User talk:Hithladaeus

Hoo?

My account name is an intentional misspelling of a famous character. I have a history of intentional misspellings as a form of what I like to call "wit" (another one of my funny misspellings, since everybody else calls it something else).

Welcome!

Hello, Hithladaeus, and welcome back to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you still like the place and decide to stay. --RexxS (talk) 14:29, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I suspect fresh eyes will notice that I favor primary quotations. I'm betting that it will be within 100 substantive edits that someone confuses "quoting primary sources" with "primary research." As for how to cite something just plain written by the person in question, I have no idea, since it won't be a web link, and we all know that only links to websites are real citations.

I remember when mine was the first article on the whole world wide web on a major work by Jonathan Swift. My citations were in parentheses and went to the original text or to print articles. Those got removed during the orgasm of "note codes," then the article was cited for "original research," and then the article was "saved" after I left by people putting in references to web pages that got their information from. . . me. Since mine was the first ever article, it got copied, mirrored, and paraphrased everywhere. Eventually, links to those copyists were used to prove that I had not been making it all up.

I could be a specialist in the author and the work in the real world, but here I had to be told what was acceptable research. Acceptable research was linking to web pages. Unacceptable was reading things and sitting in the library.

That said, as an anonymous IP I complained bitterly about John Bunyan, and some people did come in and work on it. I don't think they understood why it had fallen into the rubbish state it was in, mind you, or the degree to which American culture warriors would fight on that article, but they did make things better. Hithladaeus (talk) 18:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Did you ever see Citogenesis? You must have been the original. Nevertheless, not all parenthetical referencing has gone. --RexxS (talk) 20:34, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

JB

I think they must have created many, many more disambiguation pages over the last six years. Sadly J.B. is now a dab page (don't blame me, blame Justin Bieber and the rest of the music PR industry). You'll probably want J.B. (play), although if you leave it long enough, there's a bot that comes round and explains to you that you linked to a dab page. It must be like Austin Powers waking up after 30 years in a cryogenic freeze. --RexxS (talk) 20:20, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'll fix the link. I figured that it would be more appropriate to give clippings of what I've clipped into my commonplace book lately than to try to write about myself on my user page. My reading explains me better than my testimony anyway.

I had a point of view that I guess is still just my own. I didn't agree with all the "civility" and "insult" stuff because my argument is that we do not exist. I don't mean that philosophically. I mean that there are no people on Wikipedia. There are only ever bytes. There are words. Words are all "we" are. Of course harassment is harassment, and disruption is disruption, but all the bottles of smelling salts people passed around about their reputations, of all things, at a site where we purposely do not allow ourselves to have reputations, blew my mind. Thus, I "died." Having died, I couldn't hang around to explain to people that "I" was only alive as a collection of words and that the collection of words was no longer to be here, and therefore "I" was no more.

You're right, though: there is a lot of populating of name space that's surprising since I died. One that's bugging the heck out of me right now is Familists. I have some good contemporary material on them from the 17th c. and the very early 18th c., and I have The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1974 edition, although a 1982 copyright). Both of them are far more encyclopedic. They say what the group was in summary style, while the present text seems to be gathered from an academic article about how they worked and whether or not they are Quakers. So, blowing away good content? Nnnoo, I guess I can't.

On the other hand, going over to AfD out of boredom has confirmed how much hasn't changed. While everyone there seems to think guidelines replace judgment, which I get, the spam, the advertising, the "download our songs," are nauseatingly familiar. Hithladaeus (talk) 00:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

While looking through an article history, I noticed that Iamb is also a dab page. I was impressed. Although it was somewhat marred by the hatnote "(not to be confused with Lamb (disambiguation))", which I do find worrying. --RexxS (talk) 20:34, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Iamb? The metrical unit and the dance? I must know what choices there are now. I do like to show my students how to "do" the dithyramb (cha-cha-cha). I also, though, have to explain to them syllabary stress. No kidding. I have to say, "words of more than one syllable have a primary stress on one of those syllables." It's a new concept to them. (No childs were left behind, I guess. Hithladaeus (talk) 00:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and J.B. is a very fine play. I understand that it's being assigned to 9th grade English classes around the U.S. That is a terrific mistake. One needs to be a grown up. Hithladaeus (talk) 00:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I spent 25 years teaching students aged 11 to 18, so I have some sympathy with the view that there are subjects unsuited for assigning to children. Sadly, every time I tried to remove those topics best left for (much) older students, I was left with an empty list. It's a fundamental flaw in human evolution that the ages where people learn most easily are the ages where they have the least ability to understand what they are learning. --RexxS (talk) 15:33, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Ah, well, I certainly agree with that. There will be some students -- more than will confess it -- who will "get it" on a time delayed fuse. What bothers me is that Piaget missed the "age of irony." Irony is hard. There are functioning adults who can't handle it. Even among those with highly developed minds, irony simply waits until the person is . . . ready. The idea that a speech is neither intended as it is stated nor "sarcasm" nor simply satirical is really difficult. Last time I taught the intro. to literature, I had a kid ready to vandalize my car because he was certain that "The Road Not Taken" was too about being an individualist and that making a person special. (I pointed out that the last rhyme requires "differENCE" and is feminine, so either Frost was a bad poet or he's highlighting the word to make us notice that it's ironic. This is on top of the internal evidence and "wanted wear" being a linguistic game.) He'd read that poem in high school, and it was a poem that was all about how great it was to be yourself, and that was that, so I'd better shut up. (And I won't even get into what happens when teaching Received Texts to fundamentalists.) Hithladaeus (talk) 17:57, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Litotes!

So, I, along with others, have a contributor who states "I am not a massive fan." Well, whoever that person is is at least exercising a classic Anglo-Saxon bit of whining. "ðæt wæs gode cyninge" and all that. Unfortunately, it is also a plastering of a single bit of composition. Hithladaeus (talk) 11:55, 31 May 2015 (UTC) (Thanks to those who reverted.)

Oh, I though it was just Ceiling fan guy who was trying to tell us he had lost weight. It seems that having an obsession with ceiling fans is quite usual on Wikipedia, judging by the talk page for the article Talk:Ceiling fan, which is bigger than the article itself. --RexxS (talk) 18:41, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Wow! I'd always heard about fan service and that lots of men were interested in it, but I had no idea how deeply they cared about it. The vandal's requirement that the statement be suitable for reproduction on multiple pages had a kind of pop art quality to it -- and I was beginning to wonder who was doing the detournment, the vandal or me for thinking of it as being an object stating itself as a reference -- but then I decided to go on a car trip to a bookstore today instead.

Once, I was walking near a halfway house, and an attractive, nervous young woman I did not know told me, "I just lost a hundred pounds!" I said, "Oh?" She repeated, "I just lost a hundred pounds." She didn't look to weigh more than 120 lbs., so I said, "Well, congratulations." She said, "You don't understand," and then, in a small voice as she turned away, "I'm the queen of England." Hithladaeus (talk) 01:56, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

"What's too painful to re-MEHM-ber/ We simply choose to for-get"

I've fogotten how to "hide from display this stuff." It's like a <! and then some equals and then the flanking "turn it off" is? Oh, well. I'll just muscle in quotes as they occur, erasing all prior ones, and not assemble a big file. That's more honest anyway.

I had also thought of getting one of those pitchers of things -- maybe an x-ray of a goodly rupture or spinal fracture for people to use when they want to indicate that they're having a "break." A bit too macabre, though, and, of course, the articles are shocking because of the "why have a line drawing when I can take a photo of it" debate. Hithladaeus (talk) 16:53, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

It's an html comment like this: <!-- This bit is hidden -->. You could also use collapsible sections, made with {{hat}} and {{hab}} (or one of the similar templates) to archive stuff out of sight until you click to see the contents. --RexxS (talk) 17:46, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, RexxS! (Or, "thanks code user RexxS.") I enjoyed, in the past, sharing commonplace items. They said as much about me as anything I could have offered, and most of them were from personal reading. (All of them were, but some of the early ones from my reading of collections. E.g. "Diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice doggie!' until you can find a rock" is a great quote, but it's not one that I read in a primary. On the other hand, anything from before 1900 is guaranteed to be. It's in lieu of "about the author.") Hithladaeus (talk) 18:01, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

AFD

Hi Hithladaeus, I apologize for pasting your comment here[1] - I got in to an edit conflict so I couldn't be bothered to do it all manually incase I had another ec so I decided to simply copy & paste what I'd done but haden't realized I also copied your !vote too
I've only had 4 hours sleep so something disastrous was bound to happen sooner or later ,
Anyway just thought I'd explain myself incase you were pinged or whatever,
Anyway happy editing :), –Davey2010^Talk 15:40, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

No problem. If I hear a ping, I just assume it's the destroyers on the surface nearing my location again. I've been less surprised than amused at some of the puffing up of chests at AfD. Oh, well. "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing may be made," as the man said. I guarantee that I will be wrong sometimes, and I won't know when. Hithladaeus (talk) 17:16, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Hithladaeus. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Triple Image.
Message added 21:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Request to revisit the discussion. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

You're right. I was trying to be as procedurally pure as possible, given the high emotions/dudgeon people seem to get into betimes. (Shrug.) I've therefore added a second motion for the "Celebrate" album. Hithladaeus (talk) 23:23, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

Hello H. Wonderful edit here. I look forward to being in the audience for the premiere of your film. Thanks for the chuckle!! MarnetteD|Talk 01:54, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) I almost added, "but Not When I Told My Jokes," but I think that will have to be in the subtitle. Hithladaeus (talk) 01:57, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Good stuff! You just made the grin on my face wider. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 01:59, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hamilton Fire Department

What are these white pages of which you speak?! You mean people used to have books... that they looked up information in?!?! WHAT IS THIS MADNESS!!!! :-p Hope you are having a good day. --Zackmann08 (talk) 17:38, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

They were called "White Pages," but they had black ink in them. Go figure. Every city had a different one, and although each one had a completely different set of characters, the plot was exactly the same. In the end, it was always Z. Hithladaeus (talk) 17:58, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

HAHAH!!! I will have you know that "In the end, it was always Z" legit made me LOL at my desk at work... Thank you for that! --Zackmann08 (talk) 18:46, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

AfD

Hi. Deletion decicions at AfD are usually made according to policies, guidelines, and general accepted procedures. For he normal process for schools please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St.Augustine's Higher Secondary School Karimkunnam. Happy editing! --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:33, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

• My motion was within "normal." First, "outcomes" is a recognition that general outcomes have been of a sort, in aggregation, not a prediction or rule about any individual article. Second, a school article needs to be a valid article. Third, people need to debate the article for deletion, not the concept. In that case, there simply was no content to be kept, and there was no legitimate name.
• I appreciate the tutoring, though. Perhaps it will help to turn AfD into a place that can be decided entirely by -bots relying on guidelines drafted in namespace. Hithladaeus (talk) 18:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem with WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is that it makes certain assumptions, by-passing some basic checks. Can anybody tell me why we shouldn't have an article on St Rexx High School (http://www.metropolis2.com/St.Rexx/)? I could make a decent stub out of their website. --RexxS (talk) 21:10, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

It has a lot of problems. For me, the most significant problem is the amount of emotion brought to bear by people who take an absolute position. Frequently, they'll vote first and try to shut down all discussion. The SCHOOLOUTCOMES says that there has been an outcome that has repeated very often. Because of this, there are general ways to settle these articles, generally, based on past behavior of past AfD juries. None of that is tantamount to a rule. It's a prediction and a guide. It's an effort and preventing someone from re-litigating the "settled" business of whether high schools may be written about.

The other problem is the most piercing, to me: a lot of "voters" at AfD vote on the concept of a page rather than on the article. The most ridiculous case I've seen recently was when an obvious junk article got huge "keep, and let me hector everyone, too" fields (article title couldn't manage capital letters properly, had no formatting, etc.). Because some IP's phone-written junk happened to coincide with a potential article, people were coming in to vote to keep the crap.

AfD isn't cleanup, they say. They're right. It's also not "concepts" and "names" for deletion.

Anyway, back in the dim mists of time I recall a group of people saying that the door would be open for spurious schools being listed, for people arguing, "But schools!" when they wanted their gas stations to have articles, etc. When someone can present a case wherein a researcher would need an encyclopedia entry on the thing, that person sways me. Otherwise, it's like the S&M Deli: everyone takes a picture of its marquee, but nobody seems to know what it's like inside. Hithladaeus (talk) 01:28, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

You just can't take this stuff seriously. For a bit of fun, I went ahead and made a "typical school stub" at St Rexx Secondary High School. It looks about as good as St.Augustine's - and I would suggest is just about as verifiably notable. --RexxS (talk) 01:47, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

It seems as if List of Canadian Television Shows Now in Production is up at AfD. What an outrage. Next thing, they'll be trying to delete List of People Currently in My Living Room! It's systemic bias. I'm sure of it. (Oh, and the way AfD goes, it seems clear that the secret bat cave is still operating. That was a good reason for the dust off one's feet before. I don't know why a particular long-time Wikipedia non-administrator left, but I know he was not fond of the secret radios. I had forgotten about it, until AfD people started bulging certain debates while neighbors had no votes at all, and I was getting identical insults without context.) Hithladaeus (talk) 02:24, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Please take another look

Hello! I am leaving this note for you because you participated in a deletion discussion about the Wikipedia article titled Institute of Continuing Education. I substantially expanded the article today (for the helluvit), and would appreciate if you would take a look and see if it’s better than when you last saw it. Cheers.Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Erg. I still think it needs to be lodged at another name because of the collision with so many other universities with so many other institutes of the same name. Cambridge is a fine place, but there's no reason to believe that they were the first or original of these adult extensions, so it would be better to have Cambridge University Institute of Continuing Education. If it were at that name, it would need a much lower "notability" standard to start with, because then it wouldn't be the "institute," but CU's. Nevertheless, I'll consider a change in motion. Hithladaeus (talk) 12:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for your willingness to reconsider. The founder of ICE was James Stuart who, in 1867, gave a course of lectures in various cities that marked the beginning of the university extension movement.Anythingyouwant (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I got that from reading the article, but I suspect that this is disputed history. I don't mean that it's disputed in regard to this entry, but trying to trace continuing education and extension courses is probably pretty knotty, especially given all of the reformist movements that were going on at nearly the same time. This is made worse by all the energy pouring into education in America and France in the 19th century (esp. America, where geography and the end of the Civil War, beginnings of the myth of the inventor, etc. were increasing a pressure every bit as great as the British gentleman scientist). I.e. I believe its claims as far as they go, but trying to make a claim of "first" is notoriously difficult. Hithladaeus (talk) 13:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly more notable than the St Rexx high school (mentioned in previous section above)! 🐼 Anythingyouwant (talk) 13:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, yes, but we can be sure that that one is the only Chaldean English language high school in London. :-) "St.Augustine's" gets an automatic "Keep Are You Crazy?" because of some danged description of past voting behavior. That's logic. I fully expect camel case to be no impediment to "keep" soon.

I do wonder about those early efforts at continuing education. I have been all sorts of places where they claim to have been "pioneers" in it (in the US). Unfortunately, there are a lot of ways to make the claim. For example, I attended both of the "first state universities" in the United States. One was chartered first. The other opened its doors first. This is what I mean by "first" being an impossible claim. Someone will be the first to be degree-granting, another will be the first to be licensed, another will be the first to integrate credits, another will be the first to offer regular course offerings. . . and all of them will be first. Hithladaeus (talk) 14:14, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

True. And this thread is also first in some way. Let's install a plaque!  :-)Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:31, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

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