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Revision as of 23:26, 26 January 2008

Welcome!

Hello, Morgan Wright, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  RJFJR 18:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Jimmy Cavallo article

please do not delete due to the anti-plagiarism laws or copyright infringement laws. I am the author of the essay this was pasted from, and in fact I am the author of the entire website www.hyzercreek.com/hoyhoy which is my website and domain. I am donating this essay to Misplaced Pages. Citations verifying the truthfullness of information in this essay will all come back to me, since I wrote the liner notes for 3 of the 4 Jimmy Cavallo CD's that have been issued in the past 10 years, and Jimmy himself has read them, of course, and verified all information himself before these CD's were issued.

Hello - What you're going to need to do to make sure your article isn't deleted is add a statement to the work on your website saying that you release the content of this article under the terms of the GFDL, which goes beyond simply allowing Misplaced Pages the right to use the work. Please see WP:CV and WP:GFDL. Such a statement would likely include "I hereby release the contents of this article under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License." Once that is there you should be good to go, however keep in mind that your work will likely be edited, possibly mercilessly, to fit the tone of similar biographical articles on Misplaced Pages. Feel free to be a part of that process, and good luck! - skrshawk ( Talk | Contribs ) 18:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok that's a good idea. It's such a good idea, I beat you to it. Go to www.hoyhoy.com/cavallo.htm and see the note I just added at the very bottom, giving permission for Wiki to use the text. Why not, everybody else has (it's the liner notes for 2 different CD's and part of a third one, nobody paid me they just said thank you)Morgan Wright 18:48, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The website address has been changed to www.hyzercreek.com/hoyhoy/cavallo.htm

Morgan Wright 09:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Dog contributions

G'day Morgan. Your contributions to the Dog article are... thought-provoking. Unfortunately, unless you can back them up with appropriate citations (provide reputable sources), they are -- at best -- speculative. Gordon | Talk, 5 October 2006 @12:18 UTC

Broncs and such

Hi Morgan, Didn't mean to be snarky about the bronc versus bronco thing. (I am actually on vacation in the land "down under" as we speak)...my comments about usage were not intended to argue that one form or another is the "right" informal term, but rather to explain the regional dialect as a term of art. "Bronco" is archaic in the actual west where the term "bronc" is most frequently used. Anyone saying "bronco" in the American west labels themselves immediately as a "dude," just like people look at me like I am an idiot here in your country for saying words like "flashlight" instead of "torch"! <smile> And yes, we know about introduced species, we have lovely fish called Carp that destroy the habitat of Trout, we have nasty weeds that chopke out native species. Yes, the damage introduced species can do is real problem, isn't it? Your country is beautiful and it is sad that people sometimes mess things up. Oh, FYI Remember to sign your posts with the four tildes (~) so that we can link more easily to your talk page. Montanabw 23:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Midwest Accent

Hi, and thanks for you interest in the subject! Linguists reject the idea of a "General American" accent, because it can be applied to almost any rhotic accent without noticeable regional influences, and unfortunately the General American accent doesn't reflect that. I've been meaning to re-write the article, but I haven't really had the time. About your assertion that speakers from the rural Northeast have the same accent as Midwesterners: that isn't really true. Upstate New York has undergone the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, so the accent found in that region is similar to that found in Northern Ohio, Michigan, Northern Illinois, and parts of Wisconsin, but the "General American" article isn't about that region. Western PA has its own accent, centered around Pittsburgh, and Eastern PA is part of the Mid-Atlantic dialect region. Western New England alternately shows signs of the Northern Cities Shift and the Boston or New York City accents, depending on geography. You may be interested in looking at the Teslur Project or the Phonological Atlas of North America (here's chapter eleven, which has a lot of good maps, although it's rather technical .) Concerning the spread of the dialect, you need to provide sources for the inclusion of the information, rather than have me provide sources for its exclusion. Dialects and accents are dynamic; for example, the accent of New York City was traditionally rhotic, but the influence of New Englanders moving into the city made it non-rhotic. The Boston accent underwent the bath-trap split, and is now moving away from it, through the influence of television, and the Northern Cities Shift is relatively recent, having been going on for about forty of fifty years. It doesn't make sense to say that a Northeastern accent went to Iowa and has remained unchanged for 100 or 150 years. Still, it's a fascinating subject, isn't it?

Cordially, Confiteordeo 11:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I disagree that New Englanders moved into New York City and changed the accent to non-rhotic. Lots of people moved into New York City...Jews, Italians, and Irish being the biggest. I think New Englanders might be around # 178 on the list of groups moving to NYC, and the New Engand -ar is so different from the NYC -ar that we can forget the whole theory. Also the Northern Cities accent shift is food for a nice academic paper (that's what scholars do, right?) but incorrectly implies that northern cities like Syracuse, Utica, or Albany did something or other to change the accent from the rural areas, when the truth is that the rural accent around Syracuse, Utica or Albany is the same as that in the cities. People move back and forth all the time. You have to have a big city like NYC or Boston to have enough isolation to create a new accent. There is no variation in accent anywhere from eastern upstate NY (Albany), whether city, rural, or whatever, to Syracuse, because people move around too much and there is no isolation. The first change going west happens in Rochester, where o changes to a. So, "doctor" becomes "dactor," "contact" lenses becomes "cantact" lenses. I'm an optometrist, a dactor who fits cantacts whenever I'm in Rachester. Ha ha. I tell patients to turn their hat around and they turn their head around. e becomes a, so "head" sounds like "hat." I ask them, how do you say "head" and they say "heead." Buffalo gets worse, it has a Midwest accent, by everybody's opinion, and many Buffalo people think it's part of the Midwest. I think you are from Ohio, that's probably just like Buffalo. Believe it!Morgan Wright 16:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

With a few exceptions (like the NCS, which has been extensively studied,) it can be hard to pin down exactly how or why pronunciation changes occur. I've also heard that NYC speech became non-rhotic in the same way that Boston speech did; that is to say, the upper classes mimicked the non-rhoticity of London English (a phenomenon that happened at least a century after the founding of the colonies,) and this change eventually moved its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Albany hasn't undergone the NCS, but Utica, Syracuse, and their surrounding areas are included in the Phonological Atlas' isogloss of the shift, which goes as far east as Herkimer, Otsego, Delaware, and parts of Sullivan counties. However, even in Albany, /ʌ/ is more backed than /ɑ/, and /æ/ is being fronted, which is the first step of the shift. Regardless, these areas do not share the Omaha-Iowa-Quad Cities accent, which is really what is incorrectly referred to as "General American." I removed your assertion that the "GA" accent came from rural areas of the NE because it seems like original research, and the original version of the section made no claim about the origins of the accent. Since such things are so hard to pin-down, it's better not to say anything about it unless you have a really good source. I also added the citation needed tag because I don't believe that newscasters are specifically trained to speak "Standard Midwestern," which is another misleading term. Although I haven't done any research on it, it seems that there's quite a bit of dialectical variety on CNN and the other major networks. That is, many "standard" Northern accents are represented, not just "Standard Midwestern." Please let me know what you think of the current version of the article. Confiteordeo 18:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

One of the things that bugs me about the writers who claim that the Midwest accent is the standard American accent is their fishbowl view. They view their own accent as the correct one. What do you think somebody from Georgia or Texas would think of that? Is this another "to the victor goes the spoils" from the Civil War? The north gets to have the "correct" accent? The population of southern speakers is barely a minority, I'd hate to be from Louisiana and hear some egomaniac from Iowa talk about his accent being the right one. It's like the woman who says the toilet seat should be down, even though 50% of the population uses it the other way, she thinks her way is the right way. Newscasters generally speak with a northern accent, I can attest to that, but they come from all over, and how many of them are deliberately trained to speak like a Midwesterner? I can't imagine such a thing. Would a newscaster from Albany NY or Seattle, or LA, or Connecticut, where people all have basically the standarn northern accent, need to change to some sort of cornfield Nebraska twang? Hell no. The Midwestern accent is not really typical anyway, I lived in Michigan for a year and people have an unusual accent there, not the typical newscaster accent. They say everything is "the bomb," but they pronounce bomb as if it were spelled "bahm." Their accent may be the bahm, but is NOT the standard way to pronounce things in journalism. I would say that of all the places in the USA that have the most neutral speach, that journalists would try to emulate, this region where I live beats out the Midwest for neutrality. Eastern upstate NY, from Poughkeepsie to Syracuse. Also Connecticut, they have no trace of the New England weirdness that you see in Vermont or Maine, or most of Mass. And northwestern Mass has the Vermont accent. Very little of Mass is free of the weird New England thing. Worchester, forget it...very thick there. Probably the only accent-free part of Mass. is around Springfield, or southwestern Mass in general. That's like Connecticut, which is neutral. Unless you count eastern Connecticut, which is too close to Rhode Island, where everybody talks like Elmer Fudd. Pwovidence, Wode Iwand. So, the only neutral parts of New England are Central and Western Connecticut, and southwestern Mass. Forget Maine, they have the thickest accent of all. The Vermont accent is only found among the older people. Young kids in Vermont are not carrying this on at all. The old timers with their "Pepperidge Faam Remembas" accent with all the "ayaah," well that was a Swedish accent and the grandchildren of the Swedes don't talk that way anymore. Not at all. As for the NYC accent, that only goes as far north as Peekskill unless you count all the transplanted NYC folks, especially after September 11, who moved upstate by the millions lately. As far north as Poughkeepsie, there are a good number of NYC folks that moved up due to 9/11, but the native Poughkeepsie people have the basic American accent, and the children of the NYC folks lose their accent in one generation. North or west of Albany, there are very few NYC transplants and no accent at all, except for the rednecks. And what can you do about the rednecks? Morgan Wright 04:29, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Your recent edits to Albinism

Thanks for your interest in this article and efforts to improve it, but many of your changes have had to be reverted because there are no references cited to back them up. Please do not make factual changes to science articles without citations to reliable sources. See this talk page topic for a detailed explanation of the specific reverts. PS: The other editors of that article are well aware that the section in question is already lacking sources for much of its information, but adding unverified claims only worsens the situation; and while the article is under heavy development, especially with regard to source citations, as you can see it is from the article history, removing material that is in the process of being researched, as you did in several cases, is not helpful either. — SMcCandlish ツ 02:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

NB: I've responded at length to your reply on my Talk page. Super-short version: No disrespect intended; it's not about whether you are qualified or not, but rather about policy/process here. Replacing one unsourced thing with another unsourced thing is almost certain to get reverted by someone, because the original is presumed under WP:AGF to be valid, while WP:OR#Citing oneself (and see also footnote 1 on that page for further rationale) prevents us simply taking your word for the validity of your unsourced changes just because you happen to be a doctor in a relevant field and "know you are right". Misplaced Pages just doesn't work that way. Anyway, please see the longer reply. Your input would be actually genuinely valued on the article, it just needs to be sourced like everyone else's. No free pass for a medical degree.  :-) — SMcCandlish ツ 08:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

PS: See also your #Midwest Accent and #Dog contributions threads above; three of the five (not counting the generic intro) topics on your talk page are saying the same thing to you: Please cite your sources, or expect reversions. It doesn't matter how much you think you know, or genuinely do, know about a topic, or what qualifications you have — that experience is invisible to the rest of the world in the articles you edit, which is why we have WP:V and WP:RS (and WP:N for that matter, which is really largely about source citations).  :-) — SMcCandlish ツ 09:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Albinism#Section tagged-to-heck with "citation needed" specifics for a (long!) reply that I think will be consensus-building. (Short version is: Delete the unsourced stuff you are sure is bunk, but if your new additions can't be sourced "soon-ish" they'll probably get removed, too, on the same grounds. The article needs to be sourced or it's simply not trustable by anyone, since they can't be sure who edited/wrote what or on what basis.  :-)

PS: Somewhere in there you said something to the effect of "the original author of this article should..." Just FYI, for an article of this scope there really isn't (in any relevant way) any such thing as "the original author", as any non-trivial article may have been edited many hundreds, possible several thousand, times by hundreds (or more) editors, and the origial article text is long, long gone. What's way more relevant is the present active editorship (which 6 months from now will probably be radically different, and today is very different than it was 6 months ago.) "Original authors" are pretty much meaningless in Misplaced Pages unless the article is so insignificant that the original drafter remains the only major editor of it for a long time.

— SMcCandlish ツ 12:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I waited long enough for citations and deleted. Nobody cited. Astigmatism is an optical disorder caused by aspherical curviture(s) of the cornea and/or anterior lens surface and/or posterior lens surface. None of this has anyhting to do with albinism. Citations can be found in the most rudimentary reference books, try Britannica for children or Current Science, 6th grade editions. The same can be said for hyperopia and myopia. These have nothing to do with albinism, so I 86'ed them too.Morgan Wright 02:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Response to your trash talk

I did not trash the Harry Gibson article. I have attempted to bring it up to encyclopedic standards. Perhaps you should familarize yourself with Misplaced Pages guidlines, such as Misplaced Pages:Citing sources and The five pillars of Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages isn't just for readers who are familiar with a topic already, otherwise nobody would learn anything by reading it. Misplaced Pages is for presenting verified facts backed up by reliable sources. Also, please be careful to write your comments on talk pages, not editors' user pages. Spylab 13:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Morgan, can I ask you to tone down your angry comments on Spylab's talk page? Let's keep WP:CIV and WP:NPA in mind, ok? —Viriditas | Talk 04:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• Morgan, judging by your comments on my talk page, you do not understand what Misplaced Pages is about, and you definitely do not understand what it means to provide a reference. Please read Misplaced Pages:Citing sources and The five pillars of Misplaced Pages so you comply with Misplaced Pages guidelines.Spylab 09:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• In response to your threat of "open war" on my talk page, I again suggest you read the five pillars of Misplaced Pages, especially http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Etiquette. Keep in mind that if you cross certain lines you can be reported to an administrator and have your account blocked from Misplaced Pages. Spylab 11:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"Bronx Cheer"

In regards to your additions to the "Bronx Cheer" section of Blowing a raspberry, I'm not sure that the information pertaining specifically to Yankee Stadium, or Yankee fans is necessary or beneficial to the article. In my opinion leaving the more general information in this section is more helpful. Skylerb 17:22, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

So how 'bout we shorten it up a little instead of just blowing the whole thing outta the water, hmm? And the reference to Ice Hockey was idiotic so I deleted it. And the other writer's reference to when a Bronx Cheer is used is also idiotic, about the pitcher and outs and base runners, idiotic, so it got the can as well. Who do they let on this thing to edit? They let any old body edit this thing??Morgan Wright 14:24, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Your recent edits to Hippie

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. However, adding content without citing a reliable source is not consistent with our policy of verifiability. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. —Viriditas | Talk 13:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please do not add content without citing reliable sources. Before making potentially controversial edits, it is recommended that you discuss them first on the article's talk page. Thank you. —Viriditas | Talk 13:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much. "Welcome to Misplaced Pages," you say. Like I'm new here. "Our encyclopedia" you says, like it's yours. How is it yours? You go around deleting and destroying, and never contributing. Yeah, we need people who do that.Morgan Wright 00:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've made 450 edits to Hippie, mostly involving adding new material, adding new references, and improving the article. What have you done? —Viriditas | Talk 02:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I have seen your edits. I went back and checked them 100 and 200 posts back. Almost all your edits were to delete other peoples work. Why are you so hooked on this article, when you never were a hippie yourself. Why don't you leave it up to the people who actually know something? (Oh yeah, knowing something about a topic is called "original research" and can't be used. How nice)Morgan Wright 02:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The majority of my 450 edtis were spent adding new material, new references, new sections, new formatting, and greatly improving the article. When you've done the same thing, you will be free to criticize me. —Viriditas | Talk 03:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Did you just say 450 edits? So basically, you are the author of the whole article then. Do you see why people feel you have commandeered the article? 450 edits is more than just an edit, it's sabotage. You think the article belongs to you.Morgan Wright 08:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Please pay close attention to WP:NPA. Your latest edits to Talk:Hippie show that you understand the concept, as you have made some very constructive comments. —Viriditas | Talk

Misplaced Pages stress

One thing I find helps with conflicts here on Misplaced Pages is to approach them slowly. Try limiting yourself to 1 edit per day on pages like Talk:Hippie. This allows time for other editors to pass by and participate as well as lowering the stress level for all involved. I happen not to believe that editing wikipedia is a waste of anyone's time, as it plays such a visible role in our modern information landscape. Why not try a different article for a few months and return to Hippie 3-6 months down the road. In any case, thanks for your efforts with the project. ∴ here…♠ 03:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Sock Puppet

By his own admission, Viriditas says he edited the article 450 times, and most of the 450, he claims, were content additions rather than deletions or edits. I searched the history of the article going back 500 posts at a time (and after scaning thousands of edits I only got back as far as early 2006, it's amazing how many edits there are). Anyway, this is well before the first edits by Viriditas, and I counted only a fraction of the 450 he claims, and almost all of them are deletions and minor edits, perhaps only a handful of actual content additions. So if he indeed did make 450 edits with content additions, then he must have done so under several sock puppets because even if you add up the major contributors, you'd have to add several of them together to come up with 450 edits that contained actual content rather than trivial changes, since the time that Viriditas zeroed in on this article. If edits are by concensus, the quickest way to get concensus is to create sock puppets. As for actually PROVING that he has sock puppets, you know as well as everybody else that's it's impossible to do this, people can get many email addresses easily at yahoo, hotmail, etc and use many different IP addresses. The days are over where you can just check IP's to see who is posting. My own computer has wifi and there are about 8 people in my building with wireless modems that I can access the web with, all with different IP addresses, and after that I know of many proxy servers I can use. If I were obsessed with commmandeering an article and needed to make sock puppets, I could, but I sure wouldn't waste my time. Viriditas needs to step aside from hippie and let others edit it. He's done more than enough, just read the talk page for all the complaintsMorgan Wright 16:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Sock puppets can be proven to some extent; that is why we have Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser. Please see WP:TOOL#Edit_counters to see all 450 (there's more than that of course, but that is what the edit counter lists as current because the primary edit counter is lagging behind at 126 days, 7 hours as of this edit) of my edits to Hippie. —Viriditas | Talk 03:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Chrysler Building

Hello Morgan,

I've checked out the source from Emporis about Chrysler in 3rd position and added a source; as we cannot use Misplaced Pages itself and its articles as source. I've also clean up the clarity of language so that it flows neatly with the "...The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture..." with the rest of your own text. Please also note that the article is currently under the process of GA nomination, so whatever is written has to have an external, reliable source or citation, or those GA guys will start questioning whatever new that is added... (Those GA guys seem to have an eye of precise watch of content accuracy with the references, so be careful...)

Compliments of the Season! :) Someformofhuman Speak now! 17:30, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Quote:...Also I reworded your writing because my English is very good

Wow, it’s good to see someone in that professional level like you! I didn't know about that! Have you ever written a few books before? I'm currently a freelance and script writer/actor in a local newspaper firm and organized many writers' conferences in Asia.

Well in regards to the topic, I hope the matter is settled, and, if applicable or in any extent an announcement from CTBUH about the tallness ranking of the three buildings, I’ll gladly cite the announcement as valid source.

Someformofhuman Speak now! 08:51, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah that's nice, but I actually speak English. Your English is very good as a second language. My second language is BS which I also speak well Morgan Wright (talk) 12:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Well actually, since Singapore is a multicultural society, English is our official language. I've actually learnt four languages but I don't usually express them. :) Oh yeah and, sorry for the lateness of my reply. Someformofhuman Speak now! 13:50, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, your English is very good for a 4th language. Morgan Wright (talk) 01:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

And what are you trying to prove? Someformofhuman Speak now! 09:04, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:3RR

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Hippie. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. --Veritas (talk) 23:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

You obviously are a sock puppet for Viriditas. I find you to be a thorougly loathsome individual, both you and your other sock. Morgan Wright (talk) 23:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)