User talk:Allens/Archives/2011/December

Phospholipid-derived fatty acids

Mr. Allens:

I apologize for deleting the original template that was on this page, as I am new to Wiki and just learning the rules. I would have responded sooner, but just learned how to respond. I am also planning to imbed the remaining citations once I am back at work on Monday, in order to fully follow the Wiki guidelines. Will leave your original template and references alone from here on out.

I am curious about your interest in PLFA? Did you work with Dr. Max Haggblom while at Rutgers. He is someone we have worked with for many years. Regards.

Ckunitsky (talk) 21:18, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Max? Heh! Yes, as it happens, at least peripherally. I was in the same department (Biochemistry & Microbiology) during my graduate (doctoral) work, and the class I TAed for most of that time (Experimental Biochemistry) used his analysis machine for lipid analysis of one of the labs - one that I generally graded, and also helped the students with on numerous occasions. (They were doing analyses on lipids in food products; among other things, unless it was a microbially-generated - fermented or whatever - foodstuff, I needed to help them distinguish which lipids were unlikely to be found except in bacteria/archaea and thus should be ignored in favor of more-likely alternatives.) I also first drank alcohol at the party for his getting tenure. If you happen to talk to him, do say that Allen says hello, if you would...

I understand fully being new to Wikipedia and not having learned the rules just yet - while I had done a bit of editing a few years ago, I've only been regularly editing a couple of months myself. (One of the rules is "don't bite the new editors"...) In terms of the "template", there's actually two different things. The first is the presence of an initial section, the lead above all of the sections with headers (those things set off with equals signs on each side); this should be an initial summary with in specific the name(s) of the article in boldface. Feel free to edit the lead section, provided the guidelines for it (linked above) are being followed. The second is the template that I had added (the thing in doubled {, etc) regarding the need for the citations to be in a more-manageable format. (I may try to help out with those later this weekend, although I've also got classes to teach & get prepared for...) Once they're in a manageable format (I recommend the one with "ref" and "/ref", in less-than and greater-than signs, which is the easiest to maintain as far as I can tell), feel free to remove that template. I wouldn't actually call them "my" sections & references - for one thing, all I did was to take what was originally written for the article before you massively expanded it (for which I thank you...) and stick it in as an introduction, with the references for it kept in to indicate where the material for it was taken from. (It's quite possible that the other portions of the article will provide sufficient references for the lead section - as long as this is the case, the lead doesn't need specific references, unlike the rest.)

A few other hints: One generally doesn't put the person's userid or similar, with or without salutation, in a message on that person's talk page - it's assumed that one is talking to the associated user of the talk page if one "writes on it". (Among other reasons, it's frequently uncertain exactly what salutation to give - Mr/Ms/Dr/whatever.) The "talk" page of an article - accessible usually via the "discussion" tab at the top of the screen is generally the best place to discuss changes to it, and also has things like links to various "WikiProjects" that the topic of the article falls under. (I'll have to remember to change the "class" of the PLFA article - sort of a quality rating - according to those to something other than "stub" (usually a very short article) after the citations are revised. Either I or you or someone else should ask someone with the WikiProjects it falls under to determine its new classification, since - at least to me and some others - it's not quite right to try to fully rate an article that one has oneself revised (bias).)

It's very good to hear from you; I really wasn't looking forward to having to take any other actions than talking, nor others doing so... Allens (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

On second thought

Pursuant to your enquiry on my talk and having checked both my reverts on Minoan civilisation. I have found that they were both correct. The first revert cleared the duplicate text while the second revert changed "fisherman's" which is wrong to fishermen's which is correct. So I am not sure about the purpose of your query. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 21:30, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The text was a duplicate? Oops... I hadn't spotted that. Thanks for your quick reply, and sorry for bothering you... Allens (talk) 22:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Thank you for your clarification. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 22:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Romy Haag - Agree with your revert.

Hi Allens!

Thanks for your prudent revert of that unreffed sentence in Romy Haag. It is true that I just really meant to revert the rigurous cuts by the anonymous editor, who b.t.w. did the same to the Dutch and German versions of this article. Those changes carried the suggestion of self-editing by the subject, i.e. Romy Haag herself. Since Romy happens to be a good personal friend of mine (hence my picture of her at the top of this article), I simple gave her a ring and asked. She denied having anything to do with the cuts. In fact, she didn't agree with them, since the parts that were cut away represented common knowledge about her person, readily available from many more sources than just Wikipedia.

I thought you might be aided by knowing this. Cheers from Holland, Thor NL^{AMAZE ME} 13:03, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Quite welcome on the revert. I'm happy to hear that Romy is fine with the info being known (particularly from my personal perspective as a supporter of LGBTI rights). Nice picture, BTW - she doesn't look 60! Allens (talk) 13:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)