User talk:Chris j wood/2004

Welcome

Hello Chris j wood and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

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Marlow Bridge

Sorry about that, when you study history as a hobby, time periods become very subjective and 1832 seems modern, trust me! -- Graham ☺ | Talk 21:15, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Crofton

Just thought I'd let you know that I like your article about Crofton Pumping Station. A bit of a coincidence that you wrote it this weekend but I was planning to do the same after a visit on Sunday. I'd searched wikipedia on Friday and there was, of course, no entry at that point. Imagine my surprise... Jerry cornelius 16:47, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. The serendipity goes beyond that. I was there on Sunday, and that is when the photographs were taken. And I too was born the year ENIAC died. -- Chris j wood 17:18, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good to hear from you. I've visited Crofton many times - we often take friends and relatives there as it's such a beautiful spot. I only came across wikipedia a couple of weeks ago and created the Wilton Windmill entry really just to test article creation function. It needs some more work and a photo or two. What are you planning to do to celebrate next year - or at least take your mind off turning 3 score years - 10? For myself, I'd really like to climb Kilimanjaro - have visited Tanzania many times but always on business. Jerry 15:37, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It was my first visit to Crofton in a long while; I vaguely remember visiting years ago. Fascinating place. I hadn't realised the Wilton Windmill article was yours; I was kind of surprised that when I put the link in from CPS that it came up blue rather than red. Sadly I've never seen it operate; something for next year perhaps. I've no plans from celebrating my birthday yet; still in denial I think :-). -- Chris j wood 13:39, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Official invitation

Hi!

This is a message to let you know that there is now a UK-specific Wikipedia community page at Wikipedia:UK wikipedians' notice board. It would be great if you could come and get involved! -- Graham ☺ | Talk 23:21, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Berkshire

I've replied to your query on the discussion page. I have to ask... you are clearly local to Reading and my own Tilehurst. Are you perchance the Chris Wood who worked for ICL in Reading some years back? There were two, but one sadly passed on. Ian Cairns 19:22, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I sure am, and I do remember you from 'the club'. I'd seen your signature on other articles and was wondering the same. However both the two Chris Woods who were around at that time are still definately in the land of the living, so you may be thinking of the wrong one. I worked in the consultancy end of Dataskil, eventually left to help form a company called March with Terry Pudwell and Andy Robbins, amongst others, sold out to Internet Security Systems in 1998. The other one worked on things like Access Manager, eventually married Gisela Evans (previously married to Chris Evans, or the mad Canadian, or the Colonel from Datakill) and now lives in Thatcham with a daughter Katrina (also my god-daughter, just to confuse everybody). Chris Evans did pass away in the mid-90s, which might be where your confusion comes from.

ISS closed down the Reading labs at the end of 2003, and I got a reasonable pay-off so I'm 'resting' right now (hence my activity levels here). Now summer is over, I'm starting to look for work anew. I've got a feeling somebody told me you had got into teaching (which is what Andy Robbins is doing right now), but I may be mis-recalling. -- Chris j wood 19:41, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Small world... Yes, it was Chris Evans with whom I was confused. I left Dataskil / ICL C&TS to go contracting in 1984 in a joint company with Peter McSweeny, the same year as Linda Collins, whom I married in 1986. We have 3 large children and are in the Tilehurst phonebook. My neck of the industry effectively closed down in 2000 / 2001 with IR35, and I decided that teaching would give me a job til I drop, which I need with 3 x university candidates approaching. I started part-time at Kendrick, where Andy is / was teaching, then moved full-time to Bulmershe and am now at Slough Grammar, teaching A-level Physics and IT (although I'm a mathematician). Linda is also teaching IT locally. We see Andy and Karen from time to time at Kendrick or the scouts. Good to speak. Ian Cairns 20:31, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Of course, I'd forgotten you had got together with Linda. In which case I have met at least one of your approching university candidates. I recall bumping into Linda in Friar's Walk when she had a babe in arms; and again in Savacentre probably about 97/98. Please pass on my regards to her. I've enabled 'e-mail this user'; if you want to drop me an e-mail I'll send you my e-mail address. -- Chris j wood 21:10, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Proposal

Hi, when you have a sec from all this great work you're doing, you may wish to have a look at this proposal to sort out the ever increasing repetition of work that's going on with regard to British place names and cataloguing them. Your comments would be most appreciated. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 17:02, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Categorisation of towns

Thanks for your note - I can see the point of your worries about the project. However, there is no consensus on a nationwide approach to categorising villages. In Durham they are included with towns, in Somerset in borough categories, in Merseyside with towns in borough categories and in most other counties just in the county category. I think that, as you suggest, there will be an increasing number of articles on villages, and for clarity these should be outside the main county category. Where people decide to put them is up to them; if they also wish to include towns they can. I don't think any of that will make the categorisation of English towns any less useful - note that towns in Ireland have been categorised in the same manner. Warofdreams 18:35, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Dundee

Thanks for your input :-) Good to know someone's reading it! Adambisset 17:36, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

USS_Potomac_(AG%9625)

Hi Chris, can we change the title of the USS Potomac page so that it uses a simple hyphen instead of an em dash (%96) - this would much simplify linking and appears to be what is used with regard to other US ships. I was putting in a link from the Camp David page where the Potomac is mentioned. Blorg 01:12, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Transport for London

Wow! Good job! — OwenBlacker 03:12, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia meet in London

Btw, you might be interested in Wikipedia:Meetup/London. — OwenBlacker 03:14, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Stagecoach Group

Hi, thanks for the welcome! I'm still familiarising myself, it's not quite as easy to navigate round as I first expected. No worries about the edits to the Stagecoach article. I'm hoping I can expand on it by creating articles on the various companies, though I've not yet figured out the ideal way to go about it as yet...--Ayrshire--77 13:01, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Tadley

Thanks for your work on Tadley, it has improved the article considerably. --Lancevortex 18:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Counties

All of those counties still are used for administration as a unit to some extent, just not via a county council, if you read Tyne and Wear for example it explains the situation quite well, and that was written by a councillor. Perhaps something similar should be written for South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire et al to explain the situation. G-Man 21:52, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi. "administrative county" is not my preferred terminology. It is the terminology that the traditional counties movement demands, because they claim that "county", the actual legal term for these entities, is ambiguous. "Administrative county" may not be the best term for this, but it would be better than inventing yet another term, such as "statutory county". Morwen - Talk 22:24, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Trams in London

Hi.. thanks for letting me know what you done..that´s fine by me and I accept that it´s also logical to keep London tram articles the same as London buses..In fact I had already seen the changes before I received your note.. even so thanks.. I´ve only just started the article, which I think is always the hardest bit, but I intend to fill it out in the the coming weeks.. greetings from Berlin IsarSteve 15:05, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lake Havasu

Just to say that yes, that was an accidental truncation. Many thanks. --Iceaxejuggler 23:58, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

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

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

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

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

response

See my response to your questions on my talk page. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 14:34, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

University of reading

Hey buddy, thanks for the comments on the stuff i added to the University of Reading page. Im doing loads of little bits building up my 'expertise' so nice to get some feedback. Im a student in the university so can give a number of academics who teach here, but as with any article, the question of who is noteworthy and who is not, is definately a pov. Just because Kevin Warwick has his own wikipage dont make him the most noteworthy. Not really sure what comment im tryin to make, but not really sure how we can make it npov! But the changes you made did make it less pov.

My rambling, for today, is over DaveLewis 13:15, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Misleading 'xxx tube station' article names

Hi Chris, There is a convention on wikipedia as follows:

London Underground stations = xxx tube station
National rail stations = xxx railway station
DLR stations = xxx DLR station
any combination of the above = xxx station

I see your logic that Mansion House has no "tube" lines only "subsurface" but London Underground consider the whole system "The Tube". Check out - www.thetube.com. The title is "London Underground. The Tube" so its not really an error to describe any station on the system as a tube station.

I somewhat disagree. This is colloquial usage, like saying "Britain" for "The United Kingdom". One could argue that, since The Tube originated as an equivalent for "London Underground", the meaning has changed with that of that term, but I find that less relevant. In my opinion, just like we shouldn't base titles on "Britain", we shouldn't base titles on "The Tube" - "xxx tube station" should be "xxx underground station". For one thing, most of the English language speakers of the world do not refer to this system as "The Tube", and for another, the usage of "tube" is confusing, as the discussion above demonstrates. Aliter 19:22, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cable car on rails

You indicated you had your doubts about the sentence "The fact that the cable of a cable car system is a loop also adds some other advantages, such as the possibility to go down one slope and up the next." To some extend I agree. I guess "gives", rather than "adds" would be better. However, I intentionally left out the Furnicular counterpart on this one, to indicate this was not a solid distinction.

The basic problem is that transport systems come in two flavours: Driving systems - Train, Taxi, Cable Car on Rails - and Moving systems - Furniculars, moving side-walks, elevators, ski-lifts. Though the Cable cars are close to the dividing line, there's little doubt about the definition of the system itself. On the other side of the border, things appear to be different: It's not all that clear what characteristics make up a Furnicular, and which of those distinguish it from other moving systems. But the archetype of the Furnicular railway is a system with cars on either end of a cable, so the weight of the car pulled up is compensated by that of its pendant going down, minimizing the effort needed to move them. (Is this even in the article?) Systems of that type obviously have no need for a complete loop. Aliter 19:22, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Very good additions to the cable car article, and I agree that the division between cable car and funicular should be in the defining paragraph. I also added a paragraph to the "Funicular" section emphasizing the conceptual difference between the two. Do you think that para should be nearer the top of its section? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 22:45, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)