaze? by Biruitorul nom (its a list, but a very good one - I chose thids hook as it has a free image we can use. Author (ie U) may be able to suggest one that has not been in an FA.

OK? Victuallers (talk) 18:02, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Anonimu
An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Requests for arbitration/Anonimu/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Requests for arbitration/Anonimu/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, David Mestel(Talk) 18:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

A star for you


Indeed. By the way, did you see this? Bwahahahahahaaaaa! ;-) K. Lásztocska talk 03:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Yay?
Yay? :) AdrianTM (talk) 02:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm preparing the champagne... just in case, if not, at least I can get drunk :D  AdrianTM (talk) 03:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Unsinkable...nuclear...rowboats. Jeez. Just think, they'll still be talking about us centuries from now! Incidentally, do check out the link KIDB just posted to my page--the video is in English and it's hilarious...sad, but hilarious. K. Lásztocska talk 13:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

BTW, what does "cinstire eroilor" mean? K. Lásztocska talk 17:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * something along the lines of "honor/praise the heroes" -- AdrianTM 17:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * LOL at the deliberate ambiguity, but your main antagonist is gone now, so I'm afraid all you'll get is a few blank stares. But hold on, so you avoided making a pro-Legionnaire statement by issuing an outright provocation to the Transylvanian Hungarians?? Shame on you, you ultranationalist Székely-kicker! ;-) K. Lásztocska talk 00:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * But blue?! Doesn't that say "Lăncieri"? :D Dahn 01:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed: better dead than... but then there's Bluze Albastre ;) Not even I know where this came from... Dahn 03:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

BTW, you are not accused of being philofascist, you are accused of being a fascist canibal... (sorry, but I got an image of a painted canibal wearing a German helmet) :D AdrianTM 03:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah but, you see, he admits to the charge of being a cannibal. It was bound to pop up sooner or later. :D Dahn 04:11, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "Their mighty ships once again raised from their watery graves, our Intrepid Heroes of the good ships Dacia and Hungaria looked cautiously over the newly-calm waters, not daring yet to fully believe...but yes, it was true...could it be? The storm was over, the sea was peaceful, their latest battle had run its course. Hoisting their flags high to flutter cheerfully in the cool breeze, the various captains and admirals set sail for the mainland, there to beat their swords into plowshares and spend their time building great monuments in words to Romanian literature, Hungarian music, and various characters on all sides of the political spectrum. At last, all was well."
 * Now, THAT'S how we should have ended it. (Dahn, did you see what odd path I've taken the Balaton tale down?) Incidentally, Biru, I got your message and have replied on the forum. :) :) :) K. Lásztocska talk 05:34, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, you see, what I do is I enter the forum page, open the newest posts page, click on "Edit", "Find in this page", type "Dahn". I then proceed to read the five words before the highlight and the five words after. What I couldn't help notice is that there was no highlight for quite a while now, ahem.
 * No, but really now: it's truly hilarious. The Arpads touch... I guffawed. But, hey, forget Funar: there's a new guy in town who, although he scored miserably at the Euro elections, knocked out Vadim and won more than Tokes (he's the new yardstick when it comes to ground-level agitation). Plus, he should add more color than the bland monomaniacal Funar. Here's the man, here's the dream. Enjoy. Dahn 06:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What happened, have all the people who had a trace of common sense left Romania? Who can vote for such a guy? -- AdrianTM 06:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ask Biru ;). But no, hey, I'm mean. Becali didn't get that much - did he, after all, gain that one seat they were still hoping for? On the other hand, I came to admit myself that Becali is at least one class over Vadim: I mean, he is really simple, but, unlike Vadim, he is not of the feces family. Especially when it comes to insignificant offices such as MEP, I prefer Becali. Dahn 06:52, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * From the little I saw of him, he looks like a reasonably good stand-up comedian. Speaking of which, how come there is no one from Romania in Category:Stand-up comedians by country? How about Birlic, or Constantin Tănase — would they qualify for Category:Romanian stand-up comedians, if such a cat were to exist? Anyone alive that could go in such a cat (besides jeejee, that is)? Turgidson 07:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the fans made sure (I cringe...). Btw, we should have articles on Divertis and its members at some point. I did my share - does he qualify? Dahn 07:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Backing up a bit: good Lord. Dahn, you're right, I completely left you out of the most recent chapter. *hangs head in shame and slinks off into a corner.* Glad you liked the Árpád bit though: it's a recent recurring daydream of mine, as in recent months I've become quite fascinated with early Hungarian history and mythology--the thought that there might still be an (illegitimate, most likely) Árpád line out in the backwoods somewhere, and also an excuse to bring the story of Prince Csaba into the mix. K. Lásztocska talk 16:13, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

«Panoramic» image
It was not a personal Photo, just my mistake (I remembered I had one but it was b/w and not that detailed). This is a scannend image (can't remember where from though), not mine. Fair use. --Alex:Dan (talk) 10:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

what is this comment supposed to mean?
"more Nergaal specials coming our way" Nergaal (talk) 00:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe it is more important to have a stub article that can appear in the queue of a search, than to wait until someone has the energy to write something decent. This means that there is an interest in having those articles. Also, once an article is created, there will be some interested users in de-stubing them, or at least in making them 'acceptable' (as you just proved). Please keep in mind that those many of your contributions have been well below our standards are only a part of way more many articles I create and expand. Nergaal (talk) 01:08, 6 December 2007 (UTC

Roger Federer records page
Not sure why you feel this should be deleted. It is very notable the records that he is breaking and it takes a considerable amount of time to compile the records together in one place, which is why the article is valid. If your complaint is the sources, then you should compel the authors to source each one of the records.

Benkenobi18 (talk) 03:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Juan Carlos
I think the section you removed should be retained although perhaps not the top section of it above Robert of Worms (which might be made up.) But the section below Robert of Worms is undeniably accurate and I think it adds to the article to see how the man's ancestry can be traced back to the beginnings of his royal house, the house of Robert - this line also happens to be one of the longest in the world, which is cause for mention.

If you disagree, can I suggest a move to House of Bourbon? There, it would show the ancestral beginnings of that house, which would definitely be useful.

Mark J (talk) 22:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, that's fine. The same proposal appears to have been accepted by other royal houses, such as House of Tudor and House of Stuart. Cheers Mark J (talk) 16:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

ABP
Thanks, and yes, it looks quite reasonable. In fact, I don't know why they didn't simply add a "spouse" section in the infobox to begin with. Fascinating character, wouldn't you say? Dahn (talk) 18:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * On Eliade: fire at your own will - I'm sure they can find a place in the article, and we could expand on them from some stuff I posted for safekeeping on the talk page there. The word I'm thinking of when it comes to the other articles you mention is "spam" - better the redlinks (or, well, nothing).
 * In the meantime, I tickled the dragon on rowiki, and it seems that the controversy there revolves around a small cluster of people who actually want to promote extremist and antisemitic sites (or are even involved in promoting those sites). They write their own policies, act as if the project belongs to them, and have collectively flame warred me and other users with all sorts of attacks (some coming from an admin, who currently proposes demoting admins who do not agree with him). I want to take this further, because we are clearly talking about abuse, but just how much time and energy would this require? Little wonder that project has gone to hell. I'm as jaded as back in the Icarian days. Dahn (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the encouragement. As we stand, this is me and others praying to the Virgin (if you have the energy to read through it, you'll see what aspects this has come to involve, and who the usual suspects are - perhaps you could look through the recent history of the page, as you'll perhaps agree with me that two involved parties double as the prosecutor and the judge). Meta looks like a good next step, but one would have to start from scratch and deal with all the noise, threats and accusations yet again. This early assessment, alas, looks dead on for now. Dahn (talk) 19:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Argh! How could we get our hands on a PD photo of this? Dahn (talk) 23:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Their website says we can't. You can take photos if one pays 50 lei, but one can't use them for anything other than personal purposes. That's what they claim, but Paciurea died more than 70 years ago, so his sculpture is PD by now. bogdan (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I remember brushing into that absurd regulation when I noticed how one user was, shall we say, braving it (which, if you were to ask me, was a merit - just what legislation does that state museum think it is operating under?). Dahn (talk) 00:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, they claim a "taxă de fotografiere profesionişti: 2000 lei / oră" which is absurdly high. The Louvre allows anyone to take photographs for free.
 * BTW, I visited that museum last week and I was reprimated for doing something which a guard considered "obscene". (how do you dare kissing her? this is a museum!) :-) bogdan (talk) 00:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What the guard did would only make sense if "her" was a painting or a sculpture. :) Dahn (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think they have no statue of Galatea, but they do have a copy of Rodin's The Kiss. :-) bogdan (talk) 00:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And speaking of ABP, you did a terrific job with that article! bogdan (talk) 00:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you! It's all part of my hidden and subversive agenda. :D Dahn (talk) 01:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I knew it! You're part of the Great World Conspiracy! BTW, next time you meet your Grey extra-terrestrial overlords, can you please take a picture of them? The article severely lacks a good photo. :P bogdan (talk) 10:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you: you see, I don't work for those guys. I'm with these guys. :) Dahn (talk) 16:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:LOTD
You are the nominator of a WP:FL that was promoted in the last month. I am inviting you to participate in nominations and voting in a List of the Day experiment I am conducting at WP:LOTD.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 00:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Samuel Cony
Hello Biruitorul. Thank you for your contributions to the article Samuel Cony. I wish you all the best. Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 02:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Welcome! Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 03:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Cristero War - Mexican Revolution
It seems that you insist that the Cristero War had its roots on the Mexican Revolution. Could you please give some evidence to this?

Edsonland (talk) 06:24, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Now I agree that the Cristero War might have had its roots on the policies that where implemented on the post-revolutionary period. It just however doesn't seem to me that it was actually a consequence of the revolution happening. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edsonland (talk • contribs) 05:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Anonimu
This arbitration case has closed and the final decision is available at the link above. Anonimu is banned from editing Wikipedia by the Arbitration Committee for a period of one year, to run concurrently with the existing indefinite community ban. This notice is given by a Clerk on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Ratgeb
Hi, Thanks for your edits on the Jerg Ratgeb article. I agree with removing the flag icon (you should do the same on Albrecht Dürer), although I think removing the reference to Germany as his birthplace (as in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Holy Roman Empire) goes a bit too far. athinaios (talk) 17:36, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. To be honest, I think it was ok either way. I think if one was very strict, one would have to say that it was already Germany then (after all, the full name of the Holy Roman Empire implies that strongly; the point appears to me that there was no unified German state then, not that there was no Germany), so that the über-correct version would be "Holy Roman Empire, now Federal Republic of Germany". And that would look awful. So let's leave it the way it is, or if you prefer, even the previous way you put it. Anyone who really want to know will presumably find out one way or the other. athinaios (talk) 00:07, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Socialist realism in Romania
Please excuse me again: I wanted to answer sooner, but, as you might have seen, I had quite the delurge to deal with (though it seems that, at last, more users are becoming aware of the problems). And thank you for the kind words of support on the WP:RS noticeboard.

Your article is a great start, but we may have to restructure it in oder to fit the references. As we stand, in addition to the three sources (VT, AC, LB) and, possibly, Victor Frunză, have handy two books by Cernat: one which is just a great read for this and other subjects, is incidentally already mentioned in the bibliography section; the other is the one I quoted in ABP, where one finds an interesting foray into the birth of socialist realism inside the Romanian avant-garde (with Roll, Bogza, Paraschivescu and some other guys). There should indeed be sources that link NC's style not just to Stalinism, but also to socialist realism, but I admit I haven't looked into them yet - it'll be one of my priorities when I do. Presumably, they could also be used to clarify what is perceived as "original" (Păunescu's introduction of distorted "flower power" litanies, Vadim's nationalism, the Palace of Parliament's baroque flowering etc.). I'm also with you on the issue of de-Stalinization; perhaps the article could mention the way in which Dej maneuvered against Jar and Constantinescu as part of his "I'm not Stalin" routine?

In addition to the trails you propose, there is indeed the issue of linking it to other articles, but I propose we leave the bulk of that to when we add more sourced content. I would also like to do something for flow in the sections that read like lists: presumably, one could turn them into commentary using sources as a basis.

There is still quite a lot to add, though. At the moment, I'm thinking about linking the concept to the ARLUS, the birth of Onirism, the return of various socialist realists to their avant-garde origins and the start of their [unusually] quiet dissidence, and, of course, a closer look into visual arts. We could also look, for example, in the Radio Free Europe archives for the period, where lots of interesting and immediately available stuff is just waiting to be picked.

One of the major problems this article has is that of quotes already in the text. Presuming we start citing the sources, what do we do if they aren't to be found in those available? Do we just strike them out? For example, I'm not sure that I can find the exact source for Beniuc's definition of the socialist realist poet; on the other hand, I could easily replace it with traceable quotes of the same nature. Dahn (talk) 04:02, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, and: I would live the article on propaganda for later on. It is bound to be massive and require a lot of research, and we have to think of ways to structure it and somehow glue it to already existing articles. I would have to say it sounds a bit superfluous having a separate article for it, but it is certainly not unreasonable. Dahn (talk) 04:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Technically, I'd rather have a secondary source telling me that it is relevant than a wikipedian, but, yeah, okay. It could even go in without page numbers, if all else is cited fully. Unless it gets too complex, you could perhaps ask him/her if there is anything else he got from that issue to use in the article, and if he actually read it himself/herself. Dahn (talk) 11:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Accident in Saint-Paul
Thank you for the translation. The right number is 27, thus 23+4. By the way, I think that you should change guardrails with something like slope, as a rampe is a part of a road with a high gradient and not only something that will prevent you from falling. Thierry Caro (talk) 11:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Semantron
Greetings! Well, I think that its usage in Bulgaria these days is very rear. Perhaps you can find semantrons in a few churches built during the Ottoman domination but it is usually replaced with bells as far as I have seen. Still it was widespread before 1878 so I will add Bulgaria and the Bulgarian name. Thank you for noting me that : ) Best, --Gligan (talk) 13:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas


Hi Biruitorul! I wish you a Merry Christmas and all the best in the new year. - Darwinek (talk) 12:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I still have not figured out whether Romanians celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 or Jan. 7, but whenever you do celebrate it (maybe twice?) have a very happy one! :) Cheers, K. Lásztocska talk 03:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)



Crăciun fericit
Well put, and I'm sure they are not thinking about us on May 1st. And Merry Christmas to you too! Dahn (talk) 08:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

salut, ai un e-mail sau o adresa de messenger?
salut, ai un e-mail sau o adresa de messenger, vreau sa discut ceva cu tine Adrianzax (talk) 17:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

speaking of wikimail, check yours...something very strange appears to be afoot...KL

CIA related articles
In the spirit of good faith and my attempt to improve a prior article with much POV in all directions, shall we discuss how intelligence generally, and CIA-specific, articles may be improved, rather than immediately calling for deletion? As you mentioned, there is coherent prose and sourcing, which should be a starting point for improvement, not a call for deleting everything around it.

Incidentally, there is a new Intelligence Task Force under the Military History project, and there has been some discussion of the challenges of writing NPOV articles on intelligence, not overly influenced by fiction or politics, on the general project list. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

AFDs
As a common courtesy, please notify article creators when you nominate their articles for AFD. Thanks. The Evil Spartan (talk) 04:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Ktitor
Hi, I was writing an article and came across the term Ktitor.. it's just a stub now, but I remember you asked me about it some time ago. Would you like to help expand it some? —dima/talk/ 00:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured article candidates/Józef Piłsudski
Since you commented in the last round, please note that the nomination has been restarted. Thanks for the comments and edits so far! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

2006 Ferentari riot
I don't know if you noticed that you were reverted at 2006 Ferentari riot. Yes, the material is poorly written and some of it is of dubious relevance, but the former can be fixed and the latter should probably be argued out on the article talk page.

Right now, the poorly written mess is the article, so it might well be worth getting back to. There does seem to be at least one relevant substantive disagreement: whether the deaths of the children occurred before the riot and were a triggering event, or after and it was simply a coincidence. I have no idea of the facts, but I assume that source materials should be able to clarify this.

Anyway, best of luck hope all is going well. - Jmabel | Talk 19:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured article review/John Day (printer)
Hi there. User:qp10qp and I have done a lot of work trying to bring this up to current FA standards. Could you take a look at the article again and comment at the FAR? Many thanks. Budding Journalist 21:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, boy...
It looks like I am as close to getting the (much coveted) "Romanian Nazi" label as I'll ever be. Be still, my heart! --Illythr (talk) 03:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Reply
Thank you for contacting me, Biruitorul. I'm a bit busy at the moment but will have a look at that situation in a couple of hours or so. Best regards, Hús  ö  nd  22:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, seems like another user has already called on Mrg3105 to be civil and cease his accusations. He hasn't been uncivil again (at least on that talk page) and hopefully so he shall continue. Please report any further incivility/trolling. The Digwuren restriction may indeed apply here, but I was involved in this particular discussion so you would need an uninvolved admin to enforce it. Best regards, Hús  ö  nd  02:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah...
Happy New Year, and thank you for the welcome! I am bordering on rudeness yet again with my delays, so please accept my apologies (on the other hand, we do seem to have our hands full thanks to some newcomers and some old faces... akh!). To answer your questions: I still have no clue as to 1) and 2) - I let too much time slip between my edits in those areas and the present situation, so I wouldn't know where to pick at it. On the template issue: I could see no particular problem in what the one we had previously (i.e.: presidents), but it seems there's too many windmills out there for us Don Quixotes... It looks pretty silly to me, but, as long as it's not abhorrent, whatever keeps them content... (incidentally, how about Antonescu's weird job? if anything, what does that imply for such templates?). A for the "President" article, well, it currently looks like crap, but I'm not sure what the best approach is. Dahn (talk) 23:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I share your feelings about the whole shabang, but I will add that both sides in that conflict, as usual in anything on that scale involving Romanian articles, have moved outside the realm of logic and common sense. this is why I chose not to waste my time trying to see what they're on about at the moment. The sample text you linked is indeed weird, and, yes, it does not seem like those guys have thought it through or compared it with other cases. While, yes, many people still use "Rumania" and "Roumania", I cannot see this as material for the lead. It is equally odd that this is not mentioned in the somewhere in the text. But then, the perfect solution was just in front of our eyes: I'll call it the Rakovsky solution! (Not entirely out of my head: there is a specification somewhere that, if there are alternate names or there is something to say about alternate names, editors are to consider starting a special section.)
 * I also avoided commenting on the Iaşi-Chişinău article - for one, it's one of those "a rose by any other name" things, and, quite simply, both possibilities looked equally convincing for me. It's also that discussions like this tend to attract the usual crew on both sides, and rarely see the end of them. But, yes indeed, those comments were an outrage, and that guy was seriously out of line. The stupidest part of this pretense national gang war is that, for each guy who accuses editors of x nation form a gang there is a guy in that x nation who demands from his compatriots to form a gang (or acts as if they already form one).
 * The Ploieşti article is now as appealing as a latrine. I remember I saw it being hijacked a while back, I saw Turgidson trying to get in the way and giving up, and I kept wanting to fix at least part of it just before it suffered even more casualties (needless to say, the diacritics thing didn't help at all...). Eh, eventually... Dahn (talk) 04:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


 * A couple of issues concerning Eliade. Entirely by accident, I bumped into a source that discussed his marital status and the other details you brought up on the talk page - if you still want to add from your source (provided it was not the same source), I can't see any problem with it, but there is, of course, no more "sense of urgency". However, other issues have popped up or moved to the forefront. For starters, was he actually an American citizen? With the characteristic dose of confidence, in what is a characteristically ridiculous article on Eliade, rowiki says that he was "naturalized an American citizen [sic! for the tautology] in 1966". Fine, I take that for granted, and ask myself what source they used. So far, I see that the Anglo-Saxon world seems to have no recollection of that fact, whereas the Romanian-speaking world flows over with sites of the forum and blog level who repeat verbatim the claim made by rowiki (or the other way, or whichever). Do you think it possible that we actually find a credible source discussing this aspect, either backing up or refuting the rowiki claim? Another question I would like to see answered eventually is what did he actually die of?
 * In case you are interested, it would be a major boost for the article if you were to have access to another source discussing Eliade's fiction works - George Călinescu is rather dated and dismissive, while the only other readily available source I found is indeed valuable, but short and vague. Something that would actually explain what the stories are about and trace connections between them would be marvelous. Dahn (talk) 04:27, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course. Dahn (talk) 00:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Waaay ahead of you :). But how on Earth did I miss those two, Biru? It's only now that I notice them (I probably lost them in the backlog). They're excellent ideas, and, yes, by all means, let's have them in. (On the PCR one, a note might be in order for the pre-1945 troika, but it's not an absolutely necessary addition.) Dahn (talk) 02:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I shall happily delegate that honor to the creator of the templates. Again: great stuff! On a partly related topic: do you have the feeling that I, you, Turgidson and perhaps Bogdan are turning into the Romanian-side-of-the-English-wiki's Humphrey Applebies? :D Dahn (talk) 07:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean? As I said, I think that "warning" was unwarranted, but did it actually carry any consequences? O do you mean to say he does not want to edit anymore? I certainly hope not! (I'm about to log off now, but I'll be back later in the day - I apologize in advance for the possible delay in replying.) Dahn (talk) 17:04, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * That's awful news! Is there any chance he would reconsider the decision? Dahn (talk) 19:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Forget Appleby, this is Tammany Hall! :D You can count on my support, and I'm looking forward to the vote. Dahn (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You can count on my support too (I don't know how much is worth though considering that I don't have a good reputation -- and not plan to build one ;) AdrianTM (talk) 22:08, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Help! Dahn (talk) 22:36, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Tout en gardant la foi, I have to say I'm looking forward to seeing an end to this wikibreak of yours :). It's got more boring around here. I just want to let you know that I might not be very active between mid and late March, when I'm off on a trip - I'm not sure that I'll have reasonable internet access there. If you want my vote (I hope you do, even though I'm sure you'll have no problems winning with or without it), you might consider scheduling running in early March or early April. I was going to tell you about this later, but I saw the message on KL's page. Dahn (talk) 09:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Complicated stuff. For starters, I think such an article should rely on something other (or at least something more) than a blog page, which is currently the only reference it has. But yes, that is a good solution to several of our traditional problems. However, as I mentioned before, it would be a gruesome task to make sense of the pre-1945 situation. Aside from the lack of complete info in one place, you would not believe how much sources diverge on who was what and where - especially for the years when the PCR was supposedly several parties (one in Moscow, one in Doftana, and one in Bessarabia). The thing that is hardest to figure out is why those lists differ, and if authors really contradict each other. Throw in "revolutionary legality" (i.e. the communists not really caring who was what), and you have the basic ingredients for a mess. Dahn (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Michael the Brave
Hi Biru, I just overhauled this article and would like to put it on A-class review as soon as posible. However any additions or copyedit would be welcome. Just take a look when you have some time... Best, --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 18:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi
I don't intend to move it back to the wrong orthography. The ș and ț are supported on all operating systems which have Unicode support &mdash; those that don't should probably not be editting Wikipedia. If you would like to open up a larger RFC on ș and ț versus the other forms I would be more than willing to cast my opinion there. Dahn appears to have done a copy/paste move to restore the Ploiești article which is in violation of the GPL. I've rectified the situation as you requested. - Francis Tyers · 07:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It's gold, I tell ye!
I spoke you speak better German than I do, because I found a lovely source for us to use: see pages 79-98 here (I guess the yellow will also point out who my next article is gonna be about...). Dahn (talk) 07:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Hm, I hadn't actually connected the DYK with the question (a really cool one, btw!) I was asking - though now it seems that I could have. Don't worry, I won't hold that against you :). Machine is what I do too (more or less - I actually pick it up word by word from dictionaries and see where that gets me; I have to say it was much easier with Catalan...). Here's what I was thinking: there is this magical button on our keyboard that can help us store the text and bypass the, well, changes that may occur in viewing ;). I'm thinking of using it and then try a bit-by-bit approach to translation. The important thing is that it so very complete and so well-structured for what we need, and that we should get "a hold" of it to cover the gaps. Once I'm done with other things, I'll see about that, and you might consider doing the same. That way, we can work it whenever we can give it our undivided attention. Dahn (talk) 23:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Translations and references
Hello,

You really do a great job in translating the articles I (mostly) wrote. I added two references on the Morea exped, still looking for the last one. I'll read History of the Cyclades after a good night sleep. It's not yet finished : roman and byzantine periods are still a little short : big reference problem : my university library is relatively poor and byzantine period is one of the subjects of the competitive exam to recruit teachers (Agregation) this year, so the other libraries wont lend their books.

If you are looking for "neutral" featured articles to translate, you should try Siège de Tripolizza compared to Fall of Tripolitsa or even better Massacre de Psara compared to Destruction of Psara.

I think I should some day try to pay you back and translate one of your best articles. Got anything real good and neutral about Alexander Ypsilantis (1792-1828) war in Moldavia and Wallachia ?

Thanks again, Cedric B. (talk) 00:49, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Idem
I'd like to thank you for this translation. Thierry Caro (talk) 01:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

dyk
Nice article, by the way! Lovely pictures and lots of interesting information. Adam Cuerden talk 05:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Romanian calendar
Since you are the creator of and most prolific contributor to Romanian calendar, please help out here. —  AjaxSmack   21:11, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Barthélemy Boganda
Excellent work a few months ago with Barthélemy Boganda. I found the subject quite compelling, and I'm considering bringing it to FA status. Since this is the first time I've actually heard about this guy, could you tell me if article is "complete"? Do you think it can be significantly expanded? Thanks, Nishkid64 (talk) 19:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Alright, I'll start looking into the images, and I'll be working on the article, copyediting, expanding and referencing, when appropriate. I picked up two of the book references used (Dark Age and Historical Dictionary) from my uni library. It appears Pierre Kalck, the author of Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic also wrote a biography on Boganda (Google Books). Unfortunately, I could not find it any of the area university libraries, and Google Books does not offer a preview of the book. Nishkid64 (talk) 06:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry about that. I knew I wrote down the wrong number, but I forgot to change it. Thanks for that! By the way, this should be at FAC in less than a week (hopefully). Nishkid64 (talk) 16:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Moldova
I saw your edits on Warsaw pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Now we have a comparison of it to ... the intervention of Romanian troups in Moldova in 1918! :Dc76\talk 19:49, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have an opinion about renaming Tighina? (See the talk page of the article). If you don't have an opinion, don't feel obliged to answer. :Dc76\talk 18:50, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Operation Straw Poll
Hi, since you took part in the discussion about renaming this article, you may be interested in participating in a most evil poll to determine the public opinion on the naming issue. --Illythr (talk) 20:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

A proposal
 A bunch of users that sign below would like to significantly increase your Wiki-addiction level. Please visit the torture chamber to see what this process entails, and then accept (or try to reject) your fate. A page has already been created for this procedure. If you accept the nomination, you must formally state and sign your acceptance and answer the questions on that page. Once you have answered the questions, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so.
 * Illythr (talk) 20:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Jmabel | Talk 20:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Dc76\talk 20:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC) (signatures are just copied the RfA page)

Greetings
In case you still don't know, we're about to crucify you. So please, be a nice guy and step onto the executioner's block, will ya? --Illythr (talk) 20:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * :-) you've got a sense of humor, Illythr ! (i have to leave for the night, but I'll be back tomorrow, cheers, everyone):Dc76\talk 20:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Aww, spoilsport! --Illythr (talk) 21:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

If this is crucifying, then allow me to sign up before the rooster crows today. Dahn (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

SSRs versus not in templates
To your question, it should be standard procedure to not mix SSRs and their independent selves, particularly not for the Baltics. So, presidents and first secretaries don't mix, ministers, heads of parliaments, etc. —PētersV (talk) 02:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yup, no mix! At the end of the day SSR versus independent is apples to oranges whether officials are called the same or something different. —PētersV (talk) 03:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

UAR Building / Casa Păucescu
I assume that you know the UAR Building in Bucharest (formerly Casa Păucescu, right on Piaţa Revoluţiei). I'm working on an article about it for Architectural Glass magazine. I've been trying (and failing) to find out who was the original architect of Casa Păucescu (1898, I believe) and what it was used for from 1914 until it became a Securitate building. Any ideas for leads? I wrote the UAR, but they seem not to be replying. - Jmabel | Talk 06:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Moldova, Moldovan language
As I expected, the provocations of User:Xasha become clearer, and there is an involvement of User:El C and User:Mikkalai. There is also Bonny, but I'm concerned another edit war will start. Dpotop (talk) 10:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, there's Irpen, too. :) And I got a warning under the blanket "Eastern Europe" decision of the Digwuren case. From El_C, or course. Dpotop (talk) 12:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have to apologize in advance that my editing time over the next few weeks will be close to non-existent. My (temporary) editing swan song was completing cleanup of a section in the Denial of the Holodomor article.
 * The only method for dealing with WP:OR et al. that has worked for Moldova/Transnistria is to use/quote the Charles King book ( The Moldovans ) as the best and most highly regarded reference available. Magosci's Historical Atlas of East Central Europe is the most highly regarded current work (recently revised) on the wider region. There's also Upton Clark's excellent 1927 book, Bessarabia, available online. Hope this helps! —PētersV (talk) 17:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Question
Hi there. Barthélemy Boganda is currently at FAC. Upon suggestion from Dahn, I added sources for the reference notes in the article. While doing this, I noticed that one of the notes provides a direct quote from preamble of the CAR's 2004 constitution. I tried looking for the quote online (or the CAR constitution for that matter), but I had no success. I was hoping that you could tell me where you got the material or point me in the right path to it. Thanks and good luck on the RfA! Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 05:31, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're quick! Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 05:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, I edited Image:Brassovia.jpg. I hope that my correction will stop BetacommandBot from readding the tag. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 05:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Edit summaries usage on your RfA
Hi. Do you mind using edit summaries on the RfA? It'll help me a bit. Thanks in advance. El_C 05:59, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I just think that limiting these to mainspace is problematic. I find it useful to have pertinent (and not just "r" or "c") summaries for comments and so on; especially as a record to look back at. Does that make sense to you? El_C 07:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Your RFA
No problem. I'm glad we got that issue cleared up. Spencer T♦C 17:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"Intelligent, strongly nationalistic..."
How about marking it as a quote and an "according to"? If that's a verbatim, just add quotation marks to it. If not, replace it with a verbatim. Sorry, but it looks terribly strange as it is now. Dahn (talk) 18:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Nothing against them being in the text, but, even as positive assessments, they could easily be seen as non-neutrally voiced if seen only as plain text. How about a "whom Titley describes as..." before a verbatim quote? Dahn (talk) 19:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It's your call really. If you think that the assessment still has a place there, I will not dispute that, and if you ultimately decide that it doesn't, I will be saying that was the better choice. It depends on whether you ultimately decide to keep it, and is a question of personal preferences - since you are the editor, it should actually be your preferences. With or without the phrase, the article is just about perfect. Dahn (talk) 20:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm okay with it if you place the words in quotes. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 22:02, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Great stuff. I'm not questioning your reasons, but I'm a bit curious: why did you not upload them directly to commons?

Oh, and: concerning your earlier post. I'm jaded enough by the very proliferation of "x-y relations", and especially by the fact that Bonnie's nonsense has become official in this case. So I won't look into that particular issue for now. As for the other articles: let's burn them. (Who by fire?)* Dahn (talk) 18:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, yeah, but then they do say that commons is for stuff that wikipedia may not need at all (I think I read it in the form for uploading images here, as opposed to there - something like a "consider if they're not more suitable there"). Plus, you know, if they do have a use here, and they are uploaded on wiki, they will eventually be moved to commons - since they're copyright-free. And let me add: they do most certainly have a use here, each and all, and the more of them the better. Even if they were not encyclopedic (and they are!), they would still be much more relevant than, say, all those photos some exhibitionists take of themselves and post on commons.
 * (And I'm so with you on having something substantial about the ceferişti in the CFR article! Something to do in the future...) Dahn (talk) 19:41, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Does this prove your arguments in favor of nationalism extend to Third World liberation movements, or is it one "remember Fachoda" from a Rule Britannia kind of guy? ;) Dahn (talk) 02:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

* At your convenience, though: I've seen what your AfD initiatives have generated - as justified as you were, are, and will be in proposing them for deletion, I am sure that having to explain yourself every time to every opinionated RfA voter is something you're not keen on doing right now. Dahn (talk) 19:02, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Hawaiian independence
What is the rationale here? Should Hawaii be forced into independence despite the wish of the vast majority of its residents? Should the monarchy and native culture be restored, and the 75% of Hawaiians who are not of native blood be deported? What's the plan? And why independence for Hawaii, and not other parts of the US which have separate identities and have actually attempted to achieve independence in the past? Because it's an island? 65.190.89.154 (talk) 19:00, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough - glad to have an answer. I don't necessarily agree - it strikes me as the imposition of ideology on a populace that doesn't necessarily want any part of it, which is generally not my bag - but that's a nice and straightforward answer.  Let me go and support your RFA with my current projectspace account. 65.190.89.154 (talk) 19:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Future interest in collaborations?
Just wondering, but would you be interested in collaborating on articles of other politicians like David Dacko, Abel Goumba or Jean-Bédel Bokassa? I've got both Kalck books and Titley right next to me, and then there's Google Books for the other sources. All three guys are quite interesting, and I'm probably going to start working on them soon. Let me know what you think. Thanks, Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 22:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Your RfA
Sorry, very rude of me. I forgot to drop you a line to tell you I'd left you an optional question at your RfA. --Dweller (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations
Let me be the first. Dahn (talk) 00:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I've now descended from the mountain to give you my answers :). Let me just say I wasn't trying to get you to use commons - after all, you may do what you want with the pictures you take; I'm glad we get to use them either way. I didn't yet add those to the Rădulescu-Motru article because I sometimes get tired of visiting the old pages, and because what has been going on there lately is, as you noticed, not to my liking. I also don't mean to seem like I'm dragging you into side discussions about African nationalism: you must have plenty on your mind, and are right to be upset about the other issues you cite, so please only mind those comments of mine if you think they're worth your time. I was glad, though, that you replied to this issue as well (again, your punctuality puts me to shame), and this especially since we seem to be in agreement. And, when it comes to France's post-colonial policy as compared to Britain: the Brits tended to make sure that it all went to shambles when they left, but at least they left! I read somewhere that, when Sekou told the French they could expect "cooperation" after Guinea's independence, the departing administrators vandalized their own offices. And, indeed, many of these guys were monsters (though prolly not Houphouët-Boigny); though it's also quite obvious that the Africans didn't have many choices in the Cold War world (I for one will say that the Soviet intervention in Africa had at least some constructive effects, whereas the Western one mostly degenerated into the worst of the worst - but that is probably just a coincidence attributable to the Soviets' willingness to get less "value" for money, and comparable to what the Italians were doing in Ethiopia).
 * On ceferişti. When Ronline wrote the article, wiki apparently had quite different standards. The article did not fail those, and probably doesn't fail most of today's. On the other hand, this aspect was probably not even on his mind - one more reason to carefully consider articles before they are promoted (unlike the FA & A-class nomination craze around here, to which Boganda was an exception). Kudos on the collectivization article. From my part, I shall be probably be visiting it when I get back from my trip (I'm leaving on Saturday), as I'm not sure I'll be able to do start something i can finish before that.
 * "Military history"? Much of it looks like forking to me, but whatever. It's another one of those articles that looks like it's not going anywhere yet...
 * I was following the other front, and I did reply just now to one of the more annoying clichés vented there. For the love of me, where do they get the idea that you are "juvenile" (let alone the stuff about WWI...)? Bah... sticks and stones, Biru. Anyway, what is the margin you need there, and how much does admin review count? Dahn (talk) 10:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, and: amen to that! I was going to remove it myself at some point. Since by now I guess you checked out my expansion of Sfarmă-Piatră (I discovered the stub by following you around, so it's *all* good), what do you think of the Sadoveanu detail? I think I'll visit that article for an encore as soon as I can, so we may check that on our lists :). Dahn (talk) 11:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Biru, that was the funniest... post... ever! Thank you for that, and know that I'm still laughing as I'm writing this.

If you were to start the ESRB RfA (which I would fully support, as much as I enjoy seeing boobies on very muscular and androgynous virtual girls), you'd have not only get all the usual crew on your back, you'd also become a moving target for those hobbits who put these articles together. Though I'd probably set the bar lower than you when it comes to albums (to something that would include lovely obscurities such as Candy Apple Grey, Veuillez rendre l'âme (à qui elle appartient) and stuff from Zabranjeno Pušenje), I have to agree that the current is too much: I wonder if they set themselves some minimal standard of notability, which is imperative now that the line between the chart system and internet meme is effectively blurred.

And we agree 100% on the essay. in fact, I was thinking about something on the same lines, but didn't know where I wanted to go with it. I have an additional observation to make on this phenomenon, and I dare say it is quite pertinent. if you find use for it under any form, I would be honored if you make it part of your essay. Here it is (clearing throat): "It would seem that many editors tend to imagine that the goal of wikipedia is reached when one user who types two, three or even four random words into wikipedia's search function, gets them to one existing article with each single try."

I think that the "big" articles you cite are an accurate barometer. Ideally, once you add references to an article and/orwrite the whole of it in a readable form (usually "and" rather than "or"), activity around it comes to a standstill. The only people who jump over that perimeter fence are either erudite or demented - the former is Boganda's case, the latter happened recently with Codreanu. Remember how noisy it was around here back in the Bonaparte days, when the whole Illyria group was only using wiki to flame war and add pictures from children's books to articles on battles? Well, how much of that coming to an end is not in fact attributable to good old massive editing from good sources? Not that one needs to do it because of that, but once you did it, the Bonnies and the Dacodavas can only take their show on the road. And, inshallah, it seems that this is finally happening on rowiki.

Trust me, I'll deal with that little detail in the Sadoveanu article while I'm editing. You know, the Appleby way ;). And thank you for the link, even though it's already giving me an ulcer. What has that man got - a g*amn' river bot?!

Well, at least "History of the Jews in the Vatican" points to the "Italy" article, though I think there are some users willing to change that :D. But yes, you're obviously right, and this is covered by my "random words" comment above. That Nauru thing is lovely - one more reasons for countries all over the world not to allow America to create embassies on their soil. Or is it that having embassies is usually a sign that relations have become non-cordial?

Don't let them mess up this project while I'm gone ;), and thank you for the kind wishes. Dahn (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

We've got...
an FA! Excellent work! Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 00:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Your RfA
I'm genuinely sorry to oppose, but you'll get there next time, if not this. I gave my !vote an enormous amount of thought. I think you've been unfortunate; under other circumstances you'd have succeeded with ease with my oppose one of a tiny minority. --Dweller (talk) 18:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Your RfA was unsuccessful
I am sorry to inform you that I have closed your RfA as not demonstrating a consensus that you should become an administrator at this time. Should you still be interested in becoming an administrator in the future, I recommend that you attempt to address the concerns raised by those opposing before running again. Best wishes, WjBscribe 22:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Mmmrgmn mmmnm khmnmnmmmndfnmmmmmmn... #!₮¿nrgnmf! Dahn (talk) 23:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I personally am disgusted by the people who voted there. A good part of them totally ignored WP:AGF and nobody brought any evidence of you pushing your POV in any article. Heck, beside being Romanian (and hypothetically sharing the same POV as you) I don't agree with 3/4 of the things you have in your user boxes and I still considered that you can act in a unbiased manner. Not to mention the ridiculousness of the 3 AM question or the troll (sorry, good faith editor) who tried to push his edits in an RfA... -- AdrianTM (talk) 01:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Be assured, that RfA revealed Wiki's problems much more than your own: 1) Uninformed RfA Mandarins too lazy to dig below superficial buzzword invective ("nationalist"? what is "nationalist" really in this case?), 2) Central Europe is a tough Barrio - Look at NCurse and Bogdan, these two admins spend their time mostly elsewhere (which is of course right and proper; the point being that they avoid the propeller scars that the rest of us Manatees bear on our backs) 3) bad outcomes push talent away (as with any company).
 * The one thing that galls me most (or is at least in the top drawer) is to see lower-competence pass judgment on higher-competence. (as is known to anyone ever involved in any military anywhere in the world).  Take a break, come back, stick around.  István (talk) 14:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I know it can be harsh, but remember you almost made it. I agree with Istvan above and others; it is a safe bet I (and many, many other old admins) would not pass today's RfA. Simply being controversial is deadly, and being active - and stepping on too many toes - doubly so. The only thing I can say is - good luck in the future. Do let me know when you try again! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Good luck with another attempt, it there will be one. All the best Tymek (talk) 01:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Piotrus. When I was put up for admin, there were no dissenting votes. I wonder if I'd even garner a majority these days. - Jmabel | Talk 23:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Orthodox categories
I agree it seems silly at the detail level, but it's the logical conclusion of having Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians by nationality and Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians by jurisdiction, both of which seem valid trees, or branches of much bigger trees. The second is certainly needed for clergy. I'm not sure what I would say at CfD; perhaps keep. Sorry about your RfA - I've not been seeing those lately. Johnbod (talk) 23:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes - It makes more sense for America, Ukraine & some other places; Greece, Romania etc I'm not so sure. Johnbod (talk) 23:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration
I've been researching into some African political leaders, and I wanted which individuals you are interested in writing about.
 * Patrice Lumumba – Anti-colonial leader like Boganda; helped lead DRC to independence (served as first PM) before being assassinated under mysterious circumstances at age 35.
 * Idi Amin Dada – cannibal, ruthless dictator of Uganda, numerous human rights violations, currently a GA. Bringing this to FA wouldn't require much, IMO
 * Milton Obote – The Ugandan president who was deposed by Dada; some biographies (limited preview) available on Google Books
 * Fulbert Youlou – Boganda-like figure, no biography on subject, so writing might be more difficult
 * Jean-Bedel Bokassa – I'm currently working on Bokassa, taking most of my info from Titley's book and obituaries
 * Abel Goumba – Interesting figure in CAR political history; true successor to Boganda, but was replaced by French-backed Dacko
 * David Dacko – Replaced Goumba, was overthrown by Bokassa. Later put back into power after Operation Barracuda

What say you, Mr. Biruitorul? If you've got any other suggestions, let me know. Regards, Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 02:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Alright, good luck with Houphouët-Boigny and M'ba. The author of both articles on fr.wiki also wrote Boris III de Bulgarie. Surprisingly, his articles are very well-referenced (which I usually don't see on fr.wiki) and quite lengthy. Anyway, I'm getting underway with Bokassa right now. I'll give you an update on my progress in a few weeks or so. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 23:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a consolation to see I'm not the only one with an interest in Francophone Africa ;-) A really great work on Boganda, and I'm happy to see you project others. Oh, if you pass in Chad, make a call: I would really love to collaborate trying a FA on François Tombalbaye or Hissène Habré. Ciao, and good work!--Aldux (talk) 01:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Nicholas Medforth-Mills
Hi Biruitorul :) I was referred to you by User:Lil' mouse 3. I'm interested in perhaps obtaining a translation of the two articles from Cotidianul on Nicholas Medforth-Mills' page, Prince Nicholas: “I am ready to be the King of Romania and Prince Nicholas, a dream of romanticism among the Romanian youth. I was hoping you could help in translating them for me, or else point me to where I could obtain a decent translation. Thanks in advance! Morhange (talk) 07:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the tranlation Morhange (talk) 23:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Am ceva mai bun, ce zici, ma ajuti?: Alexandru Baltagă si Artemie Munteanu. Dc76\talk 17:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC) Also, this: Bessarabian and Bukovinian martyrs of the faith from Communist persecution, which is only the start. Dc76\talk 19:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Banishment in the Bible
First let me say, Hello Biruitorul, and yes I do welcome your opinion. Regarding the article, that we are currently debating whether to Keep or Delete, Banishment in the Bible, I figured it would be better to respond here than on the Afd page, as too many comments have a tendency to distract from the main article itself, and the reason for the 'Afd discussion. In addition, to be truthful, I believe I stretched the patience of the discussion past the point of ordinary participation :-). The main reason I spent the time in trying to improve the article, was that the piece caught my interest!  Moreover, to be honest, I always felt, that if I found the subject intriguing, other individuals will found the subject matter interesting.  Many times, I have done a search on Google and even here at Wikipedia and found the subject matter I was looking for either not available or I had to search through 10,000 hits.  With this particular subject, I went Hey, I could see other individuals looking for the same thing.  With that in mind, I voted for Keep.  In the same sense, if someone was looking for this subject matter, why not have it all in one place.  Hence my overly zealous Keep stance.  I hope that I provided a little insight to my opinions, and either way it turns out, thanks for your participation. Shoessss | Chat  22:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed prod from Unreal Tournament 3 Tweaker, now at AfD
I have removed the prod tag from Unreal Tournament 3 Tweaker, which you proposed for deletion. I'm leaving this message here to notify you about it. I have nominated the article for deletion instead; the debate may be found at Articles for deletion/Unreal Tournament 3 Tweaker, which overrides the need for a prod tag. I have explained my reasons for doing this in my nomination. Thanks! --  At am a chat 15:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

New policy proposal that may be of interest
I'm tapping this message out to you because you were involved at the AfDs of Eve Carson or Lauren Burk. Following both of these heated debates, a new proposal has been made for a guideline to aid these contentious debates, which can be found at WP:N/CA. There is a page for comments at Wikipedia talk:Notability (criminal acts)/Opinions should you wish to make a comment. Thanks for your time, and apologies if this was not of interest! Fritzpoll (talk) 15:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

WW1 Prisoners of war in Germany
Bunã ziua Biruitorul. I'm Tinodela from the Wikipedia-fr. I write you in order to congratulate to have translated my article about the WW1 prisoners of war in Germany. I'm happy that this theme will be better known. This aspect of the WW1 is very interesting. (I'm sorry but my english is not very good). Rămas bun! 81.252.32.3 (talk) 07:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I will try to augment the article, in order to be awarded with the label "article de qualité". Also I say to you "see you soon with the news details in the article". Bye.81.252.32.3 (talk) 16:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Eldon Enclosure System
Good morning. This is oanaquijoue from Brasov. Thank you for helping out with the Eldon... page. (I previously wrote the text in Romanian... but noticed that everyone is using the same language to communicate and... maybe someone else could use your advice on this matter as well. I'm going to leave the Ro version as well, hoping it's not a problem.) The matter I could really use your help with is: is there anything I could do to make my page appear on the "Eldon" search - result page, since for the moment it doesn't even appear in "see also". Thank you.

Lucrez de foarte putin timp pe Wikipedia (probabil ca era deja evident... :o))si orice ajutor imi e de mare folos. Am mai adaugat cateva informatii pe pagina mentionata, desi mai necesita destula munca. In speranta ca n-o sa va deranjez foarte tare, am o mica nelamurire la care inca nu am reusit sa gasesc raspunsul singura: daca scriu "Eldon" in motorul de cautare apar rezultate in categoriile Places, People, see also. Intrebarea mea este daca trebuie sa fac ceva anume pentru a fi listata si pagina mea ca rezultat la aceasta cautare. Multumesc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oanaquijoue (talk • contribs) 07:43, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Eldon Enclosure System
Multumesc frumos. Ma gandisem si eu la asta insa nu eram sigura ca am voie sa modific pagina (mi-am imaginat ca doar un admin are permisiunea sa modifice pagini de gen). Va multumesc mult inca odata :o) si mult succes in activitati! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oanaquijoue (talk • contribs) 14:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

WWI POWs
Thanks for the ISBN. I completely missed your list of refs because you included them in front of the footnotes. By convention, it's done the other way around, so I've refactored the article layout accordingly.

You obviously did a lot of work translating this article, so I was naturally keen to do all I could to ensure it didn't get passed over. Anyhow, rather than reply to your last post, I just promoted it straight to the next update. Regards, Gatoclass (talk) 06:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Articles à supprimer à propos de La Réunion
Salut. Pourrais-tu signaler au bon endroit que les articles dans Category:Cities, towns and villages in Réunion devraient presque tous être supprimés ? Je suis né et j'ai vécu vingt ans à La Réunion. Pourtant, je n'ai jamais entendu parler de Maison Leroux ou de Fiague, qui doivent être des patelins minuscules. Seuls Dimitile, Domenjod, Grande Chaloupe, Ligne des Bambous, Manapany, Piton Sainte-Rose, Quartier-Français et Vincendo sont acceptables – à ce sujet, voir Dimitile, Ligne des Bambous et Manapany. Thierry Caro (talk) 13:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, you might be interested in translating Jacques Delisse and Jean Dugain. Thierry Caro (talk) 13:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Merci. Je confirme que les chiffres concernant la population sont farfelus, et que beaucoup de lieux cités ne sont absolument pas connus. J'aimerais bien qu'il y ait plein d'articles sur La Réunion ici, mais pas à partir de sujets aussi marginaux que ces petits villages de trois ou quatre maisons inconnus localement. Mieux vaut s'inspirer de ce que nous avons déjà ici. Contacte-moi si c'est nécessaire pour témoigner. Thierry Caro (talk) 15:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

April Fool's DYK hook
I have noted some hopefully minor concerns about the "John F. Kennedy" hook at April_Fool%27s_Main_Page/Did_You_Know. Would you please address them? Royal broil 19:10, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Réunion
I got all of those names from http://www.fallingrain.com/world/RE/ - I've never yet had any trouble with information pulled from that site, so I assumed all was reliable and went accordingly. --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 04:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * To take the two points you raised, one after the other:


 * a.)I was creating stubs as per established procedure - I've seen plenty of similar stubs created for places around the world that have been allowed to pass muster before. Consequently I didn't think there'd be any problem regarding notability of these places either.


 * b.)Actually, most of the Virginia entries I looked at make pretty good sense - I can't give exact numbers, but the figures for the places that I know generally tally with what I'd expect from towns of that size. --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 16:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You are making sense, yes - I hope I am as well. I recognize now that the site has problems; my point is simply that I've seen plenty of articles citing it as the only source, and so consequently assumed that it passed muster.  I have also seen a lot of stub articles such as those made to fill out stub categories, and had never yet been called out for doing similar things.  In other words, I have never had any indication that what I did with these articles was any sort of a problem.  Indeed, every time the issue's come up with someone else, I've seen such things emphatically defended on the premise that geographical localities of any sort do pass muster.


 * Please understand that I really don't care what happens with these articles, to be honest, as long as it's in the encyclopedia's best interest; my only interest was in filling out a stub category, which I did, without complaint. I'm just trying to emphasize the point that everything I did was in good faith and based on solid precedent.


 * And I apologize if this seems at all testy, but it's late, I'm exhausted, and I think I'm starting to see the screen cross-eyed, so I'm not exactly in tiptop shape for writing much of anything right now... --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 04:54, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Pleasepleaseplease don't think for a moment that I've found anything untoward in your tone - I haven't in the least. It's just that I was afraid that my comments were coming across as a bit snarky and a bit whiny, and I wanted to try and emphasize that such tone was not my intent.  (I'm afraid I sometimes end up being too self-conscious in online discussion, which failing I'm working hard to improve.) --User:AlbertHerring Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla! 04:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Requests for adminship/Martijn Hoekstra, Requests for adminship/Biruitorul 2 etc.
I hope that you do not consider that I "ganged up on [you], started proposing drastic solutions, dragged [your] name through the mud and implicitly threatened [you]", at Martijn Hoekstra's RfA as I do not believe I did either of those things. There may be editors who do not, but I do intend to support your next RfA in the summer/autumn if your AfD work is good, and I'm sure it will be. Your RfA not succeeding and the discussion at the Martijn Hoekstra RfA was somewhat regrettable; although I hope that it will not impede your future request for adminship. On another note, to make this clear, my oppose at your RfA was nothing to do with your political beliefs; in fact some of your positions with regards to the British Isles would be similar to my own ;-) Anyway, keep up the editing and I look forward to this. Regards, EJF (talk) 16:23, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Jack Kennedy (criminal)

 * HAHAHAHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Lovely! Dahn (talk) 08:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Congressional Scorecards
I first saw a Congressional Scorecard on Pete Stark's bio, which somebody else put there, and decided to add scorecards following the format on Stark's page to the other California representatives because I thought they would be more complete. Socal gal at heart (talk) 04:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Oops
Re Talk:Cluj-Napoca, there's an old S. J. Perelman joke: "Budapest? You must mean Bucharest. There's no such place as Budapest. Of course, there's no such place as Bucharest, either." - Jmabel | Talk 16:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Major removal of text from Transylvania as vandalism
I understand the material you removed with this edit may have been controversial, poorly sourced, WP:OR, etc. but I have trouble with such a large block being removed with an edit summary of removing some vandalism or words to that effect. Would you mind placing a more detailed explanation of the material you removed and why at Talk:Transylvania. Thanks.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 23:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Prague Spring
Replied on FAC page. The Dominator (talk) 19:18, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

2008 Farnborough plane crash
It looks like consensus has been reached on the article being notable enough to include on Wikipedia. Are you willing to close the discussion? Mjroots (talk) 16:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've no problem with the actual nomination for deletion. I did check before I created the article whether or not it met notability guidelines, and having satisfied myself that it did, created the article. A few of the arguments for keeping were very weak IMHO, but the article does meet the notability criteria. Agreed, had they been three non-notable people, the article wouldn't be notable in itself, although the details would have been for Farnborough and Biggin Hill. All the best, Mjroots (talk) 18:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Grr!
Argh, you evil imperialist bastard, you knew from the start that the article needs only some minor style and structure edits, NPOV-wise! How am I supposed to push my hardcore Stalinist POV into it now? Grawr! A fine demonstration of the lack of substance in certain recently raised concerns over POV-pushing of a certain editor... Some pics and online refs would be nice, though. --Illythr (talk) 17:01, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Take Ionescu
Hello. Thanks for adding Take Ionescu to List of atheists. I take it you know Romanian. Would you be able to include a translation of a substantiating quote from that article, much like the other quotes in the references section? Thanks. Nick Graves (talk) 23:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the translation. The article says "he was accused of being an atheist." Plenty of people who are accused of being atheists are not. Take did not confirm these accusations in his response, but basically said "my beliefs are none of your business." Is there another source where Take directly says he's an atheist? I'll look too, though I will be limited to English sources. Thank you. Nick Graves (talk) 00:09, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Popular fronts
Definitely a worthy exercise. Do you have King's "The Moldovans"? It's really quite well sourced on who all the activists were (it even has the positive Latvian-Moldovan connection during those heady days), the OMON and Transnistria came later. —PētersV (talk) 01:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Right back at you
Thank you, Biru, and great to be back. Unfortunately, I had stopped stalking you these past days, but, like the mighty beasts we're so often shown on the silver screen, I could sense that something was upsetting you and thought I'd check out that "contributions" link. Sorry for not being around when it came to the other ones.

I reread the Ionescu source twice, and it is just now I realize it could be read two different ways. I had read it as "accused that, being an atheist, he was giving laws to the church", and I'm not so sure I was right. I'll keep looking around but perhaps the best thing for now is to rephrase and drop from the cat, list etc. Eh...

Glad you like Sadoveanu. I do recall seeing a minor dispute erupting there between Turgidson and some IP about whether he was a communist or not. When it comes to Sadoveanu, I have to say I do not agree nor disagree with Turgidson's point, but it would seem the sources do endorse the notion that Sadoveanu was never and was never seen as a communist. I wasn't sure where you stood on this issue, but I'm writing this to explain why I did not put the category back in (at least, for now). And I still have hope that Turgidson will return some day! Dahn (talk) 03:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * And while I'm at it. This is by no means a big deal, but it struck me as odd that your DYK hook should use the word "support" twice. I may be nitpicking, but wouldn't it read better if you were to alternate it with "backing" or something? Dahn (talk) 04:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

History of the Jews in Poland
This name was discussed and rejected long time ago, but I don't hold a strong opinion one way or another. You may want to post rationale on the talk page; also, please fix broken template links to FAC/R and such on the talk page.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Baneasa
Regarding this, I couldn't find much anything more on the zoo online. Is there a book on it? Salut, Basketball110  pick away... 23:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I can some Romanian. I'll do the best I can. Thanks! Basketball110  pick away... 00:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Senecio vernalis
Thanks for the Romanian common name for the article. I started to list the common names long before I read where the wikiplant project endorses mentioning all of the common names. While studying this species (a more interesting study than I thought it would be, btw) I read where at the turn of the last century, it was some of the common names that helped to identify some of the species as a problem for cattle -- as it is sometimes the only plant that grows (either in drought or flood, depending on the circumstance and the species) in some years of extremes. The common name clearly said this with one or two words where the latin word said only where it likes to grow and who its family/genus is. When I was using books and pamphlets for my own purposes, it was interesting to see how the scientific names did little to help me to find what I was looking for and the common names just said it simply. One group is apparently funding a lifestyle while the other group might have been trying to stay alive in spite of the life style choices of the other group -- all conjecture on my part though; that.

I am curious what the translation of the newly added Romanian common name would be in English; is it translatable? I watched a re-enactment recently of the first attempt to translate the word 'azimuth' from Arabic to Latin. In Latin, the concept did not exist that there was a highest point in the sky and therefore, no word to describe it; the re-enactment was kind of funny and then at the same time, a total tragedy which made me wonder the reason they still used latin for so many hundreds of years after that. -- carol (talk) 02:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

About the photo on the Edwin Booth page
I could be wrong, and you may be right, about the Booth photo. But I do believe this to be Edwin's older brother, based on my research. Interesting, it is, if you look at the Library of Congress documentation of this - and an adjacent photo that is unquestionably Edwin - which says "Booth?" (Question mark theirs), suggesting they saw the dissimilarility of this photo and an adjacent one. Anyway, I've written the LC, and also referred this to several colleagues who've written and published, as I have, about the Booth clan. We'll see. All the best--- Weimar03 (talk) 03:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Meanwhile, take a look and compare these two photos at the LC: TITLE:  Edwin Booth CALL NUMBER:  LC-BH82- 93 [P&P]  and  TITLE:  Edwin Booth [?] CALL NUMBER:  LC-BH82- 93 A [P&P]  - Very similar indeed. At the time of the photos, Edwin and Junius Jr. were often performing and/or producing plays together. I suspect they were both photographed by Brady or one of his team in the same session. They're related, but not the same person. And look again, at that question mark (on the photo, moreover, that's unquestionably Edwin). Anyway, hopefully the LC will get back to me in a reasonable time. Meanwhile, here's wishing you all the best. Weimar03 (talk) 03:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Romanian Historical Political Party
I totally agree!

But I taught at this template as a universal one, for modern times former parties (Like PLD - merged into PD-L, AP - will merge into PNL... and others). I think we both know that in Romania we hat countless parties!

ES Vic (talk) 19:22, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:USArmySecs
Template:USArmySecs has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — ''' bahamut0013 ♠  ♣  22:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

RFA Thanks
Thank you for your comments on my RFA. Even though it failed with 28 supports, 42 opposes, and 15 neutrals, I am grateful for the suggestions and advice I have received and I do hope to improve as a Wikipedian. If you ever need my help in any endeavor, feel free to drop me a line. -- Shark face  217  19:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Bender, Moldova mediation
A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Requests for mediation/Bender, Moldova, and indicate whether you agree or disagree to mediation. If you are unfamiliar with mediation on Wikipedia, please refer to Mediation. Please note there is a seven-day time limit on all parties responding to the request with their agreement or disagreement to mediation. Thanks, Anthøny  22:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for mediation not accepted
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Re on villages
Hi! I took a quick look, and, while I'm with you 100% on the "dubious source" issue, it seems that the articles created are for communes, not villages, which means that they were bound to be created at some point (therefore, the issues of notability don't seem to apply). I'm not sure what to do about it next: the articles are at times hilarious (see them proclaiming the existence of a Transylvanian Saxon language), and, indeed, the source should not be taken for granted (meaning that the editors should certainly not assume notability for other items that may be listed there, and that notability here may have been sheer fluke). Correcting such articles and finding other sources would probably be the best solution for now, but the prospect of doing that is well, you know... Dahn (talk) 12:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see now - I had only looked at the last entries, which were all for communes. Since our one attempt to centralize this issue turned into mush (no fault of ours), I think the only solution is to ask for a resolution on the matter at some higher level (probably as a geographical convention on its own). That would give us a reference point and a standard explanation to link to for users who will not abide by the Schmidt Convention. If you think this is worth pursuing, I think it would be more efficient than pointing out the same evident issues each time a user embarks on an experiment. Dahn (talk) 18:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, my first instinct is to start a discussion on the talk page for WP:MOS, or rekindle the flame on the notice board, or bring this to the attention of WikiProject Geography. I'm not sure which one is better, though. For my encore, I'm going to stub those disgusting articles you showed me. Dahn (talk) 12:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Btw, one thing really annoys me now: the templates are created in such a fashion that they automatically include their articles in the county category. This means that subcategorizing them by level (commune, town etc) will not take them out of the parent, Anyway we can fix that? And, btw, why do those templates have to be so big? Dahn (talk) 12:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Attempts to censor your Sandy Berger edits
A couple of users are trying to remove Sandy Berger from the American criminals category. Could you go to the RFC at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:American_criminals#What_should_be_the_threshold_for_inclusion_of_this_category.3 and indicate if you believe corrupt politicians should be placed in this category? John celona (talk) 18:31, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Daniel Dăianu Article
Dear Sir, Here are the reasons of the changes I´ve made on the article about Daniel Dăianu.

a) The first paragraph of you version contains a grammar mistake: "He is an associate member of the Romanian Academy since 2001." (Correct version: He has been ......... since 2001.)

b) The structure of the article you prefer is confusing, as it goes from one topic to another, to come back to the first topic and repeat information. (You say in the first paragraph that "he was the Finance Minister of Romania in 1998" and then, in the third paragraph, you repeat that: "Between 5 December 1997 and 23 September 1998, he was Finance Minister in the governments of .....") If you start talking about his jobs, it would be good to provide all the information about this topic in the same paragraph and then to talk about the studies Mr. Dăianu has.

c) The paragraph about Ex Prime Minister Ciorbea ("On 4 December 1997, then-Prime Minister of Romania, Victor Ciorbea, confirmed that Dăianu had worked for the Securitate´s foreign intelligence department ..." is not correct. Mr. Ciorbea didn´t have to confirme anything, as Mr. Dăianu declared himself, in 1990, that he had worked as an economist for the ex Securitate. You say: "According to reports, Dăianu was an officer of the Securitate espionage service and one of the intellectuals of the Securitate", but these reports are not mentioned. The only reference you give is an article published by a newspaper, but this is not official information. The only official report regarding Mr. Dăianu and his work within the ex Securitate is the CNSAS report. Besides, the statement "he was one of the intellectulas of the Securitate" is a subjective statement; Mr. Dăianu became well known, after his short period at the Securitate, for his writings agains the communist regime and those writings were often mentioned by Europa Libera. So, please don´t delete this information, which is based on true facts, for adding subjective information.

Thank you very much. Gabriela Ristea (talk) 20:05, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Jack Kemp FAC
I have renominated Jack Kemp which you previously supported. I hope you will again support.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 23:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Romanian communes

 * It would be helpful if you used the information from the Romanian WP to fill the template: Infobox Romania Communes with data and include the interwiki links. I have cleaned up a few dozen of the ones you created, but you may wish to add the data to make the articles more useful. See Cerna, Tulcea for an example. You can tell which ones I've done by viewing your contributions and seeing where your edits remain "top". Carlossuarez46 (talk) 02:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I have no trouble seeing the links. Check if the website is in maintenance, which seems to be planned to be extensive until 24 April. As for quality vs. quantity - it will be difficult for others to figure out what to clean up - as you know it's easier to start from scratch than add material around an existing stub. As for links to villages, all villages and settlements are inherently notable, per WP:N and precedent. Tiny villages everywhere else have articles, as will no doubt the Romanian ones; many already do at the Romanian wikipedia. As for disambiguating, what most European commune/municipality articles do, is focus on the administrative unit and if there is anything special of note in the village or town of the same name, add that too, rather than a separate article. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Biru, I'm sorry for not looking more into this for now - I have begun to edit something else altogether, and much of my energy is consumed by other issues in RL. However! Carlos, can you please show me where WP:N makes such a claim? I was not able to find anything on the main policy page, and the only place where the matter is discussed is at Notability (Places and transportation). It is not a policy, but the point that it makes is highly relevant: "A city/town/village should show a verifiable notation in multiple atlases." Which opens two issues: 1. No, certainly not "all villages and settlements are inherently notable". 2. Show me one atlas where Romanian villages, as opposed to communes, are recorded. To my knowledge, there are none, and neither are there any dictionaries that would bother to mention what villages go into a commune. The guideline also says: "However, any area that has something exceptional about it merits its own article, and ideally the area should be discussed in reliable sources. The notable feature could be for instance (but not limited to) a business or tourist district, a place with a noticeable economic effect upon a region (jobs and/or raw materials usage/production), or a place where some historical event occurred." If a village should fit into that description, the info could still go into the commune article in about 90% of the cases (since the villages often have the population not of a quarter, but of a street, and since an article on some village will say no more than "a village in x commune. y event took place here in z year" - two out of two pieces of information which would inevitably appear in the commune article as well). And, yes, per that specification, tiny villages everywhere may have articles, depending on village and individual notability. I could even be persuaded that some villages in Romania could have articles (though I think deciding on which is a fool's job), but there is absolutely no reason to even imagine that good faith editors, adding info from reliable sources, could in a million years make more than stubs out of all or even half of the potential village articles, and, from now to eternity, any article on a village would be redundant to the article on its commune (meaning that all the info on the village could easily be folded in the article on the commune). Dahn (talk) 21:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * See Articles for deletion/Common outcomes - you cannot delete a village or settlement no matter how small. the Proposed guideline you cite will not be accepted as policy unless it adheres to the norms. Any little dot on a map that people call (or used to call) home is in. Many of the articles will be of the X is a village in Y commune in Z county, but alas, that's the nature of Wikipedia. We have lots of those sorts of articles about geographic features, because the quite small ones haven't been fully written up - and may never be.  The odd thing that strikes me about the proposed guideline is that the lesser may be notable while the greater is not. A road through village X may be notable, and a school in village X may be notable, but alas X, itself, may not be. It's that convoluted logic that dooms the policy - even were one to try to make it work. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 01:50, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Carlos, let me underscore a crucial point: I am not proposing deletion, I am proposing merger. As for the odd thing: the missing aspect here is the measure of difference between one article and the other, and has to do with the issue of content forking. Yes, there is a logic to creating an article on a church in a commune and not creating one on the village it is part of. This is because the things a proper article will say about that church will be significantly different from the info on the locality itself. In the case of village v. commune, the info is inevitably forked: what proper article on a village will not be a identical or smaller twin of the proper article on its commune (and vice-versa)? how much info would separate the two articles, and how much of the content would be a more elaborate copy-paste? Consider this analogy: while an article on a family is considered acceptable, while articles on individuals in a family are (notability considered) obviously encouraged, who would consider creating or encouraging articles on the individual married couples?
 * The forking has occurred as the rule on rowiki, where the existing articles on villages, when they are not redundant, are, and I say this confidently, crap. The only result there, precisely because admins are not doing their job and editors do not stop to think before they edit, is that people do not know where to add info. Once all the OR and other nonsense is whittled away from the few developed village articles on rowiki, we're wither back at one-liners or have some more substantial text that could nevertheless belong just as well in either of the two articles. Dahn (talk) 02:50, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have read a number of the articles, and while I am not fluent in Romanian, the simplicity of content is understandable by nearly anyone who can read Italian or Spanish. Are one line articles on the villages worthwhile? Perhaps, perhaps not. It is not a primary goal. There are two things that the rowiki is much better at in this arena. One is a unity of look and feel to its commune pages which was what my original comment here was driving at, and that thought seems to have been lost in this other issue. I would like to see some commitment to not just drive quantity of these articles but quality of them - not just X is a commune in Y county, Romania. Take some time, do it right.  The other thing that rowiki is better at is the disambiguation of the small villages. Someone looking for a small village under its name at rowiki will eventually find it (or its commune). Here, deferral or the absence of village articles should not affect their mention at appropriate dab pages so that they can be found. That way when someone looks up the little village from which grandpapa came, something is visible that the place exists - even if whatever minimal we can say about the place is in the commune's article, rather than a separate one. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * My solution is this: list all the villages you like, but don't make them links; create disambig pages for names, not as "village something, a village in commune something", but simply as "village something, a village in commune something". That should sort out the problem of people looking for a village (just in case they do not already know the commune it is part of - itself a rather unlikely scenario). Of course an article on a commune should specify somewhere what the villages are, but, per the rationale above, they should not be either redlinks or articles. In fact, that much info can be picked up from various places on the net, and rowiki probably picked it up from there. For villages with a unique name, just create the pages as redirects to the commune and don't link to them in articles.
 * The problem starts when one considers the encyclopedic nature of further info on villages (rowiki constantly proves there is none). Aside from the issue of content forking, a look through any monograph on any village or commune would instantly show that the bulk of the material that could be sourced is not relevant enough (out of curiosity, I just looked over some reasonable, not self-published, ones at the Village Museum, and anything of an encyclopedic nature takes up about 10% of the book - which can be summarized in no more than two or three paragraphs. Dahn (talk) 20:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * And as for a common look and feel, which do you prefer: Băbăiţa or Balaci? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The latter - huge infoboxes abuse the concept of "infobox", and I can't see the need for two maps. Probably the best solution in the future would be a map of the commune with a small "location in Romania" in one corner. Dahn (talk) 20:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * And yet Carlos decides to use both maps... Why did you bother asking in the first place? And what do you plan to do about the redlinks to villages, Carlos - are you leaving it to other editors to remove them? If you are, then the messages in this section about being helpful a bit ironic. Dahn (talk) 11:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Dahn, you are being rude. I have expanded dozens of municipalities and used two maps a couple of times to see how it looks and ask your opinion. After your preference was seen by me, where are 2 maps being used? After your rudeness, I will not bother asking for your opinion further because when I have acted upon it you accuse me of doing otherwise. If you want to be a dictator you have come to the wrong place. As for redlinks, no need to remove them: they are there for expansion. Your tone about irony is itself ironic. Being helpful is apparently in the eye of the beholder. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:35, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Mind-reader!
How... could you tell? ;) Dahn (talk) 04:18, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * FA is what I'm aiming for, but not just yet - I don't feel like filling all the redlinks in the lead for now. Dahn (talk) 11:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. To answer your last question (and I haven't forgotten about the previous ones, I just haven't looked into the issues close enough at the moment - apologies for that): I agree; the clean and simple solution is to write something about it (and the laws in place just after the union) as an introductory section for the 1866 article. Dahn (talk) 03:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Freemasons Category
Although the category is a natural category it's been tried before and been deleted twice as a breach of people's privacy. JASpencer (talk) 07:51, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * There'll be some other reason why you can't put it in. Just as you can have Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists, you can't have Freemasons.  Not sure why they get upset, but they do.  JASpencer (talk) 15:03, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Freemasons Category
No... it would be a very bad idea to start a category such as that. We used to have one, and it became a nightmare of unconfirmed, unverifiable speculation. All sorts of people kept being added to the category who we could not verify as Freemasons. Since adding a category to a page does not show up on your watch list, it was very difficult to know when someone was added inappropriately. The category was deleted by CfD, and "listified"... with a list, we can easily keep track of who is added, and if there is no verification, we can easily remove them. Blueboar (talk) 15:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * "A very bad idea", like Category:Catholics, Category:Armenian people or Category:American Methodists. JASpencer (talk) 18:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I remember being puzzled by the decision to remove the cat (though not especially). Any inclusion into categories is to be done on the basis of reliable sources, and inclusion should be validated by the text. As long as those criteria are met, deleting the category is like putting the carriage before the horse. Is there anyone preventing me from adding George Washington to the American Muslims category? Apparently nothing but the knowledge that I will be blocked for disruption and the fact that 10,000 people are monitoring the page (and, before you ask, I'm not even considering actually doing that). In fact, nothing can prevent any form of disruption other than vigilance and editor/admin response. Solely the fact that people may use original research etc to add articles to a category cannot prevent that cat from being created.
 * Furthermore, as long as the membership is acknowledged by reliable sources and not subject to debate, then it is a fact and a relevant one (not to mention all those admitted Freemasons out there, who have no trouble stating it). Somebody continues to mess with the articles? Give them the treatment: warnings, short blocks, long blocks, bye-bye. After all, cat or no cat, only this response will prevent them from doing the same to the article. Consider: what is the difference between adding a cat based on questionable info and simply adding questionable info to the article? Should we start deleting articles on people because people add false info that stays there for a day, a week, a month, a century? Doesn't the "not censored" part of wikipedia admit this inherent fault of its open-edit policy?
 * And lastly: with a list of Freemasons and an entire project for Freemasonry, isn't the absence arguably conspicuous?
 * But again: cat or no cat is ultimately fine by me and probably other editors; however, if it gets deleted, let it be on rational and transparent grounds. Dahn (talk) 18:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ultimately for me, it comes down to this... it really works well as a list and does not work well as a category. 'Nuf said. Blueboar (talk) 00:59, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Works well? Only if you are a skilled wikipedia game player.  The amount of newcomers' edits that are removed borders on tha paranoid. JASpencer (talk) 09:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No... no paranoia involved... just lots of additions without reliable sources. Blueboar (talk) 15:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with citation requests? JASpencer (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Sine we're on the subject
Btw, Biru, two categories exist that, to me, seem to be POVed and useless: Category:Anti-Revisionists and the newly-created Category:Stalinist collaborators. I can see some logic in the latter, and may work well under a different name, but for now it could just as well include anybody and everybody from Lenin himself to Pauker to André Breton and even Durruti or G. B. Shaw! Dahn (talk) 04:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Whadya know... one was up for deletion. Dahn (talk) 04:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, how could this slip my mind? I wish you a Happy Easter! (I won't say the traditional thing, as I don't really believe in it). Dahn (talk) 05:09, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. However, the fact that it's even on rowiki could only serve to make the pros of it shaky (I shudder to think at what some guys I know are doing to those articles over there). :D Dahn (talk) 05:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Hahhaha! Hadn't noticed that one. I can't help but feel that I played a part in that, and, having noticed who the main contributors are, I feel like saying: "good riddance". I'm just sorry because, it would seem, they managed to drag some good contributors with them. In any case, I'm weary of stuff like this; so, if you remember the old scandal and its implications, perhaps it's reasonable to speculate that we know what color the shirts are? Dahn (talk) 04:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Kudos - definitely the best approach to this (the rest can follow later). In any case, an article will best reflect how much awareness of this there traditionally is how important it was a cultural phenomenon and how popular among the elites, how it collided with other factors, etc. Would you terribly mind if I edited on it in the upcoming weeks? Perhaps you could detail the references to notes in the meantime (no rush - who would I be to say?) - I'll add my own notes, and that way we can see how they match, which source goes into more detail etc.
 * I'm still due with answers on other topics, but I shall return soon. Dahn (talk) 14:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Your recent additions to List of Freemasons
You recently added several people to the list... since the source is in a foreign language, I would like to find out more about it before we conclude that it is reliable (I am not saying that it is or that it is not... I just want information about the source). I have temporarily removed the additions, pending some discussion on the talk page. Assuming the source is reliable, we can add them back after discussion. Blueboar (talk) 15:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Communes in Romania
You have recently added a series of articles for communes in Vaslui County, Romania. You may have added some in other counties too, I did no check. Definitely communes of Romania should have articles in en:wiki. A more systematic approach is however lacking in en:wiki. Thus, in ro:wiki the rule has been adopted to have all rural localities (communes and villages) be named with the name of the locality and the name of the county, regardless if there are several localities with the same name or not. Additional rules apply for the case of several localities with the same name located in the same county. I consider that this rule should be generalized also to en:wiki. There are many localities which have the same name. Not using this rule can lead to future changes required for disambiguation which can be extremely timeconsuming.

I would also recommend that you include links to the romanian (and other language) articles. This is recommended especially in this case when the information at least for some of the communes is more comprehensive in ro:wiki - even though many of them are not totally correct.

Incidentally a have started connecting the articles from ro:wiki communes in Vaslui county to Wikimapia and transferred the coordinates of the communes from Maplandia. This has been done at present only for the eastern part of the county, but you might be interested in transferring the coordinated also to your articles in en:wiki.

A friendly advice, also indicate some kind of reference - For instance for Vaslui county the official list of communes can be indicated. Otherwise, somebody will start tagging your articles indicating that they do not indicate sources. It happened to me many times.Afil (talk) 21:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Orthodox Easter
Thanks for your greeting! Here is the great piece of one of my favorite Ukrainian painters depicting this event in my homeland as he saw it a little over 100 years ago. Enjoy! --Irpen 08:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

About Ariel Moscovici article
In your opinion what could be done in order to improve this article from a neutrality point of view? I have open a discution section on the biography page. Would you please talk on the biography page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.127.24.34 (talk) 12:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Descending from the ivory tower
Hm. The main problem I have when I edit wiki is that I tend to do something else as well while at it - that sometimes means that I start editing, but I don't know if I can give 100%, and I therefore focus on issues that I feel I can handle over a short period of time. This was especially the case these past weeks, and I couldn't focus on all issues you brought my way, so, again, I have to apologize for the delay.

On villages: merge, merge and more merge. Stubification on several levels is getting this project nowhere. I'm still not sure where we should address this, but I would follow any suggestion - at the moment, I dread having to bear the heat of such a potentially extensive conversation, but I will definitely intervene in any discussion I come across (as I did and will do on the Freemasons thing). I may start it myself if need be, but, at the moment, I'd rather pretend the problem is not there.

On Tricolorul. I think it disqualifies as a source, seeing that no one reliable would quote it except to mock it. I understand the problem when sourcing an article that has no political feel to it, but there are three points that stand out in my view: 1) such a source should not be used at all; 2) a "general info" article in Tricolorul probably follows or even copies (*I've seen them do that) a more reliable source, which may make itself available; 3) in publishing such material, a source like Tricolorul probably wants to hide its agenda, in the same way as altermedia published all sort of "neutral" stuff to hide its own. When it comes to pictures, I find myself on the spot: Personally, I would not borrow anything from such a source - just as I would in an instant delete the picture in Nichifor Crainic (which, btw, is most likely copyrighted), as it was pasted from some neonazi site, even though it seems to me that they scanned it from Călinescu's ILR. I became jaded with editing Ovitz family precisely because of the source for the picture it uses (also not copyrightless, but that's the least of their problems).

Freemasonry. Hey, I was half-joking about rowiki: the cat there is valid as well, I just don't want to see how they are using it. Of course you're right about dewiki, about the general principle, and about how they relate to each other. And, sure, I'll keep that list on my mind once I get to other articles (likewise, you too may want to add from the source in articles where this is not yet mentioned). Dahn (talk) 02:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you seen this absurdity? Crud. Dahn (talk) 01:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd best no comment on them just now, because I feel like saying things I'm bound to regret. I'll comment more when I get a chance to see these things more clearly, and I'll also start with deletion proposals for the categories I've shown you (about the articles... I'm sensing the possibility of an irate and modestly literate comeuppance of the Berislăveşti, Vâlcea kind, so let me gather my strength). Dahn (talk) 02:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Biru, I have a dilemma that i hope you can help me solve. For some time now, I've been considering an expansion/rewrite of the Topîrceanu article, and it struck me that the link for Saint Sisoes goes nowhere. I don't remember exactly, but it seems that there was an article on him, under another name. If I'm right, could you please help me find it? (And, if we do find it, let's consider a disambig page for Sisoes.) In case we do not find it, could you please indicate what name we should have for it? You're my go-to guy in these matters. Dahn (talk) 08:20, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Alright, then, "of Egypt" it is. Thank you. Dahn (talk) 20:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Kudos for the great idea. Indeed, it needs some more. For now, I have Veiga around (also imperfect), and I also have a Dosarele Istoriei where more detail is provided (including a complete list of victims) - I just have to dig for it. I know next to nothing about how they were actually killed, but I seem to recall that they entered the cells and shot all around them; I therefore presume one wouldn't call them "firing squads", which are probably more organized and officialish. But I know what you mean. I know I keep promising stuff, but I sure will be back for that one in due time.

Btw, I just checked all the instances were the word "Tzara" is mentioned in an article, just to check if disambig was needed beyong him and Greta Knutson; I stumbled upon the creacionismo thing (weird article that one!), sourced the info, and now, well, I concluded that the article covers everything relevant about the man, from Ana Pauker to Huidobro to Varian Fry to Radiohead. SuperDahn indeed :). Dahn (talk) 08:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Couldn't agree more. Here's to friendly stalking ;). Dahn (talk) 08:31, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Deleted book in Leonard Oprea's entry
Hi. I noticed that you deleted the last book I entered for this entry and complained about formatting. Could you please elaborate on this? What was the problem with the format? The format was copied from similar earlier entries. Would appreciate your reply. Sensei2004 (talk) 14:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Jazzy Spring Festival - Help needed
I'm not sure that my help request if out of context, but I'll try it. I want to publish an article about Jazzy Spring Festival in Bucharest.

The article was deleted twice by two editors: ''(Deletion log); 11:03. . Stifle (Talk | contribs) deleted "Jazzy Spring Festival Bucharest" (A7 (group): Group/band/club/company/etc; doesn't indicate importance/significance)''.

Now I have a slightly updated (sandbox) version at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dubluzet/Sandbox1 Do you think I should re-create it or not ? I also posted a message to user:Stifle. Any little help would be really appreciated. Thank you ! Dubluzet (talk) 07:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hungarian-Slovak poll
You might like to know that there's a poll going on about modifications to the Hungarian-Slovak naming convention proposed earlier. Voting is open until 11 May 20:06. Markussep Talk 14:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

St. George's School, Newport
I agree with the substance of your edits to St. George's School, Newport, but your accompanying editorial comments were neither collegial nor constructive. An edit war may be brewing which could have been avoided with a more diplomatic approach on your part. Thanks for your consideration. JTRH (talk) 21:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Again, you're absolutely right about the content. JTRH (talk) 21:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Emma Rhodes AFD
Hi,

I had a look at the Emma Rhodes AFD you started. I noticed though that you forgot to add the AFD notice at the top of the article page. I was going to add it, but noticed that the entire article was copied from Emma Rhodes own website, which is copyrighted. As there was no earlier Non Copy-vio versionto revert to, I marked it for speedy deletion.

If you do list any others for AFD, could you please make sure you add the deletion tag to the article? It is also considered good practice to notify the editor(s) that you have done so. WP:AFD has the process. Thanks. StephenBuxton (talk) 16:18, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Presidents Templates
Hi! Yeah, I think it is a good idea too...in the spanish wikipedia though, people seem to hate templates. I did thought about writing just the last names, the problem is that many of them have the same last names and it would difficult the understanding. At list I thought so...the other idea is very good as well, just lots of work and to tell you the truth, it's kinda difficult because some "real" presidents turned into dictators, some were not presidents by votation and so on... User: ecuadoriangirl1986 —Preceding comment was added at 10:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah
You may be surprised, by I tend to agree with you on the substance of your argument. Surely, the data would have to be kept separate, but, if one reliable source can be found counting some Moldovans there as Romanians, then both relevant points of view can be included (after all, articles don't suffer from that imperative). As long as sheer data takes the driver's seat, and all other scenarios follow its lead. I am commenting au sec - I did not yet look over the article (not for a while, at least), so I'm just stating the principle I think should be adopted. But I will look over it in the coming days, and I'll comment some more when I get the chance. Btw, this page is screaming "archive me" :). Dahn (talk) 12:51, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, I forgot about the other issue. Well, on principle, I don't oppose the split (neither do I think the article should be split). My main concern is about how this is to be accomplished - especially since past splits were either attempts to move every objection stated against Eliade under the rug and/or make it seem controversial, or Bonaparte's utterly idiotic attempt to separate a biography from its biographical article... It would require a lot of thinking about what to summarize and where, especially considering that me and Phatius have added to the text when the split was out of the question (which directed the prose and citations to the least repetitive option). For example, we would have to state and source the same facts in several articles, each with its own priorities (so the info doesn't come out of nowhere). The situation we have now is more or less okay, until either we all get the energy to renew the discussion or somebody who understands the issues at hand is bold enough to start judicious moves on his/her own. Dahn (talk) 13:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Join it on the Project:MoldovanWines !
Hello, maybe you will be interested in development of the Moldovan Wine articles. If yes, I am pleased to invite you to join it on the Project:MoldovanWines project page. Best regards, --serhio talk 10:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

New Template
Thanks for the VP and PM templates at the Indonesian project - lets hope the project eds can fill the red links items :( SatuSuro 00:10, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed the hope - the project is plagued by red link lists - and my bad was to have misread your good work - thanks again! SatuSuro 02:21, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Romanian communes
I definitely agree with your proposal that the titles of all communes should also include the county. I also consider that the name of the commune should be separated from the county by comma and that the county should not be in brackets. Brackets should be used if there is any disambiguation required. The same rule should also be applied to the name of romanian villages (even if they are not commune headquarters).

Personally I am more enclined to use the names of villages which are the locatilities (be they centers of communes or not). Communes are only administrative entities which change a lot in time. Therefore the villages and the communes should not be confused. Therefore there should be a way of differentiating the articles on communes (which could deal with administrative issues) and the articles on the villages (which would deal with issues such as the history, the monuments etc.). Even if, at least for the time being, there may be few articles on both issues, this may change in the future and therefor the possibility should be kept in mind.

All the best.Afil (talk) 01:17, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

AE
The next time you file an AE report, follow the directions and put a notice on the guy's talk page. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Da Guard
Your edits on Iron Guard got me thinking: should the two of us start focusing on that article together some time soon? I was in and out of wiki these past weeks, but I'm ready for a challenge, and there's so much that needs to be said and structured... Dahn (talk) 17:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Awright! (and thanks for pointing out the other thing) I agree with all you say, and I could add that we may start an introductory section on ideology - while I tend to consider it a fascist movement myself, there are plenty of reliable sources who do not take that for granted, at the very least for the pre-1938 period, and the article could do with a mention of that debate; I also think there is room for discussing that old issue about the Guard and the PCR. This is just what I have for now. I'm thinking of starting with sourcing from Veiga and perhaps Ornea, then some Tismăneanu and Cioroianu, the Final Report, then some other things (for example, Cernat's book has some very interesting detail on the cultural clashes of the 1920s and how they reflected on the Guard). Is the sandbox model to your liking, or do you think we should start expanding the article itself? Dahn (talk) 17:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Brrr... To the problems you point out, I can add that, ever since the bar has been set higher, editors who can't/won't reach them get creative and contribute many nonsense articles and infoboxes. Indeed, I for one plan to get moving on that "turf" as well (PNL and all), but I not before I makesure I can invest the effort. And the whole Moldavia thing... I'm getting tired of both camps not realizing that the truth is in the middle. To be dealt with later.
 * On the main issue: I for one think sandbox may be better, because it may come to an overhaul. Much of the content is quality, but it would need to be rearranged and completed, and doing that in a separate place looks like the easier choice. It would also give us a chance to troubleshoot before the final version. Dahn (talk) 19:34, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Redundant National Historic Register sites
Sorry for creating a couple redundant articles. I'll try to merge them or you can feel free to do so too. Thanks for alerting me to the issue Swampyank (talk) 23:27, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Pisanie
Dear Biruitorul: There may be a more technical term for Pisanie, but the best English translation I can think of right now is 'Inscription', or better: 'Dedication'. If I come across anything more specific, I'll let you know. MishaPan (talk) 14:31, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

It may be worth...
...to stop responding to obvious baiting and just agree that some people can't even agree to disagree. ;-) --Illythr (talk) 18:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

1965–1966 Central African Republic coup d’état
Could you take a look at 1965–1966 Central African Republic coup d’état? Someone at the FAC asked for a copyedit from a fresh set of eyes. Thanks, Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 13:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Salute
I didn't notice that you are Romanian, just hy, please if you find some information on Macedonians in Romania contact me!? Salute --Makedonij (talk) 15:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That one is interest for me. Also if you found something of priest Nikodim who bilded some churches.Thanks (How do you say thanks in Romanian ?)
 * Salute/Pozdrav --Makedonij (talk) 16:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello
HI, knock knock. Can you let the bald guy in?. I'm refraining from joining in at the village pump but can I just say that the idea of the bot creating a few articles automatically is so many editors such as myself can no longer spend all our time creating articles on geo stubs and trying to address the huge bias on here, but can focus on quality, on building up stubs to start class articles. I dedicate a lot of time to wikipedia and creating new articles but if I could soley spend my editing time on here writing the articles that exist, things would be looking a lot better. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦      $1,000,000? 17:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Just this for now
Am I right? Dahn (talk) 10:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

That historical regions thing
While I disapprove of Xasha's, uh, approach, he does have a point there - Bessarabia, Herza etc were regions of Romania in 1941-1944 no more than Odessa - a historical Romanian city, France (along with most of continental Europe) - a historical region of Germany or southern Germany - a historical region of the United States, during similar periods of time. --Illythr (talk) 21:44, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Ionel's biography
The first site is not a self-published forum, it is a writers community (you can see the English version on www.agonia.net). The second website is his official website and it works ok from my PC. I don’t understand why is subject for deletion, since colleagues of mine like Cristian Matei, can have a self-written page. I doubt Ovidiu even knows or agrees with this article, because he always was very secretive with his work and life. My opinion is that he is one of the brightest living Romanian composers and if you want I can search links for reference, because there are. It’s a pity that authors with a questionable work have articles here, and young writers, who made something, do not.

Adrian.tnb (talk) 19:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

A thought
How about we wrote an essay (even if outside Wikipedia) on Alaska taken over by the Russians, or maybe Wales taken over by the French, with all the parallels that would result? I think an essay of that form would be a good illustration for our colleagues to the West on what really happens in Moldavia. --Gutza T T+ 22:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Whoa, well done! How about a more coherent and stand-alone version we can refer to whenever? --Gutza T T+ 22:46, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If properly sourced, it might well get on the front page of k5. But I was thinking of a work of fiction proper -- such as A Modest Proposal or the Gulliver saga. Would you go along with that, or do you prefer a thicker, satirical version? --Gutza T T+ 22:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Meh, wasn't one such essay enough trouble to last you for a year? Not to mention the notatribune thing... --Illythr (talk) 20:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Can I be the villain there? Maybe not the main one, but at least some secondary role? :-) --Illythr (talk) 20:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't forget all Alaskans no longer being taught English, but Аласкан, returning it to its historical roots. —PētersV (talk) 12:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Şelimbăr
I noticed you removed the individual pages for the villages in Şelimbăr I created. Surely there can't be a policy stating that villages may not have individual pages as there are many villages having wikipedia pages. Once those stubs were created, people (including me) could expand those articles. 66.33.219.10 (talk) 12:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, by removing the individual pages the links to the Romanian articles for the villages will be lost 66.33.219.10 (talk) 12:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I hear
you have practical knowledge. I am gonna be banned for this ? adriatikus |  talk  17:30, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Deletion review for March 19, 2008 anti-war protest
An editor has asked for a deletion review of March 19, 2008 anti-war protest. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this article, speedy-deleted it, or were otherwise interested in the article, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Myheartinchile (talk) 18:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)