User talk:Ww


 * Please do not delete or substantially change edits made on this page, whether they were made by you or not. This page can be a (semi) official record of actions and reactions. I am an admin, and they may be of import at some future time. Thank you. ww*

Welcome (angela)
Hello Ww, welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. You can learn more on the how to edit page. The naming conventions and manual of style pages are also useful. Feel free to experiment at the Sandbox. If you have any questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. Angela

Enimga <> stream cypher?? (Securiger)
Hi, Ww, why are you claiming Enigma isn't a stream cipher? It encrypts one symbol at a time in a way which depends on the machine's internal state, which is exactly what a stream cipher is. If you are concerned that it acts on whole letters rather than bits, don't be; that distinction is practically obsolete. In fact of the 12 examples given beneath the stream cipher article, only 3 are bit-oriented. Securiger 09:06, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

JNC on PH
Hi, not sure I completely understand what you mean by "I have a sense of the other shoe not yet hitting the floor about it" - I apologize for not responding before, there are just so many things to do on Wikipedia, I was busy elsewhere. In other words, don't read anything into my failure to reply!

I just posted a reply on the PH talk page; I read your reply and agree we need to cover the theories in some detail, but I still think it ought to be a separate page. Since only Daniel disagreed (of those who have said anything), if you're OK with it, I think we should do it. Noel 14:07, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

logical fallacy good & Constitutional Debate of Canada
Congratulations on your rephrasing of key paragraphs in the Logical fallacy article! I wanted to clarify it as well, but it is very difficult to construct accurate sentences in a foreign language. Can I ask what is your nationality? I am looking for a non-Canadian to help out in making Constitutional debate of Canada neutral and clear for outsiders. Right now, we (well, it is mostly me) are in the process or restructuring the article (see the talk page) which used to be parts of Politics of Canada so that all visitors can make sense of it even if they are new to the subject. At this point, we just need to know if the proposed structure is understandable and neutral or if it looks obscure and/or biased. Mathieugp 20:16, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * A stranger to the debate is what we need. Ideally, more than one person would be even better. Reading French is sure helpful to dig into this contentious subject. A lot of books were written in that language by Quebecers and they were not necessarily translated to English. Nevertheless, if you would just watch the page as it evolves and point out things that seem non-neutral, vague, out of place, fallacious etc, you would be very helpful. All of us who know of the debate are biased and we know it. Mathieugp 21:43, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Your edits were fine, but the article is going to be rewritten completely. Currently, it looks like and accelerated history course and the headings are not very logical. There are also numerous errors. I have a proposed structure for the article here: Talk:Constitutional_debate_of_Canada. Since I conceived it and nobody showed up to participate to my discussion, I am actively seeking people to tell me if they see any bias in it. I will not start writing before that. Mathieugp 15:44, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

CRYPTREC (mc)
Hi ww, great start at CRYPTREC. I can't make head or tails of their website; is the project ended / ongoing? Anyway, good stuff. &mdash; Matt 17:23, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

CryptoDerk's plans
Thanks for the info about crypto, I'll definitely be editing more pages in the near future, as soon as a finish off my thesis (which, of course, is about crypto). My specific area of expertise is the DLP and related stuff like ECC and HECC, so I'll likely be sticking to that. Block ciphers are not my cup of tea at all, so it'll be rare for me to edit anything like that. I'll definitely be sure to add some more books. CryptoDerk 16:11, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

Main Page design ans from Eloquence
Getting back to you regarding your comments on the new Main Page:

1) Structure. There are different opinions about what the Main Page is supposed to accomplish. Some feel it should give every visitor all the knowledge they need to become a contributor. Some feel it should showcase examples of our work. Others think that it should be a directory of articles. My design is based on two assumptions:

a) We want to point users to articles that they likely want to read,

b) We want to provide an incentive for people to regularly view the Main Page.

Let me elaborate on these assumptions.

a) The old design provided merely a catalog of links with no information as to what is behind these links. In the case of the topics directory, this approach may work, because people have a general idea as to what these topics refer to. In the case of news items, new articles, featured articles etc. this was ill-conceived, as there is little motivation for me to follow a link if the only way to get a basic idea of what is behind it is to do so.

b) I only viewed the old Main Page to access other pages, hardly ever to actually read the content. I did not view it regularly. I view the new Main Page every day and follow most of its sections. Why is this difference important? If we can hook our users on our Main Page, then that is a good way to get them interested in the rest of the site. If the reader will, however, be turned away by the Main Page after following a link from somewhere else, we may lose them forever. So it is very important that our Main Page includes "hooks" to catch people, and to create a bond with the site. The information is also much more accessible this way - rather than following dozens of pages, if you want to get a digest of what's interesting on Wikipedia, you can just follow the Main Page.

The old topics index is still there. In my opinion, it is mostly useless, because it gives the false impression that it is a directory, when in reality it is just a list of articles, many of which do not provide a good overview of the general topic. Furthermore, thanks to our ubiquitous redirects, just entering a search term and pressing "Go" often gets you exactly where you want. When the fulltext search is back, that will be the primary way people access Wikipedia articles. I have almost never used the topics index.

The Community Portal is now, in my opinion, much more useful even though there's still a lot of room for improvement. We have space on it to collect all the important Wikipedia: pages, and we can use it to inform our readers about general events of note to the community rather than just readers. Once people become interested in editing, this should be the place where they can learn everything they need to know.

2) Design. Yes, there are always trends in design and we should certainly not follow the latest trend just for the hell of it. I have studied Digital Media for four years, and I was often wildly opposed to the types of designs that were favored there. I was the only one in a room of 40 willing to stand up and say: "This design is crap. The user can't find anything there." So while I understand where you're coming from, I resent the claim that the new Main Page is somehow an expression of fashion, conscious or unconscious. I sat down and designed it (on paper at first) based on ideas that were previously thrown around in the community. If you wanted "the latest fad", the Main Page would consist of a Flash intro, after which you would get a JavaScript based button navigation with the function of the buttons only visible when you move your mouse over them. It would all look very nice but be completely useless.

I added images not because images are fancy, but because they transport emotions. And I think therein lies one cause of the problem. Many people are opposed to any design that works with emotions. However, I believe this to be necessary if the information that we transport is actually to be memorized and usefully processed. This is how memory works - by connecting information with emotional encoding. Intellectuals can generate these encodings from the smallest bits of information, but most people require a trigger, typically of a visual nature. As an encyclopedia we can choose to write strictly for ourselves or for our readers. The new Main Page is designed to accomplish the latter.&mdash;Eloquence 04:52, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

use stubs (isomorphic)
Hi. Thanks for all the stuff you're adding on cryptography, but could you make a little more attempt at formatting on the stubs you create? It won't really add much work for you and it'll save others from having to clean up after you. Especially, don't leave messages in the article itself about what needs to be added. Put that on the talk page. Isomorphic 17:58, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm pretty sure the official position is that you should use the talk page for such things. If you really don't want to use the talk pages, there is one other option that's still much better than inserting a message directly into the article.  The Wikipedia markup language allows comments to be made in the code without appearing in the article.  The format for this is  .  I've inserted a comment into this page's code as an example.  Isomorphic 19:54, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Jorge Stolfi in re snake oil
Thank you! Jorge Stolfi 18:22, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Being an admin (isomorphic)
Regarding being an admin, how much of an advantage it is depends on what sort of work you do here. I was nominated for admin because someone saw me doing "maintainance" work - fighting vandalism and nominating nonsense pages for speedy deletion. Since I was doing that sort of work anyway, it was convenient for me to get the tools to do it easilly (rollback and deletion.) There are other powers (running direct SQL queries, viewing deleted pages, undeleting, protecting and unprotecting pages, editing protected pages, and a few other things) but I don't ever use them myself. There isn't actually much authority involved since usage of most of the powers is strictly controlled by policy. You can read all about it at Administrators.

As far as the community aspects of the position, admin is a position of trust and service. Admins aren't required to do any particular jobs but they tend to be the ones taking care of a lot of the boring maintainance tasks. People also tend to expect admins to act as examples by their behavior (staying cool in disputes, being civil and helpful, etc.) There's also some prestige in being an admin, although not a huge amount of it. Some admins don't like the thought that there's any extra status, but in practice it's a position of trust so there's bound to be some respect attached.

Basically, if you aren't doing maintainance stuff there isn't a lot of reason to be an admin. Of course, there's also not a lot of reason not to be one. If you want I'll take a look through your contributions and consider nominating you. Isomorphic 21:24, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security (mc)
Have you come across this: Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security? It's apparently to be published by Kluwer sometime this year (2004) and has some top cryptographers contributing. They seem to be aiming at around 500 articles (we have some three hundred odd). It would probably be profitable to compare their coverage to Wikipedia's. &mdash; Matt 20:31, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

--'s on list of cryptography topics (mc)
ww &mdash; thanks for adding articles to list of cryptography topics. One detail though: could you make sure to add a separating "--" to the end of the entry, as this seems to be the style we've inherited for the list. Cheers! &mdash; Matt 23:40, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Admin nomination (isomorphic)
Hi, I took a look through your contributions and liked what I saw, so I nominated you at Requests for adminship. You'll want to wander by there and accept if you want the position. From your edit log it doesn't look like you've been in any disputes or controversies, or made any enemies, and your contrubutions have been valuable. The nomination should sail through easilly. Isomorphic 01:49, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

ISBN (jmabel)
Thanks. I didn't think ISBN was retrospective, but since someone was complaining about my lack of providing an ISBN for a 1940s book, I thought he might know something I didn't. Sounds like I knew something he didn't. -- Jmabel 17:46, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(mc)
ww -- can I recommend for large reedits of a page? it's really useful for avoiding edit conflicts, and looks like this:

&mdash; Matt 19:15, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

crypto (jengod)
You're welcome! I've noticed your work because I frequently scan Special:Newpages for possible additions to Template:Dyk and I've recently come across many quality additions to Wikipedia in the cryptography field--most with your name on 'em. I'm so bewildered by math that I'm pretty sure I'm not a particularly good choice to look over your shoulder, but if i ever see anything that could be improved from a fuzzy's point of view, I'll be sure to chime in. :) Cheers! jengod 21:14, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

Tonkinese cat (Brian Rock)
Ww,

Glad you got the nomination. It looks like smooth sailing for you. I think you might be the first admin nomination I voted for (or maybe the second). I saw the nomination go up almost immediately and said to myself "Ww, sounds familiar. Oh yeah, the Tonkinese editor." It took me five minutes or so to figure out how to properly edit the first "Support" vote, but I got it in pretty quickly. Actually, I think after your first edit on the Tonk article, you left some things hanging, but the second and following edits fixed things and then really made it a nice article.

Actually, the reason I started the Tonk article is that I looked at the List of cat breeds article for those cats that didn't have breed articles. I did the Egyptian Mau cat article first. My wife and I showed Egyptian Mau cats regularly for a number of years, although we didn't run a cattery (rare folks who show, but aren't breeders). Then I started on what I considered the nicest breeds that didn't yet have articles. I put the American Keuda cat in the breed list, and wrote a short article about them. It's a very rare breed in early development, so few people know much about them. Then I think that the Havana Brown cat was next, probably followed by the Tonks. I really didn't know much about them, but remember liking them from the shows, so I put out a rather anemic article about them, and pleaded in the Summary for some nice Tonk fan to show up and make it a good article. And you did. I was pleased, since this sort of appeal usually doesn't work. Now we've got a good Tonk article.

I'm pleased to support you. Thanks for all of your good works. Brian Rock 00:24, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

danny
Thanks for your comments. Although I had never noticed your edits before you were nominated, I checked them out and found that they really were excellent. I am pleased to be able to support you as an admin. My talk page was protected because someone had been vandalizing it over the past few days. Danny 01:09, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My mind isn't working well (jwr)
And I don't know what you mean by KBO, unless it's Kuiper Belt Objects. :-) I'm glad my Washingtonian stuff is welcome -- I imagine you're referring to Seafair?  It's probably the best of what little I've yet offered.  I'm still mulling over how to approach Northwest Folklife and Bumbershoot.  And I'm happy to look over cryptography articles if you'll tell me which ones need special focus.  I should admit, however, a casual interest in cryptography -- I read Simon Singh's The Code Book and enjoyed it, and so read a couple of other very popular-style approaches to cryptography....about 2-3 years ago now, but if it disqualifies me as a pair of eyes, well, just let me know. :-)  Congrats on your adminship (pending?  Or are you in by now?), and I'm happy to have helped. I do remember the Curse fiasco now (goodness, a tempest in a teapot), and am sorry your edits got lost, but that discussion went in weird directions before resolving. Let me know what I can do to help out, and thanks for your note, Jwrosenzweig 18:32, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * A general impression with a few ideas is at Talk:Enigma machine. :-) I'll try to get to others as I have time over the next couple of weeks.  And my request is a fairly simple one: I've been begging a long time for people to look at Medieval literature, which is almost entirely written by me.  People have been content to object to it generally on a few occasions, without offering any specific ideas for improvement.  Any thoughts about where it can be expanded, what is unclear, how it can be better structured, etc., are very welcome.  If you do that and feel a little more literary interest, I've done a lot of overhauling on the still woefully incomplete History of literature, and would love some ideas on that one too.  Thanks! :-) Jwrosenzweig 20:43, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Heh, thanks for the amusement on my talk page. Don't freak out -- I'm not looking for sophisticated literary analysis....just general thoughts.  I think actually the character of my remarks regarding Enigma (which really didn't rely on my limited technical knowledge of cryptography much at all) is what I'm asking for, and I've every confidence you can handle it. :-)  I'm afraid I don't drink beer (see teetotaller for more info ;-), but perhaps a burger and a Coke will suffice if literature proves beyond your abilities!  Anyhow, thanks for the marvelous conversation, and let me know if there's anything else I can do beyond a shot at a few cryptography articles.  I promise, on at least one of them, I'll say "Perfect!  Change nothing!" ;-) Jwrosenzweig 21:23, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Happy to help (cecropia)
Hi Ww, Sure, I'll be happy to look over your cryptography article and anything else you suggest, and make suggestions. I've just looked at the first paragraph or two, and the material is (from the layman's POV) much better written than most, actually. The one thing I know I'll suggest is trying to sum up the issue (i.e., the "dictionary definition" opening, in the first sentence, with the etymology at the end. I'll be more specific when I've looked at it a little more.

I'm in the point now in my work where, as far as tech knowledge is concerned, I learn what interests me, but only work to have a thorough knowledge of what I need to know, if you know what I mean. Many technical issues have a short layman's explanation, enough to tell the non-techie what s/he needs to know, and I especially want to write new openings for articles like Domain Name System. If I can help with that kind of rewrite of articles of interest to you, that's my special focus. Cheers! Cecropia 19:34, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Ah, I get it! I'll read over the article with your comments in mind. Cecropia 20:11, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

meelar
I'd certainly be willing to look over the cryptography articles, and I appreciate your offer of return help. I've actually been looking for someone to do this sort of thing; mainly on articles about U.S. political topics, since that's my area of expertise. Part of that would be for NPOV, as well as too much of an "insider" approach (i.e. unfamiliar terminology etc.). I'd really appreciate looks at southern strategy, campaign finance reform, and realigning election. Any particular articles you'd care to have me examine, or should I just look at your contributions and user page? Yours, Meelar 21:06, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Brian (catbar)
I'm willing to help, too. I'm no expert in cryptography, but I have a pretty good knowledge of computing and mathematics in general. I may be helpful to you, and I may not. Perhaps my biggest handicap in that area is a lack of strong interest, but that may be of use to you - making sure the article appeals to as wide an audience as possible.

I'll watch your work and get back to you as I can. Feel free to make specific requests, too. Brian Rock 00:07, Apr 17, 2004 (UTC)

...it's crypto generally.
 * Ouch. Sorry for the misinterpretation. I'll start to look around the crypto pages as time allows. Spring has started in my neck of the woods (more like summer, actually). I was out taking what I hope will be wikipictures today. But the cold and rainy days will be back - it is April in NE Ohio, after all. Talk to you later. Brian Rock 20:47, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

message form Simpson'sFan
Hi how you doing? Simpson'sFan 15:56, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New pages! (mc)
ww - hey, good work on the new pages that you've added in the last couple of days (5-6 isn't it?). I add them to List of cryptography topics when I notice them, but I'm not sure that I catch them all; I don't suppose you could add them to the list on creation? &mdash; Matt 20:29, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thoughts (jwr)
Your thoughts are more than welcome! History of lit is less pressing for me because, as yet, no one seems to want to write the half of the article that is still missing, and I have considerably less knowledge in much of it -- still, I'd be interested in your thoughts concerning what's there presently. The subject is far too big. And I may not have as much WP time in the next few weeks, but what I have, I'll devote a chunk of to cryptography pages. Thanks for your help. :-) Jwrosenzweig 16:48, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sysop congrats (several)
Congratulations! You are now an administrator after getting 100% support on WP:RFA. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. Good luck. Angela. 02:49, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * Congrats from me as well. You're right, a lot don't go that smoothly, but you haven't been in any fights and your contributions are good.  So no problems :-) Isomorphic 17:25, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Congrats! Arvindn 18:27, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Congratulations, Ww! Cribcage 20:30, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Info: Page access counts (mc)
ww - you might be interested in perusing User:Matt Crypto/Crypto hits March-2004, which gives some popularity data for the crypto articles from last March. Moreover, congratulations on becoming an admin! &mdash; Matt 02:58, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A Wikiproject Cryptography? (mc)
Do you think we would benefit from a Wikiproject Cryptography? I have hacked together a proposal for Wikiproject Cryptography. It might be a reasonable place for collecting together useful information, identifying needs, and hosting more general discussions. I guess we don't (at the moment) have a huge number of editors working on this, but it still might prove useful. What do you think? &mdash; Matt 17:38, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Your suggestions (meelar)
Hi, sorry it took so long to get back to you--I just got finished writing a long paper that kind of swallowed my weekend. Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on realigning elections, but I have a few bones to pick as well.

I'm not so sure that TR marks a polarizing point--I would say that liberal-to-moderate Republicanism survived well after this (for example, you could make a case for Dwight Eisenhower, as well as Rockefeller et al). A good couple of resources for this are "Grand Old Party", by Lewis Gould, a history of the GOP. Also, Gould wrote "1968: The Election that Changed America", and Kevin Phillips' "The Emerging Republican Majority" are quality reads about Nixon, Goldwater, Rockefeller, and the final collapse of moderation.

Of course, that's only if you're interested in this sort of thing; as my girlfriend would attest, sometimes I assume that everybody is. I'm not sure I agree with your comments entirely, but you're right, FDR didn't just spring up ex nihilo. What would you suggest?

Yours, Meelar 01:01, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Treecats (piotrus)
Awesome work you did, I dont think I can add anything more to it now. I will work on some other honor-related links. One think that could be done is to add graphics from my page, but I am not sure how Wiki policy applies to it (see Honor Harrington discussion page for my questions regarding this).

--Piotrus 18:39, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

just some more of the same - you are the treecat boss! :) --Piotrus 01:57, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks (Wmahan)
Hi ww, I wanted to let you know that I replied to your comment regarding cipher versus cypher. By the way, I appreciate all the work you've done on the articles related to cryptography. Thanks! Wmahan. 16:15, 2004 May 1 (UTC)
 * I apologize for my gross misuse of the English language. My only hope is that no one else will notice, because my transgression is hidden in the history of a talk page. Wmahan. 19:38, 2004 May 4 (UTC)


 * ww, I assure you that I would never attempt such a bad pun in real life--I do want to keep my friends. Please don't tell my school about this embarrassing incident, because if they found out they might not give me my diploma in a week! Wmahan. 20:20, 2004 May 4 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comments. I'll see if I can look over some of the crypto articles when I have a chance. Talk to you later, Wmahan. 20:37, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

ROAR (dpbsmith)
Actually, my experience was almost the opposite. I graduated from MIT in 1966. I was in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin 1966 to 1975, and paying very little attention to Boston. We returned to the Boston area in 1975. So I left an only-normally-racist city and returned to a viciously racist city... Dpbsmith 20:18, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Wikicode (dcoetzee)
Hi! I noticed you've contributed to computer science articles. I've started a project on WikiProject Computing to propose a standard pseudocode for use throughout the Wikipedia that I call wikicode. Please join the WikiProject (no commitment required) and please participate in the discussion about wikicode. Thanks!

Derrick Coetzee 16:48, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Subheading style (mc)
ww &mdash; it's Wikipedia style to capitalise the first letter of section headings, including subheadings. Have a look at: Manual of Style (headings) or Manual_of_Style. That's the reason behind the changes at Substitution cipher (and elsewhere). &mdash; Matt 08:10, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Good work (mc)
ww -- good start at side channel attack; it was quite a notable gap in our coverage. (I've also replied at User talk:Matt Crypto re PGP &mdash; Matt 11:04, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

..cypher.. vs ..cipher.. (wmahan, etc)
The reason I corrected those instances was because I found them on User:Wmahan's list of misspellings, not because I was looking for messing up the crypto corner. I was unfortunately not aware that this matter had been discussed at all.

I did verify that I was actually changing real errors, though. Note that I've never changed the word "cypher", only "encypher". According to m-w.com and dictionary.com, cypher and cipher are both valid spellings, but the only spelling given for "enciphering" something is with an "i".

I see you've challenged this argument elsewhere, but I disagree that non-conventional spelling should be used for any reason, including that of being used by some experts. I don't think people who prefer the variant "y" make up the largest part of Wikipedia's target audience even when it comes to this somewhat specialized section of articles.

There seems to be consensus against what I'm saying, though, so I'll keep off of the lawn in the future. Sorry for the trouble, and thanks for leaving me a note about the issue. Fredrik 17:29, 24 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I've replied at User talk:Fredrik. &mdash; Matt 09:23, 25 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Also, I've put a case for "cipher" on WikiProject Cryptography/Cipher vs Cypher &mdash; Matt 11:48, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

On a somewhat related point, thank you for posting a message to my Talk page alerting me to the new discussion. James F. (talk) 20:59, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I've replied on my talk page. Arvindn 03:15, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Resolution on cipher vs cypher (and NSA)... (mc)
ww -- I was hoping we could finish off our cypher vs cipher discussion (WikiProject Cryptography/Cipher vs Cypher), seeing as how no additional comments have been forthcoming for a while. I was particularly hoping for a response to the "Can we agree on what to do?" section, the gist of the proposal being that since it seems "mostly harmless" to yourself, yet others think it is important, there's little cost to yourself to standarise.

On a related note, I was surprised to see your changes to Eli Biham and PGP, changing "the NSA" to "NSA". In Talk:National Security Agency you appear to be advocating standardising the articles, Thus, among us cryptiacs (or cryptonauts?), and in articles on same, it should be NSA, no 'the'.. This seems at least a little at odds with your various arguments about accepting usage variations in the English language.. &mdash; Matt 15:42, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Matt, I waited for a while to respond to your can we agree on what to do section as we two are not the only participants. Indeed, I have twice tried to respond (the time for waiting having been sufficient by some vague standard) but have lost the edit in both cases. WP has been up and down of late... I'll try again.


 * On the revision at Biham, I was trying for a more historically relevant account of how it was that it became known that diff crypt had been discovered at least twice before. The historical sequence is as I have left it; the edit summary could accomodate only a brief comment which seems to have been a bit confusing.


 * As for the other, it's not an inconsistency in my position. For the NSA or NSA only, the NSA really does ring quite clearly wrong in some circumstances. I've tried to develop an explanation of this at talk:NSA, but as you might guess from that none seems quite compelling even to me.


 * Does it not ring equally wrong in some cases to your ear? Albeit yours is a BE ear? On this, because of the clear wrong ring, I think there is less room for debate, though this being English, I'm absolutely confident there will be some, as there has been.


 * To my ear, just "NSA" rings wrong, and "the NSA" seems correct; there's plenty of room for debate, e.g. Schneier uses both forms in Applied Cryptography (e.g. p597-599, 2nd ed, if you have it). Equally, "block cypher" looks hideous to my eye. Having said that, I would stress that I don't think we should go by what we feel to be correct, but follow what is actually used in various writings. I do think this is an inconsistency in your position, though, because you simply declare that the NSA "really does ring quite clearly wrong", yet argue that we should tolerate both "cipher" and "cypher" because English has lots of variation. &mdash; Matt 21:15, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Matt, Have to disagree about the inconsistency. In the one case we have the language itself (perhaps) changing -- Sassure's 'parole'. On the other we have a coding issue from sound (leaving out accentual effects on the orthography) to a written representation. I don't know that the language itself is changing and I don't know any way even in theory to even reach more of an awareness of what's happening than I (or you) have already. In the other, it's arbitrary, albeit without a rational system in place (or an Academy to issue eidts) how to settle the arbitrary is harder.
 * I'm surprised that your ear doesn't hear something odd about the NSA. Maybe it's an AE shift that we (I) are sensing seismically deep in wherever languages change. Fascinating, and as I note below, a very odd feeling. ww 13:53, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I guess I perceive inconsistency, as the arguments that you give to variation in spelling also, it would appear to me, apply also to variation in "NSA" vs "the NSA" &mdash; I don't think you've yet mentioned the reason for a distinction. But I don't particularly want to discuss that, but rather I was hoping that you might reflect on your desire to standardise on "NSA" over "the NSA" &mdash; based on (what seems to be) just your preference &mdash; and understand why people might wish to use "cipher" instead of "cypher" &mdash; based on what's used overwhelmingly frequently in modern cryptography. &mdash; Matt 16:21, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Matt, Let me try again, then. What is a language? It is, obviously, a collection of vacabulary (different (more or less) than other languages) together with a notional codebook mapping vocabulary to meaning (in a complex multitudinously self referential way) and some rules for structure (grammar and such). So far, so (probably) not very controversial. The controversial part begins when we try to get any closer to any of these elements in any particular case, say the assorted English pluperfect (imperfect, sort of perfect, really not perfect, ...) tenses.
 * For a long time, until Sassure (mentioned here and there in some of my comments on this issue), what test one might apply to determine whether this word or this usage pattern (ie, grammatical construct) was part of a language was not really too clear. Consider such border problems as the edge of the Danelaw for determining what was Anglo-Saxon or not, or Alsace and Lorraine for much of their histories, or the similar border through what is now Belgium for French v Nederlands, or ... Sassure claimed that the test was parole, ie what is actually found in the wild (like computer or other viruses, sort of) among fluent speakers of a language. Thus, my opinions on whether this or that is properly a part of Gaelic (any flavor) are incompetent. I can't speak a lick of any of them. But I speak a bit of French (about 1 bit just like a typical monoglot AE speaker) and might have an opinion on some question of French usage. But, by Sassure's criterion, I'd still be irrelevant as I'm hardly fluent. And some agent of the l'Academy would probably extremely sanction me (ie, fatally) if I dared. Cowardice forbids. And so it is that, if this account of language's nature makes sense to you, the Miss Fidditches of the world are permanently irrelevantly babbling to the extent they refuse to acknowledge that the textbook is at best an approximation.
 * Since fluent speakers occasionally (!) disagree on what is (or is not) proper usage or vocabulary, what a language is is a bit indeterminate. Which neatly explains how it is that a language can change, as for instance English (or various proto versions of it) has so persistently done. Just change what the fluent speakers think is right. Or find a new group of fluent speakers (as happens in creoles), and what they speak becomes a new language. It's something of a non explicit, unconscious, never quite called for a vote, hard to watch, ... kind of plurality rules thing. How it is that this happens is mysterious, but it certainly does. If most (and we're not talking a (50% + 1) majority here, but something rather larger and hard to pin down) fluent speakers of English accepted awful as meaning full of awe than it would be an appropriate word for a reaction to, say, St Paul's. On the other hand, if most (in this same sense) took awful to mean really truly horrid, then it presumably wouldn't apply to St Paul's (modulo architectural taste, of course). The word (however it's written) has actually been used both ways within historical times, I understand. One use seems to me to be a misuse, but I'm now well on the other side of the divide. Many words in Shakespeare have changed meanings in similarly significant ways, one of the reasons Shakespeare's intent in this or that passage is less than limpidly clear today. Corruption of text, lousy note taking, publisher 'improvements', editor follies, ... all contribute of course as well. Thus far, we're talking about something happening within our joint brains. This is (if you think Chomsky's on to anything at all) not arbitrary in any sense, but a reflection (some levels of indirection on) of physiology or inherited wiring patterns or some mysterious such. My participation in such determinations is obscure, not easily noticed, and I'm fascinated, if only occasionally able to watch. It's the possibility that the NSA v NSA is such a thing that's so interesting, and the reason I'm interested in what your (BE) ear hears.
 * Spelling, on the other hand, is merely an arbitrary englyphment of the sounds used (approximately and ignoring accents). We would still have the English language in exact full if it were written using Tengwar, or one of the developments of the Brahmi script, or han gul, or in katakana. My sense of participation in the insanity of English spelling is at best bemusing, and mostly maddening, unlike that noted above. You've noticed how my fingers have decided to wash their hands of the whole matter? Who determines what is the correct mapping (or, in English, the mishmash mapping) between sound and glyphs is not at all obvious. In English it's certainly not any sort of consistent phonetic scheme. It's not you nor me, and it's not majority vote either (at least going by the history of English spelling), nor is it merely that the experts use this spelling (however crudely coerced by their editors), as the only 'neutral' authorities we have (the dictionary compilers) retain variants for extended periods.
 * Does this clear up the conflation in your mind? ww 14:27, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm going to have to be honest and say "not entirely"... ;-) From what I can gather, you're saying that language tends to standardise itself to a large degree and that spelling remains fuzzy. Well, bringing it back to our specific discussion, I would ask you to consider again a point which you've already agreed: the spelling "cipher" is used overwhelmingly more frequently than "cypher" in modern cryptography. The current standings are about thirty books to zero, and (if I could be bothered to list them) hundreds (thousands, probably) of academic papers to, well, almost zero. Yes, there's divergence of spelling for other words: "colour" vs "color", "spelt" vs "spelled" and so on, but our case, "cipher" vs "cypher", in the context of modern cryptography? An agreement seems to have evolved &mdash; Wikipedia should mimic that agreement. &mdash; Matt 15:52, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Matt, Enough ':'? I'm afraid I have to agree with your "not entirely". I'm not at all sure 'language' does anything at all (there's distorting reification here, lurking like recumbent cats in a dark hallway tripping us all), but rather its fluent practicioners do (more or less jointly) something that we can sort of observe. What's going on and how it happens and how speakers cooperate in doing so is the fascinating (and almost entirely unknown) bit. At least I think it's fascinating. But whatever is happening, Sassure's point is that to define as language anything else (specifically including the written variants thereof) is to miss the point. It's in that arena that the the NSA v NSA thing is happening, if anything is. I still feel a virtual itch surrounding this usage, despite some weeks of having it in the foreground of my thoughts. As for the spelling thing, let me get back to a reply to you at the cy v ci discussion. I'm loosing the : here! ww 16:22, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I think here we are encountering an actual case of parole (in the Sassurian sense) trumping school lessons on perceived (wrongly in this case) correct practice. It's a very odd feeling to become aware of this happening in one's head. I've seen it happen, after the fact, in regard to much slang terminology (of course examples have just fallen out of my left ear!), but I had no sense of being involved personally. I feel at one with Chaucer and Shakespeare and Pope and Jefferson in this case -- well at least a microscopic amount.


 * Thanks for including the new snake oil article in list of crypto topics -- you beat me to it by moments, it seems, for it was done when I got there. And for moving snake oil it to the paren'd title, I was waiting for Jorge to respond before even attempting to do so, as will be apparent from my note in the Talk page. ww 16:23, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How to add something to a category (mc)
ww -- to add an entry for an article to a category page, you insert a "Category" tag into the text of that article itself; e.g. inserting Category:WikiProjects at the end of WikiProject Cryptography. &mdash; Matt 20:26, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Response to welcome (decrypt3)
Hi ww, I'm just acknowledging your welcome to WikiProject Crypto, with thanks. As to the cipher-cypher debate, on my user page you'll also note that I'm half American and half Japanese, so my American side puts me firmly in the "cipher" camp! (My Japanese side doesn't really care.) I can't think of anything I can add to the debate, so I'm staying silently on the "cipher" side. Once again, thanks for the welcome. --Decrypt3 20:52, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

cy v ci (decrypt3)
I'm not fluent in Japanese, unfortunately, but I can tell you a few things. It's almost completely standardized throughout Japan. Of course there are regional dialects, but they affect primarily spoken language, not written. For what you were saying about the relationship between sounds and glyphs... there are about a zillion kanji that can be pronounced "ki", but if you're wanting to say "tree", only one of them is correct. Additionally, a lot of them can be pronounced as something other than "ki" depending on their context.

I do speak Flemish (Belgian dialect of Dutch) adequately, however. I've gone and added notes on pronunciation to the Rijndael page. And like the Japanese regional dialects, Flemish deviates from Dutch primarily in the oral aspect, not written. Dutch tends to be faster and more guttural. Flemish speakers also roll their r's, whereas Dutch speakers don't. --Decrypt3 18:15, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)


 * I guess I misunderstood you the first time. There is a one-to-one correspondence between Hiragana and Katakana. All of the Kana are distinct from each other, except for two pairs: "shi" and "chi", with the dakuten (the little marks that turn "ta" to "da", for example), are the same sound - "ji", as well as "su" and "tsu" with dakuten both being "zu". However, there are rules that determine which to use when there is a "ji" or "zu" sound. See Hiragana for details. The Romaji are also in one-to-one correspondence with the Kana, like the Romaji as I've used here.

WikiReader Cryptography (mc)
ww -- another cunning scheme: a WikiReader/Cryptography, a collection of cryptography articles gleaned from Wikipedia. It'd be great to have your suggestions. &mdash; Matt 20:24, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Crypto (sverdrup)
I thank you for the invitation, but I'll stay outside for a while -- most of my edits were requested categorization I did, and crypto is not my main interest. I find it hard to contribute, since our crypto articles have such high standard, so I don't think there is a topic I can cover. Kudos to all-you crypto writers and good luck! &#9999; Sverdrup 15:50, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Now I've seen the notice; my watchlist is growing past the unusable, so I missed it earlier. I'm not too serious about apologising, note the smiley :-), no worries. &#9999; Sverdrup[[Image:U-Svdp.png|Sverdrup]] 15:24, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Emmett Watson... (jwrosenzweig)
At last -- why didn't I think of him? :-) I know what you mean about being tormented by not recalling this kind of thing.  Sorry, btw, that I haven't helped much more with crypto.  Is there an article you want me to set my limited layman's eye to, or are things moving along nicely? Thanks for your note while I was away -- I appreciated it, and it helped remind me of why I like it here.  Obviously it worked -- I'm back and happy again. :-) Jwrosenzweig 20:07, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Informing wider community (mc)
ww - I thought I'd advertise the WikiReader Cryptography plans a little tonight (well, tonight for me...); does the proposed article page look OK? (P.S. "cipher" vs "cypher"? *grin*) &mdash; Matt 20:00, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * (I've replied at User talk:Matt Crypto) &mdash; Matt 20:14, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

ww - I don't suppose you'd mind signing your comments on the WikiReader page? Helps keep track. I was also hoping you might be able to add your own "numerical" score to the summary table, or is that just too much complexity / hassle? &mdash; Matt 21:03, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * (I've replied to some things at User talk:Matt Crypto). Is the summary table OK? It would be very useful to maintain, as you could glance at it and see what people thought about various articles, but if it's too much hassle for people to edit / update it, then we're probably better off without. &mdash; Matt 15:44, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

- (I've replied at User talk:Matt Crypto) &mdash; Matt 16:23, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

PaX FA Discussion (bluefox phoenix)
Could you take another peek at PaX and elaborate a bit more on the FAC page about your objections? :)

I've moved the "Why PaX is signficiant" section to the top, which starts off by simply stating that PaX turns most security attacks into DoS attacks, with a short explaination of exactly what that really means.

Also, I removed "most" as used in the first sentence of that section and replaced with "many;" really, there's only a handfull of software packages that are still exploitable with PaX in place, but I would rather be more conservative about this and not go yelling on the wiki that PaX can catch damn near 100% of everything. In my experience, it gets damn close:

http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=format+string

AFAIK that is the only class of attack which PaX can't catch :) That list only ever gets bigger; it doesn't lose items just because a software package was fixed.

--Bluefox Phoenix Lucid 01:07, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

re2 PaX comment (John Moser)
Sure I'm willing to put up with limited help :) It's always great to see someone willing to help rather than cheer from the sidelines (like I do normally).

First off, what do you see wrong with the structure as is now? It's best to work with the majors first: Section order, missing or false (I shouldn't have anything false) information, unneeded cruft that just confuses the reader. After that's all good, concerns about minor bits of wording are worth raising.

--John Moser 19:33, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Cryptography mailshot (mc)
Hi, quick note to let you know about what's happening with the WikiReader in Cryptography. There's now a provisional Table of Contents to work with, and for the next 68 days or so there'll be an "Article of the Day" scheme: each day there'll be a particular article highlighted for reviewing and fixing. There's two templates for this purpose: Template:WikiReaderCryptographyAOTD and Template:WikiReaderCryptographyAOTD-Verbose. The smaller one looks like this:

These articles are likely to be some of the earliest English Wikipedia content to get turned into a print version, and any help in making them as good as possible would be much appreciated. Thanks! &mdash; Matt 01:48, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Constitution et al (meelar)
Hi. I haven't had a chance to look at that yet; thank you very much for reminding me. As for the Constitution, Emsworth says he found several factual errors, esp. in the Bill of Rights section. I suspect it's the history, but I'm not sure--would you mind doing a quick review? Thanks very much; I'm not sure what's wrong, but hopefully it will get fixed, because once we get the facts down, I think it's definitely featured article material. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 20:23, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)


 * Not sure about the context, but I'll go over it with that in mind. As for the errors, I suppose I'll ask the objector himself, who apparently does keep a history library in his head (he's been responsible for about 20% of all featured articles over the last month). Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 20:56, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)

Thanks for your words (SirJective)
Hi ww, you told me not to worry too much about my untrained english on my discussion page. I already heard about "ghoti" = "fish" and found it very funny.

In the future, I might take the challenge and translate german articles into english. *g* (Until now, I only translated the other way round.) This may start with just placing my proposal of an addition from Talk:Cantor-Bernstein-Schroeder theorem into the article. Had I done this already in october 2003, it would surely be transformed into the correct wording. --SirJective 15:27, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC) (Please correct mistakes you find here, so I can learn.)

Enigma (wapcaplet)
Thanks for your compliments on my Enigma diagrams! When the Wikireader on cryptography is ready for it, I'd be glad to make a cover design for the purpose. My cryptography knowledge is fairly limited, but it's fascinating stuff.

Colorado Springs has been home to some interesting people. I need to get over to the Nikola Tesla museum sometime. Who is RAH? Living at 1776 Garden of the Gods Road these days would be tricky; it's all businesses and industrial centers along there now. -- Wapcaplet 18:06, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Kludge admireabity (kop)
Hi, I note you added to 'kludge' a sentence nothing that that it's never elegent or admireable. I've slightly altered the wording to suggest that the only admirable quality of a kludge is that it does the job. Please take a look and see what you think.
 * Yes, the _one_ good thing about a kludge is that it does work, hence my change. I believe I've left your ironic point intact, although I don't know that the original phrasing necessarly spoke to the common usage to which you refer. I think the most important part of your addition is that kludges are not good, which could be overlooked in all the talk of kludges being a solution.  Yes, calling something a kludge is an ironic act, as by definition you're calling something an ugly work of art.  I've tweaked my phrasing a couple of times since I wrote you, you might want to take another look.  To support your "ironic usage" perhaps we should add "It generally takes a skilled craftsman, someone intimately familar with the properties of the material at hand, to produce a working monstrosity which is artitstic enough to be called a kludge."?  BTW, I'm only familiar with the term in it's CS usage. (Is this how/where this discussion business works? Should it be on the kludge discussion page?  I suppose I should get a username.) i-- 66 Aug  5 07:44:45 UTC 2004
 * Thanks for the welcome.--Kop 04:56, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * See Talk:kludge for more on ironic and your latest edits. (Can't make it link directly :-  Maybe some of that text can make it into the article.  See you in weeks.--Kop 05:12, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Password cracking
Hello.

I notice that on 16:23, 23 Jun 2004, you added informations to the 'Brute force attack' paragraph, however, one of you sentence appears to be unended. It starts with : 'Using longer passwords in such cases (if possible,'

... then nothing else.

Have a nice day.

Crypto illustrations (wapcaplet)
Thanks once again for the kind words! I've had a visual talent for as long as I can remember; graphics were what got me into Computer Science, so it's somewhat ironic that I haven't done much of anything graphical in terms of programming. I've done so many graphics lately for Wikipedia that I'm considering putting together a demo-DVD of my graphic work, since programming employment hasn't fallen in my lap yet.

I think you're right about the "long key." I'll see if I can emphasize it better (though it's obviously kind of impractical to make it, say, 4096 bits in comparison with a 64-bit "normal" key.)

Yeah, it's a little unfortunate that a digital signature doesn't too closely resemble a handwritten one, but it really seems like the best analogy we have; it's a kind of authentication. From what I understand, most of the caveats involved with proving the validity of a digital signature (certainty that Bob's public key is really Bob's, that nobody else has his private key, that a good protocol is used) have analogies in a handwritten signature too (i.e., ability to recognize Bob's signature, certainty that nobody else can forge his signature; use of a good protocol would maybe be analagous to how hard it would be to forge Bob's signature - if he scribbles, it may be easier, but if his handwriting is distinct, it's harder). At any rate, unless someone can suggest a better metaphor than a pen, I'll stick with that. (By the way - alien wombats living under Greenland? 1 Whose artistic flourish was that?)

For Alice and Bob, I was mostly just having fun. Any ideas for how they might be changed to better reflect anything that is known about them? I wanted them to be generic, overall, without being uninteresting. Found myself struggling with the question of their ethnicity... I suppose in some strange way they are reminiscent of the college professors I had. Bob, especially, resembles at least two of my CS profs. -- Wapcaplet 18:31, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * You are blessed with quite a vivid imagination :-) A bingo ball cage or Lotto-style ball fountain are certainly good analogies for random number generation, but unfortunately cumbersome to encapsulate in a smallish icon. I've made a six-sided die for that purpose, because it's simple and easily recognizable as something that produces random output.


 * Faked moon landing, yeah; the American public is strangely unskeptical. I remember a few years back FOX aired a special on that, hosted by Mitch Pileggi of The X-Files. Completely lame and ridiculous. "Can't see the stars in the sky! The dust doesn't get stirred up by the air! Must be faked!" (I think the Gallup poll showed something more like 6% of Americans think it's a credible theory; isn't there another statistic somewhere showing that 6% of Americans will agree with just about anything (even alien wombats) in a poll?).


 * By the way, I read that great essay about the personalities of Alice & Bob. Perhaps I should give them each sunglasses and a turned-up trenchcoat collar? Maybe Bob should be chain-smoking? Alice with a tinfoil hat? Both should have that wild-eyed paranoid look. I dunno, though; I have always pictured Alice and Bob as two normal people with a healthy dose of doubt about the good intentions of others. They are happy people, because they believe their communications can't be easily tapped by agencies operating under the USA PATRIOT Act. I don't want the illustration to be distracting.


 * I still gotta think of something better than that ink pen/digital signature, though... -- Wapcaplet 16:12, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

On email contact (mc)
Hi ww, you said (at Talk:Jerzy Ro*$£9"*$£something) (which seems I'm able to fix even without admin powers):
 * On another subject altogether, I noted that you should get in touch with me on email in an earlier comment. I now renew the request.

Sorry if I overlooked this; I can't remember noticing the request at all! Feel free to get in touch with me by email; you can do so by clicking "E-mail this user", a link which should appear when you visit User:Matt Crypto. &mdash; Matt 00:07, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Reply (isomorphic)
I see that someone has already switched the article back to its old name, so I miss my chance to duck into a phone booth... anyway, there are no hard guidelines for how long someone should be around before being nominated for admin. Generally it's around three months and a couple thousand edits, but it depends on the person. From what I've seen of Matt's work, I'm sure he'd be a shoo-in. Isomorphic 03:42, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Diabetes Mellitus (prisonblues)
Hi, it's Prisonblues. Thanks for the feedback and for more work on the diabetes mellitus diagrams. I made this one from my notes on glucose action on insulin, but don't seem to have that much more information available (I saved some cash this year sharing some text books with friends, so don't have them here at home). Have you got any images in mind that I could work from (from scratch though) for what you had in mind? --Prisonblues 01:16, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yr secret ID (Jerzy)
Looks like you are probably User:163.151.0.253 (a fact that would at least be worth mentioning at the corresponding user page; you should also get the nearly 800 edits that are apparently yours under this IP attributed to User:Ww). That would make what i asked at User talk:163.151.0.253 much easier than i made it sound, if so; could you check there and tell me on my talk page where you choose to reply, or that i'm mistaken? --Jerzy(t) 09:39, 2004 Aug 26 (UTC)


 * J, Sorry, no spandex suit here. And no phone booth either. This seems to be an artifact of the Wiki deciding I've been on long enough and 'helpfully' logging me off. More response at Talk:Jerzy. ww 15:53, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks (Cryptoderk)
Thanks for welcoming me back. It's good to be back in full force again. You're right about the down time -- while I was gone I finished up my Masters thesis and relocated to Canada for PhD work. Cheers. CryptoDerk 04:36, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Minor edits (Arvindn)
Hi, Just a suggestion: typically only spelling corrections and such are marked minor (in non talk pages). Addition of any actual content, or any change in the meaning, no matter how small, should not be marked minor. Thanks. Arvindn 04:58, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Infosecpedia (Chris Brown)
I happened across one of your edits on Wikipedia. I started looking at your contributions, and liked what you had to say about and the edits you made to the information security related articles. I was wondering if you wanted to participate in a project I've started. If you have a few minutes take a look at Infosecpedia at http://www.infosecpedia.org. --Chris Brown 22:20, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing (ram-man)
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)  14:13, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

cypher v cipher (Ricky81682)
Actually, my concern is not the spelling. I can tell this is a serious issue when I saw this page. However, all I know is that the link for cypher is a disambiguation page, but cipher redirects to Encryption. You can obviously see my predicament. Seeing as how it seems cypher can mean a number of things, I think cipher by default becomes the preferred spelling. Otherwise, I guess we're going a number of pages with cypher in them. Also, correct (or just make a note not to change things) on the cypher page. In reality, I couldn't care less, and I'll leave it to you all to debate. --Ricky81682 (talk) 05:25, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, hell, just edit the spelling. I use cypher because "cipher" looks damned silly. User:trekphiler 10:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Re. Math CotW (Ral315)
That article you nominated (Modular forms) is a pretty bad article, but it doesn't fit the Collaboration of the Week standards (it's too big an article). Perhaps one week we can add it as a "rewrite from the top down" special collaboration- I'll keep it in mind. ral315 02:32, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal (ral315)
Whoops...I posted this to a ton of contributors to the math articles I've seen...as you already know about the Wikiportal, disregard this message. ral315 02:58, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

dka (alterprise)
Thanks for the note. I had not even looked at the DKA article. It really is fairly bad-- nothing but oversimplified pathophysiology with some errors and omissions. Nothing on circumstances, treatment, risks, etc. I put a brief synopsis of dka in the main diabetes article at your request a few mos ago, and one of these days I will rewrite the dka article. Your note nudged it up a little higher on the list. alteripse 23:33, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Proper place for an announcement? (Angela)
That's good news. It would be best to add it to Trophy box and Village pump. Is there anything about the award available online? Angela. 22:10, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

The world wonders (ciphergoth)
I've taken the discussion to Talk:Padding (cryptography). It's on my watchlist, so I'll see any replies you make; you don't need to alert me of them on my talk page. Thanks! &mdash; ciphergoth 10:30, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Re: Honorverse Edits (*Kat*)
No, I haven't met the MWW (dammit!). I have exchanged e-mails with him on occassion though. Glad you like the work I did with the Character list. I'm about to do some more. *Kat* 02:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Brandt (Izehar)
We'll discuss it on the talk page ;-) Izehar (talk) 00:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_debate (Teofilo)
Hello,

As the author of this edit, you seem to be the person best suited to answer my request. Would you be so kind as to cast a glance at it here? --Teofilo talk  14:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. You say « Nave died during or just before Rusbridger had reference to his diaries ». If you search in Google the keywords "Eric Nave" "died" "1993" you can find an article saying « Commander Nave died in June, 1993 ». So that might have given him plenty of time to « later distanc[e] himself from » the book co-authored with Rusbridger, published in 1991. John Seigenthaler Sr. said on CNN last month : « I've always thought the best answer to bad speech was better speech ». It's a pity that the Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_debate article provides a reference for the alledged "bad speech" book from Rusbridger and Nave and no reference for the "better speech" publications that subsequently criticized the book.

A French historian who visited the British archives, says the British governement is probably still hiding documents relating to what Churchill knew about the movements of Japanese troops in 1941. He says, that while it is possible that Churchill knew nothing about Pearl harbour, it is impossible he knew nothing about other movements of Japanese troops elsewhere. link (in French) --Teofilo talk  17:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your prompt response, as well. I'm sorry that my extremely limited French won't let me make much sense of the link you left to a recent review of the content of British archives relevant to this business still kept secret. I'll run it through one of the translation sites in the hope that something will emerge, but..
 * Actually this is only one sentence, and I can translate it into English. François Delpla says : « Le gouvernement anglais a bien, en 1993, pour faire pièce aux accusations lancées contre Churchill, autorisé la consultation de nouveaux dossiers : ceux-ci ont été visités pendant la rédaction de ce livre et en ont enrichi certains aspects, mais sur les positions des forces armées japonaises ils sont parfaitement muets - ce qui veut dire qu'on nous cache encore quelque chose car, si le Premier ministre ignorait la menace pesant sur Pearl Harbor, il était certainement informé d'autres déplacements de soldats nippons ». I translate : "Indeed, the British governement, in order to crush the accusations made against Churchill, allowed in 1993 new files to be examined. I visited them as part of my work to prepare the present book, which was enriched accordingly on some aspects, but on the positions of the Japanese armed forces they [the files] are perfectly mute, which means that something is still being hidden, because, if the Prime Minister had no knowledge of the threat on Pearl Harbor, he must have been kept informed on other moves by Japanese soldiers."
 * Actually this is only one sentence, and I can translate it into English. François Delpla says : « Le gouvernement anglais a bien, en 1993, pour faire pièce aux accusations lancées contre Churchill, autorisé la consultation de nouveaux dossiers : ceux-ci ont été visités pendant la rédaction de ce livre et en ont enrichi certains aspects, mais sur les positions des forces armées japonaises ils sont parfaitement muets - ce qui veut dire qu'on nous cache encore quelque chose car, si le Premier ministre ignorait la menace pesant sur Pearl Harbor, il était certainement informé d'autres déplacements de soldats nippons ». I translate : "Indeed, the British governement, in order to crush the accusations made against Churchill, allowed in 1993 new files to be examined. I visited them as part of my work to prepare the present book, which was enriched accordingly on some aspects, but on the positions of the Japanese armed forces they [the files] are perfectly mute, which means that something is still being hidden, because, if the Prime Minister had no knowledge of the threat on Pearl Harbor, he must have been kept informed on other moves by Japanese soldiers."


 * someone in the West was privy somehow to Yamamoto's plan as approved at the Imperial Conferences (till them it was only an authorized experimental test and planning exercise, together with some anticipatory crew training), passing of that knowledge to those who withheld it from Kimmel and Short in Hawaii (eg FDR etc)
 * In the Rusbridger-Nave story, FDR himself is a victim of the withholding of information by Churchill.
 * François Delpla takes for granted that the Rusbridger story is bogus, but he says the story of admiral Layton (Edwin T.Layton, Roger Pineau and John Costello, And I Was There, New-York, 1985) is more credible. According to Admiral Layton, Churchill did all he could to make the American-Japanese relations worsen. But this is another debate (no longer the advance-knowledge_debate)
 * As I finish writing this message, I find that François Delplas's text has already been translated into English. So here's the link : http://www.amgot.org/phintroe.htm --Teofilo talk  21:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * François Delpla takes for granted that the Rusbridger story is bogus, but he says the story of admiral Layton (Edwin T.Layton, Roger Pineau and John Costello, And I Was There, New-York, 1985) is more credible. According to Admiral Layton, Churchill did all he could to make the American-Japanese relations worsen. But this is another debate (no longer the advance-knowledge_debate)
 * As I finish writing this message, I find that François Delplas's text has already been translated into English. So here's the link : http://www.amgot.org/phintroe.htm --Teofilo talk  21:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * As I finish writing this message, I find that François Delplas's text has already been translated into English. So here's the link : http://www.amgot.org/phintroe.htm --Teofilo talk  21:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Thucydides (Teofilo)
Thanks for the reference. Thucydides is interesting when he speaks about the « ability to see all sides of a question » which is his own quality as a historian. Giscard d'Estaing suggested including a Thucydides quote in the preamble of the now rejected European constitution. I read Alcibiades by Jacqueline de Romilly, in which she praises Thucydides a lot. All this makes very likely that I will start reading the original text of Thucydides some day, instead of contenting myself with comments.--Teofilo talk  11:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Invitation re: project (Leifern)
Please weigh in on this proposal and see User:Leifern/Wikiproject health controversies. Thanks in advance, and feel free to spread the word. --Leifern 17:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

re: cy vs ci (Phr)
I mentioned Naval Cypher #3 to correct an error I'd made earlier. However, in general I agree with Matt Crypto about the topic. I don't understand why there's such a big debate on that page. I think I'll try to stay out of it. Phr 02:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Cipher does seem to be the most appropriate usage according to current dictionaries and the new Fowler's Modern English Usage (1996). If The General Report on Tunny prefers cipher, that is good enough for me.TedColes (talk) 12:10, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

a non-linguistic problem (Andreas)
Regulation of intermediate metabolism is one of the most complex and less understood areas in biochemistry. Regarding your specific question (inhibition of fatty acid oxidation), I do not have an easy answer. I will have to do some research on this. I do not think a definite answer exists, however. Andreas 15:23, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Thx for encouragement, as for the work.. (Msoos)
Hi! Thx for encouragement (User_talk:Msoos) as for the work... I have been working on Timing attack and Cryptographic primitive lately. I would wish that I get some positive feedback, or negative whichever you think. Also I was quite astonished that a page concerning the crypto primitives was not yet done. Once I am more or less finished with that page, it should possibly be linked in to Portal:Cryptography. Thx in advance for your comments, Msoos 21:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I am trying to get it together. It's a real mess. There are bits and pieces totally missing, like for instance the traffic analysis from padding and bits and all sorts of stuff. Wikipedia seriously needs some update on cryptography! I am trying (as my field is computer protocol security), but it will be a long ride, as I just got a job and have a zillion other things to do. Well, at least I am keeping an eye on them in my watchlist every day, so very bad things can not be added :D Msoos 18:36, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Bug butter (milesvorkosigan)
No, the only bug-butter problem I have is that I can't find anyone making ambrosia. Too bad. :) MilesVorkosigan 01:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Katy Harris (ACEO)
ww - thank you for your comments on Katy Harris, that seems to answer my question well. ACEO 09:17, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

interurban (Lukobe)
thanks for starting that article. I can't believe we didn't have one yet, nor that we don't have a picture. I'd like to come back to it and tweak it some, so that's what the tags are for--to remind me, since I am not sure I'll have time this weekend.

BTW, are you a Seattleite? --Lukobe 23:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: 2 issues (Piotrus)
Could you check the spelling of this German guy? I am having troubles locating any references. As for treecats, I replied at Talk:Treecat.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Gotta love Wiki: Ernst Hanfstaengl. Perhaps you can expand the article with the information you wrote for me? Especially if you already have some sources for that.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Information Theory (Calbaer)
I reverted the introduction on information theory. Your short introduction was rewritten by a admin the day after you wrote it, so I thought it best to revert. If you disagree, please discuss on Talk:information theory which version you prefer and why. Thanks. Calbaer 17:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Edits on Seattle articles (jwr)
Thanks for the note...I'm not around as much as I'd like, but it's good to feel productive. I had a look at the articles you pointed me to on KBO and the statues. I'm afraid I probably took a little of the life out of your writing, but sometimes the tone felt a little too "familiar" -- I did preserve "to say nothing of the dog" (if you haven't already read Connie Willis's novel of that name, but like the Jerome book, you're in for a treat someday) but doubt it will survive a more ruthless editor. :-) Thanks for the tip, and I hope my fiddling doesn't offend--I'm very glad you've produced the articles, and feel I have little to add but the cruel knife of the copyeditor.  Revert any of my changes you find troublesome, and do let me know when I can next be of help.  Best regards, Jwrosenzweig 05:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Digital Restrictions Management (McMillan)
Looking through the dicussions on the DRM Talk page, I'm failing to find the point where consensus was reached. Would you mind pointing it out to me? AlistairMcMillan 17:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The Restrictions version is highlighted in the third paragraph and I can see the part of the Talk where people decide that the Restrictions version should probably be mentioned there and highlighted. But I can't see where people decided it should be mentioned right in the first sentence.  All the discussion I can see relating to that, is people saying it is POV.


 * Please note that discussion tailed off in August 2005 with everyone seemingly happy that the Restrictions version would be mentioned in the third paragraph and not the first sentence.  Then on June 1 2006 an anon user put it back.  AlistairMcMillan 17:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry to disappoint you. I'm still opposed to mentioning the Restrictions phrase in the first sentence.  I fail to see how this is any different to mentioning M$FT or MicroShaft as an alternate phrasing of Microsoft in the first sentence of Microsoft.


 * However I just don't have time to get into a "bloody" discussion right now. :) And with that my dinner is ready. AlistairMcMillan 17:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Cryptography != munition (mango)
My source on that was the RSA Labs Cryptofaq; they have a pretty good section on crypto laws. Fingers crossed about the FAC, and thanks for your support vote. :) Mango juice talk 04:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Pi and Indiana Pi Bill (Makholm)
Hi. I have reverted most of your additions to the Indiana bill section of Pi, because I feel that the section there should be a short summary that just lets people who are looking for the legendary bill find the main article. The Pi article is long enough as it is, and I don't think it is well served by expanding too much on such rather tangential issues. A better place for your historical details would be the main article Indiana Pi Bill, and I invite you to add them there if you find that it provides too little information. Henning Makholm 09:00, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks (mango)
Hey -- thanks for the support in the FAC battle, I'm proud of the result. BTW, I think you voted twice in my RFA; you were #17 and #57 on the list, so I de-numbered your second vote. Anyway, I'm actually pretty fired up about the whole FAC process, I was thinking about working on another FAC promotion, perhaps Digital signature. Will do on the Crypto WikiProject list. Thanks again! Mango juice talk 18:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Crypto edits (mango)
Hey - got your message. I figure, mostly, that the edits you disagree with were the ones I made that simplified the text and removed some information from the context. The example you mention, I actually left alone, though the wikicode makes it look otherwise. What I actually changed in that paragraph was the mention of Block cipher modes of operation; I reduced the description somewhat, because I wasn't able to adequately explain things without a lot more space, and I don't think the space was merited. Sometimes diffs show a large block of removed text and a large block of added text even when they are very similar to each other. I don't particularly find it difficult to read them, but I'm kind of used to the phenomenon now. While we're at it, do you know of a reference for 666 being an encryption of the emperor Nero? This is in the Number of the Beast article too, but no reference there either. Mango juice talk 20:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Re the "assuming" line -- I don't think the average reader will appreciate the difference between the primitive being appropriately chosen and implemented and the protocol being appropriately chosen and implemented. It's too subtle a point; I think most people will get confused. Mango juice talk 01:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Seeing keys (wapcaplet)
Sorry for the delay; I've been on a prolonged diversion to non-Wikipedia things (developing tovid, buying a house, getting started on kids ;-) but I would love to hear your thoughts on crypto key visualization. I could use some doodling side-projects, and might whip up something... -- Wapcaplet 05:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

DRM again (AlastairM)
I think I said at the time, something like, I just didn't have it in me to really get into it. In no way was I happy with the POV "Digital Restrictions Management" sitting right there in the first sentence. BTW Although it is completely irrelevant, I hate the bloody stuff as much as you do.

About the signature thing. You broke up my comment into three blocks, with my signature only at the end of the last block. So, in a year someone is searching back through the talk page they might not be able to tell who wrote the two paragraphs that didn't seem to have any signatures.

It's Glaswegian. And Glasgow is a very big place so I didn't know personally. But I had seen him before in things like Red Dwarf and One Foot in the Grave. I was in the States recently, and it was very weird turning on the tv and seeing a guy who was a minor bit-part comic here, hosting the talk show that follows Letterman. Very weird. AlistairMcMillan 18:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry but that version wasn't acceptable to me. I just didn't have the time to really push the issue.  We mention the Restriction version in the third paragraph, where it is even highlighted.  I'd be surprised if you can find another good article on Wikipedia that mentions criticism of the subject in the first sentence.


 * I wasn't saying that Ferguson wasn't good. I just meant that I wasn't aware of him except in minor parts.  I doubt many people in the UK would be able to put the name and face together.  He has definitely achieved more success in the US.  AlistairMcMillan 20:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * We don't mention critics in the first sentence. Seriously, if you can find a single other example I'd be very surprised.  And "by a considerable number" sounds like weasel words. AlistairMcMillan 20:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You want "Restrictions" mentioned "early and prominently"? It is, right there in the intro.  Above the TOC.  Third paragraph.  The one that starts "The topic is controversial". AlistairMcMillan 20:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

It isn't a stylistic issue, it's a POV issue. You are misunderstanding our NPOV policy. The idea is that we are not supposed to inject our own POV into articles. Sticking "Restrictions" in the first sentence is inserting your own POV. It isn't up to us to decide whether "Rights" is POV or not. It is irrelevant whether the RIAA has bankrupted Grandmothers. The people who created DRM called it "Rights", so when we are explaining what DRM means, we say "Rights".

And you're thinking of the British Phonographic Industry. AlistairMcMillan 21:08, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that everyone settled on having "Restrictions" in the first sentence? If so could you point to the point where that decision was reached?  I see everyone deciding they are happy without it in the first paragraph in Aug 2005.  After that the discussion seems to be about whether it should be on DRM. AlistairMcMillan 21:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Diabetes 'n' stalking (Alatair McMillan)
Don't worry I'm not wiki-stalking you. Just noticed Diabetes on your userpage (I was diagnosed type 1 about two years ago) and decided to take a look. AlistairMcMillan 21:51, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Diabetes bunkum (jfw)
I always thought of diabetes as a relatively quackery-free zone, but I'll have to revise my opinion. Thanks for your comments on Talk:Diabetes mellitus, anyway. JFW | T@lk  17:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Digital Rights Management (rwang)
Hello, and thanks for the note you placed on my talk page.

I was aware, when I began editing Digital Rights Management, that I was stepping into a fairly controversial article - I gathered from the quality of the article overall (which left me less than impressed upon first reading) that most users were unwilling to make major changes to the text without clear approval from others. Since I have no direct experience with DRM or its history, but could still see a number of major problems with the text, I decided to edit largely from the literary perspective that you mentioned. I hoped that users, such as yourself, would keep an eye on the article to ensure that my changes didn't sacrifice too much technical detail, and I'm happy that you responded as quickly to those changes as you did.

If you have the time, I would greatly appreciate some further help with the article, since I still intend to clean up around half of the remaining text. I'll try to be less bold in my edits, but I'd still be grateful if you could keep an eye on them to make sure I don't make any major mistakes - I'm really only good at this kind of literary editing, so I do need help ensuring that the facts in the article remain intact. Thanks again for your comments. :) RandyWang ( raves/rants ) 23:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm only happy with boomerangs in my back, so long as they aren't all tarted up. :)


 * Thanks for your time at the article - I'm anxious to do well here, since this is my first assigned task at CUTF, but I'm glad that you and the others have stepped up to comment so quickly and helpfully. I'll probably leave making more major edits until later tonight (~8 hours' time) to give the article some more time to settle before starting again. That, and I have an essay due soon.


 * I am interested in engineering, specifically software engineering and other, similarly 'geeky' topics. Computer security is mixed in there somewhere, and I'd certainly be happy t read up on the topic if I were given the chance. Suggest away - I'm all ears/eyes/nose. RandyWang ( raves/rants ) 00:32, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Redux: Thanks for the message on my talk page, and of course you're correct in hindsight. I reverted the article without checking properly on the talk page (I haven't been following it as closely as I should have been, and it's been a while since I've paid much attention), so I can certainly understand that my revert was in error. Thanks for catching it, and telling me about it.

In other news, I'm not longer assigned to that article at CUTF, because I don't really have time anymore. I just finished my Trial HSC exams (which count for a significant part of my final school assessment), and with my final exams just two months away, I don't have enough time to work as hard on it as I did before. I've asked that it be assigned to someone else, but I'll try to keep an eye on it for the future (and to avoid reverting in error, as before ;) ).

Finally, I haven't really had time to do much reading in the recent past, because the various assessments flying around my head at the moment. I don't seem to be able to find your original recommendations, though - but I'm still interested. Gah! Do you still happen to have them around, somewhere? (Sorry!) :( RandyWang ( chat/patch ) 09:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

edit to talk:writing medical articles (Stephen Fruitsmaak)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine/Writing medical articles : Im not sure why you placed this here... shouldn't this be on the talk page of a specific article you're referring to? --Steven Fruitsmaak | Talk 12:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe it will get more readers in the doctor's mess?--Steven Fruitsmaak | Talk 12:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Greetings (Ancheta Wis)
ww, thank you for your note. I found that when I cut down my watchlist to 50 articles, life became much simpler. What I concentrate on right now is good faith actions. If the people are not subverting the articles, I abide by the changes, as the articles will keep evolving anyway. Anonymous changes get my immediate attention; everyone else seems to adhere to the spirit of the articles under my watch, which is what matters. Regards, --Ancheta Wis 03:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Electronic Signatures (Isaacbowman)
ww, I had not reviewed my wiki for a while but just saw your notes on the Talk:Electronic signature page. I have place my replies along with your's Isaacbowman 16:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

ww, I do appreciate that you took the time to comment to me regarding the edits to my posts and I realize that we may not view this subject the same. But, please also note that many well known businesses (not just the laws) also consider digital signatures as a sub-set of electronic ones. Adobe, Silanis and CIO along with many Universities. Its merely the terminology. No one (not even myself) is trying to define electronic signatures to some limited technology. Its just the term used to describe all virtual signature solutions, just as the term 'automobile' can include cars/trucks and many other types of vehicles.

I understand that there is a large number of people that feel the same as you regarding electronic vs digital. I agree that an electronic signature does not mean that a cryptographic solution is present. However we also cannot assume that a PKI/Cryptographic solution is the ONLY way to capture a virtual signature. It is merely ONE way out of many.

When I say that all electronic signature laws (and therefore all dig-signature laws) require non-repudiation and integrity I am NOT implying that they are requiring any kind of specific technology. As I had said before, any contract law (whether virtual or physical) requires that the contract be non-reputable and maintain integrity. HOW a business complies with these is up to them.

I am not sure what you refer to as the 'misunderstanding of the underlying cryptographic engineering'? I believe that you feel that Digital Signature and PKI are one and the same. But they are not. Wiki has a page for each topic and a read can drill down to get more specific information. Therefore Automobiles >> Cars >> Sports Cars would be similar to Electronic Sig >> Digital Sig >> PKI. The digital Signature page should discuss all topics relevant to Digital Signatures (like PKI, message authentication codes, file integrity hashes and digital pen pad devices) and then a reader could select the sub-page to learn more.

Making the dig sig page exclusively about PKI would be like only talking about 2-door cars without discussing all of the other options. If a reader wants to learn more about PKI then send them to PKI. Each page should discuss an overview of all the sub-pages:


 * 1) Electronic Signatures
 * 2) FAX
 * 3) Morse Code
 * 4) Click Wrap
 * 5) Digital Signatures
 * 6) PKI
 * 7) Pen Pad

Isaacbowman 00:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Crypto (Autarch)
Ww, thanks for greeting me to the crypto project - I've started an entry on another ancillary topic recently - Sukhotins Algorithm, which I hope to expand as I add material as my understanding grows. I'm puzzled about the reference to "Teapot Tempest" - where exactly is it on the talk page? Autarch 17:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: insulin image (Meiquer)
Hi ww :) thank for your messages and your comment. The information you wrote ma about how insulin causes glucose influx suprised me a little. Where do you have this information from? Could you give me a reference? From what I know, the glucose uptake is activated not by means of gene expression modulation, but rather by enzymatic phosphorylation cascades. The channell that takes glucose in (GLUT-4) persists in cell in the membrane of intracellular vesicles. The signal from insulin receptor makes these vesicles fuse with cell membrane, so the GLUT-4 is exposed on the cell surface, and allows uptake of glucose from the cell environment. The mechanism you wrote about is very likely to also take place, but modulation of gene expression takes hours. This would be too long a period of time for our organism to wait before the glucoseis eventually absorbed by the cells. I think this mechanism serves rather as a mean to generate new particles of GLUT-4 so there is enough for the next time the insulin receptor is activated.

I have today greatly expanded the "Adeno-associated virus" article. Unfortunatelly I forgot to login before I saved the changes. Is there a possibility to change the IP of the editor to my nick?

Best wishes :) Meiquer

Diabetes mellitus revert (Storkk)
Hi. I was wondering why you removed the tag that I put on the Diabetes mellitus article. The introduction to this article is, IMHO, far too long. The vast majority of good articles on WP are briefly summarized in the lead-in, and then you get a table of contents. This, I feel, is important, hence my addition of the tag. Please read WP:LEAD, and please reply on my talk page. Thanks! -Storkk 23:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Note, reading WP:LEAD may lead you to believe that the intro section is fine as it stands, I disagree completely. The key word being concise, which Diabetes's is definitely not. Thanks for your comments. --Storkk 23:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WHOOPS. Mea culpa -- I pressed the wrong radio button on the history page, and incorrectly assumed you removed it. Sorry, please disregard all of the above (which will be copied and pasted to User talk:Jfdwolff). I apologize for the inconvenience. Sorry. --Storkk 23:11, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

DM Archiving (Coro)
Regarding separating by topic. Admittedly, I had to think about it a bit myself, and for the most part stuck to chronological myself for those reasons. I deviated in the case of the one topic, because it is a discussion that keeps cropping up to a degree that I haven't seen elsewhere. I would not be inclined to separate any other topic out. --Coro 18:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Cryptography navigational templates (gothberg)
Hi ww. I have left some questions for you and the other crypto editors at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography. I'd like your input, you often "see" things others don't see. --David Göthberg 13:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

CryptMT / Fubuki (gothberg)
Hi Ww. I moved the article CryptMT/Fubuki to CryptMT since they are two different ciphers. Fubuki seems to be a block cipher or at least able to run in a block mode. I also made several updates to the article and stated they are two different ciphers etc. Even though they both are based on the Mersenne twister. (Yeah, unusual to base a block cipher on a PRNG.) --David Göthberg 21:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Oberon move (Mets501)
Thank you for the move, it was sorely needed. However, it seems that the talk page(s) were lost in the process. Is there a way to recover it (them)? I suspect you're better at this than I since I have managed to remain blissfully ignorant of all such details. ww 03:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Ww, which talk page were you talking about in particular? Oberon-1 still goes with Talk:Oberon-1 and Oberon-2 still goes with Talk:Oberon-2.  Oberon (programming language) never had a talk page. — Mets501 (talk) 03:09, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

JN-25 (Trekphiler)
Your comments:
 * "As for your edits noted above, I applaud your industry, thank you for the reminder that the Thailand fleet had been sighted before the Pearl Harbor attack (had slipped my mind), and must disagree with the tone and some of the facts in these edits. In fact, JN-25 was NOT broken prior to 12.1.41 in any edition. This was at the beginning of its life, a superencrypted additive code/cypher. There were several new editions (one on 12.1.41) and became a two part code as well. In the absence of considerable depth at any particular edition, such systems (essentially state of the practical art of the time) are very difficult to break. The highest credible estimate of the percentage of JN-25 broken prior to 12.1.41 is about 10%. wh the opening of hostibilies, traffic increased, much more depth became possible, and the 12.1.41 edition was steadily broken to the point of sufficient information to stage the Midway ambush. As for attack information in minor codes/cyphers, one which had been broken did indeed carry a warning. It was sent, IRC, on 12.6.41 but not decrypted till 12.8.41."

According to Blair, Silent Victory, & Kahn, Codebreakers, JN-25 had, indeed, been broken by September 1940. It was not being read to any extent, perhaps 10% early; by 7 Dec, about 40%, IIRC. I can't speak to when the J-19 msg in question was decrypted, but IIRC, it wasn't decrypted until 8 Dec (or after the war, translated maybe). Regardless, there wasn't the manpower to deal with lo-grade cyphers. I'm less clear on why you object to edits that bring this to light. If you mean because it implies more knowledge than the Americans actually possessed ("break" = "read" ="know in advance"), I take your point; go ahead & change it. If you mean something else, I'd appreciate a bit of clarification. User:trekphiler 10:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Pearl Harbor (beback)
Pleae remember to sign your talk page comments with four tildes ("~"). Otherwsie it's hard to follow the conversation. Cheers, -Will Beback

JN-25 again (trekphiler)
I see your point. I'm taking "break" in the cryppie sense, as Kahn used it: an early entry into the system. I don't take it to mean it was "read clear" by any means; I'd guess the 10% number is a "read clear" number, but, from whay you've said, maybe not. I take what Negat, Hypo, & Cast were able to do was get useful info, in collaboration with the traffic analysts. You're right, the unitiated might see "break" as offering more than that. Change it back. Except, I'd be sensitive to saying anything to the effect "it wasn't broken", because that's misleading, too, & that was my initial problem. Something like, "little useful information could be obtained, despite a penetration". OK? User:trekphiler 10:52, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

JN-25 again (trekphiler)
Sounds like you know more about it than me. I'm getting it second- & third-hand, so I have no real idea what the cryppies were actually getting. My impression is, by 7 Dec, it still didn't amount to a lot, tho they might've gotten some clues (& don't forget they would've been reconstructing the JN-25 book, based in part on past knowledge); even callsigns & addresses would've been useful to the traffic analysts. They weren't doing much (or any) analysis, AFAIK, & Costello suggests they weren't doing a "traffic analysis" of where the messages were addressed, which he says might have tipped ONI to an attack at Pearl. Which makes me wonder: is there a Wikipedia page on sigint? (I haven't looked, I confess.) A discussion like this, on so famous a case, might be of interest there, no? Trekphiler 00:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Costello (Trekphiler)
I suspect we're talking about 2 different things. Costello says there was no examination of the weight of traffic between embassies or legations, which, if done, might have pointed to Pearl; I'm not in a position to comment. I've seen Kimmel's famous comment (which Stinnett uses to imply conspiracy; it doesn't pass the hilarity test, either) & I don't doubt USN traffic analysts were on top of things within their purview. Thanks for the heads up on the traffic analysis page; I'll have a look. Best. Trekphiler 02:03, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

"at best" or "at least" on snake oil page. (Coppertwig)
Hi! You reverted my edit on the snake oil page. Thanks for watching over Wikipedia pages; with collaboration we can do better than any one of us alone. I think "at best" is wrong because there is the possibility that the substances being mentioned have some beneficial effect over and above the placebo effect. I had changed it to "at least" to refrain from claiming that this possibility did not exist. Maybe we can come up with some other wording satisfactory to both of us. You may reply here, or on the Snake oil talk page, or on my talk page. --Coppertwig 03:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply on my talk page. I've replied to you again there. (Maybe we should be discussing it on Talk:Snake oil.) --Coppertwig 12:10, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Reverted edits of public-key cryptography page (Birkett)
Why did you revert my changes? They certainly weren't malicious and I believe them to be accurate. Could you at least explain what is wrong with them? Birkett 14:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I responded to your comments on my talk page. Birkett 19:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

thank you (Omphaloscope)
your appreciation is truly, deeply appreciated! Omphaloscope talk 06:43, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

RE: MUMPS (Oliver202)
Sorry about that revert, I must have been half asleep Oliver202 17:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Oddly enough... (Warrens)
... I find myself defending the prominence of the term Dig Res Mgmt on the DRM article, which is almost like me agreeing with your position in the matter. Wonders never cease. ;-) -/- Warren 01:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Loudspeaker peer review request (Davidkazuhiro)
I've requested the article Loudspeaker to have peer review. I noticed it was pretty good and might deserve a GA status. If you can take a look at it too and help evaluate and improve it's quality, that would be great. The peer review tag can be found on the article's talk page. --Davidkazuhiro 10:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow ww, thanks for all the advice, support and references! You sure gave me a bunch of exciting stuff to spend my extra time on (when I have it that is =D) thanks! --Davidkazuhiro 03:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

DRM intro (anon)
I made some modifications to try to clean up cruft in the opening section of DRM but they were reverted by another user. I've put the proposed changes in the "cleanup" section on the DRM talk page. You seem to follow DRM - please review & provide comments on the talk page if you have time. thanks. 71.232.58.195 01:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Pearl Harbor (marskell)
I was leaving a message as you wrote me. I hate to blame process, but what to say? Sometimes people miss a notification and the page has to keep moving. Peal Harbor has a lot messiness around the edges (unformatted links and an overwhelming TOC, for example) and there wasn't consensus to keep it. Having someone show up later and say "but I would have worked on it!" makes me feel awful. But a good overhaul can happen without the review. Try to get it back to FAC maybe?

I haven't seen that short story, but if it explains the nature of reality I ought to go looking. I'm almost felined-out though; need some other random area to start working on. Marskell 12:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It may always have POV debates and that by itself, if it can be managed, is not a reason to remove it. What I was pointing out is that there are immediate presentation problems that really ought to be taken care of: weblinks thrown in unformatted, different quote styles (and sometimes over-quotation), "listishness," one sentence paragraphs, etc. And, of course, it's absolutely massive. These things ought to be taken care of at review and hadn't been. Hope that makes more sense—I don't mean to denigrate the work involved in balancing the POV in the slightest.


 * As for behind the curtains, I disagree in terms of FAR. I can't think of process that does more to alert people to a review. I'm sorry it failed in this instance. Marskell 16:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Cryptography article disambig naming, examples/voting (Gothberg)
Hi ww. We are currently discussing cryptography disambig naming at the talk page of WikiProject Cryptography. Naming like Tiger (hash). I'd like your comments/input on the matter, you often "see" things others don't see. --David Göthberg 05:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Edits for clarity (dicklyon)
WW, in your copyedits, if you really want things to be clear and readable to a general audience, it would be good if you would avoid latin abbreviations for "for example" and "that is"; or if you must use them, then learn how to punctuate them ("e.g." and "i.e." per MOS:ABB). Thanks. Dicklyon 06:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect of Xune (bot)
Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Xune, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Xune is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1). To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Xune, please affix the template to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. CSDWarnBot 08:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Agenda? (trekphiler)
I'm not seeing it. I do think the total embargo on oil was too much, but it was understood even at the time if it was placed, Japan was liable to have an extreme reaction, & as Toland says, it put Japan in the position of back down or be destroyed; one may imagine the U.S. reaction to being compelled to negotiate (effectively) with a gun to her head. As for the rest, I tried to look at it from the POV of the players & present it as such: FDR was looking for deterrence, Japan for autarky; neither side got what it wanted. I'll have another look at the edit history, but it seemed to me your tone was too mild in places, in particular not using "shocked" to the U.S. reaction. Everything I've ever read or heard, it was like a slap in the face (which probably explains why every U.S. doc on the war, regardless of the subject, prominently mentions Pearl). Also, taking out "mistakenly" (again?) I'd call wrong; it says to me the Japanese commanders misjudged things even before the attack was launched. (As to why, that's OR territory...) Trekphiler (talk) 06:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with your objectives, just not (entirely) with your execution. I was after a collision between desire for autarky & mistakes. I won't argue there was heavy investment in a southern campaign & a sense of entitlement, but that's not a Pearl Harbor issue, that's a Pacific War issue. As for "destroyed", what would you say to "wrecked beyond repair"? (The technical term is "constructive total loss", if "sunk" doesn't apply; cf Sailfish.) Trekphiler (talk) 22:33, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with both sides on the inclusiveness, actually. It should be covered, just not (necessarily) in this article. (That's why ""...) Something(s?) that branch(es) off into fuller coverage would be ideal, & it would incidentally take out some of the overlength, since the main article wouldn't have to carry all the weight, while at the same time allowing fuller coverage. If you're inclined, I'll give you all the help on it I can. Trekphiler (talk) 23:04, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2 quick points. Brevity, I think the issue wants both mention in the article & extended coverage elsewhere; the unitiated (or those not seeking maniac-level detail) can get a glimpse, while link-outs can give enough for specialists. Changing "reattach" offends me esthetically, but I can live with it... (I do still have concerns over the link to OP-20-G ...) Trekphiler (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

DRM article (warren)
Hey, ww, hope you've been well. Quick question about this, do you have any sources that could be provided for this information? In particular, a source for the EFF quote and information about the development of the CPCM. I don't doubt that your information is right but it'll be good to source it so someone else doesn't remove it later. -/- Warren 18:16, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, sounds good... thanks. :) -/- Warren 20:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

RE: Hong Kong (sesshomaru)
Yeah, I probably screwed up by assuming all of those were related. Go ahead and remove the tags if you feel they're unneeded. Cheers! Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 09:12, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

tragedy of the commons (brusegadi)
Hey, this is not necessary because the zh was added in its appropriate place by another user. Thus, your reversion of my edit adds it again. Let me know if there is anything I am missing. Ciao, Brusegadi (talk) 07:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Newly found (Trek)

 * Revert? Maybe. I'd be very hesitant to dump all the work done since; it's not all bad, just...disorganized, which is an inevitable hazard of WP. (Some pages really show they're "open edited". And those are the better ones.) Myself, I'd be inclined to just go read through every so often & try to keep some order on it stylistically; it's hard enough keeping out obvious bad edits, mistakes, & junk, never mind getting good style. Don't even mention vandals. I'm too old-fashioned. Or maybe just too old. Hang in there. If we quit, we abandon to the barbarians. What did Donne (Dunne?) say? "All it takes is for good men to do nothing"? I'm sticking my finger in the dike. (Oh, wait, that sounds really dirty. =D) See you there. Trekphiler (talk) 19:37, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/List of Honorverse characters (Piotrus)
You may want to comment at that article's deletion discussion.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Subwoofer revertion (noodle)
I have reverted your reversion on sub woofers, this is because I believe the article is in a better state afterwards, and you provided no justification or reason for the revert. Noodle snacks (talk) 23:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Swing and a miss (BQZip)
FYI, "broadcasted" and "broadcast" are both perfectly acceptable. Either usage was appropriate on the A&M page. Please try not to sound so condescending in the future. — BQZip01 — talk 21:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

cryptology (DAGwyn)
I agree that confusing terminology should be avoided. That is why it is important to make correct distinctions. "Cryptology" refers to the whole science of secret communication, whereas "cryptography" refers to a much more limited domain involving use of glyphs. Since Friedman coined those terms in order to make proper distinctions, it is particularly ironic that one would change them incorrectly in his biography. — DAGwyn (talk) 18:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL for Ww (Dvi Secundus)
I am/was User:Ww on some other wikis (simple, de, commons), but have now started to file rename requests. Just wanted you to know, in case you want to have a SUL. --Dwi Secundus (talk) 15:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Type II (Michellecrimp)
Quite simple, every claim must be citated on Wikipedia. Yes I didn't pick up everything nor am I necessarily questioning the factual accuracy but it needs to be verified. As someone who is not a physician I stumbled on the article out of interest. Michellecrisp (talk) 04:56, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Pay in advance (Trek)
Re your comment here: I had no idea it was so complicated. FYI, Jim Randi is one in a long line of debunkers, going back to Erik Weisz; did you know Johnny used Randi as an advisor whenever Uri Geller or somebody came on his show, & they always seemed to encounter "hostile energy"? (Some people still take Geller seriously... And Kreskin. *Sigh*)  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  22:46, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Didn't know about Mackay, but I've heard of Sokal. As for pessimistic, I can only repeat (I wish I could credit it), all it takes for for the triumph of ignorance is for good men to do nothing. I do what I can. And (as I think I've said elsewhere), I stand with those who defend reason against ignorance. I can do no less.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  01:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks (Trek)
Just a quick TY for deleting the conspiracy from Pearl Harbor. I'd've done it myself, but a) I've done it once already & I don't need need to get in a revert war, &, more important, b) you beat me to it. ;) Also, FYI, I'm trying to talk him down from adding it again. Here's hoping that works. Don't need to reply; I've said my piece, & I'm satisfied you'll read it eventually.  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  21:05 & 21:06, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Survey request ( BCproject)
Hi, Ww I need your help. I am working on a research project at Boston College, studying creation of medical information on Wikipedia. You are being contacted because you have been identified as an important contributor to one or more articles.

Would you will be willing to answer a few questions about your experience? We've done considerable background research, but we would also like to gather the insight of the actual editors. Details about the project can be found at the user page of the project leader, geraldckane. Survey questions can be found at geraldckane/medsurvey. Your privacy and confidentiality will be strictly protected!

The questions should only take a few minutes. I hope you will be willing to complete the survey, as we do value your insight. Please do not hesitate to contact me or Professor Kane if you have any questions. Thank You, BCproject (talk) 23:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

DM protection ( JDFW)
I'm in total agreement that the page should be protected so that the anon can learn to form consensus. However, I have participated in the discussion sufficiently no to be impartial in this issue. I therefore prefer not to action the protection myself; would you try WP:RFPP please? JFW | T@lk  21:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

about MUMPS (AbuAmir)
from your comparison mumps:perl one may have the impression that these two belong to one era. Indeed (or so I think, being ho historian) that Mumps was a major source on inspiration for the PERL inventors. By the way, the  s x="x x" x x is mine.

AbuAmir (talk) 05:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

MEDCAB mediation (Fr33kman)
Of Diabetes mellitus. Can you kindly let me know what is going on and what your opinions are, as you see them? :-) Thanks! Fr33kman talk APW 19:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

No more links (Wed Nxt)
It's a spam prevention measure. It's been reformatted recently to stand out as it was being ignored... Not sure it should be changed, myself... Wednesday Next (talk) 23:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Spherical dice (Noe)
I made a slight change to your recent edit of Dice; see this dif. As I state in my edit summary, I don't really know what I'm talking about - but I suspect you don't either (no offence intended). Please take a look at the dif.--Noe (talk) 07:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Regarding your reply on my talk page: I like puzzles; my students sometimes like them less... What have you got?
 * On spherical dice, I will post on the talk page talk:Dice.--Noe (talk) 15:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you (Piotrus)
For your kind words in my arbcom. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Cleartext (Paranormal Skeptic)
I have nominated Cleartext, an article you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Cleartext. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Paranormal Skeptic (talk) 12:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC) Paranormal Skeptic (talk) 12:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Insulin therapy split (Draeco re proposal)
ww, you're the only dissenter to splitting insulin therapy into its own article from insulin. Could you check back at the discussion and see if your mind has changed? I for one will make sure that insulin therapy is still (briefly) mentioned in the main insulin article for completion. Thanks and happy editing - Draeco (talk) 05:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Diabetes Mellitus type 1 (AnthroGael)
Hi, I noticed an October 18th edit that removed a citation request tag from the Type 1 diabetes page`s pathology section for the following sentence: "This has suggested presence of a genetic vulnerability[2] and there is indeed an observed inherited tendency to develop Type 1."

I would like to see something to substantiate the "observed inherited tendency." I've heard stated and seen written the presumed hereditary element of type 1 diabetes (often erroneously based on well-founded type II diabetes research), but I have yet to find any published study attesting to it. I would not be surprised if there were one...but I would still like to see it. Do you have such a reference or was there another motivation for the change?

Thanks for your attention, AnthroGael (talk)

Hi again, I noticed your reply on my page and thought I might need to be a bit clearer on the type of citation I hope to find. The one given for the genetic vulnerability was, it seems in my view, well placed. I am not questioning the genetic component of diabetes, although I think you will agree that the exact role of such a component in the development of type 1 diabetes is not understood. My concern is over the hereditary element. If there is one, then an in-depth statistical analysis of the occurrence of diabetes in families of diabetics versus that of the general population should be revealing. That's what I want. Finding a genetic marker or cause is not the same as being hereditary. (e.g. Downe Syndrome is a genetic condition that occurs as a result of cell disjunction, it is not hereditary; likewise, numerous syndromes are genetically caused by exposure to toxins such as agent orange or radiation, and not necessarily hereditary.)

Thanks in advance for any info on the subject! :-) AnthroGael (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 03:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC).

Diabetes MedCab (JFDW)
I decided to ignore the medcab case. Anon seems to have disappeared. I think the monogenic stuff needs to be mentioned under the rarer forms, but not in the intro. JFW | T@lk  07:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Two articles on the Honorverse (Debresser)
You did some very good work on making those two articles easier to understand. But a few things shouldn't be changed, since they are the same throughout all of the close to 100 articles connected with the Honorverse. For example, the use of the phrase "the Honorverse, a series of military science fiction novels written by David Weber" at the beginning of every article and section with a redirect. Likewise the word "fictional", which is added at those same places according to Wikipedia policy to clarify the fictional character of the subject at hand. Debresser (talk) 03:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you made very good edits. You manage to outlay the point in language clear the even the outsider. That is definitely important for articles on fiction in an online encyclopedia. You will notice that apart from one minor correction I didn't touch the main body of your contributions. I think it's a courtesy to other Wikipedians not to touch their work unless it is really necessary. That's why I standardized the first sentences of all sections (which are actually all of them targets of redirect pages and so the first thing the reader will see about the subject). It might make for a little repetitive reading for those who read the whole article (see e.g. List of planets in the Honorverse), but that can't be helped. While trying to write good prose we are still working on an encyclopedia. Hope to see you around more, Debresser (talk) 08:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC) (

Re: Honorverse boilerplate (Piotrus)
Sure, I can take a look - but can you be more specific as to what I should look at, exactly? Template:Honorverse? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:23, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Space-based solar power merge (Eqascion)
I just wanted to let you know that I posted my response at Talk:Space-based solar power. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:26, 20 Feb 2009 (UTC)

Attack on Pearl Harbor alternative history? (LazyLaidBackEditor)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#Semi-protected.3F

I mistakingly read your comment about the "Alternative history" article and thought you meant the "Alternative history" section. Under "See Also" there is no link to Pearl Harbor Attack, Alternative History. Could you link me to the page, please? (In here or in my talk page works, either way.) Thank you! LazyLaidBackEditor (talk) 04:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

My talk page (Debresser)
I finished fixing those edits that were the innocent victims of an edit conflict. Added my reactions to it as well. I kept them short, but to the point, I hope. I should consider making a section for your sake on my talk page. :) Debresser (talk) 21:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
– xeno  ( talk ) 12:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Copyright policy (Moonriddengirl)
It seems you did try to speak to me. I'm sorry. I didn't see it because you didn't put it on my talk page, but on User:Moonriddengirl/Admin, which is a page I set up to help another user who was interested in adminship. My talk page is User talk:Moonriddengirl. As the page you put it on is inactive, I haven't had it on my watchlist for a while, but I checked your contrib history and found it. :) (Out of curiosity, how did you stumble upon it? It worries me that somebody else might try to contact me that way and I not realize.) I had noted my concern with the alteration at WT:C; perhaps you missed it? My concern is not with the text, but the placement of it in conjunction with "in the first case." I don't wish contributors to inadvertently pick up the idea that they transfer copyright to Wikipedia under any other circumstances, as they do not. I've tried modifying it in such a way to address my concerns. I've made it its own sentence rather than a subclause of "In the first case" and changed "not" to "never". I realize that if people read the entire policy, they aren't likely to be confused on that point, but, honestly, in my observation few people read the entire policy. :) As I said at the copyright policy talk page, I am in agreement with most of the alterations you've made to the policy, which I think clarify things nicely. Do you feel that my modification meets both our goals here? 

Thanks for your words on my userpage. :) I am at this point the most frequent volunteer at the copyright problems board, and in a way it has evolved as a kind of "FAQ" out of previous discussions I've had. Maybe at some point I'll turn it into an essay and put it into project space. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Symmetric Key Management (shadowjams)
I did a little bit of cleanup on the symmetric key management article. I plan on laying out some ideas about cleanup on the article and I would like to hear your input. While I disagree with your opinion on the merge proposal, it's not a very big deal and I wanted to thank you for your help cleaning the key management articles up. I'd be much more inclined to have separate articles for each if the umbrella article was more than a big stub, and you seem to be ideally suited to help direct that process. Let me know if you have any ideas about how to help expand those. Shadowjams (talk) 05:36, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Enigma machine FAR (cirt)
nominated Enigma machine for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cirt (talk) 07:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

New developments on Honorverse articles (debresser)
Somebody has proposed Imperial Andermani Navy for deletion. On the discussion page an option for a merge has been mentioned. The latter might be advisable.

That same editor has tagged List of organizations in the Honorverse with what could lead to another deletion proposal, and that is already too much IMHO.

I feel your input is necessary. Debresser (talk) 09:39, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

That which I feared has now happened. User:EEMIV has successfully pushed the merge of Imperial Andermani Navy‎ and now has
 * 1) tagged Technology in the Honorverse adebresser)nd Weapons technology in the Honorverse with PROD’s;
 * 2) blanked (that is, turned into redirects) Office of Frontier Security and State Security;
 * 3) tagged for deletion (as AfD’s) Treecat, List of treecats and Honorverse concepts and terminology;
 * 4) is about to do the same to Elysian Space Navy, Royal Manticoran Navy and probably others. Debresser (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Would you support me here, please? Debresser (talk) 09:50, 16 April 2009 (UTC) (

An article you worked on maybe deleted soon: Tools which can help you (ikip)
The article you worked on: Honorverse_concepts_and_terminology may be deleted from Wikipedia.

There is an ongoing debate about whether your article should be deleted here:
 * Articles for deletion/Honorverse_concepts_and_terminology.

The faster you respond on this page, the better chance the article you worked on can be saved.

There are several tools and helpful editors on Wikipedia who can help you:
 * 1. List the page on Article Rescue Squadron. You can get help listing your page on the Article Rescue Squadron talk page.
 * 2. At any time, you can ask any administrator to move your article to a special page. (Called userfication)


 * 3. You can request a mentor to help you: Wikipedia:Adopt-a-User. But don't wait for a mentor to respond to you before responding on the article for deletion page.
 * 4. When trying to delete a page, veteran editors love to use a lot of rule acronyms. These acronyms don't need to intimidate you. Here is a list of acronyms you can use yourself: Deletion debate acronyms, which will help you argue that the article should be kept.

If the page you worked on is deleted, you also have many options available. Good luck! Ikip (talk) 16:44, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Invitation (ikip)

 * {| cellpadding=5 style="border: thin solid red; background-color: white"


 * Barnstar search rescue.png
 * Barnstar search rescue.png


 * valign=top valign=center| Hello, Ww. You have been invited to join the Article Rescue Squadron, a collaborative effort to rescue articles from deletion if they can be improved through regular editing. For more information, please visit the project page, where you can  >> join <<  and help rescue articles tagged for deletion and rescue. Ikip (talk) 16:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
 * }

I thought with all your noble work saving fictional articles, you maybe interested in this group. Ikip (talk) 16:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

DKA on GAC (jfw)
Diabetic ketoacidosis has undergone substantial improvement and is now at WP:GAC. Please offer any comments on Talk:Diabetic ketoacidosis, or you might consider reviewing it for GA! JFW | T@lk  17:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

DKA (jfw)
Thanks for the nice message. I consider myself barnstarred. JFW | T@lk  05:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

speaker box
I see you made some changes but not as drastic as I would expect. So you don't oppose my flooding of pictures? Daniel Christensen (talk) 02:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Whatever you did though mega fucked up the picture alignment. Daniel Christensen (talk) 03:03, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Dorabella Cipher
Thanks for your note on my Talk Page about how an article might be presented on The Elgar Society Cipher Competition of 2007/08. I agree with you and think that a completely new article is required. I have put some flesh on the stub of Dorabella Cipher and referred to the competition as the most recent attempt at a solution or explanation. --Steve (talk) 01:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Kristeen Young acronym
Appreciate your contributions to Kristeen Young's page. I was wondering where you found the info that the all-caps band name is a verse acronym? It's interesting, and I've never heard it before, but it's not as if I can claim to have read every interview and write-up that exists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alarmwillsound (talk • contribs) 21:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Cryptography Mishap
Hey, I came across this addition (slightly paraphrased) made by you in cryptography, the following section seems like a copy-paste error (and interestingly enough has persisted for over 1 month):

.. Extensive open academic research into cryptography is relatively recent; it began only in the mid-1970s. Medieval work was both less systematic, less comprehensive, and more likely to attract attention from the Church or others as Satanically inspired or dangerous to the state or those in power; at least two of Johannes Trithemius' books were added to the Index of banned books by the Roman Catholic Church. In recent times, IBM personnel designed the ..

Wanted to give you a chance to clear things up, but to me, this part files under "Sense makes none" --Udoprog —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.254.36.75 (talk) 06:47, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Diabetic diet (Doc James)
Have removed the passage to the book as it is not a good enough source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:43, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi, My article about "Imran Channa Visual Artist " is considered for delition, Imran Channa is the well known contemporary Pakistani artist. i have given all the links and sources. I m also an artist and a new user of wikipedia, my task is to creates articles on art & artists of pakistan , because there is no material available on wikipedia on pakistani art & artist so that art historians and students from all over the world can get some sort of information, so plz could u help me out to add my 1st article of Imran Channa. Thanx —Preceding unsigned comment added by Art wart1234 (talk • contribs) 19:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Cryptography FAR
nominated Cryptography for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Smallman12q (talk) 14:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of MICKEY


The article MICKEY has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * No sources, no notability, no evidence of importance, practically no content.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. SnailKing (talk) 21:43, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

MSU Interview
Dear Ww,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the communityHERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:
 * Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
 * Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
 * All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
 * All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
 * The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your nameHERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar — Preceding unsigned comment added by 35.9.115.210 (talk) 21:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 6
Hi. When you recently edited Cryptanalysis, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Shannon (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:47, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Biuro Szyfrów - references need improvement
This article, which you've contributed to, needs more references if it is to maintain its GA status. See Talk:Biuro_Szyfrów. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 22:40, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Elevator shoes


The article Elevator shoes has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * rm per WP:DICTIONARY. Unsourced for more than 5 years.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Logical Cowboy (talk) 06:21, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Notification of pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in over one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next month. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e., as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised and that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions). This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. MadmanBot (talk) 00:30, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Notification of imminent suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in over one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next several days. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e., as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised and that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions). This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. MadmanBot (talk) 00:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in over one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions have been removed pending your return. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. Regards, — Moe   Epsilon  06:33, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Cryptographic engineering for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Cryptographic engineering is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Cryptographic engineering until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. BenKuykendall (talk) 21:26, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of DECIM for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article DECIM is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/DECIM until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Likeanechointheforest (talk) 21:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Sound Logo project
VGrigas (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of MAG (cipher)


The article MAG (cipher) has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Although I found a few sources I did not think they were good enough to make this notable"

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2024 (UTC)