User talk:Richardeast

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You left a common
Hi you left a comment here Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(icons) but it appears incomplete can you have a look Gnevin (talk) 00:46, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Twin Towns / Sister Cities
Hi Richard, I've noticed that there doesn't seem to be any consistency in the flag icon/country naming of UK countries for Twin Towns, or Sister Cities. Do you know where the Wikipedia policy is? I haven't been able to find it. Daicaregos (talk) 08:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Daicaregos, no - I couldn't find any either. The only bit I found was the article about not unnecessarily use of flags. If it's any help, down where I live in France all twinning signs seem to have Welsh and Scottish towns with the respective national flags, while English towns have the union flag! --Richardeast (talk) 22:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

List of European countries
Careful with the edit warring, Richard. Getting blocked for it would only stop you participating in the discussion. Jack 1314 (talk) 21:40, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up mate... I'll take your advice onboard though as a relative newbie here I'm genuinely surprised how stubbornly sure of their own opinions some of the editors are, regardless of how many facts are presented which show them up to be, quite frankly, wrong! In my job I'm lucky enough to work with a number of different academic institutions and they scoff at the idea of a student using Wiki as a source - but in the last 3 days I can see how a project initially created to advance human understanding can be hijacked by those who see it as nothing more than a stage from which they can spout their warped political opinions to the world. It's genuinely sad as all they do is damage the good honest work done by the majority of decent editors. --Richardeast (talk) 22:28, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

A member of the WP:EAR team has addressed your enquiry at Editor assistance/Requests. If the issues/problems persist, please consider either raising a WP:Request for Comment or making use of one of the WP:dispute resolution departments.--Kudpung (talk)

Legally defined as countries
Good evening/Bonsoir!

I left a question for you on the famous talk page and I'm afraid it gets a bit lost in all the mess. You referred several times to E/S/W/NI as legally defined as countries. Can you please refer me to the text of law which defines them as such? (by that I mean something more precise than membership in organisations such as the IOC or the FIFA, or the website presentations provided). In the absence of a written constitution for the UK I don't know where to look for such a definition. It is really a good-faith question for my personal curiosity, I'm willing to take any answer you may have. Place Clichy (talk) 18:12, 6 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Bonsoir Place Clichy - I did miss your original post! (are you from Clichy By the Way? - I lived for a year in Taverny and used to ride the RER through there from Montigny on the way to the central Paris). There's been a number of official government documents or acts of law where Wales is officially referred to as a country such as One Wales (just search for 'Wales is a country!') - and [The Government of Wales Act 1998 which outlined the setting up the National Assembly. We're also listed as countries on relevant parts of the UK government websites and by the Commonwealth Secretariat. Though I'm afraid neither Wales nor the UK has a formal written constitution which sets out the exact relationship between the states, the UK prime minister's office has tried to clarify the strange situation of having countries within a state. The simplest solution is simply to look at the Welsh government's website 'The official gateway to Wales' which answers the question directly!

Quoted comments
Just a heads up, Richard. If you quote another "editor", whether or not they contribute any actual content and no matter how charmless, ignorant, rude or provocative the rants, quoting the "diffs" is considered to be the thing to do. This is to enable other editors to check that they haven't just been made up. Some of those quoted would be rather hard to believe, to be fair. Unless you knew the person concerned, of course. Best, Daicaregos (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't want to bring it into the debate as really it's irrelevant but equally I don't want to drag everyone to arbitration on an article we've all spent time trying to perfect simply because a single editor seems to have agendas beyond the quality of the encyclopaedia. Some of the unbalanced, illogical and contrary positions being taken were simply getting too unbelievable! There's only so long you can try to span the divide with someone who wants to blow up every bridge!! Excuse my ignorance though, but what's a 'diffs'? --Richardeast (talk) 23:51, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, Richard. A diff is a link to any post made by an editor. Jack 1314 (talk) 00:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I quite understand your frustration, believe me. Sorry, I don't suppose there is any reason you should know. A "diff" is the edit's url from the article history. e.g. this is the diff of my edit in this section. Go to the article's history tab. Select the "prev" of the relevant edit and copy the url. If you have any problems with it, let me know the article, and the date/time of the edit and I'll do it for you so you can see. Daicaregos (talk) 00:07, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you both- Diff Added! --Richardeast (talk) 00:16, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

List of European countries and territories
Hello. The requested move on List of European countries and territories is about to close and you are currently the only person oppose the move. I hope we can get complete consensus on this before we do it. After discussing your opposition, will you now support the move or do you still have reasons to oppose it. Currently, all that is being proposed is that the title be changed, not the content. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 14:23, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Should you disagree that the new title reflects the content, that still can be discussed once the page move has taken place. Having an article title that reflects its content (and vice versa) is surely a good thing. Daicaregos (talk) 14:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree and if there's consensus to change, I'll go with the majority - it just seems a bit... sad... that some people were so offended about the idea of including my country that they went to such length but c'est la vie! - We should probably look into Aland and Svalbard as they're specifically highlighted in the Dependent territory article as not being dependent territories - I'd like to keep the article as complete as possible so maybe we could include a note? I'll leave that to other people to decide! --Richardeast (talk) 14:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Richard, just a word to the wise. You may want to take a look a WP:3RR re List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe. I wouldn't want to see you blocked from editing. Best, Daicaregos (talk) 09:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Use of flags for non-sovereign states and nations
Re – For your information: WP:MOSICON. Hans Adler 17:14, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I see above that you were just trying to make everything consistent, and made an effort to understand what our guidelines say about the matter. Sorry for reacting a bit rough – this has come up several times in the past, and in the past it was usually editors with an unusually strong identification with their own British "country"/"nation" who were pushing a POV. I guess this is how much of the inconsistency arose in the first place. If you think we should discuss this further, Talk:Mannheim is probably not the best place. I think a discussion at WT:MOSICON wouldn't hurt in any case – to determine once and for all how to interpret MOSICON in the context of town twinning, and maybe even develop a strategy for keeping things consistent. Hans Adler 21:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hello Hans, Thanks for the reply though I'm really sorry I've only just got back to you... things have been very busy at work and so I needed to take some time off Wiki editing! Though I agree with you that currently the union flag should in some cases, for sports and culture (and everything non-political) we're considered separate countries so should really use respective national flags. For instance on Mannheim's own page (http://www.mannheim.de/stadt-gestalten/swansea-wales and http://www.mannheim.de/stadt-gestalten/partnerstaedte-staedtepartnerschaften-partnerstadt) Swansea is listed as in Wales and not in United Kingdom... so it seems odd that Wiki does not reflect the real-world. --Richardeast (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox F1 driver
The infobox which you are changing is a template maintained by WP:WikiProject Formula One. Consensus there - after extensive discussion - is that the rule of thumb is not applicable to Formula One, representative nationality being an intrinsic part. If you are set on changing them all, have a look at List of Formula One drivers - you'd better set aside a week or so for the task! -- Ian Dalziel (talk) 12:00, 29 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link, I did have a quick search through the archive but couldn't specifically see why editors thought a special case should be made for people involved in F1 over people in other sports... so I've started the discussion. --Richardeast (talk) 12:59, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Shard=UK
Please do not change the shard back to England. It has said UK on it for a long time. As I can see that you don't like the UK but many people regard the Shard is in the UK.

Willrocks10 (talk) 12:43, 19 February 2012 (UTC) :: Thanks for your comment - my main aim was to take the flagicon out of the info box as per Wiki policy, please refer to WP:MOSICON, notably the section which states.

"Avoid flag icons in infoboxes Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many."

I see you've added it back in, why?

Reverting
Quite frankly, I didn't know how to put it to you, but here goes!

"tens of thousands" means anywhere between 10,000 and 90,000 thousand. There is a very big difference between ten thousand and 90,000. Nearly 10,000 people fitted inside the Royal Albert Hall, until they moved some of the seats out.

In other words, the person who said that, (and twitted on inanely about other things as one would expect) was not making an "estimate": she was merely using a big number. She might as well have said "millions"; it would have been just about as accurate. Your second source had borrowed directly from the first one. Neither were "estimates". Neither stated that they were estimates.

No-one can be silly enough to "estimate" that there were "tens of thousands of people" because it is meaningless. I thought I made the point clearly enough in the edit summary, but obviously I didn't.  Amandajm (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * THis is silly and illogical. Go and look at a few of the pictures. Look at a bridge.  There are a thousand people on it. Look at a station entrance. There is another thousand in one photo. The people stretched for 7 miles along the banks on either side. They were 7 to 20 deep, depending on the slope, steps etc, and there were people on every balcony and at the windows and everywhere else you can imagine. Thousands of people at every location.  To say tens of thousands, (which means less than 100,000 is ridiculous!  Of course there were a million. In Sydney (population 4.5 million) we can turn out 1 million people to a major event, so don't tell me that London can't! Amandajm (talk) 13:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Amandajm, do you have any idea how many people a million people are? a line of a million people side by side is over 750km! even 5 deep on both banks that's a continuous 75 KM line of solid people! - it was most likely in the low hundreds of thousands, but Wikipedia being wikipedia, I simply referenced what different sources were saying (I think you'll agree, CNN & LA times are good sources... Daily mail, I'll leave for others to comment!). I don't get why you deleted this, it's independently referenced and adds to the article.  --Richardeast (talk) 13:41, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, by the way, may I refer you to WP:NPOV. "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of, or as detailed, a description as more widely held views." --Richardeast (talk) 13:50, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I deleted it because it plainly isn't a proper estimate. It is a very loose number.
 * Rain soaked Millions Times Colonist
 * More than a million Mirror
 * Hundreds of thousands Herald Sun
 * 1,000 boats, 20,000 participants and a million onlookers The Guardian
 * Nearly a quarter of a million people watch the ANZAC Day March, through the streets of Sydney, every year and they don't march very far, because the WWII guys are a bit shaky on their legs. Even the Vietnam vets are getting on!
 * Amandajm (talk) 14:03, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with your WP:NPOV position is that if someone makes a truly vague and mindless gestimate, but prints it in a newspaper, then it's in print, and can be quoted, no matter how off the mark it may be.
 * You have give two references for the lowest estimate. Why don't you now add to the higher estimate the Times, the Mirror and the Guardian, for a better balance of opinion?  Amandajm (talk) 14:23, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I had referenced the higher one, despite the clear and obvious flaw in that claim.... Like I said, the real number is probably in the low hundreds of thousands but I think you've been contributing to Wikipedia long enough to know it's not for you, I, nor anyone else to pick and choose sources based on our personal opinions! --Richardeast (talk) 16:12, 5 June 2012 (UTC)



Actually, I'm going to pop in here, because I read the tens of thousands too, and considered that it was flawed. WP:NPOV requires in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint, and I think that that is the key there.

The simple fact is that the term "tens of thousands" is used in a small number of articles whereas a million is used in a large number of articles. It therefore would seem (to me) that you are picking and choosing your sources to support your own personal political views.

The CNN article which you quoted also cited 20,000 people on the river itself (ie, in the boats) which is 2 out of your tens of thousands already. These people were scattered into craft. Your argument with relation to the calculation of the "length of a million people" is a straw man. It frankly doesn't hold up against that number alone.

But hang on there. There were 10,000 people who went to the Buckingham Palace garden party. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jun/06/queen-s-diamond-jubilee-in-numbers

So, if we're in the "low hundreds of thousands" say 300,000 a full 10% would either have had tickets to the palace OR been on the river itself. I should know quite a few people, who had that opportunity then!

The MET Police state that there were 1.5 million. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/diamond-jubilee-celebrations-success-police

It should be noted that the Notting Hill Carnival does around 1 mil over 2 days, with around 800,000 on the biggest day. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notting_Hill_Carnival  http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/aug/29/notting-hill-carnival-revellers-police
 * Ok - ah I see what you've done. You've taken a quote for the number of people who were 'on the streets' of London and, regardless of whether they were part of the 60,000 people watching coldplay at the Emirates, shopping on Oxford street or simply visiting mates- updated the article in a way which makes it sound they were all standing on the Thames watching the flotilla. As I previously tried to explain to you, do you have any idea how many people even a million people are if you stand them in a line? There clearly were no where near a million people there, but the whole point of NPOV is it gives a balanced view based on the widest range of independent sources possible, regardless of your, mine or anyone elses personal opinion. I have reverted the page back to the balanced paragraph, lets not get into a revert way but, if you have an issue with this I'm happy to seek arbitration as ensuring the encyclopedia's integrity is very important to me.


 * 1,500,000 minus 60,000 at the Emirates and you are still left with 1,440,000. Let us suppose that 200,000 people were shopping on Oxford St, at Sloane Square and so on, and another 140,000 were visiting The Tate Modern, the BM, the National Gallery, the Tower of London and the other top sites.  And another 100,000 were feeding pigeons, visiting churches, going to the theatre and sitting in bus shelters.  That still gives us a million people who were "on the streets" on a cold, blowy, rainy day when they could have been at home watching the tele.  NOTE: if they were at a pub, (any pub) then they were in all probability watching the pageant and singing "God Save the Queen" every 15 minutes, because that is what those people who couldn't get near the river because of the crowds did.
 * The people along the embankments were not 7 deep; they were twenty deep and on every balcony and in every window. Look at the videos.
 * Amandajm (talk) 04:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)


 * You don't seem to get it do you. Unless you're presenting original research, which you're not, it's not for you to try to assume how many people 'might' have been shopping, visiting friends, in a concert, playing football down the park, asleep under a tree in camdem, etc, etc, etc - we take the independent and reliable sources and use that as the basis for the articles. It's really not that complicated. If you're looking for a medium upon which you can state your personal opinions about what people in pubs do, I suggest you start a blog.

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