User talk:Jtdirl/Archive 7

Hey, Ann. Comment about your message about the Dallas article.

The photos of Dallas I found are widely-circulated pictures—in other words they are found all over the web on many web sites, so it's virtually unclear where the original source of the pictures is. However, if you would like me to state the source of the specific web site I found the photos in alternate text, I'd be glad to do that. The thing I'll say is that if I do that, be aware that the photos are most likely not the property of the web site's author.

I'm having a hard time seeing how the Dallas pictures could be too big. Must be your Mac's problem, HA! Or maybe you use Internet Explorer 1.0 or lower, lol. I myself use Explorer with 1024 x 768 screen resolution, not to mention that I've tested lower screen resolutions to make sure what your saying is false :-) Oh yeah, can't forget to say that having used an eMac identical to yours with both OS 9 and OS X, I didn't notice any drastic differences in the Internet viewing between a Mac and a Windows-based computer. Nothing like viewing something with IE and Netscape.

Anyways, talk to you later. Let me know what you think I should do regarding the images and their ownership. And quit smoking! {shakes finger} It's bad for you! ...heh, but you Europeans live longer than us Americans, so what am I smoking? Pwu2005 05:23 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Smart user page-pity you have to work by candlelight! I just dropped by from Tannin's talk page to show solidarity. It's not so much the errors we all make (I got my fingers burned on Finnish Language - background knowledge = I've heard it spoken), but the persistent attempts to impose a particular standard, which too often is the dumber version. Although the capitalisation debate has subsided, thankfully, I was speculating when writing crossbill how much sense sentences like female red crossbills are green like parrot crossbills or in Ireland common crossbills are rare would make.

The irony is that hard-working contributors like you, Tannin and me have come close to walking through the determination to impose uniformity throughout what, after all, is a voluntary activity, which we do for fun (at bit sad in itself, but still...) jimfbleak 15:40 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well, I'm sorry for contributing to your angst over Droop Quota (though I myself never edited the formula...) - anyway, the current version seems OK to me... everything will usually sort itself out given enough time. :-) Peace, Evercat 16:01 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've eavesdropped on your message to User:Evercat and felt I had to comment. I don't know if I'm one of the google nuts you're referring to, though I have used google as a defense on many occasions. I appreciate your work, and think that Wikipedia really needs dedicated contributors such as you who have the experience, knowledge, and resources to provide Wikipedia with good information; I agree in the strongest possible terms that google is not to be considered an authoritative source, but sometimes it's the only source of information I have that is available at my fingertips. Whenever I see a stub article that needs a bit of fleshing out, a spelling of a name that seems questionable, or an obscure term that needs a definition, google usually is quick to provide an answer. And yes, 99% of what it spits back is nonsense, but a trained eye can usually find the gem of truth among the garbage. I try not to put anything into an article unless I'm fairly certain it's correct, or at the very least, better than what was there before.

I apologize if I have bulldozed over any of your work; I make every effort not to do so, but it is Wikipedia policy to be bold, and I usually am bold if I see something that I think needs fixing. With cooperation, I don't see why conflicts can't be resolved with a productive outcome. I would encourage you to stay here and keep contributing! Of course, maybe some time away is what you need. -- Wapcaplet 18:39 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Glad to hear I wasn't one of your targets. I understand, and can relate to, your frustration. If you sit back and think about it, it's nothing short of miraculous that anything useful at all comes out of Wikipedia -- hundreds (thousands, even) of people all trying to edit the same articles at the same time, all with different perspectives and agendas, different ideas of structure, organization, presentation, capitalization convention. It's like 1000 chefs trying to bake the world's largest cake. It's a tower of babel! But damned if it hasn't worked. Somehow, it has worked, and the only thing I can come up with is that some magical percentage of the people who contribute here care enough about the project to work together despite their differences of opinion and perspective. The ones who have messed up articles in one way or another probably had the best of intentions -- and I think that the more experienced Wikipedians have some responsibility to take such edits in good grace, and with patience. All edits can be reverted, all mistakes can be fixed. No article can really be ruined -- if it truly gets trashed to the point of no return, it can always be reverted to an earlier good version, and the user who did the trashing (however benign or malevolent it was) politely corrected. The good version will, eventually, prevail. -- Wapcaplet 22:48 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind me pointing this out, but you appear to have voted twice in the big "dates and numbers" debate -- for two different options. Was this intentional? Did someone else use your ID to vote? Deb 21:08 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Don't leave. I'm one of those arrogant idiots you referred to who was looking forward to working very closely with you. ChuckM 22:11 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi JT. I gather from various comments that the edit wars have been getting you down. I very much hope that you don't leave permanently as I for one very much value your contributions, and I've learnt a lot more about Irish history than I knew before, even though I'm only a £2 ferry ride and 75c return train fare from central Dublin (retired UK railway staff rates!). Take a break if you need one, but do please come back. Best regards, Arwel 23:36 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Am I the only one that takes vacations around here? No wonder people burn out and say they are going to leave. JT, I think it is time for you and you partner to take a nice relaxing trip somewhere and have some fun. I take as many trips as I can both with my partner (such as my recent Yellowstone trip) and not with my partner (I'm leaving for another field study to Yosemite National Park tomorrow). So maybe that is why I have never seriously considered leaving for anything more than a day or two. And each trip I take plenty of photos and write plenty of notes that I can update the corresponding Wikipedia articles.

That said I do sympathize with your current frustration but as Toby said all "damage" to any article is eventually fixed. Reverts are easy. But doing them right away doesn't always work - I've found that a few weeks of allowing the other person to cool off makes it possible to make the change you want and most of the time the other person either doesn't really care anymore or doesn't even notice the change. We also need to be tolerant of the different but completely valid conventions that different large dialects of English have. However, we do need to have documentation to back certain "conventions" up (such as the capitalization of mammal common names). So long as it is proven that a certain large dialect of English uses a certain convention then we should respect that (such as the two different date formats). IMO pushing for one and relying on a winner takes all approach for something like date formats alienates those people who use the other format (esp if the option getting the largest single share of votes gets only 30% of the total - that's evil!).

I hope this note finds you well - you and your contributions are much needed here. Our Irish history section was a sad joke before you cam along. :) --mav

You say it's slow right now? It's not slow for me, everything's happening in under 5 seconds. You want me to archive your talk page for you? -- Tim Starling 07:08 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Gave up waiting for a response :)

Re: Droop Quota, I'm perfectly happy for nothing that I wrote to appear in the final edit. I have no emotional attachment to this article. :-)

There's one thing I don't understand - your insistence that rounding doesn't happen. I've already asked a question that I think will settle this matter:

Suppose the Droop Quota gives a value of 5000.5 ; Does a candidate need to get 5000 votes, or 5001? This is a simple question, give me a simple answer. :-) Evercat 13:16 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi JT - just so you know, your bestest friend User:ChuckM left a little love letter for you here (rather abusive it was) - I've reverted it, but thought I'd mention its (temporary) existence. Cheers--Camembert

Ah no, he has more than just his ego - he has a narrow range of unimaginative insults as well ;-) --Camembert

Not using IM anymore? --Dante Alighieri 03:08 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Dear Jtdirl: Hi! How are you? By your sig name, I can tell youre a partisan of one of Ireland's various politic parties. Very cool. I was not aware of the Irish ituation until the middle 1980s, when Barry McGuigan, a great boxer by the way and human being, came into scene and I learned more about your country.

Well I wanted to say thank you for the awareness message you sent me. I wanst aware that that person was banned thought I saw some oddities in his page when I wrote him a meesage to thank him for his earlier message on my page.

Well, thank you and God bless you!!

Sincerely yours, Antonio Striperella Martin

Why Mr. Cadden, why on Earth would you refer to our new best friend Sue as Joe? Surely you're not implying that Sue is the same person as ChuckM, Triton, Joe Canuck, Jaques Delson, Black Widow, DW, and others, are you? Why, I think it's plainly obvious that the new Mr. Canuck is here as a very valuable contributer and isn't at all a multiple-banned user who has nothing better to do than come here and be an absolute simpleton. --Dante Alighieri 18:09 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

sarcasm doesn't become you, Dante... Martin

Do you know that if a page contains only a redirect, and has no history, the page it redirects to CAN be moved to its location, without deleting it first? Evercat 20:50 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You wrote: "Michael is a very competent contributor but he has screwed up a host of pages before by making changes before he checked. I don't edit pages I don't know background facts about. I leave notes on talk pages saying 'why is such and such called this? Why is this this way?' Other editors do the same." I replied by saying that I also do that. Before I replied, you continued thus: "Michael doesn't and his actions have already driven one contributor away and pissed off others." So I asked: "What is your evidence for the claim you make below that I have driven anyone away or angered anyone besides you? Who are those persons? When have I ever wondered why anyone 'goes into a rage' as a result of anything I've done on Wikipedia? I think these are figments of your imaginiation." You never answered, so I am reposting my questions here. Michael Hardy 00:13 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've undeleted 2003 in sports, following a query from Evercat. I will now list it on VfD. Martin 15:40 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have mentioned this to you. Are you sure it's strictly legal to delete all record of DW's involvement in the page? I thought the GFDL prohibited this, or something. Anyway I asked Martin about it since I thought he was the expert on these matters... :-) Evercat 15:51 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Don't take my keen interest in open content as expertise - IANAL. Martin 17:59 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Unprotecting page in the interests of soft security. if Michael repeatedly vandalises it, then it might be worth protecting it, but pre-emptive page protection is dubious, and I'd want a discussion on the subject before people start using it. Martin 17:59 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

We certainly can't retroactively delete stuff if a user is banned. The case of a previously banned user editing under a new name is harder, but I still don't think it's a good policy to delete the history. I mean, what are you going to do if a certain user (who I shall not name) does turn out to be Lir, for example?

Anyway, I was most concerned about the legal aspects of this - deleting the history of authorship is probably dubious. Evercat 23:12 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

(cutting in) If you do want to remove DW's additions to 2003 in sports then you should probably revert to the last edit by Jazz77, rather than delete. Martin 23:28 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Although I find legalese difficult to read, the preamble to the GFDL states Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work. So it seems clear the GFDL is intended to maintain a record of authorship... the relevant section is probably 4B... see: Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License Evercat 23:36 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

But as wiki reserves the right of admission to it, it also reserves the right to restrict who can contribute to it. If Jimbo has the right to hardban someone, then they lose the right to claim authorship. In a court of law, either the GFDL literal meaning would be upheld, in which case Jimbo would lose the right to ban anyone, or the GFDL license would be interpreted in the light of the site's rules, in which case DW et al would have no authorship rights, and my understanding is the latter is the correct interpretation. Furthermore, as DW contrary to wiki rules contributed to wiki, everything contributed by him since 30th January was contributed contrary to entitlement, nullifying his supposed authorship rights.

Therefore DW had no right to contribute and so was an invalid author. In which case then his text will simply have to be deleted en masse. I don't want to remove DW's additions but that is what has been done and if it is being done to others then it should be done to him too. What I was trying to do was keep the contents but lose DW. As there is no legal right of ownership to any of the contents by anyone on wiki, he cannot claim a right to have his authorship acknowledged. Perhaps the program should be rewritten to allow for the reference to authorship of hardbanned users to be removed. DW and Michael have both shown a desire to have their work acknowledged, in part in the form of "look what I have been able to get away with while being banned". We need to find a way around this. But if all else fails then all of DW's pages will have to be deleted. FearÉIREANN 23:45 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Warning, legalese follows, and IANAL (still!)

If Jimbo has the right to hardban someone, then they lose the right to claim authorship

wrong. My rights to claim authorship of what I write are described by national law and international treaties, and were I ever to be banned from Wikipedia, these rights would be uneffected. If I shot Jimbo repeatedly in the head, I would still retain copyright over what I've written. DW still retains copyright over his contributions, and we can only use those contributions under the terms of the GFDL, or under fair use.

You're treating this as if the GFDL, or Wikipedia, grants the author the right to be acknowledged. This is wrong. copyright law grants the author rights - specifically, the right to control distribution of their work. The author then licenses their work to us (and everyone else in the world), and we can either:

* use their work in various ways under the terms of the GFDL

* not use their work

If you've made any edits to Wikipedia under the assumption that the contributor's rights have been nullified in some way, then I strongly suggest that you speedily reverse those changes. Martin 00:10 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That is not the legal advice coming from my barrister flatmate or from his girlfriend, who studied copyright law. As DW was hardbanned, he no more retains copyright and authorship rights than does a vandal who spraypainted slogans on the side of a wall. Technically that is what he was, someone who entered wiki and placed unauthorised contributions, having been explicitly been barred from doing so, as Jimbo's hardbanning amounted to a clear and unambiguous withdrawal of any right to contribute in any way. But in case that simply means all of DW's articles will have to be deleted then. FearÉIREANN 13:28 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ahh, I misread you slightly - when you said that a banned user loses the right to claim authorship, I thought you were referring to their past (pre-ban) works, but you were referring to their post-ban works. I'd like to read the relevant piece of Canadian or US legislation that removes copyright from works created illegally.

If you would like to remove all of DW's contributions, please feel free to do so. Martin 14:34 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think your revert in the page Augusto Pinochet was excesive. By simply reverting you took out most of the biographical information. User:AstroNomer

Deb and I have been having a dispute at Talk:Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales as to whether he should be called "Frederick Lewis" (or "Frederick Louis") in the article title (as I suggest) or simply "Frederick" (as she does). Thought a third opinion might be useful. john 03:46 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi back, Irishman.

I also think that the Charles vs Carlos is silly. I made the change only for consistency's sake. Whoever set up the initial List of Portuguese monarchs created all of the monarch pages in English. I know that we use Carlos and Pedro -- but we also use Henry rather than Henriques -- oh - and then there's the antiquated Alphonso instead of Alfonso or Afonso (I think the norm now would be the middle version). Anyway, I thought it made sense to at least start out by keeping things consistent -- even if it's ugly. Which means we have 5 Peters of Portugal ... Boots

Like I said! Boots

The plan is, get all the articles all up to speed (dates, names, etc.). Then, worry about moving to better names (and changing links) -- and deleting the silly English names, maybe? or at least redirecting. But Since all the links are in the "correct" Portuguese format, I think focusing on content first is best. ANd thanks -- know all about the conventions! ;-) Boots

Dude -- getting a bit annoying. I KNOW about the frigging links -- most of them point to the English names, stupid as they are. That's what I meant by consistency. I'm doing this systematically -- you are the one moving things around. Out of ALL the stupid portuguese monarchs, only two had been redirected to portuguese names. All the others are still connected to the not-well-created English-language pages. So I am being consistent and keeping most links intact -- until we can do a systematic changeover. I am not a tyro at this ;-) Oh -- and read your private mail, silly Dublin man! You are making my tail twitch and my whiskers jumpy Boots

The above looks to me like a banned user -- possibly DW.

No. It isn't DW. I know the person and he is a genuine bona fide wikipedian. FearÉIREANN

The Portuguese names are a bit of a problem, I agree. I was never really very keen on the convention of using the English versions of names, eg. we have Henry IV of France instead of Henri, but we don't have "Lewis" instead of Louis. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's fairly obvious that the attention-seeking cat is trying to make an issue out of it. Deb 22:00 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Cheers for replying to my question of why we revert all banned users edits. On reflection all useful stuff will probably filter back in anyway as people continually refine each article so its not such a big problem. I was kind of surprised to see 2003 in sports set back such a long way in one revert, still its no biggie really. Lisiate 04:58 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Check out the new first lady page I made. What do they call President Mcaleese's husband? user:J.J.

Re your tired old accusation that I am DW: I'm going to have to start an article about Wikinoia. The psychological basis seems to be an inability to respond constructively to criticism (for example, by refuting it). Instead people invent bugbears who are persecuting them. Anyway, send me an e-mail (if you're worried about revealing your identity, open a yahoo or Hotmail account) and I'll tell you who I am. I'm not DW, as anyone with any sense for writing style should be able to figure out. Trontonian

I just realized that Yahoo/Hotmail idea won't work (hey, I got a cold). Oh, well. Maybe you can figure out a way to do it. Trontonian

1. I've made it easy for you. If you go to my user page and use the research skills you doubtless have as a historian, you will soon end up at some websites of mine which will show you I have no freaking interest in Merovingian kings.

2. JHK told me that Jacques Delson and DW are assumed to be the same person. One of the things that astounded me about Jacques Delson was that there was another person who also was interested in harness racing, Gilles Archambault, and Anthony Trollope -- an unlikely coincidence, eh? The thing is, Jacques' interests were incredibly wide-ranging, going far beyond those three topics. Might not Jacques Delson and DW in fact be groups of people? That would explain their indefatigability. Trontonian

Thanks for the note. Certainly Jacques Delson was always posting graphics which looked like copyrighted material (for example, the famous photograph of Greyhound). I've decided to abandon hypothesis 2 above (I think I was getting a bit Wikinoid myself), but as someone who has not been a victim of DW I find his "achievements" here astonishing. However, as someone with some sympathy left, I now understand your touchiness on the related issues (still, it's not nice to say bad things about Canadians -- they'll laugh at you). Anyway, I trust you now know I'm open and above board and not concealing my identity, and I'll keep my eyes open for further DWisms.

Incidentally, I find DW's List of Canadians interesting. His conception of it was doomed to failure (you can't have a restricted list when anyone can edit it), and then he went on at length when it failed. All the best. Trontonian

Sorry -- I didn't mean to imply you were insulting Canadians. Now that I know what's bothering everyone I'm a lot less annoyed at any questionable remarks that were made. I was just happily plugging away making harmless entries about box lacrosse and famous standardbreds when I stumbled into the middle of the furore. Interesting theory about DW. Certainly JD was keen on lists, too. His exchanges with me were very civilized, but then I never deleted anything of his. Trontonian

I've replied to you on my talk page. By the way, I must remember to access your talk page by some means other than going via your user page in future. It never fails to make me queasy whenever I open it... :P -- Oliver P. 00:48 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Mmmm... I guess there's a first time for everything. It's always hard to find comments on PP's talk page, so I'll repeat here what I said to him: thanks for the support, but I think most people here are pretty sensible when it comes to metric measurements. -- Tim Starling 01:38 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It's a bit different here. Metrication in Australia officially finished in 1983, and I was born in 1981. My parents occasionally talk in feet and inches, but never in miles or pounds or anything. Give it another 20 years and maybe the UK will be the same. I can only hope the US hurries up: I once worked in a lab full of thousands of dollars worth of optical equipment (like a big mechano set of brackets and stands and things), half with imperial screws, half with metric. -- Tim Starling 02:05 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well you've opened my eyes -- it's nice that I get the chance to talk to interesting people like yourself on Wikipedia. It's all very worrying: I'm reminded of the pessimistic postmodernist forecasts I've heard, which describe increasing fragmentation and decay, e.g. [1]. -- Tim Starling 03:15 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, is this leaving of messages on your supporters' pages within the rules of WikiVoting? Not trying to rig the vote, I hope... -- Oliver P. 02:19 5 Jul 2003 (UTC) (A boring old sod, and proud of it!)

Thank you very much for the comment jt. I am sensible to it.
I'll say that RK is *now* *very* civil with me, and I am grateful for that. I think that with 168 help, we will overcome our current disagreement on Gaia theory. When it is done, I expect the talk page to be cleaned up of the bad words. RK has accepted to refactor his comments to remove personal attacks. I hope he will do it. User:anthere

Just read your last comment on User talk:Oliver Pereira (03:12 5 Jul 2003 UTC), and to butt in: Main Page/Temp2 looks preferable; from what I've heard at least, the trains run on time in Germany - there has to be something said for that! (and I've met a non-conformist German!); polo necks are a creation of the devil. -- Jim Regan 19:42 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It seems "Jar Jar Binks" is trademarked [2] -- Jim Regan 20:16 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Heh. Checking the history is very important. :-) Evercat 22:22 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi, mm... you sure have lots of Talk archives! Nice candle beside the computer. 200 more of those, then you needn't the lamp! :-) And the wax that drip into the beer glass jugs make tasty addictives.
Could you give a word or two about User:Jiang on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship? --Menchi 10:33 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Heh, I wasn't having a go at you on User talk:Eloquence, just requesting a feature. The case was the only piece of evidence I had that pages can get deleted accidentally. :-) Evercat 11:49 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I just ran it through a spell checker. When it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter to me, as long as it is spelled correctly in some form of english. MB 21:34 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Please don't just revert back unless all of the changes I made a so call "british english" changes. I am almost certain that most of those were genuinely spelled wrong. MB 21:42 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)