User talk:CharlesGillingham/Archive 2

Why did you delete your good message?

I just noticed this message, which was right to the point; why did you delete it? — Sebastian 20:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)    (Please reply on this page. I'll be watching it for a while.)

Well, I decided that this was pretty far away from the subjects I usually edit, and I knew I wouldn't have time to follow up on my suggestions, so I decided to let it go. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Seeing that you just got an E=mc² barnstar, I would really value your contributions to the topic of E. But that's your decision, of course. Happy editing! — Sebastian 09:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)    (I may not be watching this page anymore. If you would like to continue the conversation, please do so here and let me know.)

Thanks!

Thanks for your comments, it's nice to have some positive feedback once in a while! (-: Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

AGI

++ AGI ++ A lot of the AGI page is nonsense. No programmer would expect emergence. Talk of self-awareness, wisdom, sapience etc is confusing AGI with human intelligence. Would you seriously apply the turing test to AGI the only way it would pass is if you include deliberately randomly generated mistakes You need to stop making the mistake that AGI will be a machine copy of human intelligence.

++AGI++ I don't know how to respond to your message, how did you generate your response

Unfortunately you appear to be presenting one side of the argument only.

From a historical perspective AI research has gone through several phases, expert systems, neural network, bots and you appear only to be putting forward the views of the people who were senior academics at those times. Does the preponderance of funding of the person with the most letter after their name determine who gets a say. There have always been dissenters who have accurately predicted not only the failure of these approaches but the manner of their failure, why are they not cited.

Searle, your major citation, actively protested anthropomorphism in AI, his argument was that the Chinese room is not intelligent it merely appears to be, his words not mine. He most definitely did not suggest that the room might be intelligent, you appear to cited an ambiguity that someone other than Searle has introduced

By adding anthropomorphism to AI and discussions of AGI you are narrowing the field to the science fiction point of view

It needs to be pointed out that the main reason expert systems failed to achieve more was that human experts refused to participate in something they saw would take away their jobs. The reason neural networks fail to produce human like intelligence is the sheer scale of network required to mimic the human brain. The reason the bots fail is that they are based on a pop psychology view of intelligence they has no underlying neuroscience to back them up

Wikipedia is meant to be able to be edited by everyone

How do I put the dissenting point of view that AGI is fundamentally different from human intelligence as it will not contain the flaws of human intelligence if you simply gag me with your deletes

Bill Gates has done an enormous amount of harm the progress of AI and computing in general by producing software that blocks amateurs from developing their own software, don’t kill other people ideas with this narrow point of view on AGI —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul shallard (talk • contribs) 10:51, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to say hi

Just a quick stop by to say hi, I saw Counting Crows at T in the Park last year and you guys where one of the highlights.

Keep up the good work in music and on Wikipedia!

Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign!)} 21:41, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Have a kitten :)

File:Catcron.gif

Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign!)} has given you a kitten! Kittens promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Kittens must be fed three times a day and will be your faithful companion forever! Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a kitten, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. And don't feed him too much corn!

Spread the goodness of kittens by adding {{subst:Kitten}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!

File sharing and the law

Yes copyright law is old, and not in its "infancy". However you misread what it said. Its talking about the area of the law in regard to file-sharing. That is, indeed, in its infancy. Basically its saying that the law has not really been developed fully around the new era of file-sharing. I put the line back in the article. However, I do believe it should be merged into the lower paragraph. JeremyWJ (talk) 19:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes. You're right. That section needs a topic paragraph that outlines the issues. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 19:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:CITE

I would not say that you were wrong. BUT in Wikipedia the term "sources" tends to be used for "third party sources" (or external sources) which used to back up facts in Wikipedia. You will find this terminology used in WP:V eg "Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

"References" tends to be used in discussion pages as shorthand for the sources listed as bullet points in a References section. These may or may not include such things as page numbers, but frequently do not. Even if they did there will be only one bullet point per edition of a book in the list, so for an article like Battle of Berlin a "Reference" to a book like "Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Viking, Penguin Books, ISBN 0670886955." would be next to useless. The page range is either "prefix xxxiv–409" or if listed separately "pp.xxxiv,52,138,194,196,217,223,233,243,246,247,257–259,274,287,291,292,294,297,302,303,304,312,314,325–327,330,337,338,340,343,345,349,358,383,385,386,388,389,393, 395,397,409."

"Citations" tends to be used by Wikipedia editors as short hand for in "line citations" (whether as footnotes or (parenthetical references)).

Of course this is only my opinion, but it does reflect the usage since I started editing Wikipedia when at first there were next to no inline citations and few reference sections. Even when inline citations became more common page numbers were frequently not used (you can see the archives of WP:CITE to see that I had to reinstate the need for page numbers in citations as a requirement in the guideline at least a couple of times before the requirement stopped being deleted).

At first the demand was for "References" by that people meant a list of sources in a References section. The for "citations" meaning inline citations but we have been through several types of footnote mechanisms and the early ones involved creating a list of references an then linking tags from the text to the reference list. The trouble with that method was that it was difficult to maintain as the list in the references section (or notes section) had to be in the same order as they were accessed in the text. Small changes in the text (like moving a paragraph could entail very large changes to the reference list). Because they were so fragile and took so much effort to maintain them there was a lot of resistance to using them. Each iteration has become easier to use and so they gradually became more common. See Wikipedia:Footnote1 , Wikipedia:Footnote2, Wikipedia:Footnote3. --PBS (talk) 18:51, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

100px|thumb

"but I think there is an advantage in other places in the article to be careful to respect the distinction between 'name of the book' (by calling it a 'citation') and 'the book' (by calling it a 'source')." Now it is my turn to be confused! --PBS (talk) 11:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

OK I've re-read all of what you have written on my talk page, and I think I now understand the difference you are making. You are using citation to mean the presentation of the source. Which in WP:CITE is covered in How to format citations and more specifically in the subsection Citation styles. Am I right? --PBS (talk) 12:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I see your point, and if the guideline only covered inline citations, this would not be a problem. The problem occures because at the moment the guideline also covers a bullet listed sources as a "citation" stylemethod.

Given that "citation" is usually used on talk pages discussions to mean an inline citation, I think that we need to make it clear if we are talking about "citation styles" but I would prefer it if we could come up with another name so that there is a clear distinction between an inline citation and the format used to include a source. --PBS (talk) 12:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have been pondering on the problem, and I think I can write a new introduction, which will solve it. But I have some other things to do in the physical world, before I can construct a provisional introduction. When I have done it, I'll post it to this section for your comments. --PBS (talk) 14:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

How about something like this:

If no verifiable reliable source can be found for an article, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. This guideline describes how to detail, and where to place, information about sources in a Wikipedia article, so that a reader of an article can verify that the text of an article is supported by those sources.

Inside an article, details which identify the reliable sources can be presented in one of three ways: either as a bullet pointed list in a section near the bottom of the article, or as inline citations or as a combination of the two.

Not all the information contained within an article has to be supported by in line citations, but Wikipedia Verifiability policy mandates that they are used to quotations and for other statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, including contentious material about living persons. Where appropriate, they are also required by Wikipedia's featured article criteria and (to a lesser extent) the good article criteria.

Details of the information required for the reader of an article to identify the reliable source used to support the text in the article can be presented in several ways, and depends on the type of reliable source, and the style of inline citation used see the section xyz.

--PBS (talk) 10:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Stacks and Language

That's a good example you gave, but I don't think the conclusion is so straightforward. Here's a sentence I made up:

"The girl who put the cat with the mouse in its mouth on her lap was sitting on the bed"

It has the same issue with subordinate clauses, but it does parse, although perhaps with a little difficulty. The next level up sentence

"The girl who put the cat which ate the mouse which ate my mother's cheese on her lap walked around the block"

Also parses. So stack looks ok to me. The issue in your sentence is that in

"The gun the man the police arrested used was lost"

is that the sentence should have an extra connecting word

"The gun that the man the police arrested used was lost"

parses fine. I think you should treat the sentence

"The gun the man used was lost"

as an idiomatic contraction of

"The gun that the man used was lost"

which leaves out the "that". Then you don't have a problem with the stack representation. But this all ties to the issue of natural language formal grammar, and I don't know the a full grammar for English.Likebox (talk) 16:16, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I remembered the original example I thought up a while back of a good "stacky" sentence: "The man put the girl who put the cat who put the mouse in its mouth on her lap on the bed."

It parses ok, but it is a little uncomfortable to do it because of the awkward repetition. I used "put" multiple times because it has to have a three prong structure (subject,object,object), it needs two objects, the "thing that is put" and the "thing which it is put into/on". It works with any three-prong verb, like drive "John drives (the car) (to the store)", and nesting can occur there too: "John drives (the car he rented from henry) to (the store which put the cat which ate the mouse on sale)".

I am confident that aside from a few idiomatic word omissions for some short sentences like "the gun the man used was lost", you can easily construct a complete grammar for the English language which generates all sentences that eventually parse to a native speaker. It would have some semantic ambiguities (when you use the word "it", what are you talking about, etc. etc.), but would be syntactically complete. I don't think anybody has done this yet, but I am pretty sure that it is easy.Likebox (talk) 20:01, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't fully agree, because the language areas expand with a little workout. The examples I gave were initially difficult for me to parse, but now are easy. I think that if you mull it over, you will see that stack nesting is actually common.

I hand-parsed some new-york-times articles to determine the typical sentence nesting, and can be pretty deep, even in very flowing sentences.Likebox (talk) 20:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:MusicInCentury

Greetings. The [[Category:20th century in music]] has a red link at the bottom, for a category called 20th-century, which does not exist. I tried to get rid of it, but couldn't see what was causing it. After removing things one by one, using preview, I found that Template:MusicInCentury seemed to be the cause. Since you created that template, perhaps you could see if it's possible to get rid of the non-existent category. Thanks. Rigaudon (talk) 22:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. (I wish we agreed on whether it's the "20th-century" or the "20th century".) ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 17:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks good now. But I think the Template:MusicInCenturyShort has the same problem. The two categories both have a red link at the bottom to a page that doesn't exist. Can you take a look?

And isn't the rule to have a hyphen when it's used as an adjective - i.e. 20th-century opera, but opera in the 20th century? Rigaudon (talk) 19:58, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

And fixed. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 13:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Artificial_intelligence&diff=302751341&oldid=302750922

r u sure you need "the" in front of Attendees? WhatisFeelings? (talk) 21:03, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, it reads a little better to me this way. We're talking about a particular group of men at a particular conference, not attendees in general. My edit comment is wrong, by the way; both versions are grammatical. I suppose that's why you're writing me here.

(Of course I liked "Those who attended" because it added a bit of stentorian rhythm to the sentence. I assumed you removed it because it just a bit dramatic for Wikipedia's flat style. <sigh> Fair enough. On the other hand, if your edit was designed to only avoid the nominal phrase ("those who -ed"), then would you accept "The scientists who attended would become the leaders of AI research for many decades."?) ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 00:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

for the music btw. I don't listen music all day long like some people, but only when I'm really in the mood, and your records are played often during those times. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:36, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

wp:citation needed

I like the idea of making wp:citation needed more friendly for first-time editors. I did however make some changes to your text. I explained why at Wikipedia_talk:Citation_needed#extra_instructions_for_first-time_editors. I am not in the habit of stepping into the shoes of first-time editors so I will defer to your advice on how to make the page friendly to them. However, I am a big fan of brevity wherever possible, and I like the idea of striking a balance in favor of brevity by directing new editors to WP:tutorial. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 23:47, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, my revert was a knee jerk; and you're right, this page should make it maximally easy for beginners to add citations. I've restored much of your text, in a slightly different format. Let me know what you think. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 02:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

citation templates

Hi, while you are tweaking the "Citation templates" page, could you possibly amend the instructions for "cite news" to make it clear that the title of the newspaper goes in the parameter "work" and not in the parameter "publisher"? A lot of editors are doing this wrong, probably because "work" is a bit misleading. (The CNN example given is actually rather unhelpful. "Publisher" is only supposed to be to "add credibility for local papers that are part of a family of publications".) This is explained clearly enough at the more detailed "Template:Cite news" page, but people don't seem to go there as much.

Why it matters: "work" puts the newspaper name in italics (the usual convention), which "publisher" doesn't.

Might you also include the "location" parameter in the example? (This is not the same thing as "place", apparently.) I think "location" is quite important when the city of publication isn't included in the newspaper's title.

e.g. work = Deseret News | location = Salt Lake City

might be a better example to use than the CNN one currently given.

Obviously people can leave "location" blank when it is the New York Times etc.

Many thanks if you are able to sort this out.

BTW the date in the example needs delinking too. Alarics (talk) 14:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, CharlesGillingham. You have new messages at Alarics's talk page.
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History of AI

Charles, thanks for the message. I originally edited the AI article becuase that one paragraph seemed unduly USA- and English-language-centric. The assertion that AI as an academic subject was conjured out of nothing -- fiat lux -- at this one event would be hard to defend objectively. I sought to soften that impression without downplaying the importance of the Dartmouth attendees. Referring to Michie's research as "other" was not meant to convey "different" but simply an example of "what else was going on in the world".Steve Graham (talk) 15:22, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Discussion re application of guidance in proposed deletion of band article for purported lack of notability

Hi. Just a friendly notice to alert you to the discussion at [1]. It concerns the proposed deletion of the article on the band The Shells, for purported lack of notability. While I have no idea what your view will be on this issue (if any), and have never had contact with you before, I recognize that you had a hand in crafting/discussing the language of the guidance, so you may be interested in joining or following the indicated ongoing discussion applying the guidance. Many thanks.--VMAsNYC (talk) 02:17, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for providing your input. To understand what I am missing, I have questions as to your deletions of reviews of the band, and band background information. I had thought both of those were appopriate in articles, as long as they are sourced properly.

The reviews from Seventeen magazine and Queens Chroncile, two independent papers over 30 years old with large circulations, seemed appropriate as the sources are clearly reliable. No one else questioned their reliability or sought to delete them entirely (though some sought to pare down their inclusion to shorter quotes).

And I understood that a band's own band site blog is fine as a source for factual information about the band members, and that sort of "not unduly self-serving" background info is fine for such an article.

Specifically ... Wikipedia says at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLP#Using_the_subject_as_a_self-published_source:

Self-published material may be used in biographies of living persons only if written by the subjects themselves. Subjects may provide material about themselves through press releases, personal websites, or blogs. Material that has been self-published by the subject may be added to the article only if:

it is not unduly self-serving;

it does not involve claims about third parties;

it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;

there is no reasonable doubt that the subject actually authored it;

the article is not based primarily on such sources.

If we look for example at the Charles Gillingham article, it says that Gillingham is "best known for his performance on ..." without even having any citation to support it. And says Gillingham "attended Richard Henry Dana Junior High and San Pedro High School, both in San Pedro, California, and also attended Miraleste High School in Rancho Palos Verdes his junior and senior year. He was a member of Zip Code Revue ..." again without even any citation to support it. Here, we have appropriate citations.

If you could restore especially the two magazine reviews for the moment, that would be important, as they are indicia (in my view) of the band meeting one of the other criteria of notabilty, and so it would be important for the reviewing admin to see them in the article (I think). (And the fact that reviews are in fact one of the other criteria suggest to me that they are appropriate for the article).

Unless I misunderstand none of this is self-promotional in that I am not the band (or connected to it, or even in the industry -- just a VMA and now this band fan), and the criteria as I understand it is that it is fine to put in info that is accurate from a verifiable reliable source -- the fact that the source says positive words in the review is not reason to exclude it.

I see now that they are even trying to delete the article on this VMA -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Best_Breakout_New_York_City_Artist_Award.--VMAsNYC (talk) 18:17, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

@VMAsNYC: There is a guideline called WP:Other stuff exists, which basically says "the fact that there is bad stuff in other articles doesn't mean you should add bad stuff to this one". Articles are judged on a case-by-case basis. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:55, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out the rules here. My first step was to read the rules. I quoted from them above. They by their terms allow for inclusion of the material. We could stop there. Beyond that, they seem from what I can tell the rules are mirrored by reality. I checked reality because I realize that sometimes there is an unwritten rule operating. Here, both the precise language of the wikipedia law and reality match, as discussed above.

That is all consistent with the language of the very guidance that you just referred me to. It says "The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on what other articles do or do not exist ... While these comparisons are not a conclusive test, they may form part of a cogent argument; an entire comment should not be dismissed because it includes a comparative statement like this." emphasis added.--VMAsNYC (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

My reply is on User talk:VMAsNYC. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 20:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Referencing

Thanks for the tip. Please look at Hinksey Halt railway station, which I've just created using {{sfn}} throughout, and also at Abingdon Road Halt railway station, which I created earlier using the <ref>[[#refid|Author (year)]], p.9999</ref> style, you'll see that the two articles have many similarities, being two railway stations just half a mile apart on the same line, which opened and closed simultaneously. Comparison of the referencing should therefore be a fairly simple matter; have I done it properly, do you think? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems that |ref=harv is now required on all {{Cite xxx}} templates intended to be linked from a {{sfn}}; accordingly I've amended Template:Sfn/doc, so please check my wording; my full explanation is at Template talk:Sfn/doc --Redrose64 (talk) 21:45, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

So it is. Thanks for fixing the doc. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 04:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you very much for fixing the broken references in History of evolutionary thought and related articles. Are you planning to fix them in Evolutionary ideas of the renaissance and enlightenment as well? Rusty Cashman (talk) 01:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm slowly working my way through all the articles that used to use Wikiref. The next time I need a mindless diversion I'll do another one. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 03:37, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello, CharlesGillingham. You have new messages at Debresser's talk page.
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Note Templates

Saw your comments in Template talk:Cref. This might interest you.[2] ChyranandChloe (talk) 23:35, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Deletion discussion redux

Hi. Just a friendly notice to alert you to the discussion here. It concerns the proposed deletion – again - of the article on the band The Shells, for purported lack of notability.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:ANI for Rjanag

Draeco has reported Rjanag at the ANI here based on what he believes was grossly uncivil behavior during the Epeefleche/Shells affair. You should know that in my comments I cited some of your comments. Regards.--Epeefleche (talk) 04:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to discussion at Wikipedia talk:Verification methods#"This is a fact"

Hello,
Please check Wikipedia talk:Verification methods#"This is a fact".
I left a recommendation to use: "This is material that comes from a book"
Feel free to leave any comment there. —Iknow23 (talk) 02:33, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Sfn/doc

I see that you are suggesting the <span id=...>...</span> tag. At Wikipedia:Citing sources/Further considerations#Filling in ref field of cite-xxx templates, the <cite id=...>...</cite> tag is recommended for this purpose. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems that you were right, since <cite id=...>...</cite> no longer works, but <span id=... class=citation>...</span> still does. Anyway, I have discovered {{wikicite}} which is nicer, and other editors have become interested.

That aside, re this comment; I'm a big fan of {{sfn}}, but didn't mention it in case the article in question was heavily loaded with <ref></ref> tags already. My immediate concern was to explain why name= wasn't working in the way that the poster had hoped. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:58, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

AI Effect

Hi

I have started to pull together the article and, as we need consensus to help avoid editing problems, need some other editors to confer with. :¬)

I saw your notes in your user space and thought it best to start with you.

I have added a comment about the definition to start with, at the talk page

Row ow ownd Row ow ownd been bummin' around this town way way too long... one of my faves of all time

Chaosdruid (talk) 00:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Ha :>. I commented on the talk page. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 00:19, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

The HTML CITE element

You and I have exchanged communications about this. I've put this on the back burner because I don't see any movement towards a consensus on how this should be handled and I don't want to do a lot of work with hand-crafted cites which might need to be redone at some later point; I have plenty of other stuff going to keep me busy. Cheers. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Sentience

Charles, I have not yet read your responses. Would you please extricate your responses from within my single, albeit chaptered, comment. Comments in talk pages are sacred, and modifying one's comments as you have done, to break my comment into small pieces, is not allowed. Regards, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 19:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. I have already taken care of it. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 19:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Are your responses soon forthcoming, Charles? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 01:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

File:Weakness of Turing test 1.jpg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Weakness of Turing test 1.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

Emphasis

Do you have any plans for this template ({{Emphasis}})? Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 23:58, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Emphasis

Template:Emphasis has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 22:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The Three Laws of Robotics

Hi

Just wondered if you may have an interest in reading the article The Three Laws of Robotics and possibly put some notes on the talk page for suggestions ? I appreciate you are busy but I am trying to get the article up to FA status again, under the guise of my Robotics project role, after it was delisted in December 2009 and would appreciate your input as a major contributor to the AI articles.

If you wanted to collaborate in a small, large or anything-in-between part that would be great also ! :¬)

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 16:36, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Pamela McCorduck

I have nominated Pamela McCorduck, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pamela McCorduck. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

AI and Robotics vital articles discussion

Hi

After the recent debacle on the renaming of Android to Android (robot) and the redirect of searches for Android going to a dab page, due to the Android OS and Google phone supporters hijacking with claims that Android OS is the primary article, I have spotted a problem with the AI and Robotics articles

After a little seach through the vital articles lists I cannot find any Robotics or AI articles on those lists. There are a couple of things at issue:

• First - A vital article is the only thing that can prevent an article from being hijacked in the way I mention above. Basically if a company releases a new product and names it "Artificial Intelligence OS" and it becomes popular the AI page could be forced into a renaming and a delinking from the search as it would not be the primary topic. Vital article is the only exception to these rules.
• Secondly - Vital articles are considered the "1,000" articles vital to kowledge (well at least from Wikip point of view). There are, in fact, 10,000 as there are four levels of Vitality with level one being the highest level.

Would you be interested in forming an informal discussion on the matters of raising Robotics and AI articels for consideration ? I am on a short break but am guessing that you are fairly busy at the moment and so may not be able to participate. As usual your contribution would be major as you are one of the main proponents of the AI articles here.

The first requests asking for info are first req for info and second request on the VA project page

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 00:15, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Human#RFC

If youre not too busy, I'd like to hear your input on a current editoral debate. The issue with the human article is that its grounded in a taxonomical approach, rather than a neutral approach. Due the excess of science-based people, I'd like to hear things from a philosophical perspective - you and Pfhorrest come to mind. My version is currently at human being. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 03:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. See Talk:Human#Update -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 01:32, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The importance of OK writing

See war. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 07:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I think your addition of a definition improves the article. I think ot flows a lot better if you state the obvious first. Did anyone give you flack about this one? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 20:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

lsa

lsa, at Talk:Taiwanese aborigines. Locke'sGhost —Preceding undated comment added 08:55, 25 December 2010 (UTC).

Common Sense Reasoning

Hi, I was looking for someone experienced, to help me with editing/adding to common sense reasoning. I noticed that you have already contributed to it. GreenEdu (talk) 18:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The article is still very short, a stub, really. If you're currently studying this topic, or better yet an expert on it, please add whatever material you can. If you are new to Wikipedia, I'd be happy to help you format the citations and so on. I'm watching the page. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:26, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Who developed this five-level list?

Hello Charles, just to let you know I replied to your edit comment on Progress in artificial intelligence. pgr94 (talk) 10:00, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

sfn

Hi. I just replied to you on the WT:CITE page. You wrote {{sfn}}? I use that a lot; yesterday. In that article, there are two other refs (oldid), 115, 116, that in turn ref the Gervais piece; Seems to me that they could be made to refer to the Gervais citation template in the Bibliography; {{#tag:ref|...}}, methinks. Care to take a look? Cheers, Jack Merridew 00:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi; I replied on my talk, too. The changes you made seem great (but not what I was talking of, above). I thought I'd also point you at this old discussion: Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion#Demo of specific proposal; the demo it links to now 404s, but it worked really well; we need to get that fellow to start that up again. It would solve all the speed issues with all the huge articles, and allow centralized (even per prefs) control of the 'style (rendered format) of the references. Something like this is *the* future. Cheers, Jack Merridew 19:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

fyi

Wikipedia:Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages shows {{Citation/core}} at #39, with 1,169,291 uses. Most of the other cite templates would lead to here, so that's a fair count. I expected more. I expect that much of it is simply that so many articles are unreferenced or have bare urls. And I know of more than a few instances where templates have been cut regressively. Cheers, sorta, Jack Merridew 02:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I think you are right about bare urls and unreferenced articles. A better measure would be hit "random article" around 1,000 times and carefully note the citation format that you find (or lack thereof). I think a survey like this would establish with statistical certainty that citation templates are preferred by the majority of wikipedia's editors for any article with more than n acceptably formatted citations (for some n).

But, this is a lot of work, and I am not in any position to do this study. Furthermore, I don't think it would make any difference in our bi-annual citation debates, because it doesn't answer the arguments that opponents of citation templates are putting forward: slow load times, cluttered wikitext, citations appropriate for different fields and personal freedom. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 03:27, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Turtle thank you

Thank you for the work upgrading our anchored refs. It's amazing that we are still improving that article, even after it got through FA. We've added video, a gallery of species ID images, the ref formatting, etc. I'm probably going to redo the map as well to improve appearance, add information, correct minor errors, etc. [I'm going to stay positive about this and just look at it as craft...something to learn to do RIGHT!] Anyhow, thanks for your expertise and intelligence directed towards our article. A real treat to find the people on Wiki who are the top and then get their help!TCO (talk) 18:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Template:Citation not found

Template:Citation not found can add Category:All articles with broken links to citations but the category page has not been created. Either the category should be created or the template be changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done. I've built a full-fledged hidden backlog category. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:BN/R Question

Perhaps you can help with this as I have gotten zero response from X!. I use the WP:BN/R template on my talkpage with the |left code in place to push it to the left of the screen. This has worked just fine until I just archived my talkpage last time around. When I don't have the code hidden, it is now right and the |left code isn't working. I have looked at the WP:BN/R template (no changes then or now). I looked at User:X!/RfX Report, no changes other than an update from the bot. So I am unsure what would have caused the problem and why it would have happened only when I archived my talkpage.

Would you take a look at the pages and see if something or someone goofed the code that is not allowing |left to work on the code? Thanks. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 03:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

{{done}} ;) Jack Merridew 03:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I know nothing about this. Are you sure you all wanted to talk to me? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

ref help please

This sounds simple but is kicking our butts.

On U.S. state reptiles, notes 1 and 3 are identical. Would like to make it a single note with duplicate instances. How does one do that? I am used to having that where we don't have the #tag thing (not sure what that is actually!?) Can you come over and help, please?TCO (talk) 01:59, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Asked over at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Combining_notes_like_combining_refs. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 02:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

{{done}} Gold Hat (talk) 02:11, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Did not mean to step on you SunC. Just for our info, what is the point of the #tag thing? I would have done all the nb notes as named notes in group nb. What is the point of #tag?TCO (talk) 02:14, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

In that case, there was no point, which is why I removed it and used normal syntax. In other contexts, it's used for nested references. Gold Hat (talk) 02:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I lubz you.TCO (talk) 23:30, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Moore's law

See my comments at Talk:Moore's_law#Problem_with_refs_5_and_6 where I mention one of your edits. Dicklyon (talk) 01:55, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Independent promoter

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A tag has been placed on Independent promoter, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become an encyclopedia article. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Business for more information.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, contest the deletion by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion," which appears inside of the speedy deletion ({{db-...}}) tag (if no such tag exists, the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate). Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 23:01, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Somebody spammed this article, but I've restored the original redirect. — Satori Son 19:20, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 20:07, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese translation of Turing Test

Hi there, Mr. Gillingham. I encouraged a Brazilian friend, MugenKaosu, to become a Wiki editor, and since he's interested in AI, he has started to make improvements in the Portuguese version of the Turing Test article. Apparently, you're a point man for the English version, so he might be asking you questions as he goes along, . Thank you for all your work. Regards, IRA in New York City. Oh, Mugen's in Sao Paulo btw. NinetyNineFennelSeeds (talk) 23:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

No problem. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 01:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Please restore all the Harvrefcol that you removed

Just now noticed you stripped many articles of Harvrefcol, back when you were on that little tap dance/crusade. Restore the original format in all articles, please. Tks.  – Ling.Nut 00:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I realize now that it was probably a mistake to merge {{Harvrefcol}} to {{Citation}}. In my defense, I asked for discussion about the merge on the template's talk page and then waited more than a year before undertaking the merge. I merged the templates very slowly, over several months, and continued watching the pages to see if any one had an objection for several months after the change. Throughout the process, I only ran into only one editor who objected: you. And I stopped the second I read your objection.

At the end of the day, I am pretty confident that I did not damage Wikipedia in a significant way, and it could easily turn out that I have helped those articles I edited. (If there is some massive improvement to the {{cite *}} family of templates (say, for example, they fix the load-time issue), these articles will be improved (indirectly) by my edits. The articles using {{Harvrefcol}} will still have the problem, because, as near as I can tell, no one maintains {{Harvrefcol}}).

It would be difficult to un-merge the templates in all 100 articles, as you no doubt realize, and I don't think you can argue conclusively that using {{harvrefcol}} is an improvement. There's no point in making an edit that doesn't improve Wikipedia. So I will not be able to restore the articles.

I do believe that my merge was an improvement to Wikipedia. However, I regret it because it turned out there isn't consensus that it was an improvement. If I had been aware of that at the start, I would have never undertaken the merge. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 10:10, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• The key point is this: Wikipedia respects all citation formats (even randomly slapped together nonexistent slipshod bullsh*t ones, like the utter sh*t that we have as our #1 format, the cite templates). If you don't like a citation template, don't use it. But deleting it... what is your point? You think it makes Wikipedia more efficient somehow? You think it makes Wikipedia prettier? Is it the Wikipedia equivalent of trimming the weeds? No, it certainly is nothing like that. It is not a positive task. It accomplishes nothing of merit. What have you contributed... actually contributed.. by deleting a citation format? Absolutely zero-point-zero. less than that, actually, because you are harming other editors' freedom to use whatever cite format they like.. If people wanna cite in LSA format without templates, there is jack sh*t you can do to stop them (thank God!!!!! At least for now, but the little worker ants will eventually standardize our citation to the cite-shit template; you and I both know it). By the way, the only way i stopped you was by showing that the templates are an established format.. your beloved Cite templates are NOT in conformance with any known format! ...Not ... APA or Chicago or MLA or... anything. They are bullsh*t made up for fun by people who know how to code templates but don't know how to cite. 'Nuff said.  – Ling.Nut 00:20, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I have published in ACS and various other formats and it made no difference to me, which I used. Therefore, I would really BE HAPPY if we standardized to a "shit" format, than farted around with more "freedom" crap. Wiki is so far up it's ass. They blather about how any format is OK as long as consisten in article and totally miss the picture that this means we will never have within article consistency as it relies on people learning every single format under the sun and coordinating across every article and edit warring until the cows come home (rather than just researching things and writing content).TCO (talk) 00:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• What's good for one person isn't good for the masses. And in general... you switch formats because you have incentive to publish (it counts toward promotion). There are no incentives here in Wikipedia; it is all volunteer. The point is this: We have experts in various domains, and if they wanna write in MLA or whatever, then we are damned fools if we stop them. No one gets points toward their promotion for publishing in Wikipedia. – Ling.Nut 00:41, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Ling.Nut, you have really misread my motivation entirely.

1. I don't prefer the {{cite *}} templates over {{harvrefcol}}. I don't argue that this method is any better. I don't care which citation method Wikipedia uses, so long as it can always uniquely identify a source.
2. I do think that it is important that Wikipedia's citation method is completely documented and easy to learn.
3. I do think that it is important that Wikipedia's citation method is well maintained by a large number of programmers and editors.
4. I do think that it is important that Wikipedia's citation method has solutions for as many problems or exceptions as possible.
5. I do think that it is important that Wikipedia's citation method is familiar to any experienced editor who comes to the article, so that the later editor can easily fix problems without having to seek out the original owner.

Unless you address the latter issues, then you are attacking a straw man. This is the argument for standardization.

Finally, I have to be blunt about your attitude: the relentless venting is inappropriate. Your argument is not made any stronger by airing your bitterness and rage. On the contrary, it suggests you are aware of the weakness of your position and hope to win by shouting. When combined with your devotion to a particular citation format, it suggests a fanaticism that undermines your credibility. When combined with your failure to address the substantive issues, it suggests that further debate is pointless. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• Please forgive me for taking the liberty of changing the format – changing asterisks (unordered list) to numbers (ordered list) – to facilitate answering your points:

1. Your first statement certainly does nothing to support standardization, and in fact somewhat the opposite. By that I suggest that since the style is irrelevant (so long as it uniquely identifies sources), then there's no harm (and probably some good) in letting people use the format that is prevalent in their field. As I said before, that's especially true since they are volunteer laborers, and can walk away at no cost to them if they encounter obstacles.
2. If you are concerned about documentation and ease of use, then go directly to the problem, and work on documentation and ease of use. I strongly suggest you gather together all the editors who work on citation templates and have them create six or seven or eight new templates whose interface to the editors are all exactly the same in every way except for the template name itself. [From the content editor's point of view, the only thing different would be what comes immediately after the opening set of curly brackets: {{CiteAPA or whatever.] Then bring each of those six or seven or eight templates into Procrustean conformance with real and existing cite formats (rather than the ... let's say idiosyncratic... format yielded by the template that is most commonly used here on Wikipedia): {{CiteChicago, {{CiteMLA, {{CiteASA, etc. Then all of your problems go poof.
3. Your third point is an important one in its own right, but is irrelevant to standardization. It is more relevant to... social engineering issues: barnstars, camaraderie, etc.
4. See my second point above. The more formats you cover, the more problems you solve.
5. When you say that the "citation method [should be] familiar to any experienced editor who comes to the article", do you mean that the implementation should be familiar to template editors, or the output should be familiar to content editors? [I know the groups overlap; think of them as roles rather than groups]. If it is the latter, then conforming to real, existing, relatively widespread formats is a HUGE plus. If it is the former, then... how is it relevant to standardization? It's more relevant to getting all your template editors talking together under one roof, either in a WikiProject or at least at a centralized discussion board.

• As for my attitude, you are right. Mea culpa. I have been through various fights again and again and again and again because every three or four months some Young Archimedes comes along who has no familiarity with the context, no idea that all of these fights have been fought before, or that there are valid reasons why their suggestions were not adopted ages ago. Now, of course I know that consensus can change, but the problem is that as veteran editors fade off into the sunset or go through wikispace shift or whatever, people tend to forget the valid points that have been raised time and again in the past. It's all like a video game in a way: when you shoot down one dumb argument, it is not long at all before the same dumb argument is broached again. And again. And again. It is very tiring. To be honest, I very very firmly believe that in a year or two a critical mass of new editors will pool their historical-blank-slate perspectives and get consensus to make One Format to Rule Them All. I also believe that will be a Bad Thing. Volunteers who subsequently are dissuaded from editing by the learning curve associated with using an unfamiliar cite format will NOT rise up in some mass protest. Rather, they will be unaware that others like them exist. They will shrug and move on, and no one will be the wiser. Our loss.
• That's all. Gotta run. Consider my suggestions. If the suggestion has been shot down before, was it scuppered for valid reasons, or just because it would be Too Much Trouble to do? I dunno.  – Ling.Nut 11:32, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I wish you'd deleted the {{merge}} template at {{Harvrefcol}} given your comment above: "Yes, I realize now that it was probably a mistake to merge {{Harvrefcol}} to {{Citation}}." :-) I have converted two of the three remaining articles, and have now mentioned that here and here. FYI. Mark Hurd (talk) 07:59, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Further to this, I see you have what I assume is a working copy of an essay at User:CharlesGillingham/Wikipedia/Arguments for and against citation formats that could be worth publishing to Wikipedia to help get consensus. Mark Hurd (talk) 09:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

request "super reference" editor help at FAC for fluorine

Could you take a gander over to Fluorine and help it? I'm thinking at a minimum make it so there are links to follow from the citations to the bibliography. Also, like to get Greenwood CoftheE in the bib as it is (and will become) a pretty primary reference. Plus whatever else you can improve as the smarty pants you are. Figure since it is BOTH referencing AND science, it will get you "hot". (Gold hat can go after it also.) P.s. I been away for a couple months...TCO (talk) 05:49, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for jumping in. I tried aping you with a linked reference for Greenwood, but it does not "link" from the ref 32 to the bibliography section. Kwi? TCO (talk) 17:43, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Your problem here is a mismatch in authors. The full citation has (amongst other parameters) {{cite book|last1=Greenwood|last2=Earnshaw|year=1998}} but the shortnotes have only {{sfn|Greenwood|1998}} - you need to add |Earnshaw| into those. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:58, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks man. Figured it was something of that sort. I should probably find and read up on how to use this stuff systematically.TCO (talk) 20:11, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey Redrose. Let's talk over at Talk:Fluorine. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:09, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for working with us. I really appreciate getting an expert and then so much of the time! TCO (talk) 16:19, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Artificial consciousness definition

Hi

Can I ask you to weigh in on the article talk page please as you have commented there before, and I respect your judgement on AI matters above all others I have encountered on Wiki. The other editor and myself cannot find consensus, it is rather like hitting ones head against a brick wall.

As far as I can see the definition is for the "synthesis of 'something' once AC has been already discovered", rather than it being a definition of AC.

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 16:41, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I contributed my two cents. Note that User:Tkorrovi has been editing this article since 2004 or so. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 01:57, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Please read my reply to your post at [3]. Thanks a lot. Tkorrovi (talk) 02:52, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Example header

Template:Example header has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bulwersator (talk) 09:43, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I am proposing a move for an article that you edited

Please check Talk:The_evolution_of_cooperation#Requested_move, thank you. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:52, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

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Sfn and SfnRef - red error message

I like Sfn and SfnRef. But (? a recent changes to the template) the template now shows red error message which hide the article's content. The SfnRef template also fails to understand the {{refbegin}} + {{refend}} combination. Please give this quickly. You see an example at User:Philcha/Sandbox/MOO 2-3. --Philcha (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a duplicate of a thread raised at Template talk:Sfn#Sfn and SfnRef - red error message and I think that per WP:MULTI, discussion should be in one place only. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:03, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks, CharlesGillingham! --Philcha (talk) 00:04, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

efn

The example of the efn template given on the doc page gives "(a)" as the inline citation but "1" in the notelist section (rather than "a"). Cheers Aa77zz (talk) 20:50, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I've discovered this depends on my browser. I'm running Vista. IE 9.0.4 displays numbers but Firefox 3.5.15 displays the expected lower-case characters. Aa77zz (talk) 21:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

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Wikimedia Stories Project

Hi Charles!

My name is Victor and I'm a storyteller with the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that supports Wikipedia. I'm chronicling the inspiring stories of the Wikipedia community around the world, including those from readers, editors, and donors. Stories are absolutely essential for any non-profit to persuade people to support the cause, and we know the vast network of people who make and use Wikipedia have so much to share.

I'd very much like the opportunity to interview you to tell your story, with the possibility of using it in our materials, on our community websites, or as part of this year’s fundraiser to encourage others to support Wikipedia. Please let me know if you're inclined to take part in the Wikipedia Stories Project.

Thank you for your time,

Victor Grigas

user:Victorgrigas

vgrigas@wikimedia.org

Victor Grigas (talk) 22:00, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Redlinked pages to merge

Hi Charles - was this your edit? I'm guessing it was because so were this and this, and all three now have redlinks in the {{merge to}} banner. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The red-link it because merge-to won't point to a Help: page from a Wikipedia: page. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 11:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

A favour - can you verify?

Hi Charles; just wondered if you were able to add a ref to this edit. I've got stacks of Fairport albums, but no CC (yet). --Redrose64 (talk) 16:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I can't edit articles connected to Counting Crows, unless it's libelous. I think that {{cite album-notes}} is probably sufficient for this. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Sein

Thanks for taking an interest in the being article. Your edits to the lede seemed a big like a hatchet-job and I restored the version previous. I'm open to suggestions as far as how to improve the lede of course, and I'm sure you have some ideas. The basic way to introduce a subject is to define it: "Being" has two main definitions - the abstract definition being and the literal definition of "a being" etc. The article must start with this basic premise. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a source that introduces "being" in (precisely) this way? This doesn't seem to capture the way the term is used in introductory philosophy classes.

The purpose of my edit was to remove anything that might be original research. Since the old lede has some statements that were obviously false, I thought it was best to just start over with a simple, short and straightforward introduction that contained only material that no one could claim is original. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

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Removing comments at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources

Hi,

This edit you made to Wikipedia talk:Citing sources removed a comment from J. Johnson (JJ). I assume (given doing so is normally forbidden, and I can't see any of the exemptions applying here) that was an accident, and as such I'm going to restore the comment now. Please let me know if that's not the case.

—me_and 17:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

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BACKLOG OF THE WEEK Category:Pages with broken reference names

Hello - some editors fight off the vandal hordes, as I do repairing pages with citation errors. If I didn't - there would be a large backlog in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting and in Category:Pages with missing references list as in Category:Pages with broken reference names (more than 1500 yesterday). But it is impossible to work it alone. Do you know how to do a "Blitz" (excuse the comparision) to find willing editors to work on it. It is much more easier to repair references if you do it one hour, one day or one week ago after the errors were made instead of months and years after the error was done. Very, very difficult to find these errors.

Only with WikiBlame Search it is possible to find and repair such errors.

Best wishes --Frze ^{> talk} 08:49, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Backlog template made by User:TheJJJunk

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Best wishes --Frze ^{> talk} 04:18, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

New REFBot

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RFC on Artificial Intelligence

Please delete the RFC or reword it within 24 hours. I completely agree with you on the substantive point. However, you have posed the RFC in a non-neutral fashion. This will give those who want the word "human-like" used (which will exclude most of modern weak AI from coverage) a reason to continue to question consensus, because the RFC is flawed. Please delete it or strike it, so that we can write a new one. Otherwise the issue will fester even after there is apparent consensus for the exclusion of "human-like". Robert McClenon (talk) 22:28, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I tried to fix it. As I said on the page, it's obvious I don't know how to do this. Just show me where I put my argument. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:34, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Artificial intelligence

Hi Charles, It looks like trolling to me. Each of our reasoned and sourced responses gets ignored or a curveball. The editor is just not worth getting cross over. pgr94 (talk) 21:36, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. I'm just going to try to stay on point and be civil. However, I have to say, I don't like being accused of a personal attack ... I can't just let him say that without responding. If he keeps saying it, I'll keep responding with same point. It's not personal -- it's just that something like that can't be left there on the page without a response. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 03:31, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, pinging users only works if you sign with ~~~~ in the same edit. --Mirokado (talk) 23:29, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help over at Artificial intelligence. You're reference cleanup is really appreciated. The article receives a lot of drive-by edits, and thus it has a relatively high rate of entropy increase, especially with things like ref format.

Not sure what you mean about pinging -- are you talking about how I occasionally re-edit my talk page posts a few times in the first quarter hour or so? That's just me trying to make them more civil as my heart rate slows down. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 12:37, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that Mirokado is referring to WP:NOTIFICATIONS - several criteria need to be satisfied simultaneously. In particular, a link to the user page of the person you wish to notify must be added in the same edit as your four-tilde signature. Since I did that in this edit, Mirokado will have been notified. It doesn't work if you edit an existing post to add a user link - even if you blank out the sig and re-sign. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:34, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

He was indeed notified, and as you see has not yet gone to bed (but will shortly). Thanks Redrose for those details, I had not realised all of that. Thanks also Charles for the kind words about the cleanup. I intend to open a article talk page section in a few days so we can discuss remaining minor issues. --Mirokado (talk) 23:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

@CharlesG; From your edits today I could not tell if you were trying to ping me today. If that was a genuine message then my answer is that there is no desire on my part to re-hash either the 63 cites or the 3 articles again. My offer as posted on the Talk there is to present what I think is a solution to the situation with the RfCs and the other issues together if you would re-post the section in good faith. It would take me about an hour to pull together all the material on my end for this, and your re-post of the section would be an assurance of your good faith. All rules of BRD would apply, and I would urge all editors to follow the discussion results following policy and guidelines. FelixRosch (talk) 21:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

We already have a solution: deep learning gets a one sentence mention under "neural nets". That's the consensus. The BRD on this issue has already happened. You made a bold edit, I reverted it as WP:UNDUE and we discussed it. A lot. That's all there is to BRD; it's just the way we edit every day. There's no reason to revert the revert against consensus; that just doesn't make any sense.

As for the RfC, I gather that we're just waiting for them to close after a month. There's really nothing else to do. We could publicize them more, I suppose. An admin will close it and then we can finish this up. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 02:11, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Meetups in the UK

Hi, saw you on TV (Later with Jools Holland) last week. Since you're this side of the pond, have you thought of coming to one of the frequent meetups that we have? There's one most weekends, see this list. It would be great if you could make one of these. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:55, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

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Chinese Room: Clarify how Universal TMs differ from TMs in general.

This entry regards the 5 June 2015 edit on the Chinese Room page, in section "Chinese room and universal computation", for: on the statements: "However, universal programmability is a red herring. It is merely a convenient way to instantiate general Turing machines, which are not always programmable."

The point cited addresses the relationship between (1) universal Turing machines (UTMs), (2) programs, and (3) Turing machines (TMs) in general.

For a given TM, T, one way to physically instantiate T is to directly build it out of some mechanisms (e.g., silicon circuits, vacuum tubes, tin cans and string, etc.). A second way to instantiate machine T is to encode its specification as a program, Tp, and then run Tp on another physically instantiated TM, U, which is a UTM (a.k.a. a programmable computer). Thus, any program is simply a specification of some TM--analogous to a blueprint for a building.

When UTM U runs program Tp, the process simultaneously instantiates (at least) two distinct TM computations: (1) that of U and (2) that of T. But this way of instantiating T's computation is merely a convenience because one could always eliminate U completely and instantiate T directly. Thus, U's universal computation is always completely dispensable, a mere implementation detail.

If this is still not clear enough, let me know. I'll take another stab at it, and I also have a new paper that spells this out in text and diagrams.

In the original wiki description, trying to keep things brief might have left this point too obscure. So, I'd be happy to elaborate it further if I can gauge the appropriate amount of detail.

(BTW, the problem with the CRA, consequently, is that its sole focus is on computation U when in fact U is 100% inconsequential to the algorithm of T, which is the only one that is truly processing the Chinese inputs and outputs.)

T. Earl Grey (talk) 06:48, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

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thanks

In my day job I'm the CS librarian at MIT, and I was looking up Nathaniel Rochester today. Thanks for writing a solid article :) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 04:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

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	Thank you for your great work on AI topics! (and for your contribution to my music year of 1993...) Ijon (talk) 07:10, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

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A barnstar for you!

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	Just read a few articles in philosophy of AI and was impressed by their quality (though the general one needs work, by now). I'm an academic working in that field. - Thank you! Antepali (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

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Progress in AI article

Since you've made a number of useful additions to the AI article and added the original citation request for this topic, can I draw your attention to this Peer review discussion. I'm not quite sure which of several courses of action is appropriate. Thanks Chris55 (talk) 11:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Automatic taxonomy construction

I noticed your work on artificial intelligence articles, and was wondering if you would mind taking a look at automatic taxonomy construction, to see if there is anything you could correct or add.

Thank you. The Transhumanist 23:45, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Honestly don't know anything about it. But thanks for asking. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:18, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

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