User talk:Gene Nygaard/2005May-2005Jun

Sugar substitute

Hi Gene, can you explain your objections to the recent edits at sugar substitute? I don't want to irritate anyone or get into a revert war, but for the life of me I can't see what is wrong with User:Michaeljosephcleary's additions. He has obviously put a lot of research into his contributions. -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 09:16, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Gene, please accept my sincere apology for the confusion at sugar substitute. However, I must still maintain that it was poor wikiquette to revert the way you did. It wasn't totally clear from your edit summary what you were objecting to - and although, by reverting, you did correct Michael's misunderstanding, you also removed all of his other productive additions (such as E numbers and FDA approvals). In such a situtation, it is far better to repair the bits that need repairing, than revert everything. Yes it might take a little longer but it is far more productive and reduces wikistress.

It was also inappropriate to call Michael's edits "nonsense" (assuming you made the first revert as 66.97.235.138).

You're an experienced editor now; you should know to not bite the newcomers and assume good faith.

Best wishes, and thanks again for your comments. -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 05:41, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Please note that because it was quite clear to me that User:Michaeljosephcleary did not understand the difference between sweetness ratios by energy content and ratios of energy density, all the numbers, and there were several, which he added or changed were suspect.

Furthermore, they were done over a long string of consecutive edits by him.

So it would be way too much work for me to go through and figure out exactly which numbers he had changed, and which he had not, and to rephrase his incorrect terminology in each instance. So what if some additional E numbers were also added? He can put them back in after he understands what's going on.

Since he was mixed up about it, I couldn't leave those numbers in there because I didn't know which quantity they really represented. It was Michael who had the data sources he was using, who could sort that out once it was pointed out that there was a problem.

Yes, I also made the first reversion without noticing that I'd been logged out (something which doesn't happen very often).

I've added more on the actual changes on the article's talk page. Does that make it clearer to you where the problem lies? Gene Nygaard 09:47, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

It's very simple to compare the changes in a consecutive string of edits using the 'compare selected versions' function in the article history ([1]). If you did this you would see that Michael changed only changed a few values, as the result of his misunderstanding - as well as adding a good deal of additional information to the article. To say he "messed up" the article is poor form, and reverting all of his changes was over the top.

I understand where the problem lies. My issue is that your response to the problem was excessive. We should all be working collaboratively and in friendly manner. In this problem, all you had to do was drop a note on Michael's talk page, and discuss the source of his figures. Even if they turned out to be wrong, it's not the end of the world if some incomplete or incorrect figures were on the page for a few hours. Wikipedia is a work in progress and new contributors should be encouraged, not growled at. -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 01:02, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I also think it was unnecessary to "reinstate spelling standard before changed by User:FirstPrinciples" when in fact the article was created with U.K. English (and I think only one of the "mistakes" corrected was made by me). The tone of your edit summary implies I did something wrong and that is hurtful. I only want the article to be as accurate and informative as possible, and I'm sure you want the same. -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 01:16, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

You changed "metabolized" to "metabolised" on 19 March 2005.

Then on 6 April, you added "synthesised", after you had changed to metabolised a couple of weeks earlier.

And this week you changed "labeled" to "labelled".

It was only the last one that was done specifically to make that change. The others are the type of thing I might inadvertently do myself, in the opposite direction. Especially when I'm only editing one section, I'm usually not going to go back and check to see what the rest of the article uses (which might not be consistent in any case).

But it was the last one, with your editorial comment just saying "spelling" as if the spelling were incorrect, which made me look into it in the first place. That's why I made sure that I pointed out that I wasn't changing the spelling just because of my own spelling preferences. Gene Nygaard 02:09, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, sorry. I would like to reiterate, I was under the impression that the article was originally in U.K. English (although that has obviously now changed); hence by making the spelling changes, I thought I was doing something totally uncontroversial. I still think it was somewhat inflammatory of you to mention me by name in the edit summary. (My latter spelling check, which was performed automatically with Spellbound in Firefox, was actually prompted by another user doing the same, as you'll see in the edit history).

Anyway; I sincerely apologise if I've irritated you in any way and I'll assume on good faith that you'd do the same for me. I see you are clearly an intelligent and productive wikipedian and I wish you all the best. I hope you will continue to work with me on sugar substitute to make it an ideal article (perhaps even a featured article one day)? Next week I will be getting some books from the local medical library to construct a complete, accurate and unambiguous table (as discussed) and hopefully we can put this all behind us. :) -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 04:15, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Trinity anniversary

July 16, 2005 —two months from now—will be the 60th anniversary of the "Trinity" test. I'm trying to organize a few people into getting that article to featured quality before then, anticipating a lot of general news coverage and curious minds. I've noticed you doing good work on Manhattan Project-related articles in the past, so I thought I would see if you were interested in helping out. Please see the discussion at Talk:Trinity site for some of my further thoughts on what should be present in the article, and please feel free to share you own. Thanks! --Fastfission 19:05, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Slrubenstein debate

Now what is the point in characterizing this with slrubinstein's name? This has been quite an extensive discussion with having to note the progenitors ID in the title? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 08:08, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Just "unstacking the deck" a little bit, by removing the presumption that this has something to do with the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy. Gene Nygaard 08:11, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Note also that it is only Slrubensteins framing of the debate which doesn't get changed. Others are relegated to the discussion or voting sections. Gene Nygaard 08:12, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me editors were having a quite civil debate on the issue, and all opinions and being represented. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 08:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Not when the deck is stacked by the title which implies that it is an already established fact that this has something to do with Wikepedia:Neutral point of view, and by User:Slrubenstein's characterization of it as a "Defense of BC/AD" (vs. "Criticisms of BCE/CE"), and by his characterization that "Those who defend BC/AD claim it is NPOV for one or more of four reasons" which by its very nature excludes those of us who have been arguing all along that it has nothing to do with NPOV in the first place. Of course, the reason for User:Slrubenstein's deceitfulness was made very clear by him in another part of his framing of the issues:

"More importantly, those of us who reject BC/AD are not doing so on the grounds that it violates our style manual (which is not a “policy”), but rather on the grounds that it violates our NPOV policy. These are simply two different issues. Moreover, NPOV trumps style. According to the Wikipedia: Manual of Style "

Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules.

"According to Wikipedia: Neutral point of view, however, "

NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable."

"In short, the argument on the basis of style must be rejected out of hand."

All opinions are not going to be fairly represented under these circumstances. Gene Nygaard 08:37, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

USS Mississinewa (AO-59)

I've fixed the table info that you added. It was understable that you made the mistake that you made. If you want to see instructions on how to use the table template please see the WikiProject Ships talk page, that should set you on the right road. I hope you like my work on that. David Newton 17:51, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Gustav II Adolf-vote

You'll have to pardon me for reformatting the vote, but it was just too oblique to be of any proper use. Please make your votes again, but stick to one vote per alternative and don't oppose the ones you don't support; it's just confusing.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:38, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

merge Tonne?

Hi there! I was merging all *gram articles to kilogram, and noticed that megagram is a redir to tonne. I'd like your opinion on whether it's appropriate to merge tonne into kilogram. Yours, Radiant_* 12:08, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

No. And gram should retain its own article as well, perhaps with a "Main article" cross-reference to the kilogram, and with any redirects of other prefixes remaining to kilogram and not to gram. The gram article can take care of the discussion relating to the cgs system, to the non-SI and non-cgs gram calories, and the like. The detailed discussion of various uses of each, and the distinction between various tons (including not only mass units, but force and volume and energy and power and who knows what else), can take place in that article; it doesn't need to clutter up the kilogram article, where there is enough already to make the salient points about the other units hard to find.

I see also that several of the energy units have been merged into megaton. The energy units deserve at least one separate article, but I think that this should be renamed ton of TNT with a disambiguation link at the top. That's a project I haven't taken the time to tackle yet, and I'm too busy right now to do it. Maybe kiloton, kilotonne, megaton, and megatonne could redirect to it. However, even as energy units, these aren't complete units without the "of TNT" designation; other similar energy units include tonnes of oil equivalent, tonnes of coal equivalent, short tons of coal equivalent, etc. In fact, because of those problems, I think that "kiloton" and "megaton" (or their -ne variants) should remain articles, or at least disambiguation pages rather than redirects. Gene Nygaard 13:21, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PA 103

Gene, please don't add all these metric units to this page. There are too many measurements and it interferes with the quality of the writing. These conversions are not policy, and this is a predominantly U.S. topic, particularly as the measurements were mostly determined by forensic investigators in the U.S. In any event, the Manual of Style if just a guideline and it clearly states these conversions need not be included. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 08:44, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

Gene, re the spaces - yeah sorry about that. I was just doing it in my own style; I'm not fussed.

Now, I'm mailing SV about this, and trying to reach a consensus. Personally, I have *huge* respect for SV and the work she has done on that article. I will not make any edits without her consensus, and I don't think anyone else should either, really.

To be frank, I prefer the inclusion of metric equivalents. Can I ask that you allow SV and I to try and work towards a compromise? I'm discussing the British and European importance of the event and how metric works over here.

I apologise for doing this in private, but sometimes things like this work better this way - have a read of the 'why private?' section Wikipedia:Mediation. Dan100 (Talk) 13:29, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:26, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Pounds force

I have a request to prefer 'lb' instead of 'lbf'. I would like this to be sorted generically rather than discussed on my talk page. I thought you might be interested. See User_talk:Bobblewik#BQM-74. Bobblewik  (talk) 12:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let me know if the discussion is taken elsewhere.

I think it has already been discussed somewhere, maybe several places.

I'd strongly oppose not distinguishing lbf from lb, and those are the standard symbols used by NIST and NPL, etc.

Note that almost all of the articles to which your request is related include two different units, pounds and pounds-force (though there are indeed many people who do not understand that).

Better stop before I get the discussion here. Gene Nygaard 12:21, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Understood. Bobblewik  (talk) 13:37, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Aircraft loaded weights

"Empty weight" plus "Useful load" should indeed give "Loaded weight". Thanks for all the work you're doing catching the various "oops-es", many of them mine! :) --Rlandmann 03:33, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's not what you ended up with on Grumman F2F, for example. So is that statement wrong? Or are you just throwing away useful information? Or adding "useful load" to empty weight to get maximum take-off weight rather than loaded weight? Or is what what "useful load" normally means in these Wikipedia articles. Is "useful load" standard English-language terminology in this context, or is it a translation of the terminology of some other language? Gene Nygaard 14:14, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Camel

On the camel page, you reverted a change of mine. I have to admit that, compared to the many other pages that confuse 1900s with 20th century this page was a bit ambiguous, but did you revert the change because you know that camels were gone in the first decade of the 20th century, or did you just think that 1900s and 20th century were the same?

I won't revert it back unless I find a definitive answer to the time period or you feel it's the right thing to do, but next time, please do leave more detail for me to go on. Thanks! -Harmil 28 June 2005 11:14 (UTC)

Some further detail. At [2], I find:

For years after the dissolution of the U.S. Camel Corps, camels wandered at will across the American desert. Bactrian camels, who had been bought and later set loose by a mining concern in British Columbia, drifted south to Nevada and Idaho. Many Arabian camels roamed through Texas, California, and Arizona. The last authenticated sightings of camels in the wild occurred in the early 1900s.

This is the only dated reference that I can find online to the existence of camels in the Southwest after their importation that contains a date (and doesn't refer to ghosts, I kid you not). Again, this is a tad ambiguous, but I think it's safer to say "early 20th century" than "early 1900s" unless we can get anything more specifc, wouldn't you? -Harmil 28 June 2005 11:24 (UTC)

I didn't just "think" that 1900s and 20th century are the same, I know that they are the same—except for a usual (but not quite universal) one-year shift in the time period referred to. That's normal English-language usage, in everything I have ever seen.

If someone wants to specifically refer to a single decade, that needs to be made clear with additional wording, by including the word "decade" or something similar. Otherwise, nobody is justified in expecting you to understand it that way. It does sometimes result in complicated wording, but that's just something we have to put up with in amny ways, no language deals with everything perfectly.

I had actually forgotten that for the purpose of linking, and consistent article titles, Wikipedia had gone with making the article 1900s refer to a decade rather than a century. So that does indeed mean that a link to the 1900s article, if what you mean is the century, doesn't get you to the right place. However, as you have undoubtedly noticed in your editing, merely linking a use of the term "1900s" in an article and also linking it to an article which happens to only include one decade is not sufficient to provide that disambiguation I mentioned above. It is the actual text of the article which still needs to identify that only a decade is being referred to, if that is what is intended.

Note that because of all the confusion caused by zero as a number being totally unknown, at least in Europe, at the time when Denis the Little invented this year numbering system in 525 AD, and because of the confusing-to-many-people mismatch between the century number and the numbers starting the years of that century, some people just don't like to use "____ century" designations, and strongly prefer to refer to a century as the 1900s, for example.

Wikipedia does give you another option, of course; you could use a piped link [[20th century|1900s]] to provide some of that link-fixing you are looking for, without changing the article's wording. Unlike the unpiped links, a piped link is also a fairly pretty clear indication that the meaning intended is the meaning used in that article.

I did see at least one other case in my watchlist where your changes made more sense than in the two discussed here, and I did not revert that one.

Mostly, however, I had forgotten about the Wikipedia articles dealing specifically with a decade rather than a century, and some such as "1900s" don't really appear to make that point clearly within the article. With that in mind, your "fix" makes more sense, and I probably overstated it a little bit in characterizing it as "not broken", though as I have pointed out above, it shouldn't automatically be the way you have done it.

BTW, the first decade of the 1900s is 1900 through 1909, not 1901 through 1909. The fact that you were confused by this much simpler usage is the tip of the iceberg compared to the confusion of using 20th century to refer to a time period in which 99 of the years start with "19" and only one with "20". Gene Nygaard 28 June 2005 12:20 (UTC)

Well, sure. I don't think I disagree with anything you said, and certainly if I were authoriing an article that needed to refer to the 2000s, I would be clear about which I were refering to. However, in the two cases that you reverted, I was actually changing the ambiguous usage to a non-ambiguous usage.

In future I'll try to keep the flow of the original in mind, and use the wording (regardless of linking) that is appropriate for the page. I presume that in retrospect you don't mind my doing so? I'm just going through all of the Special:Whatlinkshere/1900s and making sure that they were, in fact, decade references. I haven't cleared up any of the ambiguous entries if they seem to lean toward the decade, though as you correctly point out, those should be clarified too.

All things considered, I think we're roughly on the same page here, and given the huge number of completely foolish edits that happen, I can't blame your trigger finger in this case (perhaps I need an explanation in my TODO list that I link to in my edit summaries....

Thanks for your reply! -Harmil 28 June 2005 12:53 (UTC)

Aluminium

In the entry for Aluminium you made another reversion. This one is a much clearer reference to the century, not the decade. I'll wait for a bit for your response to see if I'm mis-interpreting, but unless you have a source that specifically calls this out as being between 1901 and 1909, I think I'll put this one back sometime later today or tomorrow. -Harmil 28 June 2005 11:30 (UTC)