User talk:RadicalBender/Archive1

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 16:17, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Great to see someone working on stadiums good luck with thoses, Can I suggest adding past teams to Edison Field ie the LA Rams 80-94 Smith03 21:00, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Never knew the Rams played at Anaheim Stadium. :) I'll probably go back and flesh out some of the information after a while. I'm also starting with baseball teams first and moving to other sports from there. Once I get around to football, I'm sure I'll pop back to it and add some more historical info.

RadicalBender 21:12, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

From village pump

Wasn't sure where to post this since it doesn't appear to be vandalism per se, but...the user 130.88.96.66 seems to be deleting large swatches of content in articles related to Sunnis, Christians in Arab nations, etc. (see this for a full list). Unfortunately, I know nothing of the subject matter and can't determine whether or not the guy is a vandal, making things NPOV by omission or what. Perhaps I'm being too cynical and the guy knows what he's doing. Anyways, I at least wanted to make a note of it and ask "What do you do when you're not sure if it's vandalism?" RadicalBender 05:30, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If the person does not explain why they are deleting text, then feel free to revert and if they keep it up list them on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. --mav 05:46, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, the person is now definitely an NPOV writer at least, since he vandalized Zionism very negatively as well. Anyways, most of the edits have already been undone now by various people. RadicalBender 06:29, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

All sorted? :) Martin 18:43, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Manga

I want to notice you that, in Japanese language, there is no distinction among sounds of "n", "m", and "ng" unless they precede a vowel or "y". Actually, most native Japanese speakers usually pronounce "Manga" as either "mang-nga" or "mang-ga" ("a" as "farm" but short"). When emphasised, "Manga" can be pronounced in three syllables as "ma-n-ga". I have no idea how "Manga" should be pronounced in English. -- (a native speaker) Takanoha 15:12, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

But what I gathered from what the way the person wrote it, it sounded like he intended for the alternate pronounciation to be "mang-ga" (where "mang" rhymes with "sang") not with the slight g sound at the end of the first syllable of the word (more "mahng-gah"), which is left off, I would presume, because it's harder to understand by someone who's never heard the word "manga" uttered by someone who's Japanese. And, yes, I understand that the word has far more intricacy in the pronounciation than what's written in the article (most Japanese words do), I'm trying to make sure that it's simple enough to understand and still (mostly) pronounce correctly. That's all. RadicalBender 15:18, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC) (not a native speaker, but trying to learn anyways)

Do not take me saying "Mahn-Gah" is wrong. My point is that the closing consonant of the first syllable can be "ng" (as in "sang"). I guess, you, I and he (whose edit you reverted) all agree that "mang-ga" is allowable and easier to pronounce. Thank you. -- Takanoha 01:47, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hope you have the time to put in the "Irresponsible Captain Tylor" one day! I think it sounds like Musekinin Kanchou in the original AlainV 02:20, 2004 Feb 11 (UTC)

AlainV, are you talking to me? If so, I failed to get to the point. Am I irresponsibly saying "mang-ga" is allowable? Allowing "mang-ga" for "man-ga" is like "Tylor" for "taira"? -- Takanoha

Hello! It was a comment adressed to RadicalBender. It was not related to the pronounciation of the word "manga".AlainV 02:21, 2004 Feb 12 (UTC)

Heh, I need to see Tylor first before I can write about it, I think. :) My "to watch" list is very long (maybe 200 titles, as opposed to the 200 or so I've seen). RadicalBender 03:44, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Request for Comment

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Homegrown images - UtherSRG 16:35, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ship photos

Hi, it's great that you're adding all the ship photos! (I go through phases of adding and laziness... :-) ). A couple comments; you don't need to say "public domain" photo, it's cleaner to leave it on the image description page for the few who are interested in the source (it's like where books put all their photo credits in front or back matter, not in the text itself), and it's nice to have a bigger version of each picture, since the thumb loses much of the important detail. Stan 22:42, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Heh, I spotted the new extended image syntax about halway through adding something like 20 million pictures. ^^;; I felt that for consistency's sake (for the time being) that I'd just keep doing what I was doing and come back to the bigger pictures later.

The public domain notice I wasn't sure about (there was no unity on this standard as I went through the various ships' pages). But I'm about to make a pass through everything I've done already to unify the tables (which are all out of wack), and I'll strip out the public domain notice as I go through.

Much work still to be for the Naval ships. Hopefully the aircraft carriers will be finished soon, but cruiser coverage is spotty and there are still no destroyers or frigates (let alone amphibious assault ships, oilers, ad nauseum). So I have my work cut out for me. :)

RadicalBender 23:07, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am overjoyed at seeing the jeep carriers sprout up in here. I think they are the most underestimated and underappreciated ships of WWII. I have been putting off making a general article on them because of my writing on desk types and forms and the office of the future and related topics.AlainV 02:20, 2004 Feb 11 (UTC)

Just in general, there seems to be quite a bit missing from World War II as well. A lot of the higher-level ideas and vehicles are there, but there is quite a lot missing. There's no F6F Hellcat, for example, and even the article on the Sherman tank is woefully underdeveloped, with no information on just how important it was in Europe. But, I'll get to all that after I wrap up the US Navy. :) RadicalBender 03:44, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Re: your changes to Big Bend - I see you added links to Coahuila and Chihuahua in the history section, there were already links to them in the first paragraph, I believe it is convention to only link on the first occurance (though I'm dubious about this on long articles). You also added a link to Manuel Benavides but no article exists - are you going to write one? In my opinion (and that's all it is) I don't like the links to every year/date, I try to link only when the item has some direct connection to the one being read. Someone reading about Big Bend NP isn't going to see the link for 1944 and think "I wonder what else happened then" and even if they do, it is so very easy to type the year number into the navigation field. The links are distracting.
I haven't undone any of your changes because none of them are actually harmful. Further discussion welcomed on my talk page. Bob Palin 16:42, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for that revert. I was intending to revert it myself. David Newton 05:01, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Main Page

Are you going to be updating Vladimir Putin to reflect the current event? If not, then that item is going to have to be removed from the Main Page. --mav

Someone else beat me to it. RadicalBender 14:48, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Quit reverting and mis-redirecting this NPOV article! [removing hate-mongering definition that I don't want on my talk page]

No. RadicalBender 21:28, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Look. Last time. Don't add it to my talk page. RadicalBender 03:05, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Robert Lee Hayes

No real reason, but Bob Hayes is at least a redirect. --Ryan and/or Mero 05:17, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well, true, but usually the article titles should go by the most common name (see this for what I mean). RadicalBender 05:29, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've moved it back. --Ryan and/or Mero 06:13, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Hey. I have to follow some standard, right? Easier enough to change later. Nateji77 06:27, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Has wikipedia decided to decimalise imperial measurements?

That sounds like an odd question, I agree. But I note RB that you are giving imperial measurements in decimal form on the aircraft pages, C-130 for instance. Like, 97ft 9in as 97.75ft (eg). Is that a new policy for wikipedia? Moriori 00:34, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

I actually have no idea. I'm just going on the information that I have in front me (I'm filling in data based on a book I have). I didn't really think about it one way or another. Is there a Wikipedia page on units of measurement somewhere? RadicalBender 00:37, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wherever possible, WikiProject Aircraft is encouraging use of both systems. I'll add the conversion factors there for Aircraft contributors to use.

I am not sure who I am replying to here. As far as I can see, the systems that WikiProject Aircraft is encouragiing is decimal and imperial, and not decimalised imperial. Bender, do you have approval to take details from a book and publish them here? What is the name of the book? Moriori 01:38, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

OK, well let me see what I can do on the units of measurement and what not. I guess I'll have to fiddle with the newer (although with the ugly Wikitablecode) Aircraft table anyways, so I guess I'll go back and change everything. :-\

As far as the book goes, I'm only using it for the statistical numbers for aircraft (that you can also find on 100 web sites online because it's all from public domain government info) - things like length of aircraft, top speed, missile complements, etc. Everything else (when I'm writing things) is of my own creation. I'm only using the book instead of the web sites because it's faster. As for the title, well, the cover fell off of the book several years ago (it's seen a lot of use over maybe 12 years or so), but I think it's called Modern American Weapons or something like that. RadicalBender 02:37, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Style for numbers, weights, and measures might help. It basically says give both, though see also the Measurements Debate. Angela . 02:15, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

That's a given. What I am querying is not use of both decimal and imperial, but use of decimalised imperial where imperial is intended like 3.75 feet when 3ft 9in is intended. Should we apply this to time as well. If it takes 1hr 35min to do something, should we write it as 1.58333333333hr? Hope not. Cheers. Moriori 03:15, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Aircraft

Hi - nice to see someone else contributing aircraft. WikiProject Aircraft is working towards standardising how this info is presented in Wikipedia. You might like to use the new version of the data table that uses friendlier wikicode inplace of the html version of the table. Cheers --Rlandmann 01:31, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've been looking at it somewhat, and I'm really not digging the use of the Wikicode table in that (I find it ghastly for entering information). But, besides, I'm really just entering in missing data is all. Most of the additional fields in the sample table I don't have data for either. RadicalBender 01:54, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi RadicalBender, I notice you've been making changes to the F-15 page. One suggestion - when deleting the old-style General Characteristics, and putting it in the new table, could you try to avoid removing information (for example about the number of aircraft deployed). -- Cabalamat 13:26, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

En-er-ee

Heh, thanks for making the song go round in my head. "And every one was an En-er-ee (En-er-ee!), she wouldn't have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam!)..." fabiform | talk 16:11, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Rockstar Games

I've removed the link you added under March 1 for 2004. Aside from the fact that it is debatable whether a new GTA game is worthy of being on the list, the simple announcement of said game is certainly not. :) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 21:58, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Uh, OK, but the link to Grey Tuesday a few days ago is news? :) I mean, I'm not saying this is front-page material but the last game sold 30,000,000 copies and was the top-selling video game of 2003 (right in front of its predecessor at #2). This game is almost immediately the most-anticipated video game of 2004. I mean, it's not "Osama bin Laden found in shallow ditch in Tipperary" type material, but it's still reasonably important (especially when compared with other marginal current events that have made it in in the past). RadicalBender 22:08, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The link to Grey Tuesday should certainly go as well, I just didn't notice it. Like I said, I'm not saying that the game itself isn't worthy of inclusion on the list, but think about what you added. You said, that on March 1, 2004, an important event occurred. That event? The announcement of the next installment in the series. ;) Wait til the game comes out and then put that date in the 'pedia. FYI, the most anticipated game of 2004 is unquestionably Halo 2. Even Unreal Tournament 2004 may be more anticipated than the new GTA. Not that I don't love GTA, I'll be getting it when it comes out. :) As for marginal events having made it in in the past, delete away! I wasn't hunting for it or anything, I just found it by chance when I was doing an update on the Aristide situation. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:22, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Administrator Status

You are now one of the Wikipedia:Administrators. Congrats, please read Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list if you havn't already, and use the sysop powers with care. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 18:18, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Private life

You commented: Never mind on Private life - author blanked page, so I deleted it. That's User:Barbara Shack taking apart the Tony Blair article. I have the feeling she's in over her head there, and I have not seen any discussion on this on the article's talk page. Lupo 15:24, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Protection

Ok, I'll look up your protections page. Rickyrab 20:18, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the revert on John Kerry - but it seems that all he was adding was a link ( Google Directory - John Kerry) ;) By the way, what does "Radical bender" mean, in relation to Nihongo? -S 22:11, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, the anon didn't add the Google directory site (which I would've been fine with), but he added some other general site that leeches a bunch of content from other sites and doesn't otherwise provide any value. Looked like Spam.

As far as where Radical Bender comes from, "Bender" comes from a truncation of my name, "Ben Dyer" and "Radical" came from genius hacker "Radical Edward" from the anime Cowboy Bebop. Hence, "Radical Bender." :) Needed something unique that no one would ever have on any site I would ever visit in the future. RadicalBender 22:15, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A request

RB, I know that Anthony is frustrating in many ways. I have been frustrated by him many times. And his listings at VfD are often so inconceivable that I feel much the same as your comments about his wasting people's time. But saying it in public is something I would like to ask you to avoid. As a result of your comments, Anthony said much the same thing to Muriel: I know, you didn't "make" him do it, but Anthony seems to mirror other people's treatment of him more than most people. I have bent over backwards to be civil to him as much as I can, and as a result I think Anthony is receptive to my comments (both positive and negative). I blasted Anthony for slamming Muriel, and he asked me to say the same to you as you had made the wasting time comment first -- I think he does have a point. If we treat Anthony better than he deserves and he continues to waste time and muck up the works here, banning is a likely possibility -- worst case scenarios occur when good editors enter into flamewars with apparent trolls, which (according to Jimmy Wales, anyway) makes it much tougher to justify banning someone who has admittedly been verbally abused a bit. I understand I am asking for a lot, but I hope you'll take my comments seriously. I think you're an excellent editor (if I didn't vote for you as admin, I meant to....but I'm almost sure I did), and I hope what I have said is worthy of your consideration. Thanks, Jwrosenzweig 17:29, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC) -- Just to be clear, I don't know if Anthony is a troll (I change my mind frequently) or if he is willing and able to become a contributor here. Time will tell us, I think, although with each new incident, trolling does look more likely. I do want to be honest and fair in my assessment of him, hence this postscript.

You are correct, of course. However, I hate to say it (and I haven't said it publicly, but I've been thinking about it a lot these past days), but if Wikipedia is to be destroyed it will be through these sort of actions from people on the "inside" - those who would abuse and manipulate the system and processes internally for their own personal motivations, whatever they may be. It unfortunately takes advantage of the good will of others and, while users like this do eventually disappear or get banned (from previous experience), they sap the strength of honest contributors. I've seen it in a lot of communities (far more than I'd like) before and I hate to see it here. (On a side note, on communities that I run myself, I am very itchy about maintaining the integrity of the community, even if it stunts growth in the short term.)

Anyways, like I said though, you are right and I was hasty for saying so and I'll be careful to watch what I say so early in the morning (I'm usually better at restraining myself once I'm awake)... =_= RadicalBender 17:50, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

World leaders

Your timeline of world leaders (to which I was referred by the Village pump) is simply amazing. Despite the cons you pointed out (most notably the lack of clear cut-off points for the reign of kings, other than those who were actually cut-off), I suggest you go for it. I myself have once attempted to create a graphic Wikipedia timeline (the embarrassing and Wiki-wise illegal File:Realms of the Dwarves of Middle-earth.svg, but yours is infinitely better, and would make a fine addition to Wikipedia's history section.

(Note that even the staunchest support does not imply providing any form or manner of help. :) )

-- Itai 02:27, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I L-O-V-E your timeline of world leaders! Sorry it takes so long to make. But I don't think anyone in the world has ever tried something so important and ambitious. How can I help? --Uncle Ed 17:54, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wow. OK. :) There didn't seem to be much interest when I first mentioned it. Lemme work out a to-do list for this. Well, one thing you may be able to help with is if you know anyone who knows anything about programming bots. I would like to know if it would be possible to use a bot to automatically create this info (or what I would have to do to make that possible). I'd like to explore that avenue first before I try to create something off of Wikipedia. RadicalBender 17:59, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

RadicalBender, Itai Fiat pointed me to your pages, since I discussed graphical timelines with him. I developed a perl script that can generate a graphical timeline from (hopefully) easily understandable commands. The perl script is in beta, the documentation is far from complete, and may stay like that for a while. Your chart is bit more pleasing to the eye, I have to say. But my idea is that people can define a timechart by editing a script which will also be stored on Wikipedia. Thus others can make changes fairly easily.

A html table may be more fitting for your project. Stil::l, if you're interested you can take a preview at [1]

I do not support images yet, but the rendering tool I use (Ploticus) allows them, so it may be added sometime. Also Ploticus supports clickable maps, so I might add that. I haven't tried if these will function in Wikipedia though. Cheers, Erik Zachte 22:27, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Poopy llama

Why did you delete the poopy llama link? I am intrigued... ;-) --Uncle Ed 17:51, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, a "poopy llama doused in molasses" didn't seem terribly encyclopedic to me. Besides, "poopy" seems POV to me... :) RadicalBender 17:53, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

bender: you wrote to me that the human brain does not need its own page. I agree. There is enough about the brain on the main page, but people are tyring to put all kinds of images on there that are out of scale and flipped images of the wrong side of a human brain (lobes are different sizes, so that is misleading). So I thought it mite be a good thing to start a new human brain page. The brain page as it was about five our six weeks ago was okay, but if somebody added something after that and they are not sure it is accurate, i would rather read a simple article that nobody disagrees with. If te writer wants the changes reverted and the article sdeleted, that would be a good thing to delete them. There are a bunch of stubs about brain parts that really could all go to the brain page. There hsould be just one main page for most subjects, like Jimbo dictated on the marijuana talk page.

Well, I didn't say that Human brain doesn't need its own page, just that the typo page didn't need to be created.

As far as the brain and Human brain article, I know nothing of the subject. But, as I've already said, all that I can see is that you've been changing the article entirely and removing links and images and what not. Please, use the discussion pages (click "Discuss this Page") on the left sidebar from those pages to talk about it with others who know about the subject or try to incorporate some of your changes in a NPOV way into the article. Please don't just unilaterally modify the article with your content. Thank you. RadicalBender 20:35, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What are you supposed to do with a "stub"?????????? User:Comrade Riche

ok, now i understand (im new to wikipedia), thanks for helping me!

Glad I could help. Have fun! :) RadicalBender 04:59, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hey RB -- I was going to go to bed, but then I saw the crazy revert war at the Pump. I have to admit I feel responsible for setting off this round of the insanity -- but I'm guessing if it wasn't me reverting that page it would have been someone else reverting another one. Thanks for dealing with it. BCorr ¤ Брайен 05:16, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)

Tim Starling unprotected Village Pump. RickK 05:21, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that someone else did that. I have removed the protection notice. RadicalBender 05:23, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Bertuzzi incident:

I got it figured out now:

1. I added it at current events 2. David Gerard removed it 3. someone at Mediawiki:itn complained that it wasn't on current events 4. you added it to current events 5. I added it again to current events not knowing yours was added 6. You removed my dupe

it's confusing! dave 16:57, Mar 11, 2004 (UTC)

I was just about to reply with that exact chain of events. :) RadicalBender 16:59, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tidied up Jem'Hadar entry as listed on the Cleanup page. Sectionised, rearranged, spell-checked and some rework of language usage. Reasonably respectable now, have removed from Cleanup page, hope this is OK! (I'm a newbie)

Zoney 15:09, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It looks great! Appreciate it. Welcome to Wikipedia. :) RadicalBender 15:10, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)