User talk:Dppowell/Archive4

Oh hello
I thought it was constructive, maybe Ghetto rock should be put up for deletion if it can't be added to the rock box? 68.0.172.194 (talk) 04:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

what are these USER TALK THings supposed to do?

Diocletian
Thanks! The resources I used with Constantine naturally led me to make an overarching narrative that extended beyond his reign. I had to move some of my excess tetrarchic content to a more appropriate location. I expect I'll have to do the same thing for Maxentius. I'm going to be working on the article with the resources I used on Constantine I, with additional aid from the DIR, so if you notice any anachronistic comments, please correct them. Thanks again! Geuiwogbil (Talk) 02:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hopefully, yes: GA then PR then FA, with an external copyedit somewhere along the line. Actually, the sources I've got don't say much about economic reforms. Treadgold does some good introductory work on the issue, but most of the others skirt the issue entirely. The topics involved aren't necessarily matters of expertise for the ancient historian and philologist. I'll need to obtain some further books before getting there. Thanks for the kind words! Geuiwogbil (Talk) 16:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

About the Eclipse Photo
Thank you, and yeah I didn't think it looked like a star either. I had to look it up to find out it was Saturn though. By the way, I noticed your image is from Montgomery County PA. It's funny that out of the original 8 or so images taken of the eclipse from around the world, one of them happens to be from my own county! Out of curiosity, may I ask wherein? —Preceding unsigned comment added by XDecemberFlower (talk • contribs) 05:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Subtle vandalism on Tiberius
Subtle enough that I was actually searching for independent sources (i.e. ones that didn't seem likely to have taken their information from WP) before reverting. I finally came to the conclusion that it should be reverted, and found that you'd already done it. Thanks for being on the ball (and for knowing your classics). -- Zsero (talk) 19:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Liz Wilde

 * Hey Dppowell. You drew attention to the second Liz Wilde AfD in today's log, which had been created by mistake. I closed it and delisted it. Since you've already commented in the real AfD, it may not make any difference to you now. I'm thinking of deleting the second AfD unless it will cause a problem. EdJohnston (talk) 18:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thankful
Dear Mr.Mrs./Dr. Powell: You have really surprised me with your nice welcome! I am grateful to you very much for your offer of help; for instance, always it will be very welcome any correction of my modest written english. Best regards, --Alicia M. Canto (talk) 21:36, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: Devils roster
It's still there, but we've decided to move all team roster to templates. This way by updating the template the roster on the current season and main team article are automatically updated as well. See this for the whole discussion. Thanks!  Black  ngold29   21:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Maps
The Byzantine Empire article is beginning to look unprofessional with all the poor quality maps - especially during the later years of the empire. I'm willing to standardize all maps this summer using a higher quality base map. My undoing and re-undoing of the Basil/Justinian maps was the result of my ambivalence towards the issue. Although many of us enjoy looking at the expansive conquests of Justinian on a map, to say that 565 was the apogee of the empire is misleading - all conquests were ephemeral except north africa. Nevertheless, my opinion is that the Roman and Byzantine Empire articles should be merged and condensed - with links to more in-depth articles on certain periods. This may not be realistic at this point, as the Byzantine Empire article has been featured and is pretty much here to stay. That said, the 565 map is too early in "Byzantine" Empire history to be considered the apogee; 1025 is a much better example of the hellenistic and robust appearance of the empire well into it's lifespan.

Either way, I'm looking for somebody to apply better looking maps to the article, my email is clifton_tataryn77@hotmail.com; I have a disdain for applying maps to articles - I would prefer to just make maps that are aesthetically and historically better. --Tataryn77 (talk) 21:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: Cicero edit, etc
Thanks for noticing! I try to clean up links if I see something wrong with them - there really ought to be a (semi-)automated way of correcting links: the re-direct pages seem to be a rather clumsy way of doing this 80.1.88.25 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Block
I declined it, and you blocked for six months. Talk about a difference of opinion ;-) Tan   |   39  16:43, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

P.E.O. Sisterhood blanking
Thank you for intervening with the editor in reaction to my request to block 63.70.164.200 for repeatedly blanking the phrase "Protect Each Other" from this article. I noticed that you called this a poorly handled content dispute. I would like to handle it better, and would be grateful for your advice. I believe the crux of the situation is this: PEO is a secret society, whose main secret (the meaning of PEO) has been discovered and published. PEO members feel an obligation to remove or cast doubt upon this meaning whereever it appears in public, including this article on wikipedia. I guess casting doubt on this is OK (though it might fall under conflict of interest policy), but blanking properly sourced content is vandalism, isn't it? I've tried engaging the blanking editors through talk pages, but this has never worked. So I'm treating these edits as vandalism, and issuing gently escalating warnings as they persist. What would you do? --24.21.106.174 (talk) 16:55, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Ireland v. Republic of Ireland
Hello,

Recent amendments I have made replacing "Republic of Ireland" with "Ireland" have been refused on the grounds of consituting links to "different topics".

This I believe is a misinterpretation and is inconsistent with Wikipedia practice.

The official name of the 26-county state in the English language is "Ireland" as recognised by the Constitution of Ireland and every major international treaty and body including the UN, EU and the ECtHR.

Article 4 of the Constitution of Ireland states:

"The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland."

Therefore, when refering to the state in political terms the name "Ireland" should be used. This should however link to the page Ireland about the 26 county state which explains precisely the difference between the geographic, political and descriptive nuances of the name.

The geographic name of the island is "Ireland". When describing the geographic location of a place in Ireland, the geographic term "Ireland" should be used. The suitable link is Ireland leading to the page dealing with the island as a whole. This is geographically accurate and is clearly most understandable to users. Otherwise, ludicrous anomalies may arise e.g. "County Louth is on the east coast of Ireland", or "County Louth is on the north east coast of the Republic of Ireland".

The question therefore becomes one of what link to use, not what term to use.

"Republic of Ireland" is a description of the State, but has no offical status. It is used to describe the 26-county entity when ambiguity arises. This is easily avoided without recourse to constantly using the term "Republic of Ireland". The description should be used sparingly. However, it may sometimes be difficult not to use it and in that situation it may then be justified e.g. "County Donegal is one of three counties in Ulster in the Republic of Ireland".

All this is recognised by the main Wikipedia page on "Ireland";

"Ireland (pronunciation /ˈaɾlənd/ or /ˈaɪɾlənd/; Irish: Éire; Ulster Scots: Airlann) is the third largest island in Europe,[1] and the twentieth-largest island in the world.[2] It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain. Politically, the state Ireland (described as the Republic of Ireland in cases of ambiguity) covers five-sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, covering the remainder in the north-east."

Any deviation from this is inconsistent. Wikipedia pages on EU issues also name the 26 county state as "Ireland", with a link to Ireland. Geographic references throughout Wikipedia refer to Ireland.

Also, a lesser, though notable point to bear in mind is that, apart from being inaccurate, some people would take offence to being referred to as living in the "Republic of Ireland". That term is associated with the practice of many foreign people and states, particularly in the past, to refer to the state of Ireland when speaking the English language as the Republic/Southern Ireland/Eire, thereby ignoring the offical name of the state.

I realise that these are technical points, but they are highly important and necessary in the interests of uniformity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.77.166.81 (talk) 17:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No need to have this discussion in three different places, can I suggest voicing your opinions on my talk page where this message was first posted? Cheers &#9775;Ferdia O'Brien (T) / (C) 17:46, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As FO'B says. Dppowell (talk) 18:42, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Conrad Black
Not everything that is factual ought to be presented in an encyclopaedia. Working for a newspaper, you would know that it is the editor’s duty to determine what is worthy to be published.

So, we have the fact that Conrad Black had once given the finger to a news reporter. Is this fact worthy of reportage in Wikipedia? Let’s look at examples of similar facts. While visiting Japan, George Bush Sr. threw-up on their prime-minister. This is fact; should it be reported in an encyclopedia? Jimmy Carter had buck teeth and jokes were often made at his expense. Should the fact that Saturday Night Live had a skit comparing Jimmy Carter’s buck teeth to Abe Lincoln’s wooden teeth be reported in Wikipedia?

It is plain to me that these facts would not make their way into any serious encyclopedia because encyclopedias are composed by scholars, not silly children.

“Conrad Black once gave the finger to a news reporter.” What does that tell us, other than to say that he is visually capable of demonstrating his emotions?

Were I to write a research paper on Conrad Black, George Bush Sr. and Jimmy Carter, I think it wise to leave out the facts that they had once given the finger, threw-up in public and had buck teeth else it might appear childish.

Working for a newspaper, I hope you will agree with me that the editor must set a serious, businesslike tone and that means being highly selective in choosing which facts merit an appearance on the pages of Wikipedia.

P.S. The Wikipedia pages on George Bush Sr. and Jimmy Carter wisely omit the facts I have mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.29.89.78 (talk) 02:24, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Replied on the talk page of the IP used to post that message. Dppowell (talk) 04:19, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Teletubbies
Thanks for those reverts. There's an IP out there who's hell-bent on having my remarks (the ones where I removed useless "LOL Tinky Winky is teh GHEY!!!!11!!!!!!11!!!" type of comments, and explained why (perhaps slightly more-sharply than strictly necessary, but enough gets to be enough, you know??)) eternally deleted from the record because s/he thinks they were directed at him/her. (Which--if s/he was the original LOLler--I suppose they were.) It's been a glacial-motion revert-war, with the other guy's IP changing pretty much every edit, for more than a month now, and though normally I would just shrug and go on, it's now an issue of principal--that great enabler of all revert-wars. Since I was originally reverting what I saw as talk-page vandalism, even if it's a broad interpretation of "vandalism", I think I'm in the right; but I'm not sure whether that trumps "don't refactor other people's comments"--which was why I invoked IAR. Anyhow, if it seems as though I've done egregiously wrong, please let me know; otherwise, thanks again for taking care of that. Gladys J Cortez 20:46, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
That message should be sufficient. Hopefully he will get the point, but somehow I doubt this, so I will keep an eye on him regardless.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 20:29, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Qin Dynsty
關於中國歷史教科書幾個年代的說明is a Reliable sources.Stargate 18:51 8, July 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I'm done talking to him. If he wants to find a noted scholar who completely disagrees with Derk Bodde on some logical ground, then he may add the alternative date next to the more generally accepted date of 206 BC, when Ziying was killed and the Qin imperial city was burned to the ground by Xiang Yu.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Wolfram Kaiser
I have rewritten Wolfram Kaiser to address the COI concerns. Let me know what you think? -- Mark Chovain 04:48, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Malicous bots
Yes there are malicious bots on Wikipedia.

E.g. here I fixed a BROKEN link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forklift_Driver_Klaus_-_The_First_Day_on_the_Job&diff=prev&oldid=221063392

Bot came along and reverted my edit thus re-inserting a broken link. So I had to revert it back, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forklift_Driver_Klaus_-_The_First_Day_on_the_Job&diff=prev&oldid=221063746

While I understand that the bots "intention" is not malicious the product of it is. I'm sure many users aren't as diligent as myself to follow up with their edits and make sure these bots have not reverted them.

Also please review Talk_page_guidelines

You mention "Given some of your recent edits, not to mention the labeling of legitimate warnings as "vandalism" and legitimate bot activity as "spam by a malicious bot,"

Please explain:

Besides WalMart, what recent edits are you talking about?

What "legitimate messages" and "legitimate bot activity" do you refer to? Because if I reverted a bot edit as "malicious" I consider it as such. Maybe you don't but in all those cases a bot reverted a legitimate and constructive edit sometimes for things as trivial as not having an edit summary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.238.174.69 (talk) 00:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Talk Pages
Per the wikipedia policy users are free to remove comments from their talk pages as they wish. Some people kept on re-adding comments I removed, hence the warning on my page.

Regarding Hebe there was united, unsourced, unverifiable content on that page and someone continued to re-add it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.238.174.69 (talk) 01:15, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Puget Systems COI
Replied to your comment on my talk page. Fire67 (talk) 23:55, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Re:
Thanks for the notice. Since there's nothing but vandalism, I've extended the block to a more appropriate length. It's typical for school IPs to vandalise long-term. Spellcast (talk) 16:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Curious George
Hi. Can you be more specific? As far as I know, I did sign my talk posts and fill in the edit summary. Let me know what I missed. Leonard of Vince (talk) 12:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome and heads-up
Umm. Thanks for the welcome and heads-up! Cheers. Oli. Olires (talk) 21:28, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Travellers talk page
I just wanted to say thanks for your polite but firm slap-down of yet another anonymous bigot on the Travellers talk page. The article itself is relatively stable but the talk page is now and has always been a forum for people to vent their prejudices, making it almost impossible to carry on a sensible discussion about how the article can be improved. I find it interesting that most of the people who use the talk page to give out about Travellers never bother to sign their posts. Lexo (talk) 21:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Removal of warnings from talk page
The ANI section Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive452 about blocking an IP user for a series of events starting with removing a vandalism warning from his own talk page has been hastily marked as "resolved" and archived, but I am still concerned about what happened. He was given a block warning by another editor because he removed a vandalism warning. This is clearly contrary to Talk page guidelines. Is it so wrong to let a user remove a warning and post a defiant rejoinder? What harm is done by letting him have his say, on his own talk page? Why is there the need to slap the warning back on the page numerous times in four minutes? Do you agree that if a vandal removes the vandalism warning from his talk page, there is no right to restore it and threaten to block him for removing it? What is really accomplished, other than the urge to show who's boss? How about allowing a cooldown period and just monitoring for any additional vandalism? The warning is always going to be there in the page history. As I said, I generally bring back the previous warnings only when I am adding a new vandalism warning, to make it easier to see the record, but an admin should always check the talk page history. This was an unusual incident, because in my experience a vandal usually goes to the talk page of the editor/admin who placed the warning, or to the vandalized article, to spew epithets. In those cases of page blanking/vandalism, a block is far easier to understand, but there is still usually time for a "final" or "only" warning. Edison (talk) 21:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no desire to reopen the ANI. I think that restricting the right to remove warnings from ones talk page to those the warner feels have "good faith" is a bit much. As for personal attacks, please note that when he removed the warning (the first time, as was his right) all he said, on his own talk page, was 'FUCK IT!' which is not any sort of personal attack. Wrong pronoun for that. Sometimes it is best to just walk away and let the reverted and warned person have his moment of defiant muttering. Edison (talk) 22:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, my sincere thanks for all your vandal fighting efforts. Edison (talk) 22:11, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

New Non-Profit - ejunto.com
Hello there. I certainly appreciate the efforts of yourself and others to keep spam and other spurious content out of Wikipedia. I've been recently adding links to ejunto.com resources. Ejunto.com is a non-profit, not unlike Wikipedia, in that it specializes in free high quality audio recordings of excellent historical and philosophical resources. I don't even work for them, I just happen to be busy and digest my books through my iPod. I don't fault you for assuming these were spam links, and if you'd like to change their format that is fine, but these are very good resources for the digital age and deserve a place on Wikipedia. Feel free to download one of their recordings if you don't believe me.

Now, regarding the guidelines, I think this material applies under Guideline number 3. It can't be incorporated in the body because it's audio, and it doesn't fall under any of the categories of "links normally to be avoided". It's similar to Librivox. I don't care about page rank. Just sharing a good resource. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beaster77 (talk • contribs) 23:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Reply
Hi Dppowell, thanks for your reply and explanation. I agree with you. It does have a whiff of promotion and I will take the reference out. The reason I added it is because not all free audio books are the same and I want to convey that they are semi-professional recordings. Thanks for your work and patience with the newbies... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beaster77 (talk • contribs) 00:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

July 2008 (UTC)

Re: COI
Hi Dppowell, thanks for the note...your reply and explanation of conflict-of-interest policy are both appreciated.Rmarcinkowski (talk) 01:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Angus & Julia Stone
Oh that could be. The article does read like an advert. Anyway, I've left a message asking the anon editor to fill out the edit summary the next time around. If you think the edit was good, feel free to revert my version. (Anonymi (talk) 04:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC))