User talk:Leitmanp/Archive 3

Re:Notice
Wow, Leitmanp, I am very sorry. You're correct; I guess I just completely missed your message. I was actually waiting to hear your reply, not knowing you had already given one! I'll have to keep better track of my talk page... :) Again, I am so sorry.

Well, here is my long overdue reply. I would happy to co-found a WikiPoject with you; it is really not that difficult. I will post a proposal at WikiProject Council/Proposals, and then we just wait until there is a respectable amount of members (which I doubt will take very long) before moving the project to a user subpage, and then finally to the main wikispace. I will gladly format the page, as I have also co-founded WP:ENGINEERING and WP:SKYSCRAPERS. I think it is about time that Dubai gets the level of attention on Wikipedia it deserves. :)

And please don't feel overwhelmed by the FTD; you are doing a great level of work jusdt by adding references to pages. It is a very long process, and I also feel that it can just be too difficult at times. Don't feel pressured to do any more work than you feel you have time or energy for. The main problem that I have is actually creating articles for all of the buildings; OOODDD did a great job for the Dubai list, but I personally find the task so tedious and boring that I hardly ever get around to it. If you can create articles for even a handful of the redlinked buildings on the Chicago, Houston, or New York City pages, it would be a great help. But, again, if you don't feel that you have the time to do so; don't worry at all; there are no requirements for joining the FTD.

And, on another note, I would like to thank you for fixing my terrible spelling mistakes on some of the building pages! :) I guess I just missed many of them on the edit preview...

So, again, I am very sorry. Please don't feel that you were rude in any way; it was I who was rude to you by not responding. I promise that I will never take this long to reply in the future! Cheers, Rai - me  13:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I have submitted a proposal for WikiProject Dubai here. Cheers, Rai - me  13:28, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It took the Skyscrapers project about a month to get 4 interested users, but after we moved it to the wikispace it got about 10 participants in only a few weeks. So it really depends, but for Dubai I would say that it might not take more than two weeks. What do you think about exapnding the project to all of the UAE? I personally think that Dubai should and can have its own, but the UAE idea was broght up at the proposals page. Then again, there seems to be a WikiProject Western Asia/United Arab Emirates work group, but that work group seems to be a little too broad in its focus, IMHO. So I personally think that we should stick with just Dubai. Comments? Cheers, Rai - me  19:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, and yes - inviting potentially interested users is definitely a good idea. Cheers, Rai - me  19:20, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * That was basically what I thought, that and the fact that it is just a workgroup (which seems far too small to cover just Dubai's articles, let alone those of the entire UAE). "IMHO" stands for "in my honest opinion." Cheers, Rai - me  01:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Usually, it is when they are complete. But for Dubai, since the future template is so huge, I think we should make an exception. Perhaps we should create a new "Topped out" section for the completed buildings template and move all U/C, topped out buildings there? Cheers, Rai - me  02:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * (un-indent) Those articles look great. I made a few changes in each, hopefully they will help. But the articles certainly meet WP:SKY specifications. Just a few pointers:


 * You may want to incorporate Emporis and SkyscraperPage refs into the text as citations rather than as ELs. In the past, Hydrogen Iodide and I have run into AfD problems for articles that are not cited internally. You can see two articles I (sort of) recently wrote, Heller International Building and Boulder Towers, as examples for citing very short stubs.
 * is actually a code in the infobox for marking when a building lost the title of tallest building in the world, so you can just leave that field blank.
 * This is just a personal preference, but I like using  in the infobox. This just involves a "STARTYEAR - FINISHEDYEAR" parameter, and fills in the   section automatically. Again, this is just a personal preference.
 * Floor actually links to an article about a floor in a room; storey is the correct article to link to.
 * WP:UNITS states that the format "the x-foot (z m) building" should be used - just remember the hyphen, and always spell out "feet" or "foot".
 * Thank you very much for creating building articles. You are doing a great job - keep up the good work! Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.


 * On a different note, I think it is almost time to create a user sub-page pre-WikiProject for the future WP:DUBAI. The proposal has gained several members in a short amount of time, no doubt thanks to your excellent recruiting. I was thinking that I would create the sub-page this weekend, and then hopefully the project will be ready to move to main wikispace in a week or so. Do you think this is a good idea? Cheers, Rai - me  02:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Dubai
Thanks for your note &mdash; I've added my name to the Wiki Project. AreJay (talk) 03:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Did you know...
Hey Leitmanp, I like your work on skyscraper articles. I just expanded General Motors Building (New York), which you recently started, and nominated it for DYK, hope you don't mind. Maybe you already knew this but with new articles, if you start them beyond a threshold of 1500 characters, you can add them to the main page in the "Did you know..." section. Regards, dvd  rw  06:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks Leitmanp, replying to your question, I think the count is based on characters of writing not on the number of bytes which may be greater due to metadata along the lines of categories, info boxes, interwikis, image code, and captions. It is more of a judgment call with the base number at 1500 characters of text. The instructions are here:, note that also accepted are expansions of stubs or prior articles five fold and beyond the threshold of 1500. Regards, dvd  rw  03:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Project UAE / Dubai
Hi Leitmanp, thanks for the project invite. I think the project should be called Project UAE, I'm not sure I'll be able to actively participate just to Dubai (Where I work) related articles, since lots of developement is ongoing in the northern emirates as well, like Ajman (Where I live). Fortunately less advertized. If that's alright, then I'm in!

—IncidentFlux (talk) 11:29, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Jumeirah Beach Hotel
Thanks for cleaning up that article. I had tried to get rid of the random info in there, but I think you did a better job than me. ;) I only hope the Atlantis Dubai Hotel doesn't get cluttered up with advertising like the Atlantis Bahamas article. I was working on that (Atl Bahamas) article last night as well. I read your User Page and we have the same interest in Dubai. It's only been during the past 2 or 3 months that I've been paying attention to the city, but I can't stop learning about it.--AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to try to write my first article...about the Dubai Marina Towers. I don't believe the building project has its own article yet. I've been editing article the past 2 weeks or so to get some experience before creating an article, but alas, I don't even see the button to create one. Plus, is it appropriate to use the images of the towers I found or is that considered copyrighted material?--AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 20:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, my bad. I didn't see those articles. Don't know if you saw this story today, but it might be noteworthy in one of the articles:  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080120194438.btvx361t&show_article=1           --AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 21:24, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Re:WikiProject Dubai Tasks
Here is what I think we need to do: I'm not really sure what you mean by "deciding on the importance scale" - it is just another rating, and all that needs to be done is the creation of appropriate categories. (For example, Category:Top-importance Dubai articles) Is this what you were asking?
 * Create 3 new project banner templates for categories, images, and templates
 * Create an Invitation and a Welcome template
 * Develop WikiProject Dubai/Assessment (We can model it after WikiProject Skyscrapers/Assessment)
 * Expand the to-do list (It's a litte too short at present)
 * Create a Collaboration of the Week (I think this project really needs one, as many of the articles need significant work)
 * Create a WP:DUBAI userbox (not very important, but it should eventually happen)
 * Create appropriate categories for Ratings and Important Ratings (Not at all hard - See Category:B-Class Skyscraper articles as an example.)

I don't really know how long this will take; it took a little over a month for WP:SKY, but it varies per project. Hopefully we can have this ready to move to the mainspace by the end of this weekend.

However, unfortunately, I am going to be extremely busy for the next week in real life, so will not be able to assist until at least this Friday or Saturday. I am very sorry for my lack of contributions! I will assist with anything you need me to do when I get back, and I will be checking my talk page from time to time, so just drop me a note if you need anything. Thanks, Rai - me  21:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Great job on creating those templates. They all look terrific! Do you think we need to do anything else to the project page?


 * Also, I have a question. Since you are a Dubai expert, do you think it would be wise to separate the Dubai article into two separate articles about the city and the emirate? It seems odd that the two are combined (which is not the case with Abu Dhabi), and it makes the focus of the article very confusing in many areas. I have posted my thoughts here. Cheers, Rai - me  04:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * You don't need to have co-founded WikiProjects to have an opinion on the appearance or content of a page. I am just asking if you think that anything on the page should be reworded, expanded, reformatted, etc. If you don't have an opinion on the matter, then that it is fine.


 * I think, however, the project is now pretty much up to par with WP:SKY; the only thing that I think we really should consider doing is starting a Dubai WP:COTW. As HI already noted, many of the pages are a mess, and perhaps focusing on one per week wold help bring them to higher quality standards. I also think a template page may be a good idea (see WikiProject Engineering/Templates). Also, FWIW, I didn't co-found WP:WPARCH; that was created far before my becoming an editor on Wikipedia by much more experienced users - you can probably tell from the project's very impressive format and departments.


 * No, I don't think we should welcome users who joined the project prior to the creation of the welcome template. We should welcome any users who join the project from here on out. Cheers, Rai - me  13:49, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think it would be a very good idea to start work on stub templates, but they must first be proposed at WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. I was thinking a stub for Dubai in general Dubai-stub, followed by one for buildings and structures Dubai-struct-stub, and then finally one for transporation Dubai-transport-stub. We can just use UnitedArabEmirates-geo-stub and UnitedArabEmirates-bio-stub for articles on towns/locales and people, respectively. Does that sound good?


 * And I will begin to work on the template page, and I also think we should bring up a proposal for a project ACID on the WP:DUBAI talk page. Did you have any ideas for the ACID? I think that with the fairly poor state of many Dubai articles, it may be more reasonable to simply working on improving Stub- and Start-class articles to B-class, rather than working to improve articles to GAs or FAs (the Dubai article itself seems to be one of the few that is reasonably close to GA).


 * I have created Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Dubai articles by quality log, Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Dubai articles by quality, and Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Dubai articles by quality statistics‎, so hopefully the 1.0 bot will generate an articles by quality template within the next few days. Cheers, Rai - me  19:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Importance can be difficult to determine. Generally, just try to use common sense - only articles which would be "vital" to keep on Wikipedia for coverage of Dubai (Burj Dubai, Burj Al Arab, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai International Airport, and of course Dubai, for example) should really be graded as Top-importance. High-importance ones would be the city's demographics article, transporation article, tallest building list, etc. Mid- would be the taller but not overly well-known skyscrapers, while Low- would be the majority of the city's skyscrapers, company articles, etc. Let me know if you have any specific questions on importance grading for articles; it can be very difficult. Many projects actually choose to leave out an importance grading scheme, as it can be very biased. You're thoughts on ACID seem great. What article(s) did you have in mind? Oh, and I think we should hold off with the template page until after we merge all of the articles; the merging will be time consuimng. Just remember to include a section like this on the final talk page, for GFDL conformity reasons. Cheers, Rai - me  20:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I would say that Dubai Creek, as a landmark of Dubai, should be Top-importance, while the older historic districts (possibly all neighborhoods) should be mid-importance (for comparison, districts of New York City such as Greenwich Village are Mid-importance for WP:NYC). Those articles seem very suitable for ACID. Should we do two at a time, possibly one for expansion and another for clean-up? Also, do you think it is appropriate to list shopping malls on the Dubai landmarks template? Perhaps a separate template should be created? It just seems rather odd to me. Rai - me  21:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Too many articles on Dubai buildings?
I didn't realize exactly how many of the buildings created for the FL pass of List of tallest buildings in Dubai were in the same complexes. We really don't need to have separate articles for buildings in the same complex; would you be in support of merging them? Another editor has expressed concern here about the "messy" status of the Dubai buildings category and the articles in general, and I have to say I agree. There is no need to have several stubs when they can all be covered by one large, well-referenced article. Example - Jumeirah Lake Towers can cover every building in the large complex. Comments? Cheers, Rai - me  05:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Burj Dubai
Hi, I noticed to reverted a change with "Toronto is considered a world-renowned city; country not necessary", but the IP-editor removed the country - your edit actually added the country back into the article. Was that a mistake or did you get the summary wrong? Astronaut (talk) 02:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I've nearly fallen for that one too - reading the difference the wrong-way-round. Anyway I'm in favour of dropping the country (and perhaps state/province as well) for major world cities ie. country capitals, and some other big cities like Toronto, Chicago, Shanghai, New York City, etc.  If readers really don't know where these cities are, they can always click on the wikilink.  As for "Canada", I suggest we Blame Canada :-)  Astronaut (talk) 02:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, Wikipedia's MAnual of Style might have something to say about that. Astronaut (talk) 02:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah... here's the link I was looking for WP:Naming conventions Astronaut 87.112.1.193 (talk) 02:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Dubai population
Did you want to leave the population table the way it is or update it with the 2006 population found right beside it. If you think it should stay the same since it has the census from every 10 years (1985, 1995, 2005), then that's totally cool.--AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 03:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * All I can find is the 2006 population, but I'll keep searching. --AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 03:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Building heights and floor counts in infoboxes
Do you think putting this data in a list, such as here in this HK building complex article, is better than the way it is right now in South Ridge (Dubai). Although the floor counts and building heights are arranged from highest to lowest, some shorter buildings may actually contain more floors than taller skyscrapers. This can happen if the building complex contains office, residential, mixed-use, or hotel towers, where the floor to ceiling heights are different for each building. For example, compare the Lake Point Tower (645 feet / 197 m with 70 floors) and the Al Kazim Towers, (865 feet / 269 m with only 53 floors). A short list would be better suited in presenting this data, rather than an infobox. It seems more reader-friendly that way as well. Cheers. Trance addict 02:15, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

merging dubai articles
i want to help merge some of the articles mentioned on the project page, but i've never merged an article before. i've tried to search for the instructions on the wiki help pages, but i think it's the move button at top? i don't want to mess with it in case i'm doing it wrong. anyway, sorry to bug you about it, but if you can tell me how to merge articles i'd appreciate it.--AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 00:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
 * thanks for the instructions. it seems kinda complicated and maybe i should wait until i'm more familiar with the site until i merge...cause like i said before, i don't want to screw anything up. lol. BTW, you've probably already seen this site, but i found it today and thought you might like to see it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AgnosticPreachersKid (talk • contribs) 01:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Change FL-class back to FA-class?
Well, it appears that per discussion at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index, "FL-class" articles will not appear on automatically generated worklists such as Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skyscraper articles by quality statistics and the newly created Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Dubai articles by quality statistics at least for now. I think we may want to consider reverting all of the lists back to FA-class; with the FTD going on for WP:SKY, it is important to note and keep track of which lists are featured, and this is facilitated by inclusion in the worklists with "FA-class" taggings. Also, for WP:DUBAI, I think the sole FL of the project, and the only quality article of any type for that matter, is very important to include in the worklist. Thoughts? Cheers, Rai - me  22:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I meant change FL back to FA for both WikiProjects, and will go ahead and do so with your support. I think The Index (Dubai) would be more appropriate, and would support a move; however, there is no set standard to follow - this could fall into the same group as Asia (building) in Miami, or Wind (Miami). Do you think we should move both Asia (building) and The Index (skyscraper) to Asia (Miami) and The Index (Dubai), respectively? I would definitely say that Al Burj is still proposed; Emporis still has it listed as proposed, as does SkyscraperPage. The two sites were very quick to define the changeover for proposed to U/C for the Chicago Spire (I belived that piling itself was not determined to make the building officially under construction), and I suspect they will also do the same for such a monumental project as Al Burj when the time comes. Until then, let's keep it in the proposed section. Cheers, Rai - me  03:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think we need to, as even if we reach consensus on the WP:SKY talk page, we would still need to propose a new convention at WP:NC. You may be interested in this, the old building/architecture naming guideline of WP:NC that has since been disregarded. Cheers, Rai - me  04:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think so; renaming the articles (I have already renamed the Miami building to Asia (Miami)) would be for consistency reasons, as all other Miami and Dubai buildings use the NAME (CITY) format. Waiting for a naming policy to be created would be necessary if we were to rename Singapore building articles, which seem to for the most part use the NAME, CITY format. However, as this is not the case with either Miami or Dubai building articles, we really don't need to wait. Cheers, Rai - me  04:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

UAE work group
Noticed your recently joining the above group. Unfortunately, with the creation of the separate Dubai project, it struck me as being more than a bit irrelevant, and, in fact, separate Projects for each emirate were also created later. I honestly, stupidly, forgot about this one. My own involvement, such as it is expected to be, will probably be regarding assessment and working on the most important articles thereafter, so it's basically your call which if any of the groups regarding the UAE, including the extant projects for each emirate listed on the WikiProject Western Asia page, get deleted, merged, or whatever. At the very least, however, the extant page should probably be formally named WikiProject. The other groups could be potentially made subprojects of it. Yes, believe me, I know Ajman only has about seven articles to date, and that isn't necessarily enough for a separate project. Several of the others are in no better shape. They were created stupidly in response to the creation of the WikiProject Dubai. Please inform me of your decision. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 23:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Al Burj
I heard this 1 km skyscraper began construction not too long ago. I was about to move the Al Burj entry in the Dubai building list, but I decided to confirm its status with you. Is Al Burj really under construction, or are they still doing soil testing / prep work? Thanks. Cheers. Trance addict 06:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I think these pictures here confirm the location of Al Burj. It seems like it's located southwest of the Dubai Marina near the power plant and the power lines. Cheers. Trance addict  07:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Question
There seems to be some dispute over which city in the world has the most skyscrapers over 500 feet. It appears that if one counts skyscrapers nominally (like Emporis does), Hong Kong has the most with 197 skyscrapers, while New York City has 189 skyscrapers. However, many HK skyscrapers, as you can see here, share a common podium, so a five skyscraper building complex (as in the example) is equivalent to only one freestanding skyscraper. This means NYC comes in with the most freestanding skyscrapers. But how can we verify that all 189 skyscrapers in NYC are all free standing and which measure should we use (free standing skyscraper or just skyscraper) when the building list mentions the number of skyscrapers a city contains? An as a note, I suspect many skyscrapers in Chinese cities and several in Dubai share a common podium. Cheers. Trance addict 05:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Drug trafficking and human rights
Every human rights organization on the planet links drug trafficking with human rights. I'm confused by your edits, but since you merely removed unsourced content, I'll rewrite it with sources. Thanks. &mdash;Viriditas | Talk 08:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Highways
Well, a highway is just a major road. In this case, these are numbered routes, which generally count as highways. --NE2 23:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)