User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2005 September

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About the grammar edit on "Self-defence ..."

Obliged and obligated are synonymous. No further edits are required.

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=obligated

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=obliged

--J-Star 18:32, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/European Union member states at the 2004 Summer Olympics

You might be interested to have a look. Regards. --Pgreenfinch 13:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Open Proxies

I want to investigate some recent vandalism coming from many IPs, I saw your note on User:Func's talk page, I would appreciate any scripts that help test for open proxies. Rich Farmbrough 22:44, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

If you want to test a specific IP for an open proxy but you don't know on which port, your best best bet is to search for the IP on the web with google. If it finds something in a "list of open proxies" it'll usually include a port and you can try editing wikipedia through that proxy; if it works you can block it indefinitely. If that fails, you can also try port scanning the host to find open proxy ports. Try nmap. --fvw* 22:18, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Links

Hi Rich. You recently turned "23 October" into a link on 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Not that it bothers me much, but it was already a link in the previous sentence, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) discourages multiple links to the same page on the same screen, especially with dates, so I thought I'd call your attention to this. KissL 10:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm also curious why you seem to be going around to numerous pages and turning every date into a link? The first time it is used on a page, fine, but otherwise it is overkill and muddies the page. Peyna 00:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). This is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. Rgds. Rich Farmbrough 15:30, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikibreak

Having completed the first pass stats for the PlanetMath Exchange project, when I should have been doing Real Life, I am now taking a short Wikibreak. Rich Farmbrough 19:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

When you are back, you might be interested in checking out my suggestions for improving the Perl script. (Look at that, he wrote a 10 line script and is already talking wikibreak :) Oleg Alexandrov 21:58, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm as back as I'll ever be :-) . Rich Farmbrough 14:48, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

The May Day Mystery

Science pearls

Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks,APH 09:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

You marked the Camp Iguana article as {POV}, but you didn't say why?

You marked the Camp Iguana article as {POV}, but you didn't say why. Aren't you supposed to say why? May I ask you how you think we can reach a consensus as to when it is no longer POV if you don't say what you consider POV about it? -- Geo Swan 22:29, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I saw your addition to the page, yesterday, and replied on Talk:Camp Iguana last night. Yes, the Bush administration made the claim that their suspects did not fall under the Geneva Conventions. But they were over-ruled by the Judicial Branch. The Judicial Branch had the final say here. Which, to my way of thinking, means that the official position of the US government, after some internal wrangling, is that the US government eventually acknowledged that they did have an obligation to have conducted "competent tribunals", in Afghanistan. This leaves me curious as to the value of including the claim. -- Geo Swan 15:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikify dates script

I'm sorry to say that this is breaking easy timelines... it messed up Prime Minister of New Zealand real good. Better check before you use it. Alphax ^τεχ 10:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the alert. There was another one, which I recognised as being special on the edit page, I would have spotted this one, but for Wikipedia's reluctance to show pages after an edit. I can prevent it recurring. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 13:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Rich, this also falls over when it comes across European date formats - e.g. this diff. In cases like this, where there's a mix of formats used, or where there's not enough context to tell the format of dates for sure, a script just seems like an easy way to be careless. (BTW, I do think wikifying loads of dates is a Good Thing, it's just that introducing errors in the process isn't!) sjorford #£@%&$?! 22:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I catch most of these, and do it differently for mm/dd/yyyy. Sometimes you can't tell which format it is and have to research (which is a bummer). If I get it wrong the zz's are a warning. I've only found about two articles which mix the // styles, but

• David Letterman (06/13/2003, 14/04/2004)
  

really takes the biscuit! There's only about 400 more articles to fix, then it's back to the "simple" dates where the month is in words. Thanks again, let me know if you see any more howlers. Rich Farmbrough 22:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Enola Gay

Hey Rich, I saw the edits you did on the Enola Gay page. Just curious if you have an interest in terms of the plane. Davidpdx 9/17/05 7:00 (UTC)

Only a general way. I was fixing all refernces to the "United States Army Air Force" to read "United States Army Air Forces" Rich Farmbrough 16:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Rich - I noticed you wikified 1945 in the Paul Tibbets article when it was already wikified in the same paragraph. Most editors will only wikify the first occurance of linkable text in an article. I personally feel that in long articles, it is good to wikify text when it occurs in far separated sections, since the reader may not have read the section where the first link occurs. Just my 2 cents. --Rogerd 17:54, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). This is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way.

In particular if your preference is set for ISO dates (1995-10-22) , it requires the year as well as the month to be wikified. Rich Farmbrough 18:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for explaining--Rogerd 18:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Luther Page Rewrite Discussion on

See the Luther page talk. --CTSWyneken 01:26, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

---

Japanese emperors

Hi. I notice you are on a bit of a mission to Wikify dates, which is a laudable goal. However, I wouldn't bother with any of the dates in the Japanese emperor articles. Japan used a completely different calendar system until 1873, and it isn't clear yet whether the dates in those articles are Gregorian/Julian dates or Japanese dates. If the latter, they shouldn't be Wikified. Anyway, there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) regarding how dates should be treated in Japanese articles. Probably should wait for that to conclude before making any more changes. I plan on going through and sorting through and cleaning up those dates at some point anyway. -Jefu 16:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Dates / my sig

It's good to see another person is working on dates. I too have spent a quantity of time fixing incorrectly formatted dates and date links. I've been doing it manually, which has the advantage of being unlikely to cause problems, but is also painfully slow.

Thanks for commenting on my experiment. You're the first person to notice, as far as I know. How did you find it, by the way? I haven't been very active lately. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 00:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I want to sign my comments like this Rich Farmbrough 08:27 20 September 2005, and couldn't figure out how to do it so I searched user talk space, and found lots of /sig pages, including yours. I finally realised I could set up my nickname as xxx [[{{subst:CURRENTDAY}} {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}]] etc.. but I still need to sign, save then edit/save again to get the subst to work. On the subject of dates in articles, most of my uncorrected mistakes (so far I've only been told about a handful in many thousands of edits) "escape" either because I've got over~tired or goggle eyed, or because the 'pedia responds too slowly, rather than any fundamental problem. Pretty much everything has to be checked because so many articles have links to September 11th, 2001 attacks!

Also there's loads of stuff in quotes, split onto mutliple lines, and in URLs. Any ideas for the sig, by the way?

Hmm. That's a clever idea, but no, I don't think it's currently possible. You might just put to the developers that sig dates should be wikified. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 05:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not a date, it's an edition name

Rich, I wonder if you noticed that at the top of my own user talk page I say I'll answer points there in preference to the questioner's talk page. Anyway, you asked there about a funny date, and I've answered you there. (If you'd like to discuss it further, please do so there rather than here.)

Irrelevantly, since you last commented on AfD/Charles Gauci I think the vehemence and provenance of that article's spirited defenses have made it look more obviously vanity. I've voted "userfy" (the user in question seems to have no interest in WP that's not directly relevant to himself). -- Hoary 09:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Charles Gauci

I would like to get your attention to the so-called discussion that is going on here since it has gone way out of hand. I have been attacked personally and so has another fellow Wikipedian. Can you moderate the discussion since unfortunately it has turned out to be a constant barrage of personal attacks and name-calling by those who want to keep the article? I personally won't post again there since the discussion page is no ground for personal wars. Regards --Roderick Mallia 12:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC) Admin mt.wiki

• Its ok giving attacks but its not acceptable for those to argue a point with either roderick Mallia or Maltesedog. They should be placed on remand, as when asked for a detailed reply, one gets attacks right back. You will see many times when I ve asked for the arguements to be only based on the matter of discussion. Nothing else. --Tancarville 10:52, 22 September 2005 (EST)
  • I have examined the votes on the AfD, and reckoned that 6/3 in favour of deletion is sufficient consensus to delete, bearing in mind that little additional notability was established. Hence I have deleted the article and closed the debate. I would suggest that anyone who wishes to see an article of this name, provide clear evidence and justification of ntability to the votes for undeletion, which data could then be incorporated into the article. Perhaps wait until he has recieved his Maltese Republic award. For example, are the books he authored published by a notable publishing house? How many copies have sold. Are they cited as standard reference works. Has he published on pain management, and is he cited? What is the nature of the award from the Republic of Malta, and how many people recieve it each year? How many people have a title of similar rank to his? Did he write the "bird book" or is that someone else? etc.
  • On the subject of personal abuse in the AfD, what a shame! It did not advance any argument an iota, and resulted in more ill feeling than was probably intended. It is clear to a dispassionate observer where the abuse stemmed from, but one has to be aware that people feel personally attacked when their contributions to the 'pedia are attacked. I speak from experience.

rgds, Rich Farmbrough 14:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Don't change file names

Thanks for the date fixes, but you can't wikify a date in a file name. [1] (SEWilco)

Thanks for spotting. I thought I had avoided the pix, I have now gone back and done the other captions. Rgds, 'Rich Farmbrough' 13:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Date links

Hello there. I see your date bot took on a vast chunk of the calendar yesterday, linking all the dates in the top paragraphs of the mmmm-dd articles. Great work! Uh... I know it's a drag to be pressganged through the medium of your user talk page, but if you have a moment, and the inclination, please take a look at the linking dates discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year and, if you're feeling inspired, share a comment or two about why it's a good idea. Thanks. –Hajor 14:05, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Replied there. It's not a bot, though, it's search and replace with manual checking! (Although the date pages were easy.) Rich Farmbrough 14:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Not a bot? Wow! Thanks for chipping in. –Hajor 14:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

NIce to be appreciated Rich Farmbrough 15:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Date project

Please make sure your code does not mess up links to Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 8 July 1996. Cheers. – Kaihsu 19:51, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Your date project work is partially or largely automated? May I suggest it is too automated?

I am going to suggest that your date project work on Camp Iguana [2] really wasn't helpful. I am going to suggest that you should only wikify a date if there is some reason why a reader would look up that date. In the external links section, when would it be useful to let a reader look up noteworthy events that occurred on, June 13, or July 27? Maybe if the external link was to an article that reflected on the anniversary of an event like 1941-12-7, or 2001-9-11. But those are special cases. Excess wikification just clutters up an article, and should be avoided. Sorry, but I don't see the value in the wikification of any of the dates you wikified in this article.

I looked at your contributions today. You wikified the dates in dozens of articles today, spending about one minute per article. Forgive me if I am concerned that this wasn't really long enough for you to read the articles in sufficient depth to make a meaningful decision as to whether wikifying those dates makes sense. -- Geo Swan 22:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Please see my comments below exlaining the reasons most dates should be wikified, and giving refernces to the Manual of Style. Rich Farmbrough 23:23, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I have noticed you "wikified" some dates on Leicester City. One of these datas was already in YYYY-MM-DD format, and thus correct for wiki according to style and formatting guidelines[3]. Guinness 18:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Perfectly correct sir, Rich Farmbrough 10:02, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

You have wikified an Old Style date in Joseph Sunlight. Of course, that will link to the New Style date which I think is inappropriate. Any comments? Cutler 15:09, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this creates a non-ideal situation. However this is to allow date preferences to work. If you have them set you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Since linkage of the dates is very unimportant compared with the formatting, I think it's worth doing anyway. Realistically people are not going to click on the date link, and to link to the new-style date would break formatting, and posibly be obtuse. Ideally there would be seperate markup for dates, that wouldn't link by default. Rich Farmbrough 15:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Reticular Formation

Hey Rich, I was just wondering what the reticulsar formation is and if it was similar to the reticular formation. Also, I wanted to know why my signature was taken off, i wrote the entire article with the exception of a few reticulsar edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamnotanorange (talk • contribs) 14:47, 24 September 2005‎ (UTC)

Question on dates

Greetings! I note that you wikified a date on Windham, Ohio. All well and good, but the date wikified was merely the date I retrieved info from the village school's website. Somehow, I just don't have that high an opinion of myself as to think that's a notable date in the village's history. But that does bring to mind a question: Is every date mentioned in an article to be wikified per the Manual of Style? -- SwissCelt 11:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The reason for wikifying dates is often not because the link is important, but rather that it is essential to make user preferences work (that little "preferences" link you see on your page when you are logged in). Gene Nygaard 21:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Japanese Dates

I noticed that you wikified another Japanese date. The Japanese lunisolar calendar was completely different from the Western calendar. Therefore, wikifying them doesn't make any sense, because they do not correspond. -Jefu 23:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikification of dates

Why, oh why, do you wikify dates? Babajobu 12:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Same reason you spell out small numbers. It's the right thing to do. Note that this is to allow date preferences to work. If you have them set you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Rich Farmbrough 15:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Gasp! Okay, fine, I'll support date wikification if you support the spelling out of numbers under one hundred. My only concern is that 1) wikifying dates causes some articles to become overlinked, and that in those cases an additional link is a steep price to pay for the ability to choose "11 September" over "September 11". However, I will pocket those reservations in exchange for your support in my jihad against inappropriate numerals. Babajobu 15:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

And, from the way you have done the Wikifying of the dates, it looked like it was run by some type of script. Please tell us that you are doing this, so we can point you to the right direction so we can get your script a bot flag. Zach (Sound Off) 07:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Count Stephen Sant Fournier

This getting a bit too much, User:Maltesedog now is after another biography of mine and you feel he isnt taking this personal?? He is not making any sense nor is he communicating with the author directly like Administors have in the past. He automaticly places things into deletion. He must be stopped or banned. Please view what he has done before he continues deleting all of Maltese histories. Tancarville 06:46, 26 September 2005 (EST)

- Your not doing a thing about Maltesedog or Hoary?? Typical!! *Keep Tancarville 06:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Dear Rich,

Placing articles for afd doesn't imply there's something wrong about the particular person who wrote them. Tancerville has valid articles, which form part of the collection in Wikipedia and are also of importance. However I cannot understand his insistance that I am abusing and placing unnecessary his articles for afd, bearing in mind that since the creation of wikipedia I have only placed 3 of his articles, without taking any consideration that they are his. I do not believe that I am not maintaing a neutral pov in this respect. I am not deleting all Maltese histories. There was concencus in wikipedia that Maltese Nobility, modern nobility should not be deleted only for the sake of being noble. It is not a question of placing articles into deletion. I have placed comments in the talk pages of the articles, but these were removed by Tanacerville. To me, this is intimidation not to place any more articles into afd. Debates occur in afd, it is not simply a question of rapidly removing articles, intense debates are generally done through afd and generally concencus is reached. I place the articles in the afd for others to see the opinions of others. Whether they want the deletion or not. It is not simply a matter of deleting a page without any consideration/discussion as Tancerville wishes to imply above. In view of the above, I would be grateful to comment on all the above so that to end this story once and for all.

However, I cannot understand why placing an opinion on the afd page for deletion can cause so much personal anger. Should I be intimidated by such users? I've had articles deleted such as the on the Mediterranean Region, now recreated ignoring all my work and intense research but if other users thought it was appropriate deletion, I said - I give up and did not keep insisting and taking it against the person who placed it for deletion. I am not against Maltese History far from it. I take active interest. But articles like Stephen Sant Fournier and the one of Charles Gauci, have nothing to do with history. These people are alive. Maltesedog 20:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

fountain

not at all, thanks. I always suprise how fast wikipedia communit correctis gramma or letter mistakes :). Regards Rafikk 20:30, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Solar Oven/Furnace

See Talk:Solar oven DavidFarmbrough 16:25, 12 September 2005 (UTC)