User talk:GDallimore/Archive 1

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Welcome!

Hello, GDallimore, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --Edcolins 13:09, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

templates substituted by a bot as per Wikipedia:Template substitution Pegasusbot 04:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		I award you this barnstar for your incredible efforts to discover the truth behind Complexxon and User:S.Tychon. --PresN 19:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the kindness barnstar! --PresN 03:07, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Software patent

Thank you for your thoughtful edits to software patent.--Nowa 11:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC) Nice additions about GPL3. --Nowa 22:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Great work on list of software patents, too. Rl 19:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Sutton Hoo

Good work keeping that spam out of the article this morning, thankyou. I have posted a suggestion about the format etc on the Sutton Hoo discussion page. Is this a field of interest to you? Dr Steven Plunkett 10:47, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Interesting suggestion, and have responded to your comments on Talk:Sutton Hoo. GDallimore 10:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I have got quite a way with the descriptive stuff and would now like to tackle the 'analysis' and 'legend' sections a bit. I see (running through the history) that you wrote the legend section a few months ago (and you have said some nice lyrical things). Will you be very aggrieved if I introduce other material and reshape it a bit, keeping your sympathetic phrases wherever possible? I'd like to focus separately on ghostly aspects, the Basil/Mrs Pretty relationship, and the heated arguments of 1939 (though all under one main header). It would help if I could have a free hand with your blessing. (You could always revert!!). Please respond on my talk page if you wish. By the way, your third external link there doesn't seem to connect to anything. Thanks, Dr Steven Plunkett 14:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

While your adherence to WP:CIVIL, I'm a firm believer of both WP:BOLD and WP:OURS. Unfortunately, I will probably be too tied up with other things for the nexy week or so to follow your edits, but please do continue to make them and I will pop back and have a look when I can. GDallimore 10:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Ronald A. Katz

GD, I recently put in a page on notorious patent troll Ronald A. Katz. Some editors feel that it falls short of what it required for a biography of a living person. Could you review the page and perhaps add to the discussion found at talk:Ronald A. Katz? --Nowa 13:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

GD, Thanks for your comments. Do you feel that the article as it stands now has unreasonable POV?--Nowa 17:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

No, but having looked through WP:BLP, it doesn't look like it needs to be POV to meet criteria for deletion - a neutral article about a living person still has to be quite careful, it seems. The speedy deletion request was just silly, but I can still see people wanting to open this one up to a wider discussion. I don't think it should be deleted, but it's not a decision for one person to take. GDallimore 18:02, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Patents for sources in Atomic line filter

Hello. Editing Atomic line filter, you recently replaced all of the patents in the Harvard style with simple links to the patent. You said that Harvard style was "not appropriate" for this application. While I in part agree, I do think that keeping one consistent referencing style is important the article as a whole. Under its current revision (your version), the Harvnb template links in the References section don't work consistently, for instance. And I can't see anything really wrong with calling the author of a patent its "author"; for the sake of internal consistency and simplicity, I feel that your edit should be undone. What say you? -- Rmrfstar 23:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

If I may add my two cents, I don't see any real issue with either style of reference. What's nice about the Harvard style (which I hadn't been familiar with before) is that it does list the inventors. On the other hand, what's nice about the direct patent links is that you get to see the patent image. This may be particularly helpful in this technology area. Perhaps it may be possible to combine the two.

As a point of information, there are very different criteria for being listed as an inventor on a patent versus being listed as an author on a refereed publication. Normally, for example, the inventor does not actually write the patent. That's done by a patent agent or patent attorney. Furthermore, inventorship is determined by what the patent is actually granted on. Thus inventors can be added or removed from a patent application depending upon what is claimed. There is also no formal significance to what order inventors are listed on a patent.

That being said, however, I don't see any problem with using the Harvard style for referencing a patent.--Nowa 01:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a list of reasons, off the top of my head, as to why a Harvard reference is not suitable for citing patents:

• The inventors are almost invariably not the authors of a patent spec, and authorship implies copyright ownership. Copyright is a tricky issue when it comes to patent specs, and it would be best to avoid any implication as to who the copyright belongs to.
• The assignee of a patent is important, especially for non-US patents where the inventors may not even be the first owners of the invention. Harvard referencing doesn't appear to include any sensible way of including an assignee (correct me if I'm wrong).
• A single field of "date" is confusing/ambiguous. Is this the date of filing, the date of publication of the patent application, or the date of publication of the granted patent? The link generated by Cite patent includes all of those pieces of info in a non-ambiguous manner.

So, as it currently stands, I think Harvard referencing is completely inadequate to cite a patent spec.

As I see it, therefore, there is room for improvement in a number of ways:

• Harvard referencing template needs improving to include patent specific reference features.
• Cite patent template needs improving to include (optional) inventor/assignee, publication etc information

(I have not yet read up enough on template creation to be able to do either of these things)

In the absence of improvements in the Harvard referencing template, I think the amendments I made represent the best compromise.

I will copy this discussion to the article Talk page itself. GDallimore 17:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Alright, but we must replace the Harvard templates in the inline citations, for they reference sources that specify no author or year; they are broken links. -- Rmrfstar 22:30, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

DYK

On 14 February, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Aerotel v Telco and Macrossan's application, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--ALoan (Talk) 13:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Software patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty

You have nominated Software patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty for deletion. I have rewritten the article. You may wish to have a look and decide whether reviewing your opinion is appropriate. Thank you. Of course, we can discuss how to rename the article (see my proposal here, which could be applied to all "Software patents under..." articles.). --Edcolins 17:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Catastrophe bond

GD, I've mentioned this to Ed and I thought I would mention here as well. There is an anonymous user who has twice deleted the section on patents from Catastrophe bond. Could you take a look and possibly weigh in?--Nowa 19:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

PCT AfD

I think you could just drop a note on the Afd page and an admin will shortly close the debate. Cheers, --Edcolins 14:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Four Stages

Thanks. I don't have a problem with you making changes, I'm not big-headed enough to think that I produce perfect prose at the drop of a hat, and, as you've seen, I'll soon change anything I don't agree with. If you have some time, I have another article at peer review: Wikipedia:Peer review/The Log from the Sea of Cortez/archive1, which could do with a discerning eye looking over it before I take it to FAC. Don't feel obligated though, I won't be upset if you're not interested. Cheers, Yomangani^talk 18:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I actually looked at Sutton Hoo the other day suspecting it was going to be a stubby half page that I could expand (Ha!). It's very good but needs breaking out into smaller articles. Don't worry about Steinbeck, I'll give you a prod when I do the next Hogarth. Yomangani^talk 18:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

OK to excerpt from text from patents into wikipedia article?

GD, Do you know if it's OK to excerpt text from published US patents and/or patent applications into Wikipedia?--Nowa 22:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't think I can say anything more than Edcolins already has. The EPO have started sending out copyright notices with their search reports on citing non-patent documentation, but I've not seen an official announcement on the topic that could be used in an article. GDallimore 16:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

GD, thanks anyway.--Nowa 17:31, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism Warning!

This user is strongly advised to stop vandalizing the GIF article. Removal of relevant links is not necessary or wanted. Go and do something of value somewhere and stop messing with this article.

The above unsigned comment was added by User:Motter in response to a vandalism warning I placed on his talk page. What can you do? GDallimore (Talk) 22:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to have it signed. this is Motter and i'm signing it now :)

why do you remove absolutely relevant free resources from articles?

I have explained my reasons here. Please go and discuss your case there. Wikipedia is free to edit by all and, at present, I think your edits are inappropriate so I am free to keep removing them. If you can persuade others that you are correct such that there is an overall consensus to keep the link, I will abide by that decision. I trust that you will be equally magnaminous. That is the ethos behind this website. GDallimore (Talk) 00:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Request

Hellow, I am a economics student who student in UK. Currently I am work on my final year dissertation and I wish to borrow your "technique" "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_patents" for my own research. I will like to ask for your permission. Thank you of your work and contribution.

Sonofsam1997 18:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi

It's not my technique, I'm afraid. The idea was discussed in a paper by Bessen and Hunt that is linked to in the article. If you want to get permission, I guess you'll have to go through them, but I don't think there's any claim to the technique as being proprietary.

To be honest, I do not think it is a particularly good way of looking for so called "software patents". It finds a huge number of patents that, in reality, may be only peripherally software related. For example, I've written a patent application myself about a device for moulding bricks from concrete. The inventor thought that it might be possible to use a computer to control it, so I mentioned this in the patent application and it is now classed as a "software patent". I only used the technique in the article because it is popular among people who dislike software patents and I wanted to highlight what a wide range of subject matter is caught under that particular definition - surely not all of those patents can be bad? There must be some middle ground.

I'd be interested in how your dissertation goes as the economic impact of software patents is extremely poorly researched (as Bessen and Hunt admit) - please don't go into the research assuming that all these people saying that patents impede innovation and are economically bad are right because there are so many of them and they're so vocal on the Internet. They may be right, but they might just as easily be wrong as there just isn't the research to know either way to my knowledge.

Best of luck. GDallimore (Talk) 22:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

MMR Vaccine

You are attempting to strengthen the assertions that MMR Vaccine is associated with autism. ([1]) This issue has been repeatedly hashed on the article's discussion page. There is already an article to the Vaccine controversy#The MMR controversy, and your link from "Adverse Effects" section has been allowed to remain. However, your continued insistance that Wakefield's report has not been retracted and did not make an association to autism is disingenuous. Your edits reflect a non-neutral POV, see WP:NPOV. Please desist from making POV-based edits to the article. Your most recent edit comment was "reverted per talk" -- although there is no such discussion on any talk page that I have checked. Heathhunnicutt 18:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion moved to articleGDallimore (Talk) 18:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

DYK

On 24 March, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Progress Theatre, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Carabinieri 12:00, 24 March 2007 (UTC)