User talk:Tarquin/Archive 2

Thanks for the kind words at Talk:Francis Poulenc, I really appreciate it. That DW's a real character, isn't he... --Camembert

Much fun at Hitler has only got one ball. Ortolan88

Tarquin, thanks for the tip at Talk:Gladsaxe, it works correctly now. Jeronimo

Tarquin, I think you are an administrator, cannot you block the Goatse vandal? olivier 12:25 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

What's his IP?

Unfortunately, I don't know! olivier 12:36 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

Very probably: 194.117.133.196. Look my comment on the "recent changes", when I edited the vandalism page. olivier 12:49 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

ageism is unacceptable. Lir 23:22 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

yes, that's why we still send kids up chimneys. ;-) -- Tarquin

*gasp* Lir 23:29 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

Ed -- talk:Israel -- lecturing others about "inappropriate behavior" etc. Statements such as "that's no way to treat a lady" are sexist and offensive. People derserve civil treatment irrespective of sex; Lir perhaps deserves kinder treatment on account of her youth. -- Tarquin

I was talking to RK -- not to you. Why are you butting in?
I will do or say whatever it takes to help the Wikipedia community learn to treat one another kindly. If taking into account a man's culture helps, I will do that. Many men (and I hope, Jewish men) have a concept of "treating a lady with courtesy" that I appealed to.
Please don't call me "sexist" again (it hurts my feelings). --Ed Poor

re: our mutual friend TMC...

Arguing with a relativist is like mud-wrestling with a pig. You both get muddy, and the pig loves it! --Ed Poor 19:11 Nov 20, 2002 (UTC)

Ed, do you admit TMC is trollish, or are you defending him against Ortolan? Who's the relativist now? -- t

You don't have to be an absolutist to make a judgement. He's a troll, whatever else he might be. Ortolan88

Yes, I admit TMC is trollish. In fact, his (full) username is in itself an act of vandalism. But I guess as long is he signs "TMC" in the talk pages, Jimbo will continue to let him thrust his Monster Chicken joke at us until we old-timers stop even noticing it. The only thing I'm defending him against is a total ban: he just needs to apply some circumspection to his choice of username. --Ed Poor

Well, Isis, my good friend of IBM Selectric typewriter, won't notice it, she's gone. As long as it continues to appear in the Recent Changes, it doesn't matter how he hypocritically abbreviates it elsewhere. Is there any excuse, relative, or absolute, for "Rape 20:04 . . Throbbing Monster Cock"? Ortolan88

Certainly not, and I've already quit twice over stuff like this!! --Ed Poor

If TMC wasn't a troll, why did he disappear the minute his name was banned, never (apparently) to return? Ortolan88, much later.

Just a note, hurdling is back again and it needs to be gone again. --Dante Alighieri

How about it... Shove the Clutch/Lir battle on the Vandalism page to the Talk:Vandalism page? --Dante Alighieri

I did the move to the "edit wars in progress" page. That's more accurate that "vandalism". Should it go to the talk page there ? FvdP 11:42 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

I'm trying to not get involved on that one, it sprouted up overnight so I'm coming to it after the event. It would be could if FvdP and Clutch could resolve their differences and move on -- Lir is not worth this much fuss! -- Tarquin 11:44 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

What's the protocol on this? Cookery was brand new but was referenced in earlier articles. Cookery now redirects to cooking. I've changed the old (there were only four) articles that linked to cookery so that they link directly to cooking. Do we delete cookery now? --Dante Alighieri

it's fine to leave cookery. It may be that in some contexts it's easier to write "cookery" than "cooking"; I felt the pie article wouldn't read as well with "In cooking..." instead of "In cookery...", so I set up the redirect so the link goes to the right place. Redirects are handy for this purpose, for example we have surrealist as a redirect to surrealism. -- Tarquin 00:45 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

With Law of Nature as a redirect to Physical Law, might it be appropriate to place a link to Natural Law on the Physical Law page? --Dante Alighieri

Hm. as in the Natural Law Party in the UK? I'm getting a little bit spaghetti-tangled doing this! My main idea is to ditch "law (principle)" (dreadful title) since we have adage for the "fun" laws and Physical Law. Natural law should probably be linked form Law.

I merged Law of Nature to Physical Law because their content seemd similar -- if they should be different articles, change LofN back to an article :-) -- Tarquin

Actually, not just as in the political party. It is actually a larger philosophical way of ordering the universe and mankind's place within it. It is a weird cross between pretty logical and very scary. --Dante Alighieri

Just read your User page - I suppose you could therefore be said to have synaesthesia (actually this is not correct - this would only be if you correlated other senses, such as musical tones, with colours - but do you?) as well - if you can visualise colours of the rainbow - for example. Bogey section was amusing. To me AI means artificial intelligence, but I suspect you mean some personality type, unless you are using one of those socio classification types A,B,C etc. to pinhole us all into categories.

I also live in the UK - every time I check on my location using Up My Street, I find I'm in the company of wealthy gin drinkers (I'm not wealthy, though I drink gin occasionally, when pushed) - though apparently at present I'm not in an area of Times or Guardian readers. -- User:David Martland

Nope, I did mean AI in that sense -- someone on Unreal Wiki jokes that they suspected I wasn't a real person, but a supercomputer hidden in a lost bunker deep beneath the artic wastes of Canada ... so it's a running joke in a place where no-one will get it. Which says an awful lot about me :-)

It's not synaesthesia, just a memory that tends to soak up any old rubbish. It's only when I talk to friends that I find out they don't remember, for example, the details of a birthday party we both went to 10 years ago, whereas I can shut my eyes and visualize it.

As for Up My Street... I dread to think what my area would say... but I'm off to find out anyway. Thanks for dropping by. I shall have to clean up my user page if people are actually reading it! -- Tarquin 14:48 Dec 3, 2002 (UTC)

...... it says "Heavy ITV viewing: High" ... urg! -- Tarquin 14:48 Dec 3, 2002 (UTC)

Re Ponce/ponce' - OK - Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but what would you recommend about the two other meanings. One - the guitar music composer - certainly deserves to be mentioned. I'm just not sure how to handle this - you can do it if you want, or give me some more clues. David Martland 09:38 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on whether "ponce" is a specific type of guitar composer, or whether it can be handled at an article called, say "guitar composer". -- Tarquin

You people sure make much ado about nothing! Tarquin, in addition to not knowing much, I don't know much about genealogy too. Your bit on ancestors is pure laziness. Searching France for family history is the easiest of any place on the planet.... DW

Who do you mean by "you people"? French people, amateur genealogists, or what? It's certainly a doddle as far back as 1800 or so, but beyond that the "etat civil" peters out. I don't have enough of (time | money | energy | inclination ) to travel out to the local archives. -- Tarquin 20:26 Dec 8, 2002 (UTC)

Just bringing it to your attention Tarquin someone submit stuf about theat fictional country acme: Talk:Acme -fonzy

Collabi 05:01 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC) : Thanks for looking over my yogurt article. In answer to your question, "bifidus" yogurt has been innoculated with a bacteria of the bifidus genus (such as bifidus acidophilus) in addition to streptococcus and lactobaccili. Like lactobacillus, bifidus is one of the many symbiotic flora that live in the large intestine of healthy people; it keeps pH in balance and promotes the reabsorption of water. As with lactobacillus you run into all sorts of digestive problems if you haven't got any, so sometimes they add bifidus to yogurt so it can be marketed as a digestive aid. In practice, though, almost everyone has a healthy complement of bifidus in their gut, so it's kind of a moot point. As far as I know it's only really significant for people who have depleted flora, say due to antiobiotics or extended fasting. But it makes people feel good to buy it.

be friendly to the poor noobz. Vera Cruz

You mean "META-PHILOSOPHY SPARTACUS"? He's a bit persistent... I'll step back for a bit & let others handle it with more diplomacy :) -- I have a cold so I'm feeling a bit prickly this week. -- Tarquin

Thanx! for the compliment and edit on Lake Titicaca - I've decided to port my 'factuals' over from Everything2 (homenode) where appropriate. I was always put off by how ugly Wiki looked re: E2 (much better with the Cologne Blue theme), but now that I've gotten to know it better it's pretty neat (tho' E2 is still much more 'fun' :)

Two16 There is probably more going on with bcrowell than he let on at the village pump. The posts in Talk:Horoscope did not go well for him. His ossified world view was shown up as he clumsily grasped at straws and ignored basic logic. Ultimately he made embarrassing mistakes in physics and silly completeness statements about science (his strongly held views and his profesion) which I showed him were demostrably false. His ego is massively hurt : he cleared out all incriminating material from the history.

I don't believe that bcrowell will come back even if he is sweet talked bcrowell biggest problems were advocasy, never understanding NPOV, mistaking snide and dismissive for balance, and thinking fanaticism and prejudgement of science.

Scientists always lose arguements about science, with philosophers of science.

I 'm new here. And I've been bad. I was bold too boldand it put me on the vandalism page (216.129.198.41) and thrown off. Later I put some satire in a completely meaningless paragraph. It made it through several edits. Somebody finally noticed it and edited it out including snide summary. So I demolished each remaining sentence with ridicule.

sex was a wild snake pit. Now it will be stable for awhile. Most of the credit belongs talk:sex. I marshalled reason, external links, internal links to wikipedia to get NPOV in the article. Even the stuff casually dismissed as utter nonsence by the fundamentalist. By definition you can't convince a fundamentalist of your position you can only shows them the unreasonableness of theirs (if that)

Open source community is in my soul. I aspire to the ideals that the community needs me to have.

is this google? Vera Cruz

Seeing as how I'm the writer, I do wonder how you determine what is best for me. Vera Cruz

If we're going to have a discussion, can we keep it on one page maybe? You're not the only writer. Links are created in the flow of the text, therefore things will be linked to as they are most commonly known. Bill Clinton is a good example. -- Tarquin 16:29 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

Bill Clinton is a good example of what, of the fact that you don't like to put full names as the title of the page? Yes, I see that you don't wish to do that. I think it's a stupid policy and unless you have something to add to the section's that I am working on, I'd really rather that you go do something else rather than messing around with a bunch of page names. Vera Cruz

That policy is a long-established one, and there's a general consensus that it's the best thing to do. Following naming conventions is a part of collaborative work here. -- Tarquin 16:49 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

Oh, don't give me your collaborative nonsense. There is no voting here, there is no measure of consensus. You speak for yourself, not for wikipedia.

There is no reason to do things simply because they were done that way before. There is no reason to not use the full and proper name of a person in the article regarding said person.

Who are you to decide what is the most commonly used version of a name that you don't commonly use? Who are you to decide that the most commonly used version of a name is best suited for an article title?

Vera Cruz

I'm not speaking for myself, I'm going by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Please read that page. This issue was voted on & is settled. -- Tarquin

voted on by who and when? Vera Cruz

way back in the mists of time, long before either you or I were here... IMO, that page gives pretty good reasons for why the convention is the way it is. What's wrong with them? -- Tarquin 17:37 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

What's wrong is you moved Richard Kerens Sutherland and I don't see any reason why Richard K. Sutherland is better. AND, I feel that Richard K. Sutherland is inferior as it is less informative. Vera Cruz

point one: what do most people call this person? I've never heard of him, so Google was my only guide: I found 100 for "K" and 2 for "Kerens".

point two: article titles should not be treated as containers of information. It's been suggested before that articles should have complex titles like "Science-Chemistry-Chromatography" or "Europe-England-London" -- but in a wiki environment that will just make linking impossibly difficult. The same goes for people. The article name is not there to give their full name, middle names, titles, etc. The body of the article does that. The article name should be a convenient label to identify that article. -- Tarquin 17:50 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

100% correct. --mav

I disagree. Firstly, linking is not impossibly difficult given your above examples.

Second, most people call him General Sutherland, which Im sure you'll agree is not the title we should use for the article, which begs the question, if the most common name isn't always what we want to use, why don't we use the full and proper name?

Vera Cruz

Look for "Use simple titles" in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). That used to be a stand-alone convention but I consolidated it with the common name one. Your above response now convinces me that this consolidation was an error. --mav

I don't see how you determine what is more simple. I think the simplest title is the full and complete name of the indivudual, nothing more, nothing less, no nicknames. Pretty simple, huh? Vera Cruz

Not if the "full and complete name of the individual" is Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini. The most commonly used form, Giacomo Puccini, is far preferable. Then there are cases like Tiny Tim - virtually nobody knows that his birth name (no nicknames) was Herbert Khaury, and I shouldn't think that such a titled article would mean anything to most people. Using the most commonly used names in titles makes a great deal more sense than using full names. --Camembert

Vera, the reasons were hashed out quite a while ago; you can see the results at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Conventions like this are useful, for they allow people to work in a standard way and not worry about what other people are doing. I can be confident that when I type [[Bill Clinton]], it will link to the Bill Clinton article. That doesn't mean that the convention can't be changed, but it does mean that you'll have to provide some convincing reasons why your way is better than what the rest of us have been doing. If you don't want to do this, I'm afraid people will continue to move the pages in question to conform to the standard. -- Stephen Gilbert 20:49 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

Hi, I didn't link my P.D. James stub to crime fiction because I think the text there is wholly inadequate. Any opinion on that? All the best, KF 15:29 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

I think of PD James & Agatha Christie as "crime fiction", and so do their UK publishers ("Penguin Crime" editions, for example) -- but crime fiction disagrees and seems to put them at detective fiction. I think we need experst (not me) on this one -- is there a difference in terms used in US / elsewhere? -- Tarquin 22:52 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

University of Chicago Manual of Style on "saint" (entries and examples truncated):

14.16 Saint is often abbreviated (St., pl. SS) when it stands before the name of a saint. University of Chicago Press preference is to spell the word out in text, abbreviating only in tablular matter, notes, and where space is at a premium: Saint Ignatius Loyola wrote ...

It is further Press preference that Saint be omitted before the names of apostles, evangelists, and church fathers: Matthew, Mark ...

When Saint forms part of a personal name, the bearer's usage is followed: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Ruth St. Denis ...

14.18 Prefixes of geographical names should not be abbreviated in text: Fort Wayne, Saint Louis ...
The same rules are repeated in the indexing chapter, 18.57 and 18.71.

Basically, always spell it out except for compelling reason (space, personal preference of individual for own name). Ortolan88

Maori Words - Macron usage[edit]

I spotted your comment on your edit of the Māori culture redirect.

Should macrons be used in the English language spellings of Maori words on English pages or only on truely Maori language pages?

The Maori Language Commission is rather vague on this issue.

Which is preferred Wikipedia usage and can this be made policy?

Māori or
Maori.

Your thoughts are invited in Talk:Maori language. -- kiwiinapanic 13:05 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

Moved a discussion about a discussion, from my user talk page back to the discussion page itself: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (calendar dates). Please add that page to your watchlist if you want to continue it. -- Bignose

hm, so am I truly poisoning the New Imperialism?Vera Cruz

Que? I've not commented on that since yesterday. -- Tarquin 17:20 Jan 4, 2003 (UTC)

Re updating interface translations -- if you have an account on http://sourceforge.net, I can give you write access to our CVS repository. PHP is pretty easy to pick up for anyone who knows a little C and/or a little perl; when in doubt check the docs online. --Brion 07:14 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)

I suspect that's a bot you're talking to. --KQ

You mean the "instructs"? Yeah, I was beginning to get an Eliza-ish smell from it. -- Tarquin

I read a transcript once of two of those talking to each other, and the conversation degenerated noticeably the longer they talked. ... Where does ELIZA fit in relation to ALICE? Before, after, concurrent? --KQ

Thanks for your help with Lime Grove Studios Tarquin

PMelvilleAustin 16:07 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

No problem. Glad to help :-) -- Tarquin 16:11 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tarquin,

Why did you delete the Central Park link??? It is the most well-known city-park in the world and it has a separate article. - Patrick 23:35 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

Can you prove it's the most well-known in the world? It seemed to me it was another case of assuming the reader is from the USA -- Tarquin 23:37 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)~

You can better add other well-known parks, outside the US, if you like to make it more balanced. - Patrick 23:46 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

But then everyone will leap in and add some, and the list will grow while the text stays static. Then we'll prune off the list fo a List of parks page, and we'll have YetAnotherListPage and a stub. :-( -- Tarquin 23:50 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

I think it is silly to have objections against a link to a related article, I have put it back. If you write an article on another park, we can link to that too. - Patrick 03:21 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hi there,

You mention in the belief page that Smullyan wrote a book where the characters only believe false things. I'm a psychologist researching belief and would love to find out which one. Any pointers ?

Thanks Vaughan

Okay, I think I've got you added to the sf project. Give CVS a whirl and see... --Brion 19:12 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

---

Thanks for the Smullyan info !

Tarquin, pourrais tu donner ton avis sur un petit souci sur la wiki francaise. Sais tu quelles sont les règles Wikipedia a suivre a matière de lien externe vers des sites ouvertement sexistes ou racistes. Voir sites faisant appel aux meurtres, tels qu'interdits par la loi francaise ? Le sujet a t-il deja ete discute ? Quelles conclusions ? Comment assurer une neutralité dans les informations si nous excluons les avis extrèmes ? Très ennuyée.... http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter:Dieudonn%E9_M%27bala_m%27bala Anthere 15:51 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin, if |-- means something like "proves" or "implies", is there a corresponding symbol for "does not prove" or "does not imply"? --Ryguasu 06:30 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin, why did you move Opera web browser to Opera (browser)? All the web browser pages that need disambiguation are called "foo web browser" to make it possible to insert links that flow with the text ("The Opera web browser .."). --Eloquence

I brought it up on the village pump a few days ago. The name is just "Opera" or "Chimera", and most articles write: "Chimera has full CSS support". With a disambiguation-style name (as per the naming conventions), writers can use the "pipe trick". -- Tarquin 10:29 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

Well, writers can use the "pipe trick" with "Opera web browser" as well. In addition, all other similar browser pages are called "foo web browser", not "foo (browser)". I'll move it back. --Eloquence

Please don't. And no, they can't. The pipe trick is this: [[Opera (browser)|]]. That is much easier than [[Opera web browser|Opera]] -- Tarquin 10:51 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

That's a new trick to me, but it doesn't save much. It's much better to have consistency and easy linkability in prose. Furthermore, from the naming conventions page:

For creating the specific topic pages, a few options are available. If there's an alternate name or more complete name that is equally clear, that can be used. For example, Java programming language, Titan rocket. Otherwise, a disambiguating word or phrase can be added in parentheses.

--Eloquence 10:53 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

actually, there was talk on the Pump a few weeks ago to have "Java (language)". Not sure where than ended up. I find "foo web browser" a very cumbersome expression. If we're not going to use an article title in the dlow of text, then it's a bad title. -- Tarquin 10:56 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

Why is "foo web browser" cumbersome? "The Opera web browser supports the following standards .." - "The Java programming language has the advantage .." You have both disambiguation and useful titles. Both Opera (browser) and Java (language) are bad titles because neither "browser" nor "language" are sufficiently precise qualifiers. The naming convention is clear here: If the parentheses aren't necessary, avoid them.--Eloquence

Could we ask the mailing list? I don't think that convention as stated is quite what people are doing. That was writtne a long time ago. The pipe trick makes it much easier to use () in names than before. -- Tarquin 11:22 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

Sure we can. In any case, if we change the convention, it should be applied consistently, i.e. to all browsers on web browser. ---Eloquence

I don't think it's a matter of changing the convention, it's just the intepretation of it. And I agree with consistency :-) -- t

Hello. I've just read your page and it interested me - the way you got here is strangely similar to how I did (I was reading about M$s latest attempt to get into the mobile OS business when I found some economics terms I didn't know and decided to look them up...). On your note about the tube map, have you seen "The Great Bear" by Simon Patterson? If not then you might like it. I have it on my wall.

Sorry. Random stuff but hey... MockAE.

Hi there. Welcome to the Wikipedia! It's at times like this I'm reminded that I really must knucle down and write something sensible about myself on my page ;-) I know of The Great Bear -- I wonder if anyone's contemplated doing something similar for the Paris merto... -- Tarquin 13:30 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)