User talk:Xaxafrad

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Your Opinion Please?
Hello, can you take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_breese and put in your vote to keep or delete, I am rather outnumbered by some non-spiritual people, could use someone who has a co-operative energy to look into the matter on a spiritual teacher article. Also please look into another article that was deleted that has been there for years at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_metaphysical_sciences but was deleted by a user as soon as I linked to it. Thanx (SpiritBeing (talk) 09:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)SpiritBeing)

Societal Collapse
Since it is off topic lets continue the conversation on our discussion page. You wrote
 * The Egyptians lived in a relative balance with nature for a few centuries. Let's posit that they could've lived in an isolated world, without so-called barbarian raids or competitive civilizations. How long would such a situation last? Breeding must be controlled, or else more homes will be built, cities will enlarge, one, two, or a handful of families will strike out for the wilderness and found a new city of their own. Environmental isolation (ocean, desert, mountain) is necessary to prevent the founding of colonies. The environment is far from stable, as oceans and mountains rise and fall, and deserts come and go. The nature of DNA is to spread, but I won't announce the primacy of the fitfulness of human genes until they've decisively overcome their planetary origins and limitations.


 * The only thing that can save us from another stone age will be the electronic preservation of knowledge, which requires the preservation of access to such information. With such information, those who can read it will retain some measure of civilization (that is, social stratification, by whatever means necessary, as there has always been somebody willing to kill somebody else to get what they want (it's the one law of nature that needs to be replaced with a law of man)). Assuming a genetically viable breeding population is retained every generation, civilization will come back eventually (at least, over the next couple million years, until evolution or the genetic industry introduce an unpredictable paradigm).


 * We are simultaneously approaching the limits of foreseeable environmental and technological exploitation at the speed of an iron horse. The human mind's ability to adapt to a variety of situations has enabled us to put enough band-aids on our society that it would be indistinguishable from a stereotypical mummy (which can lead us to a whole different metaphor...). Something's gotta give, but nobody knows what will give first, or if we can invent yet another band-aid before it gives. (this is a fun conversation, but I'm afraid it's not on-topic with the article, but I won't tell if you won't ;) although if anybody wants to shout WP:OR I'll stop typing right now) Xaxafrad 22:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

interesting points. You are right, breeding must be controlled. But in settled propulations the normal system of human breeding breaks down. Firstly in nomadic hunter-gatherer societies mothers can only carry one child at a time, and so children spacing tends to be four years apart. Marriage is delayed, and relations between the sexes fairly egalitarian, so each woman tends to have only two children who reach parenting age themselves. In sedentary civilisations people don't move, the death rate increases (due to human close association with animal pathogens which cross the species barrier, because of the increased number of contacts with other potential human agents of infection and because of close association with humans and faeces), and birthrates increase also. Life expectancies tend to fall. Given this populations of settled civilisations tend to be unstable (especially when compared to stone age hunter gatherers), and it is this instability that makes civilisations prone to collapse.

Regarding electronic information, it is especially vulnerable. How long does a floppy disk remain readable. How long does a computer last before it gets replaced. Compare this with medieval parchments or Egyptian papyri. With electronic information we need machines to read them, and with a collapse such machines become fewer and further between. What we see is information moving from permanent to ephemeral storage, as public libraries disappear and everything today moves onto the internet. How stable is the internet? You'd be surprised by its fragility!

Regarding human ingenuity, yes, it has got us through some difficult scraps in the past, but of the 31 civilisations to date, how many still exist? Civilisations come and go, there is no reason to suppose ours is immortal. And when we look at human history over the last 150,000 years, civilisation has existed for at most 10,000! We will arrive at a post civilisation soon, one way or another.

Regards John D. Croft 01:49, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I like your description the breeding practices of hunter-gatherers, very informative in a common-sense-once-you've-thought-about-it kind of way. :)


 * A settled population can adopt a policy of population control (China). What our species needs is to have every settlement adhere to such a policy. Has our quality of life not grown beyond the imaginations of dozens of prior generations that we can't switch from a policy of growth and expansion to a policy of maintenance? I'm afraid China, India, and other nations will have to experiment with the many nuances of the policy of population control before it becomes institutionalized as marriage, the market, and our courts of law have become institutions.


 * Only 31 civilizations? That makes me want to attack the definition of civilization, though I won't overturn it, I will modify it: each individual city has been it's own civilization, while allowing that various cities have allied with and against each other for various periods of time, without putting overmuch emphasis on the alliances themselves. Certainly, due to availability of resources and the advent of innovative technology, cities possess an unequal power distribution, which they exert over each other. The more cities that band together and work together, the better everything works; imagine if every city were playing for the same team.


 * But I don't think definitions are the most important thing. Helpful, beneficial, sometimes. Other times, definitions can simply be unnecessarily devisive. In the end, I guess I'd have to say that I simply believe that human civilization is here to stay, for as long as humans will be here. In looking at how people have rebuildt cities throughout history, it would take an incredible environmental catastrophe to wipe everything out. We're a pretty presistent species, what with our wide range of food sources (fire certainly helps in that department).


 * I don't really know. I feel like overstepping my boundaries. I guess it'll come down to whether or not a family is able to hold on to an encyclopedia, and get enough idle time from surviving to absorb the material, and be intelligent enough to adapt their resources into something better. That's a lot of ifs. Xaxafrad 05:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Tree of life
I don't know of an on-line source, but Darwinian evolutionists such as Stephen Jay Gould have always emphasised that evolution is a matter of adapatation to the environment, and any idea of progression is an anthropomorphic view, somewhat akin to the American intelligent design version of creationism.

By far the most successful animals in terms of numbers of species and individuals are the insects (beetles alone account for a quarter of all species, yet the tree of life, like the sun-centred universe of old, leads to man as its focal point.

This doesn't really answer your question, but it may at least clarify what I was trying to say. jimfbleak 06:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

re Native dab link fixes
I responded on my talk page. Thanks for disambiguating the links. I'd guess there were a lot. The purpose of a disambig page is to help readers and editors to find the right page instead of leaving links pointing to ambiguous info. --Scott Davis Talk 05:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Plank cricket and Street cricket
Hi Xaxafrad, I know you're trying to be helpful, but please do not merge content to other articles while an AfD is in progress. The consensus turned out to be a delete, and since you merged content, it would violate GFDL to do so. I will now have to delete the Street cricket article and selectively restore all but your edits. This is going to be very difficult to do. Please take a look here for a list of things you can do while an article is undergoing an AfD. Thanks, Deathphoenix ʕ 15:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the misconduct. I'll refrain from bold actions like that in the future. I guess I'm more of an inclusionist. So, since the consensus was for "delete", what's this business about violating the GFDL? How does one violate the GFDL by deleting content that was moved from one article to another? You could've just deleted the list item and two references that I added to street cricket. Maybe it was too much work for you to look at the history and compare the differences I made. I would've fixed it myself if you had asked (apparently, somewhere between one half and two thirds of wikipedians would rather tell somebody what they did wrong, rather than just fixing the problem; you're the first person to do something to the edits I made, rather than simply sending me a message about what I should do to fix the bad changes I made).


 * Why did you have to delete the whole street cricket article because I merged in content which should've been deleted? "Selectively restore"? I haven't heard that phrase thrown around wikipedia yet. Does that mean you compared the differences between all the edits made since my edit, and then reinstated the genuine, non-vandal edits? In my efforts to figure out what you did, it seems you covered your tracks pretty well (at least, this newbie can't find the bread crumbs). The history for street cricket seems to be corrupted. Neither my edits, nor your deletes and restorations can be found.


 * What, exactly, did you do?


 * Xaxafrad 02:23, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * No problems, I wouldn't say what you did was "misconduct", it was a very specific problem that you wouldn't have any way of knowing. In a nutshell, GFDL means that you must provide proper attribution for content. What this means in our specific case is that if you merge content from one article to another, to preserve GFDL, you must provide information on each author who contributed to the first article. Normally, this is satisfied by providing a redirect from the first article to the next because the first article provides all the author information in the form of article history. However, when the first article is deleted, all author information is lost. Therefore, some of the content in the second article violates GFDL because we don't have author information on the content that was merged from the first article.
 * Simply editing the second article to remove the new content from the first article isn't enough because this content is still retained within the article history. To remove this content from article history, I had to delete just your edits. Fortunately, I can do this by deleting the entire article, then specifically restoring only the edits that I want to save in the article history. This means clicking on a checkbox for every edit I wanted to save. Unfortunately, there were some 150 or 250 edits (I forget which) in that article, so I had to click 150 or 250 checkboxes to restore this content. This was one of the first times I performed a selective restore, so it probably took me a lot longer than it should. :-P Don't worry, no harm done, but basically, this is one of the reasons why the guide I showed you above asks not to merge content from an article that is currently undergoing AfD: because that article might be deleted, then we'll have problems preserving GFDL. I hope I haven't confused you too much, I was beginning to confuse myself as I was typing it. Cheers, Deathphoenix ʕ 03:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It's always easier to keep stuff than it is to delete it, but there are times when deletion is absolutely necessary. But that's less important than the real issue here, one that's bothered me from a long time ago (since my D&D days): What is the purpose of a ten foot pole? Why get one when a quarterstaff will do the same thing? Hmmmmm... --Deathphoenix ʕ 04:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

A short Esperanzial update
As you may have gathered, discussions have been raging for about a week on the Esperanza talk page as to the future direction of Esperanza. Some of these are still ongoing and warrant more input (such as the idea to scrap the members list altogether). However, some decisions have been made and the charter has hence been amended. See what happened. Basically, the whole leadership has had a reshuffle, so please review the new, improved charter.

As a result, we are electing 4 people this month. They will replace JoanneB and Pschemp and form a new tranche A, serving until December. Elections will begin on 2006-07-02 and last until 2006-07-09. If you wish to run for a Council position, add your name to the list before 2006-07-02. For more details, see Esperanza/June 2006 elections.

Thanks and kind, Esperanzial regards, &mdash;Cel es tianpower háblame 16:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

help me help me!
Sorry, I'm not in the 100% state of mind right now, and the help desk was looking way to hard to navigate. I just wanted to know how I could find articles less than 2k, or 200 chars, or some low threshold, and were unstubbed. It seems like an awkward thing, but I think at least several dozen others must've wanted to do this by now. Xaxafrad 02:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi :). umm if u take a look at Special:Specialpages, have a look for the link there, i thinks its like 'Shortpages' or 'Smallpages' etc ;) Have fun, hth --Deon555|talk 03:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Sweet, thanks for the tip! There be fun there, arrrr. :) Xaxafrad 03:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * lol, no worries ;) let me know if you need anything else ;). --Deon555|talk 03:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll probably do that. ;) Xaxafrad 03:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Bot for ISBN
I have NO idea whether someone wrote a bot already. The request is not yet marked as fulfilled. However, many bots exists that do template substitution, and you might want to ask over at the Village Pump (technical) about it. Circeus 03:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Substitution would be replacing ISBN XXXXXXXXXX with (true substitution) XXXXXXXXXX, or ISBN XXXXXXXXXX (which would be the end result anyway.) See ISBN and Template substitution for the relevant pages. Circeus 12:46, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The Rabbit Joint
The Rabbit Joint was an american musical duo, featuring Jesse Spence on drums/percussion and some vocals, and Joe Pleiman on guitars, vocals and keyboards. They released a single, self-titled album in 1998. Pleiman has since been in several other bands, including Bluegrazer, AM Ghost, The Fall Leaves, The Summer Villains and Hip Tanaka.

The album also features Kathryn Meany on The Night, Alison LaCourse on "Momma" and Jayson Haedrich on "If I Were a Friend" and "It's Not Like That".

Zelda, a song often circulated on the Internet, containing a melody inspired by Koji Kondo's Legend of Zelda overworld theme, is often misattributed to System of a Down due to what some believe are similar-sounding vocals between the band's two singers.

Track listing
All lyrics by Joe Pleiman.
 * 1) "Her First Time" (Pleiman)
 * 2) "Lonely Road" (Pleiman)
 * 3) "The Night" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 4) "Salad Shooter" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 5) "It's Not Like That" (Pleiman)
 * 6) "Hey Momma" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 7) "One in a Million" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 8) "Mr. Techno"
 * 9) "Sally"
 * 10) "Bethesda Yacht Club" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 11) "Rufus on Parade" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 12) "Mother Nature" (Pleiman, Spence)
 * 13) "Matthew Wants to Take a Piss" (Pleiman)
 * 14) "Domesticity" (Pleiman)
 * 15) "If I were a Friend" (Pleiman)
 * 16) "Zelda"

The album also features multiple hidden tracks.

Cheers, —Ruud 14:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Sweet, thanks. Best info I've found on the Zelda song (but still not reputable, I think): zeldauniverse.net

Eureka Article sections and issues
A local editor who actually controls an online web based newspaper, has been focused only on a specific area or section I have been trying to gently (well, at first, not so gently) corral in the "Recent Government and law issues section." This editor was determined to create an entirely new major section on HOMELESSNESS a couple days back, which I had reduced to a bullet point. Now you have further reduced it and returned it to a paragraph (of course I agree that is better yet). We need to realistically expect that this editor will revert these edits and re-expand this controversial section. I, however, question the placement of this type of detail in an overview article of any city. Ultimately as the Eureka article matures (if we allow that to be based on ther recommended San Jose article or the very cool example of the SF article(s), much of the controversial or recent issues will be better served as DAUGHTER articles. All of this is in light of WikiProject US Cities suggestions. By the way, if my zealousness in the beginning caused you to lose any work, I apologize. I hope we can all work to consider the audience and the forum and serve the process in a professional and qualitative manner. Thanks Norcalal 22:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I lost no work, but the merging process was a little tedious and I was just afraid there was going to be another edit conflict. I have noticed the increasing specifity of Daughter-type articles relating to many controversial topics. Just a short teaser sentence or two, followed by "See main article Homelessness in Eureka, CA". Xaxafrad 22:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

About the Notes/References thing: from what I've seen heavily referenced articles use the Notes/References style, where "Notes" is like footnotes and has abbreviated references to full works listed in "References". On shorter articles, the usage is generally to combine Notes/References. Most of the larger city articles end up using something like the former. Mike Dillon 22:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a pretty fine line, I'll have to keep my eyes open for examples (unless you know of an appropriate WP page). Xaxafrad 22:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * San Francisco, California (a featured article) uses the Note/References style, while Los Angeles, California uses just "References" (and is sorely lacking in that regard). I generally lean toward the more compact single-section approach unless it becomes necessary to split them because of size. Mike Dillon 23:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I now realize what has been occurring. Regarding the Note/References debate, it is accepted policy in Academia to always use the separate NOTES and REFERENCES format. I think we need to discuss this and consider the affect. As I stated, the premier historian in the area mentioned the lack of credibility in this online source the moment I said "Wikipedia" in his presence. I appreciate lowering the bar for ease, but I think a neet and tidy reference list resulfts from the notes section if we do the traditional notes/refs system. There will be significantly more notes to come and this will become a long article (per Mike Dillon reccomendations/statements. Please see the San Francisco article. It is not by chance that we might defer to it. This city (known as "The City" is the very reason Eureka exists in the first place. I would like to see this article become featured at some point. and the cleaner, albeit two part method of Notes/Refs is not only more in line with academia, but it looks better as there becomes more and more notes. Please comment in my discussion area. Thanks Norcalal 23:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree completely and the redundant portion should be removed. BUT, the article awaits a great concise description of the actual geography of the Eureka mentioning the islands, harbor, all the way to the forested lands and parks. I just have not gotten to it yet. Norcalal 00:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Maps 'n' such
Noticed your kind note about my mapmaking on your user page. Thanks! Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) Incidentally, Cassell's Atlas has a series of world maps covering human history from 10000 BCE to 1996- I would be willing to work with you on doing an animated adaptation of it but I know nothing about the programming necessary to animate. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 18:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not familiar with Cassell's Atlas (goes to look it up right now). Well, I guess my goal is to reproduce the best of Cassell's most comprehensive work in a free (as in GNU liscensed) electronic medium. I'm strong on programming skills (in theory at least, if not in practice), but weak in the artistic department (though I've been wrangling around with the GIMP these last few days, tweaking with a 39-frame series of the Roman republic/empire). There's a lot I could learn from you, I think (like what programs you use).
 * My visions are grand and will probably need trimming down to a practical size. With the proper programming setup, I should be able to mark and name arbitrary geographic regions on an image, then use a script to control a simple program to overlay all the pretty colors we like to see. I think I'm imagining a unwieldingly high level of customization, but I won't know until I try. So far, I've found GMT to offer the kind of controls I'm looking for, but those tools aren't geared for animation (yet; if I could gain the right kind of UNIX programming skills, I'm sure I would wind up working with the GMT programmers to the point where my influence would inspire an animation plugin or something). Xaxafrad 18:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually most of the maps I've created for Wikipedia have been with very basic tools like Paintbrush. I essentially take PD map images from elsewhere on WP (Blank maps is a good tool, see also the map on the topography page), then edit them in png format on Paintbrush.
 * Cassells has a series of world maps showing the major states in any given time period. the maps are color coded (green for hunter-gatherers, beige for pastoral nomads, pink for simple farming cultures, light brown for chieftaincies and complex farming cultures, purple for state societies and dark brown for empires. certain long-lived empires (Roman, British, etc.) are delineated in unique colors.
 * If you look at Image:World 820(1).png, that was largely based on a cassels' map for that year.
 * Suppose we drafted a series of individual maps for each time period, then had them animated to show changes over time. It would'nt be useful to show expansion and shrinking of most states since they took place over too short a period of time, but it would be useful to show the general progress of urbanization and state formation around the world. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 22:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Historical Atlas
Hi Chris,

I have transferred your comments to the talk page. Me and Tibor have a discussion about which programm we will use. Perhaps you would like to contribute? A friend of mine (my neighbour) is considering to join as well. He is a programmer. So making the system for the maps will probably become a success.--Daanschr 09:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It would be unlikely that my friend will join us, so we stay with the three of us for the moment.--Daanschr 09:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for being a little bit blunt. I guess, Tibor is waiting for your comments. I can't answer him, because my knowledge is too limited. :-) --Daanschr 09:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

okay I will check in every now and again :) I have some experience with making maps mostly using the blank maps that are already here, and with animations - but I dont know GIS/GMT so I was amazed with the detail of the maps which you linked to on the project page. It would be fantastic if we could get a program to work as you described --Astrokey 44 13:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

GMT questions
In response to your question on commons:User talk:Highpriority

I don't know GMT. I just took the file commons:Image:Europe countries map.png by commons:User:San Jose. Then i inserted points with GIMP under Linux commons:Image:Europe capitals map.png. In the end i wrote the names of the capitals commons:Image:Europe capitals map de.png. For GMT just go and ask San Jose, he might tell you about it. Have a nice day! --Highpriority 16:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

In response to your question on commons:User talk:Mikel

I used the blank map Image:Template europe map.png and I colored the areas with Gimp.--Mikel 12:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

In response to your question on de:Benutzer Diskussion:BishkekRocks

Hi Xaxafrad, would you mind rephrasing the problem you encountered in English? It was a bit difficult to understand, since translating devices tend to mutilate sentences. I'm not sure though if I can help you, since I'm just an amateur on GMT issues and I created my own maps mostly using the "trial and error" method. --BishkekRocks 10:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I love the trial and error method (it's what I'm using to learn GMT). I haven't figured out most of the projections, but otherwise I think I've learned how to use psbasemap and pscoast fairly well (and probably pstext, and maybe by tomorrow psxy as well). grdraster and grdgradient are still a little beyond my grasp. Basically, I just need help getting topographic/bathymetric data to overlay my pscoast maps. I tried following Captain Blood's tutorial, but my GMT doesn't seem to like the file e10g I got from ngdc.noaa.gov (actually, I've started updating the tutorial, and will continue to do so with your help, I hope). The first call, using grdraster, fails, saying something like "error reading file." I'm guessing I need to reformat the data in some way, but I really have no ideas (other than to scour the GMT tutorial and cookbook again). Xaxafrad 02:17, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup Taskforce
I added Curly horse to your desk because you expressed an interest in cleaning-up organization. Please look at it and accept, reject or let me know and I will reassign it. Thank you. RJFJR 02:55, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I caught your assignment of this article, and while I'm not sure I'll be able to bring it up to a point where the cleanup tag can be removed (I don't even trust my own judgement, even if at the end I did an exceptional editing job, I'd still want an outside opinion), I think I can improve it at least a little (maybe even a bit, or a lot). Do I have a time limit? If I don't get to it in the next week or two, will that be okay? This is actually my first assignment, so I'd love to hear your feedback (especially after I try cleaning it up). Xaxafrad 20:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Not a rush. It's purely voluntary (and I don't want to admit how long some articles have been sitting on my desk).  RJFJR 20:37, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

History of the world map series
I've just done my first conversion of one of the historical world map series in the Cassell Atlas. Check it out and let me know what you think. It's Image:World 2000 BCE.png. Cheers! Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 06:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your praise. Is there a Wikiproject for that historical atlas project you were talking about? I'll work on the next Cassell map conversion as I have time over the next few days. The biggest pain in the ass was erasing all the contemporary national borders from the giant map I found under Blank maps. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 23:57, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Latest in the series : Image:World 1000 BCE.png. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 04:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * And now- Image:World 500 BCE.png —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Briangotts (talk • contribs) 05:27, 27 December 2006 (UTC).
 * Latest one - Image:World 323 BCE.png Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 05:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Re
Regarding Python language's vs MATLAB's introduction, I would argue that the difference is that Python has a long enough lede to maybe just qualify for FA if you ignore its other flaws, and Matlab's doesn't. If anything, the lede is still too short on Python's! ;) 88.111.196.62 22:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Aksum vs. Axum
Maybe you should bring this issue up on the talk page. Axum isn't technically incorrect, and google shows it to be more popular (2:1) than Aksum. Aksum is a more faithful transcription, but the "x" has been used to represent the "ks" sound in Aksum since Greek times (Axomites, not Aksomites). &mdash; ዮም  |  (Yom)  |  Talk  • contribs • Ethiopia 08:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes
I'm a little confused as to what you're trying to accomplish with these. The whole point of infoboxes is that articles use a base formatting template, but the actual content (i.e. the facts) are contained in the article itself, not on some other page. Hence, infoboxes don't have any edit links; the only thing that would be editable separately from the article is the overall structure of the box itself, which most editors shouldn't need to ever deal with. Kirill Lokshin 19:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm still getting the hang of the way everything works around here, so I have a little confusion too. I'm probably in waaay over my head at this point, but how do you learn how to swim if you don't get in the water, right? I guess I'm not exactly sure what an infobox is. But I know what templates are. So I think it would be true if I said: all infoboxes are templates, but not all templates are infoboxes. I'm sorry, all I want to do is get the list of combatants settled, preferably with an informative list, but not necessarily. I have an tendency to compartmentalize things, to analyze things and take them apart, so I starting moving in the direction of seperating the infobox from the article as a means of facilitating on-topic discussion. In the case of WW2, as a high profile article, with a great many additions and subtractions to the infobox, I felt making it only slightly harder to edit would curb some nationalistic editing.
 * If it comes down to the point where I have to check every single difference to WW2 in order to pick out the drive-by, "my country wasn't minor!" edits from the genuine edits, I will, but I don't look forward to it. Xaxafrad 19:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, if you want to get in the water even deeper... ;-)
 * What a reader sees as a "template" is actually composed of two distinct things:
 * The template code. This resides in the Template: namespace, and is meant to be shared among multiple pages using that template.  The concept of a "template" that's only going to be used on a single page is therefore quite strange.
 * The template invocation, which consists of the template name, and optionally one or more parameters to be passed to the template; e.g.  or   .  This invocation is placed in the article namespace, at each point where the template is meant to appear.
 * An "infobox" is a "template" that's meant to display a summary table of an article, and follows certain stylistic conventions; when people refer to an "infobox", they may mean either the template code, or the code + invocation combination that produces the final displayed result.


 * So what's the upshot of all this? The universal convention in Wikipedia is that an infobox template's code is a layout and formatting tool only; as the infobox is intended to be used across a wide range of articles, the actual contents of its fields are passed in through the invocation, on a per-article basis.  While there was some experimentation with per-article infoboxes in the past, this approach has been abandoned for some time, as imposing extra costs on article editors without a substantial benefit.  This is why, for example, we have Infobox Country but not Infobox France, Infobox Film but not Infobox Titanic, and so forth.


 * (The more concrete practical point here is that a high-traffic article is going to be a high-traffic article no matter what; trying to tie it down to the infobox isn't helpful. The fact that World War II is seeing a long-term edit war over the infobox is not a distinct case from a long-term edit war over any other part of the article, and should really be dealt with in the same way.  You wouldn't move a contentious section to its own page just because discussions of it were clogging up the main talk page, for example.) Kirill Lokshin 20:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

WWII, Chronology vs Timeline
Hello! It seems that my weekend additions to the World War II article triggered the move of the "Military Chronology" section to the Timeline of World War II article. However, it seems to me that this article is now huge and difficult to navigate. Also, the content (synopsis vs day-by-day timeline) is qualitatively different. Do you think it would make sense to split this in two articles, the timeline as it used to be, and "Military Chronology of World War II" to contain the more descriptive parts? -- Miranche 20:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Your message copied for continuity:


 * Hi there. :) I'm not sure what additions you made over the weekend. *looked at article history* Oh, those. No, it wasn't your edits (those were co-incidental), it was the cumulative additions over the last (probably) year or so. I don't know how long the chronology section has been growing, but it just seemd like it should be it's own page. The Timeline of World War II shouldn't've been started, since it's just a list. In fact, the interwiki WW2 timeline articles are actually titled chronologies, so I'd recommend making timeline redirect to chronology (are there any reasons not to do this? it should probably be a WP:MOVE, for the history's sake).


 * I agree with you on the navigatibility. I think the more generally titled World War II article shouldn't have the same level of detail as Chronology of World War II should. I expect the evolution of the chronology article will see the reduction of the timeline sections (or a grouping of timeline events by area, and insertion immediately after each chrono section heading, or something like that, maybe), and an increase in chronological prose, which was already really big before moving it out of WW2. I expect there's a group of editors who maintained the timeline, before I nosed in; they're probably not happy. Xaxafrad 22:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello! Not sure -- I see some merit in having both a prose synopsis per theater of operation as well as a separate list-like timeline that cuts across theaters. I've seen paper encyclopedias include such timelines as a way to compare parallel goings on across the world; I found this informative to look at and it's probably useful for some simple analysis. Also, the prose + list is now 172 KB long or so, so it makes sense to separate the two. In this case, the main question would be the title of the synopsis article, as "timeline" and "chronology" are, as you point out, synonyms. By the same token, if the prose and the list remain in one article, I believe it would make sense to separate rather than interweave them. Miranche 23:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

(discontinuity) Cool, I spiffed it up a bit. Miranche 00:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

WWII
Hello. I wanted to thank you for drastically improving the WWII article. Heavy Metal Cellist talkcontribs

WWII Introduction
hi. Yea good job editing the WWII article, it was brilliant because we really needed a better introduction especially but I have one question. We keep saying over 72 million people died, and I noticed in several parts of the article there are stats on how many people died, but because all figures on the casualties in WWII are estimates, (and I've heard from many different sources on different figures of how many people died, all different) do you think it would be better to say over 60 million people died? If you look at some of the other articles they have different figures... the German one says 55-60 million, French says 62 million, Italian says 62 million, Spanish says 72, Polish and Duth 62, and so on. --LtWinters 21:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

o thanks didn't realize that.--LtWinters 22:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

WWII Infobox
I agreed with you on the idea that adding a few nations to the infobox would be a good idea. However, if you've looked at it recently as its been updated, people keep adding and removing stuff. I just wanted to call your attention to a little vote I set up on the talk page becuause I think that's the most logical answer to the problem, yet I may be wrong about my solution, so I was wondering if I could get your opinion on that. --LtWinters 02:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

My Apologies
My apologies Xaxafrad. I should have either left a note on the talk page and waited for a few others to express their agreement, or I should have left a summary. I know it took you a while, and although I'm sure you probably know this, you could always get it back from the history page. But I must express my compliments concerning the 5 v 3, I still don't know how to put those little flags in, and they certainly make the infobox look nice. --LtWinters 10:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I suggested a merge of 20th-century related articles
Hi Xaxafrad, I noted that in the talk page of article Survey of the twentieth century, you advocated merging it with articles the 20th century in review and 20th century. I agree, and have added a merge box to the latter article, and updated the existing merge boxes to point to its discussion page. Just a heads-up in case you want to participate. Teemu Leisti 02:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Historical atlas
Hi Chris,

The GIMP is working again on my computer and i got enthusiastic about the historical atlas project. Do you still want to continue with it? I hope Tibor is still online as well. We need to get more people. I still can't commit myself too much. So, if Tibor is gone than the project is in a stand still. Though, i could make some maps on my own for Wikipedia.--Daanschr 09:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_July_10
Your comments would be welcome. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 16:21, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

thanks for contributions to Urantia Book
Thanks for the referral to Wikiversity, and adding the category status. While there is a little debate about the original research and notability concerns, as I review them, I can't find where there is a violation; all that the universe reality article is is a summary and elaboration for the purpose of making the Urantia Book article more clear itself. Thanks. Richiar 15:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Please re-register
 Hello, ! You are receiving this notice because the Cleanup Taskforce has been inactive, as a result of this all active taskforce members are being asked to re-register.

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If you do not re-register here within 15 days of receiving this notice your name will be removed from the membership list (if you were unable to reply to this notice in time, you can just add you name back).

RJFJR 00:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

TUB as FA
Hi Xaxafrad,

I've left a comment in response to your rating of the article. GA might not be too far off, but I tend to agree with a "B" for the current version.

I think it would be a worthy topic actually to get FA status on, the clean-up and improvements necessary are attainable in my view. How about a push toward it? Would you be up for joining for work on the article with that as a real goal? You seem like a knowledgeable person on the topic, and a level-headed editor and commentator all around. Would be really nice to see a gold star on the article someday. Wazronk 03:00, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * WP:PR seems like a good idea, a step to assist with taking it to GA. What aspects of the article do you think could be improved prior to PR?   A number of things come to my mind, some that I've already mentioned in my ranking comments. Wazronk 03:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I've only had limited time for wikipedia lately, but in reply to your last message on my talk page, yes, more inline citations would probably strengthen the article. I know in the past there were a lot of POV disputes and sources were closely checked.  I only later implemented the in-line citation system and started with citations in areas that were particularly disputed such as "Criticisms",  but not as many in-line citations are in the article overall as could be.  Probably should be done.  The Teachings section would be easiest to do since many of those citations would be to passages in TUB itself which is readily available.


 * On "comparison to world religions", I can understand about wishing to see more detail, but I've run into a shortage of sources. There are ones to compare to Christianity, and the Buddhism section is one I added based on TUB's statements.  Wazronk 21:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia: WikiProject Religious texts
Thanks for rating many articles your work is greatly appreciated would you like to join WikiProject Religious texts? --Java7837 01:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Top importance will typically be biblical books or very important articles like Bible, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Ten Commandments, quran

High importance will be the roman catholic apocryphal texts such as the book of Tobit, Talmud, Apocrypha Authorized King James Version, Dead sea scrolls, very famous apocryphal texts like Book of Enoch, Gospel of Judas and very old manuscripts etc.

Mid will be books such as the hadith article, somewhat popular apocryphal texts such as the book of jubilees, The Alphabet of Ben-Sira (famous for being the earliest known text to refer to Lilith as the 1st wife of Adam)

Low will typically be either lost books quoted in the bible (w/ some exceptions) very rare apocrpyhal texts such as Three Steles of Seth and most Modern pseudepigrapha such as The Urantia Book also any text part of the Pearl of Great Price is and also many midrashim are rated low --Java7837 12:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:New Age
Portal:New Age, a page you created, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:New Age and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ). You are free to edit the content of Portal:New Age during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 21:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Historical Atlas
Hi Chris,

There is a revival in the WikiProject Historical Atlas. So, if you are interested, you are welcome to join.Daanschr (talk) 13:39, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:New Age
Portal:New Age, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:New Age & and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ). You are free to edit the content of Portal:New Age during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. B (talk) 05:33, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

File:Israel and New Zealand.gif listed for deletion
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Disambiguation link notification for December 23
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Universe RfC
By changing the proposition from a statement to a question, the appropriate response is no longer support/oppose but yes/no. HHope you understand that this is problematic. Pls get back to me. Cinderella157 (talk) 05:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I didn't foresee a problem in that way. I'll change it back. Xaxafrad (talk) 05:39, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks :) Cinderella157 (talk) 05:40, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to comment on VP proposal: Establish WT:MoS as the official site for style Q&A on Wikipedia
You are being contacted because of your participation in the proposal to create a style noticeboard. An alternate solution, the full or partial endorsement of the style Q&A currently performed at WT:MoS, is now under discussion at the Village Pump. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
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ArbCom elections are now open!
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Please don't use talk pages as forums
Thank you for your contributions. It is a fascinating topic. However, as a general rule, talk pages such as Talk:The Urantia Book are for discussion related to improving the article, not general discussion about the topic or unrelated topics. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages.  Of course, if you find sources meeting WP:RS, please do bring them and start a discussion. Doug Weller talk 17:04, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to thank you for your reply on my talk page. Doug Weller  talk 19:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of Citizen of the World for deletion
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Nomination for deletion of Template:Timenavbox
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