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If I left a message on your talk page, then I will be watching it for a while. So you can simply reply there, and the discussion will be in one place. Similarly, when an experienced editor comments here I will usually respond here.

Zonengrenze

Hi Hans, I noticed your comment about "Zonengrenze" being an uncommon term for the inner German border. Actually, it appears to have been the principal term used on BGS border signs prior to the Ostpolitik era (see for an example). The "Zonengrenze" border signs were subsequently replaced with signs referring to the "Grenze", though it seems that not all were replaced. Anthony Bailey says (in Along the edge of the forest: an Iron Curtain journey) that even by the 1980s "roughly one sign in ten" still used the term. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, initially it was a standard term in the West. West Germany officially referred to East Germany as the "East Zone", "Soviet Zone". Informally, "the Zone" was commonly used. This was of course offensive to officials on the other side (who saw East Germany as a separate sovereign state, not a zone of a Germany-to-be-united), and therefore usage by the West German state, media and population slowly changed via "the so-called GDR" and "the 'GDR'" to "the GDR". At the time when I started reading newspapers only some right-wing newspapers still used the inverted commas, and I only remember hearing "the so-called GDR" or "the zone" from actors who played a particularly right-wing person on television.

The term appears later, so it should be mentioned somewhere. But I think in its current position it has too much weight. More importantly, it's potentially misleading to readers who might think that Germans in general referred to the border in this way, over most of the period in question. I tried to address this with only a minimal addition, to avoid giving the word even more weight. Hans Adler 00:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I changed the wording to "initially also Zonengrenze" to indicate that this was an early, limited-duration usage. Does that sound right to you? -- ChrisO (talk) 08:22, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's perfect as it indicates the temporal restriction and hints at the geographical restriction. Hans Adler 12:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Comparison of MD and DO in the United States

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Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Civility

Please don't label other editors as 'pedants' or mock them for their interests. Conflicts happen around content from time to time, but there is no need to resort to name calling or being rude. We all have to try to get along here despite having different ideas. In future please restrict your comments to the article content rather than the editors. MRSC (talk) 06:38, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest that you refrain from issuing such admonishments until your reading age is sufficiently advanced to be able to distinguish between "You're a pedant!" and "Not every user of the English language is a pedant with an inflated interest in things like stamp collecting or arcane details of legal definitions ...". There's no shame in being uneducated, but best not to flaunt it. --Malleus Fatuorum 07:17, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thinly veiled insults are still insults. MRSC (talk) 08:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Are you accusing me of having engaged in a thinly veiled insult? If so, proof please. Hans Adler 12:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

That's some pretty thin skin there. If Jza84 himself is similarly thin-skinned (which I doubt) I would appreciate it if he could say so himself. I would have felt justified to use much stronger language than I did. After all, he attacked another editor with the words "hat's a POV interpretation, not grounded in fact", based on nothing but a canard (that what is the first definition of "city" in many dictionaries is not valid in the UK) that was debunked in an earlier thread in which he participated (although not as actively as I remembered). See the second thread in Talk:Leeds/Archive /March 2008.

BTW, I did not mean to mock anyone's interests. I am very strongly interested in such things myself, e.g. see "my" article Mundat Forest. The underlying problem is not the interest in a topic but the failure to realise that the internal conventions of enthusiasts for a topic don't invalidate the more general conventions such as those described in dictionaries. It's absurd to deny that regardless of its legal status a huge settlement is commonly called a "city". And "pedant" is a technical term referring precisely to people engaging in this kind of absurdity. Hans Adler 12:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

fyi

Note that one of the editors who you referred to in your June AN/I, 龗, has just been blocked as a sock.--Epeefleche (talk) 05:31, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

AN actually, not AN/I, and he didn't play an important role. But thanks anyway. Hans Adler 08:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Whoops ... sorry. Understood. Just thought it might interest you (as I don't know the relations of all in that issue).--Epeefleche (talk) 08:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Chzz was never involved in the homeopathy situation otherwise. I guess he was just trying to score a quick point for his sock by participating in the mob against a banworthy editor. Hans Adler 09:02, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

WT:NOR, quotation marks, link

Hi! In your recent message at WT:NOR, could you check it over to see if the quotation marks are correct? For instance, the sentence re exception seems to be your comment, rather than part of the quote. And could you give a link to where the quote came from? Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:09, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

To quote the first sentence from Quotation: "Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes and speech marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase, or a word."

What makes you think that my WT:NOR passage in quotation marks (which I thought I sufficiently framed as made up on the spot by introducing it with the words "Here is a quick example...") was a quotation rather than (fictional) speech? This is not the first time someone has misunderstood me in this way, so I am genuinely curious. Maybe this use of quotation marks is dying out in the US or somewhere? I am sure it's still alive in my cultural sphere. I would have thought that the explicit reference to the proposal was a dead give-away that this was not a real-life example. Hans Adler 16:29, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that it was a fictional example, i.e. one that you made up, rather than one that appeared in a source. However, even as a fictional example, it's not clear what parts are the fictional example and what parts are your comments on the fictional example, because the quotation marks may be misplaced. I hope this is useful feedback. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:13, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The stuff in quotation marks is the typical wikilawyering by people who try to get their personal opinions into an article based on them being (so they think) obvious, straightforward consequences of what the reliable sources say. I don't know where you are getting the idea of misplaced quotation marks from. They are precisely where they should be and would make no sense anywhere else. Hans Adler 18:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about that discussion, I figured situations like this would require consensus and application of WP:COMMON. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 22:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

MFD nomination of User:HarryAlffa/ArbCom

Hello, this page has been nominated for deletion. You may be interested in participating in the discussion, located here. Thanks, GlassCobra 18:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Ottava "identity"

At no point did he say that he was Essjay. Provide a diff, or strike it out. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I asked him: "I put it to you that you are not a scholar. You are obviously not capable of reasoned debate. Please answer this direct question: Are you Essjay?" To which he replied: "Yes, you first had a problem with me and have been following me ever since. And you can claim that I am not a scholar all you want. However, my real name is known and easy to find."

I wouldn't have minded him returning (the previous incarnation was before my time here), but if he insists on resuming his habit of pushing his opinion with reference to false credentials, then it's an obvious problem:

• Trying to push Derrida into Linguistics by bullying the experts.
• Threatening to call another editor's university.

(By the way, when I researched this I realised that I had a short interaction with Ottava in April at Talk:Linguistics, after the diffs that I provided.) Hans Adler 21:53, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I do not see that "yes" as being a response to "Are you Essjay", and suggest you try to see it as an interjection instead of a response.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It ought to be quite clear to you that Ottava was replying "yes" to a different question, not to "Are you Essjay?" It is rather concerning that you are pusuing your misconception this way in the face of all reason. I know who Ottava is, and he is most certainly not Essjay. --Malleus Fatuorum 21:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, unfortunately I do not know this. He is making wild claims about Knights of Columbus, ethics blogs and PhDs in progress. Do you believe him that he is an expert on ethics, of all topics, given his unethical conduct here? Doesn't this remind you of Essjay's motto Lux et Veritas? I am not talking about the Chillum nonsense. I am talking about his POV pushing, which doesn't even stop when he is dealing with a bunch of professionals. Hans Adler 22:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for striking.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for asking nicely. Hans Adler 22:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Funnily enough, Ottava has a tendency to accuse other users of being Essjay. He did this when he harassed John Kenney and threatened to phone up his university for daring to disagree with him back in August. It led to another ANI thread in which, predictably, no action was taken against him . Read the whole thing, it's eerily familiar. --Folantin (talk) 22:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that was actually one of the reasons that put me on this possible connection. Many sockpuppets of banned users behave in such a way. Given Ottava's apparent level of social intelligence it makes perfect sense to suspect him of thinking that this protects him from people making the connection, when the reverse is true. Hans Adler 22:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think he is Essjay. He claims to be some sort of English student although he makes some very basic errors. He was most insistent Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was a work of Renaissance poetry (sic). His comments on Iranian history include some of the weirdest claims I've ever seen on Misplaced Pages. --Folantin (talk) 22:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)