User talk:R. fiend/Archive1

This page is an archive. For current discussion, see User talk:R. fiend. So I went ahead and organized my talk page...

Standard greeting

Hello and, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Drop us a note at Wikipedia:New user log so we can meet you and help you get started. If you need editing help, visit Wikipedia:How to edit a page. For format questions, visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Alex S 19:16, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

questions

Who are you?

Just curious: Who are you on Jeopardy!, and how much did you win? Markl222 Dec 17

Ken Jennings 2

Are you sure about the 2.6 million figure? Because

1. Most newspapers say 2.5 million, not 2.6
2. By extrapolation your figure doesn't seem right.

Based on a 2.5M figure, he had to have won about (2500000-2350000)/4 = 37,500 per episode, which is consistent with his daily average. I'm dividing by 4 since if he lost on his 75th game, he had 4 more wins. The 2,000 for finishing in second place is insignificant.

Based on a 2.6M figure, he either had to have won about (2600000-2350000)/4 = 62,500 per episode (WAY above average) or had more days to win (thus contradicting the 75-day rumor).

Markl222 20:13, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for the speedy response. Markl222 20:28, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ken Jennings

Wow...thanks for the summary. That was very interesting and intriguing indeed. Being a contestant must have been quite an experience...

Bull that you were a contestant on Jeopardy, and that part about some woman winning you must have made up. Marcus2 21:29, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't papers have not allowed truth about the future of a game show to be published? Marcus2 21:34, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bert and Ernie

I saw your addition about "It's a Wonderful Life" - I've always wondered about those names and figured Henson used them on purpose. Just curious: do you have any source for the coincidence? Did he say that in an interview somewhere, perhaps? - DavidWBrooks 12:53, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Jeopardy

Hey, you seem to know quite a bit about the show. When were you on? Do I know you by another name from the J! message boards? --OntarioQuizzer 20:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wow. Really interesting. So this means your show airs between the 13th and 24th of December? --OntarioQuizzer 03:21, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think I've figured out which contestant you were. Hopefully I'm right, otherwise I'll look really stupid in congratulating you for your two wins, and I'm happy that failure to phrase in the form of a question didn't really come back to haunt you. --OntarioQuizzer 18:30, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked at all of the contestants over the past three weeks and I realized that there was only one whose name started with an R... (Robert?) --OntarioQuizzer 22:40, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oooh, very tricky. That puts me nearly out of leads. If I was forced to make a guess now, though -- retired computer programmer from Austin? If I'm wrong, what was your interview about? --OntarioQuizzer 21:31, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re: Current dispute over Jennings article

I put my two cents in. Hopefully I was able to clarify Trödel's point.--OntarioQuizzer 08:43, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Comments and stuff

heads of state

Hi. Your heads of state by time effort is very interesting. However I feel its too redundant.

In the future, a computer program will simply do it. Why? because your actions are basically answering the question "who were heads of state for each year". And not many people are asking this redundant question. Maybe you were once curious about one year and have just been following your nose to complete the rest of the years.

I think you could refine your question-asking ability toward more deep and dynamic questions.

Hfastedge 18:14, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, while there are lots of things a computer program will do in the future, we have to make do until someone actually writes that program. Until then, those who want to know will be happy for your lists. - Nunh-huh 18:20, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Please note that British prime ministers are not heads of state. Rather, they are heads of government. There is a difference. Please put PMs on the heads of government pages (when they're created). -- Jonel 20:57, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Do you want to join in at Wikipedia:WikiProject Leaders by year? john 06:14, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up on heads of state. I think it fits well with what I propose. I am not touching post 1950 yet (because its anarchy) but pre 1950 I reckon about 50% or years comply.--BozMo 09:58, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Someone has pointed this page out to me on pagelayout: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Years I suggest you check the heads of state stuff there also--(talk)BozMo 17:47, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Kudos

Thanks for your help with the Canterbury Tales template :-) Danny 01:08, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Controversy!

THIS COMMENT: (at Clean-up)

Henry Hoese and just about every other person listed as a Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and most articles by User:Faedra in general. I've done work on alot of them but even those could use help. Too much poorly worded and confusing information. Hard to make heads or tails or much of it.

Im sorry my items at Wikipedia daunt you, I see no point in making such an inane comment as above however, and have seen little evidence that you have improved upon anything I have contributed. If you find my efforts beyond you then perhaps you should confine yourself to simpler issues.

Concerning the lords Wardens items, you will note very little information exists on some of these men, and I have provided a platform for future research, which perhaps alternativly, as you have so much time and such a poor opinion of said items you would like to improve them.

In any event I do not take kindly to such unsubstantiated critism, as you have made, without evidence that my critic has any idea at all about the subjects in question. Faedra 11:51, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

PS general comment: People who think an item needs cleaning up and fail to attempt the same are in my opinion time waisters.

Early Delete

I must say that the votes on Early Deletion have bummed me out no end. I appreciated your comment on the talk page. It was about time for someone to point out the obvious. My proposal was designed to be MORE democratic than what goes on right now. "Not if only admins can vote" is absurd. If it were open to all, then the authors of the articles would immediately vote "keep" and the page would go straight to VfD. I.e. it can't be open to all. "Open to anyone except the author" wouldn't work, either, because of all the sock puppets and nonce accounts we see. I spent ages working on the most modest, rational proposal I could, and people began voting as if I were trying to make a power grab. In fact, I was doing the opposite. I was trying to allow common sense that would really be common sense. Anyway, I'm not going to comment on the page. I just figure there's not much point in anyone proposing policy changes and actually having an announced vote. If people are going to not read the proposal, not read the talk pages, and vote like this on a proposal this timid, nothing bolder will be passed for sure. I just wanted to thank you for your comments and for, as I said, actually reading the damned thing. It's more than most voters seem to have done. Geogre 00:08, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC) I also wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you read my A Tale of a Tub. It's the single article I've written that I'm proud of. To say the least, I know that particular book very, very well. Geogre 00:46, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Harry F. Byrd

If you are substantially knowledgeable about Byrd, could you comment on this? Ground 01:09, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mission accomplished

Certainly I think the carrier landing was an engineered photo-op, but I don't think anyone can ever prove much absent a tape recording - politicians do get to play at adventuring, the people in those jobs do appreciate the visit even if they know it's hokey - think of Jake Garn in the space shuttle, Dukakis in the tank, etc. Probably they had the idea first, then somebody said "oh yeah, the carrier crew only has one handheld video camera, how are we going to get the support people out there?". (Think of The West Wing episodes, some of which were inspired on real-life snafus.) On White House statements, I think you'd need a news report that had done some careful chronology and investigation, because trip plans are the kind of thing that can be changed on 24-hour notice if necessary, and so a press secretary can always claim to have not heard about the change yet. If you find it, the material would be getting to be more about the Prez and less about the ship, and I'd suggest creating a separate "Mission Accomplished" article with all the juicy details. An "unauthorized" photo of Bush with San Diego skyscrapers in the background would be the perfect illustration for such an article, heh-heh. Stan 17:49, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Forgot to mention one thing - carrier landings really are dangerous, the people on the deck would all have seen plenty of serious accidents firsthand. Civvies may snigger, but the navvies watching were very impressed that Bush would take that kind of a personal risk (my guess is that Bush didn't understand the risk level either, but Cheney considered his puppet expendable :-) ). Dems are still paying the price for Clinton being sloppy about that sort of thing. Stan 17:56, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Commander-in-chief visits the troops" - a morale-raising duty, or a publicity stunt? The beauty of presidential politics is that a visit can be both equally, which is why political observers at the time thought it was a brilliant move. Stan 06:35, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Working Man's Barnstar

I've just awarded you with a Working Man's Barnstar for your exemplary commentary on Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#New section. Spectacular work, especially considering your constant forge. Great job. Ian Pugh 07:17, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

vfd of Green Hill Zone

VFD rules state that there must be a consensus to delete, if not, then the status quo must remain, so I undid your redirect of Green Hill Zone.

Descision tree (hmm, tricky representation using ul :-/ ):

Is there a consensus to delete?
1. Yes, there's a consensus to delete: Is anyone suggesting a redirect?
  1. Yes,someone has suggested a redirect: are there any opposed?
    1. Yes, some people are saying "no redirect": what's the consensus?
      1. no consensus _not_ to redirect: Then Redirect
      2. consensus _not_ to redirect : Then Delete
    2. No opposition to redirect: Redirect
  2. No redirect has been suggested: Delete
2. No consensus exists to delete: leave it, Keep

In this case we have 1.2: "No: leave it, Keep"

Sorry to jump in, but I noticed what had happened. Hope this helps! Kim Bruning 15:41, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I was using your numbers, I really should check the vfd page as well. One mo Kim Bruning 15:47, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I get slightly different numbers, and no clear consensus to delete or redirect at all. Hmm, that's easier then. I stand by my position. Kim Bruning 16:03, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Right, vfd is rather tricky :-/ . I think I got the above tree about right, based on documentation I've read , but it looks like the way we're actually doing the counting before we get to the tree somehow differs. That's not too good. Could be the mistake is on my side of course.

I'll go through all the vfd docs tomorrow or as soon as I have time again and see if I can find out the consensus (hopefully) on how vfd votes are supposed to be counted then.

If you know where to find this information, I'll follow your lead. If not, ut oh! Kim Bruning 22:13, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Vfd deletions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators

Needs to have a rough consensus to delete. Yay! (not) :-/ Oh bother, deletion guidelines have been getting out of step with current vfd reality. :-(

Ok, here's the plan. Continue as you were, I'm going to ponder over a couple of things, have a bit of a fight with some of the vfd proponents, and hopefully come up with something.

Sorry to bother you.

Kim Bruning 22:55, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No worries, like I said, sorry to bother you. :-) Kim Bruning 11:03, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Count d'Erlon

Please stop sticking {{cleanup}} on d'Erlon. The lay out is in CV style and is perfect for a minor military figure of the Napolionic wars. If any activity he was involved in needs expanding it can be done every easily. If you really think it needs a diffrent style then do it. If I do not like it I can always re-edit it.Philip Baird Shearer 19:05, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Praful Nargund - Optimus Prime

Possibly he could have a chance to delete it / move to his userpage himself. But once the VfD behemot was summoned propably thers no way back :-) --Wikimol 21:01, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Apeman

Thanks for your note. I think your dab page is excellent. Frankly, my main interest in the project was to encourage Sam Spade's son by not totally trashing his creation! Your dab page preserves the link to early human ancestors, although the reader will have to click through to hominids to get the list. I've left a note for Sam so he can point out your page to his stepson. JamesMLane 19:56, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think your approach to the hominids reference is fine. The fictional apemen don't need to be catalogued exhaustively; the example you chose makes the point. Having now fixed a typo, I don't envision doing anything more with the page. JamesMLane 23:50, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Be civil

I ask you to please respect Wikipedia:Civility in Wikipedia discussions. I'll be happy to conduct an e-mail discussion in which you use whatever language you like, but here we ought to treat one another's work with a certain degree of respect. Everyking 22:42, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started the Free the Rambot Articles Project which has the goals of getting users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to...

...all U.S. state, county, and city articles...
...all articles...

using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) version 1.0 and 2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to the GFDL (which every contribution made to Wikipedia is licensed under), but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles (See the Multi-licensing Guide for more information). Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. So far over 90% of people who have responded have done this.

Nutshell: Wikipedia articles can be shared with any other GFDL project but open/free projects using the incompatible Creative Commons Licenses (e.g. WikiTravel) can't use our stuff and we can't use theirs. It is important to us that other free projects can use our stuff. So we use their licenses too.

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template (or {{MultiLicensePD}} for public domain) into their user page, but there are other templates for other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} with {{MultiLicensePD}}. If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know at my talk page what you think. It's important to know, even if you choose to do anything so I don't keep asking. -- Ram-Man 16:25, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

F.E.C.E.S.

Thanks for candidly expressing your opinion on these matters. I respect honesty above all else, even common courtesy; it's rather unfortunate that Wikipedia does not. Perhaps linking to Fancruft and editing what you don't like about that is a better option. It's like claiming that calling someone a V.A.N.D.A.L. (Very Active Newcomer Disclosing Atypical Labour) is not meant as an insult; no doubt many people will appreciate the humor, but a great many others will not—VfD is not the most relaxed place on Wikipedia, for one thing. JRM 17:34, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

I feel obliged to point out that if you know the term is insulting, and if you in fact expect it to be taken as an insult (because, let's face it, "I'm calling your article shit but that doesn't mean I think you stink" isn't going to fool anyone) you are actively discouraging cooperation, and that makes Jimbo a sad founder. :-D Look, I like a good joke as much as the next person, but insults have no place on Wikipedia. If you think fancruft is bogus and should go and people should stop sticking it in, then just say so, or always give people a link to a (neutrally named) subpage where you (politely) express your opinions. The "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" approach only works if it's actually a joke, as opposed to a "funnily worded" insult. "R. fiend, are you trying to live up to your name? :-)" is a joke. "I think this F.E.C.E.S. should be deleted" isn't. It's going to be funny to everyone but the person it's addressed to, and hence it's just an insult.

Here endeth the sermonizing. I think I'll go brush up my halo now.

(And yes, I made up the "V.A.N.D.A.L." acronym myself, in response to you. I don't think I'll be using it, though. :-)JRM 20:20, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)

Fair enough; to each his own. As long as you're willing to catch the flak for your own invention, who am I to say you can't? You F.I.E.N.D. (Feistily Insulting Exponent of Nefarious Deletionism) JRM 21:16, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)

More on FECES

This is a poor attitude to impose upon would-be contributors to Wikipedia. I urge you to reconsider your actions. [[User:GRider|GRider\^talk]] 18:47, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

John Sasso

Originally agreed with you on this being VfD fodder, but having googled him he seems a quite important behind the scenes character, I've added a little, and will expand as I learn more.

P.S. Noticed your random search ("a little experiment") threw up two of my own articles: Tony Pulis and Arjan De Zeeuw, glad you thought they were adequate, although apologies for forgetting to remove the stub tag from the former when it no longer applied! :) Grunners 23:18, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC) Bold text