User talk:Bryan Derksen/Archive 14

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 10

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Archive 12

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My User Page

Heya! i'm glad you were willing to help me with my User Page. However, i just want to know why the certain categories were removed, so i can better alter my page in the future, and possibly remove/add any further content in upcoming edits. Thank you and continue the great work, friend. Feel free to contact me on my user page for anything. :)

Raccoon Fox 22:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

MK9 Bomb

I will work on getting those cites. They are simple calculations bassed on pure physics calculations. I believe a Cold War era damage calculator for nuclear effects can show a simple set of calcs. Alyeska 04:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Until then I've removed them as the figures directly contradict quotes from the episode. I hope we're not going to wind up in another argument over original research again. Bryan 07:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

Hey, I'd like to give you a barnstar for your referencing work on Mao (game)!

For referencing the unreferencable! Mao is a better article for your efforts. Fieari 02:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Woo! Thanks! But I'm not done yet, let's see if I've gone mad by the end of the evening... :) Bryan 02:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Page Move Request

Some time ago now you locked the Timeline of unfulfilled Christian Prophecy page from moves. I was hopeing that now that a new title has been decided on that you could move the page to Unfulfilled historical predictions by Christians for us. I don't believe that the page move lock will be nessiccary any longer either. thanks --T-rex 01:27, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it was Woohookitty who locked it, but I'll take a look at talk and see what's up over there. Page locking is meant to be temporary so I'll probably unlock it. Bryan 02:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Alexander Koptsev

Extreme amounts of media coverage. Very famous religion-motivated crime. Cf. Baruch Goldstein, Richard Reid and the nineteen 9-11 terrorists. - the.crazy.russian τ/ç/ë 16:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Don't tell me, tell every future editor who stumbles across the article by adding this sort of stuff to it. As the article currently stands it gives no indication of the guy's fame. Bryan 16:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Did you know? {{prod}} takes a parameter.

Hello there. You have proposed the article Alexander Koptsev for deletion without providing a reason why in the {{prod}} template. You may be interested to know that you can add your reasoning like that: {{prod|Add reason for deletion here}}. This will make your reasoning show up in the article's deletion notice. It will also aid other users in considering your suggestion on the Proposed Deletions log. See also: How to propose deletion of an article. Sandstein 17:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Survey

I am conducting a survey on Wikipedia and would like to invite you to participate in the study. I've posted a message on wikien-l, but here is the link again in case you are not subscribed to that list-serv. Thanks a lot for your time! --Mermes 01:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Page move request

Could you please move Code: LYOKO to Code Lyoko as per the the talk page discussion? The redirect page has an edit history preventing the move. - Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 07:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Done. Bryan 07:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

One more addition to this. Aelita (Code: LYOKO) also has a redirect preventing a move to the proper page name. - Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 08:37, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

goa'uld ring transporter

they werent created by the goa'uld, so, why put them there? who cares if they just took over the usage and started producing them? it is NOT goa'uld technology, and thats what the page is about, goa'uld tech... if you put it under, say, "Technology the Goa'uld have stolen", then, sure, maybe as a reference then. cause we all know the goa'uld steal most of their technology, it has been said multiple times... Xornok 18:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

They weren't created by the Goa'uld, but they are now the only race manufacturing them (and also perhaps the Tok'ra) and pretty much the exclusive current users. IMO that's a perefectly reasonable justification for mentioning them there. I suspect most casual viewers of the show wouldn't even know the ring transporters weren't Goa'uld-originated. If one were to rigidly exclude "copied" technology like this, then Tau'ri technology#Naquahdah generator would also seem to be in violation - it's Orbanian technology. The X-301 should also probably go, the Tau'ri didn't even build all of the components for that themselves. Anyway, when I restored the ring transporters to the Goa'uld technology list I also added a note explicitly pointing out its non-Goa'uld origin. Some of the other entries could use similar notes, I notice that the Sarcophagus doesn't mention Ancient healing device for example. Bryan 21:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

because the sarcophagus was developed from the ancient healing device, whereas the ring transporter has not undergo any change at all. the ring transporter is still the same design, etc, that the ancients used. the orbanian design was different from the tau'ri one, but yes, it is in violation... maybe "Tau'ri design naquahdah generator", because it is NOT tau'ri tech, only the design... but i suppose the mach 2 would be, because they engineered it to be 600% more effective then the original... something the orbanian people couldnt do... the x-301 is experimental, the fact that they added different components means that they were trying to modify it... which they failed with the 301... its a hybrid, but it led to the 302... just like taking an idea, transforming it, and making it your own... -Xornok 00:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

This all seems like excessive hair-splitting to me. It's all well and good to have detailed descriptions clarifying these technologies' origins within the show, but we shouldn't go so far as to make the article's layout or contents violate expectations in a non-obvious way. People who are reading about Goa'uld technology are naturally going to expect ring transporters to be mentioned since Goa'uld use and manufacture them so extensively. In computer programming terms this is the principle of least astonishment. If we don't mention ring transporters under Goa'uld technology I expect there will be an endless stream of people such as myself coming to "correct" the "omission". Bryan 06:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

TES-templates

Just so that you know: by using [[Category:The Elder Scrolls regions<noinclude>| </noiclude>]] instead of <includeonly>[[Category:The Elder Scrolls regions]]</includeonly>, the template is sorted to the top of the corresponding category with every other article that icludes it sorted normally. That was the original intention all along. --Koveras 07:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I know, I was deliberately removing that feature. It was a clever approach but those categories are intended for articles in the main article namespace and templates are not articles so shouldn't have been in there at all. Templates are an "under the hood" component of Wikipedia that are used to construct Wikipedia content but are not the sort of thing a reader needs to go to directly. Bryan 16:43, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Category:Cricket subcategories nominated for deletion

I have nominated Category:Cricket subcategories for deletion here. This is just a courtesy note because you took part in an earlier inconclusive debate on the same subject, and may wish to comment on this one. If you're not interested, please forgive the intrusion. Stephen Turner (Talk) 12:11, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Refs on DNA Resequencer

Hi, a few days ago, I spent hours researching and writing DNA Resequencer. I am almost the sole author of the article. However, I had had very little expirence with refs and didn't know how to cite properly. Using another article, I managed to get 80 cites done. However, many were redundant, and i didn't know how to do the a,b,c, thing. I saw that you went in and fixed the only part of the article that wasn't perfect, the refs. Thank you very much for that. However, there were 3 messages at the bottom which said that the cite wasn't done properly. After expirmenting for a long time, I fixed two of them, however, I don't know what is wrong with the 3rd. I would appericiate it if you would fix ref 30. Also, did I fix the others correctly? Thanks. Tobyk777 03:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Found the problem, I typoed the "title" variable name as "tite". Bryan 06:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Do you think the article is good enough to be a good article, or a featured article? Tobyk777 03:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't actually read the text all that closely as I worked, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. :) The "Other fictional examples of genetic advancement" section doesn't look like it's going to work well, IMO. As it stands now the three examples it gives are rather sparse and random; there are probably thousands and thousands of examples of "genetic advancement" in fiction so picking just a few will be difficult. It might be better to create an article specifically about this sort of thing (genetic enhancement in fiction, perhaps?) so that it can be handled with as much depth as it deserves and just have a "see also" in the genetic resequencer article. Bryan 06:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, again I just noticed 2 other things. There is some red text in the article that wasn't there before, saying that something wasn't cited right. I don't know how to fix it. Also, the external links have been un-split and sevral have been taken out. Do You think they're better that way? Tobyk777 03:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Got 'em, I accidentally labelled the refs with a "title" attribute instead of a "name" attribute. After doing so much repetitive work on those references an error like that's not unusual. :) Bryan 06:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that. I think the article is pretty much as good as it can be. Do you think it has a chance of becoming a FA? Tobyk777 05:59, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Hm. Featured Article status is pretty demanding, I suspect it'll still have trouble making it as it is right now. In addition to the "other examples" issue I pointed out above, I'm thinking there might be some other overlap with more general concepts in the Stargate universe. I'll take another look at the article tomorrow and see if I can come up with more specific suggestions to mention in the article's talk: page. Bryan 06:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I responded to your comments on the talk page Tobyk777 06:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a random question

Where is the page to learn how to use <timeline></timeline ? Thanks for any info. →ΣcoPhreek _Δ 05:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Answered over on your talk page, sorry about the delay. Bryan 01:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a ton ! →ΣcoPhreek _Δ 02:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Cite converter

Hello, I noticed that you used Cyde Wey's cite converter to change the references in the Gray Wolf article. Do you know where I could get that? —Mir l e n 01:44, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

It's here: [1]. You don't need to install anything, just use copy and paste. I've been working my way through Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Ref converting articles over, though be careful not to do it blindly - sometimes there's broken syntax in the old references that the ref converter doesn't handle cleanly, and sometimes there are articles where editors have decided to refuse the cite.php syntax (J. K. Rowling is at the top of the list right now and is such an example). I expect eventually they'll come around, but until then there could be acrimony and edit warring. Bryan 01:49, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you so much. :) —Mir l e n 00:22, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I notice that you used it on multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis, two articles that I've worked on. Since it's been brought up as a point of discussion, it is always nice to leave a note on the discussion pages when converting from one style to another. I don't plan on reverting the changes, as I think that cite.php has a lot going for it. Rather, I intend to work to see more variability in its implementation — it's quite hard to edit the source code on well-referenced medical articles with the length of citations that the code uses within the text! Any support that you can give me (I intend to bring it up on the appropriate page later today) in giving us choices (ie full reference at bottom of page with in-line anchor) would be appreciated! It just adds so much more difficulty when trying to edit these kinds of articles, as I'm sure you've encountered! InvictaHOG 13:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what sort of note would be useful in this case, though - I came, I saw, I converted. There were no broken links whose repair wasn't obvious to the layman, the references on those two articles were very well maintained. In one way it does make it more complicated editing articles with the citation text embedded in it, but IMO in others it makes it far easier; there are no longer any issues with having to manually maintain the numbering of the references, moving text around or adding new references is trivially easy, and there are never any hard-to-spot broken reference links introduced by subtle typos. One suggestion I might make to make it easier to read and edit the source code with the refs embedded would be to use the {{cite journal}} template instead of just raw text, I've found it easier to differentiate reference text from article text when it's embeded in a template like that (and it has the added benefit of ensuring standardized reference formatting accross Wikipedia). Bryan 16:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree that in every way but one cite.php is superior and I really like the way it looks and works. It solves all of the problems that I've had in the past with the referencing systems. However, the difficulty that it creates with the page source is so irritating that I really find it hard to work with. I am not a fan of the cite journal template - it's much more tedious to complete than a pubmed cut and paste. I do see your point about ease of reading, though articles with frequent citations may have mere words or sentences between citations and having large blocks of space make source code reading difficult. Anyway, I would just love to have the option within cite.php to place the reference list at the bottom and put a note on the project page. Seeing as how there haven't been responses to other such inquiries on that page, do you have any idea of other ways to address this desire? Thanks in advance!InvictaHOG 22:35, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

No idea, I've never tried "campaigning" for a code change or addition beyond the occasional idle wishing in posts on the Wikipedia mailing list. You could try looking around http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/ for feature requests. I couldn't find an existing feature request that matches what you suggest, perhaps you could add one. Bryan 01:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, another idea comes to mind for making heavily-referenced source code more readable; insert a single line break before and after each set of ref tags. When the article source is rendered it won't cause a paragraph break, but it could make the beginning and end of ref blocks more noticeable in the source code. Bryan 01:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

And one other idea - you say you're not a fan of the cite journal template because it's tedious to fill out, but would you like it a little better if some wikignome whose attention has been drawn to the articles in question were to take the cut and pasted references and do all the tedious templating for you? :) I just did a couple of {{cite web}}s on Multiple sclerosis this morning to clear up the numbering problem mentioned in the talk page there, considering the other journal references already have all their detailed information in place it would be no big extra trouble for me to go through the rest of the references and put cite journal markup in place as well. My reference formatting services are at your disposal. Bryan 01:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Haha, I can think of a hundred better ways to spend your time than that! I understand it's a style/standardization issue, but the cite journal template doesn't affect the outcome of the finished product so it makes more sense for me to try the line break and just suck it up! Plus, I'm sure I could just write a word macro to convert them all automatically if it were really necessary. Thank you for the advice! InvictaHOG 02:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to the footnotes page! InvictaHOG 02:13, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Kelvin

Great work here on the references! Most of this was due to work I did last summer and I do have some sort of ambition to turn Lord Kelvin into a model article. I will probably come back to it this summer and do some more. There are a lot of references but not too many I think. I did toy with the idea of putting them on a separate page. They are only really of use to a serious researcher. What do you think? Cutler 08:46, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's fine keeping the references within the article. There aren't that many for an article of this size, especially not compared to some of the more controversial articles I've seen, and they're tucked away unintrusively at the bottom. And the new cite.php reference markup makes it quite easy to maintain compared to the old template-based mechanism. Even if the references seem obscure and unlikely to be of interest to most readers, Wikipedia:Citing sources suggests they're very useful for complying with verifiability and original research policies. Bryan 15:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Reliable replacement warhead article

We have a new user (User:RRW jockey, who's making edits to the Reliable replacement warhead article, which I disagree with. I wanted a third opinion about whether his changes are Neutral POV or not, so I'm asking a few other wikipedians who have worked on nuclear related articles.

If you can pop over there and take a look, and if you have an opinion leave it on the article talk page, I would appreciate other feedback.

Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert 20:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll pop over. But be warned that I have very little knowledge about anything factual in this particular topic, so I'll be mainly just judging style. Bryan 01:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

various edits

Your edits to references/notes in Thomas McKean are appreciated, especially since I've learned there's something new and better in the way of doing references, and will use it in the future. However, I would ask you to give some thought to making changes to the nav boxes and succession boxes as you have.

1) The "standard" governor navbox you have inserted is a modification made a couple of months ago to the navbox you found. In fact the one you replaced is the orginal. Although I cannot convince the editor who redesigned it of the shortcomings of his design, there is no reason to accept it as a standard. Neither is there any reason to have major revert wars over them as they both convey the same information, one is just missing an unnecessary flag, and one is in alpha order.
2) The state navbox you removed is intended to be a partner to the office specific navbox. Most readers of this stuff, I believe, are looking around for related items as well, and its intent is to help them. I have worked hard to try and design a small clean looking box to accomplish that. I would ask you to take another look at it in that light and consider its usefulness to the reader seeking other information on, say, Delaware government, when reading a Delaware biography.
3) I am using the succession box design from the Succession Box standard project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization. In fact, it fixes some real programming problems in the "start box" template, in the wrapping of data. It is not well known, but should be, and I hope you will take a look at it.
4) Regarding the location of succession boxes, you seem to have accepted the credo that these boxes always have to go at the VERY end of an article. This is not written anywhere, and IMO does not make any sense. Like a picture they should go where they are most useful. In biographies, I think that's after narrative part of the article, but before other almanac like information and references. No one is going to scroll down to the end of a long article to find this information, so it might as well not be there. I think that's why you often see it duplicated in the infobox, which (properly) is always at the top of the article.

I have given a great deal of thought to these issues over many months, and have not casually tossed them out. I would ask that you not casually reject them because they are variations on what most are doing or what you are used to. Frankly, again IMHO, the designs in nav boxes and succession boxes is way out of control; many look simply awful, often including way too much information, unsymmetrical images, or strange sizes. Discussing changes is a mind numbing task, because it is often impossible to convince anyone, myself included, in these discussions. People need to see and experience the variation before they can let down their defenses and appreciate them. I'm simply trying to present a few slight variations on the norm to make the product better. Your thoughtful consideration of all this is much appreciated. stilltim 11:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, opinions on how things look are in the eye of the beholder. I am a big fan of standardization (I'll definitely look at that succession box link you mention), but you're using it as a very selective argument here IMO. I'll address some specifics:

- 1) If the only issue here is cosmetic, as it appears, then IMO it's not a good idea to subst the template. We'd end up with all sorts of different-looking navboxes according to the varying tastes of whoever edits each bio article, which defeats part of the purpose of a standard template - it should be easy for someone to get used to seeing the navbox and click around quickly using it. Furthermore, it means that if there's a substansive informational change to the template (a new governor is elected) then we have to somehow locate and manually update every instance where the template was used - without the advantage of a whatlinkshere function to find them. If you really don't like the current design of the navbox, I suggest instead of not using it you go around trying to gather supporters to help argue for changing it. If you can't find enough people who agree with your view to make a difference, well, unfortunately we can't all get what we want all the time - Wikipedia is a collaborative effort.
- 2) I don't feel particularly strongly on this, but there was a whole page full of navboxes at the bottom and that seemed excessive. Do we really need {{Pennsylvania}} at the bottom of every single article that has anything to do with Pennsylvania? I feel such general boxes are only warranted on the "main" articles on the subject.
- 3) Will take a look at that project. I've gone on major succession box adding sprees in the past, if there's a new standard with more support than the old one I'll switch over (with or without arguing about it :)
- 4) If succession box placement at the bottom is a "credo", and is implemented on the vast majority of the pages that way (which has certainly been my experience), then IMO it's a de-facto standard to do it that way even if it isn't explicitly written anywhere.

I'll go over to the navbox talk page later today when I've got idle time and see what the discussion was like, maybe participate in it a bit myself. But I do feel strongly about the substing of navboxes, it's IMO a bad idea all around, so hopefully some sort of compromise can be worked out on the appearance there. Bryan 17:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I just had a look at the talk pages of the governor navboxes, and I can't find any discussion over their formatting. Checking the histories of the template pages themselves suggests {{DEGovernors}} is the one there was disagreement over, you reverted Jack Cox at one point suggesting he discuss the matter on the template talk page. But I've looked atTemplate talk:PAGovernors, Template talk:DEGovernors, User talk:Jack Cox, User talk:Markles, and User talk:Stilltim, and all I could see relating to the governor navboxes was a brief discussion between you and Markles about the use of <small> tags. Did I miss a talk page? What was the actual dispute over, just the issue of alphabetic order versus chronological order? Bryan 07:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Most of the discussion is on the several user pages, but frankly the discussion is really my being lectured. Hence, after fully explaining once or twice, I have not wasted further time with it, going with the substitution on the advice of administrators+ at WP. Otherwise I would, of course, use the template. This specific dispute is simply alpha vs. chrono & the addition of an image (flag), but there are others. By itself, this is hardly worth the time it is taking either of us, but the larger issue is that there must be a way to prevent "out of control" WP editors from effectively vandalizing work in the name of "standarization." I strongly believe in standarization as well and have faithfully applied the many good standards I have found (and even some bad ones) to the work I am doing, but never at the price of quality. However, there is something quite unprofessional going on here, as it sometimes feels to me that the two editors you identify, at various times since February, have been following me very attentively, and doing over the cosmetics (never content) of work I do, especially templates, in their particular way, and declaring it to be "standard." This has sometimes taken place within minutes of my save. I realize managing such issues is the price of working in this medium, and view this exercise as a learning experience in how best to do so. Nevertheless, it is very discouraging and unmotivating. I feel like I am back in high school. Aren't you glad you stumbled into this. BTW I have tried to work the new note methodology into all the notes I have done, and used the tool quite successfully. So I do like standards. But of course my shadow, Mr. Markles, upon seeing the refr changes I make, becomes aware of the article and has to go fuss over the templates. I'm going to go do something sane...and fun now. :) stilltim 12:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

What, pages and pages of discussion over whether a small list at the bottom of some articles are alphabetical or chronologica isn't fun? :) Seriously, though, from your self-description at your user page and from the work you've done on these articles it looks like you're quite a good content contributor for Wikipedia so I do consider it worth my while to spend some effort trying to ensure that you're having a good experience while contributing.

One thing to keep in mind is that other editors are probably thinking some of the same things. I first stumbled across the Thomas McKeen article simply because I've been on a reference cleanup/conversion binge recently and it showed up on Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Ref. When I saw all that transcluded wikitext at the bottom while checking my conversion to make sure I didn't break anything my first thought was "oh dear, this is a mess." Not vandalism, but definitely something "broken" and in need of "fixing." Since I've never encountered you before that I'm aware of and didn't examine the article's history, that was an honest reaction to the content rather than anything personal. I also checked out a couple of other articles listed on List of Governors of Pennsylvania to see if there were similar situations among them, which could have appeared like "stalking" if you'd been doing work on those as well - again with no ill will intended on my part. I haven't found the lectures you've mentioned on any of the talk pages I linked to above so I can't say anything specific about them, but could it be that Markles and Cox are honestly attempting to help? I myself can think of strong arguments for why chronological order would be better than alphabetical, there's more information in it that way. I don't like the little flags and other decorations many of these navboxes have, but IMO it's a pretty trivial detail and certainly not worth the trouble of substing templates instead of transcluding them.

My suggestion would be to try to find some sort of central gathering area where lots of other people who might be interested in this matter go, a related Wikiproject perhaps, and raise the issue on the talk page there since these particular templates are probably not very heavily travelled. Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography might be good for settling the alphabetical/chronological issue, or Wikipedia:Navigational templates for the flag/substing issue. If you feel you're being harrassed by specific editors, Wikipedia:Resolving disputes is a good central clearing house for ideas on what to do and where to get help with that. I'll offer my own assistance as a neutral third party, if you want, though I've already formed an opinion on the article formatting issue itself so I might not be much help there.

Anyway, I'm sorry you feel put-upon. Ideally there'll be some sort of compromise position that everyone's at least vaguely satisfied with, but the ideal isn't always possible. We do what we can. Bryan 00:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Wikifairy!

Hi Bryan Derksen. Thanks for being wikifairy to the Opus Dei article. Yes, we sure needed that assistance to improve the references and footnotes! Thanks to you, I have now realized that we have too many references there, and perhaps some of them have to be removed. Well, thanks again. Lafem 05:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh. And I'm not done yet, either. Glad you like it! :) Bryan 15:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Carnac stones ref merging

Thanks for merging those references - I was kind of hoping someone would. It's a real pain when you footnote something, then work backwords through the article adding more footnotes. There's really no convenient way to avoid that mess - otherwise each time you have to update the previous footnote that actually defined it. Stevage 07:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Over at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes#Fixing non-1st ref content Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters posted a patch for cite.php that makes it use the text from the first non-empty reference tag with a given name as the reference text. I'm unsure whether this will be a net improvement since it'll make it harder to find the text for later editing, but if it's implemented it should clear up that particular difficulty. Bryan 00:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Luminous coefficient

Where did you get this term Luminous coefficient that seems to be the same as Luminous efficiency? Dicklyon 21:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, third edition. I haven't used it much of late but I got it ultra-cheap and at the time I'd just learned to use math tags so I created some articles based purely on the prettiness and complexity of the formulae they were about. :) Bryan 00:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, since I can't find a single Google hit for it, not even in books.google.com, I suggest we just mention it as an anternative term for luminous efficiency, rather than give it its own article. I'm not sure how to go about recommending it for deletion, so you want to take care of it? Dicklyon 04:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

If it's an alternate name for something then just merge and redirect it to the other article rather than deleting it. Bryan 04:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

If it helps for finding information on the source, here's more detail: Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition. Published by D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, Toronto, London, New York. January 1958 (yes, it's old. That's why I was able to buy it for a dollar). It could be that age is the problem and this is simply a way of referring to the concept that's no longer frequently used. Bryan 04:57, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Therianthropy Article

I notice you are interested in editing the therianthropy article. See Talk:Therianthropy/Archive 1#Disambiguation for a disambiguation that was apparently accidentally wiped out because of all the recent vandalism. I've also got stuff on my user page about the disambiguation.Blue Milk Mathematician 21:24, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

template cite web

Many thanks for your very kind bug report. And my apologies for having done that botch. It should be fixed now. --Ligulem 08:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess sandboxing such a complicated and conditional template wouldn't necessarily catch problems like that, either. Oh well. Bryan 16:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I did sandboxing :-). With tests at User talk:Ligulem/work/x1. And the error did show up in my sandbox test. I simply overlooked that erroneous output. To my shame, I did hit such a prominent use case. I was just too obsessed with the special cases. Oh well. Thanks again. --Ligulem 16:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks !!

Thanks for helping work on the reference links for the Chavez articles: there is so much work to be done there, and every little bit helps! Sandy 01:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Hopefully we'll get everything converted to cite.php, then people will be able to cut and paste chunks between all sorts of different sub-articles without fear of breaking things while hashing out the larger-scale issues. :) Bryan 04:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I hope so ... WHAT a mess! Thanks again for the help. Sandy 13:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Oops. we were working on same material at the same time

Bryan,

Thanks for cleaning up references on the Ashkenazi Jewish page. At the same time you were making edits on one section, I was adding some new references. Sorry if our edits clashed. We could provide external links too. The New York Times and the AJHG are both available online.

Howard --Metzenberg 08:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't look like any edits were lost, based on a quick perusal of the diffs. My plan was just to add some {{cite web}} templates and other prettifications and then move on, since I don't know anything about this subject myself - Wikifairies often have short attention spans. But if there are any other articles you know of that you'd like converted over to cite.php and tidied up, let me know. :) Bryan 00:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Kofun

I saw your work on the references on Kofun and I want to thank you for your hard work. Tortfeasor 03:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem, I like tidy references. :) BTW, would you happen to have the right font installed for this page: [2]? I only get gibberish that suggests Firefox isn't handling the character encoding properly, so I wasn't able to copy and paste the title properly into the reference in the article. Bryan 05:04, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm on IE (don't judge ;) and I'm only gitting the gibberish too. Thanks again for the good job and let me know if I can help you out anytime. Tortfeasor 07:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you know of any other articles that have external links to Google Books as references? It'd be good to get those formatted like Kofun period's, in case Google takes the service down or changes how the URLs work sometime. Bryan 23:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Off the top of my head; ~~Asuka period~~, ~~Nihon Shoki~~, Gold Crown Tomb, Seven-Branched Sword, Fujinoki Tomb.

quotes

hey bryan, since youre an admin here and all, what is the wikipolicy on the use of quotes? i tried looking through the list of policies and couldnt find anything about it... -Xornok 06:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Limited quotations are generally fine under fair use: Wikipedia:Fair use#Text. It depends on the specifics of the situation, though. What are you quoting? Bryan 07:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

nothing, ive just been to some episode summaries for tv shows that happen to have a lot of quotes and i was wondering on what the limit was for them... -Xornok 20:20, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

No hard-and-fast limits, it's a fuzzy area both in terms of writing style and legality. Legality probably isn't a problem for something like this, though, so it comes down to whether it makes for a good encyclopedia article or not. One should probably only use quotations when it's needed to illustrate something explicitly, if you just want to relate some fact or another from the show then one might as well paraphrase it (possibly using the quote as a footnote). Bryan 20:24, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

well, from the ones ive seen, theyre only used cause theyre funny and memorable... -Xornok 20:33, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine, then. Though if they don't contribute much to the understanding of the episode a possibility might be to move them to Wikiquote. Bryan 20:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Three Laws of Robotics

Thanks for revamping the notes and references on the Three Laws of Robotics page. I appreciate it. Anville 21:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Been doing a lot of reference work lately, it's almost second nature now. :) Bryan 23:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

wondering

okay, i was wondering... when i type Firefly, i get the insect page. wouldnt it make more sence to link it to the disambiguation page since it is more likely that people looking up firefly are looking for the TV show. and i know it was named after the bug, i know that the the show isnt as famous as stargate but still. instead of typing firefly, having to click on the link to go to the disambiguation, and then clicking on the tv series link, i thing it should be that people type in firefly, and then they can choose to go to the insect page if they want to, instead of being forced to. the casual user wouldnt know to type Firefly (TV series) to get to the show... it would be more user friendly to navigate around... i was just wondering what you think since you are one of the oldest and more experienced users around here (you've been here since 2001, right?) anyways, thanks -Xornok 05:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason for this is that there's one particular meaning for the word "firefly" that is far, far more common than the other meanings for it. When this occurs, Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic suggests using this way of arranging things. In cases where it's not so clear that one particular meaning is more significant than the others it's done as you suggest, but in the grand scheme of things I think a family of beetle with worldwide distribution and a unique luminescent ability that's been inspiring all manner of poetry, art, and scientific research for thousands of years is a bit more significant than a relatively low-budget science fiction series that ran for one season and spawned just a single spinoff movie. As much as I may have liked it myself. :) Bryan 06:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

i was just using the show as an example. another one would be the firefly phone for kids... i mean, with 24 other things on the firefly disambiguation page, do you really think an overwhelming majority of people are looking for the beetle?

on a sidenote, if you like the movie, you should take a look at www.fireflyday.com... and if youre not interested, would you be interested in helping to spread the word?! -Xornok 06:59, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, yes, I think most people would be looking for the beetle. Most of those things on the disambiguation page are of extremely trivial significance compared to them, and even the show is pretty obscure. Bear in mind, whatever social community you're surrounded by is probably a very biased sample. What percentage of the general population has any interest in science fiction in general, let alone recent American science fiction television series from FOX that only lasted 14 episodes? Grab a random person off the street and I bet they won't be able to clearly distinguish Star Trek from Star Wars. :) If you think you can make a case to the contrary, though, Talk:Firefly and Talk:Firefly (TV series) are probably good places to try it. Bryan 07:39, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

this isnt actually about the show... its about the people who run this place (meaning you and me and every other editor). you think that by typing firefly people want the beetle. why not just link to the disambiguation page and then let the user decide for themselves, you just automatically assume they want the beetle... and i think is more then just firefly, i think things like windows and stuff should automatically link to the disambiguation page... it would make it more user friendly... but i see what your saying, i just dont like how people assume... because they cant know, there is no way for us to check to see how people go to the firefly page because they were searching for the beetle or because they were looking for the phone or the tv show... -Xornok 08:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. The disambiguation page is already linked, though, right at the top of the Firefly page. This means that someone searching for the TV series has to make an extra click to reach it, but conversely someone searching for the beetle has to make one fewer clicks than if the disambiguation page were at firefly directly. This tradeoff is a net benefit if most people searching for "firefly" are interested in the beetle, which I think is a reasonable assumption. Bryan 08:14, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

so youre favoring the ones who are looking for the beetle over all the other ones? -Xornok 08:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I haven't done any rigorous checking, but it seems like a reasonable assumption to me that the beetle is far more prominent than the TV show and more likely to be what an average encyclopedia-user is going to be looking for. So I'm favoring the majority over the minority. Bryan 08:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

youre favoring what you believe the majority is without any proof that it is the majority... -Xornok 08:51, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes again. As I said, seems reasonable to me. If you've got evidence otherwise, though, feel free to bring it up. I can be convinced otherwise. Bryan 15:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The way I see it, real life trumps fiction in all cases. -- Run! 11:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

In this case I don't think the fiction/non-fiction distinction is significant, it's simply a case of one subject being far more prominent than the other. Bryan 15:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

isnt is also about naming articles? if someone got to the disambiguation page, and their were no summaries to tell what each link was, then only by process of elimination can someone deduce that regular Firefly is about the beetle... i thought it had to be 100% clear where each link goes to and Firefly (insect) takes away any doubt where it goes to... this is of course assuming that there are no summaries to tell what the links are about, which i think should be some sort of guideline as to establishing disambiguation pages... also, youre assuming that people know what theyre looking for when they search for firefly... someone may have thought they heard Firefly is a phone for small children, but dont remember... by automatically linking to the beetle its like "hmph, i guess its not called Firefly"... because some people might not know what disambiguation means... hell, i even dont, i just know it gives all the meanings of the word, which should always be the first place someone goes too... its like refining your search, you type in a word, its gives you all the possibilities, and then you go from there... so what if the insect was the first and probably the most relevant but unless all people are looking for the beetle when they type firefly, they should be linked to the disambiguation page first... -Xornok 18:25, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

i just did some research. if you type "firefly" into either yahoo or google, the tv show and the cell phone are the top searches... they have the most relevance according to the two biggest search engines around. i think thats proof enough that the beetle is not the top choice... also, people who are looking for the beetle generally use the term "fireflies", plural. i think this is significant because you generally see fireflies together in groups. you never say "look a firefly" its usually "look, fireflies"... i think this constitutes as compelling evidence to rename the articles... -Xornok 21:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I disagree. First, it's blatantly obvious that the page firefly is only about beetles - it says it in the first line of the article and there's a photo of one right beside that. So if someone goes there looking for something called "firefly" that's not a beetle, how hard will it be to figure out the instruction "For other uses, see Firefly (disambiguation)."? This is not a difficult puzzle, we're not going to have people giving up in confusion. Second, Yahoo and Google are not the final authority on what is more prominent - they're focused solely on the Internet. A small group of fans can put up a lot of fan sites and make a lot of noise in the blogosphere even though in the grand scheme of things the show remains a small phenomenon compared to the beetle family. If we were relying on Google results the planet Pluto [3] would be neck-and-neck with a cartoon dog [4] for the position of "primary meaning."

But the most important question now, IMO, is why are you spending so much time here on my talk page trying to convince me about this? I'm getting a little puzzled here - you popped onto my page with a question about what I thought about some article I don't recall ever making significant edits to, and so I gave you my answer and some pointers to Wikipedia guidelines on the subject. You apparently didn't like my answer, but what of it? I'm not in charge of Wikipedia's contents, I'm not involved in the article (at least not so far), I just gave an opinion when asked. The discussion on Talk:Firefly is the important one, take it over there. Bryan 23:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Consensus on Chávez

As a recent editor on Hugo Chávez, can you review developments on Talk:Hugo Chávez and let us know which version you think we should move forward with, considering that either version we pick will need work? Thanks ! Sandy 14:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

HMS Triumph

Hi: I am currently writing a series of articles on British Battleships of the Victorian era. The current article on HMS Triumph is down to you as author. I would like to ecpand this article, which will, in effect, obliterate what you wrote. I would like your permission to do this; you can always revert if it's not up to standard.(I know I could just do it - I like to ask)--Anthony.bradbury 19:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really the original author. Originally, all the ships named "HMS Triumph" were described together on the page HMS Triumph, and back on September 22 2004 I split it apart into a bunch of individual articles. It looks like User:SoLando was the original author of the text that was there, based on the edit history, but I don't think you'll need to ask his permission to do a rewrite (even out of simple politeness); editing without explicit permission is the way that Wikipedia works. :) Bryan 23:44, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Surely; I just like to ask so as not not upset anybody. I recognise that in the Wikipedia format we can mangle any article we like, but asking does no harm. --Anthony.bradbury 21:29, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

ww2 casualties

your edit removed the external links, why did you make this edit?--Woogie10w 00:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see the problem. I didn't remove them, I turned them into footnotes using the cite.php system (Wikipedia:Footnotes). This system requires a <references/> tag at the bottom to "catch" and display the references in a manner that looks very similar to how the {{mnb}} templates are displaying it, so I assumed there was already a reference tag down there and that I was just adding these to the list. Looks like the article's using two other referencing systems simultaneously but neither of them is cite.php. What a mess. The Wikipedia:Footnote4 system in particular is an obsolete never-implemented proposal that's only used by a handful of articles now. I'll revert myself for the time being, but later on when I've got more time I'll see if I can't revamp the article's referencing to be a little tidier and easier to manage. Bryan 00:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

If you make any changes please make sure that the readers can access those external links. These links backup the data with sources that can be verified. I copied that format in August of 2005 from another article when I started working on that page. Go to Dogpile and type in "War Casualties" and that page pops up to the top. In August 2005 that was not the case when the article had data that was not backed up with verifiable sources--Woogie10w 01:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, certainly. If the <references/> tag had been in place like I thought it was when I made that edit those external links would have popped down to the bottom of the page (referenced via internal hyperlink) and they could have been done up all pretty with a cite template, making them much more useful if the article is printed for example. Bryan 01:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Bryan, is there an article that you can reccomend that uses this approved link system? I want to see how it's done--Woogie10w 16:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Footnotes goes into detail about how to use the new cite.php footnoting system. When using it for citing sources, such as external links, Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations has a whole pile of templates that can be used to make formatting easy and consistent (though this is a separate issue from the footnoting itself, you can put whatever text you like inside a footnote). Neither of these systems is mandatory, but I find the new footnoting system to be quite a bit easier for editing purposes than the old template-based one; the contents of the footnote are placed in the article's source text in the same place as the material being footnoted, so it's really easy to move stuff around and add new footnotes without having to go down and edit the references section at the same time. Bryan 23:24, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you name a model article that uses this new system?--Woogie10w 10:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hard to answer, since there's no template to check the backlinks of to locate one. :) India's got a nice little mix of source citations and informational footnotes. Right whale has a lot of source citations using it. You could try rambling around in Wikipedia:Featured articles, that's a good place to find them I think. Bryan 01:46, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Image:Wavelength.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Wavelength.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

-Nv8200p talk 03:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Image:Inv4.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Inv4.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

Bleak House

Hi there, I've just found your reply to my note about spoilers in Bleak House. Of course I agree with you, and indeed it is Wiki policy. But the comment was put in relation to a single bracketed note to the character list. If you want to put that back in (it's marked in the history), and add the spoiler tag, go for it. And then make the spoiler note earn its keep by putting in a synopsis of the plot, which is of course what this article needs.

It was just a response to an addition that would mean nothing at all to a WP reader unless they were part way through Bleak House - in which case it would have blown the entire plot. So yeah, please fix all: take out the HTML note and go the whole hog - like you say, it's good for the encyclopedia. cheers, JackyR | Talk 21:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I know nothing at all about the book or series and so I didn't know what sort of spoilers might be put into the character list, a single bracketed note seems pretty trivial. The note made it sound a lot more drastic than that. Bryan 01:46, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Magnesium in biological systems

Wow! Must have taken you ages to get the references that far. Very commendable -- Samir धर्म 04:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't already started working before I realized just how big a job it would be. But now it's finished so nobody else will fall into that trap. :) Bryan 05:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Unofficial naming style I used with rank insigias

Firsly first this is not a policy or a guideline, just a mere reccomendation.

Image:Star Trek Tos OF5d.png is the commander rank so it should be named OF4. I use the nato code to referance to the ranks. See: Ranks and insignia of NATO Armies Officers. I thought you might want to follow that format. :) --Cat out 21:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I just increased the letter at the end whenever I modified one of those, I don't actually know much about military ranks so the numbers weren't meaningful to me. I only have a few Star Trek reference books to work from so I may not be updating any more of those Star Trek ranks any time soon, but would you like me to change the names of the ones I already did to match your format? Bryan 23:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I would like that. :) --Cat out 22:06, 16 July 2006 (UTC)