Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Centrx (talk | contribs) at 22:14, 22 June 2007 (→Infobox at []). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archives

The signature issue

Could we discuss this and perhaps come up with a compromise? -- Cat 12:23, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Like what? —Centrx→talk • 16:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I was proposed something like User:White Cat/ (formerly Cool Cat) redirect by User:David Levy. I like that suggestion for two reasons. #1 it satisfies the valid concerns of people such as yourself. A definite "Cool Cat" link is left behind. #2 it satisfies my desire to "empty" 'Cool Cat' userspace.

Should a bot with a bot flag make the modifications marked as a minor edit it wouldn't even trigger "You have a new message" or show up on watchlists (unless user wants to explicitly review bot edits).

-- Cat 19:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

The concern is that there is no reason someone should not be allowed to create a redirect from your old user page to your new user page, regardless of whether top-facing talk page revisions have a link to it. I think you should be perfectly free on your new user page to say nothing whatsoever about your old user name; the issue is the other direction. If you are suggesting that a bot go through every use of your signature to change it to point to "User:White Cat/ (formerly Cool Cat)", that does not address the fact that the contents of archives should never be altered except under very special circumstances that are beyond an ordinary username change, aside from the logistical fact that every username change could be accompanied by thousands of bot edits. —Centrx→talk • 21:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

You may want to respond to the two posts I made earlier:

I am quite confused in what you're seeking. Should the redirect stay if I get my current userpage deleted? I can get my userpage deleted if it is put as a precondition to get the redirect deleted.

Although it is sane and logical, I do not believe there is any policy/consensus to back up your "archives should never be altered except under very special circumstances that are beyond an ordinary username change" logic. Archives would have been full protected if that was the case.

-- Cat 22:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

It has been proposed several times to fully protect archives. The reason it is not done is because 1) it would be a large burden that is generally not necessary because few people try to change the contents of archives and even common vandalism in archives is almost non-existent; and 2) there are legitimate edits to be made to the page, even outside of removing real names or potentially libellous statements, such as archiving additional sections, re-factoring, or changing headers, that would be impeded by protecting the page and likewise create additional burden if there were a scheme to have administrators protect and unprotect these pages. —Centrx→talk • 22:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Let me get this straight, now you are changing your sig to use a different subpage in your userspace when you have not even changed your username? Where does it end? —Centrx→talk • 22:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Wally the Green Monster

Hey, I'm not sure why you keep deleting the Wally the Green Monster edits. Susan Widak is the orginal creator of Wally and holds copyrights form the mid-1990's. Her hats, t-shirts, biibs, cups, pants, etc. were all sold at in around fenway park for roughly 5 years. I'm gonna actually scan some of her designs for your overview. I'm not sure who you are, but don't you think it's slightly out of line to erase all of this factual information that's being posted???

First, your addition needs to be verifiable in published third-party sources, like books and magazines, references to which should be included in your edit. See Misplaced Pages:Verifiability for more information. Second, your addition needs to be written in a neutral point of view. The beginning of the paragraph is fine in this respect, but everything after "Although Susan humbly refuses to claim credit..." is written as though it were an addressed letter from you personally to the world. See Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view for more information. —Centrx→talk • 16:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you help me?

I would like you to take a look at this article to check if it meets the requirements for notability. I have included a lot of published references. Please let me know the minimum that I need to do to make this a real Misplaced Pages article.

Wisepiglet 00:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I think you should rebuild from scratch. First, Digg, a wiki, Lou Dobbs, and some of the advocacy sites are not reliable sources. Use Google Books and Google Scholar. Also, keep in mind the possibility that an encyclopedic article cannot be created on the subject. The political references exist, but that does not mean that something more than a rough dictionary definition can be reliably created on it. Also, write in a neutral point of view and, especially for some of these sources, grant the possibility that some of these international trade agreements are nothing more substantial than trade agreements between sovereign nations, and that some collaboration between nations is not necessarily a prelude to a forfeiture of independence. Superficially at least, some of these agreements and proposals are exactly what one might expect to happen even if there existed nothing resembling any North American Union. —Centrx→talk • 21:30, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Sig revert

Is there any good reason why you are reverting me here and here -- Cat 03:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Do not edit archives. —Centrx→talk • 04:00, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

This isn't prohibited behaviour. Find a new hobby, stop stalking me. -- Cat 04:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Is it so impossible that I have a page you edited in my watchlist? Is there any place where you have actually explained why any these changes are warranted, or why you have some special privilege to alter archives where others do not? —Centrx→talk • 04:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Please don't be so dense. I mistyped my signature and corrected the error. Archives are editable. Have YOU actually explained why archives are not full protected since you claim they are not to be edited. No one but you seems to care. I wonder why you care so much about it. -- Cat 04:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I did explain above why archives are not fully protected. And yes, others do often revert edits to archives, as recently as a few days ago with your edits. —Centrx→talk • 04:20, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, I can understand archives. Is there any reason why are you reverting the sig fix here aside from an attempt to irritate me? -- Cat 04:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Old comments that are on an ordinary talk page belong as unchanging as the comments on pages labelled "Archive". We should not, for example, go back and change old comments from a month ago; ideally we should not change comments from even an hour ago, but depending on the likelihood of someone having already read it and the substantiality of the change, we might alter the text rather than appending a remark, an action more viable if the comment was made only a minute ago. In many cases, the only reason that an old comment on an ordinary talk page is not instead on a labelled Archive is that no one has yet bothered to archive it yet. Labelled Archives are essentially back-extensions of ordinary talk pages that are made only so that old comments may be deleted from a talk page in order to lessen loading time and improve navigability and clarity, while retaining a searchable page of old discussions and other advantages. Otherwise, simply having a permanent link to an old revision of the talk page would be quite sufficient, and provide no opportunity at all for editing archives. In this particular case, it is only a matter of chance that I have not yet archived the past month's discussion. —Centrx→talk • 04:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

In other words you are going to go great extends to reinterpret policy and guidelines just to prevent me from updating my sigs. Spelling corrections make a greater difference the actual difference in readable text is null. -- Cat 04:57, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I have not re-interpreted anything, and the only great extent to which I have gone is to write a thoroughly explanatory message to someone who appears to take every opportunity to insinuate malicious intent. —Centrx→talk • 05:06, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Please simplify your sentence -- Cat 13:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Centrix, please stop being exactly as wrong as Cat is. There is absolutely no good reason to revert signature edits, even though I agree with you changing sigs with a bot is a bad thing. Reverting edits puts even *more* strain on the servers, and for what? To annoy Cat? To feel good yourself? Nothing that has any use for wikipedia in any case. ValHallASW 14:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriate edits to archives are reverted. The reason for not editing signatures is not because of server strain. There is nothing wrong with good edits that might negligibly strain the servers, and the edits remain wrong even if the strain on the servers were absolutely zero. —Centrx→talk • 22:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Hard drives

they are using the old prefixes in the same fashion they used prior to the existence of the new prefixes, specifically with the purpose of misleading customers

Do you really personally believe that they have been using these prefixes specifically to mislead customers? — Omegatron 16:57, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

What other reason do you think there is? Even if there were some other historical reason, their marketers would, if there were not, change to system that report larger sizes. They used these prefixes prior to the existence of the new IEC prefixes, when every use of prefixes with -byte outside of network cards was in the binary sense. They advertise decimal sizes when the hard drives themselves are in binary and the uses to which they are put are in binary. They did not use binary when the IEC prefixes did not exist, and they do not use binary when the IEC prefixes do exist. They did not in valiant defense of SI prefixes use the "correct" SI prefixes before, and they do not now with the opportunity of IEC prefixes use the binary system that directly corresponds with the make and use of the drives. They choose to sell eggs by the gram rather than by the count of them, despite the fact that the eggs naturally come as discrete units and that they are used by counting them out rather than trying to weigh them, because it markets a larger, more impressive number, and the customer is wiser with poultry than with computers. —Centrx→talk • 17:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. I just don't see any evidence for deliberate misinformation. I've spent hours reading through old documents and haven't found any evidence of hard drives ever being abbreviated using binary units. The closest I've seen to this is early drum storage devices that contained a binary multiple amount of words, like drum memories that hold 2048 words, but no one was abbreviating units at that time; they were just writing out "2048" in their documents. Decimal prefixes were in use by the engineers who designed this stuff long before the devices were even invented, as John Reed pointed out in his email to me. I find it hard to believe that their continuing use of these units can be attributed to malice.

You claim that every use of -byte prefixes outside of network cards was in the binary sense, but this isn't supported either. These abbreviations have always been ambiguous. The earliest uses of "K" that I can find were actually decimal. Here's a document from 1961, for instance, that uses "K" to refer to 1000 characters of drum storage. Some early memories actually held decimal amounts, like "10,000 words", so why would they use the binary convention? Remember that early computers actually came in both binary and decimal versions, meant to replace mechanical adding machines. The documents about the IBM 7090 core memory actually use both "65K" and "32K" in the same sentence, truncating "65,536" and "32,768". If they followed the binary convention, it would be "32K" and "64K". If they followed the decimal convention, it would be "33K" and "65K". The simplest explanation is just that nobody cared; everyone knew what they were talking about at the time. But I haven't seen any evidence for even a de facto standard at any point in time, for either convention. Common usage is simply a hodge-podge of several different conventions.

Hard drive manufacturers use the units that they've always used, and memory manufacturers use the units that they've always used. No one cared or even noticed the discrepancy until recently. — Omegatron 18:02, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course people noticed and cared, at least for the past 20 years. And why do they not now use binary units? —Centrx→talk • 20:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Why would they? — Omegatron 03:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

It's quite obvious to anyone familiar with computers who checks the size or who formats a drive. Even naive customers notice when they think they have 1 GB of space left because of the discrepancy. You can see several websites that mention it via and personally I know it was a well-known phenomenon ten years ago among technical people. —Centrx→talk • 04:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

On the value of edits

Centrx, I was urged to come here by someone, to hopefully help you and Cat work a little something out here regarding his sig edits. Doing a little reading, I wish to make the following points here for you to read and consider. The fact that he is changing these links means he honestly cares way too much about keeping things neat and orderly. The fact that you go back and revert these shows you wither have gotten too caught up in process and need to breathe for a minute, or he has gotten on your nerves to the point that you just want to smack him down at any opportunity. The purpose of not changing archives is so that the nature of the comments and readability of the conversation do not get changed after the fact. Changing the link in a sig that otherwise appears when rendered substantially the same does not interfere with any of this, and as such violates the letter, not the spirit, of the rule. He's wasting his time editing pages back there, but so are you reverting it. Articles are thattaway, many need fixing and editing. Both of you should go focus your energy there. Because, really, who cares about this? Just something for you to think on, and hopefully I didn't come across as a dick. -M 21:12, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Request to delete categories

Hi, there. I saw that you deleted "Category:Porn stars of Egyptian Origin", which is good, and so I was wondering if you would do the same for "Category:Porn stars of Indian Origin" and "Category:Porn stars of Persian Origin". Basically everything under "Category:Porn stars by ethnicity" is problematic. I created that category because I was annoyed at people categorizing certain people as "Spanish" on the basis of their heritage, when they were in fact British or Australian or what have you. I am quite annoyed at these ethnic categories in general and I would very much like to see them go! Please advise. Thanks! Joie de Vivre 05:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Either start removing the articles from them, as they are already sparsely populated, or nominate them for deletion at Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion. —Centrx→talk • 05:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipe-tan (lolicon)

These images are on Commons. Centrx look at them - they place a Misplaced Pages symbol of a minor in an overtly sexual context. In my opinion they are disruptive. WP:IAR applies if nothing else to avoiding the damage these images could do to the foundation's reputation. Lets apply a bit of common sense and stop these images appearing in Misplaced Pages. We should not be helping to promote this kind of agenda. WjBscribe 02:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

If they are truly so blatantly damaging to the Foundation's reputation and promote an unacceptable agenda, then have them deleted. Where have they been used for vandalism? —Centrx→talk • 02:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Abdulsalami Abubakar

Centrx, next time you delete an article on an important subject which definitely deserves an encyclopedia entry, would you please be so kind as to either replace it with a stub or leave a note on the wikiproject's page? (WikiProject Nigeria, in this case.) Us Nigeria editors don't exactly spend our time checking that articles on military rulers haven't disappeared overnight. Thanks, Picaroon (Talk) 02:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: OTRS

Zscout370 asked me to use the exact edit summary you saw. My experience with people asking about the edits has been that they don't recognize the initials OTRS. You're the first one who does. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

You don't need to recognize it, it just stands out as all caps with a long cryptic-looking number after it. —Centrx→talk • 03:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair point. I appreciate the advice. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:53, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The Three Point Plan

Hello Centrx,

I think I know where you're going now: you really really don't like the Three Points, and you want to jettison all traces of it from the current text, which you ... ???

- Only mildly dislike? Are indifferent to? See promise in? Really like? Not sure.

If we do that, no relation between the old and new versions would be left and it would be better to restart without the Three Points, which you want to ... ???

- Revert to? Return to its old name? Both? Burn with fire? Not sure.

Am I close? My head hurts.

Cheers, --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 18:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The essay you wrote looks fine, except for those first two points in the second section. Insofar as they derive from the other version, they are incorrect. Insofar as they say "understand what rules others are citing" and "give reasoning for not following their cited rules", they mean "listen to others" and "give reasons for your actions", which in the way it is written is misleading. It again puts emphasis on rules rather than discussion and reasons, which is the opposite of IAR, and is merely not so absurd as the previous text because of circumlocution. —Centrx→talk • 19:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Your essay is not a re-write, barely even in spirit, it is an entirely new essay which there was no reason to create on top of the previous page. Half the solution is to disconnect your essay from the other essay, in the same manner as if a new article had been accidentally written and editted over an old. —Centrx→talk • 19:22, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay. 3-point plan jettisoned. Perhaps you could help fill in the blanks? I really do wish for this to be, um, much more reality-based than the usual essay. On the one hand, not treating the preception/really of admin/editor divide is maybe not so responsible, on the other hand, I don't recall having an admin break rules in a way I didn't like, I've only seen other people complain, so I'm likely to talk out of my posterior, which isn't so responsible either. --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 02:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

essay not categorizing

can you tell me why my essay on "I-don't-know-where-to-put-it disorder" is not categorizing? Yes, it is currently short, but I'm sure that it will get bigger (with the help of others). Sincerely, Sir intellegent - smartr tahn eaver!!!! 22:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The template was set to only categorize if the page was in Misplaced Pages-space rather than user-space. It looks like this was done in error, so I changed the template to categorize in any namespace. It should work now. —Centrx→talk • 22:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

link to Misplaced Pages:Be Afraid

Just for the record, do you think that link should be included on its alleged merits (I'd be groping around the dark here as I don't see any, but perhaps symmetry, humour, or policy insight?), or did you just think it wasn't quite uncivil enough to be removed on those grounds alone? (FYI, it's gotten less civil since.) Alai 00:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be relevant and both are humor pages anyway. —Centrx→talk • 00:49, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Evidently I neglected to "ask otherwise" on reply location, but you seemed to hit the brief window I'd notice a followup, despite that. I'd personally have said that "follow" was a "humour page", which makes a point about "IAR"; whereas "Afraid" is a compendium of miscellaneous complaints (by a user that seems to throw a fit any time anyone questions anything he does). But relevant how? Alai 00:56, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

For the record, when I linked it, it had none of the FAR stuff and was less hostile. It was mostly just a parody of all the scare clauses in WP:BOLD. --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 02:07, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Ignoring all rules is all about being bold and not consulting a committee before acting. —Centrx→talk • 04:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

		The Editor's Barnstar
		For your always properly motivated reverts/removals.User:Salaskan/afewlinks Thank you for tirelessly thinking up good arguments instead of blatantly reverting and/or starting edit wars, like some people tend to do. SalaSkan 19:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

A query...

Hi Centrx - User:White Cat's asked me to step into the ongoing fuss about him changing his sig in archives. To be honest, I don't see why there's any problem with it: he's far from the only user to change his sig file in archives - I've done so myself, back when I had a small image as part of my sig which I later removed. Other users have also changed their old sigs to newer ones in archives, especially in those cases where a user has changed username (User:BD2412 comes to mind as one such case). The two GFDL-relevant features of the archives are unchanged: the message text itself isn't being changed, and the attribution is still to the user who made the comments, even if with a different user name. I'm not saying that what you're doing is wrong - you may well have perfectly legit reasons. I just wonder why there a difference in White Cat's case - is it because the sigs are being created from a user page subpage, or is there something else I'm missing? Grutness...wha? 01:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Other users should not be changing signatures either, unless perchance to conceal personal information or for some other special situation; and the issue is the alteration of archives, not the GFDL. —Centrx→talk • 02:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Why shouldn't other users be altering their signatures? It makes no change to the substance of the archives to do so. There is nothing at Help:Archiving a talk page that suggests that archives cannot be edited further. In fact, one section of that page explicitly points out that, once archived, editing may be done - "For instance, headers can be renamed to be more helpful, unsigned comments can be noted, irrelevant comments can be moved to a more appropriate place, chit chat can be removed, etc.". At another point on the same page, it mentions that refactoring means that "Archives cannot be easily repartitioned and recombined as with the subpage method. If you later wished to divide up the archives in a different way, you would need to paste all past archives to the talk page, save, and then rearchive (note that when this is done, the revision history becomes muddied)." These comments would not be necessary if no editing was ever intended of archives. I understand how editing of comments and attributions could cause problems relating to tracking the history of a discussion, but simply changing the form of a signature (while ensuring that it still points to the same person who made the comment) cannot possibly cause any problems in that way. Unless there is something which causes problems with the license, I don't see how changing the style of an individual's signature in an archive is going to cause any concerns whatsoever. Grutness...wha? 07:56, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

None of these alters the existing contents of the archives. Headers are not part of the contents, unsigned comments add to and are always done by a third-party, moving comments preserves them, chit chat should never have been in the archive in the first place; there are specific good reasons for doing them and they do not mislead anyone. If someone were to move comments and give as their reason merely "I want to" with no other justification, that would not be acceptable; and none of these actions involves changing existing text. —Centrx→talk • 04:55, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

But changing the style or pointing of a person's signature doesn't alter the contents of the archive any more than any of the activities shown, and far less than removing chit-chat or moving comments from one place to another. The comments are left exactly as before, and the signature still points to the writer of the comments. Signatures are no more or less part of the contents of an archive than headers are - the only difference is that signatures are designed to show who wrote the comments. Changing a signature to more accurately or easily indicate authorship is identical to adding a note to an unsigned signature noting authorship - in fact, in cases where a previous user page has been deleted it gives a link where no active link would otherwise be present. There are, in your words, specific good reasons for doing this. They are not done to mislead anyone, and they have far more justification that simply "I want to" (a justification which no-one here seems to have used). Grutness...wha? 05:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Removing chit-chat deletes sections that have no business there, by section. Moving sections does not alter the text of the comments. Headers were never in the talk page in the first place, they are added after the fact while making the archive. In any event, these sorts of changes are in order to make it a more efficient archive. Changing a signature re-attributes the author of the comment misleadingly, and the previous user page needs to redirect to the new username. Do you propose to change the sentences in other user's comments when they refer to "Cool Cat", a user who, if you were to alter signatures, would falsely appear to have never participated in the discussion? —Centrx→talk • 05:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Removing cxhit-chat still alters the content of the discussion. Though it may not seem relevant directly to a discussion, it may - and often does - bear upon it tangentially. Adding headers to a talk page that were not previously there can also change the perception of a discussion, as it implies that the header was placed there by the first commenter and therefore bears the same slant on a particular discussion that that first commenter would have - in effect, it puts worsds in that editor's mouth that were not there. Changing a signature to point from one user to the same user does not re-attribute anything in any way. Previous user pages do not always redirect to new user pages, nor should thhey in some cases. In White Cat's case, The user:Cool Cat page is a protected deleted page. Pointing to that page is far more misleading than repointing to User:White Cat would be. And no, I do not propose changing any comments - it should be clear from the context that the user to whom they are replying in those comments now has a different user name, due to the changes signature. Grutness...wha? 06:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Chit-chat refers to text totally unrelated to the discussion, usually left by random anonymous passers-by; e.g. . A header is Template:Talkarchive; you are reaching for straws if you think any reasonable person will interpret that as a comment by the first commenter. Here is an example of how changing the signature alters the discussion: In a comment below, you read "In reference to what Joe said above", yet you scroll up in the archive to find what Joe said and find that there is no Joe whatsoever on the page, rendering the archive useless where it was not before. —Centrx→talk • 17:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

A header is far more normally interpeted as meaning something like "===Header=== - and is usually interpreted as being part of the first commenter's message. If you think it's clutching at straws to think any reasonable person would interpret Template:Talkarchive as being a comment by the first commenter, it is not nearly so much a grasp as thinking that an editor would interpret "a header" as meinging a specific archiving template. In the case of White Cat's change of signature, BTW, he signs his name simply as "Cat", so anyone seeing "Cool Cat" referenced would have no doubt as to which other commenter is bing referred to. It seems, however, that we must agree to disagree. When we started this discussion, I wasn't sure whether you had any valid points to make which would explain your reasoning, hence my original comments. As the conversation has continued, however, it has become all too readily apparent that those reasons you have are clearly not valid ones. You are quite happy to allow changes to things which may change the implied message of an archive, but unwilling to allow things which do nothing other than make it easier to attribute a specific comment. It all seems backward to me, but I seem to be unable to convince you of why this is a poor idea, as well as being an arbitrary one not supported by Misplaced Pages's own instructions on how to archive. There seems little point in continuing to try. Grutness...wha? 10:01, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Why was an article on my work deleted?

Why did you delete the article on my work from Misplaced Pages? I have worked in the arts and as a professional composer for over 35 years. My work has been performed widely world-wide. I have been composer-in-residence at Tanglewood Music festival, Joe Papp's Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, The NationalTheater Manheim, The Donaueschingen Festival and many many more. I have created over 9 full length operas and 6 symphony to great acclaim. I believe I have earned the right to be included in wikipedia, why don;t you?

Carson Kievman, Ph.D. carson@sobemusic.org

http://carsonkievman.com http://sobemusic.org

You are not allowed to write an article about yourself. See Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest. —Centrx→talk • 00:38, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Where is the AfD for that article? --Dachannien_Contrib 11:52, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Articles that are advertisements and/or copyright infringements do not have AfDs. —Centrx→talk • 20:18, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I obviously can't see what the article looked like before you deleted it to judge for myself. Was it truly a self-serving advertisement with no chance for being polished into an actual article? --Dachannien_Contrib 04:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It was entirely copied from the subject's website. If it was not a copyright infringingement, then the article was created by the subject himself and then for the entire two-year existence of the article no substantive edits were made by anyone else. There were no sources and nothing beyond the subject's personal biography, and if anyone wants to create a legitimate article where for the past two years they did not, they can obtain all the information from the original autobiography. —Centrx→talk • 17:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

The past comes back to haunt us.

Remember this? . The other party in the initial incident, Vesther, is back under the name Mark Kim. The only difference? Well a year ago Vesther wrote much more cleanly and coherently as you can see here . I noticed some uncivil behaviour here, and reminded him about npa, which I guess was entirely unacceptable. He's not allowed to be warned or some such thing. However, whats different is the writing style. He seems to have abandoned that much cleaner writing for something a bit more familiar. Not long, but in a style that reminds me of someone else near and dear to us...either way he's expressed to me multiple times that he's not interested in caring about the policies here, and is willing to blank warnings and go right on attacking and threatening users.--Crossmr 01:13, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Open proxies/Tor

Can you please make sure to hardblock Open proxies and Tor nodes from now on? I've come across several IPs you softblocked as open proxies in May which have been used for abuse by accounts. Thanks. Dmcdevit·t 22:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this was carelessness on my part. —Centrx→talk • 00:01, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Amity

The Amity High School page should not have been deleted. There was no unture information on that page, and it's useful that there at least be some page there for that school.

Misplaced Pages articles must be substantiated by independent published sources, especially when they pertain to living persons. —Centrx→talk • 04:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida)

Was a speedy really necessary? Non-notability and being unsourced is not part of the speedy criteria. An AFD would've been better in terms of handling this. (→zelzany - uses a new sig) 12:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of County Road 702 (Palm Beach County, Florida). Since you closed the deletion discussion for this article or speedy-deleted it, you might want to participate in the deletion review. (→zelzany - uses a new sig) 16:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I would be happy to restore it for you if there is any reason to believe an encyclopedia article can be created out of it. —Centrx→talk • 22:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

you don't own the article, Wikimedia Foundation does. if the ruling party on the deletion review overturns it it will be restored. please voice your opinion on the deletion review. Master son 22:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You have completely misunderstood how Misplaced Pages works. The Wikimedia Foundation does not own the articles and it is not relevant whether they do. The "ruling party" is not an agent of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Misplaced Pages is not strait-jacketed by procedural deletion review rules. We are here to build an encyclopedia. —Centrx→talk • 22:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Yet WMF has entrusted the users with the content. and we are building an encyclopedia. and last time I checked - there are procedures for deleting an article, which according to that review you may have violated. • master_son 23:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

In fact, you're really close to violating the fact that Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy. Deletion review is a consensus-based discussion. (→zelzany - uses a new sig) 23:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

RE:Dragonball Z

Sorry. I mistook this for December 2002 and thought it had to be deleted so a history merge could take place with Dragon Ball Z. Here is when Dragon Ball Z was created. Lord Sesshomaru

Okay. So all is well then now with the redirect? —Centrx→talk • 22:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes. All is well on that case. I have recently noticed that Buu was created before the current Majin Buu article was made. A history merger should take place there now, I think — a redirect can only have its history merged with what it redirects to if the latter came afterwards. Wait, did I say that right? Lord Sesshomaru

I have merged the article page histories. I did not merge the talk page histories because they overlap. —Centrx→talk • 06:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll let you know of more when I see them. I have a question: does Misplaced Pages ever plan to have only established users edit the English Misplaced Pages? I'm seeing less and less useful ip users contribute wealthily and more blocks seem to go out to ips rather than established users. How can I get something set on this? Or... any ideas? Lord Sesshomaru

There are not currently any plans to do that. Also, many IP edits are productive; the places where most IP edits are not productive are very popular articles that get a lot of random vandalism, often from school-children on Christopher Columbus or somesuch topic being taught in school. Those articles are increasingly semi-protected semi-permanently, so that is the effective solution for those articles. Also, 1) because anyone can register, restricting IP edits is not going to prevent someone intent on vandalism; 2) most of the established users became established users because they had the opportunity to edit without registering. —Centrx→talk • 17:00, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I find simply that more ips disrupt the Misplaced Pages rather than help — it is essentially harder to report an abusive ip user who's ISP changes alot; therefore, making it rather difficult to report them than a established user who account does not change a lot. Reason why I brought this up was recently I read about anonymous editing here and I completely agree with that one statement: "Many have suggested requiring users to register before editing articles". I feel like starting a new discussion on this, but where could I do such a thing? Lord Sesshomaru

Misplaced Pages:Village pump. —Centrx→talk • 00:33, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Which section? Lord Sesshomaru

Policy or proposals. I would put it policy because it is a perennial proposal. See Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals#Prohibit anonymous users from editing. —Centrx→talk • 06:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I have to go, when I return I shall post this discussion on the policy section. I would greatly appreciate your help there though. Lord Sesshomaru

I began it — you're welcome for comment there. Lord Sesshomaru

Colonial America

Hi, I noticed that you semi-protected this article in October to deal with IP vandalism, and that it's still protected. I figured that it was just forgotten about, so I thought I'd bring it to your attention. Thanks! --Confiteordeo 16:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I have now unprotected it. Some popular articles are near-permanent heavy targets of random vandalism, so it may have to be re-protected. —Centrx→talk • 16:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Archive box

Hey there. You encouraged me to "keep fiddling" with the code at Template:Archive box and here's what I came up with. Please drop me a note occasionally, as to what you think of it and whether it is ready for a template page of its own. —AldeBaer 17:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I've had that "clicking twice to open" issue for quite a while. You see, I have really no idea about programming languages, not even basic knowledge about CSS/JS, everything I do know I learned only since you told me to try around with the archive box code. I still have no real idea how mixed classes work though...

I understand there are preset styles defined in the wikimedia common.css, but I'm having a hard time isolating them so I can include the code to override all aspects I want changed.

Please take a look at my my sandbox, I have thrown together a version of the archive box using class"navbox collapsible" instead of the div=navframe element. It seems to work (and it only requires one click to open). The problem is the text align in the title and the height of the title bar (it appears to have some padding that I can't eliminate).

Re the standard transclusion: Did you try it with a talk page where all archive pages are regularly numbered /Archive 1, /Archive 2, etc? What does it or doesn't it do? —AldeBaer 02:57, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Addendum: I don't know how tech-savvy or interested in this you are. If you think I'd better ask someone else just tell me so, I don't want to bother you with anything. —AldeBaer 03:00, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I fixed those two problems. I am not sure what you are referring to about the transclusion with numbering. I am pretty tech savvy and I am happy to help. By the way, programming is useful and can result in a sense of marvellous creation such as with building a cabinet or your own house, so I highly recommend you join the fun. —Centrx→talk • 03:31, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. On the template talk page you said that my second example wasn't working. That was the example in which I included the code (what I referred to as "standard transclusions"):

{{#if:{{{auto|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{{auto}}}|long|{{Archive list long}}|<div style="text-align: center">{{archive list}}</div>}}{{#if:{{{1|}}}|<br/>}}}}{{{1|}}}

which is supposed to produce automatic links, if I understand it correctly.

The title was the other problem which I couldn't fix. It's offset to the left for some reason. Would you mind taking yet another look, see if you can do the magic with that as well? —AldeBaer 04:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem might be that the #if etc. part is designed to be used in a template; I don't know. Also, I think the bad centering is fine and we should leave it as is to give a distinctive look to the box. Good night. —Centrx→talk • 04:30, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks once more. I'm going to stay up and maybe create the template for others to use. —AldeBaer 06:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

{{Archive box collapsible}}. —AldeBaer 07:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

State Flags

I've noticed that you've been deleting state flags from numerous articles regarding American politician. I'm just wondering what your reason for this is. Tey seem ok to me. --Cjs56 22:46, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

These were all added en masse by one user. The flag does not add any information, the name of the state is already included and that name is usually much better recognized by a reader than a flag; flags are appropriate in situations where there is not enough space to display the country name or where it used as a sort of abbreviation in listings, so that the full name is not listed each time, such as in sports tables. The flag unbalances the infobox, shouting to the reader that the state in which the person happened to be born is somehow more important than every other element in the infobox . If we were to follow the same principle by which the state flag is added, why not add the logo of each political party? and the logo of the religion, and the flags of the states of primary residence of each of politician's antecedents and successors? This quickly becomes ridiculous (see, e.g. ). In addition, the flag is not appropriate for navigation. The convention with images like this on the Web in general is that clicking on the image will bring the reader to the linked article, i.e. the article about country, but instead they are sent to the image page. This is because images are not navigational tools. Misplaced Pages:Images, WP:MOS#Images, and Misplaced Pages:Image use policy has some relevant mentions about the use of images. —Centrx→talk • 01:57, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Giuliani

I'm not sure what happened in the transfer to different articles, but the Mayoralty article as it currently stands does not include quite a bit of information which was written into that section over the last few weeks. Please revert and do the split again. As an example, I had expanded the Yasser Arafat section into a few paragraphs and now it appears as only the few sentences it was before my work of a week ago. I don't want to have to manually go through and reinsert my changes and I shouldn't have to, because I already had to do that once when the article was split off. I had also spent considerable time working on the references in that section and I see that the references are back to the uncorrected way now. Did you simply resurrect the Mayoralty article as it was split off a few weeks ago? If that's the case, there was much more information added to the article since then, the change needs to be reverted and the section split off in its current format (or, the format of a day ago when the article still reflected recent changes and contributions).--Gloriamarie 01:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I was not the one who split it off originally. I have now re-merged the changes that were made since Tvoz's revert (in this diff) with the exception of the 'Not having read the 9/11 Commission report' section, which is unduly long, disproportionate to the importance of the "controversy", and some minor changes at the bottom that seem to just be reshuffling of categories. If there were changes before that, you can simply copy and paste the versions from the main article as of yesterday to the sub-articles pages, but reverting back to a 150KB article and simply leaving the sub-articles as there were, left to rot, is not a solution. —Centrx→talk • 02:12, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Talk:German Christmas traditions

Why was Talk:German Christmas traditions deleted. I want to add the WikiProject Germany template. Is there any problem with this? Kingjeff 17:04, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem. It was deleted just because the main page was deleted. —Centrx→talk • 18:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Re:Copyright

Hi. Concerning the copyright in general and Heinrich Knirr in particular, I was led by a limited knowledge of policies and guidelines some time ago, so it isn't an actual issue anymore. Thanks though. Brand спойт 20:05, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem, just letting you know. —Centrx→talk • 20:07, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Infobox at Dante Gabriel Rossetti

You removed the infobox at Dante Gabriel Rossetti citing it as "recently added unnecessary pseudo-scholarship." Although it was added by an anon IP recently, I highly disagree with it being pseudo-scholarship, or scholarship, period. Unless you disagree with anything that is said in the infobox (which would be odd, since all of it has already been stated in the article), then I do not see a reason for it being removed aside from personal preference, please correct me if I'm wrong. Perhaps you should take your argument to the talk page before removal. Take care, María (críticame) 14:14, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

If it is already stated in the article, what is the point of the infobox? And where does it say even on the WikiProject that infoboxes are required on biographies? Where is the discussion on the talk page prior to the infobox being added? The infobox is a new change, so the status quo remains until there is consensus for the change. —Centrx→talk • 21:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes are not required, you're correct, but they are highly encouraged. Take a look at FA articles in basically every subject; if an infobox if available, it's present on the article. They are intended to provide standardized information for related topics (biographies, films, novels, organizations, etc) as well as summaries of the subject matter's important points; for biographies that means dates, occupations, major works, and others. Perhaps you should bring your qualms with infoboxes to WP:INFO or a related talk page. Unless you have issues with the content pertaining to Rossetti, I see no reason for us to debate this issue since infoboxes are basically standard. María (críticame) 12:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

What says that they are "highly encouraged"? Why is their presence in articles not simply due to a handful of people zealously adding them to articles in a semi-automated fashion, and then others then falsely thinking they are "standard" and "highly encouraged"? —Centrx→talk • 22:14, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd also like you to please stop removing infoboxes on other articles like you did at Alan Rouse, Eric Shipton, and Frank Smythe. You have been reverted several times by various other users. There is no need to be disruptive on articles. Again, if you do not agree with the usage of infoboxes, please bring your concerns somewhere. By repeatedly calling the infobox "misleading" is untrue. María (críticame) 12:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

"Stop"? I haven't done anything in a day, and everything I did do I did once. This was in cleaning up after a user who was adding false and misleading information in infoboxes. Standardization, especially when it is done by people who are not familiar with the subject of the article but instead in a semi-automated fashion just for the purpose of being "standard", leads to false and misleading information being included in articles. This happened several times with this user. —Centrx→talk • 22:14, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Primarysources

Hello, hope all is well with you. An issue on which you and I strongly disagreed has once again been brought up at Template talk:Primarysources#Strike Usually?, that is, whether that template should imply if articles can ever be written using only primary sources. As you know, I feel the wording of the template should be sensitive to the apparent contradictions... er, deep and subtle nuances of the language of WP:NOR. I think you felt it should be written more explicitly so as to be more effective.

Anyway, since we discussed it at length previously I just thought you should be aware the issue has come up again and I have chimed in. Have a good one, Satori Son 14:32, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Melissa_Scott_(televangelist) deletion

Could I ask why in your opinion this person is not notable? She is a televison performer and appears in other wikki articles.

The information from her web site is simple biographical info - 2 or 3 sentences. jmcw 00:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)