User talk:Tom Radulovich/Archive1

could you please tend to # 36

i would appreciate it of you could please answer my query "Punjab Map in Public Domain?" [comment # 36].

IJ. --203.101.163.104 13:58, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(no title)

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Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 22:32, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Tom, good edits on Rail gauge -- however, I noticed you changed 'Northern' and 'Southern' to the uncapitalised forms in the paragraph about post-Civil War gauge rationalisation. North and South were capitalised because when used about the Civil War, they're proper nouns (referring to the Union and Confederacy, respectively) and not just indicators of direction. I'm going to change those back -- unless you don't agree, of course. —Morven 22:14, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No problem. I also followed your convention of using the English/Imperial measure first, with the metric following, but made it all "x feet y in". There may be a Wikipedia standard, and if so someone is welcome to change it, but I thought that the page itself should have a consistent usage. Tom Radulovich 22:27, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The basic Wikipedia standard is 'consistency within the page' paramountly. I list Imperial measurements first for the simple reason that the vast majority of the world's railway gauges were defined in Imperial units first, metric being an later conversion. The exceptions are many of the European narrow gauges, e.g. metre gauge, 950 mm, 750 mm, 600 mm. —Morven 23:39, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Temperate Coniferous Forests

Hi Tom, I'm curious how you define the various regions on this page - several are so similar to each other as to be not worth distinguishing separately (e.g. the Alpine and Carpathian forests, which share the same species to a very high degree), yet you also removed the east/west split of the Mediterranean high altitude conifer forests that I'd put in, where there's quite a lot of differences in the species composition between them. - MPF 00:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was using the World Wildlife Fund/National Geographic listing of the 867 ecoregions, which can be found at the following link:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/wildworld/profiles/terrestrial_pa.html

there are articles for each ecoregion, of varying lengths, that explain the criteria for delineating each ecoregion as they have done; the WWF reports are more detailed than the WildWorld articles.

WWF/NG put the conifer forests of the Atlas Mountains in the Mediterranean conifer forests ecoregion, and the montane conferous forests of Italy in the South Appenine mixed montane forests ecoregion. The WWF puts a few Mediterranean-climate conifer forests in the Mediterranean Forests, Woodland, and Shrub biome, including the South Appenine forests. The Pyrenees forests end up as a separate ecoregion in the temperate broadleaf/mixed forest biome. My biodiversity text indicated that the central european and mediterranean high mountain ranges have a lot of endemism, so it may be reasonable to separate the Alps, Pyrenees, Appenines, Atlas, Carpathians, etc.

This is not to say that the WWF ecoregions are definitive, but they are the chosen convention for the wikipedian ecoregion exercise. Where there seems to be some expert disagreement about how to split the ecoregions, we could explain further in the individual articles.

One of the areas of ambiguity is where to put mixed forests ecoregions; the WWF/National geographic convention is to put broadleaf and mixed forests together, with conifer forests separate. There is obviously some discretion involved here (Does gray go with black, or with white? how about light gray and dark gray? how light or dark?), and sometimes the WWF and National Geographic don't agree. One solution would be to list mixed forest ecoregions with significant conifer forests in both biome types, as you have done with the Valdivian temperate rain forests.Tom Radulovich 00:52, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! On the conifer/mixed/broadleaf, I'd say in reality, almost all forests are mixed - it is probably impossible to find a genuinely 100% pure conifer forest with no broadleaves, there's always a rowan, or a birch, or a willow, somewhere! (the reverse is easier; no conifers at all in some large tropical regions). But of course many forests are predominantly conifer or predominantly broadleaf. Your option is a good one; another would be to remove the conifer/broadleaf distinction altogether, and just list all temperate forests, whatever the composition, without specifying tree type (just region & altitude), but I suspect that might not be popular?

On individual cases, the one that really surprises me was the absence of the Balkan mountain conifer forests, as they have 4 endemic conifers (Pinus peuce, Pinus heldreichii, Picea omorika, Abies borisiiregis, the highest conifer endemism in western Eurasia), and also endemic broadleaves like Aesculus hippocastanum. That one definitely needs to be added. By contrast, the Alps and Carpathians share all the same conifers (and broadleaf trees, too) - any endemism distinct between the two is in non-dominant minor species. I wonder if perhaps, while all the ecoregions could be listed separately on the summary pages, very similar ecoregions (like the Alps & Carpathians) could be linked to head to the same page (when they all get pages written for them, of course!) - MPF 23:45, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tom: nice job on the Ken Wilber phases.

goethean

Ecoregion table formats

Hi Tom, I've just been through all these to correct the box layout problems - found out that the problem was the inclusion of the line
<table align="center"><tr>
at the start of each subsection and
</table>
at the end of each subsection; once these were removed, the tables work.
In some of the tables, the regions are listed bold, in others, they're not; I don't know if this matters at all, but I've edited so that in each individual table, they're all the same (some had some sections bold, others not) - MPF 10:25, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think that will work fine. With my browser (Safari) and Netscape, that edit adds a double line above each header, but it really improves the look of the table for IE users.

I thought the bold looked a bit better, but was more interested in getting all of the ecoregions listed by ecozone and by biome. I don't know that bold or regular type matters too much in the grand scheme of things, so having each page internally consistent is just fine.Tom Radulovich 06:08, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Themidaceae etc

Hi Tom, thanks for doing something on Themidaceae - which seems to be only the latest in a long series of public works you are doing around plant taxonomy. Can you explain a puzzle about the Asparagales? The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group's website has a dendrogram on it that puts Themidaceae miles away from Asparagaceae, but our page says that APG2 (2002) allows them to be included within it. Has there been a further revision, do you know? seglea 05:29, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Good question. The way I read the Asparagales cladogram is that all of the families on the lower part of the cladogram, from Aphylllanthaceae to Ruscaceae, share a common ancestor, that was sister to the ancestor of the Alliaceae/Amaryllidaceae/Agapanthaceae. That would meet the cladistic criterion that a family should be monophyletic, but how closely monophyletic plants must be related to be included in a single family is a judgement call, and there will always be lumpers and splitters. The APG1 favored the splitters with the 29 families of Asparagales, but the APG 2 tries to make the lumpers happy as well. The APG2 is the newest revision I am aware of, but the previous revisions were based on ongoing research, so we may see further changes in Monocot taxonomy.Tom Radulovich 07:58, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Abugida

Are you sure that abugidas evolved from alphabets? I was under the impression that they tended to be derived from abjads. — Gwalla | Talk 20:16, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good Question, The Brahmic scripts, as best I know, are derived from a Semitic alphabet (Aramaic?) which is strictly speaking an abjad--although abjads are alphabetic, in the broad sense of alphabetic used on Wikipedia. If alphabetic scripts are defined as only those scripts with a full complement of consonants and vowels, than I guess only the European scripts (Greek, Latin, Cyrillic and variants) are alphabetic. The Cree syllabary is apparently derived from Pitman Shorthand; not sure if that could be considered an alphabetic origin...

Ah, I hadn't realized that Wikipedia uses such a broad definition of alphabets. I always considered alphabets to be distinct from abjads and abugidas. And I don't think it's generally accepted that the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics are an abugida rather than a syllabary. — Gwalla | Talk 02:10, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Penutian

There seem to be a quite a bit of differences in the classification of the Oregon coast languages. I've been trying to untangle the nominclature based on a good refernece standard. This University of Oregon site classifies the Penutian as a phylum with the families within in, so I chose to follow that. I see the Penutian both as a superstock as well as a family. There seems to be no generalized consensus among linguists for these particlar languages. You're welcome to reclassify if you think it is right the families as sub-families. I would have if I had found a reference stating it as such, but I haven't. -- Decumanus 23:04, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Chlorogalum

Hi Tom... I've just put up a genus page on Chlorogalum, the Soap Plants. I'd classified them in Liliaceae, following ITIS and the Jepson Manual, but I see you have them listed in Hyacinthaceae. Is that now a done deal? If so I'll change it in Chlorogalum - and if you could give me a reference to the reassignment, I'll add that. Thanks. seglea 18:21, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your response on my Talk page. Aided by your references, I've done some more digging around the abstracts, and it looks as though they are going to end up in the Agavaceae, so I have put them there (though with references to older classifications). I've made consequential changes to Hyacinthaceae and Liliaceae. seglea 01:07, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Tom, good job on list of India-related topics. How do you go about finding the topics ? Jay 23:06, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A small reminder...

It's nice that you're helping in the effort to cleanup (e.g. Satara), but can you also remove the listing at the main wikipedia:cleanup page once you've cleaned up and removed the {cleanup} tag? Cheers, Jia ng 09:51, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Tropical Broadleaf Dry Forests

I'm really impressed with your list and I was wondering what your source was (I'm a dry forest ecologist).

The list is based on the World Wildlife Fund's scheme for terrestrial ecoregions, which are listed on the WWF web site: Conservation Science: Biomes and Biogeographical Realms. Since you have the expertise, if you have the time and the interest you may consider writing some of the articles about individual dry forest ecoregions. Tom Radulovich 06:42, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Podocarpaceae

Nice starts to some of the genera! (something I've been meaning to do for ages, but never got round to). I'll be expanding them with morphology details etc over the next few days - MPF 15:36, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Civilization

I think I have fairly butchered your edits here in order to make those sections more readable and approachible to the uninitiated. But you should probably have a look to make sure I didn't destroy anything important. But really the article would be much less if you hadn't contributed so much. I think it's shaping up beautifully! Fishal 16:44, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I;m just curious. Who is the David Wilkinson you include in your edits? He doesn't have a Wikipedia article, and Google returns so many David Wilkinsons that I don't know where to look? His ideas are important enough to the Civilization article that I wish I knew more about him. Fishal 18:26, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Edit attribution

Hi Tom. Edits from 209.86.3.34 have now been reattributed to you. Regards — Kate Turner | Talk 05:40, 2004 Sep 4 (UTC)

Grant

w:fr:Utilisateur:Anthere/NGF grant

Do you have any comment, any suggestion ?

SweetLittleFluffyThing

Thank you for your answer Tom. Yes, you are probably correct. I have listed a few foundations to which we could suggest more specific goals, but I will wait a few months before contacting them. Most ask for the non profit status for any grants, and we still do not have it... Meanwhile, I notice en: had a new contributor in soil science, so all is well. We are also making great progress with regards to botanic on fr... Well, mostly in paléarctique ecozone anyway :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

Nomenclatural query

Hi Tom - may I query "Rhamnus glandulosa (Frangula azorica)" at Buckthorn? - which is the valid species epithet, glandulosa or azorica? As a general rule, plants retain the same species epithet when transferred between genera, except in a few very special circumstances (e.g. that tautonyms are not allowed, which is why Rhamnus frangula doesn't become Frangula frangula but has to be something else, hence Frangula alnus) - Thanks, MPF 09:34, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi Tom, Thanks; I did a bit of rooting around and found out what happened, the species was first described as Rhamnus latifolia, but when transferred to Frangula, it couldn't (as would normally be done) take the name Frangula latifolia, as a different Frangula latifolia had already been named earlier by Philip Miller. So it had to take a new name, and F. azorica was the one chosen. One of those rare special circumstances.

Of Rhamnus glandulosa, it has never been placed in Frangula, and after looking at pics on the web, it looks like a member of subgenus Rhamnus so I've moved it up there - MPF 19:29, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmmmmm . . . looked at another pic, I'm not so sure it is in subgenus Rhamnus after all, it has 5 petals which should make it a Frangula, maybe I'd better move it back! - MPF 19:38, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ecozone maps

Hi Tom - thanks; you're right, I'm afraid I overlooked that! I'll re-do the maps (have to get the old ones deleted first before I can upload new ones with the same name) - MPF 18:08, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Done (after getting some logistic help from User:Dcoetzee) - MPF 21:25, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Another ecozone boundary query

Hi Tom - what do you think is the best position for the boundary between the Afrotropical and Indomalayan ecozones? I somewhat arbitarily used the political border between Iran and Pakistan, but I'm not certain if that's right, maybe I should put southern Iran in the Indomalayan? The old map had the Palearctic going right down to the Indian Ocean coast there, which it doesn't. Thanks! - MPF 21:37, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. 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. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are 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 what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 14:09, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Keres languages

Hi. I just wrote a stub on the Keres languages and then discovered that you had included them among the Kiowa-Tanoan languages. We should merge the articles, but where? Maybe we can settle it by dueling sources. I know nothing about the languages, but I'm following Ethnologue and Native American languages in treating Keresan as a separate family. —JerryFriedman 00:25, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Tom. As Sgt. Schultz used to say, "It shall be done!" —198.176.219.145 16:48, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Indian wikipedians' notice board

I took the liberty to add you out here : Wikipedia:Indian wikipedians' notice board Alren 21:26, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Seeking you support

I am seeking your support and participation for starting the "Indian Collaboration of the Week". Please enlist your support on the page Wikipedia_talk:Indian_wikipedians'_notice_board if you would like to support. Thanks Arunram 09:39, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Goa

Apropos to your recent Goa edits. Are you certain that the Bijapur kings were Mughals? AFAIK, they were not Mughals, but Hyderabadi. Please could you check up the facts and let me know? Thanks Nichalp 17:56, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

The suggestion that the Adilshahs were "Hyderabadis" is so hilarious that I am forced to comment on it! (See my diary) WikiSceptic 09:10, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Quongdong

Hey dude, how do I get the page info back from Quongdong. You re-directed a full page to a fairly empty one about the same thing. I wrote the Quongdong article searching Google for the info as 'Quongdong' cos that was how I thought it sounded. When I did find some info I thought that was the correct spelling. I ate one on a bushtucker meal and was trying to find out about them. Anyways, since then I've found out that the correct spelling is Quangdong - the talk page of the article. I was going to try to find out how to do re-directs and put the info that was in Quongdong into Quangdong. Hopefully you can help me do that now and the info isn't lost? Cheers. SeanMack 16:27, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good job on the merge! I found the info on redirects so I should be able to sort that kind of thing myself in the future. All the best. 220.237.221.14 11:37, 10 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers. BTW bizarrely I was logged in when it used my IP instead of username, wiki was going a bit strange at the time... SeanMack 02:36, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Goa

There's an ongoing discussion on the Talk:Goa page regarding the accuracy of the history of Goa and, a notice for it to be removed as a Featured Article. Given your interest on the topic, please could you provide some inputs. =Nichalp (talk · contribs)= 19:19, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and shrub

I see that you have been working lately on this article. But it is a shame that this article still lacks a fitting image. I happen to be back from a trip to Turkey, where I've been taking lots of photos. I made a panoramic photo of a natural landscape in Side, just behind the dunes; mostly trees and shrub in sandy soil : Image:Mediterranean landscape.jpg (in the Commons). If you think that this photo fits nicely into the article, you can put it first in a category in the Commons and then in the article. JoJan 20:12, 16 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:39, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

History of India

The History of India is this week's Indian collaboration. Thought you might be interested as you contribute a lot to India's history. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= July 3, 2005 09:18 (UTC)

You added Sacramento to the list of seaports ?

You added Sacramento, California to the List of seaports. Is it really a seaport? Or is it a riverport? I saw from the article there is a canal that connects it to San Fransisco Bay. Does that make Sacramento a seaport?

Manchester has the Manchester Ship Canal and Houston has the Houstan Ship Channel. But they are not on the list of seaports. Personally, I think the list of seaports should only include real seaports. If a big ship canal makes an inland city a seaport, then it should make all cities with big ship canals seaports. What is the maximum size vessel? How much tonnage ships through the port, anyhow? -- ~~

Ponnani

Do you have a reference that the river is called so ? I am from the state of Kerala and would be most surprised if it is true. When we locals talk about Ponnani, it is about the place Tintin 02:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. From a google, it does like look there is some who call it that. I leave it as it is. Tintin 02:38, 28 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

About the Rajputs

You had a question as to why the Sikhs would also be willing to accept Hindus as Rajputs only.

I will probably do a horrible job of this but here we go.

The reference to that comes from the point that although many common Sikhs in today's world consider themselves seperate from Hindus, the Royal families of the Phulkian States and Maharaja Ranjit Singh himself do not consider themselves seperate. To make things simple, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala was my mother's cousin, Maharaja Devinder Singh of Nabha was married to my maternal grandfather's paternal aunt (now that was confusing, sorry). Maharaja Ranjit Singh was married to the two daughters of Maharaja Sansar Chand of Kangra who was the older brother of my great great grandfather Wazeer Ishwari S. Katoch. Maharani Jind Kaur escaped to Nepal since the Nepalese royal family is related through marriage to the Kangra Royal Family, and thus to the Sikh Royal Families. My cousins happen to be the Royal family of Nepal. As you can begin to see it is not so cut and dry. To further this, lets take a book written called "The Real Ranjit Singh" by a Pakistani historian, Syed Fakeer Waheeduddin, this book alone destroys a lot of the Sikh seperatist attitudes of 1921.

As well, there are many things in the family that historians have no clue about, for example, why the Phulkian States joined the British in the 2nd Anglo-Sikh war.

Sikhs were considered a part of the Hindus, thus if a Rajput called himself a Sikh, he was still a Hindu, even if he was a Sikh. Sikh practices begin to change in 1921 and after. The extreme changes happen in the early 1980s and after. Now the Sikhs in the west are completely different form the Sikhs in India, its almost as if they are two different faith groups.

I know you will find a lot of flaws in my horrible attempt to reason this, since I have left out a great many details. Its easier to discuss this over a coffee or when I used to give lectures on this at the university wher I was also able to present the evidence against the whole Akhalistan movement and its ideology. The bottom line is that Sikhs still follow the caste system and are still part of the Jati system. Many still marry with Hindus, and thus a lot of people do not see a difference except perhaps an external one, and that is not always the case either.

Muslims are completely foreign, and thus are not accepted, and there are historical reasons for that as well. In the end, a Rajput can be a Hindu or a Sikh or a Vaishnava, Shakta, Shaivite, Tantric etc etc etc but not a Muslim.

I hope I cleared up something for you.

Take care. gurkhaboyGorkhali 13:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Great Lakes

Hi Tom, I noticed you moved the African Great Lakes article. Is Great Lakes going to be moved to American Great Lakes or North American Great Lakes? It seems to me to be a clear case of geographic bias. TreveX^talk 16:24, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Punjab

It's considered good Wikiquette to explain why you revert someone else. Nichalp moved the article from "Punjab (India)" to "Punjab, India". I noticed this a few days after the fact and discussed with him why, better possibilities, etc. After that, I moved it to "Punjab (Indian state)". You moved it back to "Punjab, India" without a single word said on the subject. Why did you do it? --Golbez 21:53, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, my change fit the standard perfectly for states, provinces, etc. See: Georgia (U.S. state), Falkirk (borough), Victoria (Australia), Punjab (Pakistan). Using "Punjab, India" is indeed standard - if Punjab were a city, like Los Angeles, California. So, which elegant convention are you referring to? Yes, "Punjab, India" is what most articles link to, because that was its name. I hadn't changed all the links yet, and using that as evidence is a pretty thin thread. If I had changed the links, I certainly wouldn't have used that as evidence.

I don't recall Nichalp making a formal request to move it, so there should likewise be no equal burden upon me as well. I won't move it back right now (I don't revert without reason), but using the parenthetical form, contrary to what you said, is the preferred fashion for disambiguating between national divisions. As for not giving a reason - It doesn't show up on the article history (unfortunate) but I did give a reason in my move box, which shows up in the move log; you didn't even bother to do that much. I apologize for the tone of my original comment, but I was a bit irked after I went through discussing the move with Nichalp, and then to be reverted without so much as a simple reason. --Golbez 05:15, August 13, 2005 (UTC)