User talk:Leonard Dickens

Welcome to Wikipedia
Better late than never, right? :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Must scratch the itch. -Leonard (talk) 14:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Artefact/artifact
Why do you think 'artifacts' is the standard spelling? This site is the Artefacts Canada database. In the US, artifacts is indeed the main way it's spelled, but I wouldn't call that 'standard'. If the article was just about a US subject, I'd agree that artifact is the appropriate spelling, but for Vinland? Dougweller (talk) 16:27, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Among other things, "artefact" is the variant in wikipedia itself. Since I wanted to interlink it, it seemed sensible to change the spelling to what wiki prefers.  "Artefact" is also marked by firefox as unknown to it (I am using firefox).  But also I checked google to see the incidence of both variants in the internet as a whole, and also in wikipedia.  In both cases there are far more pages with "artifact" than "artefact".  Also, check the #1 hit in each case -- "artefact" is a video game.  "Artifact" is the wiki page.
 * As for the subject of the article, it is Vinland, which does refer to an area of what is now Canada, but was not Canada or even English-speaking when it was Vinland. So I don't think that there is a strong case for "ownership" of the concept of Vinland by Canadian English. -Leonard (talk) 18:51, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I wasn't making a case, just asking. Be careful with Google, you'd be amazed at the number of hits you get when you hit the wrong key and spell it artufact. :-) I presume you used Scholar and Books and not a general search which can be very misleading. No, you mention a video game. If you use a general search among other things you get Wikipedia and Wikipedia clone hits. I also added the word archaeology because the spelling might vary with the context/subject. But yes, artifact shows up more times, probably a reflection of US publishing dominance. It's mainly the British English vs American English that counts, if this had been a Canadian, Australian, Indian, etc article I'd be concerned. However, you should follow the guidelines set out at WP:ENGVAR including the one on maintaining the existing variety. This is just advice, I'm not going to make an issue of it. Dougweller (talk) 06:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the advice. I am actually rather amazed that anyone would notice such a small detail.  Is it really the case that wiki has people like you scrutinizing every change being made?  How is it even possible?  -Leonard (talk) 15:33, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The article is on my watchlist, I just hovered my mouse over the diff and saw the change. Do you know about watchlists? But there are indeed editors who look at every recent change. Dougweller (talk) 19:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I know about watchlists. I watch all of four articles or whatever.  It just seems odd to me to have something as obscure and random as Vinland on one's list... implying of course that there is total coverage of all articles on various people's watchlists who also care about minor details like artifact/artefact and who watch for changes at least, say, daily.  And probably more often than that.  You must have 100s of watched articles, I am guessing, and there must be thousands of people as active as you, at least, to get the kind of coverage our chat seems to imply.  Or maybe it was just luck that I happened to edit an article that you happened to watch. -Leonard (talk) 20:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I have over 4000 pages on my watchlist (talk pages and Articles counting as one page). I've got several books on Vinland also. A lot of the pages are probably editor talk pages I created when giving them welcomes, warnings or blocks, but I've still got a lot of articles that I watch! And yes, there probably are thousands of people as active as I am in various ways. Dougweller (talk) 20:27, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Notification: changes to "Mark my edits as minor by default" preference
Hello there. This is an automated message to tell you about the gradual phasing out of the preference entitled "Mark all edits minor by default", which you currently have (or very recently had) enabled.

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Thank you for your understanding and happy editing :) Editing on behalf of User:Jarry1250, LivingBot (talk) 17:12, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Edits to Spanish Civil War
I like the look of the edits you've made, but please could you repeat them on the articles linked as "main article:" at the top of the relevant sections. That way the content doesn't "fork" and become two separate works, instead of a longer and a shorter version of the same thing. Thanks Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Completely new abortion proposal and mediation
In light of the seemingly endless disputes over their respective titles, a neutral mediator has crafted a proposal to rename the two major abortion articles (pro-life/anti-abortion movement, and pro-choice/abortion rights movement) to completely new names. The idea, which is located here, is currently open for opinions. As you have been a contributor in the past to at least one of the articles, your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

The hope is that, if a consensus can be reached on the article titles, the energy that has been spent debating the titles of the articles here and here can be better spent giving both articles some much needed improvement to their content. Please take some time to read the proposal and weigh in on the matter. Even if your opinion is simple indifference, that opinion would be valuable to have posted.

To avoid accusations that this posting violates WP:CANVASS, this posting is being made to every non-anon editor who has edited either page since 1 July 2010, irrespective of possible previous participation at the mediation page. HuskyHuskie (talk) 19:47, 4 July 2011 (UTC)