User talk:JohnOwens/2003-2004

Dear John: Hi1 Im glad I make you laugh with my nick names thats the whole purpose, to lighten it up a little around here. Ill try to not have them on the deletion page. Just onre question, whats the meaning of the word imdention?

Thank you and God bless you!

Sincerely yours Antonio Haren leader Martin

Dear John: Hey! Thanks for the clarification! I gotta admit, for people like me, the ones at the boxing and video games department..LOL words like Indention are hard to understand. Ill try to do it the way you told me, that way the format on the votes for deletion page looks nicer and better.

Meanwhile, check these two articles I began work on today: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Billy Conn. I hope you like them and feel free to put your valuable help on them!

Thanks and God bless you!

Sincerely yours, Antonio Lost Soul Martin

Thanks John. Slip over to Talk:Koala - maybe there is something in it. Tannin

Tom Peters on fumocy: I was still adding content while you were editing. I am not clear on what you were changing, but I may have overwritten some of your edits. I am ready for now, so please modify as required.

Dumb question that nobody answered on the mailing list - how do I recognize a Michael edit? I saw the Bullhead change go by, but thought to myself "random anon with a random factoid, happens all the time" and didn't pay any further attention. Just wanting to do my part! Stan 23:53 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * The album formula is this: one- or two-sentence stub followed by a track listing. The first sentence will be something like this: "The Real Thing is an album by Faith No More, released on June 20, 1989."  The sentence will link album (go figure) and give not just the year of release but also sometimes the month and exact date.  The second sentence, if there is one, will typically mention and link to KROQ, a radio station that's apparently given Michael a deep religious experience.  Dates, album titles, and track listings will often be incorrect in one or more ways.  There will be little or no mention of context of the album, group, or songs, or why anyone should care about them.  He also favors the years in music pages, as well as heavy metal and punk bands, as well as pop/punk bands like Green Day.  Koyaanis Qatsi 00:05 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * If it's that and/or a matter of recognizing IP addresses by range, that's conceptually straightforward. Presumably somebody has to sing out about an IP address so that innocents don't get trashed?  (As an old net snob, I'm OK with just pre-banning all AOL addresses, but I guess that's considered too unfriendly :-) :-) ). Stan 00:13 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Watch for the phrase "and sometimes punk band" in the description of the band in the first sentence. It seems he needs to resolve with himself whenever he edits an album/biography page relating to a non-punk band. -- Jimregan


 * Well it's becoming increasingly obvious that IP bans don't work. (and yes, I believed for quite awhile that they did.)  AOL serves quite a lot of people, and they're using dynamic IPs, so you could conceivably block Michael for 5 minutes, and then it's someone else entirely being blocked (it happens a bit; I've forgotten to whom, though).  As far as accidentally reverting someone else's work, I've yet to see a complaint about it--Michael's work, while consistently untrustworthy, is also at least fairly consistently formatted.  If he adopted a new format, we'd figure it out soon enough.  Oh, and as I'm sure you've noticed, he likes to leave edit summaries that are either profane, physically threatening, or tell you that you are fired.  Koyaanis Qatsi 00:23 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I am finding it impossible to make needed edits because my account (Iseeaboar) has been blocked. Presumably, my IP address was blocked in the past because of Michael.

Boilerplate
I see you are experimenting with boilerplate. I'm hoping for something along the lines of:

Quality alert!
''The article previously seen in this space was so fundamentally similar to excrement that detecting the difference would require the prolonged application of a post-nuclear excrement-detector from the 25th century. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it.''

Reality alert!
The article has no discernable connection with what the more mundane Wikipedians have chosen to call reality''. You can help Wikipedia by finding that connection.''

Well, perhaps not -- Someone else 19:44 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Or: POV alert! this article is so ragingly POV that both Noam Chomsky and Pat Robertson have condemned it as extreme.  Click "edit this page" and see if you can do better.  Koyaanis Qatsi 19:47 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Heh, actually, I didn't so much copy that boilerplate stuff over to experiment with it as to have one with the ones I use most right up at the top, so I don't have to go down two or three pages to get to the copyright boilerplate, for instance.


 * So of course, your additions are going right to the top.... ;) -- John Owens 19:49 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, I changed voting in takepage of inheritance (object-oriented programming) so that the course of further contributions can be clear. -- Taku 03:44 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Recent edit summary is aimed at the anonymous contributor, not you. ^_^ Best,  Koyaanis Qatsi

Ahh, I'm glad you asked, John.

A Bivine, although little-known in the northern hemisphere, is a very common species of Australian spelling error. The northern form, long since driven to extinction by competition from faster-breeding errors such as the potatoe and the aluminum airplane, is now found only in museums.. The southern form, however, remains widespread. Bivines breed during the long nights of the southern winter and, according to Australian Bivine specialist Dr Tannin, are frequently found huddled together in small clumps underneath the shelter of rusting manual typewriters. Although not classed as dangerous, bivines can have a nasty bite if unexpectedly disturbed, and the reader is advised to seek specialist advice before attempting to domesticate them. Bivines are protected under Australian law, and their export is strictly prohibited without a licence.

Thanks for improving the code on lots of my aircraft pictures, it's appreciated. Unhappily I'm clueless on the correct code so I rely on other people to put me right. Adrian Pingstone 10:31 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Re comment to Arpingstone, you'll be a true Wikipedian when you go buy a digital camera just so you can use it to take pictures for articles! :-) (Ironically, I'm soon to get a scanner so I can add pictures of all the remote places I went to, before I had the digital camera...) Stan 21:40 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In case you didn't already know, I've created a group watchlist of sorts at Favorite pages of banned users to help with tracking when Michael is vandalizing (and any future vandals like him). So feel free too use it, I have already found it helpful, and please add to it when he vandalizes more. Thanks. MB 22:10 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John. I don't know if you were a user at the time but some months ago a user called Scipius tried to screw up the Republic of Ireland page. He wanted to call it simply Ireland even though the page is only on the RofI, and everyone else told him it should be called the Rep of Irl. He tried to change facts and got into a major row with his pre-occupation with changing things to his own highly inaccurate understanding of Irish history, culture, politics, etc.

Now he is back again and trying to rewrite the agreed template on the RofI page; one of his recurring insistences for example, is in suggesting that the Irish and english languages have equality of status, by removing a simple reference to the Irish language being defined as the national language and english as a (not the) secondary language. On past evidence, he will simply keep reverting the page again and again and again, ignoring any past consensus reached until it people can get it clear to him that he is not getting his way. So it would be a great help if you could keep an eye on the page and tell him that the page as it is (I reverted his changes) is factually accurate and his 'version' is factually inaccurate and simplistic. lol FearÉIREANN 03:04 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Surely you meant to link to Related Changes of the vandals' favourite pages, rather than the back links? :-) Evercat 22:44 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In Ft McCoy, Florida what do you mean when you said "hr had to go"? I will never figure out all the secret handshakes here. Rich J 00:05 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

How do you get "Disambiguation" into a title like you did with eagle? Rich J 00:11 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm in no hurry; reply when you can. I should have been clearer. How do you get disambiguation into the title of a page that is already a disambiguation page? See Dion Rich J 00:33 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, John, for catching the edit to my homepage. The Anome 21:00 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John, I can't say I see any difference on my user page compared to before your edit, but thanks anyway. I wouldn't have thought that there are actually people who have a look at it. By the way, the horse chestnut is what I see when I look out of my bedroom window. And as it's five to twelve here, that's where I'm going now. All the best, --KF 21:55 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I see. No, I didn't know that we could use [[Media:Whatever.jpg]] for that purpose. Well, that's what lifelong learning is all about. Thanks again, and good night. --KF 22:09 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi! A question: did you protect User:Punk's page? I am just curious. I went to and in the process got the impression it was already protected though the screen didn't tell me. (I am new to this sysop stuff and just getting the hang of it.) I am not sure whether it was you or I that did the protecting. Just in terms of helping me get the hang of all of this, I am just wondering if you had already protected the page before I made a move to. Oh the joys of Michael. Maybe we should rename him Rasputin - he is as annoying as Rasputin and is just as difficult to get rid of. Though his days are hopefully numbered. lol FearÉIREANN 23:58 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Glad to be of service, John. In the UK, all heron-type birds with straight necks in flight are scarce or rare, so a passing spoonbill, crane or stork instantly attracts attention. Btw, I was astonished how tame the Sandhills could be in Florida, when I went last October. They were in town-centre parks, and we even saw a couple on a large front lawn in a posh housing development. as for the Sandhill and Whooping Crane articles, it seems fitting to me that an American should write them..... jimfbleak 06:05 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I knew you were an American, that was just a bit of subtle (?) reinforcement. The USFWS site at http://images.fws.gov/ has a searchable picture library which you might want to look at. We are both famiar with the N.Am cranes, and I've seen Common and Black-crowned. My daughter sent me a postcard of a Sarus Crane from India (she's doing a round-the-world backpack), and Grey-crowned is like Black-crowned, apart from the obvious, so there won't be many to sort out. Jim


 * just out of idle curiosity, where did Eurasian Crane come from? I know species have different names between (and even within) countries, but I've not seen this one. National Geographic guide uses Common, and Sibley omits it. Incidently I've just come across the fourth different name for Hume's Ground Chough (which apparently isn't a chough anyway.  jimfbleak


 * fair enough, although it's a new one to me. It's certainly not common in the UK either, so it's a logical name. No such thing as Euro-centric of course (LOL), and as for the C-word (c-word), I think I'll have to lie down for a bit. Jim

- About the deletions page - "Pay heed" to what? I assume that I am violating some rule here ; if you could steer me in the direction of it? Thanks. Arno 11:38 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ooops. Should have put the flounders versus founders here. I'll change your page back. User:Robertkeller

I put a temporary protection on the Off the wall (album) page to keep Michael off it. Otherwise that will probably become one of those annoying Michael revertion pages. If you don't think it is a good idea, feel free to lift it. FearÉIREANN 00:08 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hello John, need a suggestion about a red and blue colour for User:Fonzy/sandbox as I dont think the standard ff0000 and 0000ff looks good. -fonzy

I think adding an image size to it's description page is entirely sensible. If I were you I'd go ahead an add it to Image use policy straight away. Theresa knott 12:54 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

-What?? Are you talking too me? -fonzy


 * No, she was talking to me, but not everyone is as anal-retentive pedantic about those &lt;hr&gt; things as I am. -- John Owens 23:38 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ok BTW you did not respond to my message (above hers). -fonzy

But, but, but... I went to Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, and at the bottom it clearly says to add new stuff to More bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, so I did. :-P Evercat 11:41 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I hope not. I don't want to be fired! :-P -- Notheruser 21:42 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John,

Have you voted yet on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles)?. I am afraid that wiki is about to make a major captioning error. It seems to be voting to putting the year first when naming elections, sports events, etc. While people often do so in spoken english, in titles and captions it doesn't do so, because to do so makes the year the central fact, whereas in reality what the event is is central, the year the disambigulation point. For example, media outlets caption election coverage as Election 2000, General Election 2000, Presidential Election 2000 etc because the the fact that it is an election is the main fact to know, that it is a general/presidential/local/state/congressional election central. We have been following this rule for ages on wiki, so we have everything from UK general election, 1970 to U.S. presidential election, 1932 to Irish general election, 2002, etc. Moving to 1932 US presidential election goes against standard media caption style and would involve the wholescale renaming of pages covering elections and all sorts of events from all over the globe. You are talking about hundreds if not thousands of pages having to be renamed and go against standard caption style, which is often called the where what, when rule. After all, people if they are searching for a page on an election will use the name of the election as their entry point for a list (particularly if they don't know the year). Typing in a search for ''U.S. presidential election throws up a clear orderly list of US presidential elections, with the disambigulation year at the end uniformly.

As you may guess, I do think wiki's proposed to system would amount to a pointless waste of energy in remaining vast numbers of pages, especially when it is to a format that is generally not used in titles and captions but only in speech. And this debate is all about titles. So I am canvassing support to vote down what I think is a flawed, ill thought through and pointless that originated initially with Adam Rinkleff (in the Susan Mason persona) some months ago and survived as an idea after SM was banned. lol FearÉIREANN 01:31 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well I was tired after all the canvassing!!! I hope you voted. :-)

I liked the Aztalan article, John. As a Brit, you can imagine it covers a subject about which I know nothing, but one of the virtues of Wikipedia at its best is that it provides a painless education ( although some of the maths articles might as well be in a foreign language-and I have maths qualifications!) jimfbleak 06:08 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Upon closer inspection, when the michael-like user isn't blanking the Grammy Awards of 1962 article, he/she is copying and pasting information into the article from the Grammy Awards of 1971 article....strange behavior, to say the least. Kingturtle 07:32 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oi! Hands off my pictures! :) Lucky I saw it before I logged off... -- Tim Starling 16:23 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John, User:Eloquence does not seem to realise that it was agreed some months ago to allow the usage of both dd/mm/yy and mm/dd/yy. (Apparently the Manual of Style was not updated to reflect this consensus change). I have tried to explain it to him but he still seems unconvinced. Could you are an editor extraordinaire :-) explain it to him. I don't want to see edit wars breaking out on the issue but he is adamant that mm/dd/yy is the correct wiki style and wants to change every dd/mm/yy to mm/dd/yy. FearÉIREANN 20:59 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John, regarding your summary comment on Earth, I'll explain a bit. A moon is the general name for a type of natural satellite. "Luna" is the specific name of Earth's moon. I expected the moon article to have general information regarding natural satellites. I will rephrase that sentence. -- Rotem Dan 12:00 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

7 new pages, probably Michael, can I just delete them? They are:


 * Piece Of Mind
 * Frogstomp
 * Blaze (album)
 * Pennywise (album)
 * Lagwagon
 * Dropkick Murphys
 * Silverchair

Evercat 20:58 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

John, Do you feel like wearing your adjudicator hat today? I made some edits yesterday in the "Martin Luther" article, basically cutting a lot of what seemed to me to be "special pleading" but also making what I thought were fairly judicious rephrasings. "Moses ben Nachman" seems to me to have essentially reverted them in this history, with the comment "(adding back some relevant details)" which seems to me a dishonest description of a complete reversion, and which reminds me of the tedious process that eventually led to the inclusion, without apologetics, of a mention of Wagner's antisemitism in Wagner's article. Oddly, and perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the antisemitic tracts of both Wagner and Luther are linked to the same fairly distasteful website. Anyway, I'd like for you to take a look and tell me if I have been too aggressive in cutting. I'm hoping this doesn't degenerate into a reversion-war like that which surrounded "Wagner". -- Someone else 23:32 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * No need for immediate attention, but I appreciate you keeping an eye out. I only edited it because it seemed to be getting edited away from a NPOV, and I'd probably rather let the article get (in the words of the Colonel) "extra-crappy" than war over it. -- Someone else 00:34 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've put a welcome message on User_talk:JCarriker. If our "friend" replaces it please revert rather than delete Theresa knott 12:32 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * 03:32 9 May 2003, JohnOwens blocked 172.151.143.31 (contribs) (unblock) (repeated petty vandalism at antiseptic, alcohol, Bill Clinton)

A month is sufficient banning for five edits, perhaps? You've blocked other folks for similar lengths of time for similarly few edits - could you check your recollections of their crimes and consider unblocking them? Thanks. Martin 13:25 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If there was one today, I wasn't around for it. But I noticed the tone yesterday was a bit more frazzled-sounding than usual, especially the comment on Jimbo's talk page. - Hephaestos 23:05 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I left you a message at the Russian 'pedia, and since I think it's pretty important, I'm leaving you a message here to make sure you don't let it fall into never-never-land. -Smack 03:56 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I thought you might be interested in the opinion poll going on now at Talk:Clitoris. MB 18:03 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi John, 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 00:45 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hooray. Welcome back. :-) Evercat 20:33, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hey John, see: Talk:Alain WhisperToMe 04:28, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yea sorry about that, apparently some browsers dont read it correctly. I was going to change it back immediatly but decided to wait if there was new color for which some consensus was reached (for the aircraft pages). Othwerwise I'll go through and put them back to the hex variant of that color so reads properly for all browsers some time soon.

Greyengine5 17:22, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My apologies for the recent incidents with accidentally altering the Template:Searchhelppage and Template:Searchingwikipedia pages. I just installed a copy of Wikipedia at home, and while trying to edit those there, didn't notice that the links were taking me here instead. -- John Owens (talk) 11:17, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Help request
I'm am trying to adjust some of the local place names as used in Wikipedia. Wisconsin is one of the states that presents a sort of problem. As a fellow Wikiholic, Would you please check out my List of Wisconsin towns. I need to ensure that the opening statement is correct. Then look at the related talk page, and tell me if you think I'm going in the right direction. Thanks ... Lou I 16:40, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)