User:Silence/Archive0005

...

This is the Talk page of zeppelin manufacturer and 'big steel' tycoon User:Silence. Feel free to leave a comment.

• Archive I: July 2004 to September 2005. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive II: October 2005. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive III: November 2005. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive IIII: December 2005. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive V: January 2006. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive VI: February 2006. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive VII: March 2006. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive VIII: April 2006. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive VIIII: May 2006 to December 2006. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive VV: January 2007. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive VVIIIIV: February 2007 to July 2007. Nothing important happened in this one.
• Archive IIIVXXXLCCCCDM: August 2007 to August 2009. In this one I edited Łobżany.
• Archive IIXV: September 2010 to September 2015. Nothing important happened in this one.

Welcome to my talk page. Let's be friends. -Silence 20:38, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Ligature list

Please quit deleting what I have done. What you are reverting is not incorrect. Your mistakes:

For starters, never link alternate spellings. Aestival can be spelt with the ligature - quit removing it. Aecium and aecidium are different words that can both be spelt with the ligature, thus listing aecium as a variant does not give information of that (and the same for aesculin and aesculetin, but they are two completely sepereate chemical compounds!). Also, why did you remove the links to wiktionary for links that did have a definition? The other "paedagog & paedagogue" DO exist but are generally not found in either British or American English because of their archaicness. Aestivation should not be put as estivation because first: it is not the trend the rest of the page follows, and both aestivation and estivation exist in American English (and it makes sence to put the spelling acceptable in both forms of English); thus putting aestivation as a British varient makes no sense. Aether is a proper noun. ―68.13.122.35 23:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip

Me and my friend and other guys are trying to improve this article to F.A staus, any hep and suggestion is well accepted, By the way what do you think of the article.? --Philx 16:57, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems fine. Some areas definitely need wikifying and style improvement, but it's got some good info. If you want my help, though, you'll most certainly need to restore my reverted edits. I'll gladly help bring the article up to shape to the best of my copyediting ability if given a chance, but I'm not going to waste hours of time on an article just to have all that work arbitrarily reverted. Anyway, either way, good luck with the article! -Silence 20:38, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Please do not leave Wikipedia

I understand your frustration (even though I may have added on to it, and for that I am sorry), but I seem to get a little upset because it appears that a lot of things I do come under fire. But, please stay here. You are one of the best writers here. You are also very popular. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 17:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Polls and holes

Happy new year! I hope you're well. I must say that (for the Darth poll) your response to Scorpion is far more ... detailed than any of my comments ever were! :)

I'm not at all challenging the comments but, they might now be unnecessary ... Though I foresee no problems, I've suggested a course of action, and noted possible challenges, to The Wookieepedian regarding the vote that I think are reasonable. As for when we should move forward, perhaps we can try to do a 'transclusion' beginning next week? Anyhow, take care! E Pluribus Anthony 02:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello; I hope you're well. I noticed your comment on the DV/AS poll regarding the "other" option. I also think we can have our cake and it eat too: as you'll see in the summary (for manageability), I think we should retrofit the two articles you created way back when with notions in the current article and then copy them into the bona fide spaces; however, I'm open to other ways of doing so expediently yet properly. I hope we can get underway soon; I've been mildly swamped over the last some days, but can focus on this towards week's end. Thoughts? Thanks! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 18:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

What?! You're leaving?

That doesn't sound like the resilient Silence I know. Anyhow, if you decide to stay, your comments would be appreciated at Victor Hugo's peer review. Remember the ordeal about article size and sub-stubs? Well, I think it actually produced a near featured-status article. --TantalumTelluride 05:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure who or what started this rumor that I'm leaving, but whatever it is, it's kind of funny. -Silence 05:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, you're a great person. Now you deny that you are leaving so you don't make fellow Wikipedians upset. Keep up the good work, we'll miss you, buddy! εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 00:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Adeo immanis et venustulus caper es. Itaque faenum in cornu habuero. -Silence 00:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

To approach a horrible goat is charming. And for that reason a hay javelin is considered. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

We'll also miss your Latin. My Spanish isn't helping me understand what you said at all. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I was actually joking, about now you want to tell me: "Hic puer est stultissimus omnium!" εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I know you were joking. That's why I called you "indeed a monstrous/huge and charming little billy goat/armpit", and then mentioned having hay on my horn (a sure sign of danger!). Revenge for making me Babelfish your Portuguese comment! Fufufu.

Hey, Encyclopedist, you are doing a good job of keeping Wikipedia in "interesting times". Please do keep it up; et rara avis es. -Silence 01:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

How can it be a word for an armpit and a goat. Wow, I bet people got confused a tad bit because of that on the streets of Rome some 2,000 years ago. My favorite (and everyone else's favorite) Latin quote:Senatus Populusque Romae. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Romans are weird. Probably some particularly hairy pits reminded someone of a scruffy goat, and the rest is history.. or etymology, anyway... -Silence 01:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Não posso ser um pentelho à você uma outra vez. Desculpa-me, eu já sei que eu fiz coisas maus. Então, agora eu tenho que fazer algo melhor. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm. You can't be pubic hair with me anymore? Bah, forget BabelFish. ;) -Silence 01:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

That is funny, pentelho does mean pubic hair, but if you see here you'll see that I am saying "I can't be an a-hole towards you anymore. Forgive me, I already know that I have done bad things. Therefore, I have to do something better. My Portuguese (like my English) is far from perfect. It is a beautiful, nasalized language, just as good as Latin : ) (to me, I mean people are still using it, you have to can find Latin only when your looking at taxonomy. ) εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

RfA

I also think you deserve to be an adm. Again, sorry for all the hell I put you through, please allow me to make up for it. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 01:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. No hard feelings for any ill-exchanged words at various times, like over that Black Jesus silliness; it's been more than worth it for the amusing and interesting memories, and for the opportunity to work with a lovable chap like you a couple of times. I wouldn't mind being an Admin someday purely because it's make page moves and reverts easier, but I don't think I'm really ready to be an Admin. The process of becoming one is a little too... political. Baby-kissing and all. I can most of do what I do best (copyediting) without it, so, while I greatly appreciate the offer, I'm not sure it'd be worth the trouble. The main reason it'd be interesting is because I always love to hear people's advice on ways I can improve and pointers on where I've gone astray, but I guess if that's all I want, you should RfC me instead of RfAing me. ;) -Silence 01:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Big thanks

For consolidating the ligature articles :) looks great now! porges 06:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Infobox Biography

Template:Infobox Biography has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Infobox Biography. Thank you. DreamGuy 07:06, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

COTW Project

You voted for Humanities, this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 00:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, did we get off on the wrong foot!

Ok, I'm trying (and it's a fun challenge) to make sure that Scientologists get a fair shake on Wikipedia. A great number of their current articles are *highly* POV, filled with all sorts of slams. As part of the Project to fix this, I'm trying to tag as many articles as needed to get focused attention, so that both CoS proponents and opponents can jump in. The biggest problem I see, so far, isn't that my template has been added to stubbish articles, but that diverse and conflicting views haven't been added to the same articles. Ronabop 12:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see where we disagree at all (nor how we especially got off on the wrong foot, honestly; just an honest and understandable difference of opinion, at worst). What's the problem here? I agree entirely that the content and text of the articles is infinitely more important than the layout; but you're the one who pasted the box into all those articles, so if you weren't doing that to try to combat the extreme POVs in those articles, how can you then say "it's not important" as a reason for me to not delete any of them? You weren't tagging "articles that needed focused attention", you were tagging articles just because they happened to in some way be related to the topic of Scientology, and doing so at a rapid and excessive rate. I guess what I don't understand is why you're saying any of the above to me. What's your point? It doesn't relate to anything we said on the Scientology WikiProject, and it seems fairly clear and universal in its scope. It would be like me copyediting an article you were working on for the "its/it's" mistake (only, for a better analogy, it would be after you'd changed every instance of "its" to "it's" without exception rather than checking to see for each whether it's possessive or a contraction) and you criticizing me for doing so on the grounds that there are more important content issues related to the article in question, like POV. Very confusing. Just because a certain thing is the most important doesn't make less important things unimportant. -Silence 17:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's how I was thinking of it, as an iterative process: First, collect all the significant "articles specifically about scientology" articles together under one banner/template, as has been done with christianity, Islam, etc.. Second, as we refine what actually belongs in the template, edit it to have the most significant content (there are at least 3 people working on the template so far, we likely need more). I was actually trying to be somewhat selective in what articles I did, and didn't, add the template to... for example, articles about someone complaining about some scientology sub-group probably wouldn't belong, anymore than anti-catholic articles belong in the "christianity" series. I didn't re-tag some of the articles that you removed the template from for that very reason. The reason I undid a lot of your deletions was that *removing* a template isn't (IMO) adding any positive content to an article, unless the template is somehow spurious or damaging to the article itself (and it looks like there are some pages where this may actually be a problem, because of layout/formatting, i.e. Symbols of Scientology). Ronabop 23:17, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I can see no legitimate reason to revert an edit that includes an infobox pointing the reader to relevant links. And there's some discussion on Talk:Narconon dissecting the reasons that anti-Template users are giving for their systematic removal of the box. Any issues of layout are easily fixed, and in some cases, I have already done so. wikipediatrix 04:43, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes

Hi Silence, tnx for your help on {{User:UBX/Bright}}... Will you pls have a look @ Template:User the economist? I had to delete a fair use image of their logo & I'm now using text but would like to have it look as much like the logo as possible. I'm still quite new to the markup so if you have time u having a look would be much appreciated. Mikkerpikker 02:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• Please don't strip off the Married Wikipedians category from the same-sex marriage userboxes without discussion of this. Legally, users in same sex marriages are in legal marriages that are equivalent to heterosexual marriages. Therefore, I reverted your changes that stripped these categories and would like to speak with you about it if you feel that it continues to be inappropriate for my marriage certificate to be considered less legally or spiritually binding than anyone else's. Kthx. ♥ GeekGirlSarah ♥ 21:38, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Images

You changed my images in religion boxes. On my user page I have my own userboxes. Can we add user Jedi,Sith,Britney worshipper,Apocalypse(Xmen) worshipper and few others. Check out my user page and see if they can be uploaded. Batzarro 08:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up, etc. tags

Thanks for tidying up my misplaced clean-up, etc. tags from the article pages onto the talk pages. Appreciate it. Sincerely, Jtneill - Talk 10:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC).

Actually, now I'm confused, maybe you could help clarify since I'm pretty new to WP. User:Fenice just added the AID tags back onto Wilderness and Ego, superego, and id. Is there a page which explains which tags should be used where? Kind regards, Jtneill - Talk 10:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, looking more closely, it seems AID should be on the article and AIDnom on talk? Still not sure on correct place for cleanup and cleanup-date. Have checked Wikipedia:Cleanup and Wikipedia:Cleanup_process but still not clear. Appreciate any advice. Jtneill - Talk 10:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

AID candidates

• Category:AID_candidates - See the problems and inconsistencies caused by your mass revert? I have relatively little problem with this tag being put on the main page of obscure articles, but it shouldn't brand the article (as opposed to Talk) pages of articles like frog and Cold War. If its nomination is successful, it'll get a big old template put on it for a week anyway indicating the colab, so why also put a tag on the main page that in most cases won't even have any real effect (except, in effect, to vandalize the article for weeks on end with a big pastel box). It's also somewhat unfair to put the template on the main page of some articles, like Roma people and button, and to arbitrarily not put it on other articles, like Iran and architecture of Africa. Keeping the same system for all candidates is not only more consistent, and thus less confusing, but is also fairer, giving all the nominees an equal shot. It's also more consistent with AID's sister project, Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week, which explicitly states "If the article you are nominating already exists, please add {{COTW}} to the top of its talk page." even though, if anything, CotW has more reason to put the templates on the main-page-instead-of-talk-page, since stubs and substubs are vastly more likely to be undervisited and have little or no Talk page to speak of, making it much harder to bring attention to the CotW, compared to the excessive over-advertisement that full-fledged articles get on AID. The whole system's backwards, I says. -Silence 10:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• The AID-template goes preferably on the article page. Some COTWs want it different, that is ok. I don't agree that the main COTW needs more advertisement than AID. AID has the problem that we need experts as well as generalists, and an AID collaboration is much harder to do that a COTW. We need as many people as possible for the AID to work, that is produce featured articles. You are free to advertise the COTW, by the way. The reason why it is not done is because it is a lot of work. I see no problems with the category AID candidates. Concerning Iran and Architecture of Africa: I never change the orginal positioning of the template by the nominator. Maybe I will do it in this case. I only deal with mass changes or deletions of templates, such as yours just now, because oftentimes these templates are lost then and to me this is just a simple and efficient way. I did not open every page to see if you replaced the tag on talk. And I agree that the template should be smaller and less tacky. Lots of people change these templates all the time and when I will get around to it I will adjust the format of the template (AID and AIDnom are the same, one is a redirect). Best wishes--Fenice 11:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The tags by the way do have an effect, and they do attract voters, especially epxerts. I have been doing this for quite some time, and you can tell by edit-histories that people must have come to WP:AID because of a tag.--Fenice 11:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

---

Not a big deal at all but I just wanted you to note my latest comment on AID. I think we're actually in complete agreement, I just wasn't explaining myself properly. Cheers, Marskell 15:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

a bene placito

Hi Silence: The fact that this phrase makes some (moderate) sense taken to be Latin does not imply that it actually is Latin, just as "a capella" does not mean "from the goat". Or take the famous joke "i vitelli dei romani sono belli" (Latin: Go forth, Vitellius, to the sound of the Roman god of war; Italian: The calves of the Romans are beautiful). Whatever, I reverted this one twice before and I am tired of it. Be it Latin! :-( T.a.k. 18:01, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

When did I say that it's a Latin phrase just because it makes sense in Latin? And I'm the one who used the "a capella" example to support my argument on the Talk page. Don't try to strawman me. I provided a specific and reputable print citation supporting the Latinity of a bene placito, and pointed out, quite correctly, that many Italian phrases are directly derived from Latin phrases. Until we find any sources (or reasons) to justify removing the phrase, it should most certainly be kept on the article. If nothing else, it'll ensure that anyone who has evidence to the contrary will be able to see the phrase at the top of the list and inform us of our error! I doubt that there is an error here, though. -Silence 18:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Before I talk about the matter at hand, please accept my apologies if my former post sounded somewhat less than cheerful. It just doesn't pay to start online discussions after a very rough day in the real world. And I am not strawmanning you, even though I have only a vague concept of what that means (it is, I am sure, painfully obvious I am not a native speaker). In fact, I entirely failed to find your comment on the disc, since this new arrangement of the list took me to the discussion page of section a to e. I am very, very, sorry! You have indeed quoted a reputable source, and while I am still utterly convinced that your source is wrong here, I absolutely acknowledge that Wikipedia is not about my, or anyone's, personal convictions. So I agree that the phrase should stay in pending proof of the contrary. Two personal arguments: One, it just seems so obvious that "a" here is Italian for "to", as in "a tempo" and so many other phrases, not Latin for "from"; two, googling either for "a bene placito"or just "bene placito" within thelatinlibrary.com yields zero results. Neither argument is conclusive, of course. No hard feelings, I hope. T.a.k. 22:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I assure you, you needn't tell me that a bad workday can lead to some undesired offense in comments online; the exact same thing happened to me with my above comments, so I apologize if I seemed at all too hasty. It's also understandable that you didn't get what I meant by "strawmanning", since I was inventing a neologism anyway, based on the straw man fallacy.

And I'm glad you found my comment! Now everything make sense; of course you'd misunderstand my reasoning for re-inserting the phrase when you haven't seen my reasoning! Next time I'll be more careful to clearly label my new comments by putting them at the bottom of the Talk page.

I also agree that it's not certain that the phrase is Latin just because a certain print source claimed it is; as I said, as soon as we find any contradictory sources (especially one explaining that this is a common error!), we can remove the phrase. But until then, whether the phrase is a strange Latin idiom or an Italian phrase that happens to resemble Latin, the best way to gather information is to leave the phrase on the top of the list, where it's sure to receive attention from people more knowledgeable on the matter than the two of us. -Silence 05:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Wood Badge

"Not all Scouts are Wood Badgers, but all Wood Badgers are Scouts. Ergo, including it in all the same categories would be redundant." makes no sense at all. Are you saying Wood Badge is part of Guiding? It's not. Are you a Wood Badger? Why are you zeroing in on just this one topic? Rlevse 18:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

When did I say Wood Badge is part of Guiding? That makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. If something is categorized under "Boy Scouts and Guiding", that means that it's either a part of both, a part of one, or a part of the other! That the two are merged into one category doesn't mean that everyone who's in that category are a member of both, does it? Of course not: most are a member of just one of the two. So, in exactly the same way, subcategories too need only be a subset of both. And it's obvious from the very first lines of Wood Badge that the Wood Badge is a subset of scouting, so that's where it belongs. If you find this problem to be such a major one, then why don't you divide the "Scouting and Guiding" category for Wikipedians into two different categories, "Scouting" and "Guiding"? While you're at it, you can also change it to Category:Scouting Wikipedians and Category:Guiding Wikipedians or similar, since that's the accepted style for all Wikipedian categories (and is important to do eventually in any case to make sure that anyone who visits the category knows it's not a part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia; its current state makes the category seem like it could hold real-world people, which it can't). But in any case, that's only necessary if "Scouting" and "Guiding" are really so distinct that it's absolutely necessary that we always know exactly who is a member of which one and what is a subdivision of which one; if that's not as vital as you suggest, things are fine as-is. Since I concede that I'm no expert in this matter at all, I'll gladly listen to your advice on how to handle it. But either way, whether we leave Scouting and Guiding connected or break the two into distinct categories, Wood Badgers will still be a subset of Scouting. -Silence 05:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Now, the point that real people categories should not be mixed with encyclopedia articles does make sense to me. It's an excellent point. This one I can work with. On the other hand, you put country specific categories in with world-wide categories (we did have that right, even though we did have real people categories in with articles.) There are several of us who are starting a WikiProject and WikiPortal in a few days that will encompass world-wide Scouting and all its subdivisions (Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Guides, countrie-specific matters, world-wide things like Wood Badge, etc). How we handle cats has come up and is a part of the plan. When we set up the project/portal talk pages, I'll let you know. In the future, we'd appreciate it if you'd discuss cat changes before making them and if you're still interested in Scouting categories, I'll do the same with you. Rlevse 13:01, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Our project has been formed and the talk page is at: [Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Scouting]]. We decided to name it just Scouting, not Scouting and Guiding, so I will make a category "Scouting members" and move the real people into it. The reason for just "Scouting" is that we felt it created more of a sense of oneness, as opposed to "Scouting and Guiding", which implies two that were joined. 22:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

mathematician wikipedians

I understand your re-direct from Category:Mathematician Wikipedians to Category:Wikipedian mathematicians, in order to avoid duplication - the only issue is that for those under the former, it would have been good to contact them to let them know (so as to know they should link themselves to the latter). I happened to be paying attention to the userbox template for mathematicians (as I designed it), which alerted me to the re-direct; but not all those under the former category will necessarily be paying attention to this, particularly those who do not use userboxes.

Would it be possible to undo the re-direct until those under Category:Mathematician Wikipedians have been alerted via their talk pages to switch themselves over to Category:Wikipedian mathematicians?

Thanks - DonaNobisPacem 19:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem with contacting people is that this is only one of hundreds of categories I've done this to in the last few days. Since almost all of them have been, like this one, syntactic and wording differences and undoing inconsistencies, not major alterations, I doubt anyone will object, though they shouldn't have trouble contacting me if they do, since I'm in the edit history for all of those pages.

In fact, since you brought this to my attention, I'll manually recategorize those user pages so they won't be confused, and leave a message in the edit history so they can contact me if they object to the change for some reason. -Silence 05:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

My only worry was that my name, for instance, showed under Mathematician Wikipedians, not under Wikipedian Mathematicians - so if someone wanted to look at the list of mathematicians, my name would not be there. Anyways - I posted a message on my user page re: the redirect, and I will contact the Mathematician Wikipedians over time and advise them to edit their user pages to reflect the change. Thanks, by the way - I imagine it's a rather tedious and thankless job trying to remove duplication of user categories. DonaNobisPacem 05:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Template user categories

Just to let you know that if you use the format [[Category:Wikipedians who foo|User Foo]] in a template with <includeonly> tags you end up with a 'User Foo' link in the template itself once included. You have to leave the category as an unpiped link in order for it not to show up like that. -- Francs2000 12:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

User categories

Heh... all I had to do was purge the page cache. It's fixed now. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 15:01, Jan. 19, 2006

Zodiac

Sorry about that. It looked like someone had removed the category but not changed the template. Seems it was the otherway round. --Salix alba (talk) 17:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd only just created the category the day before. Edit history = useful. :O No biggie, tho. -Silence 17:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

category removed from user:Wimvandorst??

This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know.

Hi Silence. why did you remove the Category:Land Rover from my user page? And even if there might be something wrong with a user's home page, would it not be more polite to inform that user of the error? That is what the template in the userbox indicates. Wim van Dorst 22:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC).

I'd gladly take the time to inform you in great depth about each change I am making and why, if not for the fact that the change to your user page is only one of thousands I've been making to completely redesign an area of Wikipedia's category system, per discussions in the past which have reached consensus but have never been fully implemented. If I took the time to explain every single minor change I'm making to everyone it might affect before making that change, rather than simply letting anyone who has a question or problem with what I've done talk to me about it so we can resolve the discussion after an issue arises, it would take me months, if not years, to do the same amount of work that I can do in weeks thanks to not having to ask every user's permission every time I make a minor alteration. I can't predict what actions will or won't meet with a negative reaction, so I have to just do what must be done and wait for people to come and see me when they have a problem with anything I've done—just as you've done just now.

Anyway, to explain the change: A Wikipedia user page cannot be put under a category for Wikipedia articles, for the same reason that comments can only be put on Talk pages, not on article pages (unless they're hidden using <!-- -->): it mixes up the Wikipedia encyclopedia project with the community and metapedic process of creating that encyclopedia, which will confuse our readers. A new reader visiting "Category:Land Rovers" would be terribly confused to see "User:Wimvandorst" listed as one of the articles relevant to that topic on Wikipedia, and would probably visit it only to become even more confused. Additionally, the category was redundant anyway, since the "Land Rover" template you had on your page automatically put you under that category. So, I have simply edited that "Land Rover" template to put you into a new category, one that's much more clear and is not a part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia: Category:Wikipedians who drive Land Rovers. If you have any problems whatsoever with this new categorization, I'll gladly discuss further changes that can be made to it, and I apologize for any confusion that was caused by my not explicitly stating my reasoning when I edited your user page. -Silence 08:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the elucidation. Wim van Dorst 22:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC).

{{User IPU}}

Not quite. From the image page:

The copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that this image represents atheism. As copyright holder, I believe Wikipedia's use of the logo falls under fair use. - Tim Ahrentløv (ta@invisiblepinkunicorn.com)

It's most definitely used to represent atheism, so it can be used, right? —Nightstallion (?) 14:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Notice the end of that line: "As copyright holder, I believe Wikipedia's use of the logo falls under fair use." "Fair use" images can never be used on user pages. If you disagreed, you should have made that clear when this image was removed from both {{user IPU2}} and {{user religion|invisible pink unicorn}} a week ago. The only reason the image wasn't deleted from the IPU userbox as well is because that template got lost somehow and was orphaned from the index of religion-related userboxes Wikipedia:Userboxes/Religion, but I rediscovered it while going through all the uses of "user religion" on userpages and simply made it consistent with what's been used for the other two, much more common Intelligent Pink Unicorn userboxes for a while now. Furthermore, the tags on the image itself completely contradict your claim that the image is free use: "Conditional use images", "Fair use images used with permission", and "Logos" do not meet the requirements for being usable on user pages, I believe. -Silence 14:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Mh. In my opinion, the author stating that it's free to be used as long as it's used to represent atheism overrules the attempt to codify the license into one of our pre-written sets, but if you insist... I insist on my wording of the userbox. I don't really worship it, or I do but can't see me doing it, or... ;) —Nightstallion (?) 14:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

And I insist that if you like that wording of the userbox, you should switch to using {{user IPU2}}, because there's no goddamn point to having two userboxes if they're going to have the exact same wording. We have two for a reason—so we don't have to exclude everyone who chooses to be less obvious about the satirical nature of IPU by letting them pretend to worship a parody religion.

Terribly sorry, I mixed the two up.

The same situation exists for {{user fsm}}, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, which has one template for "I believe in FSM" and one for "I don't really believe in it but agree that it's a useful rhetorical tool for pointing out the absurdities in this belief system". Also, having an empty pink box seems quite a bit cleverer and more meaningful than simply giving an abbreviation of the "Invisible Pink Unicorn", but since that's another way the two boxes can be made distinct, I won't object to keeping it. -Silence 15:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd thought of blinking the IPU tag, but I couldn't seem to get it to work... Thanks for your effort, either way! —Nightstallion (?) 19:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

template:user fsm

Get over what? The template was there before the template:user religion for fsm, why arbitrarily change things? Just leave it be. Janizary 16:39, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Nope. 95% of all users who went with one of the FSM-related templates went with the one in "user religion". That shows that they prefer, and since the one in the "user religion" template is in the process of being phased out and deleted (and replaced by "user fsm"), going with the vastly more popular and worked-on version is simply what makes sense. The "user fsm" one prior to my edit had numerous errors and problems; my changes were not "arbitrary", but carefully planned and reasoned and based on weeks of hands-on working with templates exactly like it. Many of my changes are vital ones to make the template workable and consistent with the categorization system and with all the other user templates. Moreover, you haven't even explained in any way why you object to any of the changes; which alterations do you disagree with? -Silence 16:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Because, before changing a template you are supposed to go to the talk page and discuss changes. If you're going to merge something, you go to the pages and add the merge template to it. When making changes to stuff with no real need to do it, you don't wake up one morning and start dinking around but instead start discussing it. That is the core of the why, beyond that you didn't need to change anything and didn't discuss it is there any other need to object to random acts? Janizary 16:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

But you're the only one recommending any changes, not me. :) I haven't changed a thing: I've simply moved a commonly-used, popular template out from "user religion" because there is a broad and absolute consensus that the templates have to be moved out of "user religion" to avoid excess metatemplates. The only reason any differences have ever cropped up between "user fsm" and its user-religion sister is because the former template was almost entirely forgotten about due to not being included on Wikipedia:Userboxes/Religion, whereas the latter received lots of attention from the community and from FSM fans and as such was greatly improved upon and made more aesthetically pleasing, useful, consistent, and clear. If you want to make changes to this common, popular version of the template to bring it more in line with a partially-depracated, rarely-used, obscure template that it's replacing, go ahead and suggest those changes (you still have yet to bring up a single objection to any aspect of the recent edit to the template—not even one!), but don't shoot the messenger. -Silence 17:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

That so completely skips over any logic I've ever heard of. When you are replacing an older thing with a newer, more popular thing, it's still a change. It doesn't stop being a change when you replace something with something else, just because it's popular. As I said, you're making a change without having discussed it. Being the one who made the template, perhaps I am too protective of it, but as I said, you're dinking with something with no reason behind it and having consulted noone. If you prefer the popular one, fine, put a proposal in the discussion page for the colour and wording change and get the people that agree with you to put it up - get them to agree in majority so you've done things right, but otherwise you're screwing around in bad form. Janizary 17:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

This conversation is going nowhere. Let me be clear: You have not brought up a single aspect of the edit I made, not one iota of any of the changes I made to that template, which you object to. Your only objection is how I made the edit, and your objection is an unreasonable one; I've made the same changes to thousands of categories and templates over the last few weeks without any problems, and if I spent time asking for permission on every trivial (but necessary) edit I made it would take months, if not years, for the same progress to be made that I can instead get done in hours. I'm certainly willing to listen to anyone who sees a change I've made and has an objection to its content, but I'm not going to burst into tears just because you object to the way the edit happened. As is, as you have failed to name anything about the actual changes I made which you have a problem with (instead relying on appeals to tradition and righteous condemnations for my being arrogant enough to not blindly obey your instructions), your reverts come close to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. As you yourself just said, the real reason you object to my changes isn't anything to do with the changes, but is instead based on your having made the template originally and thus feeling a false sense of "ownership" for that template. In addition to WP:POINT, you may want to read up on WP:OWN: nobody owns what they have worked on on Wikipedia, and you do not have the right to object to people just because they didn't ask your permission first (rather than objecting based on what they actually changed, which you have yet to do). Your reservations are understandable, and I'll gladly listen to any genuine and specific complaints you have about the changes I made (especially considering that if any of the changes I made are unacceptable, hundreds of other templates will need to be changed to conform to your template, as opposed to the other way around), but hiding your own sensitivity to anyone editing something that you made behind feeble and unnecessary demands for consensus approval is not the way to go. As I said at the very beginning, and I mean absolutely no offense by this: get over it. -Silence 17:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

You're saying that I have to prove to you why you shouldn't change the template, that I have to argue why you changing something is wrong and why me reverting it is right - but that is silly. By your logic I could go and get a template made for the Republican supporters which has a picture of a breast and neon green text over a indigo background, saying "This user is a Republican supporter." And that if that template became more popular it would be fine for me to replace the normal one with my new one, without consulting anyone. I realise this goes further than the normal situation, but the fact that you think you're right because you said so is silly too. If you wanted a template like that one broken off the religion template, it would be up to you to make the new one, not me. Janizary 18:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

This user is a Republican supporter.

Atheist template

Thanks for updating the atheist userbox on my page. Cheers! –Comics (Talk) 17:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

No problem, man. I'll probably be up for 3 or 4 more nights manually changing these templates on everyone else's user pages, so hopefully this really is a godless universe, so I'll have noone to blame for making humans require sleep. :) -Silence 17:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks too dude, although I must admit, when I saw somebody editing my user page, I got a tad freaked out. But nonetheless, thanks. -Copysan 05:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

outlier userboxes

Why did you delete the two gender specific outlier boxes I created?Maprov 23:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Because I hate you. -Silence 23:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

----

What a raison has Your "Important Notice"? --Mario todte 14:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

No reason, I just felt that you deserve recognition for outstanding achievements. I stumbled upon a few articles you'd helped edit and expand on and was really impressed. I'd love to work with you anytime in the future you want help with copyediting an article; just give me a ring. -Silence 14:23, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

OK!--Mario todte 14:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Chinmaya mission

What was the purpose of changing "believer" to "supporter" in Template:User Chinmaya? --Shell 15:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

"Believer" is too vague. Example: If you're in favor of George W. Bush, you say that you "support George W. Bush"; you rarely say that you "believe in George W. Bush" (which implies trust, not favor), and when you do it can be mistaken to mean that you believe that George W. Bush exists, rather than that you believe he's reliable. That, plus grammatical concerns: you can't "believe of" something; if you do change it back to "believe", the wording will have to be "This user is a member of or believer in the Chinmaya Mission." or similar, which I considered doing, but decided to just switch the word in the end for the sake of simplicity and clarity. -Silence 15:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Please do NOT -re-add user categories to userboxes

I'm removing the categories from political and relgious userboxes because it's not acceptable to categorize users by their beliefs. Please see Jimbo's comments. He's gone so far as to ask users to remove these userboxes entirely. I'm only removing the aspect of userboxes that's most harmful. Again, please do NOT add categories back to the userboxes. Feel free to discuss your concerns at Wikipedia talk:Proposed policy on userboxes. Thanks. Carbonite | Talk 15:55, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. Jimbo's blatantly wrong on this matter; user categories based on ideology and belief are as innocuous as user boxes themselves, and do nothing but help people in the Wikipedia-editing process, in creating a healthy and diverse community, and in making countless people realize what a beautifully diverse world it is that we live in. Moreover, even if you think those categories should be eliminated, you are not going about it in at all the right way: removing the categories doesn't delete them, it just makes them harder to find and less useful to everyone who does want to use them! If you oppose all these user categories based on deletion, then nominate them for deletion on CfD, garner a consensus for eliminating them, and once they're deleted through the proper channels and under the Wikipedia deletion process, I'll certainly help you out with stripping links to them from all the userboxes that use them. Until then: chill. No babies will die if the categories stay around for another week or two while you gather a vote on the Wikipedia CfD page to determine what Wikipedia's editors and contributors think about the matter. They're the only ones who will be affected by it, after all. -Silence 16:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

for fixing the minor problem with the userbox on my page. It would have taken much more text to have told me how to fix it myself. Val42 16:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

hahaha, no problem. :) The userbox system can be tricky, though MediaWiki's table code in general is remarkably simple, at least compared to what I've dealt with in the past. -Silence 16:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

thanks

thanks for all the great work you've been doing in general.--Urthogie 18:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Now you're just being silly. Insert blushing emoticon here. -Silence 18:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Template talk:User feminist

Please see the discussion page of this userbox. Morgan695 02:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:User religion interest

Why isn't 45px big enough? That's the way it's been from the beginning. It even says in the userbox code that the left-hand box is 45px wide. The whole point of userboxes is to have standardized templates, so it really helps if they match. Check out the userboxes on my user page to see why I'm against enlarging the picture - one of these things is not like the others... - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 02:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Basing the status and size of the image on a single user's random selection of (only a few! (if you had many more, I have no doubt that many of them wouldn't have the same image size)) userboxes seems rather biased and unfair, don't you think? I don't use any userboxes on my own page, so I can be neutral and base what it should look like on looking at all the userpages that use it, not just a random one. After all, if we're only basing the size on one user's page, why not just subst the template and go with whatever size you personally prefer? Fact is, there isn't any random, arbitrary limit to the size of these images, so we should base our decision on which looks best, and clearly, the larger one looks a lot better: it doesn't have a glaring, off-putting, unbalanced (one side larger than the other) orange border around the image (the enlarged one only has a small, neat-looking one), but rather the image fits perfectly snugly into its part of the template. Furthermore, the image itself looks a lot better, and it's now perfectly possible to make out that it's an image of a pretty bird surrounded with golden rays, whereas before most users would have no idea what the image was of before enlarging it. If you want to know why I'm not overly concerned with whether the image is the exact same width as a few other templates when a slightly larger width would benefit greatly, check out a few more userpages: User:Sean, User:Porge, User:MToolen, User:Anglius, User:Jacen Aratan, User:Satanael, User:Jfreyre, User:A.J.A., User:The_Neokid/Userboxes, User:Zim, etc. 45px may be recommended for the typical, average image, but it's certainly no requirement. The bot format already makes the templates plenty standardized! -Silence 02:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

You'll notice that most of the userboxes on those pages have images 45px or smaller as well. I just assumed that since the default userbox code sets the width of the left box at 45px, that should be considered the default width for the left box, and I really don't see how enlarging this particular image makes a difference. Regardless, I'm not going to pursue it any further as it's not that important. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 20:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you...

...for correcting that userbox template on my userpages. It is appreciated. → P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 10:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Userbox categories

Hi, why are you removing the Married Wikipedians category from all of the same sex marriage userboxes? Anyway, please do not do that. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!)} 21:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Same sex marriage categories

I'd like to thank you for the clarification of what you were doing to the Template:User same sex marriage templates. I think that if you'd included your reasoning in either the talk page for the template or in your edit summary, I would never have reverted. Please pardon me for lumping you in with the same LGBT vandalism I fight elsewhere. It was not my intention to label you a homophobe, but it's easy to jump to conclusions. ♥ GeekGirlSarah ♥ 22:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I understand entirely; it was really my fault for not explaining what I was doing, and also for forgetting to remove the "this user has a husband" and "this user has a wife" templates from Category:Married Wikipedians at the same time I removed the other marriage templates. I've been making lots of similar edits to hundreds of templates over the past few days, so I've gotten a little sloppy. The userbox system is complicated, so I can see why you'd mistake my removing the template from the category for my removing the users of the template from the category, even though that user-categorization was actually in the "includeonly" tags, not in the "noinclude" ones; anyone who hadn't seen the changes I made to Category:Married Wikipedians at the same time wouldn't be at fault for misunderstanding my intentions.

That's why I decided to simply fix my error and explain my intentions briefly in the edit history, rather than respond to you directly; I could just act outraged at being labeled a homophobe and ramble out protestations, but actions speak louder than words, and such a silly argument wouldn't get anyone anywhere anyway. Anyone who thinks "same-sex marriage" isn't marriage must also not think "green crayons" are crayons; it's right in the word! Crazy.

Well, now that that's worked out, back to work. :o Thanks for coming to me when you saw my edit and explaining the problem so clearly, and thanks even more for being reasonable enough to change your initial opinion of me! Hope to do business with you again sometime. -Silence 22:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Both of you deserve a big helping of wikilove for working out this misunderstanding so astonishingly and remarkably well. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 23:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Good comment

This comment demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what writing an encyclopedia is about. Quality, young grasshopper, is more important than quantity. Even if there isn't a boatload to "add", there's vast amounts to improve. Some of Wikipedia's worst articles are over a dozen pages long.

Really very good comment, as you say sometimes there are short pages explaining much more information than some long pages--Ugur Basak 00:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Though I probably should have found a less condescending way to word that message. Oh well, live and learn. -Silence 00:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for fixing the userbox on my user page :) --P. B. Mann 05:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Your user page

What in the name of Victor Hugo has been going on with your user page this week? --TantalumTelluride 05:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Human

I liked your changes as well as your justification. i have not read the whole text of your comments but will definitely make some comments later. David D. (Talk) 18:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for taking the time for the word of confidence; I'm too easily cowed, if I didn't get a rare compliment I'd probably decide that everyone else was right and I was wrong after all. And that just wouldn't be me. ;) All kidding aside (I was kidding?), I eagerly await your comments, both negative and positive. I'd love to here some specific criticism regarding the edits I made; I feel there's a lot still to be improved there (for example, the opening paragraphs probably focus a little too much on human psychology and that self-analysis junk, and not enough on other aspects of being human; also, obviously, the most important thing to do from a non-encyclopedia-writing standpoint is to find lots and lots of references for every claim we make, to avoid some of those edit wars and claims of bias that inevitably arise with a topic as vague and controversial as this one), but I feel that the place to start improving is from the version of my edit (or close to it), not the previous version. Hit the ground running, as it were. And I'm rambling again. We'll continue this conversation later! -Silence 18:26, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Timeline of evolution

I did indeed miss that! Thanks for catching it. Cheers. --PeruvianLlama^(spit) 14:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

No problem! It took me a while of looking through the edit history to figure out what was going on too; had to go back a ways to find an unvandalized version. You typically expect when two people are going back and forth with edits and the page is vandalized that one's the vandal and the other's trying to fix the page, but in this case it was just a war between two vandals. Weird stuff. -Silence 15:24, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Quality Over Quantity?

If you want to talk about lack of quality, then read the John Denver, or Elton John articles which I've nominated on the Article Improvement Drive. Carolaman 19:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

? What's this in reference to? -Silence 19:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Your comment when I said the Ottoman Article was huge. Carolaman 09:07, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Latin verbs

• The tables you created, while not economical on space, do lend readability to the page. Do you plan to do both of the pages in a similar way?--Hraefen 01:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

If there's support to do so, yes. I decided to just do a demonstration on the first two letters in case there was significant opposition to instituting a table, or people wanted to do it in a different way; better to hear what people think before spending too much time on it. And the best way to attract attention from people who would have an opinion on whether the table's a good idea or not is to put some of the table on the article page, where people can easily see it.

Anyway, while space is not a big concern for Wikipedia (it's not paper), readability is a very big concern. Pages are made for readers, not for editors. So hopefully some sort of table will end up being employed. -Silence 01:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

• Well, if it's worth anything, I created both of those pages and I'm cool with it.--Hraefen 01:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Neat. It's certainly worth anything. -Silence 01:37, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

You are wrong.

I am keeping my considerable anger with you in check for the moment. I would like to say: I think everything you just posted on my Talk Page is absolutely, positively, 100% wrong. I would bother to critique the particular problems of your positions, but the fact that they're all underpinned by your whole privileged "progressive liberal" outlook, I get the sense that you would feel compulsed to completely ignore the critique and just go pick up Ye Olde Wiki Policy to slap me with it.

I have decided to leave the antifa userbox as simple, watered down, and impotent as I believe it will take to satisfy your "progressive liberal" sensibilities of what a userbox should be. With that, I have hopefully done the last thing I ever have to keep your privileged "progressive liberal" sensibilities satisfied. So DO NOT write yet another backhanded, patronizing missive on how you "understand" why I am "frustrated". Do NOT ask for mediation so you can convince yourself how "understanding" you are. Because in the end: no you do not "understand" a damned thing. --Daniel 02:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

TfD/Deletion review

Please give people a little room to breath, and assume they canmake their own judgement, rather than accusing everyone if misunderstanding and being unable to form their own opinion of what forms a personal attack. Thanks! Ian¹³_ID:540053 11:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I have given people plenty of room to breathe, and have certainly assumed that they can make their own judgment (since I haven't asked anyone to change his or her vote). I've simply provided valid counter-arguments to some of the claims that have been made, because that's what these votes are for—they're not raw, mindless vote-counts, they're discussions, which is why consensus is based at least as much on the content of the discussion as on the number of people on each side. Please forgive me if I find your above comment surprisingly lacking good faith, considering that you've been the strongest advocate of having the template deleted from the very beginning, you're the person who nominated it for deletion, and you're the one who's been fighting all along the way to have it deleted without even giving it its fair share of time on TfD (which I'd expect even someone who opposed the template itself to let happen, rather than violate Wikipedia's typical VfD procedures and let "the ends justify the means"). Forgive me if I have a hard time believing that the above comment isn't at least a little disingenuous, and is actually part of your continuing war against the template, not an unrelated comment regarding proper procedure in VfD discussions. All of my "accusations" (i.e. comments) regarding people misunderstanding the template's meaning, function, and role within the Sexuality userboxes in general, were perfectly accurate and correct; if you disagree with any of my analysis, feel free to say so in the discussion or here, because it's only if they aren't accurate that your above advice has any merit. Informing the misinformed is a worthy endeavor, whether the template ends up being given its fair time on TfD or not, and whether it's ultimately deleted or not. -Silence 14:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your arguments in defense of Template:User homosexual-no on WP:DRV. I, too, believe that "knee-jerk reaction" is an accurate characterization of much of the opposition to this template but couldn't figure out a way to say so that wouldn't be offensive. Due to this and some past discussion at Wikipedia:LGBT notice board, I am becoming increasingly concerned about Wikipedia's biased treatment of sexual orientation issues. I find the characterization of this template as a personal attack very disturbing, as such an interpretation would seem to justify the removal from Wikipedia of any and all statements of opinions that gay rights activists don't like. And while I couldn't be more supportive of legal equality for LGBT people - I'll wave my HRC membership card around if I have to - nearly half of American adults believe that homosexual behavior is morally wrong, and I have to wonder, where are all those people? Have we chased them off Wikipedia? And as bizarre as it seems, as a dedicated Wikipedian I feel that I must set my personal opinions aside and work to make sure that their POV is represented fairly here if they are not around to do so themselves. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 03:41, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

COTW Project

You voted for Male and Female, this week's Collaborations of the week. Please come and help them become featured-standard articles. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Personal attacks

I've noticed you've been the victim of quite a number of rather horrible personal attacks, for doing what appears to be quite reasonable things. And, AFAIK, you've kept your cool through them. Well done. Your work (and calmness) is greatly appreciated. Thanks. Illigmitaus nil carbumdum (or something like that). JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

moved from userpage

If anyone deserves it, it's you. ;) (Or me. Nah, rather you. =]) Nightstallion

This user has been awarded a userbox barnstar for their work designing new userboxes.