User talk:Rotem Dan/Archive

Actually, both formulae and formulas can be used as the plural of formula. See [1]. Though I'm with you - I think Latinised plurals should have been scrapped with the Fall of Rome! :) Martin

I've never heard of the formulae form. I think English Wikipedia already has a problem of unfriendliness to non native english speakers (not everyone is familiar with the subtle differences between British, Canadian, American, Australian etc. variations of english and especially Latin derived words!!!). I have a "personal crusade" of making wikipedia more simple and readable for non native speakers.

To keep Wikipedia an International effort and entity, I suggest we'll adopt the most common usage of english vocabulary throughout the world (maybe by a revised International English definition? ;) ). Authors should not assume that the average (international) reader (even fairly or highly educated ones) are familiar with some forms or derivations of Latin, Greek, French etc. In my POV this is a form of euro-american elitism (or simple narrow mindedness). Rotem Dan 11:37 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

On the other hand, people who are taught English as a foreign language often get a comparatively traditional form of English, which would mean formulae rather than formulas. And, if I recall, the Roman empire was quite large... so I don't think it's as straightforward as you think. Martin

Well, this is not true to my country (Maybe in the far-east/europe?). Maybe this is a bad example, I don't know. But from a reader prespective I could not understand what is a "formulae" (maybe a special type of formula? who knows?) until I looked at the dictionary, writing "formulas" would seem more natural as the common plural form..

I will not start an Edit war over this simple matter but I hope I made my points clear..

From wikipedia - International English: "English written for an audience without cultural references". As I see it, use of the traditional "Roman" or "Greek" variations, is a type of cultral reference. Rotem Dan 12:08 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, (English) Wikipedia should be directed toward the International audience. I propose use of a revised definition of International English as the language of use in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia articles should not assume prior knowledge of the subject of the article, and if it does, it should give a clear reference for background (In a wikified form). I have observed an extensive amount of articles in wikipedia that does not follow this rule.

Your points are interesting and they warrant further discussion. I suppose wikipedia-l and wikien-l mailing lists are for discussion about fundamental principles of the project. Please consider posting your views to the mailing lists.
Kpjas 12:27 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

I'm rather new to Wikipedia (2-3 weeks), If you think my points are interesting you can post them yourself. I will subscribe to the mailing list (and hopefully understand how to use it...) Rotem Dan 15:30 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Hi there. When you find a copyright violation, please paste in the warning text instead of just blanking the page. You'll find it (and other neat stuff) on Wikipedia:Boilerplate text.

On the matter of articles being too complex for "ordinary" readers to understand, there is a policy similar to that at Wikipedia:Establish context. I think there's something more specific too... but I'm not sure where! ;-) -- Tarquin 19:35 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, I wondered where that "Boilerplate" thing came from so quickly, I will use that next time, thanks for stopping by! ;-) Rotem Dan 19:46 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I will try to edit the meta-wikipedia policies/guidelines in accurdance with the points I raised on the mailing list, it will probably be tweaked back and forth by other users anyway (Twikified? :) ) Rotem Dan 19:53 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

It should be notes that articles being too complicated for a layman to understand is a problem not just on wikipedia, but everywhere and everyplace. If you see an article that you have difficulty understanding either (a) fix it or (b) drop a note on the relevant talk page, explaining what you found unclear. Sooner or later someone will pop by and solve the problem... Martin

Hi Rotem,

Thanks for the warm welcome! As to your offer - better find someone from Korea or Paraguay :) I'm afraid I cannot pretend to an NPOV where I do not have one: it's literally impossible to find anyone standing to my left on the Israeli (or any other) political map. No offense, but maybe you would do good to re-examine your automatic assumptions about the political opinions of Israelis... :) Other than that, great to be on board!

Dash,

User:Uri

Well, I believe I'm suffering from the same problem you've mentioned about yourself. For example i'm not editing the Apartheid article, even though the "Alleged apartheid in israel" seems to be written by a pro-palestinian writer. I agree with some of the points mentioned in the article.. so I guess I'm not POV'd enough... :) -- Rotem Dan 21:14 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

RD -- thanks for your suggestion to look at software piracy (I also put software piracy on the List of legal topics so I and other legal eagles can monitor it). As far as the WikiMoney is concerned, thanks for the heads up I haven't quite decided if the whole concept of Wikipedia:WikiMoney is a good idea so I an reserving my rights to use or accept them unless I can use them at the Wikipedia:Candy Store. Alex756

No problem, that was really important to me, earlier versions of the article had hillariously POV'd rantings, as I recall one of them was "Draconian Laws" :) -- Rotem Dan 18:35 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hello, just for your information, \pmod{n} produces (mod n) in TeX, it means that the 'mod' is not italicised which I think is the way most books display it. I changed it in the Euler pseudoprime article but thought it would probably be more efficient to inform you of this than to follow you around all day! Regards -- Ams80 16:47 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed your change, also it seems that \varphi (for euler totient function), isn't documented on the TeX help article. I thought that article was complete.. --Rotem Dan 16:53 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

I think that it's quite complete as far as commonly used symbols go. In LaTeX there are thousnads of symbols, there's an ~80 page document at [2] full of symbols. I'm not sure of exactly how Wikipedia's TeX markup works but I guess that in general, previewing will tell us if a particular symbol is supported. I think the general rule is that if you can imagine a mathematical symbol then there's a (La)TeX command for it, their coverage is truly enormous. -- Ams80

Thanks for the info, I'll check that out. --Rotem Dan 18:48 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for putting J. Perry's ego where it belongs. --Erzengel 13:18 15 May 2003 (UTC)

No problem, Wikipedia isn't really a "fertile ground" for cranks and cooks, their changes are reverted immediatley. They simply don't get the attention they want, and (hopefully) leave. --Rotem Dan 13:48 15 May 2003 (UTC)

LOL I don't care, even if I go bankrupt ;), I just want this to be the best source on the web for this sort of material, it is currently at the 6th position at google for "Logical fallacy". After a lot of fallacies will be added I think they should be categorized a bit more.. with the review of an expert this can possibly be "brilliant prose" someday :) --Rotem Dan 18:34 15 May 2003 (UTC)

It didn't provide any useful information and looked terrible on Wikipedia. I thought no one would notice because we stopped taking about it... LittleDan

Re: Cookbook articles - I see your point. I reverted my changes after I saw that a substantial number of other recipe articles exist. I can foresee them eventually getting out of hand (since there are millions of recipes out there), but when that happens I suppose we can always create WikiCookbook :) -- Wapcaplet 13:32 19 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi RD. Sounds sensible to me. Of course, this is pretty much what we do mentally anyway. I see an edit entry on Recent Changes with a familar name beside it and I flick straight past. (Unless it's one I want to work on, of course.) But the strange names and the anons, yes indeed. The only danger is that if someone snuck under your guard (by making decent edits for a while till you added them to your trusted user list) they could do quite a lot of harm. Cheers -- Tannin

Makes sense to me. You could bring it up on the list. My feeling is that a more urgent task, however, is to institute some sort of probation scheme, such that users have to be registered for a certain length of time and make a certain number of edits before they need such a cumbersome process to block them. I'll bring this up on the list myself (though it's by no meand a new idea.) Tannin

Michael is banned. It doesn't matter what user id he uses, he is not supposed to be posting here. Besides the fact that most of the time, his English is virtually unintelligble (and he's supposedly an American, so it isn't an attack on a nonnative speaker), half the time the information he puts into articles is absolutely wrong. When people have questioned him about the validity of his entries, he has either gone off into a rant and reverted their corrections, or he has made threats (once in my case, he said he was going to rape me and kill me.) -- Zoe

Maybe he needs a new site -- Michaelwikifiction.com

---

Hi,

Thanks for your encouraging comment; maybe I should write something one of these days. It is just that I am a student of biology and that philosophy and history are more like a hobby to me. But I like to learn about those and ask questions. Sjoerd de Vries

Hi. Re: Wikipedia:Awareness statistics, I count 8 google answers for May 2003. Am I missing something? Koyaanis Qatsi

Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees, so I thought it was more likely my mistake. Koyaanis Qatsi

Hi. Do you really feel it's necessary to write "a billionth (english)"? This is the English-language Wikipedia. Evercat 14:17 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There must be loads of occurences of billion or billionth in the Wikipedia. I don't think it's practical to specify what it means each and every time. Evercat 14:25 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Although this is the English-language Wikipedia, this confusion over the meaning of 'billion' is a problem between different English languages, namely American and traditional British. In fact, when I read "a billionth (english)", I interpret that as meaning an AMERICAN "trillion", not an American billion. It's true that the American standard on this is fast becoming the accepted standard around the world, so I think it's best to assume the American standard is the one being used, unless stated otherwise. That said, if someone is quoting another source, and they use the world "billion", when what they really mean is the American "trillion", then definitely a side comment in brackets "[British, 10^12]" is not only justified but probably necessary. JMO. Revolver

Eventually I changed it to "billionth (1/10⁹)", see User talk:Evercat -- Rotem Dan 10:28 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

RD -- about your comments on centering equations and mathematical expressions, I have two points. One, yes, this is a very common convention is mathematics. Separating out mathematical symbolic expressions from text is done not just because the expressions might be too long or cumbersome for inclusion in the text proper, but even a very short and concise expression might be separated off, because doing so draws attention to it and makes it visually clear that it is an important part of an argument or proof. So, the reason could be purely conceptual. Second, at this stage of the evolution of mathematical write-up on Wikipedia, I think I'd be more inclined to separate off expressions, for the simple reason that many expressions are just more visually pleasing and less cumbersome when written in math mode than trying to write them out as text. Since TeX sticks out from text, and since as of right now there is no way to write actual TeX as text proper (i.e. not as a "displayed" equation or expression), separating off expressions from the text in math mode often seems the best option. Again, JMO. Revoler

Me again. I was reading your comment again, I think I misinterpreted it. I thought you were talking about separating expressions off from text, when I think you really meant centering those expressions in terms of the width of the display. If I finally got what you meant correctly, then the same comments still hold. Centering expressions is visually easier to read. I am surprised to find that you said there is a discussion on this topic. Centering expressions which are separated from the text is a common convention in mathematical typesetting, except for cases where there is a particular reason not to do so. To verify this, you only need to pick up several math books and flip through them. The cases not to -- if there is a list of items, for instance, these might not be centered. Also, strings of equations and/or inequalities are often broken down and arranged so that the = or =< line up. This is done automatically by LaTeX, I believe. (I'm not positive, because I use Scientific Works, which doesn't use TeX code.) But to not center expressions in general is definitely to go against convention. Revolver

--- Hallo Rotem Dan! thank you for your help with the flag. Uwe Kils 16:18 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I noticed you had something similar to Wikipedia:Standard user greeting at User:Rotem Dan/Useful templates for messages. Thought you might be interested. MB 19:43 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

(I went ahead and blocked 24.130.213.242 for the time being; I'll unblock it when he switches to a different IP. Hephaestos 19:40 7 Jun 2003 (UTC))

About the Knowledge article: Itis now clear to me that EOfT is an idiot. He literally is unable to understand what the topic of the article is about, despite both of our attempts to discuss things with him. I am not sure of how to deal with him. After reading his latest incoherent comments, I despair of any coherent dialogue with him. He plainly knows nothing about the topic, or about science, or even classical philosophy. (But I bet he knows a lot about leftist politics that happen to use philosophical terms in odd ways!) At the moment, I intend to ignore his wordplay, and will try and fix whatever damage he does to the Wikipedia. Also, I appreciate the time and work you have been putting into this article. Good work! RK 13:52 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Can you please review RK's recent change in knowledge? it seems POV to me: wrote something like: "Knowledge gained by observation was ignored or rejected by many classical religious authorities." while this may be true statement, it is POV, because he accusing "religion" in general at something at stating it as a fact. Some other changes look misleading or even degrading. Thanks (I am sure he has good intent, but Wikipedia has a strict NPOV policy) -- Rotem Dan 14:02 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- I have looked at it. He seems to be trying to take a philisophical viewpoint although I am not familiar enough to know how much he is up to date with current academic practice. My past experience with RK is so negative that I hesitate to continue to actively edit the article. He generally insists on his way. In any event I am at a severe disadvantage as my contributions to the article are original work and can easily be criticized on that basis. For example the statement, "Knowledge is belief about reality". Self-evident and true but since it is my own original formulation cannot (so far as I know) be supported by an authoritative reference. Fred Bauder 10:26 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Rotem Dan, I have noticed that you removed a sentence in discrete mathematics article:

In fact, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) amended the guideline so that a discrete methematics course is required.

It may be improved but I don't see why it is irelevant. My point is that discrete math has become one of important topics in cs education recently. What's wrong? -- Taku 20:23 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Why did you replace a GNU FDL image of a specific panda with one an image of an unknown panda with uncertain public domain status? The pose of the new panda is also confusing and does not illustrate how these animals look as well as the Tim's image (fuzziness and all - it wasn't that bad, BTW). At the very least please do not delete the references to other images in articles - they can have more than one. See American Bison for an example. --mav

Perhaps you can explain the whole Inherently funny word thing to me. What exactly is funny (inherently or otherwise) about the word "tapioca" without context? If I ask an assistant in a shop if they have any "tapioca" are you saying they will just burst out laughing? CGS 13:09 24 Jun 2003 (UTC).

One would think the sheer futility of it all would get to him eventually. :)
Hephaestos 23:20 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I have blocked 24.130.213.242 (ie Michael). Because wiki is so annoyingly slow right now I can only use I Explorer (which I hate!). Because it cuts off the ends of any page longer than 32K I cannot leave a message saying he has been blocked on the relevant vandalism on progress page, without chopping off the final 2K from the page. Can you leave a message informing people that he has been blocked? Thanks in anticipation. FearÉIREANN 23:46 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I was a bit surprised when I found what happened to a Luna link, which is why I knew right away that that linking wasn't right. ;) At least I can fall back on those four wonderful words, "I didn't do it". -- John Owens 12:12 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The Wikipedia articles on the laws of con-contradiction are not as clear as they could be. Would you mind taking a whack at our articles on Law of excluded middle and Law of non-contradiction? In particular, how could we give an example showing how the these are similar, and how they are diferent? Functionally, when are they practically identical? What examples can best show us when differences between these laws arise? RK 20:17 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I thought you might be interested in the opinion poll going on now at Talk:Clitoris. MB 18:10 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Rotem,

Message for you on hebrew wiki. --Aarrrggghhh 07:07 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

WikiMoney

Hi,

You are currently listed as "inactive" with ψ0 at the Wikimoney Wikibank, upon no objection you will be removed from the list entirely in 7 days.

Please reply on my talk page if you have any objection.

WulfTheSaxon
04:31, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Removed --Wulf 18:14, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Israeli Wikipedians

You were listed on the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Israel page as living in or being associated with Israel. As part of the Wikipedia:User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, please visit Category:Israeli Wikipedians for instructions. —Simetrical (talk) 19:00, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]