User talk:Richwales/Archives/2013-09

Hi
Welcome back! --Rschen7754 05:14, 4 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:15, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

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Georgian alphabet
Hello Rich. I think your proposal is the more acceptable here in this case and it is better if you could make changes in the text in the history section of the article. Right now in the talk page there is just a talk for talk and nothing more which makes it even useless to discuss. So when you make those changes of your proposal if it is possible put the lengthy protection on the article itself to avoid vandalizing again. GEORGIANJORJADZE 18:12, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your supportive comments. However, the article is already fully protected (for another 8+ days) in order to allow more time for a consensus to form.  Yes, I know it's going to be difficult to get a consensus here, but Wikipedia's policies say we have to try as hard as possible.  Although I have the technical capability (as an admin) to edit the article despite its being protected, as well as the ability to extend the time for which the article is protected, this would be a highly improper use of my privileges (see WP:ADMIN in general, and WP:INVOLVED in particular), and I would almost certainly be stripped of my admin rights and my actions would quickly be reversed by other admins.  So, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to say no.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 18:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Who should be the one who will edit it then? Where do you see a consensus there as I don't see it coming yet or ever will be any there so should we freeze the article the way it is now? GEORGIANJORJADZE 18:34, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't know right now. Please don't ask any other admin to edit the article or lengthen its protected status right now, BTW — they will just tell you the same thing I did (or else they will get into big trouble and probably lose their admin status if they decide to take your advice).  And you, yourself, could get into trouble for trying to pressure admins into breaking the rules.  Sometimes consensus takes a long time to form — and if there are people who make it clear that they don't care about consensus and are determined to make an article read a certain way no matter what other people think, then those defiant and disruptive editors will eventually be expelled from Wikipedia entirely.  On rare occasions, problems like this one end up thrown into the lap of the Arbitration Committee — though "ArbCom" almost never takes on a case while it is still in the stage where people are behaving themselves but are honestly unable to come to any agreement.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 18:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This is the case right now. It's been years already this article is like a mess in the history section. Something needs to be done to solve it but no one really does anything. Can ArbCom do anything about it? GEORGIANJORJADZE 19:33, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll do what I can. Please be patient, even if you believe others are not.  And remember, the essence of compromise is that everyone is probably going to be at least somewhat unhappy with the result.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 19:42, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Nokia
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I smell an edit-war
Hello Rich,

Please see Roustam Raza. I smell the edit war will happen here soon as neighbors from the south claim he was an Armenian when he was Georgian. GEORGIANJORJADZE 17:47, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey
Hi Rich, just thought of dropping by and asking how's it going :) Best regards. Wifione  Message 17:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

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We have changed the number of suggested articles and which categories they are selected from. The number of stubs has been greatly reduced, the number of articles needing sources doubled, and two new categories added (orphans and unencyclopaedic articles). We have also modified the layout of the suggestions and added sortable columns with various types of information about each article. The first two columns are:


 * Views/Day : Daily average number of views an article's had over the past 14 days.
 * Quality : Predicted article quality on a 1- to 3-star scale. Placing your cursor over the stars should give you a pop-up describing the article's quality (Low/Medium/High), current assessment class, and predicted assessment class.

The method we use to predict article quality also allows us to assess whether an article might need specific types of work in order to improve its quality. The work needed might not correspond to cleanup tags added to the article, since our method is not based on those. We have added five columns reflecting this work assessment, where a red X indicates improvement is needed. Placing your cursor over an X should give you a pop-up with a short description of the work needed. The five columns seek to answer the following five questions:


 * Content : Is more content needed?
 * Headings : Does this article have an appropriate section structure?
 * Images : Is the number of illustrative images about right?
 * Links : Does this article link to enough other Wikipedia articles?
 * Sources : For its length, is there an appropriate number of citations to sources in this article?

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If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia vs. Wiktionary for Georgian letter articles
Rich, I was thinking of doing something like it is on wiktionary so you think that it makes no point by having them on wiki as well? I mean Wikipedia is more popular than wiktionary and people will read more here about each letter than on wiktionary and that's why I thought creating all those letter articles. Maybe we can delete wiktionary articles and paste them here on wiki? No? GEORGIANJORJADZE 17:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * No. The sort of articles about the Georgian letters that are currently in Wiktionary are fine for Wiktionary, but they are not suitable for Wikipedia unless you have a lot more to say about each letter.  Wikipedia and Wiktionary are both valuable, and each one has its own purposes.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary; if all you can say about a given letter is its position in the Georgian alphabet and a few pictures of the letter in the various historical versions of the alphabet, that is probably fine for a Wiktionary article, but it is absolutely not enough for a Wikipedia article.


 * Also, from the point of view of the average reader of Wikipedia — someone who doesn't know anything about the Georgian alphabet at all, and who may be just barely getting past the "isn't Georgian related to Russian?" stage of (mis)understanding about your country and its language, is not likely to want to go look up an article about an individual Georgian letter; instead, they're probably going to want to look up material about the Georgian language, and about the Georgian alphabet as a whole (not just individual letters).


 * For that matter, someone who knows absolutely nothing about the Georgian alphabet isn't going to be looking up Wikipedia articles about the individual letters, because they will have no idea what the letters are or what they are traditionally called. You are intimately familiar with Georgian writing because you've been brought up with the language and its alphabet since you were a little child — but to people who don't know Georgian, the alphabet looks like a random, meaningless jumble of crazy squiggles (no offence intended), and if someone absolutely needed to identify the sound of a given letter, they would probably go find the article about the entire Georgian alphabet and examine the chart with all the letters in order to find the one strange-looking glyph they were looking for.  This was certainly the position I would have been in several years ago, before I started studying Georgian; the alphabet was as totally foreign to me as, say, the South Asian writing systems of Telugu or Burmese still are.


 * Changing the topic slightly: What I think would be really useful (for some people at least) would be to expand the existing Georgian alphabet article with information about the various fonts / typefaces used in Georgian today.  Show, for example, the common alternative forms of ლ (with one big, wide hump vs. three humps); რ (the alternative version that looks kind of like the English small letter "h"); წ (the version with a point on the bottom, vs. the version that looks more like a backwards შ); or ჯ (the version that looks like a hook with a crossbar, vs. the version that looks like a big X with curled ends).  Examples of Georgian handwriting styles (as well as calligraphy, or handwriting-like styles that are often seen in advertising) would also be educational.  The trick here is to find usable sources; there probably isn't much of anything written in scholarly papers about these deeper aspects of the Georgian alphabet, and using a whole bunch of TV screen shots from GPB, Rustavi-2, and other stations in order to illustrate different fonts or writing styles might result in some people objecting to an excessive number of "fair use" images.  But I still think it's something worth thinking about.  What do you think?  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 19:14, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You're right Rich. I will redirect them back to the Georgian alphabet article then. And will add those pics of all 3 alphabets in wiktionary as it will be more useful. Honestly speaking I knew very few about wiktionary as such and that's why I made those articles on wiki thinking that it was not a part of wiki-community so to say. As for your last idea I must say I am impressed. How do you know that there are other letters as well? Indeed, I will do my best to add them by myself no need for other sources I will make them personally and will show you and we can decide where to put them in article under which name. Sounds good? GEORGIANJORJADZE 19:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * When I first started studying Georgian (on my own — I couldn't find any classes or tutors), I looked at online sources such as web sites and Wikipedia articles. I soon discovered that the various computer fonts had two very different forms for წ and ჯ.  I also started looking at TV programs (the cable TV system that serves our home has an "international" channel which shows stuff from all over the world, including an hour a day of GPB or Rustavi-2 from Georgia), and this meant I was able to see many different writing styles (including handwriting and calligraphy).  Also, I found a book online (I think it may have been Aronson's book on Georgian grammar), which included a section showing handwriting; this was especially helpful because it showed that some letters (like ა, პ, and ჰ) are written starting at the bottom and moving up.


 * "No need for other sources, I will make them personally" . . . well, remember that when we work on stuff in Wikipedia, we're supposed to avoid original research and find reliable sources for everything. I agree that this may not always be possible, but it's the goal we should always be shooting for.  Rather than see you create writing samples yourself, it would probably be better if we could use TV screen shots and try to argue for fair use justification; I can probably find some stuff like this, and if you can find such material as well, I can help with the procedure for a fair use justification.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 19:48, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * It took me less than 5 minutes.
 * First letter is დ
 * Second is ლ
 * Third is ჯ
 * Fourth is რ
 * Fifth is ო
 * As for წ, well it does not differ that much from its actualself so no need to make it look like opposite შ. GEORGIANJORJADZE 20:17, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Remember, though, that we don't have any control over exactly what the mkhedruli letters will look like in the table.  For example, the default font on my Linux system shows a ჯ that is like a big hook with a small vertical bar and a slightly slanted crossbar — with no curls on the other strokes, just the big hook on the bottom.  A Windows user, on the other hand, is probably going to see a ჯ that looks like a big letter X (below the line of writing), with a big hook on the lower left bar, and small curls (going the opposite way) on the other three bars.  The version I see — which is similar to most handwritten ჯ's — is different enough from the other version that, at first, I didn't realize these were both the same letter.


 * Also, I would definitely show both versions of წ, because to someone who is unfamiliar with the Georgian alphabet, it's not necessarily obvious that these two glyphs (one with a pointy descender, the other without) are in fact the same letter. Again, it may be obvious to you, because you've been exposed to Georgian writing your whole life, but it won't be obvious to a foreigner who doesn't have any background in Georgian.


 * A list of alternative forms should probably show each letter on a line, with the various possibilities shown one after another on the line. I can write up a picture illustrating what I mean, but I won't be able to do it until about this time tomorrow.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 20:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure. We can also add the other form of წ in form of შ. That won't be a problem at all.
 * [[File:Mkhedruli sh.svg]]
 * Actually we can take this შ and rotate as we wish. GEORGIANJORJADZE 20:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * [[File:Georgian letter წ (round version).png]]
 * Hey Rich, here is the შ-like round version for letter წ. GEORGIANJORJADZE 11:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

SPI case
Hi Richwales. Thanks for the prompt message at my talk about the improper SPI case I have filed. Though I did it deliberately because the last few SPIs I have filed with lengthy evidence gave the sock a lead how to avoid getting detected and created an army of socks, giving little clue. So my apologies for that if I have wasted your or any other volunteer's time there at SPI. I will like to add a sockmaster to this report, and I am not sure how to do that. Should I move the case page myself or add the master as a puppet for now and clerks will do it if confirmed later? -- S M S  Talk 06:41, 22 September 2013 (UTC)


 * If you feel evidence for an SPI really needs to be submitted off-wiki, send it by e-mail to . If you do this, the SPI page will need to be updated with a note saying you have done this.


 * When you say you want to add a "sockmaster" to this report, are you saying you believe the real sockmaster (the oldest account you know of that belongs to this user) is an account other than ? If that is the case, the easiest thing for you to do would be to add the "real sockmaster" as a suspected sockpuppet, and let us (the SPI clerks) sort it out.  Or, if you feel you need to send the details by e-mail (see above), then identify the other account(s) in your e-mail.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 06:58, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks I have added the evidence along with the suspected master as suspected sockpuppet. -- S M S  Talk 09:12, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This did the trick — a whole sock drawer full of bogus accounts have been identified and shut down as a result of your efforts. Thanks very, very much.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 00:08, 24 September 2013 (UTC)