User talk:Miwasatoshi/Archive/1

Archives from Feb 2005 to Mar 2006.

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Nihonjin des ka? Irrasshaimase!

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Again, welcome! - --Jondel 15:10, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nihonjin ja arimasen. Eigo o tsukattemo ii yo! -- Miwa 20:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Coo Coo

Another "hello!" I'd like to direct your attention to Wikipedia:Substubs and Wikipedia:Manual of style. The "Coo Coo" article is way too short for inclusion as it stands. However, feel free to expand it. Otherwise, it's a candidate for speedy deletion as an extremely short article without content. Good luck, happy editing and feel free to leave me a message on my talk page if I can be of any further help. Just click on my user name. Best, Lucky 6.9 18:48, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

By the way, please don't remove speedy deletion notices and replace the content with the previous edit. It's kind of against the house rules. As I mentioned, feel free to expand the article in question. Keep in mind that you're contributing to a reference work and the more that you can add, the better. To put it another way: Someone seeking information on Coo Coo already knows they're an Italian pop group. Normally, I'd rehang the speedy deletion notice...but I'd prefer to give you the opportunity to expand your contribution. Looks like you've been busy today! Again, welcome. - Lucky 6.9 18:52, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Whistling Ducks, Scrub Jays

Hi Miwasatoshi - Wikipedia follows the Lynx Handbook of the Birds of the World (and for ducks, also Madge & Burn, Wildfowl); neither of these texts hyphenates these, only the AOU uses this grammatically barbarous form (it's a general rule of grammar that capitals don't follow hyphens: if they were hyphenated, it would be Whistling-duck, Scrub-jay) - MPF 21:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just find it interesting that Wikipedia follows the equally "barbarous" habit of following the grammatical standards of American English. For that matter, only the AOU uses the "Gray" spelling and by that notion the Common Loon should be a diver shouldn't it? Why, yes, it is ... so why are we discussing it in American English again?

Also, HBW format is not universally accepted: Clements, Howard and Moore, and Sibley & Monroe all use the same format as the AOU. HBW is not even discussed as a format in most ornithological forums, such as [1].

If anything, the AOU official format should be enabled as at the very least a redirect, as this is the format found in every professional bird guide in print in the United States, including the Sibley Guide to Birds.

The thing I find upsetting is that you don't leave it at "Wikipedia following Lynx's HBW", which is perfectly valid, but attach a value judgment ("barbarous" not being a particularly neutral term) to AOU formatting. It's like an MLA adherent teeing off on Turabian style -- it's cross-discipline and, occasionally, irrelevant. AOU formatting is internally consistent, effective, and well-used. The only thing "barbarous" about this is the attitude in which this has been presented. Thanks for the help, but keep the condescension at home next time. Miwa 03:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Miwa - no, it isn't a US/International English difference, look at older US field guides (e.g. the Robbins Golden Guide), they don't use the Hyphen-Cap form. It is something that only came in during the 1980s with the strong influence of one or two people who had good ideas of systematising bird names but without much English grammar familiarity to go with it (a sadly common phenomenon among 'ivory tower' scientists). I don't know who exactly started it, but it may well be Sibley & Monroe; I suspect it is the AOU following them rather than the other way round.

I'm far from alone in value judgements on this; note e.g. "In particular, the checklist has reverted to more generally used English names where the Sibley and Monroe names seem inappropriate such as their use of capitalised hyphenated classifiers" (McKinnon & Phillipps, A Field Guide to the Birds of China, p. 2). Not perhaps such a strong wording as 'barbarous', but the far more strong for being publicly stated in an important book.

On AOU spellings, where they differ, yes, they should be redirects, I agree that is a bad omission if they weren't there (I didn't know they weren't). If you find any others please do make them or let me know and I can do it. - MPF 10:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me! Looks like I have my first big Wiki-project! Cheers! - Miwa

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Inca Dove, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

New userbox

Hi Miwasatoshi - in case you'd like it: {{User birder}} - MPF 00:27, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I most heartily approve! Thanks! Miwa 02:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you like it! How's birding? My 2006 yearlist 72 yesterday, up to 105 today - MPF 20:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Utterly horrifying. My 2006 yearlist is up to a measly 8. Granted, I'm helping my wife convalesce from surgery, which really cuts down on birding for the time being. First year bird was Verdin, which I guess is better than nothing! Miwa 21:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to hear about the surgery! Hope all's well soon - MPF 22:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bird poaching

Hi. No problem at all with people poaching birds from my to do list. The fewer that I have to write, the better. I find articles on individual birds easy to write, but a tedious, unstimulating chore, particularly as there are so many higher-priority (but more tricky to write) articles which Wikipedia doesn't yet have. If you have the inclination to poach more, please do!! SP-KP 21:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great Black-backed Gull

Hi. I noticed at your user page that "Greater Black-backed Gull" is on your to-do list. Wikipedia's article on Larus marinus is at Great Black-backed Gull. Another one crossed off!

On the subject of capitalization, I found this at the Chicago Manual of Style's Q&A page:

Q. This is the title of a section heading. Should it be "The Importance of Well-Written Reports" or "The Importance of Well-written Reports"? Should we capitalize "written"?

A. Chicago's "simple rule" (CMS 8.169) is to capitalize only the first element of a hyphenated compound unless any subsequent element is a proper noun or adjective. CMS also explains a more complex and traditional rule (too long to type out here, but which we prefer, and by which you would cap "Written"). Please see CMS 8.170 for examples.

So you can see there's no consensus—the Chicago folks don't even have a consensus with themselves.

—JerryFriedman 20:32, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, typo on my part. *fixes back to "Great"*

AOU format does tend to fall under the following -- when the second half of the compound is a type of bird, both parts are capitalized (ie Whistling-Duck, Night-Heron, Scrub-Jay). When the second half of the compound is not a type of bird, the second part is left lower case (Black-bellied, Black-crowned, Pacific-slope, Black-and-white). Both HBW and AOU formats take great pains to be internally consistent, but they do not generally agree with each other, and HBW disagrees with mainstream Chicago. Granted, different fields use different citation styles (Turabian, MLA, etc) so grammarians evidently have disputes just as fractious, political, as ambiguously important as those of taxonomists!

Also, the problem is categorizing English common names is a very simple one of regionality. Do you call them Loons or Divers? Do you risk Anglocentrism and persist calling them "Common Cuckoo" and "Common Kingfisher", or recognize that the majority of English-speakers no longer live in Great Britain? "Slavonian Grebe" or "Horned Grebe"? HBW does take a step ahead of Clements in being more than a world checklist, but it's hard to pick a "standard"

For reference, AviBase uses AOU (current to 2005), CINFO (1993), Clements (2005), Howard & Moore (2003), HBW (1992-2004), and Sibley & Monroe (1996). HBW primarily follows Howard & Moore. Note that most birders in the US follow Clements. On my private lists, I also follow Don Roberson's Bird Families of the World 1, on which the first sentence in the contents is as follows:

There is no single acceptable list. (I actually think the proper term here should be "accepted".)

I guess we can say the same for bird species in general. -- Miwa 20:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: 207.224.177.252

If you see a user vandalizing who has already had one (or more) "final warnings", you need only post a message to the list at WP:AIV. It'll get taken care of within 15 minutes in most cases. (ESkog)^(Talk) 03:04, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info! -- Miwa 06:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Akahori-san's Wiki

Thanks for adding his name properly. :P Someday, hopefully, it will be as good as CLAMP's article and I'll be happy with it. :D -- (unsigned post by Kyaa the Catlord 13:35, 7 February 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Hehe, no worries there. I figured I'd slap it in since everyone else has their name in kana / kanji. I find it bizarre he uses straight hiragana though ... I'm fairly certain it's a pseudonym and it's impossible to get a birthdate. -- Miwa 23:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Categories Phoenicians, Tuscanans

Hello there. you ve made a more than strong case for changing the names. i ll make a category redirect for these using these more appropriate demonyms Mayumashu 02:15, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er, thanks! ^_^ -- Miwa 02:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for edit summary

Hi. I am a bot, and I am writing to you with a request. I would like to ask you, if possible, to use edit summaries a bit more often when you contribute. The reason an edit summary is important is because it allows your fellow contributors to understand what you changed; you can think of it as the "Subject:" line in an email. For your information, your current edit summary usage is 18% for major edits and 21% for minor edits. (Based on the last 150 major and 150 minor edits in the article namespace.)

This is just a suggestion, and I hope that I did not appear inpolite. You do not need to reply to this message, but if you would like to give me feedback, you can do so at the feedback page. Thank you, and happy edits, Mathbot 03:37, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature

Dear Miwa-sama,

I must say that it was not me who started the article, so I cannot take this honour for whatever reason.

But in fact, I did notice this article and wanted to do it better. However, ultimately, due to my laziness and studies, I just left the draft while the article grows itself. I have to apologize for that instead. And... I will try to append the contents to the article, as soon as I go back to home (which would be a few hours later only).

Sorry for responding so late in the meatime. ~ Polobird 11:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category Ornithologists

I saw your comment on SP-KP talk page and note you are interested in this. I have opened a discussion under a few of the sub-categories and would like to see your input. Like you, I prefer field ornithologist as the category name for those who gather data and make simple analyses. I would lable the good and the great, from Audubon and Hartert, to Schlegel and Witherby, as "Academic ornithologists".John H, Morgan 14:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unusual place names

Hi - here's the reply I sent in response to the previous suggestion:

Hi. Thanks for letting me know about Braggadocio. To give you the background to my salvage2 page ... the real Unusual Place Names page was up for deletion recently, and looked like it would disappear from Wikipedia as a result of overzealous deletionism on the part of some editors. I thought it a wise precaution to take a copy of it. As it turns out it still exists (in fact it exists in two places now, which is perhaps not the result that those nominating for deletion wanted, but they seem happy!). I don't intend to maintain my page, and should perhaps delete it. If you want to add Braggadocio to the main page though, there's nothing stopping you. All the best SP-KP 17:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SP-KP 09:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Contributions/198.99.244.32

The Administrator Intervention for Vandalism page is for urgent alerts for users who are vandalising now and need an immediate block to preserve the encyclopaedia. Blocks are never applied as punishment but only to stop damage. If a user has made a one-off non-constructive edit many hours ago, there really is no cause to block them. This user got a warning at 22:28, 8 March after a spate of four vandalism edits which had ended three hours before. There was then a questionable edit sixteen hours after their warning.

Given that we can't be sure that the same IP address is used by the same user, and one of Wikipedia's core policies is assume good faith (unless the contrary is established), this user simply does not merit a block. David | Talk 00:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reply - Shonen Sunday

Thanks for the comments and sorry for knocking it out of alphabetical order. (I didn't notice the order until you pointed it out and will abide by it) I will probably add a couple more manga to that list now, mostly a couple more recent titles I keep seeing them mention on WebSunday a lot. (that's probably why I put up one or two of them: sure no one's heard of them in the US yet, but don't be surprised if an anime appears in the near future) StrangerAtaru 13:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of Arizona birds

I'm wondering if you botted this one. I don't quite see the point in wikifying the dates of first sightings of birds in a state, it seems extraneous and/or unuseful to do this. Birthdates and historical events make sense, but I'm not sure why the last edit was even made. :/ -- Miwa 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It has nothing to do with useful links. Just click on the "my preferences" link, or check out m:Help:Preferences under Date format. Gene Nygaard 17:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gene has kindly replied for me. Rich Farmbrough 18:39 13 March 2006 (UTC).

Invitation

Please come over to my test page and see what you think. It's really rough right now, but I think we could do something with it to make all the Japan-related articles better, as well as better coordinate everyone's efforts. --日本穣 05:19, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mountains of Japan

If you're going to improve the list of mountains in Japan (and it could do with it), you may like to use the following list, which should be very accurate [2]. --Stemonitis 14:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]