Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:12, 11 October 2004

User:Benc/News

duplicate categories

Hi Benc, since you just moved the "category side effect" warning, could you also modify it to explain that some of the categories are listed more than once (see Misplaced Pages talk:Template messages#duplicate_categories)? (I'm relatively new and don't want to mess with such a central page without knowing exactly what I'm talking about.) Thanks. Fpahl 21:43, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done; see Template:Category side effect. Also, I wouldn't be worried about messing with a central page if I were you. Your intentions are clearly for the best; if you make a mistake along the way, someone will surely see it and fix it. :-) Thanks for pointing out the fact that it needed additional clarification, by the way. • Benc • 22:18, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for the encouragement. Fpahl 22:26, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To-do list for CoTW

I'm wondering why you are using the to-do list for previous Collaboration of the Week articles (e.g. for astrophysics). The task you propose "Improve this article to featured-standard" is so vague that it can be put on any article. Wouldn't it be better to be more specific, or to not use the to-do list at all ? What do you expect from the readers of that to-do list ? (I believe that there are already enough ways to promote the CoTW collaboration mechanism, if that's your purpose; I also believe that this presumed misuse of the to-do lists reduces their general attraction by generating bad will) What do you think ? Pcarbonn 21:54, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your point is well-taken; this is somewhat of a misuse of the to-do list mechanism. I wasn't necessarily trying to advertise COTW, but it definitely appears that way. More than anything else, the "Improve this article..." was meant to be a temporary placeholder, to be replaced with actionable items. Actionable to-do items have been added to a number of COTW graduates (see Misplaced Pages:Collaboration of the week/To do), but the "Improve this article..." message hasn't been removed in those cases, which it probably should.

I can start going through and peer reviewing the previous COTW articles needing actionable to-do items, though you (and anybody else interested) are certainly welcome to collaborate on this. Thank you very much for pointing this out to me. • Benc • 22:01, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thumb twiddling

Thanks for the improvements to the article, and for your good words. KeyStroke 14:20, 2004 Sep 23 (UTC)

The move to RfC

The reason that I posted the question to the village pump was that there wasn't an edit dispute going on, which is what RfC is for. ] 05:45, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Your bookmark table

Hi there, I stumbled upon the bookmark table on your user page and I like how you managed to put it all in a clear outlined table. I've currently linked to yours on my own user page. Would you mind me making a copy for my own use? :) ] 08:43, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

BTW, how did you make the box around

"Older discussions are

located in the archive. 

—Benc" on top of this page? ] 08:58, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

• • Thanks for the replies to both questions on my talk page. ] 07:09, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

You're a sysop!

I'm pleased to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. Congratulations!. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | Talk 00:22, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thank you — I'll do my best. :-) • Benc • 17:58, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Congratulations, Ben! ] 18:28, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

An open thank-you

As of 27 September 2004, I am an administrator on the English Misplaced Pages. This message is for everyone who voted on RFA/Benc (including the neutrals). I didn't want to spam everyone's talk pages, so I'm doing it here instead:

I'd like to send out a big thank you to everyone for their kind words and the support for making me a sysop. I'll do my very best to use these powers sparingly and appropriately. Thank you for your trust — I will be sure to "guard the keys to the WikiJanitor mop closet." :-) • Benc • 17:54, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:U.S. Southern Wikipedians' notice board

Hey! I've created this new notice board specifically for articles related to people from the U.S. South. If you are interested in contributing, leave a message on the page and add articles you feel need to be reviewed, contributed to, or started. Mike H 21:13, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:U.S. Southern wikipedians' notice board/USSCOTW

The Southern Collaboration of the Week board is now up. Please vote or nominate other articles. The first voting ends on October 3. Mike H 14:19, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Category

No objections. However, I am getting ready to go clubbing. :-D So...can you do it for me? Mike H 23:24, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks!

• Benc - many thanks for supporting my adminship, and congratulations on your own! Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 04:55, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• And also a thank you from me, for directing me to Meta-wiki (Wiki addict article), I'll take a look at is! regards, --georingo 08:14, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! + better GFDL -> GPL linking_GPL_linking">

Hi benc, thanks for helping on eigenplane. If you're interested in something else maths related in wikipedia (and i thought i wrote a long rant on this, but i'm not quite sure where...), IMHO it's rather self-defeating to have GFDL encyclopedia articles writing about mathematics (or science), containing text and formulae, without at the same time strongly favouring external links to GPL or GPL compatible software. Of course, the software doesn't always (yet) exist, but often it does, and IMHO it would be good idea to make people writing or correcting articles feel that they should search for some free software equivalent. In fact, surely just about any article could be associated with some sort of free software which does something which enables the reader/user to do more with that idea, to test it, integrate it with other info, etc etc.

As someone with a job in science, i can say that most practising astronomers use some mix between free software, not-quite-free software and outright-commercial-closed software, and are generally not quite aware of the diffferences between free and non-quite-free software. The feeling is often "the ends justify the means". If wikipedia only gives people the end results of knowledge without giving them the power to test that knowledge themselves, then we will only have a small-r revolution in knowledge distribution, not a real big-R Revolution which will help save the planet. :)

My feeling is that something could be added to the basic template for writing/editing articles to encourage links to free (as in speech) software. However, i thought that rather than trying to campaign for this (i'm sure that any change to the basic editing form would be very strongly debated :), it makes more sense simply to do it for the subjects where i think i can contribute - people are more likely to take this seriously if i do some work myself. So for eigenplane, i've submitted an article to a scientific journal, it's freely available as a preprint (external link on eigenplane) (but not GFDL - i need to get brownie points for my dayjob), and the GPL software is downloadable. If other people like the idea, then maybe it will spread.

As a short term step towards this, if anyone has any ideas for a better free software template, please see:

• Talk:Computer algebra system and Computer algebra system for how it works
• Template talk:Free software

These comments, are, of course :), GFDL, so feel free to cut/paste/modify/extend/debug/reuse on a more appropriate page of the wikipedia than your talkpage. :) Boud 13:22, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

suggestion

I read User:Benc/Feature requests, and I think you have really good ideas. In fact, I think you should add another request: that hovering on a link would open a little information box, just as happens when you put your mouse on an image. This little information box should show the beggining of the article that is being linked, or a little summary.

This will help those who are reading an article but are not familiar with a all the concepts (in physics, for instance). But this should be optional, since it might annoy some users.

Re: BJAODN comment

But in the future, let's wait until it's actually deleted, okay? --

• How am I supposed to copy the deleted article's content after it has been deleted? After all, I am not the only person to contribute to BJAODN early - there is even one article there which was in fact never deleted. BJAODN is for fun, not for disputes about technicalities. -- Mike Rosoft 10:16, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, but also: BJAODN is for fun, not for hurting anybody's feelings. I was not disputing technicalities — I was just being cautious about this borderline case. How would you feel if a good-faith contribution of yours got sent to BJAODN, perhaps with a snarky comment like this is why you shouldn't edit Misplaced Pages on acid? I was unsure if the article you're referring to was a "good faith" effort, hence the suggested delay. Whenever we're laughing at other people's contributions — no matter how silly they are — it's important to keep civility in mind.

    Anyway, about my comment. I didn't mean to say that we should always wait until deletion. Rule of thumb: whenever there are a fair number of "keep" votes on VfD or wherever, that's a good sign that some people's feelings might get hurt, and the article should only be moved to BJAODN upon deletion, if at all. In this case, the keep votes were sockpuppets, which is why I reverted myself. • Benc • 21:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

    • Fine with me. -- Mike Rosoft 11:29, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Images

Take a look at the Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy), subsection "Risk of inappropriate images appearing". Thoughts? -- Dwheeler 04:07, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)

RfD deletions

When you deleted the entry for Sample article title, you also deleted the material about Talk:Sample article title, which had not been dealt with yet. Please be more careful, and only delete entries which really are completely done with. Noel 14:01, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good catch; thank you. I was closing out old RFD discussions when I saw the first sentence of your response, which was "Done." I didn't read the rest of the comment... my mistake. I'll be sure to read it next time. Sorry about that, • Benc • 14:11, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wow, that was fast! Thanks! (No problem, BTW.)

One other thing, looking down the list of stuff you worked on: I was wondering if maybe the list of saved precedents shouldn't be on a page called /Precedents (following the example of VfD), rather than /Archive - in part to follow the example, and also since it's not really a comprehensive archive.

I do really like the way you put the actual debates on a separate page, as opposed to inline, the way VfD/Precendents does it - it makes for a much easier to read page. You might want to suggest on WT:VfD that we do the same thing there - the VfD/Precedents page is really long, and hard to use. Noel 15:20, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hunh. It turns out there is a talk page for the VfD/Precedents subpage, at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion/Precedents. So I guess my suggestion immediately above ought to be directed there instead. Noel 00:39, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You reverted your OWN edits??

How could you revert your OWN edits?? Generally, edits of this kind usually mismatch Z and X in "reverted edits by X to last version by Y", but they match in this section. 66.245.126.161 16:10, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm entitled to change my mind. Who isn't? :-) • Benc • 17:30, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Or perhaps I have an evil twin? :-P • cneB • 17:34, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

About meta

I clicked Recent Changes and looked for an admin. You were the first one I saw, so you get this question.  :-) Would you check Typeparameter and see if you can make heads or tails of it. I've never worked with templates here. Should this be on meta or is it about something else entirely? Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 02:59, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Muuuuch better. Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 03:17, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Request for Help

First of all, thank you for the compliments you posted re: my article.
Secondly: since you've posted in the Talk:Cross-dresser discussion now, I'm hoping you can help myself and Stbalbach finally bring this interminable bicker-session to a close. It was started and sustained by AlexR - who seems to have a consistent track record of causing the same problems he's now causing in the above discussion. Here's a brief background:
When I attempted to clean up some of the historical information for the "Cross-Dresser" article - specifically with regard to a personage whom I specialize in as a historian - he set off an enormous fight over the changes which I and now also Stbalbach have agreed upon. To give some idea of his argument style, I'll use one subtopic as an example: despite my attempts to point out that many eyewitnesses related quotes from Joan of Arc herself explaining that she wore "male clothing" out of necessity, he keeps claiming that I've instead been citing subjective "interpretations" rather than direct quotes, therefore he thinks we should argue over the ability of others to make such "interpretations". When I try to point out (again) that these are quotes from Joan herself, he ironically accuses me of ignoring his arguments rather than vice-versa. This appears to be his pattern, judging from a remarkably similar ping-pong match he's managed to sustain in Talk:List of transgendered people. Glancing over that discussion, it looks like numerous people have asked that an obscure word should be properly defined in the article for the benefit of readers, but he has been resisting this common-sense change and repeatedly undoing every edit which the others make - all while accusing the others of being the unreasonable party rather than himself.
I would ask that, if possible, you could please block him from further interference, at least in the Cross-Dresser discussion and perhaps others if such is merited. It is literally impossible to make improvements when one stubborn editor engages in this type of persistent behavior, and it would seem to be rather senseless to argue with him when he appears to deliberately make irrelevant comments just to keep the debate going indefinitely.
Many thanks for your time and consideration. I joined Misplaced Pages with the intent of contributing some historical material, but thus far it has been a rather frustrating process.
- AWilliamson (Allen Williamson, Joan of Arc Archive ) 00:56, 11 Oct 2004

I will gladly do whatever I can to help. I'm very sorry that you have encountered such a difficult opposition to your edits so early on. Thank you for your patience and willingness to discuss in search of consensus. Those are key virtues for any Wikipedian, especially in cases where others forget the civility rule.

Anyway, no matter how much I would like to, I can not and will not block anyone simply for being stubborn and rude. It's against the blocking policy. Unfortunately, this allows POV warriors to exist. That's why we have dispute resolution and page protection in place. In the worst cases, rude, argumentative editors dig themselves into a hole, with most of the community against them, and eventually get banned by the arbitration committee. It's slow, but in the interests of maintaining a fair, open-minded community, we have to do it this way, however slow and painful it may be.

I'm sure you've seen this by now, but I've just finished a major edit at cross-dressing to help settle the Joan of Arc issue. I hope this will help; if there's anything that didn't help please let me know on Talk:Cross-dressing. • Benc • 07:44, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As expected, AlexR has now gone in and completely changed your edits to that page, and has promised (in another place) to keep up an endless "edit war". This is a bit like dealing with an adolescent.

I had joined Misplaced Pages after someone posted a note to an academic list making the point, in essence, that historians really should edit Misplaced Pages articles for the sake of insuring accuracy. I'm finding out why more of them do not.

Would you at least revert the article back to the changes that you had made, and then protect the article from additional tampering? Otherwise this process will truly never end. - AWilliamson (Allen Williamson, Joan of Arc Archive ) 00:56, 11 Oct 2004