User talk:Menchi/Stardate 0.0005

This is the fifth archive. For more or see the current version, see User talk:Menchi#Archives

Interlink postion

I think there was a vote to put the links to other language wikipedias at the bottom, seperated by a newline. So please stop reverting perfectly fine edits... You also removed some links by doing this. See [1]. Thanks. Guaka 20:01, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

None of that. Read User talk:Guaka#Why I reverted. --Menchi (Talk)â

Yeah, ok. After seeing User_talk:210.72.12.71 it was clear to me :) Guaka 20:27, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Great. Btw, congrats for being the 1st user of my Talk in this New Year! *Fireworks!* --Menchi (Talk)â 20:30, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Chinese Wiki

Hey, you haven't worked at Chinese Wikipedia for a while, what have you been busy doing? :O --Samuel 20:25, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)~

It's not even a month yet! That is not "a while"... I like to switch between different places (Wiki or not) to get different flavours from time to time, as long as the flavour is not too bitter. >_' --Menchi (Talk)â 20:30, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Oh, i c, "a while" means like a month, eh? I think Chinese wikipedians begin to miss you! Dersonlwd asked you at your talk page "Where have you been?". I told them you are still working at English Wiki, but not Chinese one at the moment... :p enjoy! --Samuel 20:43, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)~

What did that guy (User:210.72.12.71) do? Wasn't he correcting the interwiki links? :O --Samuel 20:55, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)~

He was trying to steal your firstborn.

He disregarded the necessary recommendations at Wikipedia:Chinese interlanguage links. To quote Jiang: "stupid bot; im going to ban you if you do this again!". (summary from Chongqing) --Menchi (Talk)â

Voting

Hello there. I saw that you voted against a naming peers with peerage titles. Is there any chance that I can convince you to change your vote? -- Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth

Yes, you can bribe me. I'm corruptible. --Menchi (Talk)â 22:56, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I was not exactly speaking of paying you WikiMoney, if that is what you mean. But of course, you might find that the argument in favour of including titles in all cases is stronger than you might have expected.

Now, consider that we have two basic ways of presenting a page (using the example of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson)- 1. Horatio Nelson 2. Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson. Of course, it would appear that the first is simpler, but then again, the addition of a title is not detracting from anything. Rather, the subtraction of a title detracts from it - most people know Nelson as Lord Nelson, but not just plain "Horatio Nelson". Of course, the addition of "1st Viscount Nelson" will point to "Lord Nelson."

You might be wondering why, then, we do not put Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson at Lord Nelson. There is a simple answer: there have been several Lords Nelson. For instance, the Viscount Nelson's brother was also Lord Nelson (holding the title of "Earl Nelson"). The Earl Nelson's heirs are also Lord Nelson.

Then, you might ask, why is it necessary to make such additions. I argue that it is necessary, because the titles form a part of the name. Not including a peerage title is like not including a surname. The peerage title forms a part of the very name of the individual. For instance, the Duke of Rutland's name was not "John Manners." His name was, rather, "John Manners, 7th Duke of Rutland".

Then, one may ask if all peerage titles are to be listed. Only the highest title is listed, just as middle-names are excluded. For this reason, we would not have: [[Angus Alan Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 15th Duke of Hamilton, 12th Duke of Brandon, 15th Marquess of Douglas, 15th Marquess of Clydesdale, 15th Earl of Angus, 15th Lord Abernathy and Jedburgh Forest, 15th Lord Polmont, 15th Lord Machansyre, 15th Lord Aven and Innerdale, 12th Baron Dutton]]. No, simply: Angus Douglas-Hamilton, 15th Duke of Hamilton. So you can assure yourself that the article titles will generally not become unwieldy.

I hope that you have been convinced of the argument. -- Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth

Circle with a dot

Good work adding the Chinese meaning of the solar symbol. Peace Profound, Optim 14:00, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sinify, etc...

There really isn't a need to create new redirect pages like Sinify if nothing was linking in along that redirect path. - UtherSRG 03:01, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

They are created if somebody might use them in the future, no matter how distant. The Wiki-project Birds, for except, mandatorily asks all participants to create both lower- and uppercases for all bird names. Now, are both cases used for all bird, as of now, in WP? No. Will they? Sure, give it a few years. That is "the need to create new redirects like Sinify". --Menchi (Talk)â 03:04, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

broken images

Hi Menchi. (thanks, mav for answering) Apparently it has something to do with a server move, and all images that were uploaded between January 24 and (not sure) January 28 are on a different machine that is not used as a webserver. They should be copied over sometime, though. - snoyes 08:13, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Great, thought you were viciously importing crappy images... (kidding). --Menchi (Talk)â 08:16, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Images

Hi Menchi, thanks for your comment about my pictures! I wasn't sure if the diagram I drew was good or not, so I'm glad you thought it was OK. I like the Image:Charlestown Beach St Austell Cornwall.jpg too, it's one of my favourites. I was particularly pleased that two young girls decided to wear matching red coats that day (the little red dots on the groyne). The ultra green on the beach isn't moss, it's (technical term) green sea alge stuff. At high tide the whole beach is covered, if I recall correctly. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, you made me smile. :) fabiform | talk 07:59, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

.mov panorama to .jpg...

Hi Menchi, I just wanted to thank you for trying to help me with the question I posted on the village pump. Once I realised that it was made from a series of regular jpgs, I asked the person who'd sent it to me if he had the originals. He sent me them all laced together into just the kind of photo I wanted (phew!). If you're curious, the images are:

Cheers, fabiform | talk 22:57, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC) :)

Woa, great find! If this is what the visions of lizards and frogs are like, they must have very fun lives... --Menchi (Talk)â 05:20, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Completely Chinese article

Hi, could you take a look at Èµµå°šå¿— if you get time. It's listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/foreign language for being written in Chinese. Could you decide if it needs to be deleted / moved to here / translated etc. Thanks. :) Angela . 00:42, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)

Some communist revolutionary matyr's bio it seems. It is just copy-and-pasted (copyrighted) from sites like this, which may itself in turn just blatantly took it from another website. So, to follow the copyright policy here, that article would have to be deleted unless the author come forth. Which I highly doubt, knowing he had awkwardly post a wholly Chinese article in an English WP...

If you have any more question, feel free to drop a note at the Chinese Village Pump, which happens also to be an embassy. --Menchi 02:04, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't even think to check whether it was a copyvio before asking you. :) Angela . 02:14, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)

Any time. --Menchi 03:02, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Re:Tip

Thanks Menchi. I had noticed bare-URLs on some other pages being auto-linked (and yes, I always try to make my links descriptive). At the time I posted to the village pump, I didn't even really give it a second thought. Thanks for the tip though. →Raul654 09:45, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

Sure. --Menchi 17:37, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Friendly question

Hey Menchi, did you also grow up in North America? Just wondering, because the majority of my Chinese is self-taught (born and raised Tennessean in fact though similarly of Han origin), and looking at your Chinese it seemed as though you might be in a similar boat. No insult or offense intended at all! -- I'm just curious. I love to see people being able to maneuver in multiple languages without sucking (nanshu is gooooood)...

Anyways, drop me a line sometime on my talk page. As you can see by my contributions to the Chinese Wiki, I don't plan to do much translation into Chinese; maybe if I spend enough time here I'll improve to the point where I can though...baby steps, right? Mgmei 04:34, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, I am nothing like you... I say without humbleness that both my Chinese AND English are "with sucking". :-) I am exponentially losing my fluency of the grammar and vocab of Chinese (my mother tongue) and will probably won't ever achieve complete native speaker-level correctness in the grammar, vocab, and pronunciation of English (my second language). Yes, I am a very imperfect man. Very. If you have questions not regarding Wikipedia, feel free to drop me an e-mail.

By the way, are you Maggiemei? MgMei..MaggieMei? --Menchi 04:50, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

不是 ;-) 首先, I have an X and a Y chromosome. Second, 我肯定不是来自香港, never ever been there in my life, being the ever-sheltered American. By the way, 依我看你的英语并不 suck, 至少远远超过我的国语 (not that that means very much by itself -- sigh). 希望 you aren't annoyed by the mixed-languaged message (I love playing with languages -- hey this is just like 日本语), and again, 对不起 if I seemed to imply that your Chinese isn't great -- 不是我的意思. Btw, 我学的是繁体字 and am better at it, but 输入简体字比较快 because I can just type English characters. Mgmei 05:59, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC) (梅敬業)

Reminder

m:Talk:MediaWiki User's_Guide: Using tables#Indent

Yo. Just a reminder that your questions on meta about tables were finally, um, answered. You can delete this message after the beep. BEEP. :) --grin 08:21, 2004 Feb 9 (UTC)

Great. I'll use the div style="margin-left:10em" method. Although matching the table using div with colon could be quite a feat (which is why I wanted table to be indentable using colon). But this will do when asthetic needs arises. Thanks. --Menchi 08:38, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Re: Cat in a pint picture on my user page

To answer you question, user:Mirks (now departed) uploaded it and put it on *his* user page. Shortly thereafter, it came up for deletion. I argued strongly that it should be kept, and it stayed. Mirks later removed it from his page, and the image sat idle. Afraid someone would again try to delete it, I put it on my page. →Raul654 02:25, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Chongqing#Table

As to the table in the Chongqing page, didn't you notice that it ran way out to the right? So if you want to print that page, as I did (for my students), it will use about 10 pages of your printer instead of 3 and be very confusing. So I put it into the regular Wiki table format--didn't finish though, b/c I didn't have much time last night. Don't like it? Change it back. I'm done with it. Mjklin

Mmm...such a drastic change is better done in one session, because somebody complained that the table was out of whack. If you cannot, you should leave a note somewhere, at the Talk or at the Village Pump.

Magnus-table works fine on most people's browser. It depends on your version I guess.

--Menchi 03:12, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the tip...I'm a new Wikipedian, an American teacher in China. I might have some questions for you in the future about using Wiki with my students. Mjklin

I assume you select some articles related to China to teach those kids English? If so, there is a whole list of them at List of China-related topics. Some articles may be boring to kids, like modern politics. But some are on heroes, culture, and immortals. And especially if the student already knew the plot in Chinese, reading in English, even if the article contains unfamiliar vocab, won't be too discouraging. If you have any general questions re: operations or uses, feel free to bring it with the friendly folks who live at the Village Pump. You'll get a response in no time. --Menchi 03:27, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference to that article! Fuzheado 08:25, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Shanghai disambiguation

I noticed that you moved the Shanghai solitaire link back down to the bottom of the Shanghai article. The standard for disambiguating when one meaning is "primary" like this is to have links to the other meanings at the top, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Types of disambiguation. That way when someone arrives at the page hoping to read about one of the lesser meanings, they'll be able to immediately see the article they should go to instead. Bryan 09:31, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Noted. I confused this other-articles-linked-in-the-main-articles with the many-stub.articles-in-one-page style. Thanks for pointing it out. --Menchi 09:48, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

But the current situation, the way you wrote it, is much better, all the above notwithstanding. The previous version seemed to emphasise the game out of all proportion - it was (to my way of reading it) almost as if that was the definition, and the city and area was subsidiary. Maybe just a minor subtlety of wording and presentation, but the new one - which still has the game near the top - is much better. Nevilley 08:40, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually, looking at it again, I think that even just the single word "also" added to Bryan's version would have worked! - but the current one with a proper disambiguation is, I still think, clearer and better. Nevilley 08:43, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for appreciating my carefully crafted work of art! ;p --Menchi 10:54, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

heheh, well, indeed! Btw you can't by any chance help with the "Music Schools" query I made on the Shanghai talk page can you please? Nevilley 11:08, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to, but I don't even know the name of any colleges/universities in Shanghai. :-O We do have an overseas Australian living there: User:Pratyeka. Perhaps he's heard of such a thing. We do have a native Shanghainese: zh:User talk:Formulax (he's fluently bilingual and friendly. Drop him a note if you wanna). But he is overseas (in Singapore). Swapping of fates, huh! --Menchi 11:25, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yao (ruler)

I don't recall making that redirect. It still worked, so it looks like I pasted "temporary" into the summary field instead of the redirect command. Maybe because Yao consists of a whole bunch of separate topics on the same page? I don't remember. --Jia ng 19:13, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Political_divisions_of_China

I nominated the article at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates#Political_divisions_of_China, but there is an objection over the second row, second column of the table, which has "Some provinces them". Since you implemented the table, I thought you would know what belongs there. --Jia ng 19:44, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Copy-and-paste artifacts there. Lemme know if any more unclear phrases. --Menchi 07:02, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hangeul vs. Hangul

Hi, Menchi: On Tuesday evening (Wed 10 March UTC), Nohat started changing occurrences of "Hangeul" to "Hangul" in Hangeul (now moved to Hangul) and other articles. I argued against the change—mainly on Talk:Hangeul (now Talk:Hangul)—and you can see the article's page history here. I don't like Nohat's arguments, but he makes some good points; anyhow, an edit war was about to break out, so this morning I backed off and let him continue respelling "Hangeul" as "Hangul." Now User:Kokiri has entered into the fray and, like me, disagrees with Nohat's changes. Basically, the spelling "Hangeul" is in line with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean), while "Hangul" is in line with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). Can you please step down from your august throne, read over the material, and lend us your esteemed pronouncement? Yours, Sewing 00:28, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi again, Menchi: Thanks for your comments. I think it helps to have the perspective of someone not caught up in the heat of the discussion. By the way, if you don't mind my asking, what part of this fine country (i.e., Canada) do you live in? --Sewing 06:11, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not the All-mighty Emperor of Wikipediandom with nice jewelled thrones and pearled sceptres. Jimbo would have that burden. I'm merely the shadow who appears in the corner of the readers' eyes to dispose what he has learned, new or old.

As you've recognized, some exceptions here and there to the norm can be interesting individualism. A handful of odd/irregulars romanizations can be fun-looking, when not confusing. --Menchi 06:54, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

WikiCookie?

I believe I found a WikiCookie of yours. You posted on User talk:Robbot a link to (umlauted u). --Xoder

You mean easter egg? How did it taste? Not too salty I hope. Actually, it was a variation of the signature syntax that many people use in order to include [Talk] in their sig. I chose to hide the vestigial link. --Menchi 05:02, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

O I see... WikiCookie is an entertainment program of WP. No, I never joined WikiMoney stuff. I found them confusing. It'd take me more than to get heads and tails of them than it's worth probably. Have fun anyway! --Menchi 05:03, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Simple English

Hi, I sent you an email about Simple English. Shall I take the lack of reply as no objection or a sign you didn't get it? :) Angela . 02:02, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Didn't get it. Email gets lots of spam though. Resolved over IRC. --Menchi 04:23, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Enclave

Hi menchi, just to let you know that I've redrawn your image on enclave with antialiased lines and hopefully a higher contrast between text and background for printing. I hope you don't mind. :) fabiform | talk 19:32, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Cool! Good job. ----Menchi 04:25, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Please read slowly and carefully...

In the future, if you feel that a Wikipedia article should be edited, but really don't know whether other people will accept it, please use the sandbox. -- Anon

I just realized that you are talking about the content duplication at Chen Shui-bian. Not sure what happened there, I got an edit conflict (apparently with myself...not sure about the logic there), so a freakish result occured. That's like my 5th self-edit-conflict this year. Bad Wiki. Thanks for the advice anyway. It is somewhat vague tho'. Maybe you should point out the specific incident and recommendations next time to another newbie. That'd be more helpful. --Menchi 02:26, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This getting-into-an-edit-conflict-with-self happened to me too, and the result was the duplicated introduction of [2], which I quickly fixed. It's weird that the Wiki software does this. Anyway, I got a laugh out of seeing an anon talk to one of the most experienced Wikipedians like he's a child. :) --Lowellian 21:39, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm a careless guy. I usually don't even bother to check the page after I clicked "Submit", hence that obnoxious duplication. :o) I'll take more care when I see an edit conflict with myself (again?!) next time. --Menchi 22:47, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Dalian organization

Hi! You have deleted quite a lot of information in the Dalian article on Dec 27, 2003. Was it a mistake or on purpose? I have restored most of the deletion, as I assume that you removed it inadvertantly while adding the "Subdivisions" section. Cheers. olivier 12:04, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, a cut-and-paste error during re-organization. Thanks for spotting that. --Menchi 02:23, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Luh

Hi! I just wondered about the Prince of Luh romanization you added to the Ming dynasty emperors. Where does this come from? I'm interested to find out... Madw 13:03, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Cambridge History of China, vol. 10 (or whichever one that's on the Ming). It's academic, so I think the disambiguation is somewhat established. Or maybe it's just a one-book idiosyncracy. --Menchi 22:10, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(c.f.)

Hi. I don't think it's always redundant to use (c.f.) in some situations. The general tendency is to link liberally on Wikipedia, which is a good thing. However, the vast majority of links are only tangentially related to the main topic being discussed. If a basic pre-understanding of another topic is critical to properly understand the current topic, then in these cases I think adding the (c.f.) as an additional hint is extremely useful. Kwertii 03:08, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Article "critical to properly understand" is relative and dependent on the individual reader's knowledge. Systematic attempts to instruct the reader are located at http://wikibooks.org

I have never seen (c.f.) used anywhere except in that Taoism vs. Daoism article in my months here. If you want to discuss that further, bring it up with the Pump for a public consensus/opinion. I don't have the energy to go into this any further except to say that (c.f.) is a Book thing. That which one finds in Britannica Paperia. --Menchi 03:23, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Kaishu font

Hi, Menchi,

I just want to know something. Where did you get the Chinese Kaishu font? Is there also a simplified version of it? Oh, and which chinese-input software can the font be used in?

Thanks! WJ

Yes, Kaishu in Windows XP is one font that contains both Simp, Trad, Kanji, and Hanja. (This comprehensive Unihan-ness is the same for Song-ti in XP). Kaishu in 98 only has Trad (if you use Trad operating system).

It is a font, so it doesn't matter which Chinese-input system you use. For example, if I go to IE browser > Tool > Font, and change the default font of my Chinese text from Song-ti to Kaishu, all Chinese words appear as Kaishu. (But I wouldn't do that, it's very hard to read on small font, despite it looking so pretty.) --Menchi 21:52, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nie Zi

Hey, can you check out this page Nie Zi? I am not sure how to name it in English. I have named it "Nie Zi" now, but I strongly feel that this naming is incorrect. I don't know if it should be spelt like "Niezi" or "Nie-zi". Any rules? Thanks! --θαλαμηγός (talk) w: 16:15, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Probably not "nie-zi". I don't think Pinyin uses hyphen at all, except in those road names (Guangdong-Shenzhen-Zhuha Tielu, those inter-city railways). I feel that "niezi" is a word. Because you cannot separate the two characters and say: "Wode zi hen nie!" (我的子很孽!) Can you? It sounds really weird... They are probably just one inseparable word.

Why don't you just use the show's English name "Crystal Boys", like its official website does. --Menchi 21:52, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for ur help! I didn't notice there is an English name for the show! ;) --θαλαμηγός (talk) w: 17:48, Apr 17, 2004 (UTC)

August Ones (and definite articles)

Re: The Three August Ones and the Five Emperors - Thanks for the comment. - Madw 00:40, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

By the way, in my view the page name would be better as The Three August Ones and Five Emperors - any objections? - Madw 02:17, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

Not really. I'm never sure what to do with definite articles. Cambridge History of China has two "the"s. But as a native speaker, if you feel that the second definite article isn't necessary, do away with them. Also, if that's the case, the first "the" should also be eliminated from the title, like [The Dionne Quintuplets] or [The United States]. The only reason I started an article with "The" is to keep the parallelism between the two "the"s. My understanding is to avoid starting a title with an article unless it's an intrinsic and inseparable word in a book or movie title. --Menchi 02:39, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Menchi on that last sentence - almost exactly what I wrote yesterday (?) in my fledgling style guide for the Maori Wikipedia. Robin Patterson 06:33, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

re: User talk:Anthere#Caterpillar Walking in Circles

hehe, perhaps, perhaps... :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing 04:57, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) (I updated my talk page accordingly :-))

New Zealand

Hi - thanks for kind words about my "County" insert. All off the top of my head during coffee break. Seems about the right size for "County" - I agree that if I or one of my fellow Kiwis can write much more it should be separate (same as I recently agreed and demonstrated on the subnational etymologies). Actually "should" be (and am) spending nearly all of my wikitime in the Maori Wikipedia because I'm the only major textual contributor at present. --- Kind regards --- Robin Patterson 06:33, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

re: Seh-Yong Richard Thomas Cannon-Jung

Thank you, Menchi, for bringing this article to my attention. Yes, I was aware of it, but had no interest in it whatsoever. It was created by User:SimonMayer without my authorization. I didn't complain, because it was harmless, but I feel it has no academic value. It's best gone. I see that User:Wik has deleted it. I'm happy with that. What I resent, however, is the comment that Wik put on it: "VANITY" - implying that I wrote the article out of vanity. I assure you that I neither wrote nor authorized the article, and did not find out about it until some time later. Again, thank you for mentioning the matter to me. David Cannon 04:34, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just ignore Wik's comment. No need to care what he labels you or others to be. I wouldn't worry about some anonymous netizen's bitter non-sensical comment.

It was very sweet of Simon. But the fault lies in that he didn't take our encyclopedia seriously enough and played a warm joke with it. The intention is therefore a mixture of innocence and ignorance. The ignorance in Wikipedia's being as an encyclopedia could attract actual abuses by people who turn Wikipedia into Wiki-homepage. I assure you that the matter has nothing to do with you or SY Richard personally. Policies of Wikipedia are created to facilitate its efficient and optimal construction. Even as an admin, I have trouble keep up with all of them! We are all learning!

We apologize for any discomfort that we've caused you. Have fun with your family in the upcoming months! Your family looks very beautiful and warm together, and I hope it'll experience many more loving days that last eternally. Maybe one day when SK Richard grows older and gets an assignment from his class, he and his classmates would be researching the Net and come across a WP article you helped perfecting! --Menchi 06:06, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Menchi, for all your kind words. That means a lot to me. Yes, I most certainly do agree with the Wikipedia policy about not being a Wikihomepage, and I really appreciate your taking the time to explain it. David Cannon 10:31, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Zhao Mausoleum

Hi, I am not sure about what u meant (昭陵, in today Quandong, Shaanxi) in the Emperor Taizong of Tang China. Thx. --Koyn 16:32, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I meant that the building is located in a place nowadays called Shaanxi. It was not called Shaanxi in the Tang, but called Guannei Circuit back then. I hope it's clearer now. Do ask if there's anything else I wrote that's confusing. I'm certain there are plenty! --Menchi 19:57, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the "Quandong" or "Guannei Circuit" u meant is 关中 (Guanzhong in pinyin). :) --Koyn 20:49, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Probably! I can't find where I got that from now. Google is so vast.... Anyway, Chinese place-names changed so many times. It's really interesting, but the details really belong on the specific article (like [[Shaanxi]) and not on an article that just mentions the place. --Menchi 20:55, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese version of Wikipedia

Hi Menchi,

By way of introduction, my name is Sumner Lemon and I am the Taipei correspondent for IDG News Service. Fuzheado from Hong Kong University suggested that I get in touch with you. I'm doing a story on the Chinese version of Wikipedia and would like to get in touch with you to discuss this topic and to understand more of the wider implications of wikis in China. My e-mail address is sumner_lemonATidg.com.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!

Sumner

Sure. I just replied. Let me know if you didn't get the e-mail. --Menchi 09:39, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

Listen friend, I did not delete something because I did not like it. I replaced erroneous information with something more accurate, I tried to incorporate some of the old entry into what I wrote, but it was a very small post and there was too much misinformation to save anything. If you are the author of the original post, sorry I edited it out, but there was simply too much inaccurate information there. Also, on a more of a personal note, when you communicate with people you don’t know, it does not much help to threaten. --Menchi 02:06, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting another person's comment is unacceptable in Wikipedia. Period.

That is the policy of Wikipedia. --Menchi 02:06, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This comment is regarding Russian Talk comment removal without summary explanation by the above Anon.

I see what you mean now, you’re referring to article comments as apposed to the article, that was unintentional. This is the first time I’m adding an article to wiki and I wanted to add a comment about it. Either way, there is no excuse for being rude, have a good night.

I take Wikipedia policies very seriously and am quite protective of the rules. If you just made a mistake with some keystrokes, and not trying to silence somebody who critcized you by the blanking, I apologize. --Menchi 02:37, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Fir pic

Hi Menchi - thanks for inserting the pics; unfortunately, they are from a cedar, not a fir :-) There's no pics at cedar at the moment, so it would be worth moving them, though they should perhaps be renamed - MPF 11:41, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Oy... I'll delete them, rename and re-upload now. Thanks for pointing them out! :-) --Menchi 11:56, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! - I've an Abies pic or two somewhere I'll upload - MPF 15:29, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Conifer cones

Hi Menchi - hope you won't mind that I moved this from pine cone to conifer cones, as it discussed cones of conifers other than just pines. One more, on the positions of male & female cones, while "In addition, while male cones often grow clustered in large numbers together at the base of a branch, female cones are often produced singly or in only small clusters at the tip of a branch" does apply to pines, it doesn't to most other conifers, which is why I'd taken that out before. In Pinaceae, both male and female cones of spruces can be either from side buds or buds at the tip; in larches and cedars, both are always at the tips of short shoots; in firs, both are always from side buds, never from tip buds. There's also some diversity in bearing in Cupressaceae, some (e.g. Cupressus) having no differentiation in male/female position, while others (e.g. Taxodium) do have differentiation in positioning. - MPF 23:59, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all, the new title is more inclusive. It's thoughtful of you to include yew. Yew cones are way too special (yet not obscure at all) to be forgotten!

I've clarified the pine tip-terminal cone bits so there won't be confusion. Thanks for the info. :-) --Menchi 00:11, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Woman-ness

I pass. I do not believe genders are important for Internet personae. Abigail 14:06, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Certainly, it is your decision. We created WikiWomen just because we thought it'd be fun. It isn't a political statement or anything. It's kinda for stats I guess. I know the person who started that page (Anthere), she's an active Wikipedian and I've always found her intentions to be gentle and not extreme. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression if it sounded like I was trying to single you out. That was not my intention and if I caused that feeling, I apologize. --Menchi 20:55, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese cannibalism, dubious?

Your help is requested on Chinese cannibalism. It seemd dubious. Fuzheado | Talk 11:17, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Indubitably so. I have emitted feedbacks in the Talk. --Menchi 13:04, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I will post the page for deletion. Cast votes there. thx. Ktsquare (talk) 17:16, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Have commented. --Menchi 22:51, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously, does Wikipedia have any measures against, for instance, subtle racism on board? Say if one fellow Wikipedian continually post insidious racist remarks on his contributions; shouldn't he be banned? Surely this kind of open project should have some preventative measures against people with questionable agenda. They are much worse than vandals. Mandel 17:57, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, nothing as effective as that. No! ;-) For instance, Kt2 and I witnessed some...communal "soft-heartedness", when certain user called "Go guck your aging mother!" (in Cantonese) appeared. And I thought that case was as UN-insidious as it can get! But at least the case had a just ending. --Menchi 21:55, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, no, no. Vulgarities are easy to deal with. Ditto with vandalism.

How many people get charged for vulgarities after all. Racism is much worse. I wonder how many people feel like I do. Mandel 06:57, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

My point is that even vuglarities are HARD for Wikipedian community to deal with. Not to meantion the insidious insults! --Menchi 07:01, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm fuming after reading the article, if you know what I mean. Strange, I usually don't get upset about these things easily, but this got me on real tetherhooks.

BTW the VfD page on this is blank. Why is so? I'd like to hear what the other Wikipedians say. Maybe that will let me feel better. Mandel 10:14, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That page was deleted. I dunno who or why. But it was deleted. There used to be several comments there, basically all are made from the same users who commented on the Talk. --Menchi 11:07, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Singing

Thanks for the suggestion that I upload a version of myself singing The Web Encyclopedia Song. However, my goal was for people to *like* the song. ;-) Hey, if you sing well, maybe *you* could sing it! Elf | Talk 05:04, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Updating Wikipedia articles to conform to the new image syntax

Re: your comment on my talk page: Thanks, just doing my part. I hate to see non-semantic HTML clutter up wiki markup, and those new frames are just so pretty! :-) dpol 04:07, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

On Chinese wikipedia

Have you thought about merging the traditional and simplified versions of Chinese wikipedia into one? Maybe one can have a button by the side which changes the interface into either simplified or traditional, but the text being the same.

It'll certainly boast the quality of the Chinese wiki. To have two different articles on one subject isn't helpful. Mandel 04:30, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

That sort of idea has been going around for literally years (ok, only 2...) But no computer scientist was available to realize it. Finall, Johna is working on that now. But I haven't heard from him for days. Wing said he was set up his old Linux and helped after he finished with his moving to a new house. And Mountain said he has no time at all since he has to do his thesis, but can give Johna some pointers over MSN. And...the rest of us are techno-inept. So, yeah, basically, Johna needs more help. It is a big project. --Menchi 06:28, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I can't help either as I'm techno-inept too :(. But it shouldn't be such a big problem, i think. Basically it's just a system that will convert a series of entered Chinese characters from one form to another. Theoretically it's 1 --> 1 conversion, and shouldn't be too tough. But it's good someone thought abt it and is working on it. Mandel 14:14, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

It's not just 1:1 conversion. "Traditional Chinese" and "Simplified Chinese" in fact usually doesn't just refer to the forms of individual characters, some translation has to be done as well. There is a feature in MS Word for such a conversion and it has the option to "translate commonly used terms" (German: Häufig gebrauchte Begriffe übersetzen. I don't know how this option is described in the English version). Babelfisch June 14th, 2004

German MS Word can convert Trad to Simp? --Menchi 19:35, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Saitama

Thanks for the comment on Saitama! I just discovered Wikipedia a few months ago and love it. Still learning all the features it offers. You seem to be very active with it, keep up the good work! CES 06:55, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Now it's my turn to say thanks! --Menchi 07:00, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Imperial roof decoration

Thanks for the comment on Imperial roof decoration. I added a second high status version and text, but I don't know the uniqueness of the human figure preceding the dragon. It was the only one I saw on a two week tour. Can you add anything to the article? Leonard G. 04:29, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Knew nothing of them. Dug around Google and found some stuff. Added. --Menchi 07:08, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the great additions to the article. I have a lot of pictures from our China trip. Only half is posted on line. I can post and release copyright for any you are interested in. See [3], click through for 1024 x 768 images. Unposted pictures include Chunquing, the terra cotta army, and Shanghai. Leonard G. 17:47, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Go ahead and release whatever you deem appropriate! :-) Some photos may not be encyclopedic in that they are personal, but others could do great addition to already-existent articles, like Chongqing, terracotta army, and Shanghai. In my opinion, there can never be enough illustrations to make the points. If it's too crowded. Then use a smaller thumbnail (like thumb|100px) to avoid clustering.

Don't worry if there's no article to accompany the photo. There probably should be, it's just nobody has made it yet. No need to write an essay on that topic immediately. Just make a stub with a sentence or two identifying the image. And how can a stub be any more perfect when it has a photo?

If you believe something important surely has an article but don't wanna making a duplicate article by creating a redundant new one, feel free to drop me a note, and perhaps I can find it under Pinyin or Wade-Giles. Or you may have to make that perfect stub! ^_^ --Menchi 21:48, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Qilin

This redirects to the Kirin page, describing the Chinese unicorn, this should redirect to the kylin page. I have a discription that the Qilin has the head of a dragon, the tail of a lion, the hooves of an ox, and the horns of a dear with the scaley skin of a fish all over (I have a both a sculpture and placard image from the Doweger Empress's summer palace). I also have a unicorn sculpture picture from the Ming Tomb Sacred Walk. Looks like the 'pedia needs a chinese mythical beast directory. Leonard G. 00:52, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying kylin is not kirin? They are the same thing, just different romanizations. Mythical animals have sometimes widely varied physical description. There is a directory-in-progress at Chinese mythology#Mythical creatures. --Menchi 03:53, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Google turns up Qi Lin or Chi Lin as the unicorn.

For my placard reference see [[4]] For the sculpture see [[5]]

For the unicorn see [[6]] For unicorn closeup see [[7]]

These are definitely not the same animal. -- Leonard

I cannot say for certainty which one is the "authentic" qilin and which one is the deviant one. But two things I am sure:

Qilin = Chilin = Kylin = Kirin. They are all written with the same Chinese characters. Kirin being the Japanese pronunciation. This I know with absolute certainty.
English translations (in this case, "unicorn") cannot be taken as accurate translation.

Maybe different regions or countries have different versions of qilin. --Menchi 07:58, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The "unicorn" style is from the chinese Ming dynasty tombs, while the dragon+deer+fish is late manchurian Qing dynasty, so the different root cultures could explain the difference. I will think about improving the article with appropriate pictures and reference these two dynasties. That should resolve the problem.

Above done- see Wetman's comment in the page talk, put any response there. Leonard G. 20:00, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)