User talk:Jimregan/Archive2

(JTD wrote: One night it all came to a head. Zoe, 172, myself, Tannin and others decided "fuck it. We have had enough."

So, as now happens to Michael, we waged total war. Everything Adam in the name of his latest troll touched was reverted on sight.)


 * And now Zoe has learned and applied that same trick to me, so rather than being tricked into appearing the same as the vandals I have waited until I spotted her selectivity elsewhere. Now I can show people a track record of misbehaviour - thin so far, but real - I hope without (as she has) becoming what she fought. You don't believe it? She requires a certain level of proof from others, as in "fanny", yet lets through stuff she has no problem with. Selectivity, which adds up. All I ask for is decent equitable criteria, evenly applied. (And once we have established that, look at the internal evidence in what I gave that she suppressed. Then we can give it a fair go for deciding how to word what ought to go in, rather than just suppressing what doesn't fit preconceptions.) PML.

I moved your comment here, the page was getting too long. I hope that's enough of a quote to put yours in context, though I have to say, I think it's fairly rude to start a reply in the middle of someone else's message. Now that we've gotten off to a bad start, to my reply. I'd have to say that valid or not, it's really not a good time to complain about Zoe. Many other people seem to have gotten the same idea. Maybe Zoe really is the nastiest thing since... whatever the polar opposite of sliced bread is, but if all she's asking you for is proof, what's the problem in providing it? Maybe she does have a double standard, but she's only human.

If you want to be treated the same way as everyone else, why don't you create an account? By having just an IP in a page history, you are waving a red flag at everyone who has an eye on RC. Wikipedia does have a hierarchy, and by not logging in you are choosing to stay at the bottom of that hierarchy &mdash;if you're not being treated the same as everyone else, you've only yourself to blame -- Jim Regan 05:32 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I was trying to anchor things to a related context (now missing - you shouldn't have guessed you left enough context). As for "...if all she's asking you for is proof, what's the problem in providing it?" - that's exactly what was shown by the context against which I put the comment (now missing). She was not doing that, any more than the usual suspect vandal was "only" doing this or that. She made out that that was all she was after - but she cut regardless, only giving the appearance of making a reasonable request in a way that might fool people coming in in the middle (possibly unintentional, but just like that earlier vandal), and she wouldn't accept spelling things out in the post as proof or accept that prima facie obvious stuff put the burden of proof on rejecting it (at least show what's not prima facie about it!). So I decided to give her plenty of rope and wait for her to be out in the open before again raising the area (the sale of the Danish Virgin Islands) as part of a wider whole (bias), in the hope that eventually it would get an impartial review so we could get an agreed phrasing in - which is why it is a good time to complain about Zoe, or more precisely about what she does, now she's exposed and will find it harder to hide the fact that she has a pattern of bias we need to offset. Reworking the Danish Virgin Islands may take a while before we get around to it, but I can't just wait for the pressure to be off her - she'll make out that it's me that's biassed (as she just now has, falsely stating that the point related to being NPOV). As for why not create an account - I have already given reasons for that (it's work related); and matters should be judged on their form and content, not author. Apologies for rushed mind dump phrasing there. PML.

Oh. I guess the correct quote, then, would be "Adam's classic stunt was to start off all nice and polite, do something, people would change it and nicely explain why it was wrong. Adam would be so nice and polite . . . and change it back. So the gullible user would be all nice back, trying to explain the change. Then finally it would dawn on the user after a week or two that they were falling for an act". So this leaves me with having to read through several revisions to find out what it is you said. I'm guessing the contentious part is
 * "During the submarine warfare phases of the First World War, the USA feared that these islands might be seized by Germany as a submarine base and accordingly put pressure on Denmark (more precisely, the Danish Crown) to sell the islands to the USA to pre-empt German seizure. It should however be noted that the U.S. pressure itself took the form of a threat of seizure if a sale could not be agreed, that this took place between neutral non-belligerents, and that the USA only contemplated a permanent acquisition and not the conventional temporary acquisition for the duration of hostilities. On January 17, 1917, the United States bought the Danish West Indies for $25 million and took possession of the islands on March 31, with the funds going to the Danish Crown and so helping to maintain a degree of royal independence."

I can see the problem with POV here, from both sides. Fine, Zoe is Americo-centric, and wants proof. Simply stating that the US threatened seizure of the Islands isn't enough - you need to back it up, with evidence supporting this claim. Unless you can provide this proof, it's simply a matter of the US's word against Denmarks, and you need to flag your claims accordingly. Simply saying "The Danish Crown felt they were under pressure to sell the islands" or whatever should be the right sort of thing. -- Jim Regan 06:12 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * There was one more problem, that doesn't show in this fossilised retrospect. I had been seeking alternate forms of words to firm things up. No dice - everything got cut, including context that showed what I was putting made sense. So I stopped and awaited a strategic moment rather than seeking a synthesis that would be kyboshed. Had I continued, I would probably have put "...the U.S. pressure itself could only be a threat of seizure... since the owners were the Danish Crown", only hopefully a bit clearer than that. Then I would have tried to clarify this internal evidence even more, showing that the USA had nothing to offer the Crown, since it was all a one way loss for the Crown. Showing that would have been a serious digression into constitutional aspects - but it was already clear that I was being cut regardless, since the Second World War comparative stuff had been simply cut. Zoe et al were simply assuming that presenting evidence is POV and that if it was once cut, that showed I had no evidence to offer. No credence was being put on internal evidence, and there was no willingness to check my reasoning. PML.

OK, have a look at the page now, and tell me what you think. -- Jim Regan 06:22 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sorry I could not look at the article tonight. I've been wading through 500 articles by Joe Canuck to put his jpeg downloads on the VfD page. I am knackered and crawling off to bed. FearÉIREANN 03:32 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * You'll need to learn some SQL then - Sysops have that, right? It'd have made it a whole lot quicker. -- Jim Regan 18:25 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No. Your comments were spot on and fair.FearÉIREANN 23:02 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I wasn't too sure... lots said &c, but I wasn't sure I needed to issue an apology either. -- Jim Regan 05:56 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

BTW take a look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and let me know what you think. Eloquence, a normally very nice german guy, has a bee in his bonnet about using the dating format of dd/mm/yy. He insists we should use mm/dd/yy which things used to be written in up until a few months ago. He also dislikes British english being used on wiki and would prefer if we used both American dating and American english. Or as a compromise, that he could tolerate British english if non-Americans agreed to use American mm/dd/yy dating. I delivered a rather long and sharp attack on his arguments on the above page. I'd love to hear your views on it. FearÉIREANN 11:59 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * You know, I've been staring at that page for 15 minutes, and can't think of much to say. I presumed from your comments that some misguided people were literally using numerical dates dd/mm, mm/dd &c. In that case, I would have votes for ISO dates, but since the issue is different, 22 June vs June 22, I don't see the problem. Honestly, I wasn't fully aware that the 22 June form could be used, and have been using the American style. Though, mostly I've been writing pages about bands, albums etc and most of them are American anyway - though I have not once used an American spelling - I'd be too confused (confuzed?).


 * I've been taking part in Distributed Proofreaders, and while there, mostly focussing on Vol. 2 of the 1911 ed. of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. AFAIR, this was before the company moved to the US, and since that encyclopaedia has a mixture of conventions across articles, I fail to see why some people find it so unprofessional/inconsistent/bad here. In fact, since I started here, and started seeing these little tiffs over "standardizing" on AE, I've found myself flicking through other encyclopaedias to see how they do it, and I don't recall seeing any difference. Maybe I'll actually take a survey--I doubt it'll placate the hardcore AE people, but it'd be nice to have. -- Jim Regan 13:48 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

To be honest I am utterly puzzled by Eloquence's stance. I don't see how using 27 June rather than June 27 is going to cause the end of civilisation as we know it. (civilization?) Given there was agreement to use either, and the redirects are all in place, his argument I find odd in the extreme. Oh. The joys of a Sunday afternoon! lol. FearÉIREANN 14:02 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Now, you're not suggesting that some people have too much time on their hands, now are you? :) It's amazing what people get passionate about. Oh well. -- Jim Regan 14:31 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The thing with Michael Hardy is he has done this before with political science pages and it is getting irritating, to put it mildly. But in this case he changed the actual formula, removed an important definition phrase and mucked up on the capitalisation for the umptheenh time. I have asked him before that if he has any doubts to raise questions on the relevant talk page first before makingh wholescale changes but he never does. He just bulldozes ahead and I am fed up as a political scientist regularly having to clean up after his mess. But the changes to Droop Quota hit a new low. He obviously doesn't know what the Droop Quota is but still changed everything anyway. If a student wrote the formula as adjusted by him they would get an F- and a bollocking from their professor. FearÉIREANN 23:30 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Oh, an ongoing thing. Maybe you need to lart him. -- Jim Regan 00:18 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Not that he knows me from Adam, but tell him 'Happy Birthday' for me, eh? Phil Bordelon 07:28 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I did, but he all he's interested in at the moment is his party and his presents. -- Jim Regan 07:51 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Just passing through on an obsessive quest to remove links to disambiguation pages ;) Regards -- sannse 23:26 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Thanks! -- Jim Regan 23:34 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I hope I am doing this right... anyway, I stubbed Rockapella and Tekserve is not meant as an advert. Sorry. -- Etan

I added some basic info on Pearl Jam's albums. I didn't know that you were working on them, so you might have to edit and/or merge your info. -- Dori Jul 7 2003

Thanks for the info. By the way, is there any way of entering date/time automatically? --Dori Jul 8 2003

Just saw your question to TUK-KAT - I'm not sure if he's around at the moment, so I'll chip in: you can get details of Billboard chart positions from allmusic.com (search for the album, and the appropriate link is on the album page). --Camembert

If you would help take the appropriate steps (pop punk page I was working on) to delete everything cached past the March date, I'd appreciate it so no one else goes back to it. I screwed up and put the latest page up there instead of the first one, but I don't want to try again because it would still leave the old ones there. I don't know how to do it and I don't want to get in trouble. Plus I am going on vacation in a few hours and I can't deal with this right now. Many thanks. P.S. Did you go to Notre Dame? Or maybe that was a different guy I am thinking about. --weezer76


 * Well, deleting specific revisions is being worked on, but not there yet; all we can do is revert, and note in the summary that it's being done for copyright reasons. Secondly, I'm not an admin, so I wouldn't be able to help you directly in any case, but simply reverting copyright violations seems to work for the vast majority of cases. Don't worry about causing trouble, you made a simple mistake, and have taken the steps to correct it. And no, I didn't go to Notre Dame :) -- Jim Regan 19:43 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Not an admin? Isn't it about time you were? :) -- sannse 20:00 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * First time it came up. Well, apart from those pages with little bits of vandalism, but they've always been deleted within minutes of my blanking them. But I'll take that as a vote of confidence, so thanks. -- Jim Regan 20:09 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Well I won't push - but it's just as quick to delete as blank when you have the buttons... and it saves any being missed... and it saves someone else doing it... and I'll shut up and leave you alone now ;) -- sannse


 * I tried it out before on test. I'll try it out again and see if it fits... -- Jim Regan

- Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban signed in users. What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban anonymous vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Votes for deletion for more than a week, protect pages when asked to by other members, and help keep the few protected pages there are, among them the precious Main Page, up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information at Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun! --Eloquence 21:17 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

OK, I want to know the find-copyrighted-text trick (like Donny Hathaway). -- ESP 05:02 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I used this query on google; just picked a phrase that looked relatively unusual. My first search had the name on the bottom of the page, Michelle E Smith. I'd have picked a different phrase if the second hadn't worked. -- Jim Regan 05:08 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi Jim, I've put forward some other ideas about how to make the VFD page more user-friendly and more decisive. They are on the Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion. I'd welcome your observations. lol FearÉIREANN 00:47 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

- Sorry for the late reply, but I've been out-of-town. The chart positions come from allmusic.com Near the bottom of the first section is:

Charts & Awards 	Click here for Billboard Chart Positions & GRAMMY Awards

Tuf-Kat


 * Before I left, there were no dissenters to the view that album covers would certainly qualify under fair use since Wikipedia is a non-profit, education and reporting organization, and the image could not replace the original product (nobody buys the album solely for the cover, and if they did, a blurry print-out would hardly suffice). Tuf-Kat

You've made the most recent edit on a number of [http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=67.121.191.130 Michael edit. s]. Are you vouching for the accuracy of them? I need to know so I know which to blank. --Dante Alighieri 18:13 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes. If you look at At the Drive-In, almost every detail is different between my edits and his. -- Jim Regan 18:27 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * OK, no problemo. I'll just get rid of the ones without your revisions. --Dante Alighieri 19:36 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

- Yo Jim, thought I'd let you know I un-stubbed your article Killswitch Engage. TopCamel