User talk:Smkolins/Archive 1

Redirects
One more thing. I saw you made this edit to change Bahá'í to Bahá'í. The first is actually the preferred Wikipedia syntax, as "Bahá'í" is shown, but the link goes to the Bahá'í Faith page. The second syntax shows "Bahá'í" as needed, but then goes to the "Bahá'í" article which is redirected to the "Bahá'í Faith" page. While redirects are not that bad, one should not switch links from not going through redirects to going through redirects (as it causes extra traffic for the Wikipedia servers). Note that, however, there's no need to go around fixing redirects, as Wikipedia states that it's more expensive on their servers to make the edit that fixes redirects, rather than allowing redirects. -- Jeff3000 15:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * My aim was to fix references of Baha'i individuals so they showed up on this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bahá%27ís It seemed that the mixed entries weren't showing up. Of course that could be of too little benefit....
 * To add them to List of Bahá'ís, you need to edit the List of Bahá'ís page. There's no automatic connection. Categories, on the other hand are more automatic.  If you add , it will add that page to Category:Bahá'í individuals-- Jeff3000 01:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Religion
Hi, I was just looking at the Baha'i faith and saw that you are a follower of this religion. I have never heard of this faith before so I was just wondering if you could tell me about this religion's role in the United States. Are there any Baha'i churches in America (besides the one in IL)? Do you have any famous church members who I might recognize. Please let me know if you have anything to tell me. Thanks, (LonghornJohnny 03:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC))


 * Hi Longhorn Johnny - sorry to wait a few days - I've been away on vacation.... yes I am a Baha'i (dropping the accents)... "Role in the United States"? Hmmm... we're much like any religion by some measures, albiet only a hundred thousands members plus in the US. I'd guess one of the more destinguishing qualities of our presence could be that the Baha'is have standing as an NGO in the UN as well as some measureable history on race unity and advocacy of the  equality of women and men. BTW, we do not arbitrarily hold those truths based on political affiliation - so many of the arguments you may know of from right wing vs left ewing arguments simply have no standing within a Baha'i context. I find that people often mistake our involvement in such issues with an inherently left wing approach to all matters and that's as far from the truth as saying we're inherently right wing based on other tenents of the Faith (like for example our view on homosexuality.) As for "churches in America..." - well if you check the  Demographics section you will see that we are well spread out. We have many organized communities in the US - several thousand, and many of them own or rent what we call "Centers" which act somewhat like churches for us, but as you've read of the one Temple in IL, you may know we have several such  Temples.  And as for "famous" Baha'is - yes we have a  few you might recognize.


 * I see you've asked several other Baha'is these questions too. I hope that our answers prove interesting. I'll copy my comments to your talk page....--Smkolins 02:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the answer. I'm gonna go and read some more about the Baha'i faith. It looks like you guys are a pretty peaceful and happy religion. Keep up the good works. (LonghornJohnny 18:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC))


 * You are certainly welcome. There are hundreds of bits of information about the religion just in wikipedia - let alone the dozens of official webpages on the faith (the most obvious being www.bahai.org), and the many thousands on webpages and blogs maintained by individual Baha'is. The Baha'i Views Blog is a metablog of many current references to the religion. While there are many topics, the Baha'is in Egypt and Iran are notable trouble-spots, even though Baha'is believe in the divine basis of the Moslem religion just as we do of the well known religions as well as some less well known.--Smkolins 19:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Seven valleys
I would revert your additions today, they are all original work, unless you have a secondary source for the statements. -- Jeff3000 01:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Long quotes should also not be included. I'm sorry, but I think I'll have to rever the work, it's just not acceptable by Wikipedia policy.  If there is a secondary source that documents the Seven Valleys, that can be used as a source to document the valleys, but then even that work should be paraphrased and cited. -- Jeff3000 01:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I understand exactly what you mean. And yet this is an examination of the book itself. Plenty of paraphrases are attempted and quotes are tried sparingly - it present the words themselves. What is an encyclopedic examintation of a book? Is it a word count or an endless list of allusions? Is the book described? I could see a disclaimer that paraphrase is an interpritation, and each is free, indeed, required in search to see for oneself, but the one liners that were there were just as interpitative as the amplified version I present. --Smkolins 01:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Consider Layla - a long article with many details of history and circumstance. And yet also a sound clip. The song itself is also presented. How is the book itself to be presented here?--Smkolins 01:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The words themselves, if not copyrighted, could be in Wikiquote; it is not the place of Wikipedia. If someone has reviewed a book, and has a synopsys, that synopsys can be paraphrased and placed in Wikipedia.  Our own review cannot be placed in Wikipedia.  In regards to Layla, look at the number of references in the article; there is a whole cannon of work that analyzes that song.  If you want an example of how it's done in the Baha'i case, take a look at Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, which uses Adib Taherzadeh's Revelation of Baha'u'llah as the secondary source.  Taherzadeh's explanations are paraphrased succintly and included in the article, and only very short paragraphs from the exact text are included. -- Jeff3000 01:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * And again were I a master of Taherzadeh, which came to mind and yes I've read more than once and deserves to be added here as much he mentions the Seven Valleys.... I understand what you say and yet feel like the presentation as is says too little for even such a small book. I shall struggle to improve it in other ways. Keep up the editing.--Smkolins 02:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Can an example, clear and concise, serve as a citation?--Smkolins 02:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Scott Kolins
The article Scott kolins has been deleted. Please do not create articles about yourself or other unnotable people. Thank you. DJ Clayworth 22:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not Scott Kolins - he is my brother. However, do a search of your own in Wikipedia for "Scott Kolins" and one in Google and you may see he deserves some mention.--Smkolins 22:07, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Steven, please consult the guidelines at Conflict of interest. I'm not opposed to this article, but to avoid being nominated for AfD, the article's content needs to be more encyclopedic and less biographic and trivial. -- Robocoder (t|c) 14:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I am trying to be encyclopedic I thought (sigh) --Smkolins 19:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Images
Hi Smkolins, would you have any pictures of the World Centre that you have taken yourself that you could upload at commons.wikimedia.org on a free license? Regards, -- Jeff3000 04:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes. I'll try tonight. For preview of a few of the ones i have check http://homepage.mac.com/smkolins/Adoption/adoption2.html and click through the next several pages.--Smkolins 13:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * several pictures loaded - file names are 8thterracefountains.jpg, arc1.jpg, arc2.jpg, babshrineatnight.jpg, baharoom.jpg, bahashrine.jpg, bahiyyih.jpg, collinsgate.jpg, downterraces.jpg, grove.jpg, munireh.jpg, navvab-mihdi.jpg, northsidebabshrine.jpg, pathwaytoshrine.jpg, seat-insession.jpg. Let me know if there are any changes I need to make - I tried to be correct with all information of course.--Smkolins 22:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If they were originally in jpg, I don't think it's that useful to go to png, as the images have already been stored in a lossy format. BTW, did you see how I categorized the images you uploaded? -- Jeff3000 15:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * They did indeed start as jpgs - and yes I saw the re/categorization - I added a few misc others too. Did you see the audio files?--Smkolins 15:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I can't play ogg files on my computer at work, so I can't hear the files. As for categorization, since all the Shrine of the Bab, World Centre, and terraces pictures are in Haifa, I've put the whole categories in the Haifa category as a subcategory.  I think that's the best way to do it, rather than tag individual images. -- Jeff3000 16:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It bet it helps to know this stuff almost second nature. I was just discovering other caterogies.... Ogg is a pretty obscure file form - I had to work at finding a way to translate an mp3.... which of course started from an extracted track from two mpg1 files....--Smkolins 17:46, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services
We appreciate your, but for legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must include on the external site the statement "I, (name), am the author of this article, (article name), and I release its content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and later."

You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here. You can also leave a message on my talk page. -- Karada 13:39, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding your reply on my talk page: unfortunately, it's not GFDL-compatible content, so we can't use it. Please see the Copyright policy. -- Karada 13:52, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Placing the same content on the temporary page doesn't make things any better. Eli Falk 08:46, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * First some of the content in that part of the original content of the article I wrote isn't from the publication. Admittedly it's a small part but now it's a larger proportion of the whole. Second, the remainder of the article is mostly intro/acknowledgement which seems more generic than the point of the publication (which spends roughly 80 pages outlining a great deal of work) and third this content is a tiny fraction (roughly 3 pages out of more than 80 pages by memory) of over a month ago. --Smkolins 11:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Your edits to the Dizzy Gillespie article
I reverted back to my prior edit, and deleted the opening reference to "African-American" and Gillespie's religious faith, which you took it upon yourself to re-insert. It is completely unencyclopediac styling and amateurish scholarship to add micro-characterization to a biography's opening paragraph. All that's required in the opening lines is 1) the reason for the individual's notability (in Gillespie's case, his being a "trumpeter", "composer", etc.); and 2) his nationality. His ethnicity and religious preference are completely superfluous mentions at that point in the article, and smack of effete political correctness. Gillespie's Baha'i faith is covered fully enough later in the article. J.R. Hercules 15:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I disagree and said so on the talk page of Jeff3000 where you already made a similar argument. You also seem to have a reputation about removing certain kinds of content from comments on your talk page. It is not "micro-characterization". I see what *you* did as against Manual_of_Style_(biographies). Dizzy Gillespie is a singularly well known Baha'i, which also played important roles in his life and music as amplified in the main text, and being African-American is a key aspect of his life and music. Please revert your edits. And echoiing to other places of this discussion--Smkolins 17:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've reverted, and started a discussion on the talk page. You may want to comment there. -- Jeff3000 17:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the two of you need to read the Manual_of_Style_(biographies) again, and more carefully. It specifically says

''<>The opening paragraph should give -- 1. Name(s) and title(s), if any (see, for instance, also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)) 2. Dates of birth and death, if known (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates of birth and death) 3. Nationality (In the normal case this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable. Ethnicity should generally not be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.) 4. What they did 5. Why they are significant.

For example:

* Cleopatra VII Philopator (December 70 BC/January 69 BC – c. August 12, 30 BC) was a queen of ancient Egypt. She was the last member of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty to rule Egypt… * Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch (1304 – 1374) was an Italian scholar, poet, and humanist, who is credited with having given the Renaissance its name and inventing the concept of the Dark Ages<''

I see from both of your user pages that the two or you are some kind of Baha'i advocates; but Wikipedia is not the appropriate place to make your 'cause celebre' on this issue. As the above link proves, leaving out Gillespie's religion and ethnicity is the correct thing to do. I will bring this to as many admins' attention as is necessary to keep the appropriate Wikipedia style and to prevent any further edit wars. J.R. Hercules 18:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I did read it. I think you are in error. This isn't about religions of other people. See discussion on Talk:Dizzy Gillespie.--Smkolins 19:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

dab page
I've created a dab page for Russell Garcia. The page for the composer already existed at Russell Garcia (composer), you can add to that. -- Jeff3000 08:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You should be careful about copyright violations. Copying text verbatim is not allowed, and so I would change the content you added to Russell Garcia (composer) to paraphrase the source rather than copy it directly. -- Jeff3000 16:53, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well it wasn't quite verbatim, and it was one paragraph out of several pages of text and it something of a gripping story. But I've trimmed out more info from the original story....--Smkolins 21:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:0001v.jpg
Thank you for uploading Image:0001v.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. MECU ≈ talk 03:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, the image tag you applied is only for works created by the us government. That artwork/comic was created by someone else. So the tag doesn't apply. It's kind of a gray area, so you may want to ask for help in the WP:COPY system, but I asked on IRC and another trusted user said it wasn't PD-Gov. -- MECU ≈ talk 04:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: watchlist irregularities
Hey Smkolins, are you referring to your watchlist, your the Dizzy history page? Regardless, I don't know how to fix it. In the past, my watchlist was sometimes messed, up in that after each reload, it would either show or not show the latest change. It got fixed after some time though. I guess the wikimedia software does mess up sometimes. If the problems keep going you can post them at the talk page of Village pump (technical). -- Jeff3000 03:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm refering to my watchlist - when I go to the Dizzy history page itself it shows everything.--Smkolins 10:56, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Now I see my entry on your talk page and my own response to your comment above, but not that you entered a comment on my talk page (I did get the "you have messages" warning though.)--Smkolins 11:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia & Macintosh
What kind of program do you mean? All you need to edit Wikipedia is a browser. AlistairMcMillan 13:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * And Safari and Firefox can help spell check ( I found that Safari on 10.4 has a context menu to check spelling as you type). Sure. But there are but doing a search for wikipedia editors finds a few hits, none Mac friendly so far. For myself I find the terribly complicated lots of options you can practically only memorize or have in some kind of shortcut section or something rather than a template to be filled out. The whole window below the main edit window where I'm typing seems more geared to confuse than to provide options. I know there are javacript things and I've got a couple kind of working but I find it confusing and hard to remember how to use/add/change them....--Smkolins 19:25, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Looking for wikipedia and macintosh support
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot. Camino might have some capacity for doing it, and there's a Wikipedia Dashboard widget, but that's all I know of personally. – Mipadi 16:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think there's more than one but I use SafariSIA to make shortcuts for searches and I've added wikipedia to that but there is Pathway 0.6 which maps searches you do - tracking your searches but doesn't do anything for helping to edit. Now the watchlist view is evolving and I don't particularly being forced to see threaded lists in order to catch every entry. And, darn it, I'd prefer some setting to automatically sign my entries in talk pages if I want.--Smkolins 19:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Mac here too. Do me a favor, scour the PC tools for features that you think are useful, and add any others of your own. Collect them all up, with screen shots if possible. I need a XCode project to play with, and although I have about 30 seconds per week to work on it, but it will be fun to think about anyway. Maury 13:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the links! Maury 14:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services/Temp
So is this ready to be moved into the mainspace rather than continuing to sit at a temp page? ~  ONUnicorn (Talk problem solving 14:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think so - I have trouble imaging anyone having problems with it now. But I've been wrong almost every step of the process so certainly have editors review it.... BTW, what is the normal protocol with message like these - do i respond here or on your talk page? Sometimes I've done both but that get's tiresome. Appreciate your thoughts.--Smkolins 17:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll move it into mainspace for you then. As for talk page messages; it varies.  When people leave messages on mine I like to respond on theirs so they get the "You have new messages!" banner; but a lot of people like to do what you just did, and respond where the original message was left to make the conversation easier to follow.  I've learned to watch the talk pages of people I leave messages for in case they respond there.  I've experimented with doing both, but you're right - it does get tiresome.  ~  ONUnicorn (Talk problem solving 19:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your followup and feedback! Thanks!--Smkolins 11:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Categories
The cleanup categories have to do with the the cleanup templates, and are out of user control. I guess that there are some admin reasons for having so many categories. -- Jeff3000 22:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Bahá'í Faith and the unity of humanity
Though 'mankind' and 'chairman' have been championed as non-sexist, as their etymological derivation may not be from the masculine 'man' and instead from the root of 'to guide', their perpetuation unchecked ~ when there are other appropriate semantic choices in the lexicon ~ is demonstrably untenable. [Sic] conveys conceptual impropriety and inappropriate language use which is the intention with which this convention has been placed in this article.

The Bahá'í Community honour the intention with which [sic] has been employed in this article as they champion Unity and the manifestations, methodologies and mechanisms of Unity, such as mindful language use. Such inappropriate language use should not be perpetuated without the seal of [sic].

Namaste in agape

Walking my talk in Beauty

B9 hummingbird hovering (talk • contribs) 15:01, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Your post was mindful. It begs the question of description versus prescription; status quo versus leadership; error versus repair.  Your heartful endeavour to understand and conciliate is laudable.


 * Blessings
 * B9 hummingbird hovering (talk • contribs) 18:41, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Religion article
Looking over the image and the Philippines article I would say that it is probably best that the image be removed. The image depends a lot on original research so it's problematic regardless. -- Jeff3000 14:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

smackbot's tagging of the header of Flora Purim
I don't understand. I thought header areas should be simple statements. The whole article was substantially unreferenced and brief - I expanded it and referenced it carefully but largely left the header section seemed legit (it been changed since then but I still see no particular problem) but smackbot tagged it as needing references. There doesn't seem to be an controversy in the header to me and references might be distracting and largely depend on the substance of the article anyway. Please explain. I'm also not sure if this should be here or at smackbot's talk page but since you are who would explain....--Smkolins 23:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * "smackbot tagged it as needing references" .... No it didn't it merely dated the existing tag. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 23:28 2 March 2007 (GMT).
 * I stand corrected. Apologies of course. It seems *you* tagged the header section. Can you explain please? What is it you want fixed?--Smkolins 23:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, no, my apologies. It seems I was editing the lead, and thought it was the whole article.  tag removed. Rich Farmbrough, 23:43 2  March 2007 (GMT).

y2k7
Will Y2K7 occur in Australia? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.180.18.141 (talk) 06:17, 10 March 2007 (UTC).
 * According to this news story Australia adopted the same change in DST dates, so it seems yes... TheY2K7 BugPosted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 10:01 am in Linux, Routers & networks, Windows Vista, Computers, Tech, Enterprise.

I suppose building list of countries would help the article....--Smkolins 11:36, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

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misleading website
My mistake in incorrectly editing the site Universal House of Justice to state that women are allowed to serve. The website I referenced is not an official website, as I'm sure you already know. The referenced website is very misleading in claiming to be official. Unfortunately it appears in the top of a google search for Universal House of Justice. Is there anything we could say about such misleading sites about Bahai Faith on Wikipedia or should we just leave it alone? --tqw112 16:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I see you changed your user name - no prob. The neat thing about the internet is that a presence to have something to say is not a barrier to a much larger group of people than ever before. But it is also a difficult thing too. As far as the various Baha'i pages go, they have gone through a series of repeated edits by numerous people with different povs - so they've already gone far towards maturity, (not that they can't be made better but it's not going to happen randomly I think.)--Smkolins 00:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)