User talk:JackyR/Archive: Oct 2005-Feb 2006

Meeting Dvyost
Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

I also noticed one of the articles you edited was Palapye (and nice expansion of that, by the way!). As you may have noticed, Wikipedia is always in need of more Africa editors. I don't know if this is a continued area of interest for you, but if it is, here's some other links that you may want to check out:


 * WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks
 * Portal:Africa
 * List of missing Africa topics
 * African Collaboration of the Fortnight

Good luck, and happy editing! If you ever have any questions, feel free to leave a note on my talk page; lots of folks helped me when I first got here and I'm always glad to pay it forward! --Dvyost 20:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * You're welcome indeed--did you know that out of nearly two hundred welcomes that I've left, you're the first to ever thank me? Anyway, bit by bit is definitely the wiki way--I rarely tackle the "biggies" myself, but (un)luckily our Africa coverage is so sparse that even Googling a term from List of missing Africa topics can sometimes allow you to fill in a substub.  Another approach is to grab a book or two on the history of one country (in your case, Botswana?) and put together a web of linked articles--it gets easier and easier to fill in as you link it with what you've already put up, and then you can tackle a "biggie" article like History of Botswana just by collating.


 * Just saw your expansion at Serowe pop up on my Watchlist--keep up the good work! Best, --Dvyost 02:34, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

HKWNB, HKCOTW, Current events
Hi. Thanks for your contributions to some Hong Kong-related articles. You might be interested to take a look at HK wikipedians' notice board, HK Collaboration of the Week and Current events in Hong Kong and Macao. &mdash; Instantnood 18:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * :-D &mdash; Instantnood 09:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

linking to subheads
Hey Jacky,

Good to hear from you again! That's actually quite a good question, and one I'm not sure of the answer to even after reviewing the MoS. My instinct is to avoid linking to subheads if possible--while article moves have redirects put in place, the subheads are often reworked, which would then render your link useless. On the other hand, while linking only to the main article may require your reader to poke around a bit, the subheads in articles are usually listed right at the top, making it easy enough to find even if it's not directly linked.

Of course, this is only my personal guess, so don't mistake it for any standing policy. Do you have a specific article/subhead in mind? Sorry I can't be more help--maybe next time. =)

--Dvyost 01:53, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

PS Don't forget to sign your comments by adding four tildes! ( ~ )


 * Hi again, Jacky! Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you--I've been up to my nose in student essays lately.  I poked around a bit but I don't really have a good answer to your questions still, in part because I don't know how British geography articles are generally handled--in fact, I had to state at them for several minutes to even understand what we were talking about.  =)  Ah, the  curse of being American.  My best advice:  check out Village pump (assistance) and see what they say, or try to find some authors who often write articles in this area and ask them.


 * As for your other question re: the article move, what you outline looks extremely logical and I'd be happy to help you out with the move whenever you like. Good thinking, and I'm glad to see you jumping right in on all this!  Keep up this level of involvement and I suspect you'll be an admin yourself in no time... here's a nice butterfly to encourage you in the process (and to start a user page, too!)


 * --Dvyost 05:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Kent
Ta. Replied. Confused about disambiguation - I don't seem to have edited Cooling ? Don't remember doing so either. Morwen - Talk 22:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, and do you think maybe Grain, Kent and Isle of Grain should be merged? Just an idea.  Morwen - Talk 22:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Might do merger in the morning. Not doing (new) maps at moment, sorry.  Morwen - Talk 23:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Grain et al
I'll certainly look at what you have written, and comment if needed. By the way, you live nearer Grain than I do: I'm in Gravesend!!! I must have sounded very knowledgeable ... Peter Shearan 19:04, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Christmas cards
Thanks for your kind comments. I'm a fairly new Wikipedian so that was a nice way to be introduced to the community. I liked your paragraphs--I don't think there's a need for anthropological objectivity with a subject like this--but your invitation gave me an idea for an addition, which as you see, I made. Thanks! Lindmere 01:33, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The War on Christmas left me with quite a few candy cane scars. I think I'm going to crawl off into a nice, warm corner of wiki and concentrate on Belgian doilies. Lindmere 04:27, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Advice on linking dates
(copied from User Talk:DESiegel) Hi there

I've noticed your trawl of Charles Dickens making all years wikilinks, and am confused about this. The Manual of Style (dates and numbers) strongly recommends _not_ to link dates unless they add value. I've also noticed real variety between articles in this. Is this a disputed issue, or have I just misunderstood something? (Sorry, newbie...) JackyR 22:17, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You have mis-read my edit. In fact i was removing such links. This is a somewhat disputed issue, but there is a fairly wide consensus on the MoS reccomendation you just cited. I am now doing a large number of edits to apply this recomendation to various articels, and the Charles Dickens edit was one of these. See my comments on Wikipedia Talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), and look at my recent edits. Note that "rm" in an edit summery is short for "remove". DES (talk) 22:28, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Notability
That's a question that I think different editors would give you different answers on. Category:Subject-specific_notability_criteria has articles that give some useful guides here. The test for authors in Ntb (People) is:

Published authors, editors, and photographers who have written books with an audience of 5,000 or more or in periodicals with a circulation of 5,000 or more

Which I think could be reasonably extended to books as well. You're right that this may result in an unwieldly number of book articles if some enterprising Wikipedian goes nuts with them--but after all, Wikipedia ain't paper. As for the particular link you're looking at deleting though, you're in your rights if you feel it has no significance to a particular article that you're working on; the article itself, though, should probably stay if it meets the above criteria. Hope this helps! Happy Boxer Day, --Dvyost 06:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Er, Boxing Day. Sorry.  American.  --Dvyost 06:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Higham
Hi Jacky & happy New Year for tonight! I have, as you will see, added a scetion called communications to this article. When you take out the stuff about the tunnel, my amendment will cover it briefly, if that's OK? (I note my user name didn't appear - it disappears every so often!) Peter Shearan 16:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes, that's a good way to do it. I'll probably leave in a bit about the tunnel (Higham is very proud of it...), but under your headings. Seems the canal is up for renovation as well, so when i've sussed what's going on I'll add that to Comms as well. Have a good New Year tonight! JackyR 16:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Botswana
Hello and thank you for your concern. Wikipedia categorization is based on placing articles to the subcategories. So that article I edited fit to the "Ethnic groups in Botswana" category, which is a subcategory of "Botswana" category. This, let's say, "subcategorization" helps find out articles on similar topics together. If you will need some help or assistance, just let me know. - Darwinek 01:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Seretse Ian Khama
While I appreciate the notice, it was misplaced. The only editing I did on that article was in connection with stub sorting and not the factual content of the article itself. Caerwine Caerwhine 00:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Canal Pics
Months ago, I added the Panama Canal picture and left it at that. Thanks for asking. --Dlatimer 16:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Thames sailing barge
Yep, you're just too fast for me - I was just writing the talk page while you left the message. I guess you won this 'Match'. Cheers - Common Man 02:22, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ooh!


 * It's beautiful now! Sorting the text into sections makes it much more readable, and I noticed you could eliminate some duplicate text this way. Once the remaining problems (see talk:Thames sailing barge) are either explained or removed, I would support its nomination for featured article. Common Man 20:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

S African Languages
(moved from User page) I'll have a look at styles for African language names. Can you have a look at Talk:Bantu and see if you agree with me? Lotsane, eh? I taught at PSS down the road! Guinnog 07:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Poetry Project
Hi ... I've just posted a reply to your question on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poetry. Sorry for being so slow! &mdash; Stumps 07:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: African language names
Just a quick note to let you know that I've placed a somewhat belated reply to your post over at Talk:African languages. Kind regards, &mdash; mark &#9998; 21:18, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Feedback appreciated
Re: your comment:
 * So that's how half-toning works. I've always wondered... Thank you for making my day! JackyR 15:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DavidH"

Thanks very much for the nice feedback. DavidH 02:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Allhallows et al
Wow! I see what you mean! those poor folk living there must not know where they are! In a way it goes to show one of the snags of the Wiki system: each of the articles has some merit on its own, but the plain fact of the matter is that, in 2006, a map would only show Allhallows, and the historical significance of the other two would be lost. Peter Shearan 06:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * So do you think we should go for a merge? Put the whole lot under Allhallows, Kent (with suitable subheads)? After all, Higham gets one article, referring to Upper and Lower Higham. JackyR 08:00, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I certainly do! I see that "Allhallows-on-Sea" is actually on the map, but the extra words will still lead to one place. If the articles shows the historical sequence: ancient village -> railway resort -> holiday camp then that should make the whole thing clear. As I think I said, it is such a small place, and has had so many people having a go at it ... life's too short!!! I wonder how many other places have suffered this sort of treatment? Peter Shearan 14:36, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Marie Lloyd
''So have we lost both instances of the external link, now? Perhaps better to keep one, under "External links"? (Not my addition, btw, just looks useful). :-) JackyR 13:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)''

Thanks for letting me know about this. Now reinstated External links section which I never intnded to delete. I have absolutely no idea how that happened! Very odd. Cheers Flapdragon 13:47, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Need articles?
If you need JSTOR articles or anything else from standard electronic reference databases for your Wikipedia work, I'm happy to e-mail them to you. Just send me a note at fastfission@gmail.com for anything you need; it is really no difficulty at all for me to send them and I'm always happy to help other Wikipedians out. --Fastfission 02:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Many thanks - may hold you to that. Ragesoss has already sent me that one - and now I'm thoroughly intimidated by the Conditions of Use on the front page. I've already asked Sage this, but, altho it's clearly not copyright, do you know whether we need permish to use JSTOR as a source? Cos that's what they say... Companies/organisations are really pushing the envelope on what they can control these days. JackyR 02:53, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If it is legitimately out of copyright (not always the easiest thing to determine, but if the issue is published pre-1923 then it is usually very straightforward), then there is nothing to worry about. Simply scanning an item does not change its copyright status -- if it is in the public domain, it should (legally) stay there. The worst that JSTOR could do is threaten to revoke the access privileges of whoever used the source, but I've never heard of them doing that (what they are really worried about are people taking their articles and re-publishing them wholesale; mining them for copyright-free material is probably not very high on their list of priorities). JSTOR isn't quite as bad as some media companies out there -- CORBIS will happily claim copyright over works of the federal government, and at least JSTOR explicitly says they don't do that! --Fastfission 13:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that, I'll put my worry beads away. The Ballad of Gresham College was published c. 1663, so I think we might be all right on that :-). The article in which it is embedded I was going to use as a ref source in the usual way. The key thing I'm delighted to learn is that public domain works cannot (chez Wiki, USA) be copyrighted. Again, thanks, JackyR 19:54, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The only thing that comes into play with things like that is whether it is a translation or not. Translations of PD texts can generate copyright, as every translation is to some extent an interpretation. In that case it depends on when they translation was developed. But anyway I don't know if this applies in this case, but it was just one aspect of it worth pointing out. --Fastfission 19:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

African Languages
Yo, Jacky. I though of responding to the "debate" @ African Languages, but I fear that I may be hopelessly late...

Anyhoo, I'll try to write something today. The reason why it took me such a long time to tell you this is because my internet access is virtually non-existent, and I only rarely manage to edit Wikiped. - User:ZyXoas 08:30, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay, forget about it. It's not going to happen today - probably ever. I just think it's retarded that a whole bunch of people can "discuss" something they know nothing about and feel that they have reached a concensus. Good luck doing something about the subterranean quality of articles on Africa on Wikiped. I simply do not have the time/resources to do as I would like. I'm what one might consider an "Expert" on South African languages (by Wikipedia standards, definitely) and I had a three page response written and ready but I could not find the time to edit it in so...

About the capitalisation of clas prefixes. It's only in the Nguni languages where the prefixes are written in small letters. So "isiXhosa" but "Sesotho" and "Setswana". Hope that helps.

How can I deal with people who say "We should call it Zulu, not what 'the Zulus' call it" (Micheal) when I can't even read the edits most of the time...? Have fun! -User:ZyXoas11:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: Harsawa
Thanks, Jacky for your copyedits of article on Harsawa. I have seen it. It makes better sense now. burdak 12:43, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Ballad of Gresham
Moved from email: It looks like the Ballad was not even published previously; it was only in manuscript form. If that's the case, then I think even the ballad itself is not public domain. But I could be wrong. I'll try to investigate further. (email from ragesoss)


 * On further investigation, it looks like the ballad is out of copyright; even for unpublished material, copyright only lasts 70 years after the author's death, in the US. The lack of copyright permissions on the ISIS publication suggests that as well.  Since the article is supposed to be a verbatim reproduction (excluding the footnotes, but including the lettered margin notes, and indications of variation between the different copies), I think we're ok to reproduce it.  I was just reading it a bit more thoroughly, and it's awesome.  I put the 10th verse in Prince Rupert's Drops, to which it obviously refers.--ragesoss 18:57, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


 * How's that OCR going? I want to be able show it off to friends easier; it's the coolest think I've seen in a long time, and I bet virtually no one active in the field of history of science now has read it.  May the Wiki be with you--ragesoss 03:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, should have warned you there'd be slight delay. Remember the bit about playing with my new scanner and OCR software? First attempts failed and I'm now awaiting the arrival of Technical Support (my other half, who's been away). If we don't get it working this wkend, I'll resort to old fashioned methods... Glad it was such a good find (from a Gresham lecture by Robin Wilson). JackyR 16:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Stephen Fry
NORCAT is Norfolk College of Arts and Technology. I've added this to the page and elaborated in the discussion Epeeist smudge 06:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Gardner
Hi! Thank you for your message. I surely appreciate some words of encouragement, once in a while ;-). - Liberatore(T) 13:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I made a brief answer to your post in the wikiquote area
I made a brief answer to your post in the wikiquote area.

Here is the most current perma link diff:

http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Abortion&diff=177859&oldid=177858#As_above

GW

Defamation
Independent is OK with me as is your letter. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I considered writing a letter to the editor of the ST complaining, but I have a busy life and many other things to do than correct sloppy journalism. I did get as far as googling "Maurice Chittenden" --- several hits on the Press Complaints Commission pages --- but no further. Please feel free to go ahead and send your letter. best wishes, Thruston 09:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * One other point to make. Curiously on the same weekend as the ST published their anti-WP piece, the Indie published an "expert review" that included a positive review of Punt (boat) of which I am the principal contributer.  See External_peer_review.


 * Why on earth did Maurice Chittenden pick on my user name? Is it that amusing?  Thruston 09:44, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much for adding the punting line from Gaudy Night one of my top ten Desert Island books. How did I miss that one!  Thruston

Muti
I see you were wondering about muti on the South African English page. In English it's used to mean medicine, but the original Zulu umuthi means a number of things: * medicine * tree * wood * toothpaste or shoe polish if other words are added (umuthi wamazinyo = toothpaste, umuthi wezicathulo = shoe polish) Joziboy 26 Feb 2006, 16:55 UTC