Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:19, 1 March 2007

I'm fairly busy in the Real World at the moment. Expect delays here... or not. But it's my excuse anyway...

You are welcome to leave messages here. I will reply here (rather than on, say, your user page). Conversely, if I've left a message on your talk page, I'm watching it, so please reply there.

If your messages are rude, wandering or repetitive I will likely edit them. If you want to leave such a message, put it on your talk page and leave me a note here & I'll go take a look. In general, I prefer to conduct my discussions in public. If you have a question for me, put it here (or on the article talk, or...) rather than via email. If I've blocked you for 3RR this applies particularly strongly: your arguments for unblock, unless for some odd reason particularly sensitive, should be made in public, on your talk page. See-also WMC:3RR.

In the dim and distant past were... /The archives. As of about 2006/06, I don't archive, just remove. Thats cos I realised I never looked in the archives.

Atmospheric circulation pic

Thanks for the pic you added to this article. It's very interesting, and I am intrigued by some of the anomalies it shows. Denni☯ 01:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Denni. Thanks! All part of my very very slow atmospheric dynamics project... more to come... slowly... William M. Connolley 22:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC).

Trend Estimation with Auto-Correlated Data

William: This article you started is a great topic! I am just wondering if you have detailed information to add to the section about auto-correlated data. I am facing this problem now, and am trying to get information from papers and textbooks. --Roland 21:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah well, IMHO what to do with auto-correlated data is an ongoing research topic. Top tip: divide the ndof by something like (1+ac1) (or is it ac1^2...) if the autocorr isn't too extreme. There is some formula like (1+ac1^2+ac2^2+...) if its strongly auto-correlated... but... its a bit of a mess, I think. Err, thats why I never expanded that bit. The von Zstorch and Zwiers book covers it, somewhat. William M. Connolley 22:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I added a link to autoregressive moving average models JQ 23:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Linda Hall editor

User:204.56.7.1 has been blocked four times in the last month for 3RR (once by you). He is now performing wholsale reversions without comment (see at Radio ) This user as you probably know, has a long history of refusing to collaborate. He ignored my talk page request. Any suggestions? --Blainster 20:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My feeling is that 204. is Reddi. Reddi is limited to 1R per week. Establishing the connection past doubt is difficult; but the edit patterns are very similar. You could post a WP:RFCU. Or you could just list 204. on the 3RR page together with the note of Reddis arbcomm parole and see if that does any good. Or maybe I'll just block it... shall I? Oh go on, yes I will... William M. Connolley 21:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My Reddimeter displays 8.5 on a scale from 0 to 10: Selection of topics. likes patents, likes templates. Only the tireless lamenting on article talk pages is missing. --Pjacobi 21:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Reddi apparently back

... with another sockpuppet KarlBunker 19:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there no stopping him? I've blocked that one; if he persists, will semi it William M. Connolley 19:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

And to think

..I knew you when. Why didn't you mention this?

• KNOW IT ALL - Can Misplaced Pages conquer expertise? KillerChihuahua 16:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear. I did my best with them :-( William M. Connolley 17:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:AN3

• The few times that I've dabbled in WP:ANI/3RR, I've tried to be fair, but I universally get hit with a barrage of malcontents on my talk page and others that send me threatening e-mails. I don't know why you continue to take care of this for us, but thank you for doing so, as I know that I wouldn't be able to last more than a day at it. Many thanks -- Samir धर्म 14:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you :-) William M. Connolley 16:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The Templeton Foundation

The Templeton Foundation used to provide grants for ID conferences and courses. According to The New York Times, Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, later asked ID proponents to submit proposals for actual research. "They never came in," said Harper, and that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned. "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said. The Templeton Foundation has since rejected the Discovery Institute's entreaties for more funding, Harper states. "They're political - that for us is problematic," and that while Discovery has "always claimed to be focused on the science," "what I see is much more focused on public policy, on public persuasion, on educational advocacy and so forth."

I'd think that while individual members/beneficiaries of the Foundation's largess may embrace ID, the the Foundation itself is trying to distance itself from the ID movement, but keeping in mind that the Discovery Institute, the hub of the ID movement, actively tries to cultivate ambiguity around its own motives, actions and members with the aim of portraying ID as more substantial and more widely accepted than it actually is, as the Dover Trial ruling shows (it's worth reading). FeloniousMonk 21:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Thats interesting and useful William M. Connolley 21:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Improving the models

I find this to be a fascinating example of the improvement of weather models over time. Do you happen to know of any comparable quantitative metrics by which climate models can be seen to have improved over time? Dragons flight 07:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice pic. The one I'm more used to seeing is the length-of-useful-forecast graph, which shows similar improvement. However... no I don't know comparable pics from climate models. The obvious problem would be that you can't do it year-on-year, climate models being far less frequent: the hadley center has arguably only had 3 model incarnations. They do have a "model index" which finds that hadgem1 is better than hadcm3, but I don't know if that was ever applied back to hadcm2, much less to other centres William M. Connolley 13:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

when you say 3 models, does that include or exclude improvements in spatial resolution as computing power has improved? Dragons flight 16:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I meant hadcm2, hadcm3 and hadgem1. There are others, but it could get complex. Do you want to include atmos-only models? Those are the "official" releases, sort of. There are various experiments with different spatial res, but its not clear if those were meant to be improvements... William M. Connolley 17:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Well at the moment I am just sort of curious about what is being labeled a "model". I could see the term being used to refer to either a set of coupled differential equations (which might then be implemented on a variety of different grid sizes), or to a specific implementation on a specific grid size. Do you ever take your differential systems, and leaving them as is, try to increase the number of grid elements through the use of more powerful computers? Dragons flight 17:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes and no. "GCM" means the full set of code, on the whole. Ie, big set of PDEs and params on top. But also, in general, it means a specific config and setup. "hadcm3" means a given code version, plus given ancils (e.g. land sea mask), plus a given resolution. You *can* run it at, say, higher rez; but there is no guarantee that its better. But yes, I know there were various projects with higher rez versions... the problem is that because of the about grid^3-4 dependency, you can't run much higher rez, if the model is anywhere close to state-of-the-art William M. Connolley 22:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I know I've given you one before, but...

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For doing a task that makes me grind my teeth just thinking about it, this star is for you! Syrthiss 22:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah well, thanks even more :-) William M. Connolley 09:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

)

Just for amusement

AfDing articles on people can be quite interesting. This one for example: Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Jules Siegel has written far more in the AfD debate than he ever did in the article he wrote about himself... He may well be notable but... --BozMo talk 20:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm well. I don't think I'll vote William M. Connolley 20:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

No. But smile perhaps. He probably deserves to stay but the indignation is disproportionate to the point of entertaining--BozMo talk 21:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I learnt my lesson at William Connolley a long time ago and now stay away William M. Connolley 21:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, yes. BTW I have some nice (low res) pics of the family of baby stoats which live in my garden which I might send you for your blog. They are very playful. --BozMo talk 21:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Delightful! I'm very jealous. Do send the pic. In return, I could start a stub about an ex-oilman turned charity exec. Err, or I could *not* start it in exchange... William M. Connolley 21:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Not. Okay, I will find some pics/small vid clips) on the other PC and email them, probably tomorrow. As for the threat... I have enough scientific publications to pass WP:BIO and not enough appetite for it to knit a baby gnat's sock "like I want a wart in the middle of my forehead" I think is the expression. We also boast some baby owls, bats in our attic, three varieties of deer, hares, rabbit and badgers in the garden but no pics yet. Glorious Suffolk. --BozMo talk 22:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

okay try http://catesfamily.org.uk/stoats.jpg and then in a couple of minutes stoatsclip.mov from the same place. First is 2M second is 6M. --BozMo talk 23:00, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Cute or what! I'm now insanely jealous. When I blog them, do you want (or unwant) attribution and/or copyright? William M. Connolley 23:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Any copyleft with attribution to my homepage would be kind (but I wouldn't insist). I notice Stoat has no picture and will put a cut jpg up there. I think the way that they bounce around in the movie is quite informative and if you can find a way to get that into Misplaced Pages format you are welcome to aswell. I don't have the tools. --BozMo talk 09:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

stoats again

Aha! The userbox on your userpage has the deleted stoat image in it. You could update the box with the new one. I'd do it if I could work out where these silly boxes live. --BozMo talk 14:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Just when I was going to upload that stuff, I find you've done it! Still I've put it into my userbox now. Thanks again William M. Connolley 21:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The press

William,

I'm a reporter working on a story about Wikipedians that monitor pages that could be considered controversial or ideologically charged. I'm wondering if you'd be interested in talking a bit. You can get me here : matt.phillips@wsj.com.

And thanks,

Matt

Hi. Feel free to email me - the wiki mail works William M. Connolley 21:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

French lessons

Texte à apprendre par coeur:

1. Veuillez avoir l'amabilité de ne pas nourrir les trolls. (Anonymous)

2. N'interrompez jamais un ennemi qui est en train de faire une erreur. (Napoléon Bonaparte)

3. On répond aux imbéciles par le silence. (Proverbe)

Full marks get you a beer at EGU. Raymond Arritt 03:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Merci... William M. Connolley 09:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Small review

Sorry for disturbance, but I noted that you are running 3RR board too, I would like to ask you to review this case. I just need to know if there was 3RR violation or not. Original admin of this case is not against additional review. Thank you, William M. Connolley, in advance, M.K. 10:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Given the self revert, there is no case William M. Connolley 16:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Could you please say, are presented diffs valid reverts for 3RR or as particular contributor suggested more like reverts of vandalism? M.K. 10:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't really see the point of checking, since the report is done with. Two I looked at were not obviously vandlaism reverts, at least for the purposes of 3RR William M. Connolley 10:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

You see why I ask, because contributor explained that some of these diffs were vandalism and edits not reverts for 3RR, so i thought that it is me who cant recognize these; now it looks that i was not mistaken too. Thanks for your help. M.K. 10:55, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

RE: 3RR

Did you even read my commentary in the report? I request that the block be reverse and/or that similar actions be taken against other editors in this morass. Corticopia 20:40, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear. Had you but kept quiet and not posted here you would have been all right... William M. Connolley 22:32, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus

William,

can I remind you that Misplaced Pages requires consensus. There was ample time for you to comment on the proposal to remove the section on betting. Since consensus had been achieved by the contributors, it was therefore removed. If you want to change this I suggest you try and find a new consensus. I have therefore removed the section and ask that you now discuss it in a positive manner with all concerned. Mike 10:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry guv, wiki doesn't work like that. You can't hold a micro-vote which only your buddies contribute to and call it "consensus". If people didn't bloat the talk page so much with ill-disciplined ranting it would be easier to find things William M. Connolley 10:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

My 3RR

Hi William, I see you blocked me for a 3RR on Friday. I’m sorry to see that, but I understand where you’re coming from. I did not think (and still don’t quite understand why) my first edit removing the NPOV tag was a “revert”. It was an edit per the formal mediation results that stated the word “performs” was NPOV, therefore the tag did not need to remain on the page. Here’s the mediation results edit: . I wasn't really reverting anything...

But, it’s a mistake I won’t make again, and although I know the block is no longer in force, I humbly ask you to reconsider the block and hopefully remove it from my history and talk page - if that can be done. It was really a misunderstanding about that first edit. You’ll note that I didn’t remove the NPOV tag after discussion on the talk page, so it wasn’t really meant to be an edit war – I didn’t think the editor who put it back understood that it’s removal was per formal mediation results.

My apologies for appearing to edit war on this rather minor issue….

Thank you! Dreadlocke ☥ 17:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

This may have been a misunderstanding on your part of the status of mediation results. You really can't expect them to override 3RR rules. The block remains in your block log - I can't remove it, and if it is possible it would only be done in exceptional circumstances. If you're not going to repeat this mistake then you shouldn't need to worry about it. 3RR is not a dreadful black mark... just look at my record before I saw the light William M. Connolley 17:50, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks William. I didn't expect the mediation to override 3RR, it just makes the first edit not a revert - at least as far as I can understand. The last edit that put the NPOV tag there, was several days before when mediation was still underway. An editor removed it early, and other merely put it back. I removed it at the proper time, after the mediation results. To me, this is just not a revert - it was just an edit. Then another editor came along and reverted my removal - that was actually the first revert of an edit. Guess I'll just have to live with it! Um, can I archive the 3RR warning from my talk page at some point? Dreadlocke ☥ 18:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the page history, first Wikidudeman removed the tag "per mediation", second Belbo reverted the removal, then third Dreadlocke reverted the addition. Does that clear it up? --Milo H Minderbinder 18:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was referring to. If you'll note in Belbo's edit summary statement, "Page is in dispute resolution", the mediation wasn't over, thus it was put back. Two days later, when mediation was over, I removed it. Wikidudeman removed it early, before mediation was over, Belbo put it back, and then two days later when mediaton was over - I properly removed it. It was not a reversion of the previous edit. Dreadlocke ☥ 18:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I still fail to understand why you think the mediation somehow makes your revert not a revert. The mediation is essentially irrelevant to 3RR William M. Connolley 19:03, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The NPOV tag was there to dispute the use of the word "performs". We went through the dispute resolution process, ending up in Formal Mediation. Once formal mediation was over, the result was that the word "performs" was indeed NPOV and should stay, making the NPOV tag unncecessary. The removal wasn't a "revert" but instead an edit reflecting both consensus and mediation results. The tag was to be there until mediation was over and a decision was made regarding the NPOV status of the intro. Once that was decided, the NPOV tag needed to be removed - it was no longer valid. Actual mediation doesn't protect from 3RR, but it makes the edit removing the tag not a revert. Does that help? I wasn't reverting what was there before, I was editing to reflect the recent change in NPOV status. Dreadlocke ☥ 19:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't help at all. You appear to be attempting to redefining your edit as not a revert, based on mediation. The mediation is irrelevant to whether its a revert or not. A revert is what ] says it is. If you have a private defn of the term, you will end up with problems William M. Connolley 19:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Apologies. I'm just basing my opinion on what I'm understanding of 3RR and WP:Revert, it's not a private definition - I'm sorry it appears that way. If it were, I wouldn't be trying to understand where I went wrong and to explain what I understand. One other thing that jumps out to me, is in WP:Revert, it talks about a revert taking place "after a specific time in the past", a time which seems to be (according to 3RR), a 24 hour period - unless you believed me to be disruptive. The time frame was over 48 hours, I believe. Anyway, I guess this all a moot point at this time since nothing can be done about it. Essentially, I don't see how my first edit removing the NPOV tag is a true "revert", but I guess that's my misunderstanding that I'll have to deal with. Sorry to bother you. Dreadlocke ☥ 19:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

If I may, what I would liken my edit to, is if in an article on "American astronauts", someone added the edit "no American astronaut has ever been arrested for attempted murder", then two days later, the news about an American astronaut being arrested for attempted murder comes out, and I update article to reflect that change - that's not a revert, it's an edit to reflect updated information. That's all I did with the NPOV tag, update the article with updated information. Dreadlocke ☥ 20:59, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Can I archive the warning, or does it need to stay for a specific amount of time? Dreadlocke ☥ 19:43, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Harassment from Uber

Since you apparently have a monkey on your back, I've gone ahead and asked someone to get it off Raul654 21:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

remember this user?

Mael-Num (talk · contribs) is at it again. See Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/3RR#User:Mael-Num_reported_by_User:Jossi_.28Result:.29. Care to take a look? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:19, 1 March 2007 (UTC)