User talk:Aciram/Archives/2011/December

Encouraging sockpuppets

Please do not undo reverts of vandalism. Any edit made using a sockpuppet while that editor is blocked is considered vandalism, and is subject to immediate deletion even if the edit is an acceptable change to an article. I reverted edits of User:90.193.109.158 and of User:85.226.44.57 because admins confirmed that the edits were made by sockpuppets of LouisPhilippeCharles who has been blocked indefinitely -- and therefore he is not allowed to edit Wikipedia articles unless his block is lifted. Whenever admins tried to persuade him to edit within Wikipedia's rules, he said he would do so, didn't, and was then blocked by different admins (I am not an admin). Please see his talk page: He always defends himself by arguing that, even if he breaks Wikipedia policies, his edits "improve" Wikipedia and therefore he should be allowed to continue to edit. This argument has been repeatedly rejected by different admins. If a user who is under indefinite block is allowed to edit Wikipedia, the admins' decision to block him/her is being nullified and Wikipedia's rules are being flouted. In good faith, I will not revert your reverts this time. However I will continue to record in the edit summary that I am reverting edits made by a blocked user or his/her sockpuppet -- and such reverts are considered proper editing. Please do not encourage a blocked user from breaking Wikipedia polcy by using sockpuppets. Thanks. FactStraight (talk) 18:55, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt reply to my comment above. I have replied on my talk page. FactStraight (talk) 22:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

As you can see, the drama continues: He still defends his behavior, pleads for clemency -- while making edits by sockpuppet! So the admins reject his requests to unblock. FactStraight (talk) 01:19, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Swenglish ./. acceptable English

Please be more careful with your Swenglish and other language issues than this. Other editors are not supposed to be burdened time and time again with this kind unacceptable English. Here is a good read you might find inspiring. SergeWoodzing (talk) 03:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The common Word program, for example, has very easy methods of performing spelling checks on any English text you write. Learn them! Almost all of these errors could have been avoided if you had been more careful and used tools to try to avoid them before submitting your text. We are not takling about typos here, but your continued tendency to write what you imagine might be correct English and to intentionally leave it to others to clean up your mess. That attitude of yours is getting to be well known now, as per this frightening example, and I am warning you as cordially as possible that it is going to have to change if you want to stay out of serious trouble on Wikimedia projects. The rest of us are not your clean-up crew, and it is intolerable when you show us so blatantly that you think we are that. Many of your contributions are valuable, but you, too, must try to write English here, just like the rest of us must. SergeWoodzing (talk) 03:16, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as far as I know, there are no possibility, in english as well as in Swedish, for the spelling check to find real words who are not properly used. There are, however, grammatical checks, but I am not sure how useful they are. To be careful is a good thing, but I thought that no user has duties - at least it is that way in the Swedish version. Fernbom2 (talk) 03:48, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Inasmuch as anyone who writes anything anywhere needs to write it so that people will understand it, or else it will waste the time and effort of those doing the writing as well as (trying to do) the reading, I fully agree that we should all be careful in writing and posting. Whether or not that should be called a "duty", such as I see it, or something else, may be a matter of debate (?) and of attitude.

I often work out of Sweden and I have an excellent, free, built-in English or Swedish grammar and spelling program in Word on that computer using Firefox (as this user says she does) - red underlinings for spelling and green for grammar - which would preclude almost all of the huge amount of problems caused by this user regarding readability, or at least alert her to the very quanitity of the problems and inspire a constructive attitude as to her own capacity. Perhaps if one does not consider it a "duty" of sorts to contribute readable English here, that actually might be the problem? SergeWoodzing (talk) 17:40, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Page move

Hello, Aciram. You have new messages at SlimVirgin's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 11:19, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of consorts of Lippe

The article List of consorts of Lippe has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A collection of persons not notable enough to have their own wikipedia articles (at least as yet), with no apparent interest in completing this article by the contributor. See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Deb (talk) 17:06, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Articles you created

Could you not create articles of consorts if all you do is write one sentence and never go back to them at all?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 22:59, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I hope she (it's a she, she says) replies. You gave a very good point here. SergeWoodzing (talk) 01:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

It's not that you can or can't, it that most of the time your articles are left as stub with no one who will try to improve it. I personally think you should only create an article that you actually know something about. Also when you do create these articles. Don't write that you translated them from other wikipedia when you most likely did not. Please add the translation template on top to the best alternative article on the other language wiki so at least translators might come around to improving them. See Catherine Bagration for example.--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Were/where

Hi Aciram. I wouldn’t normally do this but I thought you might appreciate the tip. Your English is excellent, but one mistake you consistently make is using where for were.

• The past tense of the verb "to be" is were (2nd person singular and all persons plural): ... women where were minors up untill until about second half of the 19th-century
• Where is a question: Can you please tell me where I will find the public library?
• You might see them in the same sentence: Where were you when I needed you?

Cheers. Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:38, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. Another one: I hope I can avoid this mistake know now when I have your explanation on my page.

'Know' and 'now' are pronounced differently as well as spelled differently. Know rhymes with go, slow, dough, flow, grow. Now rhymes with cow, how, vow, plough (plow) and wow. Cheers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:04, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Concerns expressed

I understand that English is not your native language. I just looked at your contributions to Louise Mountbatten and you've added a wealth of interesting information. I don't think anyone would complain about an occasional misuse of a word, but I probably cleaned up 30 misspelled words. Even if you do not know the correct English spelling, surely you have access to a spell-checker. In almost all cases, a spell checker picked up the error. If you were to make the corrections proposed by a spell-checker, I think others would be more inclined to clean-up the remaining issues. Does this seem like an unreasonable request? If you do not have a spell-checker, we can talk about how to get one for you. In my case, I compose in an editor with a spell checker, and my browser also has a spell-checker built-in. (As an aside, when I finished writing this post, I invoked my spell-checker which found eight errors.) In my case, it is typing errors rather than spelling errors, but I wouldn't copy and paste my text with errors and expect others to clean it up.--SPhilbrickT 00:50, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I was brought here by a comment that Aciram made over at Swedish Wikipedia about this disagreement. I generall agree with the recommendations given by SPhilbrick. Better spell-checking would be appropriate. If you don't use Word or the likes, then there are good spell-checkers that can be used in browsers (at least for Firefox). I haven't gone in depth here, but I've checked some samples.[1][2]

Before I comment further: are these sample contributions and the level of copyediting representative of what has been discussed and criticized previously?

Peter ^Isotalo 10:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes they are. Thank you for asking! SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:02, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

You might also wish to be aware of the latest two sections here. SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Very well. Then all I can say is that I don't see the point of castigating a user who regularly makes considerable additions of prose. I agree that Aciram's English isn't top notch, but it's certainly not so bad that it actually hurts articles. Useful additions to articles don't have to be perfect, especially if they're reasonably referenced. We even have a policy that states that specifically states that "perfection is not required". Judging by Aciram's responses, I sense a genuine will to do good and to learn from mistakes. It may take some time to get the hang of everything, but even with the current level of English, I don't consider it much of a problem.

Serge, I don't know if you're in the business of contributing only perfect prose that never has to be altered or improved, but I know I certainly don't. I would not expect that of anyone else either, be they newbies or experienced users. Copyediting prose additions is not something I consider to be a burden to the community, especially since it's a lot easier than writing articles from scratch. I advise you to go a lot easier on Aciram and show more appreciation for all the useful additions.

And concerning talk of "dishonesty" and filing a complaint at ANI[3], I strongly suggest taking calming down. And that goes for everyone. Slowness in learning certain things and spelling difficulties is not a reason to not assume good faith and start calling in administrators.

Peter ^Isotalo 18:32, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Peter! Either you haven't looked at the amount of damage done to the readability of those articles (yes, I reserve the right to call it damage), or else you just felt I needed a good chewing out anyway. Let's stop talking about me and see if we can get contributors who write an unusual amount of unreadable language here to write readable English and help them do so in whatever way we can.

Chewing me out is just going to give this user a lot more ammunition against me, and I assure you based on past experience it will be put to a lot of use, in Swedish and in English, as the personalification of all this (as clearly shown above) goes on and on.

I'm very sorry you did that.

And I'm ever sadder about the sarcasm you used while lecturing me about "contributing only perfect prose that never has to be altered or improved". As if I didn't know that. We all make mistakes, but if we make a huge amount of them and know it, and have shown that we don't care, I think we're doing intentional damage that needs to be addressed. SergeWoodzing (talk) 19:02, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, that didn't come across exactly the way I wanted. To clarify, these are the expansions I'm going by.[4][5] To me these look like considerable expansions through additions of considerable about of new prose. Some of it required copyediting, particularly for spelling errors, but just about all of it is perfectly passable English. In my view, expansions of articles with readable, referenced prose are the most basic building blocks of articles. Copyediting is usually necessary, but it doesn't actually build articles. So how exactly can additions of less-than-perfect prose be overall damaging to Wikipedia? Or for that matter, damaging enough to deserve stern warnings and talk of administrator involvement. If anything, what were you hoping to achieve by taking this up at ANI? Getting Aciram blocked?

And I did not mean to be sarcastic. I merely tried to stress that lack of perfection wasn't a reason to warn other users.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Your views, as Swede, and mine as a North American, about what is "perfectly passable English" are widely different in the extreme, at least in this case. Some Swenglish added to those articles now hasn't even been corrected yet (mainly because none of us who know Swedish and understand what's intended seem to be willing to do it anymore for this user). I have never even come close to asserting anything like "lack of perfection" is the basis of any complaint I've ever made about anything anywhere. Your repeating that adds insult to injury. Stop it! Why don't we leave it at that: we agree to disagree? SergeWoodzing (talk) 20:06, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Please refrain from commenting on my English proficiency. I've worked professionally as a translator and proofreader. Our disagreement here is whether English that requires a certain amount of copyediting is downright detrimental to Wikipedia. You believe it is, I don't.

I am, however, genuinely concerned about your attitude towards Aciram. Where you see frustratingly poor contributions, I see rough, yet usable prose and a reasonable learning curve. If someone came along and made additions like that in articles I worked on, I would be more than happy to do the copyediting rather than having to write everything from scratch myself. In this case you're being quite hostile over copyediting that goes a little beyond normal. That's not an appropriate way to treat a fellow editor. Not when we're talking about expansion.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

After almost 50 years of still not being overly impressed with the work of many Swedish professional translators and proofreaders (sorry!), I'll comment on your English whenever I feel it's appropriate. If you can't see how much damage these errors do to these articles, the comment is warranted, or else I'd have to just consider you biased and belligerent, on some personally heroic campaign to defend poor Aciram against evil Serge on enWP and svWP. And that I wouldn't want to do, unless I've seen more of such for some time.

Why not apologize more sincerely for those totally unnecessary "perfection" slurs you made, before I get more sarcastic too? I make mistakes all the time and am quick to apologize when I do. I'm a typo-master, for eaxamplenh, and I have to correct myself constantly; never upload any more voluminous text in any language without spelling check in Word.

Trying hard to stick to the subject I say: Great! Go for it! Please do specialize in helping Aciram and enWP correct this inordinate amount of errors from one user! As I've said many times by now, she usually contributes very good material, so it would be just great if people who don't know Swedish would be able to read and understand every word of it. I'm all tuckered out with it, so I really appreciate your good faith attitude on that note. Sincerely, SergeWoodzing (talk) 21:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

@SergeWoodzing. You have recently criticized me for my spelling errors. This critic was perfectly valid. English is not my birth language, something I freely admit on my presentation-page, and I was not aware that it was possible to install a spelling check program. Now, I have received help from another editor to install a spelling check, for which I am very grateful. Your critic will thereby no longer be necessary. This is not the issue to why I am addressing you.

You may claim that you have pointed out my spelling errors previously. Indeed you have. But is it really any wonder that I have ignored your critic? You attitude toward me have been hostile and unconstructive. Not just in this question, but for a long time, both in Swedish wp and here. This is why I have ignored your comments, even in the case when the cause it self have been valid. That is also why your attitude is a problem. When someone acts in a hostile way, it is a normal reaction to ignore all comments to avoid provoking conflicts. If I have ever made you angry in any way, I apologize.

You claim that I am being personal in my communication with other editors, and still you yourself make personal characterisations such as these: [6] Isn’t it contradictive? It also breaks Wikiquette and can be counted as a personal attack or Wikihounding, which could be a case for WP:AN/I

You claim that I doing innocent spelling errors out of spite, and still you yourself make edit characterizations such as these: [7] Isn’t it contradictive? It also breaks Wikiquette WP:Civility and the “always assume good faith”-rule (bad faith), which could be a case for WP:AN/I

You claim that I break the rules, and still you yourself express your concern that I should use information about the rules as “ammunition” against you as soon as the rules contradict your own opinions: [8] Isn’t it contradictive? I also breaks Wikiquette and the right for everyone to be informed about their full rights as users, which could be a case for WP:AN/I

You claim that I ignore valid critic from other editors and are unwilling to change, a still you yourself react to critics such as this: [9] Isn’t it contradictive?

Is it any wonder that I instinctively ignore all comments from someone with an attitude such as this? If I have ignored valid critic from your side, it is the fault of your own attitude, which is exactly why it is a problem. You have told several users who criticize you that their opinions, advice and critic are unwelcome and that they should respect your wish stay away from your talk page. Now, I have criticized you, and perhaps you will say the same thing to me. In that case, you can have no objections to respect my wish if I ask the same thing of you. I have no wish to receive messages with a content of this kind on my talk page. It is unconstructive, and experience has now showed both of us that it does not work. I could report you for your breaks against Wikiquette, and if you do continue, I will not hesitate to do so. I have corrected my spelling errors on your request, so you should correct your attitude on mine. Thank you--Aciram (talk) 15:04, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to express my gratitude to @Peter Isotalo for his support, and for his help in explaining the rules to me. --Aciram (talk) 15:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Aciram. You have new messages at Sphilbrick's talk page.
Message added SPhilbrickT 13:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sophie Hagman

In Sophie Hagman, I was going to fix some spelling errors, but most were inside a quoted passage. It is usually important not to correct spelling errors in quoted passages, as they may be in the original. However, it occurs to me that the original may be in Swedish, and the quote was translated by you. If so I should correct the spelling.

Let me know, and I'll do it.

As an aside, I converted the references to use the standard book citation and added url; I mentioned this on the talk page. Let me know if you think I got something wrong.--SPhilbrickT 01:08, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Fatima de Madrid for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Fatima de Madrid is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fatima de Madrid until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti

good work, finding that. i was so focused on finding a source that mentioned fatima, that it didn't even occur to me that her father's name was just wrong in the article and that's why the link was red.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:56, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Survey for new page patrollers

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Johanna Hedén

Hey Aciram, Just wanted to let you know that I saw that you created the new article Johanna Hedén--The layout of the article makes it very clear. It's nice to see you editing!Amy Z (talk) 15:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, I will regard it as a compliment!--Aciram (talk) 18:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Anna Filosofova

Thank you for starting this important article. I had heard of her in passing as a friend and helper of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his family. I have some good English sources, and several other images of Anna, and should be able to expand the article into atleast c-class.--INeverCry 21:38, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I have been looking for information about her for a long time, and it was hard to find information about her on the net. I am glad if you are able to develop it. --Aciram (talk) 23:17, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I've expanded it to c-class, take a look. I can do atleast start class articles for Trubnikova and Stasova as well.--INeverCry 07:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Do start the articles if you can. Even stubs are valuable. I often start stubs as well, and they are indeed valuable: in the cases when you have little information yourself, the article will always be expanded by those with more information. People are often more reluctant to start articles than to expand them, so stubs, I find, have a great importance to the development of Wikipedia. I must also express my appreciation for your work in creating new images for the articles!--Aciram (talk) 08:28, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Special Barnstar
		For your extensive contributions to the coverage of women's history and feminism on Wikipedia.--INeverCry 20:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

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Marie-Jeanne

I found a really nice portrait for the Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniére article. Have a look.--INeverCry 17:56, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I have looked at it, and I must thank you again for your work in providing images for articles - you have done it for several of mine, I have noticed, and it is appreciated. Excellent! It is much needed, as most contributors write but more seldom take the time to provide images. Remember to upload the images on Wikimedia commons: if they are uploaded only at the english wp, they can only be used there, such as for example Cécile Fatiman - but if they are uploaded on commons, they can be used an all wikipedias, such as Marie-Madeleine Lachenais.--Aciram (talk) 23:32, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I can find public domain images for alot of your articles, because the subjects are 19th century people or earlier. The Cécile Fatiman and Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniére images are copyrighted and can't be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; they can only be uploaded to Wikipedia under fair use.--INeverCry 23:44, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I see. It does seem, that the image of Lachenais have an image on Commons, and commons images can be used on all language versions of Wikipedia, therefore it could be used on both the English and Swedish article, while the image of Fatiman does not have an image on commons, which means that it can only be used on English Wikipedia. At least, that is how I have came to understand it. But when it comes to images, you are most probably wiser than I.--Aciram (talk) 23:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Commons is only for sv:Public domain images, while the images here, like Fatiman, are sv:Upphovsrätt. I don't think Swedish wikipedia allows it.--INeverCry 00:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for 1804 Haiti Massacre

Orlady (talk) 08:03, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I am proud to hear it. Thank you for telling me!--Aciram (talk) 02:13, 23 December 2011 (UTC)