User talk:Guettarda/Archive1

My First Mistake :)
Wikipedia ALWAYS has its biographies titled FirstName_LastName. Middle names are rarely used, and when they are, it's usually because two people have the same first and last name. However, I understand your request, and have redirected George Maxwell Richards, Max Richards, and George M. Richards to George Richards. I think that this is clear enough. If you still have problems, feel free to make a note on my user page. -Frazzydee 06:08, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
The list of tropical dry broadleaf forests is based on the World Wildlife Fund's scheme for terrestrial ecoregions, which is listed on the WWF web site by biogeographic realm: Conservation Science: Biomes and Biogeographical Realms. Since you have expertise in the field, if you have the time and the interest you may consider writing some of the articles about individual dry forest ecoregions. Best, Tom Radulovich 06:56, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Trinidad and Tobago
Glad to have someone else working on Trinidad and Tobago parts. There's a lot. I still have to deal with San Fernando Hill... Good to meet you. Taran Rampersad

List of calypsonians
I just moved it to list of calypso musicians, as I felt it cluttered up the main article. Tuf-Kat 15:55, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

Port-of-Spain
The text should be reverted and the image placed on Possibly unfree images, and a sysop will eventually delete it (you should probably remove it from the article too). Ordinarily, you should wait a while, maybe a week or so, for a response, but since the provenance of the copyrighted material is known and it is also overwhelmingly likely that no permission was asked, nor would be given... You may as well do it now, and no one is likely to complain. Tuf-Kat 00:29, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Correcting title of Spiritual Baptist Liberation Shouter Day
Thanks for your comment on my talk page. My question "did you know why" was rhetorical - I discovered this while wikifying the the original article. Thank goodness that religious tolerance is not only practiced but celebrated somewhere in the world! The title of the article is that originally entered by User:196.3.146.73 who in his/her creation comment also called it "Spiritual Shouter Baptist Liberation Day".

Your correction of the name makes perfect sense - the word order was bugging me; I should have checked a little more thoroughly when I first edited the article. So I will gladly correct the title, but I would like to be sure that I get it right. Checking the internet I see "Spiritual Baptist Shouter Liberation Day", "Spiritual Baptist -Shouter Liberation Day" and "Spiritual Baptist (Shouter) Liberation Day" while Trinidad and Tobago gives "Spiritual Baptist/Shouter Liberation Day" but the nalis website uses a plural and gives "Spiritual Baptists - Shouter Liberation day". So which is the correct title?

Thanks --Cje 20:44, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just curious why you changed "Boogsie" to Lennox? "Sharpe" or "Len" I could understand, but I had to go looking to find "Lennox" - never heard him referred to by that name. Is your experience different? Guettarda 00:41, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I actually never heard of him under any name, so I just thoought "Boogsie" was some obscure fact. Oops!

Paros/Paria
Hi, well, the adjective from Paros is Parian, which occasionally leads to people thinking Parians are from Paria rather than Paros...so I redirected it there. It should be easy just to fix those links to point to Paros, so you can write about things that are really called Paria, if you want. Adam Bishop 19:28, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Commonwealth tag
You'd asked SimonP about removing the tage. Please see User talk:SimonP. I will be creating a Category. Or you can. &mdash;iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 22:48, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * I have created Category:Members of the Commonwealth of Nations. &mdash;iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 23:02, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Conservation Ecology/Biology
Okay, I didn't see the counter comment. I'm inclined to agree with you that Conservation ecology should be merged into Conservation biology. One day we may have enough to say about the differences to split them again. Sabine's Sunbird 01:36, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Copyvio at Point Fortin
FYI, an anon pasted a copyvio into your stub at Point Fortin. I marked it as such and restored your version Point Fortin/Temp. - John Fader

Trinidad in North America reply
Hi. In answer to your question, I read in an encyclopaedia (either Americana or Canadiana but I can't remember which one) that Trinidad is considered part of North America, plus I was taught this in high school. The rationale is that the Caribbean (like Central America) is considered part of N.A. and Trinidad is considered a Caribbean country. In addition if you go to Template:North America you'll see it listed as a North American country, though I based my information on the encyclopedia and what my teacher told me, not on a Wikipedia template. Cheers! 23skidoo 01:03, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Followup: I agree that placing Trinidad in N.A. is "iffy" and for the longest time I considered it part of South America. But I guess is more for the sake of convenience and maybe political reasons rather than geologic ones. It's similar to Hawaii sometimes (but technically incorrectly) being considered part of North America since it's a state. In a similar vein, Iceland is considered a European country, but I thought I read somewhere that it technically isn't, either. I might be wrong on that one. 23skidoo 01:43, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * 2nd followup: it might make for a cool article to list nations that are technically part of one region of the world, but politically considered part of another. Hawaii and Guam are excellent examples, as is Trinidad and most of the Caribbean islands offshore from South America. I've never heard a definitive statement as to whether Greenland is considered politically part of North America or part of Europe, while I know the French island colony of St. Pierre & Miquelon, located just offshore from Canada's Newfoundland, considers itself to be part of Europe even though it's nothing of the sort physically. And what continent does New Zealand belong to? I often see it grouped with Australia but I don't think that's geologically true. Let me know what you find re: Trinidad. I'm curious now. Cheers! 23skidoo 02:02, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The American (USA) POV: The Caribbean is often considered its own world region as distinct and separate from N.A., S.A. and C.A. although some Caribbean states are obviously part of one or the other. Belize is definately C.A and Guyana is definately S.A.


 * However, from the point of view of The United States of America, the Caribbean has the same Country Code for International Calling and falls within the North America Calling Plan. That is, its country code is "1" and all phone numbers have an "xxx-yyy-zzzz" format where "xxx" is the three-digit "Area Code" --examples; Jamaica: 876, Trindad: 868, ect.-- "yyy" is the three-digit "Local Exchange Code" or city code --example; Mandeville: 962-- and "zzzz" is the "Location Identification Code" --example; 876-962-5555 represents a number in Mandeville, Jamaica. How these are used vary for each set of exchanges. Some areas always require 7-digit dialing while others only require "1+" 7-digit for calls outside of the Local Exchange. Others require 10-digit dialing for all numbers and "1+" 10-digit for those outside the local calling area (which also varies within sets of exchanges and area codes). All require an International Access Number followed by the Country Code, optional Exchange/City Code and "Location Identification Code" --whose format varies in different parts of the world-- to dial outside of the NACP. For this reason, if you use the operator to place an international call from the United States to the Caribbean, you must state that you are calling North America. If not, they will ask you for a country code and when you tell them "1" they will say, "No, the country code for the country you are calling" and if you tell them "876" then they will say that that is an invalid country code.


 * Also, since the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are part of the Caribbean, the U.S.A. tends to put all of the Caribbean in N.A. since these two places are USA teritories and, by association, belong to N.America. Who really cares what the USA thinks. They sometimes call their president the leader of the free world.


 * The Americas POV: On the other hand, the Caribbean is considered a part of the Americas and people have often split the Americas into three distinct parts; North, Central and South, with the Caribbean states being completely excluded from the list of states belonging to any of these regions. For this reason it is often annexed to N.A. since the Greater Antilles lies closest to that area and sometimes to C.A since most of the Caribbean lies withiin the same latitudes as that area and sometimes S.A since the nearest Caribbean island to a mainland is closest to that area or because the Caribbean starts from the Guianas --which is in S.A.-- up through the Windward Islands and Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles and finally to the Greater Antilles. Good luck sorting that out.


 * Iceland and Greenland were both settled by Scandinavian colonists prior to Christopher Columbus and so are considered European or Scandinavian and not part of the Americas.


 * The Geologic POV: There are three plates involved; the North American plate containing North and Central America and with it, Belize, the S. American plate containing South Americar and with it, Guyana and the Caribbean plate containing all of the West Indies except Bahamas, Bermuda and --technically-- Barbados, which are all in the Atlantic Ocean. This, of course, splits Panama across two continents; N. & S. America.


 * Greenland is on the N. American plate and Iceland is split betweeen the N. American and Eurasian plates. Iceland therefore shares the same issue as Panama, being on two continents, as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge divides the island.


 * The Geographic POV: The Americas is actually split into four distinct parts; North, Central and South America and the West Indies --which will include the Bahamas, Barbados and sometimes Bermuda, none of which are in the Caribbean Basin. This also solves the issues of Belize and Guyana which are considered Caribbean --Belize because it lies against the Caribbean Plate and Guyana because it is the homeland of the Caribs-- but not West Indies states since they are not islands (hence, indies).


 * Again, Greenland and Iceland are not considered part of the Americas and are therefore Eurpoean.


 * I believe you want the Geographic POV. --Okay Hosein 20:49, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

race
thanx for the advice. I thought deeceevoice was a bit more educated than rest of the afrocentrists, though they use the same links and "proof". Oh yeah, I thought beyonce was black? I don't really know because I'm not really into pop music, but thx anyway :) Wareware 22:24, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * lol that's nice to hear Wareware 03:51, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cities and towns in Trinidad and Tobago
Ok, to simplify logistics, I popped Trinidad and Tobago to the top of the list, so we now just have Category:Towns_in_Trinidad_and_Tobago. So I guess you're thinking about renaming it "Cities and towns in Trinidad and Tobago"? Is there any official distinction between a city and a town, or are these just informal terms? The article Trinidad and Tobago names five "municipalities", which for the US we consider a generic term meaning "city or town" or sometimes including counties and townships, etc. We've also found that a given entity may have one term in its name but be officially considered something else, like the Town of Nowheresville may actually be incorporated as a city (some U.S. states make such a distinction). I'm not sure how many of what kinds of things there are on the islands. Figuring out how large a category is going to be after everything that belongs in it has been added is probably the best way to know whether or not to subdivide it, if that's an issue here.

Anyway, if you want to rename Category:Towns_in_Trinidad_and_Tobago, feel free to list it on WP:CFD. I'm done with it until it makes its way down to the "Categories to be moved or deleted" section again. If you want better advice on what to name it or whether or not to split it, I would recommend asking on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities. -- Beland 03:20, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

change race to ,..
Hi,

You're right. A new person got involved and changed the topic without discussion. Somebody (not I) sent him a note on his user/talk page. For such a contentious article it seems a little miraculous that somebody could make such a change without anybody complaining. For me it is better because the topic "Race", and the attempts to define that singular word, all made it seem as though there were a single thing called race out there just waiting for somebody to discover. P0M 22:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

United States move
When you voted to support, you may not have realized that it is also being proposed to move United States (disambiguation) &rarr; United States. That is, the page United States would become a disambiguation page.

Can you please clarify at Requested_moves whether you are voting in favor of only one or both of the proposals? -- Curps 23:39, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

USA reversion at WP:RM
Please do not revert the removal of the USA discussion at WP:RM and do not call it vandalism. You asked a question on my talk page - at least read the reply before undertaking such actions. violet/riga (t) 20:41, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Don't mess with the US"? Not exactly.
Guettarda,

Please read the comments I added, at either:
 * Wikipedia_talk:Requested_moves or
 * Talk:United_States

Basically, User:Halibutt did indeed wish to carry out both page moves simultaneously; his later denial is simply false.

If he had proposed both moves openly and clearly, either together or separately, then there would have been no problem. But trying to sneak through the second page move by stealth, and trying to get people to vote on something without realizing what they're voting for, is extreme bad faith. There is no "don't mess with the US" here... I'm not American.

Whether Halibutt's motivation for doing this was anti-American is beside the point. I do believe he was acting in bad faith, all the more so because the idea of making United States a disambiguation page (instead of a main page or a redirect to United States of America) seems entirely preposterous. It is a long established practice not to detour through a disambiguation page when one meaning greatly predominates over others: thus, for instance, Boston goes to Boston, Massachusetts and not to Boston (disambiguation).

-- Curps 21:02, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi Guettarda - I think we're at cross-purposes. I meant that I intended my statement to be an insult, i.e. I was calling Halibutt stupid and I wanted to make doubly sure that was received. And I was angry when I wrote it so I wasn't writing very clearly. Hey ho.............anyway, I see the discussion's been deleted so that should be that :) sjorford// 09:34, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Evolution
Hey, I noticed your edit to my addition to the Evolution article, and I wanted to ask you about it to get your opinion so that we can avoid an edit war. Your sentence states "This view is commonly referred to as creationism, and continues to be defended by some religious groups and a small group of scientists funded by creationist groups", while mine was "This view is commonly referred to as creationism, and continues to be defended by some religious groups and scientists". I can probably agree with you on the "small group" part, though I think it's a bit unnecessary since the article already points out that evolution enjoys the support of the vast majority of scientists. I think the simple "some" is sufficient as a result, but it's not that big of a deal to me. However, I do think that the "funded by creationist groups", while true in some cases, is POV, since it seems to suggest that those scientists were bribed or something by creationist wackos who wanted some credibility for their theory. I don't think that that is the case. What are your thoughts? --Spangineer &#8734; 21:34, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * I see where you're coming from, but the way I see it is that every scientist needs funding; otherwise, s/he can't do scientific work. Thus, it seems obvious that evolutionary scientists will get money from groups/institutions that think evolution is right, while creation scientists will get money from groups/institutions that think creation is right.  I don't see a problem with that - no one complains that John Kerry got tons of money from left-wing groups, and no one complains that George W. Bush got tons of money from right-wing groups - it's expected.  As for the integrity of the most creation scientists, I strongly doubt that they were "convinced" of the wisdom of creationism when they were offered checks by creation groups.  To me it seems cynical to suggest that good scientists rejected a strongly supported theory and made themselves the laughingstock of the scientific community because they wanted funding from a creationist think tank.  Of course, I don't know how much money they are getting from the conservative think tanks, but it just seems unlikely that they would toss away scientific credibility to receive funding (that they could have gotten from another source without switching from evolution to creation), and not because they firmly believe in creationism. What do you think? --Spangineer &#8734; 22:16, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * You're right about the funding thing - my analogy, I realize now, was flawed. I think I understand what you're arguing now - that people like Behe should have simply published their works and perhaps changed their own personal minds and then let the scientific community decide if those works should influence current scientific theory, instead of publishing their books and launching a media campaign against mainstream science. Is that fair?  I now think you're right, to a point, because that's how ideal science would work.  They, however, would argue that their opinions face discrimination simply because they rely on a God (an idea which they claim is summarily rejected by default by many scientists), and that as a result, their views, regardless of how scientifically sound they are, would be silenced by the scientific community, and the world would never know that some scientists doubt the plausibility of evolution.  I guess it would be interesting to study how past errors of science fell (like the medical practice of bloodletting, or the rotation of the universe around the earth, etc.), and see how the insurgent scientists convinced the world of the truth of their propositions.  That's ultimately what Behe and the rest think they are doing.  Anyway, thanks for the discussion - it's refreshing to be able to discuss this and actually get something out of it instead of the normal ad hominem drivel.  If you get a chance, let me know if I characterized your argument correctly and what you think about the discrimination thing in science. --Spangineer &#8734; 03:12, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Islands in the Caribbean
Having two lists (inhabited and complete) sounds good to me. I'll add what I can to both.

William Beebe
Did you know Beebe or have some other direct connect with him? I have always been fascinated by him Guettarda 02:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I was very fortunate when I was a young teenager to know Dr. Beebe quite well. My father, Dr. A. E. ("Ted") Hill was a close personal friend, and later his doctor, in Trinidad. I spent several summer holidays, between about 1954 aqnd 1959 working at the Research Station at Simla as a "laboratory and field assistant". We often stayed with Asa Wright when we were up visiting from Port of Spain.

Dr. Beebe was certainly a most extraordinary person - full of charm and wit, and a very patient teacher. He taught me how to really love and appreciate the wonder of nature - I have very fond memories of afternoons spent wandering alone through the forests, birdwatching and chatting - just the two of us. If you would like to discuss him further - please do not hesitate to write to me directly at: wynhill@bigpond.com (PS you will have to add the character for "at" here between "wynhill" and "bigpond" - I can't find the symbol)

Cheers,

John Hill 02:53, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Grenada
Actually, it was me who spelled "Grenadian" wrong... There was incosistent spelling, and after the discussion on VfD how "Bermudan", not "Bermudian" is correct, I incorrectly assumed that "Grenadan" is correct too. As for footballers, if you look at Category:Football (soccer) players by country, it looks incosistent with the rest. Same with "Football of Grenada" category and Category:Football (soccer) by country. I probably should have said that at, but did not see it. What do you suggest ? --Dryazan 15:53, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

request re: race
Can you comment on/intervene in my recent discussion with Jalnet2 concerning the race page ? Also, would you take a look at the little edit war he and I have had today (Feb. 11)? Thanks, Slrubenstein 21:02, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

re: evo book
We can't have every book on evolutionary theory on the evolution page. So it's better to have a recommended reading list rather than full blown references for compactness. This particular one seems to be about the philosophical implications of toe, and a reviewer on Amazon reckoned it wasn't very good, so I took it out. It might be worth mentioning in one of the subpages somewhere. Cheers, Dunc|&#9786; 14:23, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rastafarianism
I cannot find Anárion's vote at Village pump (policy). I think the religious sensibilities has been a bit of a misnomer (though an interesting one). If no consensus is reached I would be tempted to put it back on Requested moves, but on the basis that rastafarianism is not the common use term. What do you think? --SqueakBox 18:19, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

In my wandering around on web sites, I saw both Rastafari and Rastafarianism being used, sometimes by the same writer. I couldn't say which is the more prevalent overall, but I would guess that Rastafarianism is more prevalent on "popular" sites and Rastafari might be somewhat more in use on specialist sites. Of course, on Wikipedia, a search on either will get you to the article on Rastafarianism without much delay. What I didn't find, not even once, was anyone complaining about the use of Rastafarianism, or even mentioning that some Rastafarians objected to it. But it is fairly hard to come up with a Google query that might find that; so my conclusion is based mainly on quickly scanning a lot of articles and Google hits pages. --BM 01:51, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't know, when I do a search on Goggle (English) for Rastafari, the 136,000 results not only include noun usages but also adjectives. It is used as the name by itself for the religion, as an adjective in such constructs as "Rastafari movement", as well as with many other nouns, and of course also as a reference to Haile Selassie. I get 77.000 results for Rastafarianism, which of course is only a noun. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to have Google just show me nouns. The one mention in the dissertation you found that Rastas prefer "Rastafari" and are suspicious of "-isms" is interesting, but it does not say that they object to "Rastafarianism" or consider it insulting, and since the writer was on the subject, he probably would have mentioned it if it were so. Even if you are correct about the relative usage of the two terms, I'm still not picking up a strong reason to go through the article and remove references to "Rastafarianism", or to change the title, and I do think that might be the more common usage among non-Rastas, although this is more of a guess than anything else. --BM 02:21, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi - thanks for the comment. I still think Rastafarianism is the common term - see for example  - "Ethiopia, the spiritual home of Rastafarianism..." -- ALoan (Talk) 12:14, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Machetazo
Unfortunately it was with the sharp edge, and with the full strength of the attacker behind it. The word here is machetazo, as I quickly learnt (machete being the same in Spanish but with a hard ch). Months earlier my partner's brother had his left hand cut off in a similar incident, and I am very glad I only received the one blow.. My vision was so out I couldn't read for several weeks as I could not see an entire word due to distortion on the right. I am getting a lot better now. Incidentally once of the best sources of Rastafari when I was first interested 80/81 was a magazine from Trinidad for sale in England.--SqueakBox 19:53, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC) I added planass to machete to illustrate that some countries do have a word for it. Hope this is okay. --SqueakBox 18:03, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

Our friend User:155.84.57.253
Hi Guettarda, care to contribute to Heather Has Two Mommies? It seems out friend wants to spread his POV. &#8212;Christiaan 00:12, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also see my note on User talk:Christiaan. -Willmcw 01:43, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

RfC
I agree that it's hard to see where to post comments! I had a look and can't quite work it out. If I were you, I'd sign myself as endorsing the first summary i.e. the complaint; and then add your comment in the outside-comments section. You do still count as outside, as you're not directing involved in the dispute, but you have knowledge of the user. If that's the wrong thing to do, I'm sure others will move your comment for you. I've left a note on the talk page for that particular RfC saying that it seems a bit mixed up. Sorry I can't be more help. Best, SlimVirgin 06:30, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)