User talk:Pcb21/Archive1

Categorized old talk

I've decided to categorize my old talk by subject. The traditional method of archiving my date can be simulated by using Page History

• User_talk:Pcb21/Old_cetacean_talk
• User_talk:Pcb21/Old_transport_talk

• User_talk:Pcb21/Old_copyrights_and_images_talk
• User_talk:Pcb21/Old_policy_talk
• User_talk:Pcb21/Old_misc_talk

Welcome

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page and experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Ugh!

Thanks for the info on HP. I can absolutely believe that it will be time consuming, but it's got to be done. I've spent a lot of time researching Florentin Smarandache as well. Oh well, it was a public holiday here and I didn't have much else to do. I recently put a disclaimer like the one you're talking about on pataphysical situation, but hopefully that article will be deleted altogether eventually, as will Cartographic Congress, I hope. -- Tim Starling 13:34 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Just been looking over the Talk:Cartographic Congress. I am impressed and envious of your patience. HP's contributions started with Luther Blissett and now I notice there is a User:Luther Blissett. I fear his contributions will have to be treated with caution too. User:Qqq has weighed in on the debate. I did wonder (aloud) if he might be the same person as Qqq, but did not directly accuse him as the evidence was circumstantial - Qqq's sphere of interest is a subset of HP's own idiosyncratic interests. Indeed Qqq's first contributions to the 'pedia were on VfD (a strange place for newbies to begin, I thought) defending HP so I smelt a rat. Their writing styles are quite different so might well be different people, but who probably know each other and have a similar disruptive agenda. Pcb21 09:17 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Fantasy

Hi Pete, I have seen that you live in London. I lived for two years in London and I still miss the city... Fantasy 11:12 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Fantasy. I lived in New Cross for a year, then Covent Garden for a year. I've now moved out to the suburbs near Heathrow but still study in the West End and work in the City. I love the city. I should really contribute some more to all those articles I've just linked! Pete 11:19 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Pete, I lived in Camden, Notting Hill, near Kings Cross... I saw a lot of London but I still have many things I would like to see one day or another. The more you contribute, the more things I find that would be interresting to visit ;-) See you (maybe one day in London), Fantasy 08:21 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. Funny how you want to come back to London and I always want to visit places as green and mountainous and with as much fresh air as the Alps... you don't get those things in London! Pete 10:26 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I was born in the Alps and grew up in 1200 metres hight, for me the city is life, the mountains are nice to see, but not the place where you can stay for your life (probably this changes with age... ;-) Fantasy 12:00 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Erdos

I was THAT close of doing just what you did to "erdos", but then I noticed he was a painter, not a polymath. Better you than me ;) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 16:05 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oh dear have I done something wrong? The Erdos I have heard was a mathematician... the previous content on the Erdos page was rubbish.. so I redirected that page to the Paul Erdos page. If there are Erdos' out there.. such as painter(?).. then Erdos should become a disam page. Pete 07:42 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

According to List of painters, this painter was born in 1989, and is therefore 13 or 14 years old. Seems a bit unlikely. Probably just the nickname of the person (62.90.135.221) who added it to List of painters. No reason to think it's a real painter, so I'm going to remove it. --Zundark 11:44 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for clearing that up. I missed the [[List of painters] page. Pete 13:04 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually I think erdos is a "painter" in the sense that it is a fractal painting programme for computers. Did some googling... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 13:08 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I guess you mean someone called Dawn Erdos wrote a book called Fractal Design Painter about the computer programme also going by that name. In fact she written quite a lot of books about doing graphic design using computers (see [1] for details. Fortunately (in the sense that my redirect was correct) she don't need an encyclopedia article (yet!). Same goes for a few other Erdos's I found by googling for "erdos -paul". Pete 14:02 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Photos and how they should be generated

PNG is for computer-generated diagrams and the like. Things with nice big blocks of constant colour. JPEG is much better for photos like Image:Geyser exploding 1 large.png. -- Tim Starling 08:55, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

I've converted two of them, are you going to do the rest, or will I do it? -- Tim Starling 08:58, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

There are four (eight pictures) in total. I would do it but when I save as JPG I get file sizes waaaaay bigger than you are getting. Would you mind awfully finishing the job? If you don't have time.. don't worry I will figure it out somehow! (see also your talk where I replied first. Pete 09:02, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I'll do it. It's very strange that you get big JPEG sizes - in ImageReady Image:Geyser_exploding_1_large.jpg only goes up to 57 KB even if I set the quality to maximum. What program are you using? -- Tim Starling 09:11, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks very much for doing that Tim. I initially opened up the full res pictures (which came from the camera as JPGs at about 1.5Mb) in Adobe PhotoElements 2. Doing nothing except resaving as JPGs makes them go to 9MB. I then reduced the image size to 30% for the large and 8% for small which made for sizes that you saw in PNGs and about 30-50% bigger for JPGs. I then transferred the photos onto this computer which has an internet connection. Resaving the PNGs as JPGs on this computer in Microsoft Photo Editor/Viewer makes the photos go from 900KB to about 450KB... but still nothing like the reduction you are getting! I have to admit I know little about the technicalities of all the formats. Pete 09:22, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Okay, they're all done now. I don't know what's going on with PhotoElements, but I just tried saving in Microsoft Photo Editor 3.0. In that version, if you click "More >>" when you're saving, you get to choose what quality you want. For Image:Geyser_exploding_2_large.jpg , I got 430 KB at 100 quality, and 42 KB at 50 quality. So you might want to check that out next time. -- Tim Starling 09:49, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for doing all that, Tim. The effort is appreciated. The version of MS Photo that I have is the version that ships with Windows XP and is the default (on a standard install) program to open when JPG/PNG files are opened. I will check out that "More >>" button when I am next sat in front of that PC. Pete 13:41, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

OK, the version I have is actually called "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" and doesn't have that more>> button. Windows 2000 ships with Photo Editor 3.0 and _does_ have that button. Seems like a step backward was taken from one version of Windows to the next here! Pete 21:10, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wow - nice photos! Alas, my digital camera can't take photos fast enough to get action shots like that. --mav 09:09, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks mav. They were taken by my girlfriend who has an SLR camera. When photo ops like this come along I am always green with envy with her because my compact camera doesn't stand a chance. Pete 09:22, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi Pete, when you updated the Geyser article with jpg instead of png could you please also update Wikipedia:Brilliant pictures and Wikipedia:Brilliant pictures visible? Thanks ;-) Fantasy 11:08, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi Fantasy. Thanks for your implied positive feedback! It appears all the pages have been updated by someone else before I managed to get back to the pedia this lunchtime.... sometimes this collabrative editing is really great! Pete 13:41, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, so great, that sometimes it's hard to stop... ;-) Fantasy 14:12, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Sysop status granted

Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban signed in users. What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban anonymous vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Votes for deletion for more than a week, protect pages when asked to by other members, and help keep the few protected pages there are, among them the precious Main Page, up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information at Wikipedia:Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun!—Eloquence 02:45, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

Fair use of photos

Hi! Thank you for your comments. I am not sure, but I think Fair use material is, while not encouraged, allowed on Wikipedia. www.pics4learning.com has a very slack image policy [2] and WP seems to be a perfect example of a site that is allowed to use their images - "intended to provide copyright friendly images for use by students and teachers in an educational setting". BL 12:07, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Strokkur geyser photos

The Iceland series is great! I didn't even see it that good in Yellowstone! --Menchi 19:47, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

Whooper Swan

Thanks Pete, I know some bird pics are going to be difficult to get, but I thought someone would have an image of this unmissable swan! Jim

Thanks for the Whooper Swan. I wasn't very happy with the painting, which was basically a Mute Swan with a black and yellow bill, and this image is a definite improvement. Jim

Tyops

lol.. it's alright no harm done... i do stuff like that all the time :-) Evil saltine 14:24, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A classic case of typing then thinking on my part :-) Pete 14:42, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sperm Whale

Nice Sperm Whale - you do a lot more research than me! Jim

Thanks. I blame having the cricket on... managed to while away the whole day in front of the box and laptop! Pete 15:53, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think this was about trolling

About George Thomas: it looks like some people didn't read the edit summary of your original response. ;-) Good call. Cheers, Cyan 13:09, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

WINOR

I have put the sources of WINOR here (zip file). Needs wxWindows to run; project file is for DevCpp. Good luck! --Magnus Manske 12:41, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wow, that was quick. I have DevCpp on my home machine and I've used wxPython a bit, which follows wxWindows slavishly closely, I'm told... so hopefully the learning curve may be a little less steep than it might have been. Thanks. Pete 12:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Other people fixing my mistakes again

FYI re Talk:Weblog: I fixed the edit history thing. :-) -- Cyan 16:12, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Oh thanks, I had forgotten about that. Pete 18:58, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Photos from NOAA

Indeed it does, Pete. Unfortunately, I don't even remember adding the picture, so the only thing I know about it is what I wrote at the time in the edit summary. I assume that I found it through Google. I'm contributing less text these days because I'm spending a great deal of time taking photographs - but birds, not whales. Not many whales in inland Australia! Best -- Tony (Tannin)

If you said it came from the NOAA originall, I can probably find it there to see if it is salvagable. I will do the audit that I mentioned on your talk page. Have fun taking those photos.... see if you can snag one of Prince Harry for us... us Brits are hearing on the news today that he won't come out his Outback farm where he has started his Gap Year because there are too many photographers watching him! Pete 21:46, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Pete:

I saw your note on Tannin's user talk page this is the information I found on the NOAA.GOV site:

Downloading Images

Individuals and educational users (i.e. students, teachers, individual researchers) may download and use the images in the gallery, as long as any source information found on an image is not removed. Commercial or organizational publication of imagery used on this site is not advised without first consulting with the individual photographers. To contact a photographer or discuss use of imagery found on this site, please contact Michael Murphy at the National Ocean Service (301) 713-3145 x169 or by email at Michael.T.Murphy@noaa.gov [3]. There seems to be some public domain stuff on this site, but some of the images are used seem to be donated to the site by various non-government employee photographers. Perhaps they will grant a non-exlusive GDFL license, but that will require contacting the NOAA person above and getting clearance from him and posting it on every image description page so it can be verified in the future. Good luck let me know if you need any clarification about this, if you can claim fair use perhaps they can still be used, most of the images are pretty generic. Alex756 03:21, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Cheers for the research Alex. The situation sounds reasonably positive, I will contact Mr Murphy and see what can be salvaged. Pete 09:29, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Too many images on a page? (Animated GIFs were presented as a solution)

The idea that anyone has been saying "there isn't enough room" is a joke.

It may well be a joke, but it's also true. See, eg, talk:Rachel Corrie and talk:Images of Rachel Corrie. If you believe that Lir is a troll, that's fine, but always best to base such judgements on the facts. :) Martin 17:30, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know the details of that case, but do remember it was quite acrimonious. I will try to ignore who is saying things and concentrate on what is being said but admit it is hard with Lir. The first day he came back, he wrote to me for the first and only time, and wrote, and I quote in full, "Haven't you got anything better to do?" He is hard to work with. Pete 17:44, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I sympathise entirely, Pete. Thanks for the courteous response. :) Martin 18:54, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Votes for deletion stuff

Hello, Mr. Pete. I was just wondering what you had against the recently added bits on the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page. I always found the boilerplate text, in particular, to be very useful, as I could copy and paste it straight from there onto any pages that needed it. I don't suppose it can be anything to do with space considerations, can it? Because that text only took up about 0.2% of the page, you know... ;) -- Oliver P. 11:55, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Not so long ago there was so much preamble on VfD that on a lower res screen I had to scroll three pages before getting to the content of VfD. I suggested on VfD talk with reasonable suppport that the instructions be moved elsewhere so that a "neat" page for listing articles could be maintained. There wasn't really anything with the content added just now, just that if we put that there then there was no reason to not have the other three screens worth back. Users of the page are overwhelming old hands, newcomers to the pages are urged to read the policy page in bold text. If you think it can be handled better though, go for it, I am not too bothered! Pete 12:21, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Oh well. Now that I come to think of it, I'm not sure I'm too bothered, either! -- Oliver P. 12:54, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

P.S. - Thought of anything to add to the Selwyn College, Cambridge page, yet? :)

Ermmm, sadly doesn't look like it! It's actually quite hard :)

Thanks! re Fritz Sp.

Thanks for the compliment. Your creative spelling of his name ("the very good on article on Fritz Speigl") shows me I was right in including the information contained in the last sentence of the article. :) All the best, --KF 18:16, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Alexandros, Python

Hello. It seems that you are an extremely valuable contributer to Wikipedia, but I have not made your acquaintence yet. I would like to introduce myself to you and wish you the best. By the way, could you give me that python script you were talking about on Wikipedia:Village pump? Thank you in advance, Alexandros 04:10, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Alexandros. Nice to meet you too. I am at work now and the script is at home so I should be able to send to you in about 12 hours. Code is quite awkward to post on wiki pages, especially python where indentation matters, so please send me a message using "Email this User" so that I get your email address and it will be easier to send you the code. Pete 09:51, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thank you very much. You can send it to clarinetalex@yahoo.com. I appreciate your help. Alexandros 12:34, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It works like a charm! Thank you for your wonderful script. It will save me a lot of time of trying to copy and paste my contributions, and then numbering them. Im more of a perl/c++ guy myself, but I am very pleased with this python script. Keep up the good work! Best wishes, Alexandros 00:38, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my Concorde pic, I apppreciate it. Thank goodness the pic came out so well because that was the last ten seconds of Concorde flight EVER!

I live about ten miles from Filton and estimate that about 5000 people were at the runway.
Adrian Pingstone 13:39, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Heh, I was going to move the Rachel Scott stuff too - you did it seconds before me! Good call, and thanks for helping with the housework. :) Martin 00:48, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Just because you don't like an edit, is not sufficient reason to revert it. Lirath Q. Pynnor

I've never simply reverted one of your edits. If you are referring to Rachel Scott I altered the article closer back to how it was because it is clearer and more accurate. You use of "Some people" simply muddies the waters. So I didn't like the edit in the sense that it made the article worse. We don't just say "Some people think X", we say "Y thinks X". Also I noticed that you made another change to the same line again putting "Some people..." and put is an uncommented minor edit. It is obvious we are still working together to get that article right - putting that sort of edit as minor and uncommented is a silly breach of wikiquette that someone of your standing should be over by now. Please explain why "Some people" is better than "Christians" or I'll go back to the version I proposed later on today. Pete/Pcb21 16:18, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Charles Ingram

Thanks for help on Charles Ingram. Still needs more work from me - DoB, career etc. Mervyn.

Go for it! May be a neat way of organising the articles would be to take some more detail from the WWTBAAM article into the Ingram article and then perhaps reduce the WWTBAAM section on Ingram a bit (refer readers to your new article). This would save duplication. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:37, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Re: thank you to that person whose name I unfortunately can't remember right now - very imaginative! - I think you're talking about User:Dori? See User talk:Dori#Signatures Dysprosia 06:00, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for that - I definitely nicked it from Dori but hadn't seen his/her talk page. I'll update my page. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:17, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

WordIQ response

Good to see that others are also interrested in having the redistributors of wikipedia material comply with the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content#wordIQ for the response I received. --snoyes 15:43, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia/Guidelines for controversial articles

Hey, thanks for catching that!... -- Viajero 15:56, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Poetry

Do you think anyone would object to this idea?

General Points Whenever possible, headings and a table of contents should be included.

Please consider adding the following boilerplate text at the end of your articles and the top of their Talk page.

This article is part of WikiProject Poetry. Please read the guidelines set out there before editing the page.

I don't want to include it if other users or admins will start deleting it. Bmills 10:14, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Most WikiProjects would love to have more people join the project and so tend to do a fair bit of "advertising" on the talk page of articles that form part of the project. Although I peronally think it would be ok to put the "advert" at the end of the article too (because more people read articles than talk pages), I fear that if you did so some people will remove it - people can have quite fixed ideas about what constitutes an article. Maybe the best thing would be to be bold and see if anyone doesn't like it - if they don't then we can find out when out - if their arguments make sense then we can just stick to the talk page. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:10, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC) p.s. bit about headings and TOCsis good.

Thanks. I put in on Wikipedia:Village pump for feedback. Nothing so far. Bmills 13:13, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I like the idea, but wouldnt people have so many conflicting ideas of poetry that we would have to have more than one version of the same poem? Greenmountainboy 19:29, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Hello, I enhanced your No_stubs.PNG image. Enjoy! Greenmountainboy 03:15, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• yes, i got that vibe from her, but no harm. :-) (she can always revert) Greenmountainboy 02:27, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

BP

Dear Pcb, check the Brilliant prose nominees talk page. I placed some thoughts there. Cheers, Muriel Victoria 16:11, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

British Prime Minister

Re your changes to Downing Street, First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister are not and never have been the same. Both are usually held by the one person, but they need not be (the last time they were not was at the beginning of the 20th century). 10 Downing Street is the residence of the FLOTT, not the PM (as the sign on the door makes absolutely clear) and if the two posts are ever again separated the FLOTT will live in Number 10 and the PM will have to live elsewhere, as he had to do 100 years ago. Britain does not have a residence for the PM. FearÉIREANN 21:23, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. But you know as well as I do that there is no chance the offices of the PM and FLOTT being held by different people any time soon. I wanted to re-jig the articles that The Cuncatator had created to dispel the notion of a spitting was likely, as he had done. If I went too far with jigging then I am sorry - I didn't intent to say that were the same office. When then was the last time that they weren't held by the same person? I thought it was 1902? Maybe the article should say something like "is thus the de facto residence of the Prime Minister". There comes a stage when precision (which is obviously essential) can trip into unhelpful pedantry (which is not!) - I am sure it won't be hard to get the balance right on these two articles. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:37, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

voting

I want to know about every vote. Not just VfD. And I HAVE missed votes. and it sucks, and makes me sad. Wikipolitics is important, and needs changes. Thats what I'm about on this one. Jack 10:10, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There is also Wikipedia:List of ongoing votes that is ok, I think, at being kept up-to-date of non-Vfd votes. As for missing votes on VfD, yeah it sucks when you miss things, but to an extent the wikipedia is so big now that sometimes you just have to faith in the process - most people aren't wackos and the Right Thing is generally still done. If not, well, everything is reversible, including deletions. If something mysteriously disappears, check the Wikipedia:Deletion log and list it on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion if necessary. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:16, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"Successful" - subjective/non-neutral

Thanks. I guess who is or is not "successful" at any given point in time is very much a subjective judgment. By what yardstack is success measured? In Cherie Blair's case, is it because she has presumably high-profile clients, and charges accordingly? Or is it just to boost Tony Blair's image?. What if Cherie somehow fell from grace and was able to sustain only an average practice, enough to keep a roof over her head but no longer with high-profile clients and not particularly newsworthy in its own right? Would you still call her "successful" then? If somebody is not described as "successful", people do not immediately jump to the conclusion that they have somehow "failed", so the successful tag adds no value, and is simply unnecessary waffle. Hilary Swank won the Best Actress Oscar a couple of years ago - one can't get a much higher industry accolade than that, so she is undoubtedly "successful" in the eyes of her peers - but her public profile is so low and her films so non-box office that most people would probably say "Hilary who?". I haven't checked, but I'd bet a million dollars her entry in Wikipedia (if there is one) does not describe her as "a successful American actress", but simply "an American actress". Basically, Wikipedia is about factual information - describing somebody as "successful" (or anything else like that) is not factual, but simply somebody's opinion - and it also smacks of marketing hype which also goes against the grain in this context. I don't propose to remove it, but I still think this has no real place here. Cheers for Christmas JackofOz 23:20, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Good points, Jack. I hope you'll believe when I say I understand our Neutral Point of View policy and the problems of being too descriptive. I certainly ordinarily cite my sources more than most around here. Occasionally though, on a case by case basis, I cut myself some slack. In this case Cherie is very often described as "successful" in the press - I think it is some sort of shorthand for saying Cherie isn't just a Prime Minister's wife she's a career woman too (wohoo!) Maybe I shouldn't have followed the press lead here.. they have more licence to be subjective than us.

Hmm, if everyone has the same subjective opinion, is it still subjective?

This is where we start to enter into a philosophical minefield. Is Tony Blair the UK PM, or is it only somebody's subjective opinion that he is the UK PM? What is and is not factual is sometimes very difficult to determine - and until there is virtually universal agreement on a particular point, it will remain in the realm of opinion, supposition, hearsay, hypothesis, etc. And that's where we're talking about "historical" information. It's a whole different ball-game again when we get into the area of subjective attributes. Writers and communicators generally need to be extraordinarily careful about using adjectives to describe people, and should be sparing with use of the verb "to be". What a person did is one thing, that might be recorded on film for example (and even then we can have arguments about what really happened) - but what kind of person they are/were is not possible to pin down outside each individual observer's mind. For example, by general consensus there really was a King of Macedon called Alexander III, who is usually referred to as "Alexander the Great", but does that title alone prove that he was a "great" king or a "great" individual? I doubt it. You might think he was great, I might disagree. Who's right? Nobody. Who's wrong? Nobody. Even if you think that only a crackpot would argue against the saintly attributes of Mother Teresa, that does not mean that the "crackpot" is ipso facto wrong. The point is that there simply is no universally accepted measure of such things as "great", "successful", "evil" etc etc - which is why they are and will continue to remain fundamentally subjective, regardless of how many people you may find to agree with you. (Yes, I can ramble on as well as the next man, as is by now probably painfully obvious) JackofOz 01:48, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Dunno about the Redd Foxx photo - I snagged two versions from a couple places, and cleaned them up substantially in photoshop. It looks like that was all deleted. Just getting back to here - reading old mail, etc.- 戴&#30505sv

Dolphins

Hi, thanks for your clearing up the species of Bottlenose Dolphin. Just one question: is T. gillii considered to be a subspecies of T. truncatus or of T. aduncus? Thanks, AxelBoldt 15:33, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The former according to Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, and that makes geographic sense too. I made an edit to the article. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:10, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Takedown letter time for WordIQ.com - please help

See my comment at the end of Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content#wordIQ. --mav 05:20, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

prototype

What's that "prototype wiki-text to PDF converter"? Is that free? --Yacht (Talk)Q 02:34, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well's it free in the sense that if you want it, you can have it. It is a Python script (so you need a Python programming language install, which is free) that gets the article wiki-markup through the web interface. It then converts the wiki-markup to LaTeX. It then converts the LaTeX to pdf using pdflatex (which comes with virtually all TeX installations, which you'll need too, but is also free). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:11, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Thanks for Wikipedia:Possible misuses of admin privileges - I think (unfortunately) somebody had to do it, and you did a good job. --Camembert

Adminship page

This whole thing is, I think, rather tricky. As I personally consider Jack a kind of low-grade troll, I'd much rather have ignored him completely. However, the ill-advised nomination made that more-or-less impossible. I restored the comments manually (not reverting, yr comment is still there) because one of his favourite tactics is to delete talk that shows him in a bad light. The last thing the community needs is for him to be able to claim precedent for that kind of thing. I feel it is vital that any dealings with Jack are not only by the book, but are seen to be so. However, I fully understand that you may not see any of this the same way. Bmills 13:56, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Ah, ok it seems we are guarding against an argument of "Ah, well Pcb21 deleted not nice talk about me, so why can't I delete not nice talk about me". A pretty weak argument that would be, but there we are. Reflecting a bit, I don't think my removal of comments would help that much.. damage was done. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:58, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am intruiged by Bmills statement regarding my "favourite tactics". Can he cite any circumstance of me having done this? The only thing I can think of is in regards to CbU, and I never deleted any talk there, but rather deleted repitition of it (tannin went and cut and pasted anything bad said about me on there from other entries, and put them into his complaint against me). When angela asked me not to do that, saying it was unseemly, I never did it again, and even now, there is a rather (unfair and out of context) unflattering segment on CbU regarding me. Unsubstantiated accusations like these coming from admins are among the reasons why I am finding less and less of a place here for myself. Sam Spade 22:52, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

p.s. Oh, and thank you (Pcb21 of course!) for your thoughtfulness, regardless of its result or utility. Sam Spade 22:55, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Aotd

Yes it does stand for article of the day. Currently, it is only being used on Sennheiser's homepage. Sennheiser 15:52, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:41, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

==You are now a sysop (on meta). welcome aboard== (from User:Bmills)

Thanks a million. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:42, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Link to pictures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flowers

Belizian 02:55, 2004 Feb 8 (UTC)

script

Thanks! I recieved your message. Sennheiser! 21:15, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

WikiMoney

I am claiming 3ψ as a reward for writing an article about Henry Dudeney and removing him from Wikipedia:Articles requested for over two years. I'll handle adjusting our WikiMoney accounts (you may reverse the transaction if for some reason you feel the article is not substantial enough to qualify for your reward). --Michael Snow 23:10, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Thanks, Michael - help yourself to the 3&psi. That list is looking pretty short now :). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:19, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Born Again

Hi Pete! Just getting back to you about the comment you left on my talk page. Your original is in black; my reply in red.

Hi David, I ended up reading your comment on Talk:Born again. Just a heads up, you don't have to log in to be a "proper" user. There are good anonymous contributors and bad logged-in users too. We have to judge people on their edits not on their logged-in-ness. If you haven't seen it already, take a quick squizz at Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers. Everyone is new once, and different people take different amounts of time to understand what the implications of tiny little phrase "NPOV" really are. Moulding newcomers into fine contributors in a patient way is the only way Wikipedia can continue to grow. Thanks, Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:56, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC).

Hi Pete! Thank you for your words of advice and correction. I think I got a bit too carried away. I wasn't too upset at first, but what tipped me was the anonymous user's characterization of (User:DJ_Clayworth) as a "vandal." What happened, as I see it, was this: the newcomer wrote up a long sermon about his new-fangled interpretation of "Born again." Now, I was not, I repeat, NOT, offended to see his opinion, even though I disagreed with it. What did concern me was to see that his novel idea contained much superfluous repetition and now took up more than half of the article. Mr Clayworth then edited the article, condensing the new interpretation and incorporating it into the text, as one opinion among several - an action that I felt was proper and in compliance with NPOV. Although he condensed it, Mr Clayworth did not delete the essence of the anonymous user's opinion - but he (the anonymous user) took it that way, and publicly called Mr Clayworth "nothing more than a vandal." That is what prompted my own outburst. But that wasn't called for either. I should have held my tongue, and I wish I had. Thank you for taking the time to correct me. Davidcannon 08:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi Pete. I just saw your new Pygmy Sperm Whale entry and was reminded to drop by and say what a fantastic job you are doing with those whale and dolphin articles. Hard and careful work, long sustained. We should have a Wikipedia MVP award for you. Tannin

Thanks for the kind words, Tony. Always nice when people notice! As it happens your note was very well timed - I have just finished the initial article for Dwarf Sperm Whale... which was the last cetacean without an article. I'll do a spot of tiding and then maybe add an entry on the announcements page - its taken me long enough to do! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:26, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

WordIQ

Thanks for taking the bull by the horns with the WordIQ bandwidth situation. It's all up to the guy who pays for it, of course, but that sort of trick has always struck me as a particularly perverse sort of vampirism (vampiracy?). Best, –Hajor 19:14, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sysop

Hi, just thought I'd let you know Pcb22 has been desysopped by E23. He recommends you don't change your preferences for a while though using the pcb22 name as without doing something with memcached, it might not work. Angela. 20:10, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I have no plans to use pcb22, so all should be well. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:14, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

On User talk:Dino you noted,

You wrote added country in which the oregon incident took place -- not everyone is american in a summary comment on Sperm Whale. Actually the country is often missed off when describing a city/county/state - those in doubt can click the link. Done on a case by case basis. Thanks Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:13, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

— I got rid of the country reference, leaving a few small English fixes I did. Aint no big deal. — dino

Big Mac index

Good work on the Big Mac index article. I have added it to the list of economics topics as you requested. mydogategodshat 21:55, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thumbnails

You made some complaints about the way thumbnails look with the new image syntax, so I'm just letting you know a design competition has been launched to replace the gray border and icon. You can add your suggestions till March 15, or just vote on other people's suggestions after that date: meta:Image Box.  :) fabiform | talk 15:26, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello

Thanks for the message on my talk page. Yes, I have taken some time away from editing Wikipedia, as I found that some aspects of it were annoying me too much, and I wasn't really enjoying working here as much as I should do... However, I think it's safe to say that any absences of mine will always be temporary. I can never leave! :) Anyway, I see that you've done lots of good stuff while I've been inactive. I was wondering when Ant and Dec would get an article. :) -- Oliver P. 00:23, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

IP address & THANKS!

Hi. Just read your message about my IP address problem. Yes, I suppose I was quite unlucky (and poor, that's why I don't have broadband yet) :o( But I reeeeally appreciate your help. Thanks!! Rumpelstiltskin 11:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Key West

Hi. I note you moved the article from "Key West, Florida" to "Key West". If I remember correctly, a while back it was decided to include the state for cities and towns in the USA, eg "Chicago, Illinois", although I can't currently find that on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) (I'm probably looking in the wrong place). Personally, I'm fine with Key West at either name, as its an island in additon to a city; others might have other opinions. However, when you move a page I would like to reccomend that you help take care of fixing links to there in other articles. Note at What links here: Key West that more pages link to "Key West, Florida" than to "Key West". Best wishes, -- Infrogmation 15:25, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The reason I made the move was because I didn't like the disambiguation page at Key West, when any information about the island the ever gets written could easily be incorporated into the Key West (town) article, to give a nice cohesive article on the area. To solve the annoyance (as I saw it) I moved KW, Fl to KW. An alternative solution would have been to have made KW a redirect to KW, Fl. Maybe this solution is best as it would be simultaneously the most useful, and in keeping with policy.

On your other point, yes a few more pages point to the old title than the new, but that is only natural because the article resided there so long and people generally point to where the article is at when making a link. It doesn't imply that the Fl name is inherently more intuitive (in this the fact that so many articles pointed to KW without any article being there indicates that KW is in fact the natural name).

I can fix the single redirects if you like (wherever the page ends up) but this is not a necessary thing to do.. only if the Wikipedian is feeling energetic, after all this is most important reason we have redirects at all Double redirects should of course be fixed. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:34, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The policy as written at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) actually says that Key West is to be preferred to Key West, Florida surprisingly enough, but as the talk page notes, virtually all US city articles ignore this policy because Rambot pre-disambiguated all city names before the policy even existed. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:47, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Interesting, thank you. I added a link to "Naming conventions (city names)" at "Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)". I recall in my Wikipedia newbie days taking a bit of flack when I thought that "New Orleans" and "Chicago" didn't need any state name. It looks like this is one of those issues where our stated conventions and practices aren't as uniformly in agreement as they might be. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 16:15, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

vfd

From vfd:

• Keep D70 article. Obviously useful, verfiable, extendable content. Only reason proposed for deletion is the claim that Wikipedia is not a product catalog - it clearly is (amongst other things). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:12, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC) not counted (ambiguous) Optim 11:42, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • What is ambiguous about the word "KEEP"? What is ambiguous about "useful, verfiable, extendable conent"? If these new tallies are to be kept, they need to be accurate. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:31, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but you didn't say "KEEP". You said "Keep D70 article", which may be very different according to how I am supposed to interpret it. The listing is about List of Nikon products. I was confused and I still don't understand whether your vote applies only to D70 or to the List of Nikon products too, or whether you want to delete the List and keep only the D70. From what you write I understand you want to keep D70, but you don't say anything about the List (which is the subject of the vfd entry). You see, there are many ways to interpret your vote, hence there is ambiguity. So I explained that the vote was ambiguous to me and I hoped someone else would understand better and fix the toctally. Sorry if I made you unhappy for not counting the vote, but you need to take care when you vote to follow the KISS principle: Vote in such a way that even a stupid robot would understand what you are voting about. You should have said "Keep D70 and the List" or just "Keep" (which applies to both). You can update the toctally by yourself if you want, or leave a notice on User_talk:Optim. I have also voted to Keep this article (the List and D70), and I didn't want to take the responsibility of interpreting your vote, which was ambiguous to me. Optim^·.· 17:24, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
      • I did write about the list. You intrepreted me mid-comment to say I was being ambiguous! Read that section of vfd again. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:45, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
        • I count your vote as "Keep D70 and the List", then. Optim^·.· 18:04, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lake District etc.

Hi Pete, Thanks for your welcome! In a fit of activity I also added short entries for Sca Fell and Mickledore if you're interested. I presume from some of your other articles that you're not only a fellow Lake District fan but also a fellow mathematician, so we may bump into each other here quite a bit! I do have one piece of advice to seek - where should I respond to a comment on my talk page - on my talk page, on the other guy's talk page or by email? Best wishes, Cambyses 05:44, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi. I noticed you created a redirect from the "Wainwright spelling" of Scafell to Sca Fell, you clearly know what you are doing round here :). As for your question, there is no standard practice. I tend to reply on my own talk page, so that the conversation stays in one place, but also write a short message "I replied on my talk page" on the other person's page, so that they don't miss it. Other people split the conversation to minimize the total number of messages. It is dealer's choice! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:56, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Whaling

Many thanks for the formatting changes Pete, I will number my replies in future to make it easier reading ( or is there a more accepted method here? :)13:52, 8 Mar 2004

No standard format for talk pages really. Anyway we like so long as we can keep track of who has said what. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:59, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Football

Would wou mind taking a quick look at football (unqualified). I noticed that the history section of this article was getting bigger (and inaccurate) so I moved the stuff I'd written at history of football back into football article and completed it (I'd got bored writing the old article). Initially a dirty merge, so it needs a good copyedit from another pair of eyes. Cheers. Mintguy (T) 18:48, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

VfD

I don't mind being challenged on VfD. I think it makes for stronger decisions when there is an active discourse. But I don't think terse comments that "you don't know what you're talking about" are at all helpful. If you disagree, please say why and share your evidence. If you don't understand someone's point of view, ask a follow-up either on the page or via Talk. If you think I just misunderstood, please explain. I do try to not post complete nonsense and I try to give other Wikipedians the same benefit of the doubt. Flawed as VfD is, please help me keep the conversation civil. Thanks. Rossami 16:39, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Please let me apologize for being so snappy. I got fed up at a run of sloppy reasoning on VfD by a mix of contributors but shouldn't have let that come through in my replies.

With regard to the football list in particular: The pre-amble that I wrote explained that the vote on vfd was about the badly named 125 footballers list, but your comment appeared to be about the 100 footballers list, which had already been resolved as a keeper. Moreover your comment (if I remember right) said that the list was POV. To think that is to mis-understand the list. The article clearly states that this is was the list selected by Pele, not some list made up by Wikipedans. To me, this was pretty inescapable for those that had read the article. I thus concluded that you had just looked at the title of the page on VfD, not read the pre-amble and not read the article itself, but voted anyway. I hope this explains where I was coming from a little bit, but again, sorry for my tone. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:57, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I should apologize, too. VfD makes for thin skins. It is also difficult to have a long rational discussion because of the ever-present threat of edit conflicts. I did finally explain at length to the VfD entry for the 125 list. I'm still not sure where the confusion lies but I hope that this time all my assumptions are out in the open. Thanks. Rossami

Football

Cool. It could do with some pictures before it becomes worthy of becoming a featured article. Mintguy (T)

Mailing List

You had a post to the Wikien-l mailing list which was "held for approval" -- I guess because you're not signed up correctly? Anyway, I sent it on to the list. --Uncle Ed 18:37, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. I recently changed from bare email interface to the gmane interface. I will figure out what I have not done right. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:29, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Existence proof in recursion article

Hey, there. I put some comments on the talk page of the recursion article re: existence proof. Your fears were well-grounded...the argument you gave is, essentially, circular. I wouldn't feel too bad about though...a lot of textbooks give about the same proof! Anyway, I didn't mean to sound too harsh. I hope I gave a reasonable short explanation why the proof doesn't work. I also gave a reference to where a correct proof can be found (it's one of the standard graduate algebra texts...or at least, was 20 years ago). I might return to the article and put something back in, but you can have a go first if you want. I have other things I should be finishing, anyway! :-/ take care, Revolver 01:39, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for caring about the article. I will revisit it if you don't beat me to it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:29, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for Madrid

Hello, Pete, I just wanted to pop in and thank you for your help at the article (as you guess, it is quite important for us in Spain). Pfortuny 18:13, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

As a commuter into a capital city myself, the images coming from Madrid have shocked me badly. My thoughts are with all peaceful Spainards. I hope the perpetrators are brought to justice, wherever they are from and whatever they believe in.

From a Wikipedia point of view, perhaps a suitable memorial to the event would be to press to change the September 11th memorial wiki to a wider memorial wiki. This has been suggested in the past, and I don't think it has ever been more appropiate. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:29, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

24 hour bans for edit wars

Hi Pcb,

I've amended the proposal on 24 hour bans for edit wars. In short, the amendment calls for a quickpoll to take place before any such ban can be implemented. If you support this, I'd like you to add your vote in favor to the 24 hour ban vote, with the comment "with quickpolls".

Please also participate in the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Quickpolls.—Eloquence 22:16, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, I will take a look. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:29, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Madrid

Why have we suddenly got two Talk archives at the Madrid attacks article? Adam 12:14, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I thought the talk prior to your refactoring was now old talk, so archived it, creating archive 2. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:20, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So did I. I think we somehow archived the same Talk twice. Adam 12:27, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ah, shucks, looks like there was one of those dreaded caching issues on my side. There is a tiny bit more talk in Archive2 than Archive1 (basically the talk that appearing whilst you were refactoring) but a lot of overlap. I will put it all in archive1. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:31, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No on second glance, it looks like you just removed the talk, rather than archiving at another page. There are now two archive pages - one roughly covering 11-12th March, the other 13th-14th. The first was created over the weekend, the second by me about an hour ago. Anyway its no big deal, the articles are looking good which is the main thing! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:39, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

Msgs

Thanks for your answer in mavs talk page. It would be indeed more practical to use the boilerplate instead. See you around, Muriel 08:56, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Talk pages

Why is anything I do on my Talk page any of your business? RickK | Talk 01:55, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If one users engenders bad feeling, it has a follow-on effect on the whole community. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:42, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC), p.s. I did not put that heading, which I think is inflammatory itself, above my message, another user added it after I had commented.

Sorry. Sam Spade 08:19, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Woodsworth et al

Thank you. I believe the more the merrier, as long as mary gets credit. Denni 00:19, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)

Polar bear image

From the pump: It would've been polite to tell the original uploader about changes you made to a photograph from their private collection. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:19, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, you're right. I meant to leave you a message, but I forgot. I've been busy. Sorry if I was too bold, but that is the nature of the GFDL... --Spikey 06:10, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Imperial College London

Yeah that was my first edit, and I realised afterwards how to do it properly... Still learning... Thanks for fixing :-) Ned 13:05, 21 Mar 2004 (GMT)

---

On Wikipedia:Peer review, you posted a request for comment on Jamie Bulger. I thought that was a well-written and balanced article on a very difficult topic. I only made two very minor changes.

I have one additional thought, but would like your thoughts on how to link it properly. In the article, you use the term "tariff" to describe time served. (At least that's what I assumed from the context.) That is not the common usage in the US. Rather than clutter up the article with a definition, I wanted to just link the first usage, but tariff is not right, tariff (disambiguation) would have to be restructured and Wiktionary:Tariff does not yet exist. Since it's outside my experience (I'm assuming this is a British English usage), I am reluctant to meddle. Rossami 22:54, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at the article and thanks for the edits, they look good to me. The use of the legal term tariff in the article is correct - however it is not that common in every day English even in Britain. The "notes for editors" at the bottom of this web page http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/n_story.asp?item_id=753 from the Home Office has a reasonable explanation. It is about life sentences but applies equally to the "at Her Majesty's pleasure" sentences that were used for children at the time of the murder (I think it has changed a bit now). I will have a think about the best way to integrate the info into Wikipedia. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:08, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

---

D'oh! Lorraine Kelly was my fault. Jiang posted an anon's contribution list under wikify (we were supposed to know that meant all its contribs needed wikifying), but that confused Mark R. and myself, and Mark asked for it to be replaced. I remembered seeing an unwikified article earlier, jumped to it, saw it was still unwikified, and listed it. I had checked one of its phrases on Google and got no hits, so I'd thought it wasn't copyvio. My mistake! Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. :-) Jwrosenzweig 00:54, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

sorry, me being a grump unnecessarily. I did get a match on the google test. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:57, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No problem, I grumped plenty myself today. :-) I'm glad you caught it -- I had checked for the initial five words and got nowhere. Jwrosenzweig 01:00, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deleting stuff

When you delete an article, you need to delete its corresponding talk page, click on "what links here" for both the article and its corresponding talk page and delete any (now empty) redirects. If the article being deleted is on an obscure subject, then also orphan the article. For example, Talk:Maudlyn A. White should be deleted and [Maudlyn A. White] should be orphaned by delinking the name from the casualities. --Jiang 01:55, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You copy? Same with Talk:Men who sing like women. Please go through all the other articles you deleted. --Jiang 09:18, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I have been away from Wikipedia for several days, and thus didn't read your initial request. I won't bother cleaning up after other people's crap on vfd any more. It is an utterly thankless task - in fact quite the opposite - it invites insult when you don't do it right. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:25, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings because that is far from my intent. Having more admins cleaning up that overburdened page is a good thing. But how else am I supposed to convey this to you? Sit silently and watch? --Jiang 19:52, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, telling me the first time was fine. You then came back and told me again, slightly rudely this time, when I had only made a couple of edits after a four-day break from Wikipedia - so I had deleted nothing in the time between you asking the first and second times and I got a bit peeved at what appears to be harassment.

And oh, incidentally, what you told me to do is not always right. Talk pages shouldn't always be deleted. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:54, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was not aware that you had taken a 4 day break. I saw your name in recent changes and registered that I last contacted you 4 days ago. I checked your talk page to see Talk:Maudlyn A. White still there, so I thought you might have read the message below and missed mine. Well...it is still there. I wasn't trying to be rude then, but I am now. Should I plead and beg you or just do it myself?

If a talk page is not deleted, it should be posted on the archives, not left an orphan never to be found... --Jiang 01:04, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You care, I don't, so go ahead and do it if you like, as I said I'm not doing cleanup any more. The orphan of course will be found if the page is ever re-created, which is when it would need to be found. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 06:40, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Further your point about removing (now red) links to deleted articles is also not always true. If there never should be an article at that location then links to it are useless, and it is helpful to go round deleting any such links that exists. This requires a judgement on whether a page should ever exist, which is beyond the remit on which you look at the votes on vfd before deleting. Further, some pages are deleted because they have crap content and that it would be less work to start again than keep what's there. Keeping red links to these sorts of articles is a good idea. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:15, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Repeat: If the article being deleted is on an obscure subject, then also orphan the article. I never said every deleted article should be orphaned. You are correct on that point. Empty redirects, however, show up blue and need to be deleted. It's pointless to leave junk talk pages. --Jiang 01:53, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

Tony Slattery

I noticed on Wikipedia:Requested articles/UK people that you emailed webmaster@tonyslattery.com for permission to use material without any joy. Thought I'd suggest another email address to try: admin@micaelita.net (linked to from [4], from a link at the bottom of http://www.tonyslattery.com/). Lupin 09:13, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, will do. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:25, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You just beat me to deleting the April Fool. If we can't have a joke on London Congestion Charge I don't think we should have one on the front page. Mintguy (T)

Hi Pcb21, just like to say thanks for editing the Denise Lewis page that I wrote.

Haven't got as adventurous as laying it it out properly yet.

many thanx User:Scraggy4

James Bulger on the main page

Thanks for your note Pete. :) I was surprised how much comment it created, especially since when it was first put on featured article candidates the first comment we got was that it wasn't notable enough! It's really nice working on an article which came together so well and so quickly, of course you gave it a great framework right at the start, which helps to much! There are a few more murdered British children who I think deserve articles (because the cases were high-profile), but I'm not about to rush to start them all at once (it's not the most uplifting topic). fabiform | talk 08:46, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks - FIFA 100 Turkey move

Appreciate that you moved it, I'm still very new and don't want to annoy anyone by unduly wrecking someone's work calexico 23:32, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No problem, it is not always obvious what moves will be controversial, and what won't be. I think we are ok in that case. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:13, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Jimmy White

I noticed your change to Jimmy White. There doesn't seem to be much on individual snooker players, so I thought I'd expand what there is, and add some new articles - probably the current top 16, plus a few players from the past. I'd appreciate any comments on what I've done so far on Jimmy White, Tony Drago and Mark Williams, particularly the new infobox. I'm new to Wikipedia, and don't want to do too much without some sort of indication I'm headed in the right direction! Thanks, --Auximines 15:08, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi, good to meet you Auximines. Yes I agree there is lots of scope for expanding snooker coverage, and this time of year is a great time to do it what with all the World Championship coverage and all. As for the Jimmy White article, I like what you did - it covers the Jimmy story and personality well. I think some others would question whether it champions him a bit too much (cf NPOV policy) but in this case I didn't make any changes yet.

Doing some players would be great when you have time. My preference would be to make sure the major historical great players are covered first - I didn't like him much because he beat Steve Davis, my hero, so often, but Stephen Hendry stands out as one who is missing. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:13, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I agree, the Jimmy White article is a bit gushing, I'll tone it down a little (I didn't write it all). And Steve Davis is a hero of mine too, so rest assured he'll get a good write-up :) --Auximines 07:51, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Question for oldbies

from the pump

Many people are aware of the Rambot era when 35,000 articles were added to the database in about a week (October 2002). This increased article count by about 60%. However there was another blip in late February 2002 when around 5k articles were added, again in about the space of a week, this was another 25% or so rise. My question: what were these articles? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:19, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh, that was when Tannin joined the project, Pete.

Ah thanks, I'll hazard a guess that was when our bird coverage suddenly got dramatically better, then :-) This graph illustrates the sudden leap. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:39, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually this graph demonstrates it even better. In excess of 17,500 edits a day... more prodigious than even Rambot.... can only have been the infamous Conversion Script (may he rest in peace)... which somehow created lots of new articles... Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:49, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, but User:Conversion script says the script only converted from Phase 2 to Phase 3 software... I assume those graphs use the "at least one link, not a redirect" definition of an article throughout - although the count used at the time was different (the comma count, and before that, the anything goes count). Maybe the conversion script introduced links, thus giving the impression of lots of new articles.... or it killed subpages, which weren't counted... or maybe it was something unrelated... come on put me out of my misery.. :)

Well, I'll bet my bottom dollar that it was the conversion script alright - this page of it's contribs, for instance, shows 500 edits within one minute on the afternoon of 25 Feb 2002 (a whole load of redirects, by the looks of it); there's another 500 on the next page, still with the same timestamp. Now, why this boosts the page count statistics I'm not sure - but presumably the pre-conversion stats are either from a different source (using different criteria) or have been reverse engineered somehow.

In fact, if it's the latter it could be to do with history conversion - if a page had only one edit (its creation) before conversion, it will appear to have been created by the Conversion Script, even after the old histories were recovered and merged in, because the last edit of each article got eaten by the import (see Wikipedia:Usemod article histories). So if the stats have been generated by looking for the beginning of the edit history, they'll erroneous conflate conversion with creation for anything with no imported history. - IMSoP 15:19, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah yes thank you very much! The stats scripts will count any article edited only once prior to conversion as created on conversion day. That solves it, and the stats are undercounting article number upto Feb 2002. Thanks again. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:29, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Michael Parkinson

Yeah, thanks for the sarcasm, I appreciate that. How about having the MotD stuff at the end of the article, though? Otherwise it seems odd closing on a comment about screen ratios. --bodnotbod 21:44, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

The advice was well-meant not sarcasm. Anyhow, I rejigged the article into biographical format, so it ends better now. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:23, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi. It looks great. Apologies if I sounded a bit spiky, I think I was feeling a bit embarrassed by my oversight - I shall watch myself about that from now on. Thanks for the rejig. --bodnotbod 08:22, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

That's not my image. Mintguy (T) 09:01, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Ohh it is mine actually. Hm... i'll have to look into this. Mintguy (T)

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imps, et al.

It must have been some passing argument on a talk page or on IRC; +++ makes me think IRC, but I don't remember the last time I saw you there! Now you've got me thinking about bridge tourneys. +sj+ 20:10, 2004 May 5 (UTC)

Nothing really springs to mind to me either. Hopefully we'll amicably clash somewhere soon! :) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:43, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

---

Hi. I don't think we've spoken before, though you've evidently been around quite a while. Did you feel I was overdoing it with the "roguish" description? Some might say that was non-NPOV. Deb 17:12, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi, yes I arrived in the "100,000th article" flood of January 2003. I've definitely seen your name quite a bit and am definitely glad you are part of the project. For some reason I associate your name with JTD's - I think your interests overlapped? It was a shame he left.

I write a fair few biographies of minor celebs/actors and generally write something to add a little colour to describe the character as well as the dryest facts. The "roguish" comment fits in that league - it is the kind of thing I would write, hoping to make the read a little more interesting, but it would be kind of thing I would let go if someone decided to get rid of it on very strict NPOV grounds. (This has virtually never happened for my celeb articles. Occasionally I dabble in politics... there it is a whole different ball game). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:41, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

WcDonald's

Thanks for formatting the image on the WcDonald's page (which I couldn't figure out how to do). And I did put some copyright information on the image; sorry about not doing that sooner! -Litefantastic 18:51, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

re. edit on ECSU page

I'm not sure that "nothing special about ECSU" qualifies as a good reason for zapping the page! Emmanuel College and ECSU are two entirely separate organisations, and while they maintain a close relationship, are independent of each other, and so they deserve separate entries. Peter Parkes.

I didn't zap the page, I merged it into the Emma page proper. The question of whether ECSU deserves a separate entry is not a question of whether it is independent, it is a question of whether there is much to say. At the moment, there isn't much said. You could write pretty much the same about any SU in the university, or the same about most other SUs around the country for that matter. Note that nothing links to ECSU except the Emma. My thinking remains that the presentation of the topic "Emma college" would to be have a single page. I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

img on ifd

Your image, Image:Geyser exploding 2 large.png, has been listed on Wikipedia:Images for deletion. It has been obsoleted by Image:Geyser exploding 2 large.jpg. Grendelkhan 00:57, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Looks like a sensible piece of cleanup, thanks, Grendelkhan. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 01:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Snooker

Thanks for your advice and flattering comments on Talk:World Snooker Championship. I started writing snooker biographies a few weeks ago, and it's sort of snowballed, with others making corrections and additions. I can see why people get hooked on Wikipedia. There's now a new Wikipedia:WikiProject snooker if you're interested. --Auximines 12:01, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Alexa site traffic information

At the village pump you say that Slashdot is past its prime, based on site traffic data. I have no idea whether this is true, but using Alexa as a basis for this conclusion is deeply flawed. Aside from the normal bias of Alexa due to its relatively small userbase and the kind of people that install it, it is especially biased with a Linux-oriented "geek" website. Non-Windows users cannot install the toolbar, and the Windows users on Slashdot would be those least likely to use Alexa. Thus, it does not reflect the userbase of Slashdot at all. At most, you might be able to figure the interest of casual, non-techie's in the site but, again, that furtherless sample is likely skewed significantly. It is impossible to conclude from Alexa any changes in Slashdot's popularity. Centrx 01:14, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Comic relief

I wrote that stub specifically because I was put off by the idea of a link to the concept of comic relief going to an article about the charity. None of the articles currently linking to the small 'r' version intend to link to the charity.

Either move it back, or list it on VfD as a dicdef. I don't appreciate your action, but I don't intend to get into an edit war over it. If neither has been done in a few days, I'm moving it back myself. -- Cyrius|&#9998 18:27, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Lol, isn't it funny how sometimes you make edits you think are signicant and that people will have comments on and you are met with silence and then other times things you think are very minor cause a fuss.

Why were you put off (put off what?) by the idea of having a redirect from a different capitalization. There are literally thousands of these on Wikipedia. 99% of the world uses a case-insensitive operating system - distinguishing on case is something we ought to minimize as much as possible. There are times where an exception is made - Red Dwarf and red dwarf being the notorious example. But in this case I didn't see a problem with inlining comic relief - after all it is just a phrase without a rich history and so not likely to blossom into a substantial article. The article when I read it was fairly shallow (e.g. many people could've written it off their top of their head without recourse to any references - meaning that many readers could too and thus not learn anything from the article). Thus I felt, and continue to feel, the redirect with inlining was the best presentation of our content (note I didn't delete anything, nor want to, so your VfD reference is spurious).

Also you say you don't intend to get into an edit war about it, as if to suggest disagreeing with me about something would lead to that. I've never been in an edit war the entire time I've been on Wikipedia! Then in the very next sentence you say that unless I do what you tell me to, you are going to go ahead and do what you think is best without listening to any argument. Geesh.

Of course none of this really matters much at all, so if you really want your article separate for reasons you haven't chosen to elaborate on, go ahead, you'll keep a signpost to Comic Relief there anyway.

Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:31, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

The thing was, I did write it off the top of my head. It was just that it was all of 92 minutes between me writing it and you moving it. I think the article can be expanded, with historical examples and such. I'm just no student of literature, so I don't really feel qualified to do so. But if it sits at the bottom of a long article on a subject unrelated except by name, people are going to feel less welcome to do their own expansion.

The VfD mention was because dicdefs generally get listed there, and that's what you called it.

The reason I was put off by the move is because it violates the principle of least surprise. When you're trying to link to an article about the concept of comic relief, you get actively redirected to a large article about a charity. I don't like redirects that go to unexpected places.

If the capitalization issue really annoys you that much, then comic relief could be made a disambiguation page pointing at Comic Relief (charity) and comic relief (literary term) or something along those lines.

And I didn't mean to imply that I wasn't going to listen to any argument. It was more of a "If you ignore me completely, I'm going to act" statement, which I think is reasonable. As far as the edit war statement goes, I've been reading Wikipedia:Requests for review of admin actions too much. I think it's given me a negative view of conflict resolution.

I'm sorry if I came off more confrontational than I intended. I was annoyed, and seem to have a knack for writing whatever will make me look most like a jerk. -- Cyrius|&#9998 20:09, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

I also flew off the handle too much, apologies. I understand you much better know, particularly about the principle of least surprise. I think I ought to mention that Comic Relief has more significance (in the UK at least) than you might realise. It is the biggest charity event in the country, occupying great swathes of the most popular TV channel's schedules for a day, events around the country etc etc. The reason that no pages link to the small r version that mean the big R version is that they have been fixed in the past. A disambiguation page might be ok, but it would mean lots of link fixing and people would've have to click just as much as under your orginal formulation. Let's go back to that for now and see if we can get your article to flourish. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:47, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Manhattan Neighborhoods

No apologies necessary. Thanks for noticing that this had already been done. -- Dominus 19:58, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Title for "Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse Reports" article

Well, Eloquence is conducting a poll here on what the title should be... presumably you'd be voting for the original title, "Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse Scandal"... why don't you take a look at the poll and express your opinion.

I'm hoping that maybe everyone could agree on "Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse". Dpbsmith 23:11, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

I'll take a look at the page. Hopefully the vote will allow me to vote for several options, as I think "scandal" and the version you suggest are good. "Reports" is too weak, IMO. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:27, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Origin of my username

Just out of interest, is your name a CRSID? Marnanel 02:57, May 20, 2004 (UTC)/tjat2

Hi. I'm not sure what that is, so probably not, no. I was given the name as my userid when I went to university and I've stuck with it as an "internet id" in the years since. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:27, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Simpson vs. Savoie

You took the VfD header off Simpson vs. Savoie, but didn't delist it from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old. Given the weirdness of the debate, and Rossami's "6-8 weeks" for confirmation, I wasn't sure if this was intentional or not.

Because there were so many "Keep if verified" votes, I was going to stick it under VfD's ongoing discussions section and wait. I suspect that if Rossami comes back with an actual verification answer, it's going to shove the votes firmly to consensus in one direction or the other. -- Cyrius|&#9998 22:51, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'll let you deal with sorting that one out. Make sure to archive that mess discussion on the talk page. If Rossami comes back with an answer, there's a decent chance people are going to want to refer to the old discussion. I've just dealt with about 25 articles on that list, and don't feel like handling any more right now. -- Cyrius|&#9998 07:57, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

You've been doing a heroic job! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:58, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Nah, I've been taking the easy ones where there's no judgement call to be made. Mostly. -- Cyrius|&#9998 08:04, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

Fathers 4 Justice

Thanks for your refactoring on Fathers 4 Justice and related pages; I think you've improved the articles considerably. — Matt 11:38, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Human Rights Act 1998

I've moved the above page to... err... there, rather than Human Rights Act (UK), to follow the general practise of referring to Acts like that. Have deleted the (much much) older article to make way, rather than delete your history in a copy-and-paste thing. Hmm. Maybe the XML export/import thing would have been useful here. Might redo somewhat later. No matter.
I'm rambling. Just thought I should let you know directly.
James F. (talk) 22:35, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

No problem. I suppose that, really, we should have a redirect for every article of the form [[Foo Bar Act 1234]] from [[Foo Bar Act]]. Fun.

James F. (talk) 07:55, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Crispi

Italian history is not my field, sorry. Adam 14:20, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Fixing of categories

I noticed your summary comment at Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom - saying that the category+infobox bug will be fixed "in a few hours". Do you know for sure it will be fixed in a few hours? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:01, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

No, not for sure, just sensing from what I'd seen written on IRC, the mailing lists, and some talk pages. Sorry for any confusion...

James F. (talk) 19:27, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Categorization

Hi, I removed the mathematics category from Ramsey's theorem in line with my interpretation of Wikipedia:Categorization#Hierarchicalization. Seems to make sense to me so that Category:Mathematics doesn't get too cluttered. Lupin 12:46, 31 May 2004 (UTC)