User talk:Mav/archive 20

Purge

Just curious – what do all the purges on the Main Page mean? --Alex S 23:46, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It resets the cache for all logged-in users so that instead of seeing the old version of the Main Page, they see the new one. This has to be done each time one of the MediaWiki pages are changed (otherwise logged-in users won't see the change unless they force a page reload). There is a purge link at Talk:Main Page that works for the anon cache. --mav

So basically any random change in the <!-- purge value --> section will refresh the page? --Alex S 02:17, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Any change at all will create a new cache file for the saved page. --mav

I thought using &action=purge would work instead now to prevent having to fill up the page history with purge edits? Angela. 04:24, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I was told that that only works for the anon cache version. --mav

Thanks. I wasn't sure if that was the case or not. An unrelated question; do you need any help updating the donations pages? I noticed they hadn't been done for the last couple of months. If you're too busy, I'm happy to help. Angela. 13:28, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Nah - I was planning on doing that this weekend. The only reason why I did January when I did was due to the fact that so much money was donated in that month (really just the first week). Normally I plan to do this on a quarterly basis. Thanks for the offer though. :-) --mav

Block

Dear Mav: Hi! Apparently Ive been accidentally blocked by a couple of users which affects me in trying to collaborate in abiut half the pages. Worse yet, the blocks dont let me ask the blockers themselves (Hephaestos and Maxiumrex) to remove them! I moved List of boxers to List of male boxers in order to make a List of female boxers (see my comment on that at Village pump. But I could niot make the list of women boxers because of that.

Thanks and God bless you!

Sincerely yours. Antonio Boy Spice Martin

There is no way for admins to block you on just certain pages. You probably sometimes share an IP with a blocked user. When you are unblocked (as you were when you posted the above note), tell the admins who blocked the IPs and tell them which IPs were blocked. --mav

What to do about Zviad Gamsakhurdia edit war?

I see Levzur is up to his usual tricks on Zviad Gamsakhurdia yet again. Hephaestos has suggested mediation followed by arbitration, which I'm sure Levzur will decline, but it's a step which clearly needs to be taken. Otherwise I see no end in sight to the edit war, given that even a temp ban hasn't deterred Levzur. Do you agree with this and given your past involvement with the article, would you wish to be one of the parties requesting mediation? -- ChrisO 10:46, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

He can decline mediation but he can't decline arbitration. If you think it would help, go ahead and go through mediation. Otherwise keep reverting him - I see there are plenty of people helping. --mav

arbcom

(spam) Please vote at Wikipedia:Matter of Anthony DiPierro to accept or reject. It's been well over a month. Martin 01:27, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks.

Done. --mav

TDC

Mav, I'd like you to consider blocking TDC for some period of time. There are two reasons:

1) his inexcusable vulgar attack on my user page on April 1 (which sv reverted)

2) his behavior on the Karl Marx page. For several days on the talk page he pushed an interpretation of Marx that no scholar of Marx takes; a number of contributors including myself tried to explain why, to the point of exasperation. He then placed his view in the article itself. I edited it but kept the substance of his interpretation and them provided the view of biographers and historians of Marx. He then deleted my addition. 172 reverted, and he reverted, and this went back and forth five times on April 4. I was not involved. Kingturtle has protected the page until the matter can be resolved on the talk page. Frankly, considering the extensive discussion of the matter on the talk page prior to TDCs actions, I do not see how this is possible.

If yo don't feel up to dealing with this please pass it on to someone else; since I am involved the most I can do is request the attention of an experienced sysop. Thanks, Slrubenstein

1) Wasn't he already blocked for 24 hours for that and other things?

2) His behavior from the edits I've seen is not much worse than other edit warriors around here (including 172). As much as I would like too, I can't block people for getting into edit wars. Has an RfC page been started on him? --mav

Well, I think he's worse, but I probably think that since I am involved! I'll check the RfC page. The thing is, I don't think he's made any real contributions (I know 172 can be very scrappy but he sure has done a lot of substantive work). I guess I just don't see much point to protecting the page -- it was done in a legitimate way and in accord with our conventions, so I am not complaining; I just don't see the talk page providing any promise of resolution. Thanks for responding so quickly. (I don't remember him being blocked, but I could be wrong)Slrubenstein

Account

Please create an account on http://test.wikipedia.org -- Tim Starling 02:55, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

Done. --mav

Thanks. Someone was complaining to me on IRC that m:Requests for permission was being ignored and that nothing was getting done, so I've made some people stewards. See m:Stewards. I don't really have time to make extensive multi-lingual announcements about this just now. -- Tim Starling 03:11, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

Greece

What is this format dispute at Greece about? I can't see any difference between the various versions. Adam 04:48, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It is a high res thing - The image interferes with the table above 1400px. --mav

Periodic Table navi images

Hello, you seem to be the active person involved with the periodic table. I'm doing more work with the navigation stuff and was hoping you could help me standardize and create the table images. The two problems I've found are:

1. Images with Lutetium and Lawrencium are sometimes being depicted in the Lanthanide or Actinides, instead of the Transition metals. Although there seems to be a difference of opinion on this issue ([1] vs. [2]), we are working off Periodic table (wide), which seems more accurate to me.
2. Some images do not exist. I am trying to send them all to [Image-TableImage.png] for now. Could you help create them for me? I don't have photoshop and I don't know what those little pictures mean. If so, I will try to make a list of offending images.

Also, we could consider someday using tables to replace these images, so we could use a [[MediaWiki:{{{1}}}]] ([{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=edit}} edit] | [[MediaWiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] | [{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=history}} history] | [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:{{{1}}}}} links] | [{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=watch}} watch] | logs) with clickable elements, mouseover names, etc. and only use images for info specific to the element. It may increase loading, but it doesn't seem to cause much of a problem on Periodic table.

PlatinumX 04:57, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

1. Yes - the wide table is the one we are working with since we have a bias for not having any transition metals in the f-block. In reality, Lutetium and Lawrencium could go either way depending on what you are measuring. But we have standardized on using the block criteria (this was changed part way through the image-creation process so some older images have the alternate organization).
2. [Image-TableImage.png] is good for now. Other languages are also creating images too - just check once in a while to see if they have corresponding images. I plan to make more, but I want to wait to see if elements 113 and 115 will be confirmed first (if they do, then we will have to change their fill colors in the table images).

Using tables instead of images would be very bad:

• We could not use the wide table (which shows blocks as they should be shown = more informative and useful for predicting properties)
• The result of even using the standard table would be too wide. See nl:Lawrencium
• The other elements of the image tables (shell structure, crystal structure) would be very problematic.

Image maps would be much better. --mav

OK, I'll stick to [Image-TableImage.png] and the current layout - but updating everything when the table is changed is going to be a PITA. That's why I still like the idea of a [[MediaWiki:{{{1}}}]] ([{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=edit}} edit] | [[MediaWiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] | [{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=history}} history] | [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:{{{1}}}}} links] | [{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=watch}} watch] | logs)table - the nl version looks like a poor implementation of a good idea. Visually the table should be the same size, shape (wide would use the same space), and color as the images we are using now; There wouldn't be letters and the shell structure and crystal structure could be images inserted into appropriate cells. However, this may be impossible with wikipedias current table/wiki technology. I will play around with it a bit. I don't like imagemaps (server side may be ok, but thats still clunky), mostley because they are hard to write and the images still have the problem of being hard to update. PlatinumX 06:47, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Infoboxes for mountains

Hi, mav.. I proposed an infobox style for mountains at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains/General. I bet you can give useful feedback! --- hike395 05:59, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. I will definitely look at that later. --mav

UShistoryFooter

Great work on the UShistoryFooter. Is there a reason that it's only found in the American Civil War article? Could I add it to all the other articles included in the footer? 172 08:29, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks - go right ahead. --mav

Great. When I add them, do the series boxes have to stay up? 172 20:19, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I would like to get rid of the series boxes. Having photos and tables that pertain the to specific article would be better, IMO. --mav

Perl

I'm surprised you made Perl a sysop on meta and approved his application on wikibooks after the strength of the opposition last time he made a request here. You're in the forgive and forget camp, obviously. -- Tim Starling 00:20, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Actually I usually ignore the English Wikipedia requests for adminship page. My syopping of him on Meta was based on him already being an admin on another Wikimedia wiki. Current Meta policy is to grant adminship on Meta for anybody who is already an admin on any other Wikimedia wiki who wants it. --mav

Some people are very annoyed about the meta sysopship, but I'm more interested in your approval on Wikibooks. I can't stand him, personally. He's changed his name half a dozen times, to escape his poor reputation and to attempt to deceive people into giving him some form of trusted status. He tried to trick me into giving him developer access. I had already given him sysop access on Maori when I found out who he was. Angela asked me not to take it back, I don't really know why I agreed. He removes adverse comments about himself wherever he sees them -- that's happened on both RFA and problem users. Anyway, as long as you're aware of the issues, I guess it's your decision. -- Tim Starling 03:40, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Mav, we would like to change that policy on meta (angel, loo and I). It is not a very reasonable policy, and not one that has ever been discuss by people doing work on meta. Please could you hold on making anyone sysop on meta automatically until this is discussed ? thanks. FirmLittleFluffyThing 05:08, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Did you know vs. In the news

You expressed interest in the front page layout on Talk:Main page. Could you please vote in the poll there? Thanks, silsor 07:20, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

---

Thank you :) Angela. 01:09, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

Polish history

I have taken the horrible mess at List of concentration camps for Poles and moved it to Camps in Poland during World War II, where I have tried to write a decent article. I expect to be attacked by the Polish Nationalist faction, and it would be nice to get some support from people who care about history at Wikipedia. I am getting tired of fighting this battle by myself. Adam 09:51, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist. --mav

Other main page updates

Please check out the current Talk:Main Page for some ideas about updating the page... thanks! +sj+ 23:46, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

OK. --mav

WP Usage Metrics
One more thing -- what do you think of this graded permissions system? (not posted anywhere else yet... looking for initial feedback w/out the requirement of holding up one end of a public debate) +sj+ 23:42, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

Sounds interesting - but I'm not sure we need that yet. --mav

Pansies

I've added to the discussion of the appropriate name of the Pansy Violet/Pansy page at Talk:Pansy violet, and would welcome comment from you when you have time... I hope you had good weather at the Grand Canyon. seglea 07:16, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Done. --mav

Hinduism in Featured Article Candidates Section

I'd love it if you could check out Hinduism again and see my edits. I hope they satisfy your objection. Thanks for your input and guidance! --LordSuryaofShropshire 03:09, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

Yep - I'll have to re-read the whole article before I add my support. Until then, I withdrew my objection. --mav

WikiProject Mountains

Hi. We are getting close to deciding on the infobox layout for the project. If you have a minute, could you add any comments you have including your choice of color? See Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains/General. Thanks. RedWolf 05:23, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

My memory is...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&diff=3183439&oldid=3183317

Embarrassing!

Thank you!
--Ruhrjung 19:10, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

quickpoll

Very verily has now reached 80% on the quickpoll. GrazingshipIV 07:55, Apr 17, 2004 (UTC)

references?

Hi, I put a "References" section at the end of an article, in the "proposed citation style" (Wikipedia:Cite_your_sources) and I noticed you changed it. Did I not use the proper style? Uranographer 08:47, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Photo

I think I liked your previous smiling photo better, Mav. You look too serious in this one - which also looks as though it was shot through a glass of beer. Mind you, the end effect is also reminiscent of older paintings. Arno 11:21, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I was a bit moody when I shot it. Oh well. :) --mav

PubMed

Hi mav, you mentioned on meta that you had requested links for PubMed IDs. I would appreciate your feedback on whether the link word should be PMID or something else like PubMed. My attempt at coding it is at [3]. Thanks. Angela. 00:07, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

Mav v. 168...

The request for arbitration in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Mav v. 168 was accepted on April 20, 2004. Please present evidence at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Mav v. 168/Evidence. Fred Bauder 11:21, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

Uncertified RfC pages

Hope you enjoyed your trip. The guidelines we collaborated on say that /User pages on RfC get removed if not certified within 48 hours. There has been a request for clarification as to whether "removed" should also include "deleted". I thought it would be good to hear your opinion on the question. --Michael Snow 15:52, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Angela, Mav - I think we have agreement that for RfC user conduct disputes, the policy should be that removed=deleted. I have changed the RfC page and the template for listings accordingly. Based on this, we have the following old listings that I believe should be deleted:

Space Cadet, RickK, Danny, Wighson, Mr Natural Health, Cantus, Dwindrim, Tannin, Exploding Boy, Halibutt, 172, and VeryVerily.

Because I don't have the ability to delete pages, I must ask the two of you to handle this chore. Additionally, this means that I can't continue to handle the task of removing uncertified RfC listings in the future, and either you or other admins will need to take responsibility for this. --Michael Snow 21:15, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'll take care of it later. But you really should be an admin as well. --mav

Angela's taken care of deleting the pages (as you can see), and also nominated me for admin. If the community supports me, then I guess I can keep monitoring RfC - although I may call on you guys for assistance occasionally. --Michael Snow 21:57, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

Steward Election : Congratulations

Congratulations to you, Maveric, on your election to the position of Steward. I look forward to seeing more of you around the place-:) David Cannon 23:30, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. :) --mav

PubMed

Neato! I do think that PubMed would be better than PMID I had no idea what PMID was when I first saw it. But then PubMed does use PMID... Would it be possible for both to work? Is there a standard way to reference PubMed? --Mav 21:43, 20 Apr 2004 (GMT)

Thanks for looking at it. It would be possible to have both. I think it would also be possible to automatically convert one to the other. Would this be useful in terms of consistency? Currently I've got it so PubMed always displays as PMID, but I could switch it if the other is more standard. Angela. 04:33, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

I think we need the input from others before anything is committed to. If possible I would like to follow any applicable standards. I simply do not know what such standards are (or if they exist). --mav

Congo Free State

Yeah, I agree brutality should be gone from that intro. But I knew 172 would revert any changes I made, so I didn't want to expend the effort to rewrite that sentence, and I stuck instead to the small. Hopefully he'll be more inclined to respect your change. -- VV 07:52, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully... I do hate edit wars. --mav

A lost hope indeed. The page is protected now, sans our changes. -- VV 08:32, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Byzantine Senate

Thanks! I was originally just going to add a bit to the Roman Senate page, but I found more info than I expected. Adam Bishop 15:17, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Protection

Thanks for protection! --Ruhrjung 11:09, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well I'm a bit doubtful that Wik will not revert again after the page is unprotected... --mav

That's an obvious risk, yes. I've more and more come to think that certain controversial pages (or, maybe rather: pages that certain contributors are too interested in) better be long-term protected, and updated when there exists agreement/consensus on talk page for any particular update. To make such a system practical for the sysops who can't be expected to read lengthy talk pages, each new version could be kept as "/temp" and without much work copied when that was requested.

— Most pages shouldn't be affected, there is no need for software change, and cooperativeness and persuation should be gratified instead of Wik's & Co:s exaggerated boldness. (But of course such a system wouldn't be without problems. One is how to assess when sufficient support has massed. Another is how not to stimulate sockpuppets to propagate by division. A third how to hamper obstruction.)
--Ruhrjung 21:22, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Congo Free State

I did see it, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. In the first place, is there some rule that I'm the one responsible for figuring out the version to revert to? You're an admin too, right, so you could just do it. In the second place, as far as I can tell, 172 only reverted three times in that 24 hour period when I protected. john 15:50, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We seem to be working it out, so its OK as is. --mav

DYK

Sure thing! It was a great article! jengod 00:19, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

Levzur arbitration

This is an unexpected turn of events, to say the least. What happens if there aren't enough arbitrators to hear the case? -- ChrisO 11:39, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I dunno - we haven't had to deal with that before. --mav

Pass this case back up to Jimbo, perhaps? It also suggests that the AC might need to be overhauled - if it can be stymied this easily either it needs a smaller quorum or a bigger membership... -- ChrisO 21:17, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Greeting

I'm glad to be back for a least a little while. I took a break for a while, bought a house and a number of other major life events, so I have been busy for a while. I don't know how much time I will spend, but we'll see! --Ram-Man 11:48, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

Photo

Your photo is, shall we say, not that great. It's a little on the dark side and you look angry and bleary. Surely you have a better photo, at least for use on Wikipedia:Facebook.... on the other hand perhaps you're just trying to beef up your "tough-guy" image :-). Nohat 16:22, 2004 Apr 28 (UTC)

You got me - I just wanted to look mean. ;) Actually I was trying to obscure the photo so as not to give too much away. --mav

Selected Anniversary known only for Month, Year

Mav, The Vannevar Bush anniversary of hypertext July 1945 is known only to the Month and Year, because it is the publication time of a magazine.

The same problem for Claude Shannon's article on Mathematical Theory of Communication and for the publication dates for the articles on Unix. It would be great to put these momentous events in Selected anniversaries, if there were a convention for representing when for an event known only by Month Year. For that matter, what about events which are known only to the Year or Millennium.

What about the last day of the month, since the 1st day tends to get crowded. Thank you, Ancheta Wis 22:46, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That would be a very bad idea, IMO - other websites have done that and the result has been confusion as to when an event occurred. We should not be giving a false impression of precision when those data simply are not there. We could have events where only the month and year is known at the top of the month sel anniv pages where the 'Multiday holidays/observances' section is now. That section is underused so it would be OK to have up to 5 events and 5 multiday holidays there. Events where only the year is known simply have no place in the sel anniv project. --mav

RE: FYI re: photographs

quote: "We do not allow "used with permission" photos. They have to be public domain, GFDL or used under the fair dealing doctrine. See Wikipedia:Copyrights. --mav 09:21, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)" /quote

John Maynard Smith

I asked permission to use the photo opposite. As can be seen in a copy of the email:

(start quote)

YOu can use the photo, but can you give a credit to Colin Atherton, copyright University of Sussex.

--On 29 April 2004 16:59 +0000 Duncan Harris <dunc_harriscoughhotmail.com> wrote:

   Hi, 

May we use the photograph of JMS from your press release here http://www.sussex.ac.uk/press_office/media/media399.shtml as part of the Wikipedia project http://www.wikipedia.org , specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Smith ? Wikipedia is a not-for-profit free-content encyclopedia.

You can release the photograph under various copyright agreements. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags

Thankyou,

Duncan.

_________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

Jacqui Bealing, Press and Communications Office 230 Sussex House, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RH Tel: 01273 877437 Fax: 01273 877456 Email: J.A.Bealing@sussex.ac.uk

(end quote)

(oops signature Duncharris 09:31, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC))

I see nothing above where the copyright holder has stated that the image can be licensed under the GNU FDL - a license that allows for third parties to use Wikipedia content for their own uses. All I see is permission for us (a non-profit as you stated) to use the photo. --mav

Then what is the point in having lots of different image copyright tags? What do you propose? Deletion? I want arbritration if you want to take this further. Duncharris 18:08, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

Give me a break. I'll just list it for deletion. --mav

Right. I have been nothing but courteous to you. I spend my time contributing to Wikipedia, and I quite enjoy it. This is the first experience I've had with WikiPolitics. Your communication skills are poor, you have failed to explain your case, and you have been rude to me. I give up my free time for this, but now I'm seriously thinking of giving it up. I don't care if you are a confessed Wikiholic, moderator or not. I have now listed it for deletion following the proper procedures and await comments. I hope to see the image reinstated soon. If somebody else copies the photo illegally, than that's there problem, not mine, nor is it Wikipedias. Duncharris 12:16, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, with your usual clarity of communication, I see you have listed it at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#May_2. I apologise for accusing you of not doing so. I have posted a reasoned reply there. I hope that clarifies the matter for you. I have also contacted, User:Morwen regarding as it has important ramifications if you are right (and I believe that you are mistaken). Duncharris 19:10, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

It now appears (having read your talk page) that you claim to have a personality feature that affects your communication skills. I therefore apologise for any offence caused by pointing out your lack of them. Duncharris 19:45, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Apology accepted (although not needed since I was not offended). But you are wrong on this issue. --mav

Poll: New York City

You expressed interest in the name of the New York City article on its Talk page. Could you please vote in the poll there? Thank you. --Lowellian 23:59, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

How to sign Wikipedia articles

How come you always write -mav instead of simply signing by writing 4 ~'s?? 66.245.86.115 13:46, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Because this is my talk page and a link to my user page is in the sidebar. On other talk pages I do that after I sign my first message. --mav

City Names

Hi, I've responded to you again at Talk:New York, New York, and perhaps rather intemperately. But I really don't understand your position on this. Of course most American cities should be disambiguated, because there are many cities sharing the same name, and usually none of them is particularly famous. Pretty clearly, Portland ought to be a disambiguation page, because there are two Portlands that are equally famous. But to try to claim from this that this should always be done makes no sense to me. For all kinds of other things, we make judgments about what use is more famous, and place articles accordingly. This is even true for cities outside the United States. There are numerous cities named Vienna and Paris, but yet the articles Vienna and Paris go to the famous European cities of that name, and don't disambiguate between those cities and Paris, Tennessee and Vienna, Virginia, despite the fact that people from those parts of Tennessee and Virginia might associate the names more with the local town.

But I'm getting into arguing again, which I've already done enough of at the talk page. So I'll stop. But I just really, really, don't understand the position you're advocating, or what its supposed benefits are over just using our judgment. In any case where it's at all uncertain, we can stick with the current system, but there are numerous cases where the answer is pretty clear. And pretending that a town of less than 10,000 people in Texas is as famous as the capital of New Mexico doesn't change that. john 05:45, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Because [City, State] (and [City, County, State] where needed) is a standard that allways works for every city. It is predictable and consistent. Other nations don't have this naming system in place, thus it does not make sense to impose it there. --mav

I still don't understand. You are suggesting that, when possible, we should use a longer name. Why is this desirable? Obviously, we should use that system when necessary. But I don't see any reason why this should be the baseline. Why not just use "city name, unless it needs to be disambiguated"? By your logic, one could just as easily argue that Paris should be at the unambiguous Paris, France in order to distinguish it from all those Parises in Tennessee and Texas and Arkansas. Why is it important to have a system that always works for every city, when without that system, many cities would be at more reasonable place, while there would be no harm done to those cities that would stay at the same place they are now? john 06:20, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Mentioning Paris is a strawman since France does not have a national standard for city names (except for adding river names, but that is not too widely used). Peerage and adding the hull numbers to ship names also creates longer names than needed - yet we have accepted those standards as well. The fact is that for U.S. cities the longer name is needed more often than even Peerage titles need the longer names since there is a systematic amount of ambiguity with city names in the U.S. Thus it makes sense to have all the U.S. city names named via the same convention. That is consistant and that is following an external standard that will give predictable results. --mav

Yes, and I'm absolutely not ojbecting to using the state in most situations. I see no reason to use it when there is no reason to use it. Beyond the advantages of a universal standard, why is it advantageous to have Los Angeles at Los Angeles, California? And I still have no idea what you mean about National Standards for city names. British cities, I'd add, very clearly have a "national standard" which might be used, but is not. So does Australia. But Australia follows the sensible policy of disambiguating only when necessary, as does Britain. As to Paris, my point was that Paris is ambiguous, and that we might, by your arguments, make it unambiguous by moving it to Paris, France. Which is, I would imagine, what you would use if you were mailing something to Paris from outside France. At any rate, my point (at Talk:New York, New York about peerage names is that, besides the fact that peerage names are absolutely not used consistently, and there was a very strong feeling against using them consistently when it was proposed to do so, peerage names are not unnecessary in the way that state names are for cities. Putting in the state is only worthwhile for disambiguation purposes. But people who become peers are only known by their peerage title after being elevated, or, at least, were until quite recently. Benjamin Disraeli ceased to be known as Benjamin Disraeli in 1876, and was thenceforth called "Lord Beaconsfield". Thus, putting Beaconsfield into the title not only disambiguates from any other Benjamin Disraelis of note (which is silly, and not the reason for putting in the peerage title at all), but because he was actually known as just Beaconsfield, and not Disraeli, for a certain period in his life. This is not the case at all for cities. Including the state for Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Chicago is pure pedantry. john 08:17, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

P.S. And I say this as someone who has certainly been guilty of pedantry in the past, so I know whereof I speak. ;) john 08:18, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Well we obviously have different priorities when it comes to U.S. city names. I think it would be very odd to have have 99.5% of U.S. cities in the [City, State] format and the rest in [City] format. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. --mav

Problems with your Images

I've seen that a lot of the pictures you have in your images section and your screenshot section are missing. Ive found this error through the Lilith Sternin-entry. don't know where the problem lies, but in case it's not a wiki bug or something could you clean this up?--Thomas 10:13, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

One of the servers that hosted the images died and we lost a few days worth of Wikipedia uploads. The developers have stated that they will try to recover the images. --mav

Ah, ok. And one tiny thing: Do you happen to know whether the actress is called Lilith Sternin or Lilith Sternen? There are the same infos for both names - but I can't find out which is the right one.--Thomas 21:06, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Hm - it looks like the second spelling is the right one. --mav

Thanks. I cleaned it up. --Thomas 10:49, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Cambodia

If you are about these days, I could use some help on the Cambodia articles. The whole mess with "Hanpuk" is starting up again on Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, History of Cambodia, and Cambodia. To make matters worse it looks like 172 plans to use these articles to try to "settle scores" with me. -- VV 21:39, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm a bit busy working offline on expanding Bryce Canyon National Park right now. But I'll take a took once I get some time. --mav

Candidate statement

Just letting you know that I responded to your inquiry at User:Michael Snow/Candidate statement and discussion. --Michael Snow 22:50, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Cool - thanks. --mav

Parliament of Australia

Surely you know better than to insert irrelevant sentences into articles like that. Surely also you know how dates are written. If you want to write History of the Parliament of Australia, feel free. Adam 03:47, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Surely you know that any article on something as important the Parliament of Australia should have at least some history in it. Pardon me if I was the first person to do that. --mav

Mav is right, the sentence was just a starter to a history of the parliament. Maybe it was not positioned well in the article but it was put there with the best of intentions and was not worthy of such an unfriendly blast from Adam.

Adrian Pingstone 07:42, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Thank you Adrian. :) --mav

New York, New York

The final vote for moving New York, New York to New York City was 17 for, 15 against, not a consensus. Nevertheless, User:Nohat took it upon himself to move it, despite a discussion otherwise. I reverted him twice. He has no moved it to City of New York, for which there was never' a vote. I've reverted it once, but he's done it again, and I'm not going to get into a three-revert rule even though it's been on two different articles. Technically, he should be banned for violating the three revert rule, but since I'm the one revert warring with him, I'm not going to do it. I've brought it up on the email list, but what do you think the next step should be? RickK 02:37, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Sigh. This is exactly what I feared by breaking with the [City, State] convention. --mav

Copyright stuff

In regard to File:Enbloclcips.jpg:

Oops! I guess I didn't fully understand what was needed to use images on Wikipedia. I thought the creator's permission and the appropriate tag in the image description was enough. I've contacted the image creator to see if he will release it under the GFDL.

And more on the subject of copyright:

I don't want to come off as a "tattle tale," but please check out some of User:ThC's contributions. Particularly his/her rework of Desert Eagle (now reverted) and the Combat shotgun article. The Desert Eagle rework was a copy and paste from [4] and the Combat shotgun article information is mostly word for word from [5]. Thanks. --Werbwerb 08:14, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

I'll do that. --mav

Budget

Hello Mav

That is a weird question,but I would like to know how much money is currently available. That is very very rough estimation I am looking for, not details. Thanks. SweetLittleFluffyThing

That's a very good question - I've been waiting for Jimbo to fax me all the Wikimedia bank account statements and server receipts including the most recent one (he tried once but only 5 pages were sent). On 26 February Jimbo told me the balance was $21,241.99. Since then I've heard that Jimbo ordered $20,000 in new Wikimedia servers. So assuming there were no other withdrawals and assuming that there were no other deposits from people sending donations through the mail, then we should have about $1,200 in the bank and $4,203.05 in PayPal (this is after 3000 Euros were taken out for the WikiReaders) for a total of about $5,400. --mav

Thanks for the precisions Mav :-) That is perfect. ant

Battle of Monte Cassino

As to the selected anniversaries, tomorrow is the 60th aniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. Might be worth mentioning at the main page. Halibutt 05:01, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Somebody beat me to it. -- mav

Saddam Hussein

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates#Saddam_Hussein I'm not a big fan of this article (I abstained), but if you withdraw your opposition, it'll be an incentive attracting copypeditors to the page, which has done great things for many articles. For example, just today I made a lot minor but important changes to British East India Company in response to comments by MarkAlexander100 born out of the featured articles process. 172 00:41, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I did a test and Saddam Hussein goes down to around 30K without the pictures, footnotes, external links, related articles section, and expanded intro. The article in and of itself isn't unusually long. (There are many featured articles going over 30K, especially for important topics like this one.) I wouldn't have nominated this article myself, but while it's on the featured articles candidates' pages, I don't see why you'd object to changing your vote to abstain for the sake of attracting rounds of copyediting to the page. If there's any redundant content, it'll be noticed if it can move up to the "nominations without unresolved objections" section where it'll receive greater scrutiny. Right now, your opposition means less scrutiny, as opposed to more scrutiny. 172 11:38, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

The ability to summarize is the most prized and rare quality of writers - that is not encouraged by allowing such large articles to become featured (yes some current FA articles are larger than 30KB but de-featuring an article is more difficult than preventing featuring in the first place). I'm sure the same information (minus some of the stuff mostly about Iraq history) could be condensed a bit to bring the total KB below 30KB. The paragraphs in the lead section seem a bit long - some people like to see the TOC in their first screen. --mav

Page size arguments

Could you please explain your opposition to FACs on the basis of page size? I was under the impression that the only problem with page sizes (unless ridiculously long) is in editing - and that sections alleviate this problem.

Page size limit of 30kB??? You have got to be joking!

Can you please show me a policy that backs up your POV?

Regards,

Zoney 20:33, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Articles longer than 10 printed pages take a rather long to to read for what is supposed to be an encyclopedia article. They should thus be broken-up to improve readability and ease of editing. See Wikipedia:Page size. Longer sections should be spun off and a summary should be left in its place. That way our content is useful to those people who just want a quick overview and to those people who want more detail. Both groups win. This should be encouraged and that is why the error message is displayed on such long pages. Such articles are less editable and less readable than a more compact treatment. They thus have a major flaw and cannot be considered to be among our best content. In short, summarize long sections when they get too long and move the detail to a daughter article (for examples see the various country pages - although most should have longer sections - one paragraph simply will not do for a country's history). --mav

From the page you linked to:

A rule of thumb for splitting pages (including lists and tables) into sections, and combining small pages:

• >32KB - should be divided unless it is a list
• >20KB - may need to be divided (make sure sections are <20K - preferably much smaller)
• >10KB - probably should not be divided

This doesn't suggest that pages necessarily be split into seperate pages when 30kB long. It only suggests splitting it into sections.

I remain unconvinced that pages should always be mutilated once more than 30kB long. Zoney 10:40, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

It most certainly is talking about the total page size. See that talk page. I will clarify that page later. But there is this sentence already: "However, anonymous editors do not have the ability to use the section editing feature and people with slow modems will still have to wait for the entire page to load for them to read it. Readers may also tire of reading a page in excess of 20-30 KB of readable prose "

Your statement that the pages should be "mutilated" is bizarre and very POV - I'm not advocating arbitrary hacking of long articles just to get below the 30KB limit. I'm talking about summarizing longer sections into a few to several paragraphs and moving the detail to become its own article. This makes the content more useful to a wider audience since those who want a quick summary or of the whole subject (concise article really) get what they want (that is what the lead section is for), those that want a regular encyclopedia article get what they want (that would be the sub-30KB article on the subject) and those who want detail get what they want (some sections would have a "Main article" link or an inline link to an article that takes the subject of the section and presents an entire article on it: See Grand Canyon#Geology and Geology of the Grand Canyon area for an example). I'll go ahead and create Wikipedia:Summary style to explain this later. —mav

FAC: The Beatles

Hello, you're the only objector so far towards the Beatles' candidacy for Featured Article, so I thought you might want to see how it looks now and if it has been trimmed down to size enough. Thanks ever so much. Johnleemk 08:32, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I've mercilessly edited the article again. Here's hoping you'll approve it when you wake up. Johnleemk 09:52, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Wow! That was fast and the resulting article is so much better. Great job! Once again Wikipedia is eating into my sleep time - oh well. :) --mav

Heh, it eats into my sleep time too. Thanks for the compliment. Johnleemk 12:05, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

FAC: Saddam Hussein

Re: "But I already removed my opposition to Saddam article to give people a chance to improve it."

Thanks. The features article page has been working out really nicely lately. User:MarkAlexander100 (British East India Company and Civil War origins) and User:Kingturtle (Congo Free State), e.g., have done particularly good, meticulous work getting articles ready for feature. But I doubt that VeryVerily will retract his objections, given that he probably associates the article with me, who thinks of me as being just as evil as Saddam Hussein. But oh well. 172 10:28, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I've got a bit hooked on the FA thing too - you might have noticed I've been making a lot more big additions to articles lately and fewer small additions. The situation between you and VV is an ugly one - I hope you two can eventually work things out. BTW, I'm glad that my edits to Congo Free State stopped the edit war between you guys. --mav

Good job on Congo Free State too, BTW. The current intro's more straightforward and informative. 172 10:43, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks :) --mav

I said that at the whim of the moment during an initially angry reaction. I firmly disagree with the rulings pertaining to Wik, along with John and Danny, I believe. But you're right, the use of the word "cabal" was inappropriate. Bad decisions can be made out in the open too. :) --172 17:57, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

It's OK. We can also agree to disagree on the ruling. --mav

Thanks. I can do that, amicably but grudgingly. 172 11:10, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

AntonioMartin's dad

Hey Mav whats up? Its Antonio and I wanted to tell you that my dad is now a contributor too. I told him of what a valuable contributor and friend you are. Go say hi to him, he will be pleased. As you can tell by his user name, he was in the United States Marine Corps. He is a very intellectual individual, although he vaguely shares the same interests as I do (he likes boxing and airplanes for example but definitely not to the point I do), he was Magna Cum Laude and only eight degrees away from finishing college, which he left to manage a family business when I was small.

So go ahead, become aquainted and I hope you two become good friends and work together.

Thanks, and God bless you!

Sincerely yours, Antonio The Thrill Martin

Will do. :) --mav

Thanks for the welcome

Dear Maveric: I appreciate your welcome letter and Antonio has told me a lot about you, and I realize that I am in good company and basically, my contributions to wikipedia will be on the biographies of historical Puerto Ricans.

Any information that you might find that might be valuable to my writings please feel free to add them or to forward them to me.

We will keep in touch, and thank you so much!!

Marine 69-71

I hope you like the place. :) --mav

Welcome to the race

It's very courteous of you to inform me personally of your decision, though certainly not necessary. I certainly agree that the financial stewardship will be a significant responsibility for the Board. --Michael Snow 21:27, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

No problem. --mav

Image:McClanahan_as_Blanche.jpg

It's been suggested to me by Finlay McWalter that I check with you about the image at Image:McClanahan_as_Blanche. I went to the article Rue McClanahan, and found no image showing so checked the relevant page to find none there. I marked it for speedy deletion, and asked for someone to check it over at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. I removed the image from the main article seeing as nothing was showing. McWalter says he believes this image is one that was lost due to disk problems. Is it possible to restore this image, or should the link to it be deleted anyway?

I'm still fairly new to how things run here, so please forgive me if I've gone about things the wrong way. :)

TonyW 01:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for a buch of my images to restored and don't know if that will ever happen. If I were you I would move the image code to the talk page and wait. Otherwise go to Google image search and look for a replacement. --mav

Presumably you mean the talk page of the main article? (i.e. Rue McClanahan)? -- TonyW 01:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes. --mav

Done, and removed speedy deletion request too. -- TonyW 02:25, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

MW 1.3 breaks WikiProject Mountain template

Hi, mav, I'm hoping you can help. I don't know if you ever looked at the template for WikiProject Mountains: it uses a {{msg:Mountain_box_start}} to interpolate the parameters to a Wiki table. RedWolf suggested this: it allows us to click on "What links here" at Template:Mountain_box_start to see a complete list.

Well, now, under 1.3, this doesn't seem to work any more. I manually filled in the contents of Template:Mountain_box_start into our template, and it fixed the problem. I tried {{Mountain_box_start}}, but that didn't work, either.

What should we do now? Here are a few bad ideas:

1. Report the bug and have broken articles until someone fixes it. I don't even know where to do this. On meta? On sourceforge? Perhaps you can do this? I have no idea how long this would take.
2. Get rid of the {{msg:Mountain_box_start}} on 100+ articles. Bleagh.
3. Convert everything over to the new whizzy templates. Potentially cool, but again, bleagh for converting over all articles.

What's your advice? Thanks!!!! --- hike395 01:39, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Hum. It looks like the Template:Mountain_box_start idea was some kind of odd hack. If you want to track all articles that have the template, then a better way to do that would be to see 'what links here' from Template:Mountain. I'll go ahead and do #2 if nobody objects. We can move forward with #3 and slowly convert the existing articles over as time permits. --mav

First off, thanks for volunteering!!! That's great. The remaining problem is that not everyone is putting Template:Mountain on the Talk pages. I know I've been flaky about that. Do templates have "What links here"? Should we just go ahead and jump into #3? It's a lot more work, though. Anyway, we may want to touch base with RedWolf before doing mass work. --- hike395 02:13, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure they do, but I'm not sure how to use the new template system. If people have not been putting the mountains message on talk pages, then we could look at 'what links here' from one of the linked pages in the table. I'll also make sure that a mountain message is left in each of the WikiProject Mountains articles. If you could ask RedWolf about this, then that would be great (I'm busy right now with arbitration work). --mav

I just thought of the perfect solution: (2) combined with placing all of the articles into Category:Mountain. That maintains tracking. I'll contact RedWolf and proceed. Sorry for bothering you --- and thanks for the advice! --- hike395

No bother - but be aware that placing category tags in articles will break their fomatting whenever there is a right-aligned table or image at top. --mav

Gaah! That's exactly the case for mountains. That probably means we'll have to move the infobox down by a paragraph. Ugly. -- hike395

main page messages

Mav, on source forge you reproted a problem with the messages, i think it was on the main page. How did you solve it?

We have many flower articles on the dutch wiki, using msg in wiki tables, none of them still works in 1.3. Do you have any advice, should we all change them manually to old html tables? Is there a simple trick you used on the en: wiki?

With the 1.3 software, regrettably the source of protected pages can no longer be viewed.

t.i.a. TeunSpaans 03:32, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea - it just started working soon after I loudly complained. I have not seen any note by any developer anywhere saying that they fixed it. Perhaps if you ask on Wikitech-l you will get an answer. --mav

RfC example user

It converted all {{text}} into the new template syntax, and of course these templates don't exist yet. What prompted your idea to delist an RfC page based on a 75% vote? If it's the situation going on at 172's page, I would note that he specifically recruited a number of the recent participants in that discussion. He's welcome to do that, of course, but I wouldn't implement this idea based on that particular scenario. I do figure the 172/VeryVerily pages can be moved along to archive if a fourth vote to accept the arbitration case comes along. --Michael Snow 03:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

My concern is with Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Theresa Knott, where it is very obvious that two users want to have the RfC page on her while more than a dozen do not. --mav

Ah, I see. I was looking for an opportunity to archive that one, but thought the discussion was still too recent. Theresa doesn't seem too worked up about the page's existence, so I didn't want to be in such a big hurry to get rid of it that people start screaming censorship. I figure anyone reading the page can soon figure out that the complaints are trivial, but then again I also tend to believe that removing personal attacks is unnecessary, because a reasonable person will see that they mostly reflect negatively on the attacker. But anyway, the possibility of someone recruiting allies to vote so as to get the page removed makes me wary about this idea. --Michael Snow 06:22, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Good luck for the contributing position. Angela. 05:34, 31 May 2004 (UTC)