User talk:Dcoetzee/Archive 2007 2 21

This is an archive of the contents of User talk:Deco from my registration up through 2007/2/21.

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Hello there Dcoetzee, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page or how to format them visit our manual of style. Experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Angela 12:39 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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User User:Dcoetzee is someone who I wanted to leave a message for, regarding limit point so I had to create their user page so that I could hit on this user-talk page. I hope they notice and then check talk:limit point -- AndrewKepert 03:17, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hello. Your self-balancing binary search tree article makes me wonder if you have not yet noticed that one conventionally highlights the title word or title phrase at its first appearance, like this. (I took care of that in that article.) Michael Hardy 02:54, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hrm, I usually do, and I really thought I did. Maybe it was just a slip. Thanks for catching this error, I'm sorry.

Derrick Coetzee 13:56, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Bravo on your recent edit to reference (computer science) - a vast improvement. This page was the subject of a minor edit war between myself and another (rather notorious) user, in the end I gave up... I hope that your very excellent treatment doesn't get hacked about in the same way mine did, but if so, count on me for moral support! Cheers, Graham 23:43, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for creating Union (American Civil War). I've been unhappy with all of the links to United States in the Civil War articles. RickK 00:03, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ditto, and you can save yourself mucho keystrokes by changing from "disambig'd" to "dab" which is understood to mean the same thing. jengod 00:21, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. Union was the most linked disambiguation page, but is no longer, although some I wasn't sure about I left alone. I hope this is helpful.

Derrick Coetzee 00:23, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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re : Allen Ginsberg

> I don't understand why you reverted my edit on Allen Ginsberg without any > explanation. Is there some compelling reason to prefer gay to homosexual? Upon > examining these two articles, it seems the first discusses more the term gay than > homosexuality, and so it seems less appropriate. Derrick Coetzee 16:13, 15 Sep 2004 > (UTC)

Thank you for your input, Derrick. Many people - especially those such as myself, who are gay - prefer 'gay' to 'homosexual'. 'homosexual' is clinical and outdated, and used largely today by those who deem it necessary to deny gay people basic rights everyone else has. We certainly don't call everyone who is straight 'heterosexual', let alone in Wikipedia entries. Given the context of the rest of the article, there is little doubt the 7th graders and the like, whose usage of the word 'gay' as in, perhaps, 'dumb' - or even - 'festive' - shall be confused.

It's only a silly article on a website, heh, however I would be glad if you would consider an alternate terminology. Thanks!

Take care,

• Geoff

re: Goodness Gracious Me

Hardly worth mentionning, but what's the value of changing

[[India]]n to [[India|Indian]]

as the first notation is a contraction of the second? :)

(Indian to Indian)

Zuytdorp Survivor 03:10, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there is; I forgot that the link extends beyond the ]] to the end of the word. The only argument I could make is that my version is somewhat clearer to an editor, and that it parallels the link preceding it.

Derrick Coetzee 05:24, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Please see note on Talk:Basic block.

Yaronf 12:18, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

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Thanks for the info. We likely won't cross paths too terribly much, as most of the stuff I do will be related to crypto. I am a C instructor and wrote a "book" on it (for my class, not to be published or anything), so when I saw the example I had to nitpick it, heh. Technically if everyone conformed to C99 standards then // would be a valid comment, so that's really more me being pedantic than anything. If you want, I can replace the example with one from my book, on page 50 here (pdf) -- of course this example is even more intense than the one already in the linked list page. CryptoDerk 02:09, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I understand why you felt compelled to nitpick, I'm an experienced C programmer too. Your example is good and has a lot of detail, but what I'm mainly concerned about is avoiding library calls; C without library calls is quite close to a generally understandable pseudocode (except perhaps for its bizarre function pointer type notation), but no one who doesn't know C would understand C code with library calls. The malloc() calls are unavoidable, but I imagine something like inserting the numbers 1 through n and then iterating through and adding them (a fold). I'll write up something like this and put it in now.

Derrick Coetzee 00:02, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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D, We've tripped over each other now and again, most notably perhaps at pointer. But the reason for this note is that I have blundered across the article Impressive which indicates that not only did you do the first version but all succeeding edits. A good article. In fact, impressive. Thanks. ww 19:07, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Frankly, when I couldn't find any articles on any particular horse, I was worried whether writing one was appropriate, but this one seemed interesting for a number of reasons. I'd like to include a picture of Impressive, but I'd be hard pressed to find a picture in the public domain. I should ask someone for permission.

Actually, I wrote nearly all the material on nearly all the pages listed on my user page; typically I leave a section or two from the previous stub-like article. Thanks again.

Derrick Coetzee 23:51, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

D, Actually, though I'm not a horse person, I think they're sufficiently interesting (or the way we behave in re them is) that articles on individual horses would be quite appropriate. For instance, Secretariat or Seattle Slew or the original Arabian imported into Britain in the 1700s(?) from which all(?) Western world registered thoroughbreds descend, or the original Morgan, or, to take an individual horse much in air of late, Sea Biscuit.

Again, really nice WP work. Perhaps most especially in intelligibly bringing in the genetic problem and its traceability. ww 15:35, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Thanks for your recent contribution on spam (e-mail). The history you discuss, though, is actually already covered (although possibly not as well) on the general article spamming. There are a number of related articles in the Spamming series, which you might want to check out. Since what you're actually discussing -- the Canter & Siegel case -- is newsgroup spam and not e-mail spam at all, maybe it would work better in that article?

I know there's a lot more knowledge and history about spam in the anti-spam community and the Internet as a whole than has made it into these articles already -- every little bit helps. Thanks! --FOo 23:24, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Or perhaps on History of spamming, though I'm considering folding that in to the main spamming page .... --FOo 23:26, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I really just wanted to give a brief overview of the origin of the term, since I think a lot of people who want to know about spam are curious about that. Maybe it could be made briefer, or an appropriate link installed.

Derrick Coetzee 23:45, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Hi, just wanted to leave a note saying I appreciate your comments on my talk page... most people who revert my edits do it so callously that is seems a bit rude, but I felt that you actually put some thought into what you were doing. Thanks. DryGrain 10:21, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Hi, I noticed that you uploaded Image:Yellow stop sign.jpg with details that permission had been given to use it. This sort of permission was discussed on the mailing list recently (see Use of noncommercial-only images in particular). If you can make a fair use claim for it, you might want to do that, and add a {{msg:PermissionAndFairUse}} tag. See also Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and Wikipedia:Image description_page#Fair use rationale. Angela. 22:39, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

The original photographer was an amateur, so maybe I should've sought more exclusive permission. In any case, I find fair use somewhat difficult to argue. A better plan would be for a Wikipedian to get their hands on a similar picture, but locating such a sign seems difficult. I understand your concern though.

You could try listing it on Wikipedia:Requested pictures. Angela

By the way, I never thanked you for your friendly welcome message. I did find it encouraging. Thanks!

Derrick Coetzee 03:18, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No problem :) Angela

SQL

I'd already sort of updated it, which is why it now says "when special:asksql is enabled...". I don't know for sure if it will ever be re-enabled because there seems to be a lack of agreement amongst the developers about whether it should be allowed or not. It used to be turned on and off regularly, but now the default is set to off, I expect this won't keep happening. However, until someone says it definitely won't be turned back on, I thought I should leave the statement there, as people might want to take it into account when they support admin applications. Angela. 06:24, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

Sysop

I first welcomed you in June, and here's your second welcome - welcome to adminship! You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. Congratulations and good luck. Angela. 20:18, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

new WikiProject pseudo-code language

D,

I like the idea of such a project and have made some comments in re the language design. I think I'd best be able to help by looking in now and again as my WP time is largely tied up in the crypto corner, where there is also a Project.

Thanks for inviting me. We stumble across each other from time to time don't we. Computing topics, horses, and....

ww 22:58, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Good job

Good job on stop sign. Dori | Talk 05:33, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Lists

I noticed the excellent images of linked lists that you made. Could I ask you to make a similar image of two lists with the same tail (for Lisp programming language and possibly for Linked list as well)? I would like to preserve stylistic continuity between all of the list images. --Smack 19:54, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's impossible, because I don't currently have access to the tools I used to create them, and won't for 3 months. I appreciate the compliments though and will try and think of a way to meet your request. Derrick Coetzee 21:38, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

garbage collection

Thank you for your edits to Automatic garbage collection and Reference_counting. I'm glad you split them apart. -- DavidCary 03:36, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

{{ msg's

Hey, just to let you know, msg: before stub and delete are not required anymore. Cheers. Burgundavia 17:13, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

Oops, I knew that. Old habits die hard I guess. Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 17:27, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

GFDL ?

Hi, we use on french wp some of your pics and I'd like to know their exact license. Are there GFDL ? I couldn't manage to get this info on your user page. Thanks in advance for the answer. fr:Utilisateur:Tipiac. (We use fr:Image:Binary tree in array.png and Image:Binary tree.png and maybe others I don't know of).

Sorry, these are released by myself into the public domain. I shall update their image pages at the next possible opportunity. Derrick Coetzee 22:19, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you

Middle East

Hi! Thanks for fixing the indentation on Middle East :-) However, the L actually should be lowercase ("External links")… —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 02:51, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

Well... it is sort-of mentioned in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, but only under a sub-page for "headings", and I imagine most (new) people don't spend that much time reading every single detail in the manual (I know I didn't). Hopefully after this first effort it won't be hard to correct new problems as they appear—right now we're fixing 3 years worth of neglect :-) —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 07:34, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

Lance Armstrong

Dcoetzee -- I've restored a sentence or two on drug allegations; the lead section summarises the article, and since we have a section on drug allegations, a mention in the lead section is appropriate. — Matt 22:18, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Okay. I erased these based on the fact that usually the lead section doesn't summarize the rest of the article, but more introduces the topic of the article, but this is more a convention than a hard rule. Also, if it does summarize the rest of the article, it should probably include a sentence or so for some of the other sections as well. Derrick Coetzee 22:30, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's a good idea for the lead section to summarise the rest of the article; Wikipedia:Lead section says, "The lead should briefly summarize the article". I agree that it still needs more to cover the other sections. — Matt 22:59, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Open map

Hello Derrick, I changed a couple of things at open map; in particular, it appears to me that open maps don't preserve compactness and connectedness. Check it out and let me know what you think. Cheers, AxelBoldt 19:10, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Re: Grammar

Thanks for your comments re: grammar and complete sentences. --Diberri | Talk 06:31, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

• I'd say rewrite anything this person wrote from scratch, and tell me if they keep reverting it.

Yes, you are a real bastion of civility. But do try to refrain yourself from offering unilateral solutions to items that are disputed as this ammounts to promoting vandalism. El_C

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone with my comment about reverting anything written by this person. I don't actually know anything about them or believe anyone's changes should all be reverted. It was intended to be humourous. Mistakes of grammar never really invalidate content. Derrick Coetzee 21:03, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. I am gladly retracting my statements directly above as well as at the Village Pump (see addendum). I address some of your thoughts at Talk:Kahan Commission, and as mentioned at the VP, I request that all further comments on the Kahan Commission be limited to that article's talk page. Thanks. El_C

Spam filter

I had such a wonderful experience with the spam filter last night, I went into the mediawiki IRC channel and blasted them ;)

Here is the list of filered terms (ROT13 encoded so that the spam filter will let me post this comment - translate here):

[20:09] <wrebavz_> $jtFcnzErtrk = "/((uggc:\/\/(jjj\.|)(rzzff.pbz|cnvqfheirlfsbenyy.pbz|uhxhxv.arg|jroenax.pa|treuneq.cnqhpxgvbaf.arg|rzzff.arg|zbatbyvr.za|mj88.pbz|fw55.pbz))|QryrgrZrFuvmunb|PuvancrqvnVfAbgSerr|jjj1.pbz.pa|agfrnepu.pbz|robbx2h.pbz|hygvznfhes.arg|cncreyrffnepuvirf.pbz|guhevnz.pbz|uvfgbelbsangvbaf.arg)/";

→Raul654 08:30, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you! historyofnations was the culprit on this particular page, as it turns out. I'll search the database sometime for any other pages being "blocked" in this way. Derrick Coetzee 16:23, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Hello. Sorry if my external link addition to the Abraham Lincoln article offended you and any other Wikipedians. I would appreciate it if you would inform me of what links are permissable on Wikipedia. What you label as "viciously biased" merely seeks to balance the majority of Lincoln literature, which often idealizes him. I was pleased to see how well written the article itself is written and I fail to see how the external link I added diminished that. I apologize if this is not formatted correctly and lacks a correct link, but today was my first day as a registered user of this great service. --JimGar 01:38, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude; we try to stick to authoritative sources though, and avoid those with a strong bias, if possible. However, I would consider asking on that article's talk page what other contributors to that page think of your page. Derrick Coetzee 02:31, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip and I appreciate the suggestion. Will do so going forward. --JimGar 14:29, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image license change

Please refrain from adding license information to images produced by other Wikipedians, such as you did on Image:Trie example.png. Only the copyright holder can place an image under a specific license, and I for one disagree with some of the principles of the GFDL. I have changed the tag to public domain — I will add tags to my other images as well. Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 17:33, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Presumably you agreed that the image could be distributed under the GFDL when you submitted it to Wikipedia. That said, yours was one of the images I was slightly unsure about. I apologize that my change was contrary to your wishes. It is great that you add tags to all your images, since that will allow them to be distributed as part of the Mandrake distribution of Wikipedia! David Remahl 17:40, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I apologize; I did check the box, and since I'm the copyright holder I really did place it under the GFDL. I should pay more attention — I assume my later act of placing it under a less restrictive license (public domain) is permissible. Derrick Coetzee 01:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Of course it is! And the wording on the upload page should really be fixed..Not only can it be difficult to interpret for those uploading their own files, but people uploading fair use images (which are permissible according to current policy) have to outright lie about "their copyright holder" accepting their incorporation in Wikipedia as GFDL...It's problematic, to say the least. David Remahl 02:01, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Penrose triangle

Do as you like with the modified Image:Penrose_triangle.png; it's fine with me. -- Wapcaplet 19:15, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

English

Hi. Please disambiguate English on your user page. For example, English. Thanks. RedWolf 02:46, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

I will not. I am referring to the disambiguation page, and to the process of disambiguating it, which I did before you did. I think this link makes sense. Derrick Coetzee 21:02, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

wikicode

I'm done fiddling with the wikicode standard. I assume the next step is for you to edit my edits, and then continue until we agree. (I'm new to wikipedia and haven't done this before, but that made sense to me.)

Hack away. I've got thick skin. ;^) wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 21:52, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

DcoetzeeBot

Hi, I've marked DcoetzeeBot as a bot since there were no objections on Wikipedia talk:Bots. If you ever need the bot flag removed, please ask at meta:requests for permissions. Angela. 19:35, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Angela. This should help keep my changes from disturbing others. Derrick Coetzee 22:31, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

beta Systemic Bias section

Hi, if you wish to help contribute to a beta version of a Wikipedia page section designed to counter-act Wikipedia's systematic bias, please sign the bottom of this section on the Village pump - Wikipedia:Village_pump#Systemic_bias_in_Wikipedia. If not, no worries.--Xed 03:22, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pseudocode / Wikicode - wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk

Bizarre - when I clicked on the edit link for this section I kept getting the previous one. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 15:24, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It was the result of one of the sections above, which had == on one side but not the other. I should file that as a bug. Derrick Coetzee 16:00, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I did a search for Pseudocode and found some pages that raised some questions. Since you know a lot more about the ways things are done, I thought I would tell you my comments and see what you think. (I have to leave to give a lecture in a bit, so this list may be truncated for now.) If there are no comments, then I believe it needs to be converted to wikicode.

Wow, good job finding all these. Thanks. I'm not sure how I would search for pseudocode, except by some interesting SQL queries on the database. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It pays to not know too much. ;^) I just typed "pseudocode" at the left and clicked on "Search". wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 15:24, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Pseudocode - should this page talk about what pseudocode is, and have a reference to wikicode.

Oh dear, I overlooked this. Seems people have been attempting to create their own standard in the article namespace! I've informed them of the situation and will hopefully rip all that self reference off that article soon and replace it with a link to Wikipedia: Wikicode. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Dynamic programming/Implementations and Examples - I'm tempted to leave this alone, since it is really more in english than pseudocode.

I feel quite inclined to impose pseudocode on this page, if only to avert the garish clash of styles and redundancy imposed by all the different syntaxes. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Quicksort

I wrote the pseudocode on this page. :-) I won't be too mad at me if I fix it. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Algorithm

I'm unsure about this page. This is very introductory material. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Hash table
• Computer animation
• Datatype
• Magic number (programming)
• Iteration
• SHA family - this looks pretty close to wikicode

These are all fairly straightforward to convert. However, I really should finish up the user guide first. SHA is a bit tricky, since it very specifically requires unsigned 32-bit integers; I can create a datatype and describe it in the text for this purpose. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Template messages - is it still a proposed standard, or a real one?

Perhaps we should now call it an experimental standard; I still want to encourage feedback. I'll make this change. Derrick Coetzee 06:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To continue the list: (I'm guessing I should have created a separate page for this, but I'm not sure how to do that, and was too lazy to look it up. ;^) wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 15:24, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Linked list
• Cyclic redundancy check
• Control flow - References section probably should refer to wikicode
• Principal components analysis - this might be a good example of a specialized that doesn't need to follow the standard
• Burrows-Wheeler transform

I will work on stuff as I get time, but we have a crisis at work, and I probably won't have much time at home for this.

wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 15:24, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Linked list is one of my pages too. I'm gonna move this discussion to Wikipedia:Wikicode/Pages needing conversion. Derrick Coetzee 16:00, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:U.S. Southern Wikipedians' notice board

Hey! I've created this new notice board specifically for articles related to people from the U.S. South. If you are interested in contributing, leave a message on the page and add articles you feel need to be reviewed, contributed to, or started. Mike H 20:59, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Ocarina of Time characters

Hi Derrick - I'm not actually sure why I did that, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it just seems dumb. I moved it back. Sorry if this has caused any inconvenience. –Andre (talk) 23:35, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contrails and T

(William M. Connolley 19:33, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)) OK, I asked for a source of the 1 oC assertion on the albedo page. You put in the link to contrail, which... is also just a bare assertion. What is the actual source for the info?

Frankly I have no idea. You'll have to ask the person who added that information to contrail. Derrick Coetzee 19:44, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Update: this appears to be User:Maveric149. Derrick Coetzee 19:45, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fred Bauder I think. I've asked him.

U.S. and US

Feel free to revert and discuss if you like. I simply find it silly to have an Americanism so ingrained in the style guide, especially since the explanation for it was beyond trivial. There cannot be ambiguity with the pronoun 'us' and the adjective/noun 'US', if for no other reason for the distinct capitalisation. Writing 'U.S.' solves nothing: if the sentence can be so interpreted as to offer a sensible meaning with 'us' in place of 'US', one really ought rather to rewrite it than use full-stops to aid comprehension.

It seems very inconsistent that one should write U.S. right next to UK, EU, NATO and other acronyms, all spelt without any punctuation. Whilst I don't generally mind it in an American context – as with any American-style spelt word –, nor when it is referring to official abbreviations of institutions, if the major reason for favouring spelling with full stops is to make a Google search easier, it really must be stressed that if it is so important as to deserve being a search hit, it should by all means be written 'USA', 'United States' or 'United States of America' and not either 'US' or 'U.S.'. —Sinuhe 20:50, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your helpful edits in Dijkstra's algorithm. Brona 20:05, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

DeCSS

I think we're safe with the DeCSS image. The full DeCSS code is much longer, and requires a long, hexadecimal decryption string. The image only contains the core function which, without the decryption key, is useless. There's no way anyone could be prosecuted for "distributing a copyright-protection-circumvention device" unless it worked. (See here for the complete DeCSS code.) Thanks for your interest! – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 20:18, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Fingersnap numbers

Thanks for making my remark more brief. As per my last edit, I think we can get away with a much smaller number and still exceed the fingersnap number. Actually we don't need to appeal to A(5,n) however I think emphasizing the size of those numbers (even if we grossly understate it in the process) is a good idea. Pakaran. 17:01, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Note my edit summary has a small error - lg 10 > 3. This doesn't effect the overall argument since it's far less than the safety margins elsewhere. Pakaran. 17:09, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually I'm changing the article slightly. Deliberate understatement is silly. Pakaran. 19:53, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Castlevania images

Looks like you already noticed the quality loss is almost non-existant. At least, not in the eyes of the people who would see it on the article, as it would need a zoom of at least six times to notice the small pixelization from the .jpg to the .png (your version). And yes, I understand what you mean about size. The other image, however, is not a different version of the image I voted for deletion. It wasn't even GIF to begin with. It could be converted to PNG, yes, but all we'd get with that is a little less size on the file.

I used Photoshop for all that, and it doesn't handle GIF formats very well. I always end up creating JPG files and taking care for little (or none) quality loss. I created that other one from scratch. From a wallpaper. You think it's worth it for me to recreate all of it and save it as PNG? – Kaonashi 22:50, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh, ok. Simon is okay. Thanks for the effort and for understanding. Drop me a message if you notice (or need) something else. – Kaonashi 22:53, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Small images

Regarding Image:Belgium_flag_large.png: unfortunately I do not recall how I produced the 500 byte version. I may have used convert or XV to convert from original GIF format to PNG; both tools are available in Linux distributions. The small size does not surprise me, because the flag is simple and compresses well. --romanm (talk) 10:23, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Newbies

Well based on you newbies other 2 msgs that I also deleted, before hand, about big tits etc. I dodn't think it was a problem. Is there a problem with bitingthe heads of the self -righteous?--Jirate 12:59, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC)

Thanks!

I just wanted to thank you for the dab summary tip ^_^ --Patrick Bernier 07:58, 2004 Nov 4 (UTC)

Thank you for your article on Red-black trees! It helped me a lot in writing my implementation. I now made some adjustments on that page. I think it should be more readable now, but hope I didn't screw anything up... Drak 10:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Large box respirator

I haven't re-uploaded it as I already had another image under Image:Small box respirator.jpg and didn't have any use for the incorrectly-named image. Geoff/Gsl 21:22, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of it. The photo is actually from the Imperial War Museum catalogue. I shall update the image page with the details and shall see about making an article to give it a home. Thanks again. Geoff/Gsl 21:51, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Connexion

Why are you changing connexion to connection? — Kate Turner | Talk 22:26, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I was only going to change it in EB 1911 articles, as part of the process of updating them to more modern usage... but I don't want to cause any more friction. I'm sorry. Deco 22:28, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, I don't mind :-) But I don't think "connexion" is obsolete - it's just a British varient. — Kate Turner | Talk 22:56, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Sorry to barge in on somebody elses conversation, but "connexion" is not common usage in British English :) Joe D (t) 02:52, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Image templates

Anyway, what I came here for was to point out Template:Unverified incase you wanted to format it as Template:Unknown (it's protected so I can't do it myself)--I don't suppose it's neccesary in any way, but you might have wanted to standardise them. Joe D (t) 02:52, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A good suggestion — I did it. Deco 20:16, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Two personal Qs

(feel free to ignore, of course)

Hello again, I was just curious (a good trait for a wkp-editor, right?): based on your name, do you have any connection to South Africa? (or is this so obvious I shouldn't even be asking?) And as an aside: do you by any chance know of Derrick*, the long-running TV crime series from Germany (which was also wildly popular in Norway)? (* hmm, you might just have looked it up in wkp, though...) --Wernher 01:01, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My dad's from South Africa — I know Coetzee is a very common name there. I have a brother named John Coetzee, the same as the Nobel Prize winner. I had never heard of this TV series, since I live in the US, although I had heard of oil derricks, but I do like crime TV. I should check it out sometime; thanks for the heads up. Deco 01:25, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

thanks

Thank you for the comment on the Infinite Monkeys article footnote. It's always nice to know one's efforts are noticed. Very specific compliments such as you made are especially useful feedback. Your note brightened my morning. Pedant

thank you for your edit to the article titled metalanguage. (I wrote most of it.) It's much improved. Thanx also for the suggestions. I'll try to incorporate them in future articles.

                                                                                  Bert

Welcome!

I realise this is a bit belated, but I just wanted to welcome you to Wikipedia, and invite you to join Wikipedia: WikiProject Computing and Wikipedia: WikiProject Mathematics if you have not already done so. I also have a strong interest (and a degree) in both computer science and math, and I invite you to drop me any questions you might have, or to mercilessly assault any of the pages listed on my user page. Thanks for editing, and I hope you've come to stay. Deco 00:05, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome. You probably noticed me working on article in theoretical computer science. I intend to do (or have already done) some heavy editing of the articles in computability and computational complexity theory. My main aim for the next time is

• base computability articles and relating articles on computable function and not Turing machine
• create computational models article or something similar, describing deterministic TM, oracles etc.
• base complexity theory articles on computational models.

Comments are always welcome. If you have knowledge in those areas and especially if you have a firm grounding in math I will certainly have some question to discuss. Cheers. MathMartin 16:10, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

May we delete this photo?

Hey there-- on Oct 25 you voted to keep this image. However, it's out of focus, no one in the dog project has any idea what the breed is, and we have no licensing or source info so can't really use it anyway. I can't even tell whether it's overweight or just very furry. I think the only reason it still exists is your opposition vote to its deletion. I'd like to remove it; is that OK? Elf | Talk 20:29, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead. I meant to revoke that vote — I'm sorry. Deco 22:17, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Elf | Talk 22:33, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Decision problem

Thanks for your edits on decision problem. They made the article better. MathMartin 19:36, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ecozone Images

"You should be able to upload a new version on top with no problem. Sometimes the cache will not update immediately. Also, we probably can't delete anything until a replacement has already been uploaded, but I don't want you to be forced to use a less appropriate name. Can you describe your problem?"

Thanks; I uploaded the three images, all maps; User:Tom Radulovich pointed out there was an error on them (he's right), so I've corrected the error on my originals on my computer. I can't upload them on top of the old ones (whatever the instructions say, it can't be done, it quite simply doesn't work, I've tried several times in the past and always ended up having to re-upload with a new name. NO EXCEPTIONS.). But this time, I'd like to keep the same name for the maps, as 'Nearctic1.png' etc looks a bit silly. The only way I can see round it is to delete the old ones before re-uploading the new; I can have them uploaded again within a few minutes once it's done (if within the next quarter hour, then I'm off for mealtime, back about an hour later) - thanks, MPF 19:13, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I assure you I've uploaded over existing images on dozens of occasions without ever having problems. It is not impossible. Can you describe, specifically, what you did and the exact problems you experience? Thanks. Deco 19:15, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll try again, but I've never successfully uploaded a new version of an image with the same name. The old one always stays (and it isn't just a cache problem, because the old version is still there days or weeks later). Will let you know the results later this evening - MPF 19:34, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay. I sometimes find it helps to do a CTRL+F5 (in Internet Explorer). It also sometimes helps to click on the version links which view a particular version of the image. I'm not sure exactly what triggers the use of the new image. Tell me which one you try so I can look and see if it looks changed to me. Deco 19:38, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi Deco - I've just tried re-uploading Image:Nearctic.png, and sure enough, nothing has changed, not even after pressing F5. To see if there's any difference, the southern tips of Florida and Baja California should now be white (not purple any more) - MPF 20:42, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I hate to say it, but it looks updated to me — try cleaning out your browser's cache. You have already replaced the image successfully. Deco 20:44, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Strange! I'll do the others and remove the delete request. Now I'm wondering how long till I'll be able to see the results of the re-uploads! - MPF 21:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Stranger - the other two, I could see the change come through, and the first is now showing, too! Thanks for the help :-) MPF 21:24, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No problem. :-) Deco 21:27, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Gray Code Picture

Hi, I'm currently working on the german translation of the Gray-Code Wiki entry. I would like to use your picture, used in the original, but I'm not familar with the Public Domain Licence. Is ist o.k. if I would mark the Picture as yours and put it under the Public Domain Licence in Germany, too? Tia, --194.97.7.22 13:28, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Public domain is not a license; it means that I have permanently given up all rights to the image, and it may be used by anyone in any manner. So feel free! Deco 00:14, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

thanks for van Emde Boas tree

Thanks for writing the van Emde Boas tree article! BACbKA 22:58, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started the Free the Rambot Articles Project which has the goals of getting users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to...

1. ...all U.S. state, county, and city articles...
2. ...all articles...

using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) version 1.0 and 2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to the GFDL (which every contribution made to Wikipedia is licensed under), but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles (See the Multi-licensing Guide for more information). 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. So far over 90% of people who have responded have done this.

Nutshell: Wikipedia articles can be shared with any other GFDL project but open/free projects using the incompatible Creative Commons Licenses (e.g. WikiTravel) can't use our stuff and we can't use theirs. It is important to us that other free projects can use our stuff. So we use their licenses too.

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template (or {{MultiLicensePD}} for public domain) into their user page, but there are other templates for 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:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

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:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

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 at my talk page what you think. It's important to know, even if you choose to do anything so I don't keep asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 14:32, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Making a slight modification to Option #2, you can place all contributions to the U.S. place articles (98% of which were created by the rambot or at least were modified by it) into the public domain:

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

{{MultiLicensePD}}

You can add any other exclusions or inclusions to that statement. For instance, on my page I release all main namespace contributions and no others. You are correct though that you can't just up and pull things out of the public domain, although if you tried I don't think anyone would really complain, however, they would have a right to deny you that ability. You could try another tactic in the meantime: {{MultiLicensePDMinor}} without any additional qualifications. This will release all of your MINOR edits into the public domain, which may be nice for when you did a minor copyedit to some article you don't care about too much. I don't know if all this helps, but hopefully it will. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 02:58, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, that was {{MultiLicenseMinorPD}}. I told you the wrong thing. Sorry. Actually you can make your changes both public domain and GFDL. When you add ANYTHING to Wikipedia, the document becomes GFDL, but the edit by itself is individually copyrightable and you can release it into the public domain. It's a strange way of thinking about it, I'll agree. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 21:40, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I realise that I can place some changes under the GFDL and some in the public domain. What I don't believe makes sense is placing a single change under both, which is my impression of what "multi-licensing" does. Is this a misimpression? Deco 20:05, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Debate about deleting an image

Greetings. There is a spirited debate going on here about whether or not to delete Image:Nevada-Tan.jpg for privacy reasons. Since you have recently voiced an opinion on Wikipedia:Divulging personal details, I thought you might be interested in weighing in. – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 18:46, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:33, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unverified images

Hi! Thanks for uploading the following images:

• Image:Insertionsort-after.png
• Image:Insertionsort-before.png

I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GNU Free Documentation License, {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 21:52, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

P.S. You can help tag other images at User:Yann/Untagged_Images. Thanks again.

Automata theory

Hi, could you give your opinion on Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Automata. MathMartin 00:31, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re: Image:Pademelon.jpg copyright tag

I apologize for my mistake. I am helping with the Wikipedia:Untagged Images project and I am perhaps going through them to rapidly. I made the assumption that the source understood that the content of the site is in general under the GFDL and by giving permission was agreeing to that. I see this is a bad assumption and will discontinue the practice. You can help the project by making sure that all the images that you have uploaded have the correct copyright tags so that someone like me won't have to make judgement calls. Thank you for your understanding. — Edwin Stearns | Talk 15:17, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about that — some images I uploaded before I knew about tags. I do appreciate your tagging efforts. Deco 21:39, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

EXPTIME

Well, sorry for intruding on your article, I just went through the list :) No harm done though, right?

Yeah, it's fine, it's just that the Wiki Syntax project has made questionable changes to a number of articles I've edited and it's started to grate on me. I'm sure you've improved many other articles and appreciate your effort. Deco 19:58, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Privacy Policy

Deco, thanks for the insight --- in my humble opinion, the term Privacy Policy deserves dual caps...thus I believe I correctly indexed the PP draft @ Wikipedia:Privacy_Policy. Therefore, I have redirected Wikipedia:Privacy_Policy to Wikipedia:Privacy_policy. Thanks again! - Gabriel Kent 20:07, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Free content discussion

I replied to your concern on the Free content talk page. My point can be summarized as the following. "Legally distributable" is correctly read existentially (i.e., may be legally distributed by at least some people) not univserally (i.e., may be legally distributed by everyone). See my comment for more details. —Alexander 05:11, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)

RFC on the current prog.lang. template dispute

There's a rather heated discussion going on at the talk page of 'Major programming languages small'; why don't you have your say about the matter too? --Wernher 01:29, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Manual of Style

Derrick, I have a query about the Wikipedia Manual of Style. On Oct 17, 2004, you added a sentence to the page saying that the MoS is policy and should not be changed without prior discussion. I'm just wondering where it says the MoS is policy i.e. where you found that out. I'm not saying it's wrong, just wondering what the status of it is, and what that means in terms of gaining a consensus for changes. Best, SlimVirgin 13:24, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

Well, what is and isn't policy isn't a terribly concrete thing — I consider the MoS policy simply because people widely cite it as justification for style changes, and because its contributors seem to take it seriously. I hate to discourage editing under any circumstances, but big changes often got a violent reaction from the other people there, so I just wanted to stop that. You might drop a note there inquiring on its official status. Deco 03:31, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Derrick, thanks for your response. I found the policy page after much searching, and the MoS is not policy, just a guideline. Unfortunately, two of the current editors of that page were using the claim that it was policy to stop other editors from contributing, with something of an ownership attitude developing. I understand wanting to prevent editors from flying in, making substantial changes, and flying out again; but on the other hand, the page shouldn't be left in the hands of a tiny number who themselves are making substantial changes and pretending it's policy. That isn't directed at you by the way. Thanks for helping to clear up the confusion. Best, SlimVirgin 03:36, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

regarding your changes to Screening fallacy

Hello, with all due respect, have you read my comment on Talk:Screening test fallacy? If the article's aim is to point out exactly what is Bayesian_inference#False_positives_in_a_medical_test, there is no need to have it in separate article, or at least without references there. Best, Samohyl Jan 09:28, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't argue with that — I didn't even look at the talk page, I just noticed that this article was incomplete (in that it made an unintuitive statement but provided no credible justification for it). If you think this page should be merged into the link you give, feel free to convert it to a redirect to that link. Otherwise, I think a very brief summary of the explanation is appropriate, whether or not a link is present.

To answer your question on the talk page, I believe it is the second meaning that the author is describing, although I'm not sure myself. Deco 21:02, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Spellbot

I was thinking of creating a spellcheck bot that would highlight what it thinks are misspelled words using the GNU aspell. It would check US standardized spelling and international. Once it finds the spelling errors, it would quote passage of text (only enough that someone could find it), underline what words it thinks its misspelled, and post its errors on the discussion page. What do you think? -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:33, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'll start by saying, I agree that posting the errors on the discussion page for human review is definitely the way to go. On the other hand, I would not suggest the simple approach of running an ordinary spellchecker over it. A more robust (but more difficult) approach is to use context-sensitive spell-checking technology, trained on the entire English Wikipedia, to isolate inconsistent spellings; that is, spellings that are rarely seen in a particular context. This would help avoid both false positives and false negatives, and takes advantage of the fact that Wikipedia is the product of many authors.

As for how this would be accomplished, that's a bit trickier, but see the ideas in this paper. That paper doesn't do exactly what I mention above, since it works only with particular confusion sets, but I'll think more about how this could be done.

In the meantime, a decent approach is to run aspell on 100 random articles or so yourself, look for false positives, and add them to the dictionary. If you do this enough you should be able to cut the false positive rate down to something reasonable.

I hope this helps. Deco 05:34, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi

Please stop sending user death threats or I will block you --Capital of Liberty 05:43, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Uh, what? I've never done any such thing. I try very hard to get along with people. Is someone trying to frame me, or have you just made a mistake? Deco 05:45, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a nut; don't worry. User death threats, LOL. SlimVirgin 05:59, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Prosecutor's fallacy

You asked a question last month at Talk:Prosecutor's fallacy to which I have replied. If it is unclear, feel free to contact me. --Henrygb 03:15, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nihilism movement

I tend to think that "Nihilism movement" doesn't work for a title, though I agree with your changes otherwise. Please check out Talk:Nihilism and let me know if you'd be okay with one of the other titles I suggested there. -Seth Mahoney 06:01, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Project Participants List

Hey Deco.

In case you didn't follow the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Reformat of Participants list, I'm writing to you to let you know that I've converted the "WikiProject Mathematics Participants List" into a table. It is now alphabetical, includes links to the participant's talk page and contribution list, and has a field for "Areas of Interest". Since your name is on the list, I thought you might want to check and/or update your entry.

Regards, Paul August ☎ 19:22, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Since the new table is in alphebetical order, your comment: "Same here, Revolver", now unfortunately makes less sense. Sorry for that. By the way were you aware that Revolver has stopped editing? (see: User:Revolver). That's too bad. Cheers, Paul August ☎ 19:29, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Flag of South Africa

Yes, I quite like the intro now, the only thing is I think the sentence about changing the flag being necessary because of apartheid doesn't read well. I really didn't think the way I had it written before was POV, but maybe I was wrong, but the way it is now is missing some panache. Sorry for being agressive, but I was drunk, and checked the page at 3 am in a hot ocmputer lab, and reverted those changes because the intro paragraph looked kinda terrible then. Páll 06:18, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Don't talk to me — I didn't touch that part. Only the other parts of the intro. Deco 06:23, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Matrix chain multiplication

Thanks for your annoyed comments about this article — you persuaded me to actually finish it. I hope you like how it turned out. Deco 06:53, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, if my comment looked annoyed, but that made you finish the article, then that is good!

The article looks indeed more complete now. Forgive me for not saying more, but I don't know much about that math area. Thanks and enjoy! Oleg Alexandrov 16:00, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

planet names

I recreated it, so that no one got lost while it gets debated in WP:RM for a proper way to name all extra-solar planets. (hopefully) I didn't read your comment until after I redid the redirect. There's an inconsistency right now, and since stars can have several different designations... planet names based on "proper star catalogue names" would also vary. User:Worldtraveller tends to like it the other way, so I've set it up so it can be debated through Requested Moves, as I don't make a habit of reading the talk pages that Worldtraveller has been using to make comments on articles he'd like to rename. 132.205.15.43 04:09, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, as long as someone can take care of the move if and when it's necessary. Incidentally, I encourage you to create a logged in user if you haven't already — it will help create an identity for you that people can recognize, and would erase some suspicion from your suggestions. Deco 04:14, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Alias episodes (Season 2)

Couldn't help noticing the nice work here. Not your day job I see.  ;-) hydnjo talk 01:57, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. I did 1 and I'm about to do 3 also. :-) I may lean towards inclusionism, but I have my limits. Deco 01:59, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hey Derrick, I can't see (reviewing your contributions) the limits of which you speak! You seem that (to paraphrase): All work and no play would make Derrick a dull boy. Excellent work on the serious stuff (most of which I have great difficulty following but, I try). hydnjo talk 02:57, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just so you don't get the wrong impression, I didn't write any of this — I haven't seen the show, I just consolidated 22 existing articles. The same for the other seasons. I was just trying to help combine stubs into more useful, organized articles. The old articles are now redirects listed for deletion. Deco 03:37, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But thank you for the compliments on my other articles. :-) Deco 03:40, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The episode information listed appears similar to that appearing elsewhere on the Internet (eg TV Tome) -- rather brief, like teasers in a TV Guide. I was wondering if it would be worthwhile fleshing out the episode descriptions to include more reminders of what happened in the episode? This would, of course, introduce spoilers but they seem to already be listed in the Character descriptions. Personally, I'm currently watching Series 3 so would be willing to update description as I watch, but I didn't want to change the content without discussing with you first, since you created the pages. John Rotenstein 05:39, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In truth, I only consolidated the pages, I didn't write the content, so I'm not worth consulting. Visit the pages listed at Special:Whatlinkshere/Alias episodes (Season 3) whence the content originally came and check out what author or authors are responsible for those. I believe User:SD6-Agent is your man. Deco 07:40, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Solana

Why did you revert Javier Solana to a beast version. That is not the current or the consensus version. lots of people, most of them not beast believers, have put a lot of edits to create the current version. The old version is riddled with inaccuracies. You had absolutely no right just to revert to a very outdated version. Why did you do it? --SqueakBox 03:06, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Javier Solana --SqueakBox 03:18, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

You reverted to the correct version the first time, then reverted back to a Beast version without religious texts quoted, but that was an outdated version. You should have looked at the talk page where this is a declared controversial issue, and where (in the archive) I justified the new edits I made to clean up what had been a subtle POV original thesis offering evidences to confirm the belief of evangelical Christians that Solasna is the Beast. You should have checked all this out on the talk pages, and checked the number and variety of edits occurring since the beast version you reverted to became outdated. You reverted to it in 3 mins, so in the future please be careful before making such drastic changes to any article so rapidly, but especially in a controversial one as Solana unfortunately is. You certainly don't profile as a beast worshipper; I just think you should have taken more care and investigated before reverting. I have reverted your 2nd revert back to the version of your first revert, and hope this is satisfactory to you, --SqueakBox 13:33, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

I hear you made a mistake though I don't buy the "more important tasks". This article is continuously attacked by beast believers who put that outdated text in for a reason. You would have been better off just leaving it reverted like others do, and not given fuel to the beast believers fire. I was getting weird technical problems which is why I took it to the admins; plus I couldn't figure out why another RC patroller (who also knew nothing of the article) was reverting to the wrong version. If it hadn't been for this problem I wouldn't have gone to the incidents. There has been an edit war between the 2 versions, with one user blocked, so you were playing in to a complex situation by doing what you did. --SqueakBox 21:24, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Please dont put my statements back on my talk page, I got it the first time. i thought you meant edits. i didn't choose to make Solana the beast. yes, you made a mistake. Sorry for jumping down your throat, --SqueakBox 21:56, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for editing your talk page. I can never figure out where to leave comments anymore, everyone does it differently. I didn't mean to be aggressive, I really just don't understand how you can deny someone the right to undo their own edits. I hope your conflict over that article is resolved — I won't touch it again. Have a good day. Deco 22:18, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just meant don't put my comment twice on my talk page, the first time was fine. my talk page is fine for posting comments to, but I might then delete them as it is my page, and vice versa. IU am putting your last comment on my talk page. these beast believers have left me a bit frazzled. You have a nice day too, --SqueakBox 22:31, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

practice

Just to make it clear. Is in British English "practise" correct? Oleg Alexandrov 04:12, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, answered my own question. Won't touch that anymore. Oleg Alexandrov 04:15, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Commented on this on your page, sorry I was a bit slow. Don't feel bad, you're learning while fixing many long-overlooked errors. :-) Deco 04:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bernard Chazelle

Please verify recent change in article categories. Mikkalai 06:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

They look fine. Deco 19:28, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. When I asked the question he was categorized only as "french computer scientist", that's why I asked. Mikkalai 21:34, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

template:Infobox U.S. state

Hi - You entered a comment on the talk page for this template about it not working in IE on Windows 2003 and Windows XP SP2. Can you look at one of the Japanese prefectures, say Aichi Prefecture, and let me know if the similar template has the same issue? I'm curious if the issue is specific to the one template or if any similar template the same problems. Thanks. (I'll watch you talk page for a while, so feel free to respond here). -- Rick Block 03:27, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oddly, this infobox works fine. I wonder what the difference is? Deco 03:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Update: the issue only occurs in certain articles such as Alaska and Alabama, but not in Georgia (U.S. state). Deco 03:43, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can you try them all and make a complete list of the ones that have problems? There might a commonality that would be obvious given a larger sample. -- Rick Block 03:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It appears to occur only in articles where the template is followed by another floating box listing state designations like the state flower. A good solution would be an expanded template including these. Someone fixed Alaska by pulling these out into a separate section, but see Alabama. Deco 20:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image copyright templates

Response: I am now using the {{CopyrightedFreeUse}} tag on my images. Thanks for the tip. I couldn't figure out how to get the {{CopyrightedFreeUse-User}} tag to display my name. Any advice?

-Adm58 06:46, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, you do this using the syntax {{CopyrightedFreeUse-User|YourUsername}}. Deco 22:44, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PD

I don't see what the problem is with releasing your edits and uploads into the public domain. You implicitely give up your rights and say that everyone can use it. Saying it may still be copyrighted is incorrect. Anyone trying to claim copyright on something they released will fail miserably, regardless of whether it's actually legally possible. Also, if you can't release your work into the PD United States government and creativecommons who are supposed to know their laws have been doing it wrong for ages. I just can't believe that's the case. Let's just wait with changing things until this has been looked at by people with a law degree. Sincerely, - Mgm|^(talk) 11:41, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Additional note: Why bother changing it if there's no discernable difference between a PD or free use image. You can use both for whatever you wish. Mgm|^(talk) 11:45, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

You can use both. I only insist that if you use the PD tag alone that downstream users are suitably warned that the text is only available under the GFDL, and is not available for free use, despite what it seems.

Creative Commons is not wrong; they intentionally included language in their public domain dedication which releases all rights to the work, so that in jurisdictions that don't allow placing a work in the public domain, it would still be available under a free use license. Deco 23:11, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Free Use templates and categories

The categories Free use license and Free use minor edit license which are pointed to from your new "free use" templates for text, images and minor edits don't seem to be working. They also need to be categorized within the Category:Wikipedia copyright structure. See also my comment at Template talk:CopyrightedFreeUse. - dcljr 22:05, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, will fix. Deco 23:13, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Other unfair admins

Hi, we both have some interest in complexity and seek to provide the most informed and correct articles. can you help me deal with unfair and incorrect moderation on another article? Taipei_American_School they keep trying to censor my posts 68.121.211.14 23:54, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Re: Kaepora Gaebora

Agreed, it's irrelevant POV. Plus I've never even heard of this bizzare theory before. It seems very speculative and very asinine though. EreinionFile:RAHSymbol.JPG 01:33, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Your edits to Link (Legend of Zelda)

I will probably sound stupid but I can find no words to express my thanks for the last few edits you did to Link (Legend of Zelda). As you maybe know, I'm the one who brought the article to FA status and have been maintaining it ever since. When I saw your name in the history, I was on the brink of despair, as I was certain that would mean another hour of reverting/rewording POV, redundant information, ridiculous fancruft and innaccuracies. Instead I found the single best series of edits and corrections ever since the article went FA. It may not have been much to you, but it's one of the small things that made my day. Thank you so much :D. Phils 14:05, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem. I understand how much vandalism must hit a high-profile article such as this. I'm glad my small additions were viewed positively. Deco 02:57, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Curious about Matrix Chain Multiplication...

I noticed you added a reference to a paper by G. Baumgartner et al. on Matrix chain multiplication. May I ask how you came across that topic in your computer science studies? HappyCamper 15:43, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To be honest, I was just looking on Citeseer for a paper that discusses the matrix chain multiplication algorithm in a more general setting, and this one seemed to do so from an excerpt, but when I examine it more closely it doesn't appear to be quite the sort of generalization I had in mind. I'll probably change the way in which I cite it somewhat. Deco 00:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, the paper is a good example of where this sort of thing has real practical applications. I only mentioned it here because I didn't expect to see it in Wikipedia! It was a pleasant surprise. HappyCamper 01:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

your kylie pic edit

very nice job cleaning up that kylie pic! i'm a new user of GIMP, and your edit inspired me to look further into its sharpening tools and find they're much more powerful than i thought possible. surprising to see the difference between the original and your edit. BTW, though i'm no sharpening veteran, i have recently gotten into blurring background for certain pics also. amazing how it draws viewers directly to the subject you want. mind telling me what prog you used for the kylie pic? SaltyPig 07:48, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

Thanks! I used Photoshop, but you could do the same in GIMP or Paint Shop Pro. My strategy is: make a rough selection containing the subject, invert it, feather it, and use some Gaussian blur. If the initial image is blurry, as in Kylie's case, I go back, roughly select the subject, and apply a bit of overall sharpening; then I specifically select certain features that draw attention such as the eyes and teeth and apply extra sharpening to them. It's important that you always use feathered, blurry selections, not sharp selections, or else you'll create visible seams. Deco 22:14, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OCR can be helpful

Wait... don't be discouraged by people who say that your OCR idea can only be used for Wikisource. Many articles in Wikipedia are based on encyclopedias that are now in the public domain, such as the[[1911_Encyclop%E6dia_Britannica]]. Therfore OCR would be helpful. --Munchkinguy 22:36, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

RP

The RP article is excellent. The small error notwithstanding, I felt quite informed by it. I really should start putting up more articles about some of the lesser-known CS stuff. (honestly I think that my college education is more useful on wikipedia than in the real world).

Medieval hunting

Thank you, I appreciate that. Eixo 07:06, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

RP - Revenge of Fact Checking

I woke up today to a letter from David Newman, apparently a professor at Oxford. He noticed that my "correction" to the article was totally wrong. I changed everything back, however added a bit better explaination, as it was a bit confusing before. Also I do not think the formula was correct, (I put an entry explaining this in the talk page) and I replaced it with what I think is the correct formula. You might want to take a look at it though, as I don't really have a book on this subject so I had to base it on my own reasoning. Thanks!

I looked over RP, I think it's okay, found one major error. I wouldn't worry too much about the exact probability, as long as it's obvious it's approaching one. Deco 09:02, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

transmission de messages d'une orbite obtuse

---

i am the anon who posted into the pump under the title of this is my fourth attempt to interact. i returned to wikipedia earlier than intended because a cooperative unadvertised opensource knowledge base project i have of late been giving source and content to was hit by a person who tracked a bit of mud from wikipedia. i volunteered, because i seem to have an ability to make jumps without a net across data threads which often turn out to be correct. my beliefs about the mad poster is that he wanted to help, feels overwhelmed and a non-expert and doesn't understand that simply creating pages that link in an obvious fashion to readily acquired data is not what the project is trying to accomplish. anyway, the poster is relatively new here, at least under present sue-doe, and looks to be more of a --|manic/depressive|-- type poster.

(by manic depressive type, i do not mean to infer mental illness, but instead, um...hiccups?? maybe--starts and stops)

from my digression to your response to my post: thanks for the kindness

but i am no sure if you underrstand exactly what i was implying.

you replied in part:

sometimes you'll just find that in a community of editors, not everyone will agree with your viewpoint

this isn't the issue. i stated that my awareness of my personal bias restrained me from editing anything on the al-Libbi article. what i was trying to point out was a deletion of a divergent view on the talk page, that came with sources. what i was trying to point out wasn't an battle for truth in a free marketplace of ideas. it was unjustified deletions on the talk page by someone who feared the substantiability of his/her viewpoint.

btw, i still believe al-Libbi was hype, and the US intel got punked by the ISI.

sources in point (links unchecked tonight, if either are dead, ask what would i have to gain from a lie here):

Arab News - May 15, 2005

[CIA Missile Kills Al-Qaeda Leader in Pakistan: Report http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=63794&d=15&m=5&y=2005]

by Huma Aamir Malik, Arab News

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 15 May 2005 — A Yemeni national, considered Al-Qaeda’s No. 3, Haitham Al-Yemeni was killed by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft in a mountain region near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, US media reported yesterday.

How many Qaeda 3 are there anyway?

more recently a Der Spiegel interview with Musharraf, where Prevez offered as evidence of a successful drugging and torturing of al-Libbi was the arrest of "14 couriers", nothing more. If you check news from around al-Libbi's capture, you'll find that they werre claimin this info was acquired from a confiscated phone book at the arrest.

Basically, Qaeda 3 gave up 14 poor Pak arses who ride mopeds. This, the mastermind who is facing charges of multiple failed assassination attempts agains a government dictatorship in Pakistan, which came to power by deposing a democratic government. Kind of a stretch defining him a terrorist, isn't it?

Also, Musharraf has said he won't hand over al-Libbi to the US until after his trial in Pakistan. this is a exception to high-end Qaeda prisoners in Pak hands post-911. the sop has been to beat the crap out of them, then ship them to gitmo or Baghram under American ownership. It indicates that the US isn't buying the Qaeda 3 designation.

==

'nough said.

i don't know your wikihistory, and haven't tried to scrape it, but felt i ought to at least reply a bit, and judging from this page, i'd say that augering divergent news sources isn't top of your priorities anyway.

cheers mate - anon from i believe a 174.... node again

"Quand une fois la liberté a explosé dans une âme d'homme, les dieux ne peuvent plus rien contre cet homme-là".

Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Diable et le bon Dieu

VB.NET update

The Visual Basic .NET article has been substantially updated by myself and others since your previous comment, and it turned out it was indeed too low on the TIOBE list - I was wondering if you would reconsider your vote for inclusion?

If you can think of any other things that might be good to mention on the VB.NET page, I'd also welcome your comments. --GreenReaper 05:17, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good job! Please see the original vote page. Deco 04:40, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Considering that you have contributed to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation, what is your opinion on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Alessandra? —Lowellian (talk) 00:34, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Image:Kyrgyzstan_flag.png

Image deletion warning

Image:Kyrgyzstan_flag.png has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. If you feel that this image should not be deleted, please go there to voice your opinion.

Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:24, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Link

Excellent copyedit and damage control on the Link article yesterday (what else could be expected of you, though?). The article's passage on the Main Page was thoroughly positive, thanks in great part to you. If you ever need help on a tech/computer science related article, drop me a line. Phils 07:31, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your compliments — I'm glad I was able to be of help. I added some images too. Deco 16:28, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fragmentation

Thank you for adding the "data fragmentation" category to Fragmentation. While this verges on original research, I like it. It corresponds directly to what most people believe they are doing when the run a defragmentation tool.

My copy of the File Structures book by Folk and Zoellick claims that the two kinds of fragmentation -- internal and external -- deal *only* with wasted empty space. I suspect the original terminology came about in the days before virtual memory and sector-oriented file systems. In those days, a file on disk was always "in one piece". (Some of the examples in that book illustrate storing things on a single track of disk, without breaking that track into individual sectors). An array of data in RAM was always consecutive. If you wanted to store something that was slightly longer than the largest free block size, sorry, it was impossible -- even if all the free blocks, if they could be combined, totaled hundreds of times the size you wanted. In those days, what you call "data fragmentation" never happened. (I wonder who came up with the idea of breaking up a file into little pieces, when there's not quite enough space in the largest free block ?)

Nowadays, RAID storage not only breaks files into little pieces and scatters all over a hard drive, it goes beyond that to scatter them all over several different hard drives connected to the same computer. p.s.: Do you know anything about any computer systems that are immune to single-point-of-failure? I'm pretty sure that requires something like RAID, but going even futher and scattering files over multiple computers. ( Such a thing would be especially nifty for a wiki ).

Should I move these questions to the talk page of Fragmentation or file system ?

--DavidCary 30 June 2005 05:33 (UTC)

Thanks for your compliments. I came up with data fragmentation as a way of characterizing the difference between "fragmentation" in the sense typically meant in filesystems and fragmentation of the sort encountered in memory allocation. I think it's interesting that parallels can be drawn between both areas for all three types. Many database server clusters are designed to be failsafe in exactly the manner you describe, by automatically mirroring data across many stores and failing over requests from a failed machine to another redundant server - doing this efficiently without conflicts though is quite a difficult problem. The analogy of RAID as a more severe form of fragmentation is flawed though; the blocks are not so much scattered as "striped" or "aligned" across drives in a precise pattern which enables faster access, not slower as in data fragmentation. I'd suggest Talk:File system from your two choices, although your questions touch on a number of topics. Deco 30 June 2005 19:58 (UTC)

Just some gratitude

Hi, I just wanted to thank you for finding the link to the interview I was talking about on the Zelda page, it was pretty much what I needed. I hope now I will be able to put the info back where it belongs, on the page. Thanks again. Kreachure 3 July 2005 15:57 (UTC)

Glad to help — I'm wishing I could find the program on VHS or DVD now so that we could use a direct quote. Too much information is too inaccessible. Deco 3 July 2005 17:31 (UTC)

Image:Leda emst.png

Image deletion warning

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The Wheel of Time Merge

Since you commented positively on this merge, I wanted to let you know that Lowellian (talk) has reverted all the articles involved in the merge. Please join the discussion and see if we can all come to an agreement. This note is to alert you -- I hope that future discussion of this can mostly take place at talk:The Wheel of Time#Book Merge. I will be following that page. DES 16:26, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

London bombing image

Thank you for your interest in the image Image:London2005Bus.jpg, which I uploaded. This image may well be copyrighted, but I still believe this qualifies for fair use. US legislation specifically provides for the fair use of copyrighted material for news reportage. I have expanded on this rationale on the copyright problems page. I will add a detailed fair use rationale to the image page in the next day. TreveX^talk 21:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Re your question on the Talk:Hollywood blacklist about First vs Fifth Amendment. I answered it there today. Sorry, it took so long but other things tied me up. Ted Wilkes 18:08, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Image:Johnny Depp.jpg

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PD stuff

It took me a while to find it - it was a post I made on Wikipedia-L back in May this year. I quoted something you had said on Template talk:MultiLicenseMinorPD from the raw wikitext. Anyway, you weren't the only one I quoted - I quoted the sources you provided. It was a good argument at the time, and I decided to use both versions (with disclaimers) to be certain.

As for usernames - I have an Uppercase A and a lowercase x, one word, two syllables - and somehow I had the luck to pick (almost 10 years ago) a nick that is far from unique. Unfortunately, usernames are what we go by here, so if I saw "Deco" somewhere and I didn't know who it was, I'd be inclined to visit User:Deco. Thanks, Alphax ^τεχ 07:39, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Article Hits Counter

I'm impressed with your List of Wikipedia articles with at least 1000 hits but haven't been able to easily find anything on how an ordinary (translation: non-geek) user might be able to obtain a hit count on an article or group of articles he takes great interest in. Could you please point me in the right direction? --StanZegel 05:24, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Sure. You simply download a database dump, install it on a machine with MySQL installed, and issue a query of the form "SELECT cur_counter FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_title='Whatever'". This involves quite a bit of setup; you can perform the same query at Wikisign, but you'll be waiting in a queue. See a sample of a query I tried of this form. You can also do more complex queries, such as getting counts for all articles in a particular category. Ask me if you have anything in particular in mind. Deco 20:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

It returned "no results" when I entered

   SELECT cur_counter FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_title='Imperial Crypt' LIMIT 500 

so I must be doing something wrong. --StanZegel 01:01, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Afraid so. I neglected to mention that you have to use the same name that appears in the URL - in this case, using underscores in place of spaces. Deco 03:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Cricket

Greetings. There is currently a debate going on at Talk:Cricket about whether the page Cricket should be about the sport (as it is now), or a disambig page. Someone noted that your famous list lists cricket (insect) higher than cricket (sport). Several people have doubted the accuracy of your list because of this, and I was wondering if you could shed some light on it. Thanks, – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 22:08, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Your List

Your list of pages with a 1000 hits is interesting. I actually made an Excel file with them which I can send to you (or do it yourself: just cut, paste and sort) as I figured people would want to be able to browse articles they frequent. I was also curious if the 1000 hits includes internal wiki-hits and searches or just those from outside? If the former, I'd be surprised as there are pages I think I've searched a 1000 times myself from within Wiki. Marskell 15:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Honestly I'm not sure precisely what hits count towards the cur_counter field, but I believe that every page load does, so that would include visitors coming from other pages on Wikipedia. I appreciate the offer for the Excel file, but I could produce that fairly easily - if I post an updated version I'll link to one. I like the current form because it has direct links to everything, even if it does load a little slowly. Deco 19:07, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots

Hi, I'm currently going through the list of bots with a flag. I see your bot has one, but it is not listed on Wikipedia:Bots. Please list your bot there and describe its purpose. If it is inactive, please move it appropriately into the inactive bots section. Thank you for your time. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:21, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, my bot was approved on Wikipedia:Bot_requests but I never listed it on Wikipedia:Bots. I'll add it now. Deco 17:41, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Visual Basic Classic Wikibook

I see you have contributed to the Visual Basic article on Wikipedia. Any chance you would like to join in editing the wikibook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Visual_Basic_Classic? --Kjwhitefoot 07:57, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article rescue contest

I'm writing to tell you the contest has begun and will take 3 weeks. Since you've shown interest, I thought you'd like to know. - Mgm|^(talk) 16:05, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Please vote on list of lists, a featured article candidate

Please vote at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 20:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Image:Boots logo.png has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Boots logo.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there 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.

Hash Table

Hi there, thanks for your recent contrib. Would it be ok to move this new resizing section below the conflict resolution one, since it refers to specific resolution policies before they are introduced? Cheers. PizzaMargherita 23:22, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I felt unsure about the placement, but given the multiple references to the different policies I think you're right. I went ahead and moved it. Thanks. Deco 03:49, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I'd like to apologize. I didn't realize that you were the official guardian of the Hash Table entry. In future, I'll vet any suggested changes through you. I'm sorry I caused you extra work to remove my contributions. DerekP 00:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Please don't talk like that. I agree with your contributions and I didn't revert your changes outright. I wrote the article on VLists and I should have mentioned that they can be used to implement functional hash tables. I agree with your sentiment that only particular implementations are persistent or non-persistent, I just felt it was verbose to make that explicit when it was already implicitly asserted by the wording of the existing paragraph. I only disagreed with your placement, since the text is pretty clearly out of place in the Implementations section. If you disagree, please feel free to revert me and explain your changes on the talk page. I apologise if I offended you with my changes. Deco 02:04, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Interuniversal space

I restored Interuniversal space, because it's the subject of an ongoing AFD. There aren't many votes there yet, but there was definitely no emerging consensus to speedy delete it. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 07:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake. Deco 07:39, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

athenian democ

Hi, thanks for doing the copyedit on Athenian Democracy. I changed a few things back either because they seemed in danger of misleading...

• "signal" exception, not "single", because I don't think the generals were the only non-re-electables.
• democ dates "traditionally given as", not "Historians...claim" because it's completely uncontroversial and it seems too emphatic to use "claim". (I wrote 'traditionally' just to leave some leeway for protodemocratic precursaries and postdemocratic hangings-on.)
• removed assembly "members" (which I had used in quotes) because it sounds too parliamentary.

or because I liked them: someone has to stand up for polysyllabic comparatives and superlatives like "humbler" and "remotest".

I notice copyeditors like to turn colons into semicolons, which to me turns dramatic revelation or strong consequence into muted connection. Does the house style follow a draconian only-for-lists view of the colon?

Thanks again for the copyediting. Flounderer 10:09, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

That's okay. I haven't heard the expression "signal exception" - I assumed that was a typo, and I would prefer something like "notable exception". I had trouble rewording the bit about the dates, but all I really wanted to do was eliminate the "it", which had an unclear referent. There's no policy about colons, and I don't mind them in sentences, but in this case I chose the semicolon because "unlike earlier schemes there was no property qualification" seems more parenthetical than like a dramatic revelation to me. I do respect your choices, though; your writing is excellent. I hope this helps. Deco 12:01, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

thanks for the encouragement. I'll go with notable; it's less hisssy. Flounderer 20:45, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:England flag.png has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:England flag.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there 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.

No, no it hasn't been. I'm fine with deleting it now that we have SVG support (although the resulting images will be larger), but do actually put it on IfD. Deco 21:08, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Erm... it had (see Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2005 November 12) but I'm glad you're fine about it :-) --throup ✆ ✍ 01:16, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Oops, forgot about the archive. Sorry! Deco 06:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Interlanguage links order

While searching through Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links, I liked your proposal about making a clear policy about Interlanguage links order and create a tool that fixes the problem according to the consensus. I've started a discussion on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Interlanguage links order, I invite you to participate. Thank you. CG 14:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this is the best possible current solution. Articles which deviate from the current norm can be found in a local database dump and then automatically fixed. But the ideal solution in my opinion would still be for the software to establish the order, ignoring the order of the in-article tags. Deco 19:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

References

I'm a little confused, you are adding references to the same book into multiple articles. You cite it as a reference, yet it is not referenced in the article, so it is not a reference. It could be a source, but at least some of the articles you don't appear to have edited, so how would you know it has been used as a source. Is this book so significant - it isn't my field, but this just looks like a general text book. I'm sure you aren't spaming references to your own book, so perhaps you ould explain your reasoning. --Doc ^ask? 02:01, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

This book is considered highly reputable and well-known in the field of computer science. I would be in a much better position if I had anything to do with its writing — as you can see at Citeseer, it has about 3800 citations in published papers.

As for why I'm adding it to a bunch of articles, the idea was that a good way to add good references to Wikipedia would be to take one seminal work at a time, go through it, and look up many related articles to which to add it. I'm sorry if I offended you in adding it to any particular article — you can remove it if you think it's not sufficiently notable in that context. I don't think works have to be cited to be listed in the references, just relevant and perhaps notable. Maybe I should've put them in a Further Reading section instead? I'm not sure what the conventional thing to do is. Deco 02:09, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the convention is either. References and sources should be works 'refered to' or 'used as sources'. 'Further reading' might well be better, but whether the same general textbook marked as 'further reading' in many very specific articles is proper I don't know. Perhaps one general reading list in the main subject article would suffice. I'm no mathematician, so I'm the wrong person to advise - but your edits didn't look quite right to me. I'd suggest you discuss the issues with folk working on these articles - or in the appropriate wiki-project - before continuing. It would be a shame for you to go to all this trouble only to have someone revert you - or convince you that you needed to change it all and do it in some other way. Sorry if I appeared to accuse you of spaming - it's obvious now that your edits were good-faith. Good luck. --Doc ^ask? 02:36, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm not just citing the book, I'm citing specific chapters and sections of the book of immediate relevance to the article. For example, in quicksort I cited a detailed chapter on quicksort. I agree that simply listing a book in many articles and expecting the reader to hunt down the relevant material is suspect at best. But sure, consulting Wikiproject Computing or even the Village Pump might not be a bad idea. Deco 02:41, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

thanks

for fixing up my addition to topological space. Nicely done. -lethe ^talk 05:26, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:007.png has been listed for deletion

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Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Mistake with interact proof article

Apologies for the error with your article - was bashing through the list of syntax problems to fix and clearly thought at the time I'd fixed something. Looking back at the history I haven't a clue what that was as there was clearly no problem there.... 00:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if I was too aggressive - I do appreciate your efforts. I know it can be hard to keep track of stuff when changing many articles. Deco 01:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Proof that 0.999... equals 1

Greetings. You proposed to merge Proof that 0.999... equals 1, to which I have responded at some length on the talk page. I just wanted to let you know that I consider it a good-faith proposal even though I vigorously oppose it.

I put a great deal of care into rewriting the article, from the mess I found it in, to its current form. Casual passersby don't seem to understand how much of a challenge this topic presents. I found it much easier to rewrite, say, orthogonal matrix, than this little proof page. I chose the proofs and the specific wording with extreme care, based on reading endless confused discussions.

For example, in one of the "elementary proofs" I said "When a fraction in decimal notation is multiplied by 10, the digits do not change but the decimal separator moves one place to the right." Every other discussion I've seen says the digits shift one place to the left. Why does it matter? Because the usual version inevitably leads to the question of what happens at the dangling left end; with mine, the question never arises. Another example is the first "advanced proof". Invariably, "sophisticated" arguments say something about the meaning of the recurring decimal is a limit. Just as invariably, that leads to confusion and trouble. It's just dumb to do the same thing again and again if it's not working. So I use Dedekind cuts, with nary a limit in sight. Even in the proof using Cauchy sequences I carefully dodge the usual language. For example, nothing "tends to infinity"; in fact, infinity is never mentioned in either advanced proof. It's the same kind of care one would use in discussing, say, abortion, where loaded phrases like "pro-life" are not helpful.

Without digging through your edit history I'm not sure if you would be familiar with non-standard analysis, topos logic, p-adic numbers, and other such topics. The fact is that many of the properties of the reals that most "provers" take for granted, such as lack of infinitesimals, are rather easily subverted. The point of this observation is that it's not so unreasonable for even a clever person, much less a clueless young student, to be troubled by the assertion being proved. It behooves us to take care to treat their concerns with respect, not dismiss them with a hand-wave "it's a limit" argument. I chose not to raise these alternatives in the article because I thought it might encourage the dissenters; but knowing about them certainly shaped my writing. For example, although the Dedekind reals and the Cauchy reals are the same using the topos of sets, they can be different in other settings. (And I doubt most of our mathematics editors know that, much less general readers.) Recommended reading: Fundamentals of Mathematics, Volume I, ISBN 0-262-52093-1; and Topoi, the categorial analysis of logic.

Thus the deliberately simple external form of the article hides an underlying sophistication. I do not bring this up on the talk page because I have no wish to feed ammunition to the anonymous bozos who are only interested in stirring up trouble. But I thought you ought to be told more privately. I do hope you'll reconsider your suggested merge. --KSmrq^T 08:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

PNG color depths

I really appreciate your support for {{badJPEG}}, but I have a question that maybe you can answer. There are two different concepts involved in reducing color depths for PNG images. One is the actual number of different colors found in the image, and the other is the number of bits used to represent the color for each pixel. The second is usually more important when considering the file size of the image, since if you're using eight bits to represent each color (giving you 256 possible colors in the image), but the actual image only uses two, it would be more efficient to represent each pixel with a single bit.

You have twice mentioned saving a PNG with four colors. One instance, Image:DR Congo CoA svg 250 palette reduced.png, was actually saved with eight bits per pixel (so the representable color depth was a full 256 colors). I shrunk it to four bits per pixel (16 representable colors), and that improved the file size considerably. But my image software doesn't allow me to save PNGs at two bits per pixel, which would be a true four-color PNG, instead of a 16-color PNG that only happened to use four colors. Do you know if this is a limitation of the software I'm using, or if for some reason PNG images actually can't be saved at two bits per pixel? —Bkell 01:32, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm surprised. I just reduced to 4 colours with Photoshop and then crushed with pngcrush. To think that neither of them would reduce the bits per pixel suitably seems bizarre. Regarding valid bits per pixel values in a PNG, the spec says:

Bit depth is a single-byte integer giving the number of bits per sample or per
palette index (not per pixel). Valid values are 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16, although not
all values are allowed for all color types. 

Color type is a single-byte integer that describes the interpretation of the image
data. Color type codes represent sums of the following values: 1 (palette used),
2 (color used), and 4 (alpha channel used). Valid values are 0, 2, 3, 4, and 6. 

Bit depth restrictions for each color type are imposed to simplify implementations
and to prohibit combinations that do not compress well. Decoders must support all
valid combinations of bit depth and color type. The allowed combinations are: 

  Color    Allowed    Interpretation
  Type    Bit Depths
  
  0       1,2,4,8,16  Each pixel is a grayscale sample.
  
  2       8,16        Each pixel is an R,G,B triple.
  
  3       1,2,4,8     Each pixel is a palette index;
                      a PLTE chunk must appear.
  
  4       8,16        Each pixel is a grayscale sample,
                      followed by an alpha sample.
  
  6       8,16        Each pixel is an R,G,B triple,
                      followed by an alpha sample.

So it would seem that 2 bits per pixel is allowed for color type 3, indexed. I'd guess your software is just choosing a higher one for some reason. Deco 04:51, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: consensus at Proof that 0.999... equals 1

I'm removing the rewrite you did to the intro of Proof that 0.999... equals 1 and moving it to the end of the article. Nothing personal, and let's discuss it on the talk page. Privately, I wanted to be sure you know that for many weeks now we've had a non-stop series of posts from a variety of anonymous IPs with the unvarying message that the article is false, Wikipedia is rubbish, and anybody who thinks otherwise is (insert various insults). Many editors have tried and failed to get signed posts, civil discussion, No Original Research, and mathematical reason to emerge. All eventually conclude it's hopeless. If you think the article can be improved, join me on the talk page. Just don't expect anything to satisfy this poster. --KSmrq^T 06:25, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I can see that this persistent anon (or anons) is a troll. Feel free to refactor my changes any way you like (really I wonder if my stuff should've been in some other article). Call on me if you ever need another real math person to tell them they're wrong. :-) Deco 06:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the problem has been that a steady stream of editors with some mathematics knowledge (not always enough) take the bait. Good from a troll's perspective, not so good for the victims, miserable for the talk page. But thanks for the offer; the time may come with a non-troll. --KSmrq^T 07:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

bubblesort strange phrase

I'm not sure what "Bubble sorting paradigm is especially useful for solving processing order of a data flow graph, without the need of more complex algorithms that require recursion." meant, but presumably whoever posted it had in mind something or other — even if they didn't express it very clearly. Don't you think it's worth leaving it to see if they'll clarify? Kragen Sitaker 02:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I think they meant something substantial, but in its current form it's not very useful and anonymous IPs often never return. If they do, I hope they'll be upset enough about their content missing that they will explain it on the talk page. Maybe I should've left a notice on their talk page first, but again, anonymous IPs don't check their talk pages very well. Deco 02:27, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Impact Comics Logo

Nice work on the vector version! Works fine for me, since I had some concerns about artifacting, but that was one of the few examples out there. Again, great job.--Mitsukai 19:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Greek letters

Hi there! Thanks for your note. Why don't I save you the trouble and create SVGs of the Greek letters myself? I already have them all in a graphics file. Give me a day or two, OK? One question: I presume I should use a similar naming convention? E Pluribus Anthony 22:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for volunteering. It'd be best if you upload them to Commons, since they're language-neutral. The existing naming scheme may be already taken on Commons, in which case you might want to seek a new one. I recently uploaded a similar set of Greek letter SVGs on Commons with the naming scheme (letter)_uc_lc.svg, such as Commons:Image:Alpha_uc_lc.svg, where uc_lc means "uppercase, lowercase". Also make sure you add them to Category:Greek letters on there. Deco 00:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I just noticed that Commons:Image:Greek_letter_alpha.png, etc. are very similar to yours; only the layout is altered. Deco 01:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks for the information ... will do! I initially created the PNGs because I thought the Greek letter infoboxes in Wp were lacking and deserving of ones similar to English letters. I didn't know of those other images (and they are all mildly different): I feel that they are all somewhat redundant. That's one thing that bugs me about the interface between the commons and Wikipedia: so many images in one or both spots,

so many tags, not enough organisation. Should I upload the dual font SVG images (sans/serif) over yours (with only serif), then, or create them anew? Speaking of which, should we do the same for English letters? Thanks again! E Pluribus Anthony 01:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

There are several alphabets on Commons, including some rather exotic ones, all worth converting eventually. I'd rather not do anything that would change the appearance of the graphics, since they're used on foreign Wikipedias with editors who might (inexplicably) be upset and be unable to express their distaste to us. I do feel there is some considerable redundancy. One good solution might be to create a single SVG for each different glyph, and then sequence them together in markup (with tables if necessary). What do you think? Deco 02:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Understood. For manageability, I only suggest replacing or consolidating the images within our current scope for now, e.g., Greek letters sans/serif. We should be able to consult those files to determine how linked they are. Hence my suggestion to replace the serif Gk letters you recently created with dual serif/sans serif ones, then we can merge them with or tag relevant images as dupes, if needed. I'm fine either way.

On the other hand, your idea about sequencing individual glyphs is interesting: note what I did for San in the Greek letter template (since it is supposedly distinct, but doesn't have it's own glyph and otherwise resembles M). I do wonder, though, whether this would either muddy the page with unnecessary code, cause rendering issues (though I can't see how off hand), or complicate the issue for users who may want all the glyphs together without having to extract four image files to get them. Make sense? E Pluribus Anthony 03:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that just the Greek letters are a good starting point. Actually the markup isn't too tortured with wikitables. Here's a sample (pretend the last two are sans serif):

{|
|[[Image:Greek_uc_alpha.png|70px]]
|[[Image:Greek_lc_alpha.png|50px]]
|width=25|
|[[Image:Greek_uc_alpha.png|70px]]
|[[Image:Greek_lc_alpha.png|50px]]
|}

And now yours:

Now in a square:

{|
|[[Image:Greek_uc_alpha.png|70px]]
|[[Image:Greek_lc_alpha.png|50px]]
|-
|[[Image:Greek_uc_alpha.png|70px]]
|[[Image:Greek_lc_alpha.png|50px]]
|}

And Image:Greek_letter_alpha.png:

The PNGs have too much extra space built-in, but the SVGs wouldn't, so this would work better. I think the flexibility and reduction in redundancy (which makes maintainance more difficult) would justify the inconvenience to those who want to save out the image in one piece. Deco 05:31, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

White space is generally a good thing, but I agree that there's too much in some of the images. OK. Before we move forward, I think we need to resolve the following:

(1) do we create four individual images for each letter: serif uc, serif lc, sans serif uc, sans serif lc, or

(2) consolidate two of the four, yielding two: serif uc/lc, sans serif uc/lc?

Then we just need to finalise a naming convention, then peruse and tag the other image files if they're redundant. Lastly, we'll have to revise the letter template (but this isn't a priority). Make sense? E Pluribus Anthony 05:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's best to have individual glyph images, for flexibility and for applications that only want one glyph. This does prevent glyphs with overlapping bounding boxes though. For a naming convention I'd probably go with something like for example "Alpha_serif_uc.svg", "Gamma_sans_lc.svg", maybe with "Greek" in front. It occurs to me that the juxtaposition of images above could be done with a template. Deco 06:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I think I'll just reverse the order and expand a bit: "Greek_alpha_uc_sansserif.svg", "Greek_alpha_lc_serif.svg", etc. I'll work on creating all the images, give me a few days, will ya? :) Thanks! E Pluribus Anthony 07:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but don't work too hard at it, I have the materials to do it in just an hour or so. Also make sure you check out any licensing issues on the fonts. Thanks again. Deco 08:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Great! It really is no problem to do ... I just have a few other tasks to attend to beforehand. :) Merci! E Pluribus Anthony 08:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi

Thanks for the greeting. Yes, I need help! I am struggling with the markup language, esp for mathematics; I get un-pretty results. It doesn't seem to be exactly html, LaTeX, or TeX; my friend DK, whom I asked for help, who invented TeX, is no longer working on these matters since he is updating his comp programming books now, but you seem to be an expert on pretty fonts and graphics. Also, I could use help on my user page...it is not pretty, just plain and I would like to make it better. Then, too, I don't know how to add pretty pictures (photos, drawings, etc.) on pages. And a lot more... thanks again! MathStatWoman 15:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

(Posting to both user pages to make sure you receive this.)

Hey! I understand your frustration with the markup. The Mediawiki engine supports a limited subset of LaTeX, which you surround with math tags (<math> and </math>). You can read all about it at Help:Formula. As for the rest of the markup, it's pretty simple, and you can read a friendly but comprehensive introduction at How_to_edit_a_page#Wiki_markup.

The general process for adding images is:

• Create a GIF, PNG, JPG, or SVG image file on your local machine. I assume you already have software you use to create diagrams, but if not there are many options like the free Inkscape, Dia, and Graphviz. If you have an .eps, .ps, or .pdf file, you can convert it to SVG using a tool like pstoedit. Don't convert these type of diagram files to GIF/PNG/JPG, as this loses information and makes them more difficult to edit.
• Click "Upload file" in the toolbox along the left side. Make sure you choose a complete, descriptive filename. You will need to choose a free license to release your images under (assuming you produced them) - I suggest "PD (self made)", which releases all rights and is the least restrictive license. Don't upload images produced by others unless they have agreed to release them under a free license.
• Use the image markup described at How_to_edit_a_page#Images and Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax to embed the image in a page. When embedding an SVG, you have to specify a width in pixels, as in [[Image:Whatever.svg|200px]].

I hope this helps - please ask any other questions you have, and good luck. Deco 19:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

"perennial"

I've reworded my statement to clarify it, thanks for pointing out its unclearness. Radiant_>|< 09:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, a lot clearer now. I should've read it a bit more carefully before I screwed with it. Deco 00:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Computer science

Hi, just though you might wanted to know that we are trying to get WikiProject Computer science back on its tracks. Cheers, —Ruud 13:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

multipost

I'm confused. You seem to have deleted my posting to technical, with a note it was being moved to policy. But, I didn't see where you actually did move it. Derex 00:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I got delayed. The notice originally said it was moved to proposals, but I changed that notice and replaced with a link to the copy you posted to policy. Deco 00:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

no worries. thanks for putting it in the right place (i had been unsure which to use). Derex 00:56, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for understanding. Sorry again! Deco 00:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Clarification !

Regarding Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) bit on AfD for Maxim song list, quoting ...

I've listed it for deletion. Looks like it'll be a clear delete. Thanks for the heads up. Deco 10:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Surely. It was very controversial. Let's see what happens. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 10:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic. It's only received one merge vote so far, along with several deletes. If you know of parties interested in keeping it, please encourage them to participate while it's still on AfD. Deco 11:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Derrick ! You thought I might have been being 'sarcastic' on the Maxim delete. No way. I was basically in agreement with you and thankful for your help in bringing the article to the attention of the community. Parsing my sentiment as I had intended it:

Deco: Thanks for the heads up.
Me: Surely.
Deco: I've listed it for deletion. Looks like it'll be a clear delete.
Me: It was very controversial. Let's see what happens.

This clears things up. Thanks, again. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I wasn't offended. I was just confused by your statement that "[i]t was very controversial". What was very controversial? The deletion isn't controversial. Deco 06:07, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Derrick for your kind reply. I was referring to the original article in Maxim and its reflecting article in Wikipedia as being controversial and quite fiddly in its lashing opinions of songs, being that some of those songs are quite good and respected songs to people at large. That's all I was referring to. In my haste, I, in retrospect, was too vague in what I wrote. Apologies. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 06:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I think I get it now. Really, don't worry about it. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. See if you can find some more articles to add to AFD. :-) Deco 07:04, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

RfC: Personal attacks: Policy Extension to non-contributors

I've taken up your suggestion to restrict this proposal to article Talk page only (I think it already applies to articles as a non-neutral point of view). You may wish to consider amending your vote. (See Policy Extension to non-contributors) --Iantresman 21:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for help with Harvey family murder. : D By the time I finished notifying both editors of the tag switch, you had already found references. Sounds like a horrible crime! Too much WP:BITE to speedy. --FloNight 03:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

And thanks to you for drawing attention to it. Nothing gets an article improved like the threat of imminent death. :-) Deco 03:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

reply for Software Transactional Memory:discussion

[Reply is here, 'cause I don't want to spam STM discussion page] Well, thanks for doing it all. As far as I remember there is nothing in wikipedia policy about "offending original author" as long as you add information not delete it (but latter is "offending wikipedia" isn't it?). I'm very glad that somebody has taken care over my messy edits, thanks countryhacker 21:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi countryhacker/Fijal. Deleting info is totally okay - we do it all the time. Part of how articles grow healthily is by being periodically pruned. Other contributors have the right to reinstate deleted info in any way they like and it's all in the history. Deleting content is only vandalism if it's done in bad faith. I appreciate your support. Deco 21:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The Pseudocode Debate

Having already been mired in this mess once in the past I can certainly understand if you have a desire to generally stay out of things... but given your suggestion on Wikipedia_talk:Algorithms_on_Wikipedia I thought I might point you toward some efforts being made on WikiProject Computer science/Manual of Style to at least get some general guidelines for algorithm presentation. It is simply a set of potential guidelines for project participants rather than general Wikipedia guidelines, and is still in the process of being cobbled together, but we would still appreciate any input and insight you have to offer. Thanks. Leland McInnes 22:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Talibangelical

Talibangelical is now at AfD. NickelShoe 05:04, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Well done

Well, hi there Deco. Just like to say you're a great footballer, keep up the prolific goalscoring :-) The magical Spum-dandy 10:25, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

You probably have me confused with somebody else... I have no idea what you're talking about. :-) Deco 10:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Date links

Since you have taken an interest in links. Please be kind enough to vote for my new bot application to reduce overlinking of dates where they are not part of date preferences. bobblewik 20:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The matter of Dr. James R. Russell's article

Hi Derrick. Perhaps you can help out. I wrote Professor/Dr. James R. Russell's article as he is indeed a world known scholar in his field and very notable. I checked that his colleague, Dr. Wheeler Thackston had an article, which he has since 2004. They are both in the same department at Harvard, and on comparable par. Dr. Russell's opus "Zoroastrianism in Armenia" is a major work published by Harvard University amongst other works of his. The article is not a vanity article and Dr. Russell who occupies the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies, at Harvard University, which is a very prestigious chair, is more than noteworthy. As much as Dr. Wheeler Thackston is. Dr. Russell's article is James R. Russell. I have no idea who User_talk:Dsc is and why the person flagged it. The stated objections are not valid. The warning should be removed. I don't know where else to turn to. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It seems like the issue is resolved. Tell me if you need anything else. Deco 23:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

WHEELER

Please don't encourage WHEELER to contribute to Wikipedia in any way as his presence is far more trouble than it is worth and can only discourage less problematic users from contributing to articles on his areas of interest. It is much better if he sticks to Wikinfo as he cannot operate in a NPOV environment. CalJW 06:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

RL entry

thanks for your message. I've never heard the term RL used for anything except the polytime restricted version. I suppose this is because the other version so trivially "disappears". There is, for example, quite a bit of research into reducing the deterministic complexity of "RL" as the polytime bounded class, see e.g. papers by Nisan, by Saks and Zhou, and recently by Reingold, Trevisan and some others. The most prominent example would be a paper by Nisan which is actually entitled "RL \subseteq SC". While the current state of the page is unambiguous, it is still potentially confusing for someone who wants to find out about this current research and leaves with the impression that the complexity of "RL" has been solved, when in fact it is an area of active research.

On a side note, the class "RL" as I have seen it defined does not refer to having a polynomial time bound, but rather to the fact that machines in this class are "guaranteed to halt". Although the two concepts are equivalent, a polytime bound on what is supposed to be a space-bounded class come across as very unnatural, while a halting guarantee does not.

I must agree with your reasoning, especially that most conspicuous paper title. I'm thinking the current RL is best merged into NL as an alternate characterization of that class, and RLP moved to RL with all links updated appropriately. Deco 20:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Why have you restored Managed C++

Please explain me what is the difference between C++ and the port for .Net, Managed C++.

There are port of virtually any programming language. Is IronPython another language?

84.4.41.76 07:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging Image:DR Congo CoA svg 250 palette reduced.png

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:DR Congo CoA svg 250 palette reduced.png. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then you can use {{GFDL-self}} to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, please read fair use, and then use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other media, please check that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam ^(T/C) 00:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Image tags

It is really great that you were able to get permission for the Birnbaum images. I would point out however that several (if not all) of your image tags are obsolete. The Alan Ginsberg photo has in fact been tagged for deletion this week. I suggest that you might look into this and find a better tags.Verne Equinox 14:42, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The guy already made it pretty clear that he probably wouldn't consider licensing under a free license. I'm going to let it slide. Feel free to pursue in my stead if you want though. Deco 21:53, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Yet another date links proposal

Hi, I saw your interest in links at Wikipedia talk:Only make links that are relevant to the context. You may wish to see the proposal at: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#linking_of_dates and vote whichever way you think is best. Thanks. bobblewik 14:06, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello Deco. Please, could you tell me where I could find the demostration of the following sentence showed at the page "Adjacency matrix"?

Matrix proof

"The matrix I − A (where I denotes the n-by-n identity matrix) is invertible if and only if there are no directed cycles in the graph G. In this case, the inverse (I − A)−1 has the following interpretation: the entry in row i and column j gives the number of directed paths from vertex i to vertex j (which is always finite if there are no directed cycles). This can be understood using the geometric series for matrices:

   (I − A)−1 = I + A + A2 + A3 + ...

corresponding to the fact that the number of paths from i to j equals the number of paths of length 0 plus the number of paths of length 1 plus the number of paths of length 2 etc. The main diagonal of every adjacency matrix corresponding to a graph without loops has all zero entries." Thanks a lot in advance. Gmonna.

Hi Gmonna. I didn't write most of this, but the proof should be available in many introductory texts and even course notes on graph theory. Here's one place. Deco 12:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyright

Sorry for the trouble. i didn't know how wikipedia worked (took a while to do myself....).

Image:Noahs Ark.jpg

Hello, I just wanted to tell you that I made Image:Noahs Ark.jpg a candidate for Featured Picture. Just to give you a little head's up since you uploaded this picture. -EdGl 04:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I just yanked it off the web. :-) Deco 11:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Compass and straightedge

Please comment. John Reid 14:58, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Terrorism

On a random article click, I landed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lashkar-e-Toiba

I have some beef with the labeling of terrorists (Not that I think these guys are good, actually, I think they're pretty screwed up in the head) becauses of POV issues. I have copied something I posted on the talk page there to ask what you think about it. It is below.

--

Calling it a terrorist organization is a fairly large POV. Remember the quote, "One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter" ? Now going into that quote would start quite a flame, so I offer a compromise. How about in these articles Wikipedia says something like "ABC is a group that is fighting for revolutionary purposes." <-- Note that the stuff following "is" would be the organizations definition or mission statement for themselves. Then, afterwards, Wikipedia would say "The United States Government labels ABC as a top ten terrorist group. Blah blah blah".

This way, its not as blatant a POV. Remember, it goes both ways. One's man freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. For example, many people believe the United States or Russia may be terrorist states (regarding their large killing of innocents, wars, etc). It doens't matter if YOU actually think their actions are justified, not meant, innocent etc., but if you disagree with the statement about the USA and Russia, then you can understand that labeling someone a terrorist is definetly a big POV.

--

What do you think?

Theuedimaster 23:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

No offense, but you're rehashing arguments covered elsewhere. I would just point them to something like Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Terrorist.2C_terrorism. Deco 02:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! And BTW, if, lets say, I wanted to see if there was an article about this type of "problem", how would I go about finding it? Theuedimaster 22:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, that's one of the biggest problems with the English Wikipedia - the rules and guidelines are a disorganised mess and it's difficult to find anything unless you've just randomly stumbled around reading things. Your best bet is probably to use the search function, but only in the Wikipedia namespace, or possibly Google search (which is a bit smarter). Hope this helps. Deco 09:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Slide Rule PROSTHAPHAERETIC

Is this item that you mentioned in the slide rule article really worth mentioning? There are tons of more relevant things that could be said if the article weren't so long already. And is there a good reference that actually shows what it looks like? Dicklyon 22:24, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I was going to make up a diagram. I consulted the authors for a photo but wasn't able to get permission under the right terms. It's rather esoteric, but there is a published paper about it - however, it's a lot more relevant to prosthaphaeresis than slide rule. Deco 01:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

your user name

Heh, do you realize that your username coincides with Deco, one of the best midfielders in Europe? :) – ugen64 01:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I had no idea. My username is just a lame abbreviation of my real name. Awesome, thanks! Deco 04:32, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Reply to: Some more details on counting sort ready on my talk page...

...IMHO (Talk) 20:20, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Ready again... ...IMHO (Talk) 21:11, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll tell you what. If you want me to remove my strong objection to deletion then tell me of a sort routine that can be or has been or is implemented in hardware. I have implemented the Rapid sort in hardware while I was working for Radio Shack in 1991 only for that implementation I called it the instant sort routine. My effort paid off in another way as well since this hardware implementation led me on to the discovery of another hardware device called the Adaptron. As I recall several people were involved and may have made copies of the circuit. I'll see if I can locate a copy since I think Forest Mims who is a Rolex Award laureate may also have a copy. ...IMHO (Talk) 22:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

You can start by reading the sorting network article I asked you to read. Introduction to Algorithms has a chapter on sorting networks that's very good. An interesting recent paper on the topic is Accelerating Sorting With Reconfigurable Hardware. Here's a patent application implementing the Van Voorhis sort network. There's lots more where that came from. Deco 22:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay I've looked at these references. I can't find the one that sends data to be sorted directly to the address bus of a random access memory so the memory contents can be incremented followed by sequential retrieval of the contents so that the address of the incremented contents can be listed. Now if you tell me there are none and therefore that this method is original research then that is one side of the question which I would have to disprove but if you tell me that this method is based on a counting sort then you can not also claim the other. So what I need you to do is to choose one position or the other. ...IMHO (Talk) 01:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

You're just telling me that these methods, which are widely acclaimed in research, don't behave like your method. There's a good reason for that - it's not an efficient way to build a hardware sorting device. You might be interested in parallel sort algorithms, which are built around standard CPU/RAM equipment, and there's a lot of research available on them too. I'm not telling you this stuff to make your method look bad, but just to help you learn more about this area so that you know what the state of the art is and have some of the tools you would need to develop a really good algorithm that you could publish something about. Until you publish something, it's just original research. If you're going to be defensive and perceive my comments as threats, then I'm not going to waste my time. Deco 03:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Rapid sort still mentioned

The article on Sorting algorithm still mentions "Rapid sort", in the list of sorting algorithms in the table for non-comparison sorts. Is that intended?

By the way, the rise and fall of rapidsort as the world's fastest searching algorithm had a funny side effect. I lately tested a candidate for a position as developer with a test asking for the name of the fastest search algorithm. He had access to the internet while answering the test and guess what the answer was! ;-) --GFlohr 15:59, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I took care of it. Deco 21:04, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Deleted articles

I'm not sure why you say it's evident that they weren't mistaken creations in a sense that differs meaningfully from anything else tagged {{db-author}}. In any case, they seemed to be similar products to "rapid sort", and most of your arguments for deleting that one could have similar applications to these two. They had no links on Wikipedia other than those created by Pce3@ij.net, and the ideas they contained are probably better described by concepts like decision tables and combinatorial logic. Smells like promotion of neologisms to me. Taking into account the legal concerns as well, which is the reason the case came to my attention in the first place, I think they should stay deleted. If the terms represent real concepts rather than original research, obviously anybody is welcome to start things off again. --Michael Snow 20:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem which resulted in a need for deletion of the Optimal classification article was not that it fell into the category of a neologism itself but rather that "neologisms" (actually a chart to concisely express the difference between a decision table and a classification table) was required to eliminate confusion as to what the method being described in the article actually did. Although both articles were well cited such inclusions for the sole pupose of clarification rendered them in violation of the WP:NOR. Without inclusion of the modification to the Harvard Chart method which allows multiple states to be reduced the article was of only historical value and antiquated value due to the WP:NOR. I can be content without their publication here since all of my research is subject to verification by computer rather than by man thus assuring that the absence of peer review or publication elsewhere is only of consequence due to the WP:NOR to publication here. ...IMHO (Talk) 17:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I tend to interpret CSD narrowly, but I always interpreted G7 as meaning articles that the author accidentally screwed up, for example by placing under the wrong title or copying and pasting text from a website and later learning it's copyvio. For the reasons you list though, I'll let these go under IAR - I just don't want to give anybody the impression that they can make us delete content by threatening us. Deco 20:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

You were not being threatened. You were being informed that disregard for a legal Takedown Notice as further evidenced by repeated disregard for a db-author tag was in violation of Federal law. The info was for the benefit of the Wikimedia Foundation which is not above the law. ...IMHO (Talk) 17:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

If you were able to do this, it would defeat the point of Wikipedia. Our content would not be reusable, because if anyone used it for a purpose that some contributor didn't like, that contributor could make them take it down. The whole point of releasing contributions under a free license is precisely to avoid this situation. You're not a lawyer any more than I am - before you make that kind of threat in the future, I suggest you involve a lawyer. Deco 22:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

In preparation for further discussion...

Please use the following criteria for writing Visual Basic programs to perform any sort(s) of your choosing:

(You will only need to add a Command Button to the form to print out the list of sorted numbers.)

1. Option Explicit
2. '------Rapid sort - (Local telephone number example) -----------
3. 'Please use the following template to write a
4. 'programs for each of the sort routine(s) you choose
5. 'to compare in terms of:
6. '1.) Total number of items sorted.
7. '2.) Total primary array size to accomodate the sort.
8. '3.) Total secondary array size to accomodate the sort.
9. '4.) Total length of key.
10. '5.) Total time for setup and sort.
11. 'Once you have done a number of sorts then
12. 'please provide me with the results.
13. 'Thanks. User Pce3@ij.net
14. '--------------------------------------------------
15. Dim a() As Long, b() As Long
16. Dim i As Long, n As Long, j As Long
17. Dim start As Double, finish As Double
18. Const one As Integer = 1
19. Const zero As Integer = 0
20. Const maxi As Long = 9999999
21. Const topnum As Long = 8888888
22. Const botnum As Long = 1111111
23. Const elements As Long = botnum
24. '-----------------------------------------------------------
25. Private Sub Command1_Click()
26. For i = one To j
27. Debug.Print i; b(i)
28. Next
29. End Sub
30. '-----------------------------------------------------------
31. Private Sub Form_Load()
32. ReDim a(maxi), b(maxi)
33. '------------------------------------------------------------
34. start = Timer
35. '------------------------------------------------------------
36. For i = one To botnum
37. n = Int(topnum # Rnd) + botnum
38. a(n) = a(n) + one
39. Next
40. '------------------------------------------------------------
41. For i = botnum To topnum
42. If a(i) > zero Then
43. For n = one To a(i)
44. b(j) = i: j = j + one
45. Next
46. End If
47. Next
48. '------------------------------------------------------------
49. finish = Timer - start
50. '------------------------------------------------------------
51. Debug.Print
52. Debug.Print "RESULTS: (Rapid sort)"
53. Debug.Print
54. Debug.Print "1.) Total number of items sorted:...................... "; Format(botnum, " #,###,###,###")
55. Debug.Print "2.) Total primary array size to accomodate the sort:... "; Format(maxi, " #,###,###,###")
56. Debug.Print "3.) Total secondary array size to accomodate the sort:. "; Format(j, " #,###,###,###")
57. Debug.Print "4.) Total length of key:............................... "; Len(Str$(botnum))-one; " decimal digits."
58. Debug.Print "5.) Total time for setup and sort:..................... "; finish; " seconds."
59. Debug.Print
60. '---------------------------------------------------------------
61. End
62. End Sub

RESULTS: (Rapid sort)

1.) Total number of items sorted:...................... 1,111,111

2.) Total primary array size to accomodate the sort:... 9,999,999

3.) Total secondary array size to accomodate the sort:. 972,250

4.) Total length of key:............................... 7 decimal digits.

5.) Total time for setup and sort:..................... 1.46899999999791 seconds.

...IMHO (Talk) 14:57, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The main problem with this algorithm is its behavior on small lists. If you wanted to sort just 1,000 phone numbers, it would still take the same amount of space and about the same amount of time, because it spends most of its time scanning the count array. There are many strategies for dealing with this. Another problem is that this kind of indexing exhibits very poor cache performance, unlike algorithms that scan the array linearly. This is generally true of counting sort like algorithms. You should try sorting the same list using a standard library sort function based on quicksort - I'm willing to bet it would do it in less time.

For example, using C++ and std::sort on my machine, I can sort a list of 1,111,111 values in 0.17 sec. When I sort the same list on the same machine in the same language using your sort, it requires 0.33 sec, about 0.10 of which are spent initializing the count array, 0.18 updating it, and 0.04 writing the result back into the array. This isn't bad in this case (it'd be much worse if integers ranged from zero to a billion), but it's still not better than quicksort. Deco 23:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Well I've written in machine language before both to accommodate software and hardware application development but what I was going for here was not a comparison of the Rapid sort in machine language or in C or C++ or with a built in Quick sort function but rather a comparison in Visual Basic with Harold H. Seward's Counting sort which all readers can comprehend and copy to their own machines to verify. My secondary purpose is to provide users with a template to allow them to make their own assessments and comparisons in regard to other sort routines. Correspondingly my Visual Basic version the Rapid sort is consistent at about 1.47 seconds as shown above and the Counting sort is consistent at about 3.85 seconds. By using VB to write each of the sorts listed in the Sorting algorithm article and providing them to users in the identical format Systemic bias can be avoided, users can be provided with copies of real working code rather than Systemic bias imposed upon them by some member of the Ivory Tower programmer's Guild (no reference to you intended). Ordinary readers have a lot more on the ball than you think and should not be treated as if only observers when this publication is a Wiki and not a journal published by the ACM or IEEE and our business here is to serve them and not the other way around. What we want to do here is to provide working examples of sort routines that all users can appreciate and use to verify the results for themselves on their own computers. Once that is accomplished other criteria can be suggested which might be relevant for particular reasons in helping users decide which sort that might want to match with a particular application instead of making such decisions on their behalf. Bottom line here again is my purpose was to compare the speed of the Rapid sort with the speed of the Counting sort using the same language and machine and provide readers with a template they can use to compare other sorts versus a compare in machine language of the Rapid sort with a built in function regardless of the algorithm on which it is based which can be done at a later time for the benefit of function writers who's users should also have the benefit of deciding which built in function best suits their particular application needs. ...IMHO (Talk) 04:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually I've been involed for a long time with the discussions around code examples in articles. I even proposed a standard pseudocode, but it didn't work out. Many people including myself favor having real code examples in articles, but often feel that multiple similar examples in different programming languages are superfluous - at one time, quicksort had over 40 implementations.

I've since opened a wiki of my own where code samples in many real world programming languages are published, at http://en.literateprograms.org . Every page has a "download code" tab that easily allows the reader to download the associated code, which they can then compile and run. As it so happens, right now I'm recruiting Visual Basic programmers, as we have very few VB programs and there are a lot of VB programmers out there - I have a category for counting sort and many other sort algorithms, and I often have sections measuring and comparing the performance of individual implementations. Please have a look - it'd be great if you could help write some VB implementations there. But don't get any ideas - I don't intend to publish novel ideas like rapid sort there either, especially when my coverage of basic concepts is still poor. Deco 05:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason it did not work out is because you may not realize that pseudo code is too often expected to work without modification or adaptation to a particular users environment. Standardization is difficult for any code because of the large differences in users systems and the number of variables that any code entails. Consequently for standardization one must turn to flowcharts since flowcharts use a limited number of universal symbols that are unique. But that is also not my purpose but rather to allow a comparison of the basic parameters of each sorting algorithm listed under that article title. Visual Basic is a fairly common medium for code exchange so I've used it to make my point. The code I have provided is not intended to be pseudo code in terms of universal application but simply to provide a template and the parameters for anyone with a copy of VB6 to do a comparison for themselves. Even the Visual Basic version of Quick sort I have will require adaptation from VB3 to VB6. As soon as I have a working copy up and running I'll do the comparison and provide the results myself but if you are sincere about allowing ordinary Wikipedia users to benefit from the article’s purpose then you can join in and provide the coding for the other sorts in VB6 code yourself. This should not be especially difficult since you already have a working library you can tap. ...IMHO (Talk) 11:50, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Counting sort - Visual Basic version

(Note: to accommodate this Visual Basic and avoid negative index numbers and use of reserve words the value of xend has been used for certain calculations instead of xmin and most variable names have been changed.)

1. Option Explicit
2. '-- Counting sort (Example with identical local telephone number data) --------
3. Dim aarray()
4. Dim i As Long
5. Dim s As Long
6. Dim c As Long
7. Dim range
8. Dim ccount() As Long
9. Dim scratch() As Long
10. Dim j As Long
11. Dim start As Double
12. Dim finish As Double
13. Const one As Integer = 1
14. Const zero As Integer = 0
15. Const xmax As Long = 9999999 ' same variable function as maxi
16. Const xmin As Integer = 0
17. Const xend As Long = 1111111
18. Private Sub Command1_Click()
19. For j = one To xend
20. Debug.Print j; aarray(j)
21. Next
22. End Sub
23. Private Sub Form_Load()
24. start = Timer
25. '-----------------------------------------------------------
26. ReDim x(xend + one)
27. ReDim aarray(xend + one)
28. '------------------------------------------------------------
29. For j = one To xend
30. aarray(j) = Int((xmax - xend) * Rnd) + xend
31. Next
32. '------------------------------------------------------------
33. GoSub csort
34. '------------------------------------------------------------
35. finish = Timer - start
36. '------------------------------------------------------------
37. Debug.Print
38. Debug.Print "RESULTS: (Counting sort - Visual Basic)"
39. Debug.Print
40. Debug.Print "1.) Total number of items sorted:.......................... "; Format(xend, " #,###,###,###")
41. Debug.Print "2.) Total Array (array) size to accommodate the sort:...... "; Format(xend, " #,###,###,###")
42. Debug.Print "3.) Total Count (array) size to accommodate the sort:...... "; Format(range - one, " #,###,###,###")
43. Debug.Print "4.) Total Scratch (array) size to accommodate the sort:.... "; Format(xend, " #,###,###,###")
44. Debug.Print "5.) Total length of key:................................... "; Len(Str$(xmax)) - one; " decimal digits."
45. Debug.Print "6.) Total time for setup and sort:......................... "; finish; " seconds."
46. Debug.Print
47. Exit Sub
48. '------------------------------------------
49. csort:
50. range = xmax - xend + one
51. ReDim ccount(xmax)
52. ReDim scratch(range + one)
53. '------------------------------------------
54. For i = 0 To range - one
55. ccount(i) = 0
56. Next
57. '------------------------------------------
58. For i = 0 To xend - one
59. c = aarray(i) + (one - xmin)
60. ccount(c) = ccount(c) + one
61. 'Debug.Print i; c, aarray(i)
62. Next
63. '------------------------------------------
64. For i = one To range - one
65. ccount(i) = ccount(i) + ccount(i - one)
66. 'Debug.Print i, ccount(i)
67. Next
68. '------------------------------------------
69. For i = 0 To xend - one
70. c = aarray(i) - xmin
71. s = ccount(c)
72. scratch(s) = aarray(i)
73. ccount(c) = ccount(c) + one
74. '------------------------------------------
75. Next
76. For i = 0 To xend - one
77. aarray(i) = scratch(i)
78. Next
79. '------------------------------------------
80. Return
81. End Sub

RESULTS: (Counting sort - Visual Basic)

1.) Total number of items sorted:.......................... 1,111,111

2.) Total Array (array) size to accommodate the sort:...... 1,111,111

3.) Total Count (array) size to accommodate the sort:...... 8,888,888

4.) Total Scratch (array) size to accommodate the sort:.... 1,111,111

5.) Total length of key:................................... 7 decimal digits.

6.) Total time for setup and sort:......................... 4.18699999999732 seconds.

Hello

Bhadani has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk pages. Happy editing!

--Bhadani 16:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Bhadani. 20:03, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello

Bhadani has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk pages. Happy editing!

--Bhadani 10:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft logo

Sorry for reverting you twice and thanks for doing that :). Should've discussed, my bad. It looks now - hopefully the resolution problems with the svg doesn't turn too many people off etc. :) RN 07:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I should've discussed too, I'm sorry. Glad we can agree now. I'm annoyed at these rendering problems - but I guess we face this kind of thing using the "bleeding edge" Mediawiki software. Deco 08:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

An appology of sorts...

Normally I would simply allow time to bridge any gap in points of view but with your referral, interest and help on the Academic Publishing site Check sort article I feel it necessary to go ahead and clear the air. Please understand that after being blocked by an administrator in the Wiktionary project for pointing out that the purpose of language is to facilitate communication and therefore the first role of a dictionary is to facilitate language usage that when the definitions of nonces are excluded their absence can worsen the confusion they are intended to relieve. The other aspect of this is that since the Internet is still a parity for the wild, wild West filled with lawlessness, pornography, totally opposing philosophies that it is difficult for me to either accept or adapt to the application of formal rules. What saves me is to 1.) approaching everything with humor, 2.) being at least willing (if not always able) to "back off", and 3.) appreciating the good will of others once I've checked them out. Although I am still a bit angry over your giving prior publication a higher status than the truth the fact is that so long as there exists an opportunity to achieve the status of prior publication then the issue goes away since truth will eventually shine through unless the doors remain closed for self-serving reasons such as merely accommodating the whims of the academic guild. ...IMHO (Talk) 08:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• PS. I've added the Visual Basic program to the Counting sort#Class Determination along with the performance results and Class determination. I was wondering if you would mind converting this VB code to C++ and generating the performance data so that I can do a linear regression analysis and determine the sort to setup ratio to see just how well it holds for C++. Thanks. ...IMHO (Talk) 13:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments - I'll look at this when I get a chance. I'm not an admin on Wiktionary, but I'm sure your blocking was temporary - if not I would contact them or another admin and explain the misunderstanding and your agreement to comply with their policies in the future. It seems their Blocking policy is a lot less strict and more ad hoc than English Wikipedia's (in fact it's not even policy yet).

It's true that prior publication is not a requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia (a lot of fictional world articles in particular have no basis in research) - in fact NOR has little do with academia and more to do with notability - see Wikipedia:Notability for an unofficial guideline about this. The concept is that encyclopedias by their nature as reference works traditionally report on well-established ideas and subjects, and OR is known by only a small number of people. To give another example, if a major piece of software contained its own sorting algorithm and came with a text file describing it, this might be grounds for inclusion even though the algorithm was not academically published. Oddly enough, we even have articles on obvious but well-known hoaxes such as the infamous Time Cube, discussed with appropriate criticism of course. Deco 18:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

My major concern for all of the Wikimedia projects is the danger of its "personalization" by sysops through the method of exclusion. For instance: the nonce I wanted to create an article for was to provide a means of distinguishing the senses of another word under certain circumstances where they could be confused without a nonce to overcome the confusion. Since policy dictates no nonces the article was summarily deleted to what I feel was to the detriment of the Wiktionary. Its no problem except for the logic of failing to distinguish between already (but insufficiently) defined senses resulting in greater confusion than less if the nonce was not allowed to be included and defined. In reality the Wiktionary project's refusal to include neologisms is no problem since I can always try to post a new word and its definition on the Merriam Webster online dictionary or go to the Urban dictionary for truly radical ideas like: "Sysoptionary" - the online dictionary which is created when system operators indulge in excessive deletion of material they can not appreciate. ("Sysoptionary" was even deleted from the List of Protologisms which proved my point.) From my own personal experience I know this to be true. If I were in charge of what music could be published for instance there would be no Rap and although many others may feel the same way Rap has made some people millionaires and continues to do so today. There is an immediate incident I know of where a screenshot image of a compiler message that says an executable may not be redistributed was deleted in error on the misinterpretation that the image of the warning message was not "redistributable". I know of many, many such incidents which have had devastating consequences in the real world. ...IMHO (Talk) 02:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Permission to borrow language.

Hello,

May I use your reply to my question about excessive categorization as part of my rationale for deleting empty/lonely categories? Your response was rather concise and insightful. Cheers. Folajimi 00:25, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. I find these categories a bit strange also. Deco 05:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

C++ version of Check sort problem found...

Hi DECO,

Looks like Windows does not like reallocation of memory size withn a loop. Pre-allocation works fine. Also made a few other cosmetic changes. Posted performance chart [1] and some animated graphics [2].

...IMHO (Talk) 17:46, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

If I move the C++ version of the Check sort to the article page would that then make you an article collaborator and if so is that okay? ...IMHO (Talk) 23:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Not a problem - in fact, I hereby release all rights to that code, and I don't particularly care if you give me credit or not. :-) Deco 23:27, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

SVG help

Thanks for your comment on the helpdesk. I examined the xml of the file and see no reference to any font. I am unable to see how I can get the text to be converted to shapes in Inkscape, and I havent checked the SVG specifications but I feel that it is already being done.

Feel free to redirect me to some other place where I can get help. Thanks. Shyamal 06:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.. I found the solution. All the text needs to be selected and the Convert to text has to be clicked. Once that is done it behaves fine. One would expect Inkscape default to work that way. Shyamal 06:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Request for information.

Hi,

Can you explain to a layperson what your interpretation of the GFDL is? If so, how would you go about doing so? --Folajimi 22:09, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Folajimi. That's a good question. I'm not an expert on the GFDL, but we have:

• A pretty extensive article on the GFDL.
• Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission: Asks someone to release a work under the GFDL or a compatible license for use on Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter: Tells someone reusing our content that they're not complying properly with out license.

Hope this helps. Deco 00:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I guess the only other question I have on the issue is this: Do you license images you create under the GFDL? If so, why? --Folajimi 00:57, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I am trying to create an arrow with Inkscape using a triangle and a square. Are there easier ways of doing this? --Folajimi 01:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't. I release images under a public domain license. I don't believe restricting the license of derivative works is healthy for a creative economy. I don't use or know anything about Inkscape, I'm afraid. Deco 01:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Does this mean anyone can [ab]use your work? If so, are you okay with it? Why? --Folajimi 01:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Yup. Not everyone agrees about these things, but I don't really find any kind of reuse offensive, and additionally I believe that the restrictions imposed by copyleft licenses can unduly restrict legitimate reuses and create legal paranoia about reuse. Deco 01:57, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your insight. For now, I will give {{PD-ineligible}} a try. Unless it proves to be harmful, it seems to be the way to go.

Thanks again. Cheers. --Folajimi 02:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Please don't use that tag. If you created the work, the appropriate tag is {{PD-self}}. Deco 19:40, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? These File:Indifferent.png are the items being released. The only reason I selected that license was due to the discussion which transpired on the talk page of the template in question. Am I missing something here? --Folajimi 19:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

They might be ineligible due to the very simple and uncreative nature of their design (no offense). But this can be debated in a legal proceeding. If you want to release them, then by all means do so, with PD-self - this is a lot more certain. Deco 20:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I spent hours learning enough about Inkscape to create the SVG files which produced those images!! What do you mean they're uncreative??? :P

At any rate, I'll go ahead and switch the licenses. Thanks again for the feedback. Cheers! --Folajimi 20:15, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems that the images are already under the licence, which is rather odd. I could have sworn that I used the other template... Folajimi 20:22, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

That's quite strange. I didn't change them and I don't know how anyone could have. Deco 20:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

		The Original Barnstar
		Just because you have never gotten one of these before and you've been here helping people since Wikipedia was an infant. Davodd 06:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate that, Davodd. Now I feel embarassed having mentioned it on VP. :-) Thank you very much. Deco 06:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Blocks

Hello, just stopping by to let you know that you should always check the IPs you block with one of the links on the bottom of the IP's talk page, or look on the top of the talk page to see if there's a message there about what the IP is. You just blocked an AOL IP for one week (now fixed), which can cause a lot of trouble for a lot of legitimate Wikipedia editors, and not that much trouble for the anonymous vandal. Certain other IPs are for entire countries, and people don't tend to take it too kindly when their whole country is blocked for a month (it's happened). Cheers, Mak (talk) 06:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I knew they were. I thought one week was the usual block time used for AOL IPs. If not I'd like a pointer to a document about what to do in the future. Thanks. Deco 06:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I found it, thanks. I unblocked the other IPs I blocked too and reblocked the block for 15 minutes. Deco 07:08, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Point of Information. what good is a 15-minute block? It seems that forces malcontents to take a break, or just be a nuisance elsewhere during that time. Am I missing something? --Folajimi 16:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Deco. By the time you asked your question I was asleep (that's the problem with leaving comments and then leaving). Cheers, Mak (talk) 16:51, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not very effective - at best it disrupts their immediate activity. But it also affects a number of other users in the same IP block, some of which might have registered accounts and, due to software limitations, be unable to edit during this period. I think 15 min is a little short - but because I'm inexperienced with blocking I chose to follow established guidelines instead of take personal risks. Deco 17:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information! Excellent rationale, if I may say so... --Folajimi 17:20, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Computer science

Hi! Just noticed that you have signed on to WikiProject Computer science, and wanted to welcome you to the project. --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:21, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Allan. No one told me about it, I just stumbled across it, otherwise I probably would've signed on a long time ago. :-) Deco 23:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think Rudy Koot dropped a note on your talk page back when we first tried to get the project up-and-running again. Guess it must have got lost in the noise. But glad to have you aboard now. --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

long talk page

You really should archive the old stuff. Ideogram 02:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Relational database

Would you be interested in editing relational database? It needs a lot of work. (you can reply here, I've watchlisted you) Ideogram 02:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I won't have time for Wikipedia editing very soon, but I know some people with expertise in the area that I could contact. Deco 02:43, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, please do. We need someone who can stay true to the relational model while explaining the implementation in modern databases to laypeople. Ideogram 02:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Music samples

The discussion in Wikipedia talk:Music samples seems to have stopped suddenly. What happened? I was happy with the improvements that we were making in order to create this guideline. I wish we could restart the discussion. Thank you. CG 17:52, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Speedy keep

Deco, I asked you on IRC of what a suitable time between deletion nominations was as I disagreed with what was being claimed at Wikipedia:Speedy keep. My removal of the "6 month between nominations" clause was reverted. Obviously, I believe this to be incorrect, and feel that guidelines should reflect current AFD behaviour. I would like your input to that page if you feel it is appropriate. - Hahnchen 00:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging for Image:Senatorronboswell.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Senatorronboswell.jpg. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 09:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Triangle needed?

The conversation has been moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia jurors. The processes which are most likely to be impacted — RfA, AfD, CfD, IfD, MfD, and TfD — have been notified on the appropriate pages. Is a cowbell or triangle still needed to announce some sort of alert? Folajimi 04:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope, looks good. Deco 04:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

linked lists

Just curious after reading your user page if that routine that I just made up should be relased in some sort of disclaimer like you have. What are the issues? Ste4k 17:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

If you wrote code I'd encourage you to release it under a code license such as the MIT or BSD license. This includes a disclaimer of liability and warranty. Unfortunately the GFDL does not, as far as I know, but not much you can do about that. Deco 17:55, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Music samples is now a guideline

Wikipedia:Music samples is now a guideline. Thank you for your active participation in the discussion. The guideline will always be open for new proposals and amendments. As for now I invite you to join to the discussion in Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal for Music Samples to adopt a new samples-related CSD criterion. CG 15:27, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Bishop Luffa School

Hi Deco. You left a message on my talk page a while ago welcoming me to Wikipedia and inviting me to ask for your help if I ever needed it. Well, here I am. Basically, I stumbled across Bishop Luffa School one day via the "Random article" feature. It was an utter mess, so out of sheer boredom I cleaned it up and researched the school a little. Since then a gaggle of fifteen year olds from the school have been vandalizing it with a staggering persistence, and I'm getting tired of reverting their edits. I encouraged them to create accounts and figure out what Wikiepdia is about -- a failed experiment. I'm unwatching it, since it's annoying me to constantly bother with it -- I'm not even sure the school is notable enough for Wikipedia to begin with. What do you think should be done? --Ori Livneh (talk) 23:13, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi there Ori.livneh. If you think the school is not sufficiently notable for inclusion, you can list it for deletion according to the instructions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. If you're frustrated with persistent vandalism, you maybe be able to get the page temporarily protected. If the vandals are predominantly anonymous, semiprotection may be appropriate. See Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Be warned though that good-faith edits are never vandalism - make sure this isn't a content dispute you're raising. (I haven't examined the page in question.) Hope this helps. Deco 03:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Killer Bebes

I removed the "fiction-as-fact" label because the intro clearly states that the page is about fictional characters. The label isn't all that appealing to the eyes too! Have fun editing! =D Jumping cheese ^Contact 03:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Suit yourself - I wish there were a better tag to describe the issue, but the problem is not that the article misleadingly describes the subject as factual, but that the subject is described primarily from an in-universe perspective. But don't care that much. Deco 04:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Image:Serbia flag large.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Serbia flag large.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there 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. Wwagner 01:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Regarding ==New Section On Article Content Policy==

Yes, but the examples I made, like 'WP:STYLE' or 'WP:WWIN' are citable. Hhmmm, well Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid doesn't lets the words to use, or words to use instead. Does Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style do that? Still confused, let me know, 100110100 04:50, 18 August 2006 (UTC).100110100 04:50, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Manual of Style is the appropriate forum for specific style recommendations. However, some of the examples you gave may be met with some contention - for example, there is a school of thought that believes that male-oriented words are not necessarily sexist and preferable to stilted neologisms. In any case that page is the place to raise any proposals, which is why I cited it - don't go just changing the Manual. Deco 20:38, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Seattle meetup 9 Sept 2006

Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle4. - Jmabel | Talk 20:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Seattle article name change

Hey Deco, as a fellow Seattle Wikipedian, what is your thought on the discussion going on here Talk:Seattle, Washington? I've always appreciated your collective rationale and your thoughts would worthwhile to hear. Agne 01:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Bias toward things with well known names

Hi - My initial reaction is "duh". If something does not have a well known name, it seems almost self-evident that it is not encyclopedic. If there are any references about it, the references surely name it (no?). I don't think Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson is a counter-example and I'm not too sure about Proof of impossibility or the other examples you mention (Superhero live-action television series, in particular, looks like original research that should be deleted or morphed into a list that would have a well known name like List of superhero live-action television series). The same notion came up quite some time ago regarding Aspect of music (and it's eponymous category). IMO we should definitely not be in the business of inventing new terminology. If a concept has not been named, I think it's a perfectly reasonable stance that there shouldn't be an article about it. Wikipedia should not be inventing names. Is this bias? Maybe. But I think it might be reasonable bias. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand your viewpoint but I just don't really agree. Encyclopedic topics can very well exist without having a single widely-established name for the concept. Those two articles I cited still need to develop, but the current event articles are often relevant and encyclopedic yet have an invented name that's not used anywhere else. It's not "inventing names" to call an article History of Estonia; plain text descriptions as article titles are a well-established convention. Deco 04:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

User:Deco/Named topic bias

As far as I understand a bias only exists if there's a choice between two things. If something has just one name, I don't see the problem. Isn't your essay more about topics that don't have an agreed upon name than the ones that do? - Mgm|^(talk) 18:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

That's right. The point is that there aren't enough articles on things that don't have an agreed upon name. I have no issue with France being at France, of course. Deco 21:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Civility

From [3]...

"And now you're using this account for trolling too. Go away. Deco 06:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)"

While I realize said person was a troll, that's not very civil. 1ne 09:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. I don't think there's a particular reason to be civil to people who claim to be massively disrupting Wikipedia for their personal amusement. Deco 14:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

If someone is trolling, there is nothing uncivil about telling them to go away. —Centrx→talk • 19:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't really see Deco as having been overly rude or innapproriate here.Voice-of-All 19:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for editing the Turing machine stuff, I have no idea where it came from or if it was correct

I am poking at this last part of the Turing machine article so it falls in line with all the other stuff I'm picking at e.g. RAM and RASP and register machine and pointer machine. I'm bothered because there are no in-line sources for any of it. I have no idea where the stuff that you cut came from, & I don't know enough about complexity theory to be any good at editing it out or correcting it. About my only survey-source is van Emde Boas (1990) in "Handbook..." 1990 who is very good but makes my head swim. I will add van Emde Boas to the references. Thanks again. wvbaileyWvbailey 21:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey. I've seen sources in the past describing lower bounds on some algorithms on Turing machine, like the binary search example. I'll try to find something if I have time. Deco 06:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Bin packing problem

Some months ago I suggested you change the bounds on FFD from 10/9 OPT + 1 to 10/9 OPT + 4 (because the references had only the weaker bound). I wanted to let you know that I found a source for your original claim, so the article is essentially the way it was—with the new reference, of course.

Just letting you know in case you cared... CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm glad to see you found a reference for this. Deco 07:09, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

From "Minimum Spanning Tree"

"A minimum spanning tree is in fact the minimum-cost subgraph connecting all vertices, since subgraphs containing cycles necessarily have more total weight."

As far as I can tell, this was added by you (please correct me if it isn't). I think this sentence is true only if the weights are always positive. What do you say ?

I believe you're correct that I added it and that it assumes positive weights. Deco 10:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Update to Template:Update_after

Hi! I've made changes to Template:Update after (it now links to Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating and As of), and made significant changes to the documentation at Template:Update_after (including documenting the built-in ability to add a comment, and a changes in where it's allowable to be used); please review, and provide comments at Template talk:Update after if you think any are appropriate. Thanks! --Scott McNay 04:12, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Glossaries

Howdy. Contentious issue I'm afraid, but as the person who added the line we're arguing over ([4]), I thought you might be interested. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Glossaries. My position and the issue in general, is perhaps more briefly stated at Talk:List of glossaries. Thanks. :) --Quiddity 01:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Request of Help for languages hierarchy and feature analysis

Hello Deco. I think you understand better than me a language hierarchy, and what the language features are restricted to each class. Can you help us?

PS: Pleased to meet you!

-- User:Krauss 17 november 2006.

Hi Krauss, nice to meet you too. I'm afraid that although I have some knowledge of recursion theory, my main focus is complexity theory, and I couldn't tell you much more about the hierarchy than the articles on each type of language can. I also don't know much about web templates and their computational restrictions. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions though. Deco 11:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I lost your user-name, now it is on my bookmark... And sorry my english, I am a user en-2  ;-)

Question 1:

I used definitions from Parr article, but the terminology is not very friendly (see Formal language table-classes).

I grouped and used synonymous... "Simple" to "Complex" range, more friendly than Regular to Unrestricted range.

Note: the term "complex template language" is a informal label, not to be confused with Complex algorithm.

Question: Do you think is ok the choice of terms on the language Web_template#Languages_hierarchy (for this kind of article)? -- Krauss 23 Nov 2006

Question 2:

There are many usual programming language "features" and usual template language is like a simple (without power) programming language... Here on Wikipedia I not see "weak programming language" (like macro or preprocessor languages) list of features,

Question: Do you know a site or book (or people) explaning "features" (like use of IF, WHILE, recursion, library, etc.) of languages with relationship to Chomsky_hierarchy? -- Krauss 23 Nov 2006

PS: if there are problems on links (people changing) see:

• OLD links: hierarchy Languages hierarchy, Template system and formal definitions -- Krauss 19:00, 23 November 2006
• for "Parr reference" see (as of Oct 2006) Enforcing Strict Model-View Separation in Template Engines by USFCA University. Fixed the theoretical formal definition of Template languages.

Re: Hey

Hey there! Thanks for dropping by, I love visitors :-) I'll definitely come to you if I have any problems/questions... but first, while I'm here, can I archive your talk page for you? It's a little long! — Editor at Large^(speak) 16:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer. :-) I like it like it is though. Take care. Deco 08:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

redirect bot?

Hi Derick , I've renamed Pain" to "Pain and nociception" (the words have interwined and conflicting common use and defining one requires defining the other. A week into working with another editor on this entry they say "You've got me confused. What is nociception?" I then realised that the entry lacks clarity.). This leaves me a list http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere/Pain_and_nociception&limit=250&from=0 and I need to change indented pages to directly redirect to "Pain and nociception" There appear to be some 200 such pages. I see you have a bot that does something to redirections. Would this be a suitable task for it? Any other advice? SmithBlue 12:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you can use the redirect.py script in the pywikipediabot package for this purpose. You don't need to register a bot to use the semiautomated mode of pywikipediabot. Google pywikipediabot and take a look at the .py file itself for some documentation. Deco 08:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. SmithBlue 08:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess

Dear Glenford—you may be interested in putting your name to, or at least commenting on this new push to get the developers to create a parallel syntax that separates autoformatting and linking functions. IMV, it would go a long way towards fixing the untidy blueing of trivial chronological items, and would probably calm the nastiness between the anti- and pro-linking factions in the project. The proposal is to retain the existing function, to reduce the risk of objection from pro-linkers.Tony 14:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me (although I am not named Glenford). I'll take a look. Deco 08:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

en.literateprograms.org

Deco, I haven't been having much luck contacting your literate programming wiki tonight. Moonflare.com doesn't seem to be up either. Is there a problem ? -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Derek. Yes, I'm afraid a major long-term power outage in the Seattle area has taken down my server. It will be revived when power is. Deco 15:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I should have guessed. I heard about the weather problems in BC and Washington on the news and I knew you lived in Washington. Doh! Hope things get sorted out soon. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Hamming codes

I saw your comment on Talk:Hamming code and am seeking input. Could you comment on the changes I've made to Hamming code and Hamming(7,4)? Both technically and in prose. Thanks in advance for any input (or good comments)! :) Cburnett 07:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

MoS (writing about fiction)

In the past you have participated in discussion about this guideline, or voted in it's acceptence. There is currently a discussion about a partial rewrite of this guideline. The discussion could benefit from some more input. Thank you for your contributions. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 16:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Quadratic Sieve

Hey, I noticed your comments on the talk page and I was wondering if you could review my edits to the page. It appears that the example given is full of mistakes, so I will attempt to correct these and provide a full worked example from the the Quadratic Sieve I am writing. It currently works for factorising 1817, and larger numbers depending on the size of the factor base. Any help appreciated, I'm not much of a mathematician, just a Computer Scientist. Cheers, Tompsci 15:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Werdna's RfA

Hi. I'm still slightly wet behind the ears on process. I assume that I inadvertently crossed a WP "rule" when I amended my !vote, prompting you to amend my contribution. I don't like making mistakes and hate to do the same thing twice, so please let me know where I can find the related rule. Thanks, --Dweller 10:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi there - this was purely accidental. I edited an old version by mistake. Sorry about that. Deco 12:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh. Phew. I see someone's restored my edit. Thanks. --Dweller 12:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

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Pretty Boy Floyd

Thanks for screwing up the fixing of the PBF article[5][6], your efforts are appreciated. One band was on a major record label, had MTV airplay and owns the right to the name. The other was an obscure indie label act. - Deathrocker 20:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Read my edit summaries. Moving of an article should be done using the Move function, in order to preserve the history, not by copying and pasting the content. Moreover, a name change should have consensus before you do it, and it's not clear to me that your name change was correct. Please discuss it first. Thank you. Deco 20:52, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue with you whether the move should be done. The point is, if you're going to do it, use the Move tab. Never copy and paste content, as this erases the history. Deco 20:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Bengali wikipedia

Hi Deco, I'm an admin and the bureaucrat of Bengali Wikipedia, and noticed that you created an account there. Are you interested in running any bots or any other automated edit tools there, assuming you do not know Bengali?

Thanks

--Ragib 23:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ragib. I'm not - the account is at this time only intended for use in fixing up links to images as part of my duties on Commons. Thanks for asking. Deco 23:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)