User talk:Opabinia regalis/Archive 3

Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject Newsletter

The project main page has gotten a facelift!
When people visit the project, the very first thing that they see tends to be the project's main page, and with this in mind, the main page has been completely overhauled. To enhance readability the various "goals" sections have been merged, and a detailed "how you can help" section has been added. To increase accessibility for more established members, the links to any resources that were in the main body text have been moved onto the navigation bar on the right. Finally, the whole page has been nicely laid out and given a nice attractive look.
New project feature: peer review
I'm proud to announce the addition of out newest feature: peer review! The MCB peer review feature aims serve as a stepping stone to improve articles to featured article status by allowing editors to request the opinions of other members about articles that they might not otherwise see or contribute to.
Project progress
The article worklist
We’ve had quite a bit of progress on the worklist article in the past month. Not only has the list itself nearly doubled in size from 143 to 365 entries, but an amazing three articles have been advanced to FA status, thanks in great part to the efforts of our very own TimVickers! Remember, the state of the worklist is the closest thing we have to quantifying the progress of the project, so if you get the chance, please take a look at the list, pick a favorite article, and improve it!
Collaboration of the Month
Last month's Collaboration of the Month, cell nucleus, was a terrific success! In one month, the article went from a dismal stub to an A-class article. Many thanks to all of the collaborators who contributed, especially ShaiM, who took on the greatest part of the burden. This month's Collaboration of the Month, adenosine triphosphate, isn't getting nearly the attention of its predecessor, so if you can, please lend a hand!
Finally...
The project has a new coordinator, Clockwork Soul! The role - my role - of coordinator will be to harmonize the project's common efforts, in part by organizing the various tasks required to make the project run as smoothly and completely as possible. Many thanks to those who supported me and those participated in the selection process.
Clockwork Soul, project coordinator 18:16, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you wish to opt out of having the newsletter posted on your talk page in the future, you may add yourself to the opt out list Newsletter concept and layout blatantly "borrowed" from the Esperanza newsletter.

Peer review

Hello, and thanks for the extremely detailed review you provided for Personal computer game! I didn't expect anything as detailed as what you provided, so I'm very grateful to you for spending the time to produce such good suggestions. It's very greatly appreciated. :) Daveydw ee b (^chat/_patch) 03:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem; reviewing is fun. I find the history of computing interesting for some reason. Opabinia regalis 06:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Influenza

Page now nominated as a FAC. Comments and suggestions are welcome on the review page. Thank you. TimVickers 16:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elonka

Thank you for participating in my recent RfA. Unfortunately consensus was not reached, and the nomination was not successful. However, I do appreciate that you took the time to comment, as I find it a valuable thing to understand how I am perceived by others in the Wikipedia community. If there is anything that I can do in the future to help further address your concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. --Elonka 09:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Malate-aspartate shuttle

Hi Opanbinia,

No problem on either the Malate-aspartate shuttle diagram or the RNA interference and microRNA diagram. Let me know if/when you want me to do the latter. The Malate-aspartate shuttle diagram should likely be done by sunday or monday. Shouldn't take too long. Ta. WikipedianProlific ^(Talk) 13:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks! I want to make sure the articles for RNAi and miRNA are consistent and correct first; that may not be till next week because I'll be out of town part of this weekend. I'll drop you a note. Opabinia regalis 00:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick update, I started this the other day quite a while behind schedule. My work at university suddenly picked up pace and equally desperately trying to get some of my diagrams published is proving to be brutally difficult and time consuming. However my workload drops down on friday, so hoping to get this finished around saturday. will keep you updated WikipedianProlific ^(Talk) 21:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, it's no rush. I haven't gotten around to the RNAi articles yet either, because I got buried in unexpected work stuff, so that'll probably be this weekend sometime. Opabinia regalis 00:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here it is. If there are any changes/corrections/improvements you would like me to make please let me know. It may be worth checking my structural diagrams of the amino acids as I'm more bio than chemist, but really they should hopefully be correct. Looking at it now I like to think its actually clearer than the Biocarta version. I've referenced Glenn Croston (the chap who drew the biocarta version) in the diagram summary as I think they are more than sufficiently similar to warrant a reference. Otherwise please accept my apologies on the time it took and if you have any changes please let me know. Thanks. WikipedianProlific ^(Talk) 21:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to nitpick but here are some comments.

The whole diagram seems too dark.
i wonder if just words for the compounds would simplyfy the diagram. The cheimal structure while informative might be unneccesary for a full understanding of the shuttle.
The lines at present seem too light, I would like to see them bolder.
The lines go through the membrane, this is a distraction.
To high light the antiporter properties the lines should both enter and leave on the left/right faces of the protein. At present one is entering and leaving on the top/bottom face.
As depicted now it is not clear that the glutamate is also a product/substrate of the aspartate amino transferase.
Inner Matrix should be Matrix. As labelled it implies there is another matrix (outer matrix?)

I hope you find these comments both constructive and useful. David D. (Talk) 23:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks WP! Very nice, and don't worry about the time - as you can see I still haven't gotten back to RNAi yet. I only see two things that are a definite need for correction - on the transporter and the structure labels, the labels read "asparate", missing the t in "aspartate", and the text for alpha-ketoglutarate has a sigma instead of an alpha symbol. The other thing I'd suggest is changing the ionization to reflect physiological pH - all the COOH groups as COO- and NH2 groups as NH3+. I do think having the structures is nice (and they all look right), though it might be clearer to draw the oxaloacetates flipped 180 degrees so that they have the same orientation as the alpha-ketoglutarate, so that the carbon that gets de/aminated is in the same position in both cases. I agree with David that the color for the intermembrane space is a little dark - it would look nice printed, but when you can't trust users' monitors to be calibrated correctly... but I also agree with you that this is nicer than the biocarta version :) Opabinia regalis 04:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thanks David and Opabinia. I've made changes based on both your suggestions. The errors have been corrected and the ionisation state of the amino acids is shown. I've changed the colour of the background to be lighter but please do tell me if its still to dark. I use a laptop and am quite proud that it's very carefully calibrated (as you may imagine it needs to be for artwork). So if its still to dark let me know. I havent changed the thickness of the lines as to be honest thats quite a pain in the arse. But to make the antiporter clearer i've changed it from 'Transporter' to 'antiporter'. Hopefully this will clarify any potential sources of confussion for viewers. Although its not entirely clear what reactions the aminotransferase is catalysing I am going to leave it that way, as this is something which can be described in more detail in the text. And at the end of the day with a diagram/schematic of a molecular pathway its hard to make it 100% obvious whats happening from a diagram alone. If your still seeing the old image just press F5 in internet explorer to re-cache the image. Thanks, any more changes please let me know. WikipedianProlific ^(Talk) 13:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Couple of quick things - the labels for the structures are fixed, but the antiporter label still says "asparate". Also, the hydroxyl group in malate doesn't need to be ionized (sorry if I wasn't clear about that) - just the carboxyls. I imagine this is a limitation of the structure drawing program you used, but some of the carboxyls have their charge shown between the O and its bond (on the left in glutamate and alpha-ketoglutarate) - it would be clearer if the charge was to the left of the O atom. I'll have to let you know tomorrow about the colors, unless David has an opinion - it looks fine on my fairly-well-calibrated laptop screen, but the computer attached to the old LCD screen that was showing it too dark is running something memory-intensive and can't open a browser right now. Opabinia regalis 17:44, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have modified the old version in a few places to incorporate some of my ideas. See it to the right here or at Image:Malate-aspartate shuttle.png. It is not perfect but more along the lines i was thinking. David D. (Talk) 23:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

David, I like that placement of the text (don't know why I didn't think of that), but the matrix and intermembrane space backgrounds are now extremely similar (identical?). Though the old color was too dark, I do think they should be distinct. Opabinia regalis 05:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here you have a bold font for the enzyme names to improve readability. Also lightened the intermembrane space. David D. (Talk) 07:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like this one. If I'm allowed a micro-nitpick, it looks like the e in the intermembrane aspartate aminotransferase is about to diffuse through the membrane :) Opabinia regalis 06:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclol

Hi O,

I've been devoting myself recently to Cyclol, an early structural model of globular proteins. The article's not really relevant for modern biochemists, but it's an interesting topic, an early precursor of modern structural modeling. I confess, I also have a scientifically unwarranted affection for the theory, perhaps because of its beautifully symmetric molecules.

Anyway, I've tried to do a good job with the article and would like to help it eventually reach FA. Would you be so kind as to look it over and make suggestions/criticisms, FA-related and otherwise? Thanks muchly and all the best to you and kitty, Willow 22:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Will do! It looks like you've put a ton of work into that article - I haven't had a chance to read it yet but skimming it looks good :) Maybe in a couple of days; I'm kind of swamped at work this week. (Kitty is growing like a weed and is always looking for new ways to get into trouble :) She needs to learn that mouse pointers aren't kitty toys!) Opabinia regalis 07:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This month's winner is proteasome!

Proteasome

The Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject's current Collaboration of the Month article is proteasome.

Please help to improve this article to featured article status. Last month's collaboration was adenosine triphosphate.

– Clockwork Soul 22:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review of Fin Whale

Thanks for your input on the peer review of Fin Whale. I think the article is at a stable point again after some of my recent additions, so if you have time, would you mind taking another peek at it to see if all your points have been addressed, especially the part about the screen rendering at your high screen resolution? (also to see if anything else has come up) Thanks. Neil916 (Talk) 17:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank You

for support and views on Sequence profiling tool article. I feel moving the article may dilute the concept. Also I feel you could expand more on the microarray stuff relevant to profiling data. If you could muster enough volunteers and support we could shape this into a very informative tool Nattu 04:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Further thanks and a comment

Thanks for the vote - I appreciate it. I'm not sure what the answer to the problem is though - or how to fix it, in a perfect world everything would look great for everyone. I am barely computer literate. I use a proper big ordinary computer at home (about a 18 months old) and a laptop about 2 years old, and also a very new lap-top. At work a very big thing part of a complicated system, but on all 4 screens the article appears the same. I don't have a clue how else to describe them and have no idea if they are "1600x1200" above or below. I assume because you are the only person to point this out, that you are in the minority, (which I don't mean to sound dismissive or rude) that picture of the "Frescoes in the Villa Farnesina" has to be in the ethos section because it is part of the inspiration behind the house. I suppose I could write another couple of paragraphs to make enough room for it in that section, but again on all other screens there is ample space for it, anyway it's hardly good wiki-editing to "bull shit" 500 words just to make space for an image, and I'm pretty verbose as it is. The other pictures in that section are already quite small, so if I make them smaller they will look like postage stamps on other screens. Hopefully somebody one day will know how to solve it. Thanks for looking at the page, I see you are heavily into Chemistry - years after leaving school having obtained the lowest ungraded mark possible in a chemistry exam, I am still astounded that people can understand chemistry, and full of awe struck admiration for those that do. Regards Giano 12:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As you probably figure, 1600x1200 means the screen is 1600 pixels wide by 1200 pixels tall, hence a 1600x1200 screen can show more stuff in one "screenful" than, say, 800x600. You're right that I'm in the minority, as I use very high resolution (1920x1200) and therefore sometimes end up representing the weird resolution brigade. (If you're curious, it looks like this.)

You did a great job with that article - it takes impressive writing to make an article about a building genuinely interesting to me :) As it happens, I had a similar experience in an introduction to architecture class that I was very glad was graded pass/fail. Opabinia regalis 03:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfA nomination

Opabinia regalis,

I am planning to nominate you for adminship! But first, would you be willing to accept the nomination? You may indicate with a motion of your proboscis. Dryman 00:24, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thank you! Even with five eyes I didn't see that one coming, but I'll nod my proboscis to accept :) Opabinia regalis 03:50, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I have created the nomination. Good luck! Dryman 14:02, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dryman would like to nominate you to be an administrator. Please visit Wikipedia:Requests for adminship to see what this process entails, and then contact Dryman to accept or decline the nomination. A page has been created for your nomination at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Opabinia regalis. If you accept the nomination, you must formally state your acceptance and answer the questions on that page. Once you have answered the questions, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so.

Hi, Congratulations on the (overwhelmingly) successful vote! With your many flaplike appendages and now the administrative tools, you will be unstoppable.. :) Dryman 21:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfA thanks

Hi Opabinia, and thanks for your participation at the recent RfA, which did not succeed. For those of you who expressed their support, your kind words and your trust are sincerely appreciated. For those who were opposed --especially those who offered their constructive criticism-- please accept this message as assurance that equally sincere efforts, aimed at enhancing the quality and accuracy of representations within the Wikipedia, will continue. Striving for improved collaboration and consensus will also continue, with all of your insights in mind, while applying NPOV ideals as fairly and reasonably as possible. Ombudsman 05:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arthropoda

I've been reading up on your species, and I have to say the sources conflict so I'm confused. Are you or are you not an arthropod? pschemp | talk 00:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I'm as yet unclassified. We're dinocarids, and the consensus seems to be that dinocarids and arthropods evolved from a common ancestor, though there's disagreement on whether to extend the arthropod phylum to include dinocarids as a class, or give dinocarids their own phylum. Despite the name, this isn't really my area of specialization, but it seems to offend some people's aesthetic sense to have a bunch of sparsely populated high-level classifications, and others' to shoehorn extinct organisms into modern classifications. (There's an attempt at sorting things out here.) In either case, we're cool critters :) Opabinia regalis 03:18, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ack. Phylogeny! Run away! Or scuttle through the mud for you. possibly. unless you swam. Anyway, thanks for the link, it made it very clear what the disagreement is. :)pschemp | talk 04:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PC game

Heya. It's been a very long time since your gave your comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Personal computer game/archive1, but I've only now have much time to put them into effect. That said, while re-writing the introduction to briefly summarise most of the article's content, a question occurred to me about another point you made. The history section, as a whole, needs a lot of work -- there are a lot of omissions and other problems that are becoming apparent, but organising it seems like a real problem to me.

My thinking is that it would benefit from either far fewer subsections (perhaps just one or two), or none at all. Do you think that would help at all, or does that make it too dense to read easily? Or something?

Any advice really would be gratefully accepted. I don't have enough experience with this to know what's going on. :) Daveydw ee b (^chat/_patch) 09:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

Hello Opabinia regalis. I wanted to thank you with flowers (well, flower) for taking the time to cast one of your eyes over my RfA, which was successful. I'm very grateful for the support and thoughtful comment from a fellow example of evolution in action ;) I assure you I'll continue to serve the project to the very best of my ability and strive to use the admin tools in a wise and fair manner. Please do let me know if I can be of assistance and especially if you spot me making an error in future. Many thanks once again. Yours, Rockpocket 07:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Band speedies

You might want to be careful about band speedy delete nominations when the band is from a non-English speaking country. Often the users making an article about them have poor English and thus the band seems less notable than it is. I've found a couple of recent nominations of yours that were actually notable when I went to check them out - one example was the J-pop band EGO-WRAPPIN'. Turns out they're signed to Universal Music and seem to be a fairly big deal. Not that the article made that point, of course, so don't think I'm blaming you - just that some of these are notable even though the users trying to create the articles can't write their way out of a paper sack!

Good luck on the adminship, btw. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 09:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks then. I am certainly not up on my J-pop bands :) Maybe it's a browser/font issue but all I saw was garble in the husking bee one. Opabinia regalis 14:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your input

Thank you for taking part in my RfA. The RfA was not successful, mostly because I did a pretty bad job of presenting myself. I'll run again sometime in the next few months, in the hopes that some will reconsider.

In the meantime, one of the projects I'm working on is A Wikimedia Administrator's Handbook. This is a wikibook how-to guide intended to help new administrators learn the ropes, as well as to simply "demystify" what adminship entails. If you are an administrator, please help out with writing it, particularly on the technical aspects of the tools. Both administrators and non-administrators are welcome to help link in and sort all of the various policies regarding the use of these tools on wikipedia in particular (as well as other projects: for example, I have almost no experience with how things work on wiktionary or wikinews). Users who are neither familiar with policy or the sysop tools could be of great help by asking questions about anything that's unclear. The goal is to get everything together in one place, with a narrative form designed to anticipate the reader's next question.

A second project, related but not entailed, is a book on wikimedia in general, with a history of how various policies evolved over time, interesting trivia (e.g., what the heck was "wikimoney" about?), and a history of how the wikimedia foundation itself came about and the larger issues that occurred during its history (such as the infamous "Spanish Fork").

Again, thanks for your input on the RfA, and thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide for the handbook. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 12:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pippi Longstocking goes overboard ;)

Hi, O, I foolishly went ahead and posted Cyclol as a featured article candidate without waiting a full week for input on the scientific and non-scientific peer reviews. It was impulsive, but hopefully it will turn out well; my intuition was that we probably wouldn't get too many more reviews anyway. If you'd be so kind as to leave a note, that'd be great!

I agree with you about the extra white space in the corner of the reaction figure, but I couldn't arrange it to look better. The linear form was too wide, as you imagined, and I wanted to downplay the "open" form (in black) since it's negligibly populated. I also agree about the "See also" thing, but I'm hoping that others will think as you do, and see the sense of including those links there.

Your RfA if going well! A nice variety of people, too — a fair tribute to you and your edits. :) Willow 21:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Your statistical experiment with WP coverage (250 hits to Random Article) was thought-provoking. Have you compared it with the FA representation? Your survey seems like something that should be done automatically by the Powers That Be; a clever programmer could probably do it in an evening.

Another useful, possibly automated undertaking would be to ensure that every article in the Britannica has a counterpart on WP; perhaps we could post

and invite people to "get the red out"? Perhaps that's been done already? I don't imagine that the results would be too embarrassing to WP; we must be getting close to covering most of the Britannica already. Willow 23:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, thanks. I haven't compared my statistics with anything yet; I haven't had another block of otherwise unproductive time :) I thought about setting up a pywikipedia-like bot to get a bigger sample, but have only looked into it very briefly (just long enough to not see an existing function for Special:Random). I'm sure it's doable, and would make keeping track of the category sums easier. That would make me even lamer about articles than I have been the last week or two, though... Maybe I'll post it to the village pump and see if anyone else wants to carry on.

I think something like your Britannica does exist - Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles has similar lists, though not from the 2007 edition. Opabinia regalis 05:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're going to get carpel tunnel...

...thanking everybody who supported you when your RfA finally comes through. Assuming, of course, it does: things are looking a little tight at the moment. ;) – Clockwork Soul 20:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you for running, no need to thank me for commenting on your RfA, seriously. Just keep editing the content. David D. (Talk) 20:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both! I know, it was a little close there at the end... :) I don't know how much people read out of the general comments and such, so I hope no one feels 'ignored', but I promised not to spam people's talk pages, and spam I shall not. (Delete spam, I shall.) Opabinia regalis 03:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations!

Well done on completing your RfA with 99% support! A Bureaucrat will be along shortly to issue you with a shiny new toolkit. If you have any questions about using them then please don't hesistate to ask. I'm sure that I would love to know the answers too! Regards and happy mopping, (aeropagitica) 05:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats! I'll have to remember to get you your robes and key to the Cabal clubhouse. – Clockwork Soul 05:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your RfA

I am pleased to let you know that, consensus reached, you are now an Administrator. You should find the following forums useful:

Congratulations on your promotion and the best of luck with your new charge! Redux 07:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeay, I'm really happy for you! It couldn't happen to a nicer — umm, worm? But I hope that you won't be plagued by too many bureaucratic duties, which seems to befall a lot of admins; it would be our loss indeed if you were distracted from writing encyclopedia articles by the temptation of world hegemony ("The Burgess Shale was only the beginning! Mwahaha..."). ;D

Three cheers for the newly puissant pentomphaloid, Willow 11:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone! It was great (and honestly a bit surprising!) to see how much support and trust my fellow contributors have in me. Just tested out the delete tab on a couple of speedies, toolkit seems to be in working order :) ~~Newly initiated member of the Cabal~~_{What Cabal? It's not like I have special robes or anything...} Opabinia regalis 03:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POTD notification

This is to let you know the Featured Picture you uploaded and/or nominated Image:1axc tricolor.png is scheduled to be Picture of the day on December 17, 2006, when it will be featured on the Main Page. Congratulations!

As a favor, could you look over the blurb for this and see if this is understandable by laypeople? I basically copied what you had written in the FPC nomination and took some from the article as well. Thanks. howch e ng {chat} 17:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! The caption looks good to me - I made a couple of minor wording changes, but the content is the same. I think the only potentially confusing part is 'processivity', but it's both linked and explained in the text, so I'm not sure what else would make it more understandable. Guess I'll have to spiff up that article a bit more by then :) Opabinia regalis 03:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Survey of article coverage

I did a survey of article coverage on that other encyclopedia, which you may find here. A remarkably high percentage is already present on WP, and a few more might be found under different names. However, a comparison with your percentages suggests that certain categories of articles are under-represented here; or expressed more positively, some categories are represented more fully on WP than elsewhere, such as Category:American female guitarists. ;) Please let me know what you think, when you get the chance. Willow 23:18, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your new powers

The mop

Congratulations on becoming an admin!

Enjoy your new-found powers, and remember to use them only for good, and not for evil. If you would like to try out your new mop, here are some spots that always need loving care:

All the best! - Quadell

The flamethrower

SELEX:_Systematic_Evolution_of_Ligands_by_Exponential_Enrichment

Mind checking this out? I am concerned that it may be far too complicated for this encyclopedia. - crz crztalk 00:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly needs cleaning up but it looks sound. It might be good to merge it into Directed_evolution. David D. (Talk) 01:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The subject is specialized but seems fine (though maybe, like David suggests, needs merging), though the article is lousy. Rewritten for context and clarity, and Samir moved it to a sane title. Opabinia regalis 02:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Explanation of hatnote on talk page

Just a brief note to explain the hatnote I've added to your talk page (I see you already have one on your user page). See my comments at the Village Pump thread. See also how I've done this at my user page and talk page (User:Carcharoth and User talk:Carcharoth). Hope that's OK. Do you think this might be a good way to handle this for other cases of name similarity, and adding it to the guidelines? Carcharoth 12:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I forgot to get back to that discussion. This is a good idea, thanks. (Also see comments on username thread.) Opabinia regalis 01:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion question

Opabinia, I appreciate your other contributions.But why did you delete my day-old stub?! Yashtulsyan 22:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure, but it would be easier to find out if I knew the title of the article you're referring to. Sorry, Thanksgiving means I don't have time to go digging through the logs looking. Opabinia regalis 07:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was SimplifyThis Yashtulsyan

Thanks. In that case, it was deleted because it was a brief article that contained little more than an ad/directory entry about a non-notable company. According to the article, the company was founded about a month ago, making it unlikely that the subject is notable enough for an encyclopedia article. Please see our notability guidelines, in particular guidelines for companies, for more information on what is needed for a company to merit an article. Opabinia regalis 06:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proteasome

Dear Opabinia, I guess I owe you an apology. Sorry, due to my thesis I just haven't had the time to continue working on either the diagram or redoing the figure. Thanks for the papers. When I did the figures I was considering to color the alpha/beta/etc subunits differently but I decided against it because I feared that the average non-biologist reader of the article who never heard of proteasomes before would only be confused. So I decided to keep things simple: "This the cap, here it goes in. That is the tube. This is where the proteins are degraded." Or maybe I underestimate the readers? What do you think? PS. I will still be busy for at least a week or so, but I promise to take care of it (sooner or later :-) --Splette :) ^{How's my driving?} 05:18, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Don't worry about it, I haven't gotten back to that article in a while either, and I won't be around much for the next couple of days. I do think there should be a diagram of some sort that illustrates the structure of the 20S core - there's a lot of discussion of its structure in the text that may be hard to visualize without a picture. I'm not really sure what I like better, coloring the existing diagram by alpha/beta subunit or leaving the current one alone and having a schematic diagram that shows the subunit stacking. I'm leaning toward the latter, since the current images do do a good job with the basics and the schematic can be further down in the article, directed toward the readers specifically interested in the structure section, without confusing the more casual browsers. Does that make sense? Opabinia regalis 07:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, lets do it like that. I hope I find some time this weekend or next week. By the way I think the five-eyed Opabinia would be a good candidate for the "Did you know?"-section. What do you think? --Splette :) ^{How's my driving?} 04:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome, it's getting a little text-heavy toward the end. I'm not a DYK regular, but I thought it was for recently created articles? Opabinia regalis 05:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quick note

Hi, O, I'm up to my elbows with cooking and whatnot, but I thought I'd dash off a note wishing you happy Thanksgiving! I hope your travel went well. I haven't had a chance to work on Cyclol or Homology modeling lately, but I'll dive in again next week; fools rush in, and all that. ;) Willow 14:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Thanksgiving was nice; I haven't seen most of the family in a while, so it was good to see everyone even if I do always regret trying to get anywhere the day before. Poor cat was all by herself for a couple of days, but she did get some turkey treats when I got home :) Hope your Thanksgiving went well (sounds like you're much more of a cook than I am). Opabinia regalis 07:53, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanksgiving was fun for me, too! I seem to be a magnet for pets and small children, no doubt due to residual cooking aromas and a few spellbinding yarns. ;) I enjoy their company very much, and it helps relieve their masters & parents, respectively. One of my nieces is almost old enough to learn knitting, so we started a little scarf together. The cooking came off well, too, despite several near-disasters; I'm always luckier than I deserve. Back to the warp and weft of Wikipedia... Willow 17:00, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scarves, hm? Good luck to your niece then; I could never even manage that much :) Opabinia regalis 03:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bennoti Deletion?

I saw the product on television and came to Wikipedia to try to find more information about it - this was after checking the website, ebay, etc. I re-edited the article to remove the advertising spam, but it was deleted soon after the edit, yet allowed to remain in its previous state for...how long? Normally when I create an obscure stub it usually grows into an informative and notable article, so what gives? A quick googling of the coffee machine nets me more hits than for Catlinc (another article I started), yet Catlinc remains and is highly notable for its increasingly common use as a high-quality video distribution system...Why should this product be any different?

In any case, I can't find a history of the page to restore...bummer.--Kojiro Takenashi 05:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article was deleted because it was blatant advertising, complete with the price and a promise of free 'capsules' (whatever one does with 'capsules' of coffee). Your username is not in the contributors list and the article is still deleted, so either the timing was bad with your update or you actually edited another article on the same subject (or some glitch has happened). Spam deletions normally don't have an inherent bias against a new article on the same subject that is written in accordance with a neutral point of view and is supported by reliable sources, so if you think the product really is notable enough for an article, you can go ahead and recreate it (with the proviso that someone may nominate it for deletion again as a non-notable product). Opabinia regalis 06:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I forgot how to undelete an article (it's been a long while since I've needed to), and I can't remember the exact text that I added. My current IP was in the history since I usually don't bother to login (I know, burn me :P)...Anyway, if you're curious it's a loss leader product that promises a 'free' machine with a large order of the capsules (pre-filled containers of ground-up beans - I said so in my edit). The reason I actually came was to figure out if there's maybe somehow some way to 'cheat' and re-use a capsule (such tidbits are usually on Wikipedia). I removed the adverts (yet kept the capsule price to make it clear the amount of loss leading going on) in hopes that one day someone might figure out and it'll be there on the page :) So yeah, horrible timing--Kojiro Takenashi 07:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Only admins can see and undelete deleted articles. I restored it to your userspace at User:Kojiro_Takenashi/Bennoti if you want to work on it further and really think the item is notable. The article as it stands does contain the mention of the 'loss leader' tactic, but does not have a) sources supporting its assertions, or b) explanation of why the product is notable or worthy of an article, both of which it should have if it comes back to mainspace. It isn't notable just because it's a loss leader. Opabinia regalis 22:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, this user space thing is pretty cool! I didn't know about it before...thanks!--75.176.185.26 22:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cladistics

Opabinia, TimVickers recommended that you are better qualified to look at this question: please let me know your thoughts if/when you have a free moment - no hurry. Sandy (Talk) 16:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article is in need of updating. Definitely let me know if/when you nominate it and I'll try to get some work done, but my knowledge of cladistics is just-barely-adequate - I noticed you've already talked to Samsara, but dropping Aranae a note would be useful too; he's been very helpful on the computational phylogenetics article and has extensive knowledge of this area. If you're hoping to get some people organized time-wise, maybe wait till this weekend? Thanks. Opabinia regalis 02:29, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Opabinia, will do. Sandy (Talk) 02:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FA nomination for Bacteria

Hi there. I've nominated this page for FA. Your comments or corrections on its nomination page would be very welcome. TimVickers 17:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An editor has made some major changes to this article, could you please return to the FAC and provide some feedback on whether or not these are an improvement? TimVickers 21:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

Oh, the humanity!

I had my doubts about a second RfA, but even I couldn't have predicted the way it caught fire and inexorably drifted to the ground in flames, causing quite a stir on its way down! Still, it was encouraging to see the level of support and confidence. Thank you for yours (both before and after the deadline), and I hope I'll still have it the next time around. Kafziel ^Talk 13:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

I see we have a long way to go towards trusting each other. Samsara (talk • contribs) 04:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I think I've lost the plot here. Help me out, I'm easy to confuse. Opabinia regalis 04:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your reply to my comment on WP:AGF. Samsara (talk • contribs) 05:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was agreeing with you. Maybe unclearly, maybe superfluously, but in my defense it really has been a non-sensible day. (FWIW, the project I'm skeptical about is Wikipedia:WikiProject Modular Articles; my first reaction is that copies of text blocks in multiple articles are neither a good idea nor a sustainable idea, but I'll just watch and see what develops... I trust you, after all ;) Opabinia regalis 07:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]