User talk:Vfrickey/Archives/2015/July

August 2008
Thank you for making a report on Administrator intervention against vandalism. Reporting and removing vandalism is vital to the functioning of Wikipedia and all users are encouraged to revert, warn, and report vandalism. However, it appears that the editor you reported may not have engaged in vandalism, or the user was not sufficiently or appropriately warned. Please note there is a difference between vandalism and unhelpful or misguided edits made in good faith. If they continue to vandalise after a recent final warning, please re-report it. Thank you! . This is a content dispute that should be brought directly in the article's discussion page or directly with the user. -- lucasbfr  talk 15:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

response to Lucasbfr re: vandalism of entry on Nadhmi Auchi
As I understand it, edits should be commented on, as should content disputes. Neither has happened with respect to the changes made this morning to the entry on Nadhmi Auchi. Whoever made the change just went in and made it with no explanation or comment whatever, making it very difficult to differentiate between this change and any other bit of politically-motivated vandalism.vfrickey (talk) 15:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, I agree that explaining the edits you make are a courtesy (I always do it, at least for my own sake). However we can't hold all users to that high a standard, and many of them don't do it. I see an otehr user reverted the changes, though. Feel free to do it when you disagree with a change (as long as you are not "edit warring". I personally only revert once a change I disagree with, if I am reverted myself I bring the matter with the user/on the talk page) -- lucasbfr  talk 11:14, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem is that in the current Presidential campaign here in the US, one of the candidates, Barack Obama, has had his campaign aggressively "editing" every reference to him that can even tangentially be considered adverse. That's what happened, apparently.  I DID have an "edit war" going on with respect to another article (on the US Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs, in which the other "editor" tried to cover up Obama's nonfeasance up to that point as subcommitee chairman - in a year and a half in the Senate, he didn't call a single meeting of his subcommittee.  Some of us feel Europe deserves more attention than that).  :-) vfrickey (talk) 00:08, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Stand on Zanzibar
I think that under a previous name "loupgarous" you had added material to Stand on Zanzibar about predictions made by its author John Brunner. It was later completely deleted, leaving no trace. Recently, another editor added a list of some predictions to the article, with a reference. I added another reference. In spite of this, a third editor has been summarily deleting all this material, in spite of good faith efforts to improve its quality. You are cordially invited to look at the discussion in Talk: Stand on Zanzibar and to join in, if this topic is still of interest to you. Regards, Reify-tech (talk) 15:00, 30 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for updating me on the Stand on Zanzibar page. The hyperlink to my Stand on Zanzibar Predictions web page n + 1 in the Stand on Zanzibar:Talk wikipedia page still works, so the Mad Deleter seems to have missed it.  One reason he may have missed it is that I used a weird format to link to my Web page.


 * To correct your one misimpression, I confined my comments on "predictions" in Stand on Zanzibar to a hyperlink in the Talk page and a paragraph describing them. I haven't included that material in the article itself.  I DID comment on the article - I agree with BeyondMyKen and OldJacobite that given how controversial this point is, we ought to talk about it in the talk page before adding the section.  I agree with you that the section is worthwhile, and I've found three other Wikipedia pages about famous science fiction stories with similar sections - on The Brick Moon, Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Sea, and From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon.


 * While From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon has a section of the approximate size we want, it also cites cases in which the novel is mentioned specifically in later cultural developments. This is a point in favor of BeyondMyKen and OldJacobite, who oppose a simple compendium of post-1968 technical developments regardless of whether Stand on Zanzibar is mentioned in reference to them as they come up.  I can't think off-hand of very many developments in which the news coverage specifically says "oh, and John Brunner said this would happen in Stand on Zanzibar."  THAT is the context in which the technology of travel to the Moon is mentioned in the "Impact on Popular Culture" section of the article on From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon. loupgarous (talk) 21:27, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Spamming talk pages
What are you doing at Talk:Governorship of Ronald Reagan? You've spammed the same thing in at least 4 sections to the talk page. Quit it. Shadowjams (talk) 08:29, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, are you editing under multiple accounts? You should see our WP:SOCK policy on that. Shadowjams (talk) 08:31, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Check the Wikipedia rules WP:PROVEIT. I did nothing but enforce Wikipedia's longstanding requirement that sources be verifiable. The segments of the article I redacted were "supported" by extremely unverifiable sources, two of which seemed to be books whose titles and ISBN numbers were not given. An author's name and some page numbers without a book title in a usable bibliographic citation format IS NOT a "verifiable source." Neither is a citation referring to an incident occurring 17 years later than the incident the editor says the citation supports.

I am not editing under multiple accounts. You'll be asked to prove that accusation to me and to Wikipedia officials if you repeat it. Neither am I spamming.

One of the prime commamdments of WikiPedia is "assume good faith." I went to great lengths to explain my edits as I made them. It's not my fault you either did not or could not read them, as I stuck to simple declarative sentences in the English language. loupgarous (talk) 13:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

To eliminate any questions about who said what, anyone curious on the matter can read my response to Shadowjams on HIS user talk page. loupgarous (talk) 15:13, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, Shadowjams has very ceremoniously "retired" from editing Wikipedia, and archived the dialogue above which I left on his Talk page. As far as my part in it, I was clear. He wasn't - he slandered me and didn't bother apologizing. It happens. I'm still here working because it's more important that the work be done than my ego be assuaged. loupgarous (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Dirección General de Inteligencia
Given your work on the Mitrokhin Archive, I am wondering if I could enlist your support in rehabilitating the moribund article, particularly in referencing the unrefed claims made here which sat uncited for many years before removal recently.--Froglich (talk) 04:46, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry I took so long. I read the redacted material and am not sure what I can add to this; Former KGB Foreign Counterintelligence Directorate chief Oleg Kalugin (The First Directorate with Fen Montaigne) only talks in generalities about the DGI, and his connection with them would have been after Semyonov, whose work I don't know well. Kalugin mentions no purge of DGI, in any case, and I'm finding that so very far from being a tell-all book, Kalugin only mentions things unlikely to damage Russian intelligence, only his enemies there from the old KGB days (though that's dangerous enough to him granted that Putin was a Kryuchkov protege during HIS KGB days).


 * I will undertake a search of Semyonov and anything related to his purge of the DGI. More than that I can't promise, I have two ongoing writing projects.  Good luck! loupgarous (talk) 19:05, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * So far, disturbingly, the only direct references to Semyonov's purge of DGI personnel in 1970 are "blowback" from the wikipedia article Dirección General de Inteligencia - even William Gibson (of Neuromancer fame) uses that exact text, cut n' pasted, in his Node potboilers.


 * However, for what they're worth, here are the independent references so far to the Viktor Semyonov we're interested in (as opposed to assorted Russian horticulturalists, Nike middle managers and soccer players):


 * http://books.google.com/books?id=LrHzYo-SBjUC&pg=PT14&lpg=PT14&dq=viktor+semyonov+kgb&source=bl&ots=VCCznAuSaA&sig=qKHqG0eEcyACKnTtkLqy5kuuDXA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z5OkU4v4JYXQsQTVoICYBw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=viktor%20semyonov%20kgb&f=false


 * http://www.goolap.info/explore/Person/Viktor+Semyonov/540bf26329390abfd2be49314f03bd90cfc0c1ee

External references on the reference desk
I hope you don’t mind, but tags don't work well on the reference desks due to how the reference desks are archived, so I changed those references you provided to just be external links, which work better. According to the reference desk guidelines, we aren't really supposed to edit other people's answers on the reference desk except to fix formatting errors that affect readability, and it's debatable as to whether or not my edit was appropriate according to that guideline, so if you have a problem with my edit, feel free to revert it. Red Act (talk) 16:32, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * No, you did that from good motives, I was ignorant of the archiving issue. Thanks for letting me know. loupgarous (talk) 23:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Polycarp
Vfricky,

Here is the theme song for the Polycarp show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQuJUpMpyoQ

If you listen closely, I'm pretty sure the singer (Johnnie Allan) is saying "POE-LEE-CAR" not "POE-LEE-CARP"; it's kinda hard to tell sometimes because the next word after "Polycarp" also starts with a "P". You can hear it more clearly after the initial chorus.

What do you think?

--Skb8721 (talk) 16:43, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, Skb8721, I listened to it, and half the time I could hear that final "p," the other half the time, I couldn't.


 * I used to watch "Polycarp and Pals" on TV as a kid, and I honestly never heard that final "p" in "Polycarp" left out. We always called it "Polycarp" with a "p" at the end you could hear.


 * I'm willing to concede the fact to you, though, even though that was a novelty record and not the TV show's theme music. It all happened so long ago, either of us could be right.  Just go ahead and make the change you feel is right. loupgarous (talk) 16:56, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually, it now appears you are correct. Granted, I conducted some original research: namely, I asked my friends how they remember pronouncing the name; and I asked Johnnie Allan, the man who wrote/recorded the Polycarp song.  The consensus was that the final P is pronounced.  This still puzzles me, however, because it's a French name and in French the P would not be pronounced . . . plus I remember it not being pronounced.  But that was nearly 50 years ago!  Sincerely, --Skb8721 (talk) 19:04, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, we're both Cajuns; we know that Cajun French (a) varies from parish to parish and (b) isn't francais de France. I was just as guilty of violations of WP:OR as you were, in retrospect.
 * I fell back on 50 year-old memories of myself and friends saying "Polycarp" with a final "p". As the original editor, you did all the original sourcing.  I'm very impressed you had access to Johnnie Allan; it's a pity that oral history can't be entered into our articles when the editor is the one documenting the oral history, but that's my understanding of WP:NOR.  It's just a shame, because you did some very good research.
 * Do what you feel is right. loupgarous (talk) 19:27, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Why'd you revert my edit on 5.45×39mm, "Bulgarian AK-47"?
Just wondering why you reverted my edit on our article 5.45×39mm, which added a reference to the "Bulgarian AK-47" offered by Centerfire Systems [] (it's shown on the bottom of page 11 in that page team of the online catalog).

I followed Wikipedia procedure in making the edit and used "Prove It" to properly cite the source material. You didn't give a reason for reverting my edit, and I'd appreciate knowing what, if anything, I did wrong.

Thanks in advance loupgarous (talk) 09:48, 12 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The section just points out there have been several non 5.45×39mm AK platform arms developed and some are or have been commercially offered to civilians. You write about a particular 5.45×39mm AK platform rifle made from Bulgarian and US made parts. For years there there have been commercial AK platform offerings around for civilians chambered in 5.45×39mm. Combining parts originating from Eastern Europe and the US is also rather common. Have a look at http://www.arsenalinc.com/usa/Rifles/ and this is not the only company that offers Eastern European and US made 5.45×39mm AK platform arms. Companies like Waffen Werks, Krebs Custom, James River Armory, Molot and Kalashnikov Concern are or have been also active in producing (semi-automatic) 5.45×39mm AK platform arms for civilians. If you want to point out that several manufacturers and vendors offer 5.45×39mm AK platform arms to civilian customers that is fine with me. I think the article does not need advertising for these companies by mentioning them. They did not create new arms.--Francis Flinch (talk) 10:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Question
Hello! Seeing that you have edited the Fox News Channel article numerous times, I am wondering if you would comment on the Talk page about the logo. Me and another user are disagreeing about the current logo. Your help would be much appreciated!  Corkythehornetfan   (Talk)  04:55, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I did, in fact, respond. I don't know if that was actually "help" from your standpoint, but I was truthful as to my opinion on the matter, and tried to hew as close to the facts as possible. loupgarous (talk) 20:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)