User talk:MadScientistX11

Attention: Tea House Guests and New Users
Talk pages can be a bit confusing at first. If you want to leave me a message click on the "New Section" link up above (between "Edit" and "View History"). Fill in the subject for the new section (same as a subject in an email message) and then start typing. Remember to sign your message. Just click the pencil icon in the editor that looks like it's writing a squigle. Note my talk page is pretty full and new messages/sections go to the bottom so you may need to scroll down to review your message. I don't edit as often as I used to but I still usually respond to a message within 1-2 days. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:27, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Welcome
Thank you :) <3!!!
 * You are welcome... btw, It's a good idea to always remember to sign your comments on talk pages. Type in five tildas ("~") or use the signature icon that looks like a pencil writing cursive in the editor --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:43, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Request Third Party Opinion on Harmonica Hinds
I was not the original editor to add Harmonica Hinds to the article. It seems you may be defining "notable" as world famous. I would like to request a Third Opinion unless you prefer more formal dispute resolution. I will abide by a third opinion. I will wait for your response before proceeding. Thank you.--Wpwatchdog (talk) 16:55, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.
This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is "Talk: Chicago blues". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! EarwigBot  operator /  talk  18:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Betchplus
Just letting you know that there are two articles, "Scaled Agile framework" and "Simple Enterprise Agile" in play here.The discussion at the Teahouse gave me the impression that the user was only referring to  "Scaled Agile framework".
 * The article Scaled Agile framework was deleted and later restored to Draft:Scaled agile framework. The article has since been declined again at AFC review.
 * The article Simple Enterprise Agile (See this cache version) got deleted by User:Peridon and he is not prepared to restore the article into draft space. See the relevant discussion here. The user wants this page undeleted, so that he can continue with his edits.  NQ    talk  22:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks I missed that. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 23:02, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Also Thanks
Appreciate the help. I'm beginning to get the feel of the structure thanks to help like yours. - Regards Kent. Kllwiki (talk) 13:18, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Glad to help! Thanks for the feedback. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:36, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Messages from Tea House Users
Hi again, I really appreciate you taking time to talk about open access - it's cool to hear from someone who has some experience here and knows what they're talking about! The big issue with ads (in my opinion) is that just their presence would hold sway over the site in some unpredictable ways. For example, it could mean that users here would be heavily tracked, and different pages would feature ads based on their topics. The affiliations themselves with different companies would make Wikipedia a platform for marketing interests just by principle, which is very much at odds with its neutrality.

And yes, I completely agree with the changes you'd like to see. Just browsing through the other questions at the Teahouse, there was someone who was so adamant that people changing his/her article or putting up banners was unfriendly or not collaborative. People do seem to mistake the open source, creating good information together attitude, with the egotistic social media tendencies of making personal content that are so prevalent on the Internet nowadays. And editors who have much more to offer in terms of contributing to the site shouldn't be weighted down with correcting these types of users.

Anyways, you have some excellent ideas and I'm grateful for you sharing them - it really puts Wikipedia in a favorable light for someone new like me! Nolmagia (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for replying to my question - I know you said your opinions were too much for the Teahouse, but I would be interested in hearing them. Could you possibly post on my talk page, or over email (or through any other means I missed)? Nolmagia (talk) 18:21, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I've prepared another biography page and will submit it later today. Be interested in your your comments. Many thanks for all your help. - Kent Lawrence Kllwiki (talk) 16:14, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I guess I got carried away with enthusiasm for the subject. I will perform the edits as you suggested. Again Many thanks. Kent Lawrence 173.175.207.85 (talk) 16:52, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Again thanks. I made the changes and am now beginning to understand the impartial role of the voice in a good article. Kllwiki (talk) 17:08, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I submitted the page for creation and am editing that version. Kllwiki (talk) 17:14, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Ray Charles
Hi! My name is Skyler and I'm a student at Cornell University. In one of my classes, we are required to work in teams and edit a wikipedia article. My group selected the one on Ray Charles and have begun making edits to the page. I noticed that you have an interest in music and I was wondering if you would like to check out our proposal and preliminary work and give us any feedback you may have, as we are all new to Wikipedia! Thanks! Skylerd23 (talk) 01:24, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello
Hello my name is guywholikeshistory (Liam G) I also like WW2 and recently i have been working on the Tank Mounted Night vision of the Germans ( FG-1250) And i would like to know if you would help me because you appear to be a much more advanced writer/editor than me i only started 2 days ago and as some would say i am a Noob looking for help sorry for my lack of punctuation i wrote this in a rush i need to do some work

Guywholikeshistory (talk) 15:31, 30 September 2014 (UTC) 

The awkward squad
You're very kind with your compliment for our handling a difficult editor. I always wonder, usually too late, if silence is better than good manners and rational argument. Yet our duty is also to guide new editors, and silence is no guide. It's a dilemma. I have solved it with relentless politeness, and never, not ever criticising the person while commenting upon the behaviour.

Usually it is a successful approach. Sometimes, and this time is one such, the disenchanted editor performs a final foot stamping flourish, and we lose a possibly decent article along with them. If I were interested in the topic I might attempt to create the article myself. Fiddle  Faddle  15:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The ironic thing is I do find the topic mildly interesting and when I first saw the initial question my first thought was that I was going to offer to pitch in and help create the article. But when I read the question more carefully and then saw some of the interactions I thought better to just back off. I think the best thing to do in these situations is what you did. But, I know my limitations, I'm just not that patient. I may take another look later and if he's just given up perhaps I will take a shot at it. It would be a nice resolution I think if after all that the person goes back on Wikipedia and sees that the article now exists ;-)  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 17:17, 20 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I've looked for sources for her. There are loads of ghits but nothing that qualifies as much of a reference. I can usually put a stub together at least with a few decent references. This one is, at present, beyond me. The most notable thing about her is the manner of her death, and yet there is no data about it. Fiddle   Faddle  17:40, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

N142pb is trying again -
Hello MadScientistX11.

The response to my "Save page" was the following message in red.

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in.

Yet all of my info was still there looking like a regular entry. Maybe the note was generated in response to my Ctrl/U and everything else worked. But, in case not, I logged out and here we go again.

I received a number of welcome comments from you yesterday. Thank you.

Before I make any responses and enter a discussion, it is time that I try to understand the Talk mechanism before I reach my frustration limit.

I got here by first clicking on a userid/Talk button in one of your comments on my Talk Page. There are many comments on that page. I don't know whether I am weird or not, but I have never participated in a "blog". However, my perception of the few I've looked at at is that they are a conglomeration of comments usually associated with one topic. A Talk Page seems to be either a multi-topic blog or else a compendium of individual blogs. I kept being puzzled by where to append my question or comment intended for you. (BTW, I just made a major mistake by trying to underline my next few words the way I would in an email, by tying Ctrl/U. Fortunately, I was able to recover with no loss of data.) Finally, I saw the tab "New Section", clicked on it and here I am.

I am going to sign off shortly with 4 tildes and clicking "Save page". If I understand this now, you will then receive a notice and this will have been appended to your Talk Page. I am then going to my Talk Page and try to figure out how to respond. My puzzle has been how to direct an answer to you from there. I am finally getting it through my thick head that by making an edit in any section, signing it and entering "Save page", you will be notified without my doing anything else. If I am grossly in error, please let me know. N142pb (talk) 19:55, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * First, I understand why you are confused. I had the same questions and it took me a while to realize how communication works here. I was trying to think of an article to point you to but I can't really think of one. Most of them go into lots of detail on things that aren't all that critical. What you need to know are just a few basics so here is my attempt. One thing to keep in mind is that for better or worse Wikipedia uses the same technology for articles as for discussions. For example, when I created a new section on your talk page I just used the same wikicode I would use to create a new section in an article. So in the following when I say "a page" it can mean a Talk page or an Article page. Whenever a page is modified a notice will be sent to anyone who has that page on their wp:watchlist. You can check your preferences there is a "watchlist" tab. Whenever I edit a page my default is that the page I edited gets added to my watchlist. The way the notification system works is it sends you an email (if your preferences are set to enable that). Then IF you go and look at the page that was modified it keeps the page on your watchlist. If you don't go look at the page it is no longer on your watchlist. So when I edit your Talk Page you should get a notification. Similarly since I edited your Talk page if you just start typing underneath the new section I created on your talk page then I will get a notification. The time you wrote something that I think was directed to me on your talk page I never saw it at first because your talk page was no longer on my watchlist. That gets us to the second way besides a watchlist to notify another user and that is by using their name via some wikicode. I usually use the following That or something like it was what the other editor used so that I would get a notice that someone was talking about me even if that discussion was on a page not on my watchlist. I'm going to take a break and post this but I think there are a few more things worth saying, so I'll make another post shortly. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:29, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * A few more points. Regarding errors there are essentially two things that can go wrong when you edit a page. One is that your session can time out. That's just a normal Internet thing that can happen on any site where you edit text but it probably happens more frequently on Wikipedia because there are so many people editing the system at any given time. Sometimes you are just SOL when this happens. Some times, most I think, you at least get back to the editor. When that happens you can copy the edited text, cancel that edit session, then go back and re-edit and paste in the change. The second kind of error is more frustrating. The version control on Wikipedia is different than many collaboration tools. It's an optimistic kind of locking that lets people have occasional edit conflicts. If I start editing page P then you also edit P and you commit your change to P while I'm still editing then when I go to commit my change I can't do it because if I do I overwrite your changes. There is an error system that you fall into in such situations that IMO is the worst thing I've used on Wikipedia. It tries to show you the two alternate edits and where they overlap and give you a suggestion for how to merge them but I find it so confusing I've never used it. Instead I just do the brute force solution, copy my text, cancel the edit then go back and redo it. Again, remember all this applies to ALL pages, whether they are wp:talk pages or wp:articles
 * One thing that is mostly specific to Talk pages is a Wikipedia convention for how to indent text. If you start a paragraph with a colon at the very start, before the first word, Wikipedia will indent the article. Every extra colon means an extra level of indentation. So if you look at the wikicode here I started this paragraph with: ":::One"

to give three levels of indentation. If you've ever used tools like Notes this is infinitely more primitive and kludgy. I'm going to stop here for now. I hope I'm in the right ballpark and not just babbling, let me know if that is useful and if you still have more questions about talk pages vs. articles, communication, etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:47, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Very helpful! I believe my problem was that I started this with an email model in my mind. If it said "reply" instead of "edit", maybe I would have understood more quickly. (BTW, I do understand why it will continue to be "edit".) Now that I've got this pretty well straightened out, I will start replying to some of your individual comments about the article. Oops, I almost forgot to "sign". 174.50.170.216 (talk) 22:26, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. One more thing, it's a good idea to make sure you are logged in before you make any edits or comments. That way what gets recorded in your signature is your user ID rather than your IP address and the same for the record of any edits you make. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 23:02, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:Co-op
Hey MadScientist, this is Jethro. With a small team, I'm developing and will be piloting a new mentorship space on Wikipedia called the Co-op. I wanted to ask if you might be interested in mentoring 1 or 2 editors during our pilot that is planned for next January. The idea is that mentors will be doing one-on-one teaching based on how an editor wants to contribute, and it's not some huge commitment to teach comprehensively about Wikipedia. Your experience helping editors out at the Teahouse, getting articles started in your sandbox, and generally improving articles will be useful. We fully expect many editors to come to the space with an article they want to write or improve. If you're interested, please sign up here and we'll keep you posted when we have an actual interface to work with. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, of course, so let me know if there's anything about the space you'd like to know more about. Much like the Teahouse, the only way we'll know if our project is useful is if we can get folks to help teach. Thanks, I, JethroBT  drop me a line 03:28, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the invitation. I want to think about it a bit more before committing but I've been looking at the proposal. One question I have is how we would be paired up with people to mentor? If I did it I would prefer to work on certain kinds of subjects. People wanting to edit articles about topics I know something about and am interested in. That includes: philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, military history, game theory, computer science (especially but not limited to AI), and Information Technology. But I would be bored working with someone who wanted to create or edit articles for their high school or some celebrity or sports person. Would we have some input on who we got teamed with or would it be random? --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:46, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey MadScientist, sorry for the late reply-- had to be away from editing for a bit. The method by which we are matching editors to mentors is less focused on specific article topic and more focused on editing skills (e.g. writing an article, uploading images, navigating the communication conventions, etc.)  That said, newer editors will have a chance to identify topic areas they might be interested in, and to the extent that it is possible, we naturally think it would be great to match editors up topically.  Of course, I can offer no particular predictions on the kinds of interests editors will bring into the space, and the priority is for these editors to get the help they need first.  For our pilot, mentors will be able to select certain areas for which they wish to mentor based on these broader skill areas.  I think the idea of expanding this to topical areas is a good idea, and something we may consider expanding once our pilot is complete.  Does this answer your questions?   I, JethroBT  drop me a line 04:12, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That answers it. Thanks. I'll think about it a bit more.Happy thanksgiving. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:42, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I decided to give it a shot and signed up on the talk page. If possible, I would prefer if you can team me up with someone who is working on something technical; actually not just technical really more nerdy, I'm also a history buff, especially military history, just something other than doing someone's school or business page -- but I know these things are complicated enough and understand... even if I get teamed up with someone whose dream in life is to polish Kim Khardasian's Wikipedia page I'll give it my best ;-) --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:49, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

IEEE Computer
Please send me an email. I have the article from Computer; if you send me an email, I'll send a response email with the document attached. Nyttend (talk) 16:13, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Co-op: Pre-pilot discussion for mentors
Hey MadScientist. I've posted some initial information and discussions points about the space for mentors here. Give it a read, ask questions on what's not clear, and feel free to add suggestions to the topics I've brought up about mentoring so far. I just pinged a bunch of people at once for this; I understand that sometimes it doesn't go through, so I wanted to make sure you were aware. Thanks, I, JethroBT  drop me a line 22:44, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, and one more question
Hi, MadScientist!

Thank you so much for your reaction on my request in teahouse to help me with placing my article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sterndmitri/TheChurchOfNativity into the mainspace.

I have read all you wrote about links carefully, and tried to provide some. I kindly ask you to check it. Anyway, I found a few only to cite. The article is just my translation, and, probably, the lion's share of the information is from informational desks placed in the church, so that's difficult to judge whether the information is from printed sources at all. How do you think, does the article have a chance to be accepted now? At least, I am inclined to think that this is better than nothing about the church.

One more question. I am not a native speaker of English, so I can make mistakes sometimes (moreover, writing these articles is the way to improve English for me). The subject of the article is about christianity, religion and all that kind of stuff, I'm not well in it even in Russian, to my shame. I do actually have an adopter, but in fact he has not been checking this article for a few months, but I am convinced deeply that Wikipedia is a voluntary thing, so that's probably not such a crime.

If i aroused some interest in yourself with my article, you may kindly run through it, paying some heed to my mistakes. And I've got another article about an ancient chronicle and an icon to publish it into the mainspace. With the help you rendered me I can do it on my own now I guess, but it seems to be of the same problems with language. So, if it sounds interesting for you, I can give the link.

Thank you so much! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sterndmitri (talk • contribs) 06:16, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello Rose Bulma (talk) 17:21, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you.
Last week you left me some fantastic feedback about references and on establishing notability for my submission on Michelle Anthony. I wanted to sincerely thank you for taking the time to do this - it was really helpful advice to get me where I need to be with that article. Thank you so much for taking the time. Jim Dougherty (talk) 22:08, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy Lucia!


Happy Saint Lucia's day!

"Good Morning" MadScientistX11: Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia! 13 December is the day when Swedes perplex the rest of the world by showing up way too early in the morning dressed in white tunics, candles in their hair, singing and bringing saffron buns and breakfast in bed to nice people. Hope you have a bright day! – w.carter -Talk  00:13, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

One more "Thanks"
After skimming over your talkpage, I think you'll be drowned in thanks here soon, but I firmly intended to leave one more from myself. I am glad to finish my article Znamenie with your help kindly rendered me. And it was truly nice and interesting to deal with you too.

I plan to continue improving my English with Wikipedia later on, and intended to make up an article dedicated to the same field (about some monastery, or about a pagan sanctuary here in Novgorod - haven't decided yet). So, if you find some interest in it - i'll be glad. Have a nice workweek! --Sterndmitri (talk) 14:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * thank you back! Feel free to contact me any time if you get stuck or have a question. Happy Editing! --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Follow on to your response to my question about avoiding deletion of subpage
When you build the URL and then delete sandbox (toward the end of your response to me) aren't you removing the protection from deletion?

Is there restriction on number of sandbox subpages?

Isn't the box as a template just replacing all the URL parameters leading up to and including sandbox/ in the title of the subpage?

I'm trying to get a handle on this and I appreciate that you have taken the time to add to the basics. Thank you. Janvermont Janvermont (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No problem. Just FYI: the concept of wp:user pages was something I found very confusing when I first started editing as well. That's why I tried to provide a fairly lengthy response. So the first thing to understand is that when you create a new user page the way I described your sandbox is still there. You are creating a new user page when you do that. Just like creating a new file on your desktop, it doesn't change the sandbox or other files to create a new one. I always like to use examples. Look at this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/User:MadScientistX11/ Those are all my user pages. Some of them are programming stuff that shouldn't be touched unless you really know what you are doing. But some of them are articles or parts of articles that I started and got distracted or for some other reason didn't finish but don't want to throw away what I've done because I may go back to it. For example this page: User:MadScientistX11/ConcurrentComputingAdvantages is something I wrote for the article Concurrent Computing but haven't merged in yet. BTW, if you look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Janvermont%2F&namespace=2  those are all your user pages. I think the "protection from deletion" that you are concerned about is because you were working within the AFC process or something, to be honest I'm not sure but for normal wp:user pages which includes your sandbox there is no chance of stuff getting deleted unless you violate one of the copyright restrictions as I described in my first message. One more thing: while you can create many user pages for the most part what people do is to just use their sandbox: work in the sandbox, transfer to the live encyclopedia, then replace the content of the sandbox with content for the next article. That's why  it's called the sandbox it's meant to be your main temporary work area but never to have anything permanent or published. Hope that helps. Feel free to reply back if I'm still not getting to what you need to know. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 17:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

To delete user pages
Add to the top of the page.

New follow on to your response to my follow on
I'm sorry to require so much input. I am missing some concepts. I don't completely understand my user space. When I signed up my purpose was to create an AFC. I was advised to do it in the sandbox. When I submitted it and it was denied some nice person transferred it to a draft space and every time I clicked on sandbox it took me to my draft page From that time on it seemed that I no longer have a user page.. If I try to put into the search slot user: Janvermont, it always came back and said to me no such user page exists.

So I only thought I had a talk page and an AFC workspace. Should we clear up this misunderstanding before I can apply your suggestions?

Many thanks, Jan Janvermont (talk) 20:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No problem, like I said I found it confusing as well, ask as many questions as you need to. So first we need to clarify terminology. If you haven't already done so you should read this article: wp:user page A user page is meant to contain work that is related to Wikipedia but that is not part of the encyclopedia. That last part is important, user pages are designed so that Google won't index them. So if you are working on a draft article for Foo and someone searches for Foo in Google the draft article won't show up because it's a user page not a part of the encyclopedia. We don't want people to see work in progress or things that may not meet Wikipedia policies and think they are seeing the encyclopedia. Now, I looked at your user pages a little more closely and I think I see why you may be confused. For starters your main User page, this is meant to be a page that contains bio info, got deleted. I created it back and put some text in there but feel free to delete that text and put your own in. Here is your main user page now: User:Janvermont FYI, here is my user page: User:MadScientistX11 My page is pretty vanilla, some people get a lot more elaborate. I just realized the terminology may be confusing. We often refer to someone's "user page" and mean that page, the main page where they put their bio info. But wp:user page is also a term that applies to any page that is part of the user's space. Now, the second problem: your sandbox got set up by another editor with a code widget that is very cool if you know what you are doing but probably confusing for you... I mean even I was confused when I first looked at your sandbox. Again, I'm going to take some liberties here, normally I wouldn't edit another users pages, if you want any of this changed back that is easy to do. I'm going to move the content of your sandbox currently to a new user page for you so you still have that but then I'll set up your sandbox the way a normal vanilla sanbox is set up. Actually, I'm going to just do that now and save this comment then come back. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 21:30, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK. I created a new user page for you and moved what was in your sandbox to that page: User:Janvermont/UserPageList Then I changed your sandbox back to the basic sandbox that is normally set up for new users: User:Janvermont/sandbox  Now, note that there is a big button there that says "Submit your draft for review!" but you don't have to click that button. In fact for most of the editing although I use my sand box all the time I never click that button. That's because what I do is mostly edit existing articles. But I still like using my sandbox because sometimes I want to do more than a minor edit, I want to seriously restructure things, move sections around, play around with alternate wordings, etc. and of course I don't want some Wikipedia user to see an actual article while it's in the middle of being worked on like that. So I copy articles into my Sandbox, work on them, then copy part or all of the article back to the original article. Again, I like examples. I've been working on this article: Method_(computer_programming) as you can see there is a version of it currently in my sandbox: User:MadScientistX11/sandbox But I never hit the "Submit your Draft for Review!" button because the article is already published and I just want to change part of it. BTW, you may wonder why do I even still have that Sandbox notice: it's a good idea even if you aren't creating new articles, again its a way to differentiate between articles that are drafts and work in progress from the actual encyclopedia. Hope that helped.  Feel free to ask more questions.  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 23:08, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Sticking with me has cleared up the haze
The haze is clearing. Thank you for sticking with me. After my (basic) user page was deleted many things did not make sense. I knew I didn't have a user page and because, when I clicked on sandbox it redirected me to draft mode of my AFC, I thought I didn't have a real sandbox either.

I read WP: user page as you suggested. It now makes sense to me. In addition the redirect from user page to user pages is also helpful because the plural lays the framework for subpages.

My immediate task is to check all the modifications you made and be sure they all make sense in the new world you have provided. This has been a thank you. I will keep going. JanJanvermont (talk) 18:50, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Glad I could help. If anything is still unclear feel free to come back with more questions. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:31, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Multiple talk pages -Jan
Is every section on the talk page actually an independent subpage? If so is the contents box actually a pages list like you gave me?

I'd like to have contents box for my user pages. Still working. Thank you again. JanJanvermont (talk) 17:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Every section of a talk page or any Wikipedia page is not an independent subpage. Essentially "page" is equivalent to "file" in this context. So when we say that your user pages are a subpage of your main user page what that really reflects is the underlying directory structure. So for example in your case this is your main user page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Janvermont so all your other user pages will have paths that start with "User:Janvermont" and then have a slash (indicating a subdirectory) and the name of the new user file. So for example your sandbox is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Janvermont/sandbox note it starts with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Janvermont. The contents box just happens automatically to any Wikipedia page (Talk page or Article) that has four sections or more. I edited your user page and added four dummy headings just so you could see the TOC get autogenerated. Just start adding sections to your Talk page or sandbox or user page and after you get to four the TOC will show up automatically. There is probably a way to get it to show up with less than four but it's not obvious in the documentation: Help:Section. I think the thinking is that a TOC isn't really needed unless you have at least four headings. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry
Didn't mean to be snarky in my Teahouse comment, but when you're talking about NoScript and AdBlock when they just want to turn off the banner, it can get confusing. Tutelary (talk) 17:45, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

The Noor Of HAZRAT ABU TALIB (AS)
Respected Sir/ Madam,

I am a new user, recently I tried editing an article the link of which I have given below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Talib_ibn_Abdul-Muttalib

but the changes were rolled back citing reasons for lack of citation or references..

I would like to post the following post, I am also giving below the references. Will this be sufficient ? Please help as I dont want to breach any policy of wiki.

Sorry for the inconvenience, Regards Ajani Abbasali

Imam JAFAR (ASWS) bin Mohammad (ASWS) who narrates from his father(ASWS) who narrates from Imam ALI (ASWS) bin HUSAIN (ASWS) who narrates from his  father Imam HUSAIN (ASWS) who said: AMEERUL MOMINEEN (ASWS) was sitting in Rahbaha and people were sitting around him when a man stood up and said,

“O AMEERUL MOMINEEN (ASWS), it is ALLAH (SWT) that has placed you in this position however your father will be tortured in Hell.”

AMEERUL MOMINEEN (ASWS) replied, “I swear by ALLAH (SWT) who sent MOHAMMAD (SAWW) as a Prophet that if My Father intercedes for all of the sinners on earth, ALLAH (SWT) will accept it.

How can My Father be in Hell, while I, his son, am the one who divides between Paradise and Hell? I swear by ALLAH (SWT), who sent MOHAMMAD (SAWW) as a Prophet, my father’s Noor on the Day of Judgement exceeds the noor of all creatures except the noor of five noors: the Noor of MOHAMMAD (SAWW), My (IMAM ALI'S (ASWS)) Noor, the Noor of FATEMA (SA), the Noor of HASAN (ASWS) and HUSAIN (ASWS), and the Noor of the IMAMS (ASWS) from the sons of HUSAIN (ASWS).

Be aware that ABUTALIB (AS)’s Noor is from OUR NOOR. ALLAH (SWT) created his Noor two thousand years before He created ADAM (AS).” (Ref :Al-Hojja ‘Ala Al-Thaheb ila Takfeer Abi Taleb P72. Al-Darajatol Rafee’ah P50. Amaali Al-Tousi V1 P331 H58. Bisharat Al- Mustafa p249. Al-Ihtejaaj of Tabrasi V1 P340. Bihar Al-Anwar V35 P69 H3. Al-Ghadeer V7 P387 H3.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajani Abbasali (talk • contribs) 17:59, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Where do I start
So, thank you for replying in the teahouse (name's a bit immature, but never mind). So, any idea where I can start with making technical improvements to wikipedia. NetworkOP (talk) 19:37, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you looking to edit articles, work on the technical stuff or both? I don't think I can help too much more if you want to contribute to the technology. I'm pretty technical but am sort of an old fart so have done more management and theoretical stuff lately. The only hands on technical stuff I do these days is with AI and a tool called Protege from Stanford that doesn't have anything to do with Wikipedia technology. If you want to edit articles on computer science or information technology I can definitely give you some pointers. One suggestion if you do want to get more into the technical side, one of those links I left in the teahouse was to an adoption page where I think you can request one of the technical people from the Wikipedia technical side to help introduce you to the various projects. That might be a good next step. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:07, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * One more link I found that I think is a great place to start getting more technical details: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Teahouse comment - MirisElocin
Hi - just to let you know I responded on the Teahouse. It was basically a copy-paste of the source, hence I let the editor know that it was a copyvio. Sorry to cause you a problem there. LouiseS1979 (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year!
 Dear, HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! A new year has come! How times flies! 2015 will be a new year, and it is also a chance for you to start afresh! Thank you for your contributions! From a fellow editor, --Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook) 09:34, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

This message promotes WikiLove. Created by Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook). To use this template, leave on someone else's talk page.

Question from Tea House Editor
Respected Sir,

Regards,

I am a new editor to wikipedia and had consulted you a few days back. My initial posts were rolled back due to lack of citation and improper formatting by other editors. I gave proper citations and improved the formatting and later on my posts were acceptable to other editors.

But there is this one guy by the name of Edward 321 who keeps on undoing my posts stating reasons that the previous version was better. He might be having his view point on a particular topic, I have mine and when I am giving references to proper books and manuals I feel that undoing my posts just because one does not like it is unfair.

Now, I would like to ask you, what I can do in this matter.

I post below the link of the concerned paged. You may go through the history and Edward's comments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Talib_ibn_Abdul-Muttalib

Your kind advice would be highly appreciated.

Warm Regards Abbasali — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajani Abbasali (talk • contribs) 17:50, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Happy new year . I'm sorry you are having troubles with your edits. One thing you should remember is that everyone, no matter how good we are, get some of our edits reverted. It is just a normal part of being a Wikipedia editor. As for the specific edits: I did look at the article. The problem is I know very little about Islam so I really can't evaluate the arguments very well. The kind of articles I usually edit are about a million miles from Islam, I stick to very nerdy topics like computer science. But I did notice that you had two different editors who both agreed that your edits should be reverted. One of them  is someone I've seen answer things in the tea house and is a very experienced editor. So in this case I'm sorry but I'm going to defer to their judgement. If you want more specifics about why they reverted your edits I suggest you just ask them directly. That is a perfectly reasonable thing for a new editor to do. Sorry, I realize that probably isn't what you want to hear. Please don't get discouraged. My one suggestion is that you might want to check out the Adopt-a-user program. You can get paired with a more experienced editor and perhaps with one who has similar interests and they can give you more specific details about how to improve your edits in the future.  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:27, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks
Respected Sir, Greetings,

Thanks for your kind advice. I might trouble you in future if I need your help Warm Regards,

Ajani Abbsali
 * Honestly, I don't feel as if I was of much help and wish I could have done more but you are welcome. Feel free to contact me in the future. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:38, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!
Can I have a cup of coffee Ima Jewels (talk) 16:19, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Is a rewrite possible?
Thanks for your help in the Teahouse,. You're correct that the local newspaper article I referenced talks about the artists colony, but doesn't give exact dates. I got those from my other reference, a history book that is available online (for purchase) as an e-book. The Anthropology mag is not available online. Is there a way I could rewrite this article to get it accepted, or are the references just too weak?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:The_Property_(Malibu_artists_colony)#cite_note-1

Pcaabplroa (talk) 18:02, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It isn't a requirement that all references be available online. What worries me is that the book and the journal both seem border line as references. There are a lot of publications that are essentially vanity publishing. BTW, I'm not saying that either of those are that I'm saying from what I've seen -- and I think the other reviewers had similar concerns -- they might be. By a vanity publication I mean something that is very unlikely to be in a library, even a good city library or otherwise available. Can you quote a sentence or short paragraph from either or both of those references that relate to the colony? That would go a long way I think to help. You can include page numbers and quotes from the reference in a citation, I can help you with that if you don't know how to do it. The best thing would be if we could find references in something like the LA Times or other mainstream publications. I tried looking but no luck. I'll give it another shot today and if I find anything of course I will let you know. I'm going to do a bit of research also on the current sources. E.g., to find if I can get either one in my library. But in the mean time if you can excerpt some specific quotes about the colony that would help. I will reply back after I do some research on those refs. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:23, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I initiated a query for other editors to give us feedback on the sources here: Reliable_sources/Noticeboard You might want to watch that page and feel free to comment there as well. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I looked for the book in my library system which is pretty extensive. I do a lot of reference checking so I have access to the San Francisco library system which is the main library plus all the local ones as well as something called Link+ that gives me access to all the major university libraries. None of them had the anthropology book which is not a good sign. The goal of references is that people can verify them if they want to. That doesn't require that every ref is online, in fact close to half the refs I use aren't online but it does require that one can get them from a well stocked library. I haven't looked for the journal yet, usually those things can't be checked out so I'm holding off until I get a chance to go there in person. Also no luck with my searching. I'm going to ask a friend of mine who is better at searching. I haven't seen any feedback on the reference noticeboard I initiated. Usually it takes a few days to get good responses and I've noticed things were especially slow today on other issues, I think people are still hung over or getting back to work. So hang in there and be patient, we may not hear anything now for a few days. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:18, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for your help! I'll look for the relevant quotes from those publications. Pcaabplroa (talk) 08:39, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's a quote from : "Soon after Positano closed in 1962, Jerry Ziegman, a television script writer who had rented the cottage, made a contract with the owners of the property, the Manocherian Brothers of New York. He became the new property manager with a verbal agreement exactly like the one the Duttons had. His goal was to rent out spaces to young and struggling artists. They agreed to this arrangement and for the next thirty-one years over fifty people lived and worked here. Some for months and others for decades. The community lasted until all of the structures were completely destroyed in the Malibu brush fire of 1993." The publisher is a university press, not a vanity press; however, the book is an e-book only and has no page numbers. The chapter this quote comes from is "Some Ends and Another Begins." Pcaabplroa (talk) 08:38, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Great. I took a shot at reworking the Coffee House page with your new info. I think there would still be an issue if you tried to create a new article about The Property. With the refs you have it is still pretty iffy regarding wp:notability but adding the info to the existing article should be fine IMO. It is in my sandbox now: User:MadScientistX11/sandbox I changed the reference format so it uses all inline citations (I changed the whole article to make it consistent)  I think my version or something similar should be up to standards. If you want to copy my version into the existing article feel free or if you want me to make the change I can do that as well. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:10, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much! You wouldn't have 1 article for 2 restaurants because they existed in the same building, and what we're talking about is even more different: a cafe and an artists colony. But if this is the best you can do, then I appreciate your help. Here's one more long quote to include or use as a foundation for building a 2nd article. It's pp. 81-83 from : "The Property was located where Positano once stood and several of the tenants had been Positano customers....The community started quite by accident. As Positano was closing in the late summer of 1962, a UCLA student, actor and budding scriptwriter, John Wilder, discovered a cottage for rent where the coffee house had been located. He invited his friend, Jerry Ziegman, also an aspiring screenwriter, to share the rent. Initially, their intention was to use the place as a weekend retreat to relax and have parties. Soon thereafter Jerry convinced the New York owners to allow him to manage the entire site—130 undeveloped acres and several buildings. He decided to invent a new kind of arts community. He accomplished this dream without any outside funding—private or public. He rented spaces to young people he thought could benefit from having an inexpensive place to work and live. In his uncompleted memoir, Malibu Book 1962–1982, he characterized his creation as a 'Commune of Autocrats.' For 31 years more than 50 people were part of his social and artistic experiment. Had not a brush fire in 1993 destroyed all of the buildings, it is quite possible it would still be there. To my knowledge there has never been a community quite like this before or after. Most art colonies, such as Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, operate within a budget funded through private means or foundations and invite artists to stay only a short time. Families with children are not welcome. Other art communities have arisen within a pre-existing political entity, such as a rural village like Cos Cob, Connecticut, or an urban, usually Bohemian enclave, like Greenwich Village in New York City, Venice Beach in Los Angeles or North Beach in San Francisco. However, such places lack the isolation and social cohesiveness of the community at the Property." Pcaabplroa (talk) 19:59, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Just a quick response, I haven't had time to read your last comment very carefully. Have other stuff that is keeping me busy today so will reply again some time tomorrow. But one thing I did want to say: keep in mind that wikipedia is a work in progress. Its never done and no decision is ever final. I see the logic of what you are saying even though I still think keeping it as a part of the other article makes sense for now. It is always possible to do a wp:split later. Also, remember that I really have no more authority than you or any other editor. We are all equal and it is based on the content we write, the references we cite, and the wp:policies we can cite to back up our arguments so if you at some point want to go a different direction than I do that is fine and no hard feelings.  I think you still might have problems with the editors who review new articles but as we've been improving it I think it is definitely getting closer to where it could stand on its own. More tomorrow.  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:01, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to let you know I'm looking at this now and will get back to you by the end of the night with either some new thoughts or a new version. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:52, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I thought about what you said about two vs one article and it made some sense. So I created a new draft article, this time for The Property itself rather than adding to the coffee house. Here it is: User:MadScientistX11/The_Property_(Malibu_art_colony) If you want to try and resubmit this feel free. However, as I look at it I can still see a major flaw that the other reviewers might object to. We only have two real sources: Jay Ruby (even though it's different writings still the same person) and an article where its barely mentioned in a small town newspaper. Those may not, in fact my guess is they won't be enough to satisfy the thresh hold for wp:notability It really all boils down to Jay Ruby. It's not that he isn't credible its just that there usually are required more than one person who counts as a valid source for an article. That is why it may still make more sense to fold it into the coffee house article. If it were up to me I would take the direction of folding into the coffee house article. But its really your article and I'm just trying to help so if you want to resubmit it, the worst that can happen is they say no one more time. Or if you could find just one more reference like an LA Tims article or even another small paper or journal article or magazine article, I think that would help a lot. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 01:39, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you MadScientxtX11! I understand you're just helping and not making the final decision, but you've been a big help. I'm going to try to look for one more reference. If I can't find one, I'll try to resubmit your draft by the end of the week. --Pcaabplroa (talk) 08:15, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Cool. That sounds great. I'll consider the ball in your court for now but please feel free to let me know if you have questions or want me to try to do more editing or need help moving content from my draft pages to your sandbox, etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:51, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Just a heads up. I'm also starting to do some work on other articles right now so I'm using my Sandbox to work on an article for the Web Ontology Language but I wanted to preserve the draft of the revised article as well at least for now so I saved it to a new user page:  User:MadScientistX11/CoffeeHousePositano BTW. just to be clear I know we agreed you would try to resubmit a new article on the Property rather than go the route of merging the property info into the existing article but I think it is still a good idea to keep that draft as a backup in case we still can't establish notability of The Property as a standalone article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:12, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I managed to find one more text to reference (and I can think of another, but I'll have to order it). Do you think this is enough? It's a firsthand account by Rosa Jordan who lived in the artists colony, pp. 103-104 from : "May Rindge and her armed vaqueros rode the boundaries of Rancho Malibu until 1923, fighting off the future. Then, family fortune spent, the old woman laid down and died. Along with the sound of clods hitting her coffin could be heard the noise of a highway being built across the Malibu, and the scratch of pens on documents that would break the ranch to bits. The Budwood Ranch is one of those bits, 132 acres at the eastern end of Malibu. Its name comes from two men, Bud Abbott (of the Abbott and Costello comedy team) and a film producer, Sam Wood. It is this part of the past that I see when I come up the narrow driveway. What I see are low stone walls, constructed by Mexicans with the knowledge of placing rocks that hold without mortar, walls now overgrown with chaparral and wildflowers. I see the big house, the little house, two cottages, and a stable, constructed by Abbot and Wood in 1923. The buildings have weathered to a soft bluish green that blends with the trees they planted fifty years ago. The Budwood now belongs (on paper) to the Manocherians of New York. They in turn lease it to Jerry Ziegman, a TV scriptwriter from Nebraska. Because Jerry believes that creativity is insufficiently rewarded in America, he lets the old ranch buildings at giveaway rents to artists willing to live at the edge of poverty in order to pursue their vision. He takes one look at me and knows I am one of them." --Pcaabplroa (talk) 01:45, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks also for backing up the version we worked on! Is it time to move something to my sandbox? --Pcaabplroa (talk) 01:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that extra ref will help. As you said its still a first person account though. As to whether it is enough I'm honestly not sure. If not we can always fall back on the plan to fold the new info into that other article. My advise would be to take the version I worked on: User:MadScientistX11/The_Property_(Malibu_art_colony) move that into your sandbox; add that additional reference and the other one you mentioned if you can find it. At that point drop me a message and I will take one more look at what you did before you try resubmitting it. If you want me to add that additional ref myself and then move the article into your sandbox I could do that as well. It won't take me long to do it at all, the main reason I suggest you do it is just so you can get the experience but I'm fine doing it or if you prefer some other approach. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:46, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I added the new reference to the article, and moved the article to my sandbox: User:Pcaabplroa/sandbox. Do you think it's a good idea to try submitting the article now, and to add another reference (if I can find it) later? --Pcaabplroa (talk) 07:24, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I made two last minute edits (as always feel free to revert them of course). First I took out "scenic" from the description of highway one. I think I may have even wrote that sentence, probably because I really do love that part of southern CA and while I'm not one who usually enjoys driving; driving along highway one was always an exception. But I digreess, "scenic" is what editors consider violates the idea of wp:no point of view so I took it out and also made highway one a link. I think it's ready for another shot at submitting. Go for it. Let me know if you need more help. Good luck, I hope it is accepted this time. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:05, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I submitted the article and got a yellow box at the bottom of my sandbox that says "Warning: This page should probably be moved, but a page already exists at Draft:Sandbox." Should I do something else? --Pcaabplroa (talk) 08:25, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Good question. There are a lot of warnings like that that aren't really problems but I'm not sure on that one. My guess is it is not an issue and that as long as it says that the article was sucessfully submitted and is in the queue that it worked correctly, but I'm going to do some research. I may post a question in the teahouse if I can't find an answer for myself, if I do I'll ping you on it so that you see it as well. I'll get back to you shortly either way. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:18, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, I think I found an archived question that is the same issue: WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk/Archives/2014_August_8 I think there is some issue with the name of the file, to be honest I'm still not sure what the issue is, I didn't read it that carefully but the important point I got from that help answer was that it's not a big deal. As you can see the editor who replied to the similar question said that they had moved the article to some new file name. Essentially if the article is approved then the editor who approves it also reviews the name. If we had set the file up properly they would just use the default name, I think all that warning means is that if the article is approved the person that approves it will have to make an extra step (this is trivial) to change the name of the published article. Don't worry that problem has nothing to do with the actual content and won't impact the chance of the article being approved or not. Since there is such a backlog anyway my advise is to do nothing. Trying to fix it will only delay the review and/or cause confusion for the reviewers making it look like we are trying to game the system by submitting multiple copies of the article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:42, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

, the article we worked on was rejected again. See here: User:Pcaabplroa/sandbox. Do you have any more advice for me, or should I follow up with the editor who rejected the article? I was able to find one more reference, p. 43 from : “After school she moved with photographer and musician Stephen Kahn to a 132-acre artist’s and writers’ colony just north of Topanga Canyon off the Pacific Coast highway near Malibu. There, living with writers, musicians and poets, Albuquerque began a series of paintings in 1973 that relied on the ritualistic process of mark making.” Pcaabplroa --(talk) 08:23, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Muhammadu Buhari (again..)
Hello again MadScientistX11,

I don't want to be a bother, but I must say that I'm feeling (again) a bit lost. The IP who reverted my edits just admitted on the talk page of Buhari's WP to be associated with Buhari and is claiming that Buhari's lawyers have mounted legal proceedings against the "libelous edits". That account doesn't even respect the three-revert rule and I couldn't find any other outside opinions to pitch in on this... My first WP experience seems so far to have been a failure... Passenger68 (talk) 15:32, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It is no bother. I kind of had a feeling we hadn't completely addressed the problem. So to start with I just want to point out you are really jumping into one of the most difficult kinds of Wikipedia editing. Editing articles like this where there are people with strong passions on both sides tends to be very difficult to do right. My first recommendation would be to get more experience editing less controversial articles. I can point you to places to find those if you are interested. But having said that; you of course have the right to edit the articles you want to. Also, regardless of your participation from what I've seen of that article it definitely needs some review and feedback by experienced editors. I don't want to say too much more yet. I've just taken a quick look and I want to dig into the article and the various changes and refs a bit more. I will reply back here within 24 hours with some additional thoughts. In the mean time I have two bits of advise: 1)Be patient. Remember the more experienced editors and admins are volunteers as well and are often working on lots of different things at once and may not respond within a few hours, it can take days to have these discussions because some times people have to wait until they are off work to reply, etc. 2)Continue to practice wp:civility You have been doing a good job of this so far. I know this is difficult. Or at least it is to me. Try to never make any personal accusations or use sarcastic or even passive aggressively insulting comments. I'm not saying you have done that, from what I've seen you haven't just it is a very common mistake for new editors. We are so used to comment sections on web sites where people routinely call each other names and make assertions about motives. Always try to stick to talking about things that matter from a Wikipeida perspective: wp:objective tone, good references, verified information, etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:01, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much for your advice, I hope I will survive :). Nevertheless, I found here here that editors must warn administrators when they are threatened with judicial actions. I will do just that, presenting the situation as objective as I can. And then I'll do like you said - wait. Thank you again and I'm looking forward to reading your opinion on this case. Passenger68 (talk) 16:59, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The No legal threats option is an excellent idea, well done. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 17:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * One more general comment: Your edit made a whole bunch of changes all at once. In general it is better to make several small changes than one huge change. If the edit is controversial it is easier to focus the discussion. As I looked over your edit more carefully there were parts that I thought were obvious improvements and others where it wasn't as obvious. Going forward I suggest you try to make smaller changes, it will make it easier to collaborate and to argue for specific facts. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 21:54, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Please see my comments on Buhari's talk page as Passenger68 is over interested in Buhari — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.17.218 (talk) 16:33, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I responded on the Buhari page. I don't understand your comment that "Passenger68 is over interested in Buhari" What does that even mean? has been doing what a good Wikipedia editor is supposed to do: add more information that is well sourced and relevant to an article. How does that possibly mean he is "over interested in Buhari"? BTW, if you plan to continue contributing to Wikipedia it is a good idea to get a user ID and to remember to sign your comments. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:48, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Contact to another contributors
MadScientistX11 Thank you for the information! I greatly appreciate it! I did the way as you instructed me!--Mrandrew16 (talk) 19:31, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Glad to help! Feel free to drop me a message if you have more questions. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:47, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!
, thanks for that, you actually really made my day. I've been having a terrible day (for non wikipedia reasons) and I was afraid I was getting a little snippy with some of my answers which I try to never do. Glad it didn't come across that way. Thanks again! --MadScientistX11 (talk) 01:01, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

On about the info that you had left on my page.
Hey, MadScientistX11 :-). Personally, I agree with your statement that you had left on my page. I also think the separation of Religion and Science is mainly in Western culture. This is not seen to be the same in non-Western cultures, such as that of vary of the world First Nations, or aboriginal people. Frogger48 (talk) 06:53, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Military Aircraft definition
Hey MadScientist. The following is what I came up with to add to the Military Aircraft Accident article;

For this list, the criteria used for a military aircraft will be; any fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that is operated by an armed service of any type in the form of either combat or non-combat.The aircraft will fall into categories such as fighter, bomber, attack, search and rescue, transport or training.

Comments? Changes?Rocketmaniac2 (talk) 11:08, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Looks good. I might do it a bit differently. Some people might consider the following to be a little heavy on linking but IMO for definitional things, where you are defining the essence of the article or some concept that is essential for the article, that is when you want to take advantage of linking. For example your version still leaves it to the reader to determine what exactly is "Armed Forces" where as mine replaces the phrase with a link to the US DOD so its more rigorous, now we are using terms defined in the encyclopedia to define a new term. Anyway here is my suggested slightly altered version:

For this list, the criteria used for a military aircraft will be: any fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that is operated by an organization that is part of the United States Department of Defense in either combat or non-combat missions. The aircraft will fall into categories such as fighter, bomber, attack, search and rescue, transport or training.

Note, I also replaced your semicolon with a colon. I think either is proper but IMO a colon is better when you aren't indicating just a pause but a pause that says and what I mean is: X. Two other sort of tangential points: I couldn't find an article for "search and rescue aircraft". If one doesn't exist (probably I just didn't find it) then that might be a good opportunity for a new article. Also, I was amazed that the link Department of Defense goes to the UK Ministry of Defense not the US DOD. I think that is wrong and I might try to address that myself eventually. Hope that was useful, thanks for asking my opinion. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:08, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It wasn't as hard to change the redirect as I thought. At times like this I often think of one of my favorite math teachers. One of his favorite expressions was "when all else fails read the directions" which I did and changed it so that Department of Defense now points to the US DOD. I documented on the UK Ministry talk page as well in case anyone objects but I can't see how they could make the case, DOD is such a common term for the US DOD. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:31, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Great reply, I like your example, thanks. A couple of comments. 1st, punctuation is my WORST subject!!!! So, any and ALL help is welcome. 2nd, I did a quick search and found this link .... Search and rescue. The sub-topic of Combat Search and Rescue should give the average reader an idea what SAR aircraft do (I think). And finally 3rd, the article List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (2000–09) is about military aircraft from all countries, not just the US.Rocketmaniac2 (talk) 14:35, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * LOL, I posted my reply seconds after your replied again. I had not even looked at the issue with the DOD. I now see Combat search and rescue as the best way to tell the average reader about these aircraft.Rocketmaniac2 (talk) 14:43, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Good luck, I think you are off to a great start at editing. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:21, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Adjusting pilot start date - WP:Co-op
Hello  MadScientistX11 ,

I'll be putting out a formal update sometime soon, but I wanted to inform you that I've decided to push our start date back to mid-February rather than in January. There are number of reasons for this, but the biggest factor is that we are now facing the hard work of implementing our designs on the Mediawiki interface. It's a limiting environment to work with from a web-building perspective, and the team that worked on the Teahouse can offer similar testimonials to these challenges. We also want to make sure there is time for us and for you to test the environment out, ask questions at our project's talk page, and give us a little time to make any last changes before we start inviting editors to the space. If some of you know you will be unavailable during this time, it's totally fine if you need to bow out for the pilot. But we do need all the mentors we can get, so even if you can take the time to mentor just one or two editors, that would be fantastic. Thanks a bunch, I, JethroBT drop me a line on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.

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 * Thanks for letting me know. For me personally it probably works out better to have a bit of a delay. I'm going into the hospital on monday (2/2) for some major surgery on my spine. There is a problem with the connection between my spine and my head, its funny my dad always said my head wasn't screwed on quite right, I never thought it would turn out to be literally true. I will be completely out of commission for the beginning of next week and then probably not participating on Wikipedia as much as usual for the next couple of weeks. But I'm not opting out at all, I find helping others edit can be a nice diversion at times like this just letting you know I may not be replying quite as rapidly as I usually do. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh man, I'm sorry that your head and spine aren't quite in agreement with each other, but I am glad you are getting the help you need. (If it's any consolation, you always seemed to have a good head on your shoulders!)  I am grateful that you think you might still be able to find time to help out with the pilot post-surgery, but of course, please take whatever time you need in recovery. I, JethroBT drop me a line 16:32, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Using the Convert Template
Hey MadScientist. I was reading an article (PIK-26) and thinking about at editing it, adding the dimensions in ft and mph. But instead of manually calculating the M-ft ratio, can i use the convert tempate? (4.33 m)

If it is ok to use this template this way, what do I do with the line of code like this one |length alt=m? It's the line right after |length main=

Thanks Rocketmaniac2 (talk) 14:34, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Not sure I'm following what you want to do. I'm assuming you want to use this template: Template:Convert? I couldn't find a parameter on that page called "alt". Keep in mind that for most templates most parameters are optional. Often you can just leave off a parameter if you aren't sure what it does (best to try in your sandbox first though) and if the parameter is required you will get an error message in red that says something like "missing required foo parameter"... Wait, now I think I see why I was confused. The issue here if I'm understanding is not with the Convert template its with this template I think: Template:Aircraft_specifications That does have lots of alt parameters. I think the simple answer is you can just ignore the alt parameters. There actually was some discussion of this on the talk page for that template: Template_talk:Aircraft_specifications My interpretation of this (keep in mind I'm not an aircraft guy and have never used this template) is that the alt parameters on the aircraft template are for displaying in alternative metrics. So if it is a UK or US plane you might specify the wingspan in feet but also include an alt for the wingspan in meters. If you use the convert template it will do that for you anyway, i.e., it will display like this 4.33 m in both meters and feet so there is no need for the alt parameter and it can be ignored. One more thing, in case you are wondering: you can usually include one template inside another, again best to try it in your sandbox first.  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:18, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * One last point, I don't think this really relates to your issue but just FYI: I'm not an aircraft guy but I am kind of a military history buff and one thing I remember seeing on several WWII single engine bombers (used mostly in the pacific) were alternative specs for the payload. So for example the Dauntless Devestator (these aren't the exact specs but just an example of the kind of thing) it would say the main payload was one 500lb torpedo but alternatively it could carry 2 200lb bombs. If there is a point there (other than I like talking about WWII history) it is that the alt parameters can sometimes I think be context specific but the bottom line is if you don't feel the need to use it and you don't get an error without it you don't have to worry about it and can ignore it. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:56, 30 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry I didn't do a better job wording things. I was simply stating/asking these two things; 1st, is it appropriate to use the Template:Convert in articles such as (PIK-26)? Next, is the issue of "alt", I was talking about all of the parameters with "alt" in them.... examples, payload alt, length alt, span alt, height alt ETC. When using the Template:Convert such as |length main = 4.33 m it leaves the next line (length alt = ) un-used. Is this ok? (If this Convert template is used a lot more in articles with aircraft specifications, some "Master Template Editor" will need to edit the "aircraft specifications" template to reduce the extra lines of code)
 * , sorry we may have addressed this already on your talk page, I'm still recovering from my surgery and my brain is a bit more fogged than normal but in case I left this hanging and never got back to you: the answers are all yes. It is fine to use the convert template in articles such as PIK-26 and yes it is fine to leave those alt fields empty. Most of the templates that I've used or seen in articles have empty fields, often half of them or more than half are empty.  Usually there are some fields that are mandatory, such as the name of whatever is being described in the template but most of them are usually optional. You will get an error message in red if you use a template and forget to fill out a field that is mandatory, it will say something like "Missing parameter foo expected but not found" so if you don't get that message you are fine. Not sure I get the point about the master template editor. If you are just concerned about having redundant lines of code don't be. Back in the old days when I used to program on punch cards or 3270 terminals things like that were an issue but the servers and even clients used these days are so powerful that the fractions of a milisecond required to parse some field that isn't used is so trivial that it isn't an issue.  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:06, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I Will Be Out of Commission for a few days Starting Monday 2/2
'''My army of minions (I am a mad scientist remember) is just about complete and we are going to practice taking over a small country. No, not really, I wish actually that would be a lot more fun than what I'm really going to do which is have surgery on my spine and neck.''' --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:08, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey MadScientist, I'm sorry to hear that you're going to have to have such a serious and dangerous surgery. While I don't personally know what you have/will go throught will a spine / neck surgery, I do know a little about back problems. I have 7 collapsed/damaged vertebrae from almost 10 yrs of Bone Marrow Cancer.


 * Stay strong and just know that my family and I will keep you in our prayers. Rocketmaniac2 (talk) 11:33, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. I have MS which makes it hard for me to walk but when they were doing MRI's they found that parts of my spine were collapsing on the nerves. The first time they saw it, it was bad, they advised me to have surgery then but I've always tried to avoid hospitals. But the most recent MRI showed it was really getting bad to the point where if I didn't have the surgery it would be too late and I could end up completely paralyzed. I don't think what I had really compares to what you had that sounds awful but this was no picnic either. They have to cut open my neck and then muck around with the spine put screws in, junk like that. To be honest I much prefer learning about cool planes or computer science or just about anything else, when it comes to this kind of stuff I try to find someone who inspires confidence and then just do what they recommend and as much as I consider myself very intellectually curious I almost don't want to know too many details here. Especially since some of them ended up "if this goes wrong you end up a paraplegic". You probably had the same risks. But all went well, really well actually, I used to be a project manager and I often give doctors a hard time if I feel they are incompetent or don't care but everyone, well there was this one night nurse who really wanted to shove a catheter someplace I don't want things shoved up into, but other than her everyone from the surgeon to the nurses and support staff were amazing. All first rate. I'm back home now, they really try and get you out of the hospital ASAP which if fine with me. Won't be as active editing for a while. Have to wear a neck brace and am on lots of pain pills but the surgeon said everything went well and I feel like I'm really recovering fast. Thanks again for the kind thoughts and prayers. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:45, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Have just read this: that's good that all the most risky (and, probably, fearful) things are behind. Recover fast, dude! I am sure everything is gonna be alright now, and that's good that you decided to have this surgery. Take care! --Sterndmitri (talk) 11:21, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

About business plans
Hi MadScientistX11. I agree with you completely on the state of technology related articles. Not to mention all those articles that are really about one product. So keep jumping in.

We are also beginning to get a lot of articles written by students as assignments. I am not sure their teachers understand how an encyclopedia article (start with a summary, secondary sources, no analysis by editor, no conclusion) differs from a college paper (introduction, primary sources, analysis, conclusion). But that's another issue. StarryGrandma (talk) 18:47, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * , I had an idea to help that editor, I pointed him to the sub-page of the business project that has a list of unwritten articles that they think need to be written. Hopefully those won't be too esoteric and he can find something in there that meets his needs. I agree about the student thing absolutely. My first experience with student editing was the expert system article. My God what a mess. I learned on the talk page that some class had a project to all work on improving the article. In fact every time now that I hear "I'm working on Wikipedia for a class project" I cringe a bit. There was one nice exception though. There was a group from Yale and they asked me to look at their work. It was to improve the Ray Charles page.  I cringed as usual but soon I was going "wow" instead. Really first class work, not just in the edits and quality of writing but in the way they were documenting things on the Talk page. I actually don't think I was able to give them any serious feedback it was that good. But in general I think we need to make it clearer to professors the best ways that students can contribute. On another subject, as one of the few women editors that I've run into, I thought you might be interested in this: WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force --MadScientistX11 (talk) 23:52, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Rule of thumb
Hello my dear friend, if I answer a question at the Teahouse or anywhere here, you can safely assume that I only answer technical ones or the technical part of it. I prefer to leave discussions and philosophical debates to pros like you. I am always so grateful that there are editors like you to cover such things. That is not my area of expertise. Like if there was a debate about being vegetarian or not, I would not join in, but you can be sure that I would provide the pictures of vegetables and statistics from the Department of Agriculture.

On another note: I noticed that your talk page is getting rather long, do you want me to install an archiving-tingamagadget for you? All the best, w.carter -Talk  14:35, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:Co-op news for December 2014 – Feburary 2015
Hey, it's been a while. The Co-op team has been hard at work during over the winter, so let's get right into what's been happening: Thanks to all of the new mentors who have joined over the past few months. Big thanks to to posting about our little project here to the gendergap-l mailing list. I, JethroBT drop me a line 00:47, 13 February 2015 (UTC) on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.
 * Graphic design work is nearing completion and development work is coming along slowly but surely. The main components of the space, profiles, the landing page, and the mentor landing page have all been built, and we're basically just putting the pieces together.  We have close-to-final draft of the landing page, which is currently at User:Slalani/Landing_page, and in the thumbnail to the right.  You can check out other components over at User:Slalani if you're curious., , and I are working together on some of the front page elements.  We've also been doing some testing on test.wikipedia.org for profile building and matching.  If you're curious about checking that out, let me know.
 * We've finished up a survey for newer editors to assess their experiences of using existing help spaces (e.g. Reference Desk, Teahouse, IRC, The Wikipedia Adventure) on en.wikipedia.  is putting together a summary of that survey, and in the meantime, some findings from that survey of 45 newer editors include:
 * On average, editors found contributing to Wikipedia to be easier after using the help space compared to before.
 * However, after using one or more help spaces, only half of editors reported that editing, addressing social challenges, and resolving technical issues were easy or very easy. The other half of editors were either neutral, or reported that these matters were difficult or very difficult.
 * Just under 30% (11 of 38 editors) of newer editors said they probably would have stopped editing entirely had they not received support from the help space they used.
 * Editors frequently reported either 1) that they would not have been learn what they needed without the help space, or 2) That they could have found it, but admitted that it would have been difficult or taken much longer.
 * We will be making one final move of the pilot start date to March 4th, 2015. This is the last move (I promise), because we can't afford to run the pilot any later than that.  So there it is:  March 4th or bust!  But we won't bust, because there are just a few things left on our plate before we can run our pilot successfully.  I'll be alerting you about when you will be able to make mentor profiles soon, so when you get a message about that, please take a minute or two to create your profile here (otherwise, you won't get matched to any editors!).

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WP:Co-op: Presentation at Wikimania 2015
Hey. I've put in a submission for a presentation at Wikimania 2015 called Is Two the Magic Number?: The Co-op and New Editor Engagement through Mentorship. I'll be talking about the state of finding help spaces on en.wiki and how our new mentorship space, The Co-op, factors into that picture. Reviewing will begin soon and I'll need your help to be able to present our work. Please review our proposal and give us feedback. If you would be interested in seeing this presentation, whether you are attending or not, please add your name to the signup at the bottom of the proposal (you do not need to attend Wikimania to express interest in presentations). I, JethroBT drop me a line on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.

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Another presentation
I have also proposed a proposal to make Wikipedia free of data charges for users from developing countries, I will be glad if you can sign up here (just to ensure that you are also interested in making Wikipedia free of data charges), signing up doesn't mean that you have to attend so don't worry. Thank you, friend.  Jim Car ter  13:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Co-op: Mentor profiles and final pilot prep
Hey mentors, two announcements:
 * 1) You can now make your profile at The Co-op!  Please set up your mentor profile here as soon as you are able, as the pilot begins on March 4th.  It isn't very involved and should only take a minute.  If you need more info about what the different skills mean (e.g. writing, communication), please refer to these descriptions.
 * 2) Profile creation, invitations, and automated matching of editors, profile creation, that will be coordinated through and a few gadgets may not be ready for our pilot, and will have to be done manually until they are ready.  In preparation for the pilot, please read over these instructions on how we will be manually performing these tasks until the automated components are ready. I, JethroBT</b> drop me a line on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.

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hey hey
Hello! The last time we were in contact you had just experienced a surgery, so are you fine now? How are you, if that's not a secret?

Some time ago you kidly helped me with my article about the Our Lady of the Sign (Novgorod), and it was quite useful. I made up one more article, about the history of the city I live in again. I am happy to represent the new article for you, regardless of whether you will edit it! Maybe the content will be interesting for you, as you are aware a little about what I do write about. Good luck! --Sterndmitri (talk) 00:38, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for keeping in touch. I am doing better after the surgery. I'm still not at 100% but have been making progress, especially this last week. They tell me it can take up to a full year to completely heal. The worst after effect is that I'm tired a lot of the time. So I'm not working at the speed I used to which if I do say so myself was kind of fast. But I'm definitely interested in taking a look and giving some comments. I tend to be most tired toward the end of the day. This is also partly a factor of the medicines I'm on. So I don't think I will have any useful comments tonight, but will take a look at the article tomorrow morning and give you any feedback. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 01:03, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Glad to hear you! So, an operation on your spine is not a joke, you know. Therefore I'm not surprised by what you have just told me about tiredness and a long period to recover. Please, don't make efforts and spend your energy to make comments!! I contacted you simply because I have just finished that article and recalled about the help you kindly rendered me before ;) Just take a look and read what is written: the story I stated there is quite interesting, it looks like a fairytale (or even like a scandinavian saga) in the beginning. So, I believe that will be a fairytale to make you better ;) Be healthy! --Sterndmitri (talk) 03:12, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I wasn't feeling well over the week end but felt better today so I took a quick look. I know you said not to edit but I couldn't resist making some very minor edits. Especially in the opening text of sections I think it is good to make things as grammatical and well constructed as possible. Of course feel free to revert any edits I made. BTW, when I was first recovering and couldn't do much besides read I ended up re-reading War and Peace. It is a new English translation and it makes such a difference to have a great translation. I hadn't read it for decades but I remembered that once I got into it I couldn't put it down and that was the same this time, even more so I think because I know a lot more about European history then I did the first time. I then read Solzenitzen's August 1914 which I think is clearly his attempt to do his version of War and Peace. Its also a great book but mostly for the war stuff, he just doesn't have the same capability for creating interesting three dimensional characters as Tolstoy, but then few writers do. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:08, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Wow, you seem to be such an intelligent guy! To my shame, I haven't even read War and Peace as well as Solzhenitsyn in their original versions, so you are familiar with Russian culture of the empire style even better than me, I guess. In my school about 10 years ago I had quarrels with my teachers since I told them it's boring :D --Sterndmitri (talk) 05:14, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

on About the info that you left on my talk page22
Hey, MadScientistX11 :-). Personally, I agree with your statement that you had left on my page. I also think the separation of Religion and Science is mainly in Western culture. This is not seen to be the same in non-Western cultures, such as that of vary of the world First Nations, or aboriginal people. Could you go on and continue explaining  what you said on my Talk Page and give me credible evidence to support that what you are saying? Thank you. Frogger48 (talk) 06:53, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Greetings glad you found what I wrote worth reading. I'm not sure how much more I have to say on the topic but I'll give it some thought. But if possible we should take this to a different forum. Wikipedia conversations are supposed to be only focused on editing the encyclopedia. I was OK stretching that rule the first time but if we are going to talk more it would be better if we could do it somewhere else, such as if you have a blog somewhere or a Facebook page. Personally, I don't like Facebook much but I've given in and created an account that is anonymous (which wasn't easy to do but I'm a fanatic about security and not giving out my personal identity online). My FB page is: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1708320520 If you don't have an account or blog I could say a bit more on your talk page but not too much, its really not appropriate. Also, can you say a bit more about what kind of additional info you are looking for? There are some excellent journal articles and books I can tell you about if you are interested but don't want to bore you if you don't want to go into that kind of academic detail. Cheers! --MadScientistX11 (talk) 05:02, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing download link of the article I requested at resource exchange for working on virtual cinematography
The .pdf appears to be the full paper. Will study. Thank you MadScientistX11. --Redress perhaps (talk) 18:13, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

JSTOR cleanup drive
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ArbCom elections are now open!
Hi, You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Automatic taxonomy construction
I noticed your work on artificial intelligence and computer science articles, and was wondering if you would mind taking a look at automatic taxonomy construction, to see if there is anything you could correct or add.

Thank you. The Transhumanist 01:52, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've been cutting way back on my editing but thanks for asking, I'll take a look and if I can make some basic changes such as adding refs and make it flow better without a lot of effort I'll give it a try. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 03:51, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I appreciate it. The Transhumanist 04:42, 7 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I searched for the title of the paper in the link you deleted, and found the new link:
 * Learning taxonomic relations from a set of text documents
 * Thanks for proofreading the page. The Transhumanist 06:50, 8 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi, you've probably seen already but just wanted to give you a heads up that I did some work on the article. I know it still needs a lot more work but I think its an improvement and at least it has inline references and (I hope) makes some sense. I wasn't familiar with the terminology of hyponyms and hypernyms (its amazing how different groups find ways to give different names to concepts that are essentially the same). I thought that the idea of is-a hierarchies was more familiar so at first I went with that but the more I looked at all the papers the more I realized they all use (which I should have realized) the linguistics terms of hypernyms and hyponyms so I felt it was important to describe those terms. For people who start digging into the actual papers I hope at least they will start with a basic understanding of the terminology. I almost then deleted what I wrote about is-a but as I said I think that concept is more widely understood, especially these days with object-oriented programming so popular so I felt it was worth leaving both terms. I think the original article used both concepts as well although it wasn't clear to me what hypernyms were from what was in the original article. Let me know if you have feedback or of course feel free to just edit. I've asked some colleagues for more references on the topic but so far no one has come through. If they do I may update some more, or if you have some feedback and want me to address it I'll give it a shot but otherwise moving on. Thanks for asking though it was actually fun to do some non-trivial editing, haven't done it in a while. It helped that I had some actual work that I didn't want to do so this was a nice distraction ;-)  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 21:49, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Very nice job. You definitely know the subject better than me. Out of curiosity, what's your background?  Which programming languages do you know? I have some technical questions for which you might be just the right person to answer them. The Transhumanist 04:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * User:The Transhumanist Thanks! Sorry for the late reply was busy with other stuff for a while, wasn't blowing you off. My background is Symbolic AI (I say that because more and more I'm finding people equate AI with Machine Learning techniques). My programming language of choice was always Lisp. You probably are too young to remember Lisp Machines but I felt about my Symbolics machine the way classic car buffs feel about a 50's Corvette. I also have a pretty good background in logic, set theory, etc. I did a fair amount of R&D work on the Knowledge Based Software Assistant program as well as work in commercial applications of Expert Systems. I've used a lot of rule-based shells, and was a real whiz with the Knowledge Engineering Environment (KEE). I've dabbled a bit in Smalltalk. I'm also pretty literate in Java.  The last actual programming I did for real was in Java. I like Java a lot, it has most of the benefits of environments such as Lisp and Smalltalk (plus some they don't have such as strong typing) but also is fast (enough) for most commercial applications. I know I would get arguments on that from C++ zealots and there is no question C++ is certainly much faster and more compact but there is a good evidence that (for most commercial applications) speed of development and ease of maintenance are more important drivers than bat out of hell performance. I'm not up to speed on Ruby or Python.  Also, right now I'm learning MatLab (if you can't beat the machine learning guys then join 'em). Probably way more detail than you needed. As you can probably tell I could talk about this stuff pretty much endlessly so if you have questions that I might help with feel free to ask. Especially on Java, I've been re-learning it. Oh, also, I'm very adept at OWL (W3C Web Ontology Language standard) and a tool from Stanford called Protege for developing OWL semantic models. I think Protege really is an awesome tool. Its the best supported free software I've ever seen and its more reliable than a lot of for profit tools I've used. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:06, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Impressive experience. Well, concerning AI, what I want are editor bots to take my place, or more accurately, do the work for me according to my specifications. Genies, to grant my every wish.  I want to be able to tell them "I wish for an outline on George Washington", and the bots do the rest.  See Outline of Abraham Lincoln.  So, I plan on learning and applying automatic outline construction technology to this, but right now I'm bogged down in development of some basic tools using JavaScript. Some threads I wrote to others explaining what kind of tools and capabilities I'd like to have are:
 * User talk:EpochFail
 * https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overleg_gebruiker:Basvb#AI_on_WP:_Automating_outline_construction_and_maintenance
 * User talk:Mortee
 * I hope those give you an idea of where I'm coming from and what I'm looking for now and into the future. In the intermediate- and long-term, I'm open to just about anything. I look forward to any comments you may have about how one could go about automating the outline-building and maintenance (updating) processes. The Transhumanist 01:55, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You probably know this but there is a big difference between Java and Javascript. Javascript is simpler but it lacks true object oriented capabilities. Its usually used just for light weight front end stuff, i.e., code that can be embedded on the user's browser rather than running on the back end on the server. You can probably tell I'm more of a fan of Java. You can do a lot more with it. But I have heard of Javascript being used more for serious programming these days too. Have you looked into DBpedia? The OWL and Protege technologies I mentioned are part of a bigger initiative (backed by Tim Berners-Lee) called the Semantic Web. The idea is to put a semantic layer (defined using standards such as OWL) behind and layered over the existing Internet. DBpedia is one of the first large scale examples of using Semantic Web technologies. It consists of info from Wikipedia with logical structure behind it. Come to think of it Automatic Taxonomy Classification may be relevant to DBpedia as well. I know there are also toolkits, including freeware open source ones, that are just designed so you can construct bots. I think they have a GUI and try to make it so that the bot creator doesn't have to do programming. I know Microsoft had one, not sure what happened to it. Its been a long time since I looked at this but if I can find any good examples I'll let you know. Good luck, sounds like an interesting project. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:57, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

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thanks
Hi, the actual page has gone into the archives, but thanks for getting back to me on the ref desk to let me know you were paying attention - it certainly makes it worthwhile. Although I should add, my own knowledge is slight - Trovatore is certainly the guru here. IBE (talk) 06:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's something I would like you to take a look at
Hi, it's been a year (see above), and I thought it would be nice to touch base again...

I'm still struggling with JavaScript, as its ecosystem is huge. It's trying to absorb everything, or expand into every programming role. To help navigate it all, I built the Draft:Outline of JavaScript and Outline of scripts (No, those are not what I was referring to in the message title).

My guess is I'm at intermediate level skill now.

I've been working on tools to help users build lists (while outlines are a type of list).

The main one I've created so far is called SearchSuite.js. It provides menu items to enhance Wikipedia search results, including one that converts search results into a bare list, and another to make it into a list that can be copied and pasted into a wiki-editor (presumably that a list or outline article is opened in).

It came about because I was writing scripts to convert every type of list component I could find on WP (nav footers, sidebars, books, special:all pages, categories, cat tree, etc.) into wikicode outline format on screen (still working on this by the way), and search happened to be such a list. While working on search, I decided I might as well turn it into a general purpose tool useful to most everybody, not just list editors. So I split its various capabilities up into separate functions, each attached to a menu item, and made the menu items toggles.

One of them turns sorting of search results on/off.

By the way, I've revamped the Help:Searching page, and the special characters and parameters there work synergistically with SearchSuite's features.

Please give it a test drive and let me know what you think of it.

Any and all comments are welcome. &mdash; The Transhumanist     13:34, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the message, I'll definitely check it out. Have you heard of Semantic MediaWiki? It's based on the same foundation as Wikipedia and DBpedia but it uses more of the Semantic Web features. You can utilize a subset of OWL and create classes and relations and then do reasoning about them and of course connect them to articles either in Wikipedia or that you create yourself. I was looking at it for a project but we wanted something that had more of the full power of OWL, things like transitive relations and other features which SMW doesn't have. But if you are into building these kinds of applications SMW looks very cool, unlike Wikipedia which we aren't supposed to use for our own work SMW is a sandbox where people can create their own specific Wikis. You can get your own server or you can use the Sandbox environment of SMW. Thanks again for thinking of me and keeping in touch. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It made me jump through 20 hoops, and I still don't have an account. That has thrown cold water on any desire I might have had to have an account there. Thanks for the heads up. If you know anyone there, let them know that their security system is approaching human-proof. I wonder how many others got fed up with it and walked away.     &mdash; The Transhumanist      10:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That's too bad. I didn't notice it with SMW but I have noticed it with other sites. I was thinking of applying to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and all the BS I had to do just to get a friggin account so I could send in an application was just insane. BS like asking you 6 different security questions about your first girl friend, job, etc. (And I can never remember my answers precisely anyway, e.g., "did I say Chicago Bears for my favorite team or just Bears") IMO that kind of overkill shows that whoever manages the site doesn't know what they are doing. The security on a site should be commenserate with how important the data is. So for something like SMW or applying to a school having a huge amount of security is just wasting the time of your users and making them less likely to use your system and the users are the whole reason IT exists. BTW, another excellent tool is Pool Party I didn't spend much time using SMW because for the particular project I was consulting on it was clear that Pool Party was much better. But unfortunately it's not free, although they do have trial licenses and discount licenses for non-profits. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:04, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

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Thank you for this special decoration, I really appreciate it! --CiaPan (talk) 09:24, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

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Answer to My question regarding using images from Commons for my never to be published novel
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