User talk:Dr. Van Nostrand/Archive 1

A belated welcome!


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Again, welcome! — Bey WHEELZ  Let   It   RIP!  22:49, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Minor edits
Hello there!

I think I speak for some other fellow Wikipedians when I ask that you be more conservative with marking your edits as minor. Many of the edits you marked as minor were not, and actually included adding or removing whole citations. When viewing a list of edits on a user's Watchlist or on the history of a page, minor edits can be filtered out, which lowers the chances other Wikipedians will see your edits and be able to verify them or help to add more information. Thanks for all your contributions so far, and please keep it up! Daybeers (talk) 21:21, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Age of institutions
I see you have been converting lots of museums and related organizations' start-dates from a date to a date+age. According to the documentation for them, their examples often only use the date, and some have had extensive discussions and consensus to do it that way. I do agree that seeing the "XX years ago" could be worthwhile, but it's probably a good idea to check and make sure you have consensus before doing something other than their recommendeded uses. DMacks (talk) 16:43, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the guidance DMacks, I’ll do so in the future. Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 16:47, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your PIRG edits!
Hi there User:Dr. Van Nostrand, just wanted to thank you for improving the Public Interest Research Group article with your intralinks. Keeping the page up to date by working with volunteers like yourself is part of the work I do for PIRG. I really appreciate the attention to detail you provided! DanDavidCook (talk) 22:10, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi DanDavidCook, thanks for reaching out with the positive feedback on the Public Interest Research Group article, I appreciate it! Happy to help with reviewing any requests in the future as well. Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 02:24, 15 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your offer to help. I will let you know when the page needs updating or corrections. DanDavidCook (talk) 02:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for responding to my request
Hello User:Dr. Van Nostrand thanks so much for considering my request for new sections on the PIRG article. I really appreciate your taking the time to review and implement it. DanDavidCook (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your help
Just wanted to say a big Thank You! on behalf of the folks at PIRG for clarifying and cleaning up that article. We truly appreciate the time and thought you have invested in making Wikipedia the go-to resource for everyone that it has become. DanDavidCook (talk) 05:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks DanDavidCook for the well written edit requests, glad to help out on the PIRG article! Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 15:35, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Question about disambiguation
Hi Dr. Van Nostrand, I have a question about the disambiguation from Pirg, the Albanian village, to Public Interest Research Group. Here's what it says:

For the US environmental lobbying group PIRG, see Public Interest Research Group.

This is not exactly accurate, especially since the page has been improved and the initial description of the organization changed. But in reading about WP:disambiguation, I find no direction about how to change the text. I do not see where I would make the request, or how long the description should be. So I am asking for your guidance. Here is what I would suggest as a better descriptor; the second I believe is more accurate but seems long for a disambiguation description:

"For the U.S. non-profit group PIRG, see" or "For the U.S. non-profit organizing and advocacy group PIRG, see" Please advise if you can, and thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide. DanDavidCook (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi DanDavidCook, thanks for finding this on the Pirg page and making the request. I agree that your second suggestion is a more accurate description for the disambiguation and fits within the limits. I have made the edit to the Pirg page reflecting this change. Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 19:10, 26 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Again, thank you so much for your assistance! DanDavidCook (talk) 21:37, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter
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Spacing edits
Please do not make edits whose only purpose is to remove double spaces, as you did here. Per MOS:DOUBLESPACE, double spaces after full-stops render exactly the same as single spaces, so removing them does not change the reader experience. Meanwhile, many editors prefer them because they make scanning text slightly easier, and the edits themselves are pointless watchlist clutter. Thanks, JBL (talk) 16:43, 26 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi JBL, thanks for the guidance - that makes sense. I will not make soley double to single spacing edits in the future. Best, Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 01:57, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I appreciate it. Happy editing, JBL (talk) 02:10, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

GOCE June 2021 newsletter
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September 2021 Guild of Copy Editors newsletter
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December 2021 GOCE Newsletter
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GOCE April 2022 newsletter
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Fort Belvoir
Hi, I've just been going through and resolving recently added "by whom" tags and one came up at Fort Belvoir. Your edit was followed by an IP which tagged the phrase "has been criticised" in the naming controversy section. You don't happen to have access to the Washington Post article which supports that sentence do you? I was wondering what language it uses re the Fort, to see if the statement needs attributing to an individual or collective or whether the tag should just be removed. I can't see it myself due to the paywall.

All the best.

--Boynamedsue (talk) 07:07, 30 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi @Boynamedsue,
 * Thanks for resolving all of the "by whom" tabs. Below is the Washington Post article cited in the Fort Belvoir sentence. It does not cite an individual who requested the name change, but looking at other parts of the article, was criticized collectively as a society after the George Floyd protests and petitions in 2020 to rename army bases with Confederate names. In 2021, the United States Congress created the Naming Commission, a United States government commission, to rename military assets that have names associated with the Confederacy. There are other articles that include this information, which perhaps could be added as a citation.
 * "What to rename the Army bases that honor Confederate soldiers
 * Ty Seidule is a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and professor emeritus of history at West Point. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.
 * Ten Army posts named during World Wars I and II honor men who fought for the Confederate States of America against the United States of America. These men committed treason to create a country dedicated to human enslavement. The posts must be renamed — as should another, in Virginia, given what its name honors.
 * But whom should the Army honor?
 * Fort Belvoir (Va.) to Fort Grant
 * Who is Belvoir? Trick question. The answer is not a who but a what. Belvoir was the name of a slave plantation owned by a British loyalist. It burned to the ground in 1783. Few people realize that the post was called Camp A.A. Humphreys, for a Union general, until 1935. The fort is located only 15 miles south of the White House, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the change to appease Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-Va.), an avowed white supremacist. This name should be changed to Fort Grant, after Ulysses S. Grant, the finest officer to ever wear a U.S. Army uniform."
 * Hope that helps!
 * Best,
 * Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 23:57, 30 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks, that's perfect. I think that for our purposes we are probably ok just to put it in as "has been criticised", given the WP article mentions various groups and individuals of rather diverse perspectives. I will add the detail about the naming commission, as it will hopefully assuage the concerns of whoever added the tag. All the best and thanks again for your help. Boynamedsue (talk) 05:50, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

June GOCE newsletter
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Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of acronyms: U, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages UMA, UMB and UMD. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

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 * Thanks DPL bot, I have reverted those edits and changed them to the specific pages rather than the disambiguation pages. Best, Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 14:57, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 22
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Washington Outer Beltway, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Fixed, thank you DPL bot. Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 15:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors' October 2022 newsletter
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A barnstar for you!

 * Thank you! They certainly were very persistent! Dr. Van Nostrand (talk) 05:09, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

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