User talk:WillNess

Welcome to Wikipedia
--4wajzkd02 (talk) 14:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

thanks! WillNess (talk) 09:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

December 2009
Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of previously published material to our articles as you apparently did to Avatar (2009 film). Please cite a reliable source for all of your information. Thank you. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 19:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)


 * "your" articles? "YOUR"??? Why am I excluded exactly? Sheesh! Demand sources, demand attribution by all means. But saying it is "YOUR ARTICLE"? That's rich. WillNess (talk) 00:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think by 'our articles' he meant Wikipedia's articles, he never said it was his. You did some nice edits on the content I wrote in Roadside Picnic article! Keep up the good work. Cheers! Meishern (talk) 19:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Nick


 * Thank you very much for your words of encouragement! Thank you for the article on Alexander Pechersky too. WillNess (talk) 10:25, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Sieve of Eratosthenes
Hello there! I hope you're well. I can see that you've been very busy editing Sieve of Eratosthenes. It's really good to see an editor with such entuhusiasm. Looking at the article's edit history it seems that you've started to disagree with another editor. It can be very frustrating when that happens. The best thing is to discuss any future changes on the article's talk page. It's best if you try not to conduct creative disagreements on the article itself; keep that to the talk page. I can see that you've already started to engage on the talk page. That's good. Remember that there's the very serious issue of the three revert rule. Please make sure you read the link WP:3RR. It's a policy on Wikipedia that says if you revert an article more than three times in 24 hours then you will be blocked from editing. And no-one wants to see that! So, take a deep breath, relax, and go to the article's talk page. All the best. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  19:49, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your encouragement and warning. Problem is, the other person refuses to engage in any discussion on the talk page. They just ignore my arguments and do whatever they please - to the detriment of the article's quality IMO.
 * What can be done in such a case? WillNess (talk) 20:01, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * To keep conversations in one place, I reply to your comments on my own talk page, just so as you know - I'm not ignoring you ... --Matt Westwood 19:09, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

The real problem behind the edit warring

 * moved here from User_talk:Geometry_guy.

There is a real problem lurking beneath all this petty bickering. We do need judges (on WP), but we need them to judge honestly and knowledgeably. We need to know authoritativeness ranks, and objectivity ranks, honesty ranks, etc. Votes cast by people with low specific rank probably do need to be taken into account with less weight. The ranks would of course need to be dynamic, with all the history maintained and rechecked, so if some new evidence comes to light the value would get re-examined and thus always be as close to the true value as possible, according to the knowledge base at a given point in time.

''As an aside, that's part of a bigger political theory. We need to be able to vote anytime we want, not only once in four years. We need to be able to recast our votes any time we want, either for our representation or directly on the issues at hand. The system would tally them up and at any given point in time the true will of society would be known and represented. But we need this system also to maintain trust ranks, and knowledgeability ranks, and possibly even honesty ranks, etc. That's like getting likes on a socnet. We certainly value the likes very differently coming from different people, but the system currently assigns an equal weight to each of them. Same approach could be even taken for a true measure of value created by an individual for a society - to be rechecked and revalidated and changed accordingly at any given point in time - to replace money itself. :)''

The (dynamic, ever-changing, separately computable on every issue) verifiable trust rank would be eventually formed for each editor, and edits would carry the trust weight of their editors. In disputes, the cumulative trust of opposing parties would play a role. Trust networks could eventually form on certain matters, and a society (on WP, of editors) might split into two (or several) well-formed mutually-trusting sub-societies as pertaining to some issue (there might be several trust ranks for an editor, as rated by/computed from several different mutually-trusting networks of individuals (editors, here)).

Mainly perhaps this would play out on social, not scientific (hopefully) issues. This is what's going on on WP right now anyway, and is cause of much warring, with stronger side winning. But the winner shouldn't be defined by force, if there are two (or more) genuine sub-societies each with its unique POV, both should be represented, possibly by spitting the article. I realize this appears to fly in the face of NPOV policy, *but* the RS requirements interpretation is / can be / pretty subjective, as we just saw. There is even a school of thought teaching that all knowledge is social. WP tries to pretend that is not the case, but edit wars seem to be evidence to the contrary. The problem is real, as we just observed/participated in a small-scale dispute ourselves. And both (all) split-parts of the article could be equally well sourced and grounded in RS, just differing in some other aspect, like for the Sieve of Eratosthenes there'd be a minimalist mathematician's take on the matter, and a programmer's take (with much code snippets and more meatier complexity discussion (as it once was)), and child's take on it with more visual aids, etc. etc. A reader would choose a "reader mode" from a menu, and see the corresponding version. And if there's a well-formed minority on some article whose opinion gets always trampled, they'd finally be able to have their voice and their case shown to the general readership.

Of course if their "product" i.e. the page-version would be demonstrably false, or flagrantly ignoring well-established RS and using flaky ones instead on a consistent basis, there should be a mechanism for such article-version to be graded (by whom??) appropriately and all its editors get their share of negative grading (by whose trust network??) subsumed into their trust history. (the grading process could play part in trust networks-discovery) And grades from higher-ranking editors would carry more weight too, just like links from higher-ranking web pages carry more weight in Google PageRank discovery mechanism. Maybe each our editing action, on articles and talk pages etc., would get a little "trust/mistrust" button near it, or something like that.

This is all still a very vague idea that I have. WillNess (talk) 12:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My comment: Deletionists suck. Always. --Matt Westwood 18:10, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Edits to prime number
Hi, thanks for proposing a compromise at Prime number. Nevertheless I've undone your edit, because I think it isn't necessary now. PeggyCummins/Rebecca G have been blocked for sockpuppetry–they are apparently the same person–so hopefully there will be no more edit warring on this page. Best wishes, Jowa fan (talk) 23:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I suspected as much. WillNess (talk) 11:08, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Counting sort comment
First, I am sorry that I messed up this page. I quickly realized that I was wrong (after David Epstein fixed it). However, I did not do a second wrong edit attempt: it was another person (i.e., you may want to explain this to her/him).

Nonetheless, if we talking about the counting sort and how to prevent these erroneous edits in the future. Please, note that the version with the plus is the stable version. IMHO, it should be highlighted (in a comment or otherwise). Second, I suggest to add some comment that explains the differences between versions that use PLUS and MINUS. Then, people would not change this code.

Finally, as I noted on my wikipage and, because Wikipedia has such a messy way of communicating, I prefer to discuss such matter via e-mail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Itman (talk • contribs) 17:18, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think both versions are stable. The difference is in insignificant detail of final traversal direction, and corresponding prefix sum entries calculation. -- WillNess (talk) 10:59, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Track Geomtry
Thanks for your input, I think I am seeing where I was getting confused by trying to explain it :).

In respect of some comments you made off-wiki, the following may be of interest to you in a different capacity:, It's a set of various notes issued by GWR/BR Western Region on various matters involving railway track geometry. There is also according to a railway modelling contact apparently a semi-official BR/Railtrack manual for track geometry on curves and so on, but for understandable reasons that's not an easily accessible 'online' document. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 00:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm replying here to the RefDesk thread coz I think we're not talking math anymore here. If I'm in error, please move these my comments back there. Thanks. WillNess (talk) 08:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * This is strange. Perhaps some low-grade software. Why trace arcs with chords? Maybe you get some low-resolution picture and are trying to magnify it? Because if you worked in same level of zoom, there wouldn't be reason for what you want to do presumably. So what you want is to recover the true layout from its broken representation it seems.
 * For one chord on an arc, that arc can be recovered by your slide function. But if you have two parallel tracks alongside that chord, slide that is done according to the center-line will introduce tears at vertex points (because it works perpendicularly to the chord), and won't recover those arcs properly (introduce distortions, also because it works according to the main radius). My function would introduce tears at the side track's vertex points too, for its own reasons, and it's not bend because the amount of rotation is different at edges than in the middle point (where it is zero).
 * You could perform slide for each chord according to its own arc. That means point A having non-zero x and z at the outset, unless you perform a temporary translation before applying the slide, and then translate the results back. And maybe it even means point B having a different x than that of A?
 * But why do you want to trace your arcs by a bunch of points in the first place? Don't you have arc primitive in your software? If so, you could recover the true arc's parameters and create this arc with a call to the built-in arc primitive. Or is it the same software without arcs that you're trying to improve the picture inside?
 * Another case is transitional curves. These are sometimes traced by a sequence of chords (i.e. just calculating a bunch of points along them). Then what you're recovering is not an arc. Is this the case you're working on? Or one of the cases? And how come you only have horizontal chords?? No diagonal ones at all? As for your rectangles drawing, yes, kind of, but wouldn't you prefer to have your new curved tracks run in parallel to the center-line? -- WillNess (talk) 08:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I guess I'm just bad at giving explanations it seems.

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) I'm well aware of the 'vertex' breaks that would occur with 'slide'.
 * 2) The reason I am 'approxmating' the true arc with 'chords' is so I have 'vertex' data which I can combine with appropriate height values to actually generate rails and so on.  When creating a cylinder as a 3D object, it's typically approximated as a many sided prism, but with suitably adjusted normals so that it's shaded to appear truly cylinderical.
 * 3) The transitional curve case is NOT what I was considering at present, given that I was wanting to generate curves of a known radius in the first instance.


 * This was the code I worked out for 'bend'.

This code is still incomplete as the angle I've called b is not actually setup :(. Also given my apparent inability to explain things clearly, this code is probably wrong in a number of ways. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Logically it should also be possible to have a 'slide' procedure. 'slide' would seem to be some kind of shear function? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:57, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * In regrads to 'slide' - File:Curves P Slide Soloution.svg . Note although it would by viewing it that the angle at P_bend is a right angle it isn't. 'Solving' this triangle would yield what I need to do work out P_slide ?  Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Well if you just want a slide function to retrieve the arc based on its chord, assuming the chord is horizontal, running from x=0, z=0 to x=0, z=ZB, and you want to slide some (z,x) point to its "on-arc" position (z staying the same, obviously),

O_x = sqrt( R^2 - (ZB/2)^2 )    // pre-calculate this value def slide (x,z) = new_x := sqrt( R^2 - (ZB/2 - z)^2 ) - O_x + x      return (new_x, z)


 * Bend, I'm lost for. WillNess (talk) 22:16, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Longterm misuse by User:CRGreathouse of their rollback tool
I don't know where to report it and what to do about it, and I dont want to know. So I'll just put it here, and let it flow.

The admin CRGreathouse has demonstrated longterm misuse of their automatic (unexplained) rollback tool, i.e. making unexplained reverts with it, which, as the policy indicates, are only allowed against clear cases of vandalism and widespread misguided edits, and strictly prohibited in cases of content dispute (CD), even moreso to be used in edit warring (EW). Here's the very partial evidence I've gathered:

2011-12-31 CD (content dispute) (*)

2011-10-09 EW, CD (edit war, content dispute)

2011-10-06 EW, CD

2012-01-09 CD

2011-12-20 rv'd one-time addition of suspicious external link

2011-12-10 EW, CD

2011-12-08 EW, CD

2011-12-06 EW, CD

2010-10-20 rv'd a one-time misconstrued edit, i.e. not "widespread"

As a consequence of this behaviour, I don't feel able to contribute to WP anymore, feeling afraid to have my edits dismissed without any explanation. Maybe this will pass.

I must admit that after a recent altercation (*) I've allowed myself to feel outraged and to behave badly, making one-time extremely uncivil post to their talk page, which is regretful.

Let's see if something happens here, but I myself don't want to take any part in any wikilawyering in regards to this. The evidence is here, and I'm sure there's more, somewhere. WillNess (talk) 17:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hum by the looks of the diffs above has used the rollback tool for reasons other than reverting vandalism. However the real problem seems to be the dispute you have had with him over the page Sieve of Eratosthenes. I haven't followed that page closely enough to know the ins and outs of the dispute, but such disputes are common. It might be an idea to disengage from the page for a while, wikipedia is a big place and there are lots of other things to do.
 * As to the use of rollback I could leave a note on Greathouse's page, I don't think the misuse of the tool of of great enough extent to warrant further actions though.--Salix (talk): 18:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course this is not you that has been the target of prolonged abuse, Salix, so it must be OK by you I guess. (grave sarcasm). WillNess (talk) 00:07, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I have initiated discussion on Greathouse's talk page. That is absolutely not what rollback is for, and the sysop tools have been revoked for repeated abuse. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * No, this doesn't help me one bit. Your notice sits there at CRGh talkpage without any response; in the meantime the abuse of the tools continues: e.g. here. And I am greatly disappointed by the response from Salix. The more authority, the greater should be the responsibility for the abuser. Anything less is immoral. WillNess (talk) 00:07, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If the issue is about CRG's use of rollback then

It might be worth taking this to WP:AN/I to attract more attention. help me probably isn't going to generate as much discussion. --Chris (talk) 00:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes you could take this to WP:AN/I but I would like to offer some words of caution. Posts there can often backfire on the person raising the complaint. Now Wikipedia is not a battleground and its beginning to look like your engaging in a personal campaign against CRG scrutinizing his every edit. I've seen case like this before, of much greater magnitude, and they tend to get nasty for all concerned.--Salix (talk): 07:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It is unfair, Salix, for you to jump to conclusions about me, based on your past experiences. All it took was a cursory glance at CRGh's contributions list for me to compile those diffs, so numerous are the abuse cases. What campaign? I couldn't even get myself to open WP at all for more than a month. It is the second time I do so, and I'm not planning to repeat this disappointing experience anytime soon. The greater the power, the graver should be the punishment for the abuse of that power. You should be on guard, and you refuse to be. I see it as abandonment of duty on your part. WillNess (talk) 17:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that you have had problems editing wikipedia, it can be a rough environment. There are a few things you can do to make your editing here less problematic, I recommend reading No angry mastodons. I'd like to help make your experience better, and the best way I think I could do that is to disuade you from dwelling on the CRG issue. This is why I find the fact that one of the first thing you did on return was to check on CRG's contributions a little worrying. Rollback is not that great a power, it basically saves a couple of clicks over using the undo feature or using popups to revert to a revision - features available to all users, effectively the result is a poor edit summary. Some of the diffs you give do need a bit of context, while he did revert on History of writing ancient numbers over a few days he also engaged in a discussion on the talk page explaining his actions. --Salix (talk): 18:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * No, Salix, using rollback in content disputes makes the opposing editor feeling like they got slapped in their face. That is the actual result. It makes the opposing editor fearful to make even simplest of edits - like I did, restoring the missing word - lest they get slapped in their face again. That word is still missing in the lead of that article btw, which was silently reverted, and marked as minor - meaning, my edits are so insignificant, even reverting them without giving any reason is a minor issue. It marks me as a vandal. That's the effect of it. Now that that user has made a self-congratulatory response on their talk page, do you consider the issue closed and resolved? WillNess (talk) 18:32, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I have posted to User talk:CRGreathouse asking the user to respond. If no response is forthcoming soon then you may feel free to contact me on my talk page if you like. I don't see evidence that you are "engaging in a personal campaign against CRG", nor do I agree with Salix alba that the apparent abuse of rollback is not serious enough to bother about. However, I certainly do agree with Salix alba that it might be ill-advised for you to take the case to WP:AN/I. If you do so then you will almost certainly find that quite a few of your own edits come under unfavourable scrutiny. It is, for example, very surprising that this edit did not result in even a warning. Personal attacks such as that are totally unacceptable, and are very likely to get you blocked. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I was pushed over the edge, and responded to the abuse badly. I've mentioned that instance in the preamble above. WillNess (talk) 17:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Now that CRGh has responded to your remark on their talk page, do you consider their self-congratulatory response as satisfactory, closing the issue? WillNess (talk) 17:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

St Petersberbg
That Taibbi delete of St Petes makes no sense because it was a goof on my part. The Artist AKA Mr Anonymous (talk) 19:37, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The Hunger Games ... needs to go on a diet.
I'm guessing you're not aware of the guideline WP:FILMPLOT, specifically the 700 word recommended maximum length. I worked hard to get it down there, and now it's back up to about 900. Please consider whether what you're adding is really necessary. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * instead of removing the most recent, please remove the least needed. I contend there are other parts less needed than the few words I added, as a necessary background, in the section. This section is titled "Plot", not "Film's setting" after all. "Plot" should be about participants, not provide general explanations about the fictional universe. Cut those, by all means. WillNess (talk) 11:04, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * there you go: my new copyedits to shorten the text (by removing excessive details): -386 bytes. My earlier additions: +396 bytes. WillNess (talk) 11:45, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 3
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Tail call, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page David Wise (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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 * Just for the record, it was intended, as stated in the edit reason there: "wikify the two names, Friedman and Wise (2nd to disambig page since page itself doesn't exist)". WillNess (talk) 11:54, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Animal Farm
Sorry about restoring that paragraph. I was trying to fix the spelling and for some reason it didn't let me know there was another edit after that. I removed it again here. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:39, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Hitler
"Politician" is the correct description in the "occupation" field of the template. While you are quite right that Hitler was a mass-murdering demagogue (and which crimes are described at length in the article), these were not his occupation -- he did all these monstrous things while being a politician. Similarly, he led Germany into ignominious defeat as part of his role as military leader, but "military incompetent and war-losing buffoon" doesn't belong there either. -- The Anome (talk) 18:47, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

huilo -> Putin?
From the comment at it sounds like people in Moscow just assume "huilo" refers to Putin now? That's ROFLMAO funny, or would be if I could find a reference. Any chance you have a link sitting handy in your browser history? Tx. Wnt (talk) 00:11, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * not just people, police. When the guy protested he hadn't named who this referred to, the policemen said to him, "we know who is the huilo in our country". WillNess (talk) 08:55, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * it might be safe to assume this, because using mat so openly is such a taboo (in writing, still - in speech it becomes less and less so, but you'll never hear it in a TV broadcast), so if it is used after all, the connotation seems obvious. WillNess (talk) 09:06, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

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