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New FA-Team mission needs your help!

Félix Houphouët-Boigny needs to be copyedited and peer reviewed. We would appreciate any and all help from the crack members of the FA-Team! Sign up here. Merci! Awadewit (talk) 12:06, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Liter

I appreciate the quick note. Do you plan on updating your accompanying ref-comment so it better correlates with your vote? Your comment is #14 > here <. Greg L (talk) 19:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, thanks for reminding me. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:00, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

fact tags on IGVC paragraph in Robot article

Hi Dan. I was just wondering about the tags on the paragraph about The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. Did you add those tags? Looking at the history, it looks like you added the whole paragraph, tags included, which seems odd. It's just that, because of those tags, someone's added a huge great banner at the top of the page. Can you shed any light? thanks Rocketmagnet (talk) 13:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Hiya Rocket, hope the work is going well and you guys are getting lots of sales. I was indeed the culprit. I responded to the current problems at Robot in the last two sections on the talk page. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Riot update

Hey Dan. I went ahead and posted Stonewall riots to the mainspace, added some more, and need to add some sources and just a few more sentences. I'll be doing that over the next few days, I hope, and then be putting it up for peer review. I added info about the blackmail to the article in a note. Any constructive criticism or copy editing you feel up to, would be great. --Moni3 (talk) 16:00, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Moni, I'll be happy to look at it when I'm done with Robot. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I'm leaving tomorrow for a few days to go to California, and I don't know how often I'll be checking in. I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. But feel free to tinker with the article, or whatever. Thanks again so much for the copy edit!! --Moni3 (talk) 13:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure. I'll go give it a quick read-through now, then take it off my watchlist. Please let me know just before it heads to FA. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI as well - I've been asked to expand some of the issues leading up to the riots (a specific request to expand psychiatry, which I did in a paragraph yesterday) and resulting from them in the Peer Review by Willow, and I see Awadewit is also copy editing. I may be asked to expand other things. I have Jonathan Katz's Gay American History on reserve at the library but it hasn't yet come in. So, I'll let you know when it has passed GA and is ready, I hope, for FAC. Thanks. --Moni3 (talk) 14:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Join our conversation

Hello, Dank55! Awadewit and I are coordinating a podcast conversation about writing and editing Wikipedia articles, and she indicated that you want to be part of the discussion. (It will take place via Skype – all you need is a headset and the free software.) If you're interested, please visit the scheduling page and indicate your preference. Cheers! Scartol • Tok 13:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Literature in the Hoysala Empire

Hi. SandyGeorgia recommended I get in touch with you. If you have the time, could you please copy edit this article of mine. I have completed a PR and would like to see one final round of copyedits. I hope you are free to do me this favour. Thank you, Dineshkannambadi (talk) 15:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I am heading home now. Will switch on again at 7.00PM to answer questions. thanks for your efforts.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 21:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts. Appreciate it much.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 18:47, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I enjoyed learning about Hoysala literature. Very nice article. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:49, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Please take another look now. I have significantly elaborated on the issue you brought up in the FAC.thanks, Dineshkannambadi (talk) 23:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Good work. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter

Sorry about the delay. AWB has been having a few issues lately. Here is the august issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter! Dr. Cash (talk) 20:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Style categorisation

Hello! Do you remember asking me in time immemorial to review CAT:GEN? Well, I've just looked at it. It looks fine; with the exception of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works), about which I am unsure, all pages in the category fit the description. I have also tweaked the category's lead and added one of those pretty "administration category" boxes at the top.

There was a spare line there, you know. :-)

Now, have you received any other feedback regarding the category? What about other categories? I need some debriefing; it's been a long time since I've bothered myself with these things. Categorisation is the first step towards rationalisation of the whole system, so the progress here helps a lot; your work is much appreciated. (I take it you are following the MoS discussion on the Pump?) Waltham, The Duke of 07:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for looking through CAT:GEN; I also didn't feel strongly either way about Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works), and I've removed it per your suggestion. No one feels strongly one way or the other about CAT:GEN, they just like the fact that I'm doing the monthly updates for all those pages :) I did comment at WP:VPP; I'm happy with your suggestion of notification at WP:MOSCO, although I don't think that notification at WT:MOS as well would be a distraction. Regarding rationalization: WT:MOS#Monthly updates should have some useful information; feel free to weigh in there, or at WT:MOSCO, or here. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I made the description at CAT:GEN more specific; let me know what you think. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:19, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, but I am thinking of some elements differently. Most importantly, I should prefer proper categorisation: pages in the General style guidelines category should not be in the Style guidelines one. The same should go for more specific guidelines; I believe the overall category should have few guidelines in it, preferably those only peripherally related to the Manual of Style. The two "MoS general" and "MoS specialised" categories, empty at the moment, offer a good idea as to how we should organise the pages; we simply don't need to apply exactly the same nomenclature.

Target: If the categorisation scheme is stabilised and accepted, we could incorporate it into the "guideline" templates placed at the top and thus remove all these pages from the general category. I don't think having them in both categories is very useful to navigation; it only works if one looks at the sub-categories. Waltham, The Duke of 13:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's guidelines are whatever is in CAT:G. It would be a major undertaking to get a new category declared to be a subcategory of CAT:G, that is, to get agreement that anything put in the new subcategory automatically becomes a guideline. (I would be willing to participate if we want to do this, but I'm not going to do it myself.) I finessed the issue by making CAT:G a subcat of the style cat; it's perfectly okay to come up with subcats that are meant to be descriptive, and that don't carry any weight by themselves to make a page a guideline. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. BeBestBe's suggestion of a "MoS specialised" category was a bad idea from the start; it would create useless drama to go to a bunch of wikiprojects and ask them to voluntarily declare that the style page they've worked on is not so important after all. I figured CAT:GEN would draw a lot less attention and be more acceptable to everyone involved, and it has been: there have been no complaints of any kind. Pretty amazing for a style cat. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

P.P.S. Having said that...as I've said before, the biggest problem on Wikipedia is the same biggest problem faced by every all-volunteer organization (and although some people are getting paid by WMF, none of them are involved with content, that is, the product, to my knowledge): the fun stuff gets done and the boring stuff doesn't. Getting your stuff declared a guideline can be fun; reviewing other people's old guidelines to see if it's time for a demotion is boring, so Wikipedia builds up more and more guidelines (including style guidelines championed by a few people) over time, and when the people who cared are gone, the guidelines stay around. Bottom line: I agree with your thrust, which is that some kind of attention should be paid to what the cats are and what should be in which cat. I'm not going to go around to a bunch of wikiprojects and say, "Okay, are you guys ready to demote your guidelines now?", because this is thankless work and I'm not getting paid for it. If the WMF wants someone to do the boring and thankless work, they're going to have to pay someone to do it (apparently, because much of it isn't getting done), just like every other business. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Taking my time as always. :-)

You have a point there; if the categories are purely auxiliary and do not get entangled with how guideline status is managed and all that, we end up with less to worry about. Well done for the General style category, in any case; being able to identify a core group is a crucial step to any degree of organisation and rationalisation. I agree with those who say there is a hierarchy of MoS guidelines. There should be one. We need to have priorities, especially as style conflicts may often arise in articles, such as the one between having an image to the right and having it look inwards.

I don't think the Foundation will pay anyone to sort things out in terms of individual projects' internal organisation. This isn't about software, but about policy, and here communities are on their own.* You are a little pessimistic about this, and perhaps justly so, but I believe there are people everywhere keen on reviewing and assessing. Perhaps they won't be so willing to accept flak from WikiProjects, or will last for only a little while, but with such a big community someone will come now or then. It's inevitable. (To be honest, there is evidence of a shrink in the community, but how big this is and how much it affects processes is another matter. For the foreseeable future, we are operating properly.)

* Speaking about policy, I really don't think MoS should have this status. It's hard as it is to maintain the fine balances between hitting editors over the head with a hard copy of the Manual and letting them disregard it even in FACs. I don't say you support making it policy, but I found the post on the Manual's talk page interesting.

I see you are active at MOSCO. The plan looks interesting, and I promise to comment soon. The RfA review, which you mention as an example, shows potential; I had no idea it even existed (it apparently started in June, and I only really paid notice to the RfA request for comment in the beginning). May I suppose that our ambitious reviewing plan from last April is now dead beyond doubt and I can have the relevant pages deleted? They're not really in the way, but removing the remains of previous failures makes it easier to move forward (as long as, generally speaking, the proper lessons have been learnt). Waltham, The Duke of 04:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I didn't object to what you were doing, I'm not aware anyone did; I was just waiting for you to take the lead, because I was aware there was no way I could do that myself. I thought that as a matter of motivation, your project gave the appearance of slowing people down, making them take their time thinking about these things ... and as we can see from RfA Review, that's exactly the right thing to do, but it also takes a long time. Also, RfA Review suggests that we need to give some kind of impression of collecting the views of the community rather than imposing our own, which makes it take longer.

Anyway, this morning I'm thinking that if we can get a push-back date to Dec 31 for WP 0.7, then we've got a chance to turn this into a chance to improve it, and also improve relations between the style guidelines people and the GA and wikiproject people, but only if we have a lot of people working on it ... we'll have lots of help from the wikiprojects, but we're talking about something like 30000 articles and less than 4 months to do them. I'm going to see what I can get going with this; I hope you'll weigh in. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 11:43, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Just let me know where. I warn you, though, that I shan't copy-edit a lot, especially with my studies and all. (I'm not exactly a top-notch copy-editor anyway; I'm not even a native speaker.) I don't have a particular thematic alliance and am only active (and not that much lately) in maintenance WikiProjects, so I am a freelancer in this respect and only copy-edit randomly.

My project was too slow and demanded too many resources, which are basically unavailable. I cannot undertake that effort. (On another note, I don't think anyone would object even if more than the two of us knew of the project, as it wasn't bothering anyone.) We first need to gather opinions and then appear to be considering them. :-D The good thing with public consultation is that more eyes invariably reveal more problems and more minds produce more worthy ideas. Sometimes all we need is a single good idea, the perspicacity to find it, and the will to implement it. Waltham, The Duke of 14:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It's been a really long day. Best of luck in school this year. I'll reply in more detail in the current 0.7 thread at WT:MOS. I'll be happy to support anything you want to do with style guidelines. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

What if I want to abolish them? Or convert them to the dark side? (mischievous grin)

Anyway, thanks. Let's leave these discussions for more public places. Waltham, The Duke of 23:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

VP

Thanks, Dan! Tony (talk) 12:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

A robot question

Hi Dank55, I was going to suggest at the Talk:Robot page that the "Competitions and exhibitions" section be drastically shortened, with most of the material moved to Robot competition. So I took a look at that article and cleaned up one section: "OFF Road Robotics Competition".

As part of that cleanup, I added <ref> tags to the external links and added a Notes section with a {{reflist}}. Now I'm worried though - right now the links in the rest of the article are contained within their respective sections. Should I be moving all the links in the article to the bottom as footnotes and making an External Links section, or is it better to leave the clickable links within their sections. What do you think? Cheers! Franamax (talk) 20:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, this seems like an important question, but my brain is scrambled from editing in Robot and I'm not quite following. I agree that lots of material should be moved to Robot competition. Let me take a look at what you've done. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I see what you're saying. I tend to work on mature articles, so I'm not really sure what passes for "good enough". When I do copyediting, I don't leave any links in the text, I move them all down to the endsections. I would make an EL section. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - I don't work on "good enough" though, unfortunately my only standard is excellence, it has caused me problems in the past i.e the non-wiki past :) It looks as though you have finished your first pass through Robot (nice work BTW) - once your brain has cooled off a bit, can you revisit this one time? I understand the rationale to put everything in a standard format with References and External Links at the bottom, but at the same time it seems to me to somehow violate the integrity of the individual sections with their own self-contained external links, which are best presented to the casual reader within the immediate context. I suppose I'm looking for creative ways to resolve that tension, or past examples of those solutions - any ideas on other people I could ask?

And on another note, I see you've gotten to the bottom of Robot. The reason I renamed those bottom sections as I did is that I didn't feel it was correct to use the "Further Reading" title when in fact some of the cited works may have been used directly to develop the article body text - in which case, MOS seems to say they should be titled as "References". See here for my change. That too was a good ten minute's work, and a few days thought before - the minimum standard is excellence! Luckily, the wiki is not a slave to my obsessive desires :) I'll wait a few days before asking what's to be done with the "See Also" section in Robot!! Cheers! Franamax (talk) 04:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely, thanks for your work at Robot competition, and that's my next target, as soon as we've saved Robot at WP:GAR. Regarding "Further reading": the focus of my style guidelines work is the core style guidelines (CAT:GEN), but I visit the 4 pages often enough that deal with endsections (WP:Layout, WP:CITE, WP:EL and WP:Footnotes) to know that this kind of thing drives them crazy. There's a regular stream of people who have ideas about how they want to tweak the use and naming of endsections...I don't want to be making that case at WP:GAR. There can only be one section for the references from the inline citations. It's okay to have a section on "General references", mentioning textbooks or things that function like textbooks, for those citations that cover material so basic that anyone who takes courses in that field would know the material...but that section you're talking about is definitely not that. (For that matter, most of the stuff isn't suitable for "Further reading" either...I'm really only about 2/3 done with my copyedit, I'll get there today.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

update for August

Dan, glad to see you're in the green zone! See your work here. Do I understand that the untouched titles have been surveyed and found to show no substantive changes worth mentioning, or that they're still to be surveyed? Tony (talk) 06:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

They've been surveyed, they have no significant changes. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:30, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Literature in the Hoysala Empire

Hi Dan. With respect, if you want to support, you should do so based on your opinion of the whole article and not on what I think. I don't intend to make a public judgment about the article's merit or to comment on it at FAC. Finetooth (talk) 05:47, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I am up to my neck in work and I don't have time to review the rest of the article; hopefully other reviewers will come along. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 11:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the support and for your efforts to improve the article.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 02:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean the template? All look fine on mine.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 00:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I asked at the review page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I have been requested by a reviewer to add an small section on influences into the "Post Hoysala period". I will be done sometime tommorow. Please copy edit that section when its done. thanks, Dineshkannambadi (talk) 02:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure thing. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I am done with the section.thanksDineshkannambadi (talk) 23:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I hope no new reviewer requires more effort from both of us.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 02:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Robot

Hi. Actually, my knowledge in/on robotics is close to zero. My specialization is in Semiconductor Electronics, a topic which is of little wiki interest to me:)Dineshkannambadi (talk) 00:35, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem. If you have any friends who are interested in robotics, send them our way! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

monobook

Hi,

I notice that you are using a very old version of my monobook script. Have you considered updating it? Lightmouse (talk) 22:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I've considered it now, I'll go see what you've got. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:28, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

You could simply add the line:

importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js');

and after clearing your cache, you should see the commands in the toolbox at the left below 'What links here'. Lightmouse (talk) 23:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Done, thanks. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Hoysala literature

The topic is a bit heavy to read. I generally prefer to read topic heavy articles when I have nothing else to do, cause that gives me a clear mind to review. I'm not sure where I stopped on sunday, I reviewed it in about 15 mins as I had to go out on a photo shoot for an upcoming FA collaboration. I'll try and take a second glance sometime later. Just a note: Historians do not classify any period of Indian history as "medieval". =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

When I asked, it wasn't getting enough eyeballs to pass, but now it is. Still, I hope you enjoy the article. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

31 August the cut-off

Dan, I see that one of your points in the update is from September. Are any others? Tony (talk) 01:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The others were all Aug 31; only the one I mentioned was in September. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You deserve this

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For your tireless copy edit work in Literature in the Hoysala Empire that was awarded FA status today.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 22:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

SOS:FAC

Hi Dan, apologies if this sounds sudden. League of Copyeditors is officially dead, Awadewit is on vacation, you are the remaining active copyeditor for WFA. Could you have a quick glance through and copyedit this article if you don't mind to meet Tony's requiement, which is currently on FAC? Thanks in advance! - Best regards, Mailer Diablo 05:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Replied on the FAC page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dan, It seems we were working on the article at the same time and you found my typos before I had time to do my double check. I need a break from it now, so it's all yours if you want it. Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Graham. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Per FAC, I ran it through British spelling and fixed up the remaining errors. It's ready for next stage of copyediting. - Mailer Diablo 18:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I need to focus on WT:WPMOS; please see if you can find another copyeditor, but ask me again if you can't. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you can do a final gloss over the prose once other copyeditors finish major copyediting in a few days, to make sure the prose shines. The workload should be a lot lighter by then. - Cheers, Mailer Diablo 18:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Be happy to, give me a shout. I tend to catch the obscure stuff and miss the easy stuff, anyway, that's probably a good place for me to come in. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope the DVD emergency has subsided? The FAC urgently needs leaks to be plugged before people starting bailing overboard and into the water... - Mailer Diablo 16:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I apologise if this bothers your 0.7 work; this time round it isn't a copyediting request, I promise. :) You have previously raised concerns in your review on the state of copyediting in the article. After another round of copyediting by other editors, I would like to now invite you to take another look and see if has addressed your concerns, so that the FAC can actually move on. Additional/continued feedback on the article is also welcomed on the FAC if it can be improved further. - Best regards, Mailer Diablo 13:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not bothered, but I can't look at high-quality articles until after the 0.7 deadline on Oct 20. If it doesn't pass this time, put it up again in late October and I'll be very happy to review it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

MOS Review

Thanks for the notice - I've posted there, and am happy to help where possible. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Great, I appreciate it, I'll try to keep the momentum going. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:29, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Version 0.7

WHy does version 0.7 make it more urgent to mess up our style guide? You've said it twice but I don't understand it? --BozMo talk 12:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

It was my mistake not to add the "caution" at the top of WP:WEASEL from the start making it clear that my intention to is get people to record their opinions, not to create an abrupt change. However, virtually all the opinions do want abrupt change, and there's not a lot I can do about that, other than attempt to slow things down a bit. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry that's not a personal matter for me and the community will take care of it one way or another. People have a thousand hissy fits when five guys and a dog change major policy statements claiming consensus on the talk page, but not my problem. Incidentally I am not implying anyone of you was a dog. The question to you is why does V0.7 (with which I have some involvement) have a bearing on the matter? --BozMo talk 14:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I haven't gotten a groundswell of agreement with my concerns about WP V0.7; let's assume, in fact let's hope, I'm wrong. But since you're asking, my concern is that selling a Wikipedia DVD at Walmart has the appearance of a for-profit operation and the appearance of offering a finished version. Obviously neither of those things is true, but that probably won't make any difference. We'll see. If I'm right, then copyediting becomes more important, and community-wide support of whatever guidelines the community would like to see applied when copyediting is a prerequisite for copyediting 30000 articles; we won't have time to argue every little thing with every editor. This is, of course, the justification for policy and guidelines in general on Wikipedia; it reduces tensions and saves a huge amount of time to get as many people together as you can, brainstorm all the arguments pro and con, and get everyone who will show up to commit one way or the other, at one time, in one place, instead of arguing the same issues over and over every time you come to a new article and are dealing with new editors. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dan. I am stupidly ambitiously tackling all 125 WP:SHIPS-tagged articles on The List From Hell. You can see the beginnings of the debacle here; note from the diffs that the two Start-class articles I have thus far attacked took hours of work. I will probably beg, threaten and harass a few Ships people who are good copyeditors into helping. I had noble plans to create a similar table for WP:MILHIST articles on The List tonight, but sleep is calling. Maralia (talk) 04:17, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

That's fantastic. The very first job is to try to figure out how long this kind of project takes, so this is just the kind of information I'm looking for! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

With that kind of reception, next time perhaps I'll cut out the middleman and just bang my head on the wall directly. Maralia (talk) 00:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm on relatively good terms with Sept, but I gave him a hard time for that one. Hopefully smooth sailing now. I reviewed the whole copyedit; excellent work. The two most urgent questions are how much work we can offload, and how much the 0.7-sweepers should try to do with each article; feel free to weigh in at WT:1. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Eh, I didn't expect parades in my honor or anything—more like radio silence, or 'thanks but you screwed up this thing'. 'I hate MOS plus you suck' was not anticipated :) Anyway. Apropos of nothing, in one of my edits there, I removed a See also link to Harry Whittington. At the time it didn't make any sense to me; baffled, I mentioned it to Moni, who intuited it immediately and clued me in. Do you get it? I'm still laughing about it. Maralia (talk) 02:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

OMG. Some day when no one is looking, I'll put it back in :) While I've got your ear: the 1.0 people would like help with sweeps, of course, but we don't want to make an announcement at WT:FAC or WT:GAN saying "drop what you're doing", obviously; there's no reason to pull productive people out of FAC and GAN when they know what they're doing there. But how do you think this approach would work? FAC articles almost always and GAN articles often involve some collaboration. It's not unusal for people to offer to help on one article in exchange for help on another article. If we find a problematic article in the sweeps that won't make the DVD without some help, and the main editor doesn't know how to fix it, and the main editor would be an attractive collaborator on a future FAC or GAN, then I would think FAC and GAN people would be really attracted to that: probably very little work would be needed to qualify for 0.7, and in return, they get at least a friend and maybe a co-worker on a future article. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)I think that confluence of factors is highly unlikely (the existence of an article that has no apparent content issues but significant copyedit issues PLUS said article actually having a main editor PLUS the existence of a FAC/GAN copyeditor willing to clean it up).

That said, though, for articles that *only* desperately need a copyedit, we should consider asking for help from the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. Their focus is on articles tagged with {{copyedit}}, which populates Category:All articles needing copy edit. We could tweak {{copyedit}} parameters to make |categories=DVD also populate Category:Release Version articles needing copy edit; alternatively, we could alter {{Releaseversion}} toward the same end. Granted, GOCE hasn't been around very long, and doesn't have a huge membership, but some help is better than no help. Either way, being able to shunt articles into a unique 'copyedit needed' set would mean a screener need not be capable of copyediting, but only capable of recognizing the need for it. Maralia (talk) 04:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I didn't know about the wikiproject; that could be very helpful! I'll keep an eye out for the kind of articles I'm talking about and put them in a list somewhere so you can gauge who might be willing to help. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 11:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey

Anything you're up to with WP:ROBO? I was putting together the newsletter for this month... :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 12:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been working on Robot to save it at WP:GAR. I've moved some material to Talk:Robot competition, and anyone who wants to collaborate is more than welcome. I'm in charge of the copyediting team for WP:Version 0.7, which is going to suck up a lot of time between now and October 20, but I will be more than happy to help improve quality on the 33 robotics articles that made the cut, if someone will list them at the 0.7 copyediting requests page here. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yup, feel free to post on WT:ROBO for that... it's definitely something we should post. :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 12:25, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Harvey Milk

Hi Dank In response to your query:

I don't know if they'll take it up enthusiastically but it's worth a try. Or a second RfC. Anything you can think of to bring more people in. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:56, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Another idea is to post a message on the talk pages of all the projects that the article belongs to. That would definitely bring in more people. Looking at the article I think there is definitely some OR going on. If the People's Temple needs to be mentioned at all, I would be surprised if it needed to be mentioned more than once. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:50, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks kindly, and you do great work at FRINGE and RSN (and probably other places too!). - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Quick query

Regarding copyediting, I have a quick query:

• How are wikilinks being handled. I'm just starting a rewrite of Akira and am hit by the fact that it's a manga, which I know means Japanese comic but am not sure everyone will. Normally we let wikilinks take care of this, but how will that work on the dvd? Hiding T 10:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

This is part of the larger problem: the DVD is mainly for folks who don't have internet access, but what do we do about a product that is, in so many ways, a part of the internet age for people who aren't in the internet age? It's not practical to ask people to do too much rewriting before Oct 20. If you want to give a short explanation of any term, it's perfectly okay to add that if you want to. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

P.S. If you're interested, Gundam, Mecha, Doctor Doom and Doraemon are all in my wikiproject's selection list, and I feel a little lost trying to tackle them; I'd be happy to collaborate with you to get those ready for the DVD before Oct 20 and ready for WP:GAN soon after that, if you like. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:42, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds okay. I'm bogged down with Akira (manga) at the minute but I'm starting to see an end in sight. I'll look at them tomorrow and get back to you. Hiding T 14:56, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I'm doing a quick copyedit of Akira, hope that helps. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, it did get a bit hectic yesterday on my talk page. Um, Mr Freeze, Iron Man, Iron Man (film), Doctor_Octopus, Brainiac (comics) may fall under Robotics loosely. But as you can see, at WP:COMICS our assessment is very much a volunteer effort, and you get what you pay for. Articles that are in fairly good nick for comics include Comics and Graphic novel. The Beano isn;t listed but it probably should be, very important British comic, Alan Moore is in GA review at the minute and Watchmen is in FARC, but I think Wesley Dodds is on the latter. You might want to run an eye over Superman, it has got a lot of eyes on it but you might catch something we've all missed. I can't tell you how great it feels to actually be making even small inroads here. Hiding T 10:30, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

←Superman is good enough that it's not part of my current job description; between now and Oct 20, I have to focus on the articles that have obvious spelling, word choice or nonsense errors before they wind up on the 0.7 DVD. I'm adding Iron Man, Iron Man (film), Doctor_Octopus, and [[Brainiac (comics)] with mid-level importance, and I'll skim them today, along with The Beano. Thanks! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

list help?

hey, saw your name in the hist on WT:LIST and also everywhere else. :-) Do you have exp. with lists, and would you be willing to offer an opinion? If so, do you think the 'complete statistics" and "franchise records" sections of History of Kansas City Chiefs quarterbacks should be split off into a list (either the existing List of Kansas City Chiefs starting quarterbacks or a new one?) The sections are looking too listy for WP:WIAGA. It's been so long since I've done much reviewing that I wonder if conventional wisdom has evolved etc. I also have little exp. with lists. Thanks! Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 03:20, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hiya Ling. Thanks again for the copyediting userbox; I may start using it if I'm successful at recruiting pure copyeditors to Wikipedia. I don't do much with sports, because that's so well covered on Wikipedia, but it doesn't feel like a list to me, it feels like a narrative. Certainly there's no problem with WP:EMBED from WIAGA. List of Kansas City Chiefs starting quarterbacks is receiving feedback at WP:FLC if that's helpful.

OK Thanks! :-) Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Tagging Doctor Octopus as part of WP:ROBO

Just curious, but did you tag Doctor Octopus as part of WP:ROBO because of his arms? Not that I know, as I'm not part of the project, but does that really consitute a "robot"? Anakinjmt (talk) 17:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, I'll reply over at Doctor Octopus. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

RE:Wikiproject Journalism

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Journalism. Doesn't look very active though. May need an overhaul. BuddingJournalist 03:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, replied at that page. They did start 4 articles this month, and they've currently got a peer review of The Daily Show going. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Working on an essay

The message you sent me is probably about the Wikipedia:Let the Reader Decide link. It is an essay I am currently working on. Until the page is saved, the link will appear red. in a nutshell, it's about POV statements that are not seen a such because no one disagrees with the statement.--Ipatrol (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

You're more than welcome to work on essays like that, and this is a good time to do it; there are related discussions at the moment at WT:V and WT:Avoid weasel words. In one way, your timing is unfortunate; see the last thread on WT:WORDS. We've let people add a ton of stuff, and the page has gotten too long; we'd like to shorten it dramatically, because even though this is one of the pages people have to pay attention to at WP:WIAGA, people aren't reading it. So: my question is, what does your essay say that isn't already covered by the sentence "Imply that Wikipedia itself, rather than the sources, shows support or doubt regarding a viewpoint" in the first section of WP:WORDS, and by WP:V and WP:OR? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The essay is actually ment to go deeper into the subject raised by this seciton of the words to avoid page. If you or anyone else would like to elaborate on this essay, either do so directly or post suggestions on my talk page. —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:37, 21 September 2008 (UTC).

Kind thoughts

Thank you. It means a lot to me, in an odd way, that you thought enough of me to respond as you did on that page. I will say the same: your thoughts are important to me and (as I am with many contributors who edit far, far away from the drama boards) I have nothing but awe for your dedication. I think that I ratcheted down my vehemence toward the idea in general in my response to you, but that my passion is undiminished. I don't want to turn this into a Slippery slope so much as I want us to honestly acknowledge the power of inertia in large systems of people. Most changes are one-way and form channels of practice whereby it is easier to approve the following expansion than it was the last. This, to me, is a real threat to our model.

I understand the impact this position has on producing a release version of Wikipedia. If we want to make a version free from obvious errors it may be almost fatal. I don't immediately know how to resolve that. I'm not willing to open the door to possibly creating multiple classes of content based on the editing privileges of the user introducing the content in order to move toward solving that problem. I am willing to try a hundred less effective measures before trying this one. Partly this is due to my suspicion of using new tools for the purposes of limiting the impact of vandalism. Partly this is because we will (I feel) face a steep reputational price for implementing this policy (flagged revisions) which we are ill prepared to estimate now. This will be true regardless of how transparent the change is to users--even if the flagging only impacts which revisions get dumped to the print version, the publicity will be simple and negative: wikipedia will no longer be the encyclopedia anyone can edit. We saw a similar blowup 1-2 years ago over a much smaller set of issues that impacted a small clique of editors and very few articles. That had the added hook of personality and tabloid flavor, but the message was the same to us (or should be). Wikipedia is a highly visible target in the online world and stories about us "seemingly" backing down on core principals in favor of looking in fit an easy narrative for journalists. Once we pay that price we will not get that reputation back. We will not be able to convince people that the system is really minor and non-intrusive and that it is free from corruption (even if it would be all of those things).

This isn't an easy question and I'll be fair. If it passes, I want to make it hard. I want this to have to fight tooth and nail. I don't want this to breeze through because it seems innocuous. I want (at best) this policy to represent a small foothold in our world that represents very little to even editors like me and you. I want every comma checked and every redundant sentence removed. I want the scope (as I said on the straw pole) strictly and firmly delineated. I hope this clears up a little of the why we are on two sides of this issue. Protonk (talk) 03:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind thoughts!

You said that some form of "quality versions" might work for you; if you'll give me some details, I might find it superior to the current proposal.

"to honestly acknowledge the power of inertia in large systems of people": Acknowledged, absolutely.

"If we want to make a version free from obvious errors it may be almost fatal": What I hear from this is, on the day when the genome of a species becomes "perfect" and stops mutating, its eventual doom is sealed, because it won't be able to adapt. Fine, I buy that. But you know mathematical economics; you probably know that simulated annealing requires that you gradually lower the temperature, or rate of change, to work, and evolutionary processes require more stability the more complex the structure. I'm responding to theory with theory, but my position isn't theoretical. We will be distributing 0.7 with lots of crap on the DVD, and much of the crap will be a direct consequence of the fact that there are no processes available on Wikipedia to keep crap from entering at any moment. None of the things that you mention might damage the reputation of Wikipedia can come close to the damage caused by distributing vandalized material to third-world schoolchildren. I can't accept any alternative that allows this, but per the WMF mission statement, we must make some form of Wikipedia available to the world. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's the basic idea, more thoughts later:

• "Quality revisions" only. No sighted revisions.
• Only allow flagging for release identified articles and only for the purpose of a print release.
• Revision flagging is to be used for no other purpose. Not as a replacement for semi or full protection. Not for BLP's. Not for main page content.
• Quality flagging requires no additional comments, just a recognition that "the article claims are supported by all accessible citations and offline or gated sources support claims which aren't falsified by other sources and are otherwise accepted in good faith. Article contains no vandalism." or something like that but less wordy. This can be done through a checkbox or something. There is no reason to force editors to write that stuff each time.
• Quality revision works like a nuclear launch, but with time delay. Two editors must flag an article before that revision gets written to the release db (with the latest revision being written, even if the two revision reviewed are not the same). So if you review Adam Smith today and 1 month from now, I review it (after 2-3 revisions), it gets flagged and the revision id gets written to the release db.
• One editor can "deflag" between the two halves (in other words, after your flag but before mine) without comment or issue, but deflagging after two editors have signed off on it will place the article in a cat for review. Even during this review, two editors (not the same editors) can reflag an article and remove it from review without comment, or the article can be reflagged following a review.
• Review should only be noticed on the talk page (some banner near the project business or a value on the "0.7" banner. Flagged and unflagged articles should look identical to all editors at all times.
• Flag warring would result in loss of the privilege. Flagging an article with vandalism in it would be vandalism and editors woudl be expected to be warned and blocked for it, even if they weren't the second flagger.
• Some editors should be able to flag by themselves, but they would do so only in disputes about content or in odd cases. These articles would go into a queue for review (something like a shift register, where new reviews for old ones off, so that if the review is not controversial, nothing happens, but controversial reviews would be plucked up and discussed). No special flag for "trusted" editors to review material on a regular basis by themselves.
• Right to flag should be granted on request much like rollback. That program works pretty well.

That is basically it. Very limited. Protects the project for release versions. Drawbacks are added manpower (2 reviewers) and complication, along with the removal of "automatic sighted revs" adding newer revisions to the release versions. Also every time a major update on an article happened, it would need to be reviewed. But, it avoids some major problems and provides a limited infrastructure. Protonk (talk) 06:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The "2 reviewers" catches my eye; GA and some other review processes can only afford 1 reviewer, despite the fact that 2 reviewers would produce a superior product. There are a limited number of active, trustworthy Wikipedians who are capable of checking sources, which would be required by your quality review; I think as soon as you say "2 reviewers" and make it a separate process from the processes we have already, given the scarce resources in all review processes, you're selling something that there's no market for. On the other hand, everyone's in favor of some kind of experimentation, and if we're going to experiment, why not do it on the articles and with the processes that are the most watched and about which people care the most? That will give us the best data. I'm thinking WP:GAN for instance. I'll ponder this today and leave a message either on your talk page or at the Flagged Revisions voting page, under your last comment. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I threw the 2 reviewers in as a solution to several problems: error, vandalism, flagging warring, etc. It has serious, serious drawbacks, but a second check is at the very least a helpful technical foil for some of the issues raised about flagging in general. Protonk (talk) 14:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, per your comments, I have switched my vote to (c); check it out. As a side-benefit, if articles which have been reviewed at some level get what is perceived as an additional layer of "protection", it will be an incentive for people to submit their articles to review processes. Also, having flagging occur during one of the pre-existing article review processes means (going forward) no extra personnel required. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the message

Same team, yes. And we may well end up with the same opinion but I think time to ponder is worthwhile especially when there are lots of people involved, probably I am just getting old. I don't have any really set views on it. --BozMo talk 20:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If you'd like more time before we discuss things at WEASEL, then we'd need to get MBisanz to hold off on the merge; if you want to ask him, that's fine with me. I think we can probably get an enthuastic discussion going at WT:MOSCO or WT:MOS; there is strong, strong support there for making style guidelines clearer, shorter and less contradictory. It's been the top priority for a while now. I'd also be happy to start on whatever page you want to start on; MBisanz seems to be suggesting PEACOCK first. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Whatever you do please don't start another set of discussions. There are way too many fragmented opinions anyway. --BozMo talk 07:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Image placement and sections

No I much prefer it if images are below the heading. If the image is above the heading, because screen readers read linearly, the image seems unrelated to the text because I won't know about the heading below it. Graham87 03:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

My screen reader doesn't read HTML comments - in fact, they don't appear in the HTML source when written in a Wikipedia page. They're probably removed by HTML Tidy. I don't know about any code for controlling the image position besides what is described at Wikipedia:How to fix bunched-up edit links, which is probably irrelevant. Graham87 03:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Nope, I don't like the use of secret codes like that: hardly anyone will read the appropriate pages to figure out what they mean. It's not such a big deal, but I'd be happy if there was an intuitive way to fix the problem that works for both sighted and blind users. Graham87 04:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Can you help spruce up an old bridge to be featured?

Hi Dank55. I am planning to nominate Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge for Featured Article, and have greatly expanded it. As you can see from its peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge/archive1, the article is in quite good shape for content and layout. Comments have pointed out that it could benefit from another pair of fresh eyes who could pick up the mistakes and further improve the language. Can you help in this? Thank you. Jappalang (talk) 13:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, but I'm devoting myself to WP:V0.7 until the Oct 20 deadline. That means fixing up articles that made the 0.7 cut, but are generally much poorer than Featured Articles. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:44, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Good luck on making the 0.7! Jappalang (talk) 22:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Horse

Thanks for offering to help with copyediting the Horse article. We've reached an impasse with the reorganisation discussion I think, but a workable one. So, whenever you feel ready, please feel free to dive in. :-) --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:37, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions for lists

I saw you recently posted at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (long lists). I've just begun a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Naming conventions for lists regarding the many different variations of titles of lists. Your input would be appreciated. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 22:03, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Replied there. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Church

Hello, you are receiving this message because you voted in the last FAC for this article. Currently, it is undergoing a peer review and I invite you to come view the page and offer any suggestions for improvement here [1]. Over the past three months, the page has been improved with additional scholarly works, trims, two new sections suggested in and attention to concerns raised during the last FAC. Thanks in advance for your time, attention and help to bring this important article to FA. NancyHeise ^talk 00:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome

Though I'm not sure what I did...! Giggy (talk) 00:49, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic work on prepping for 0.7. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:31, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Horse

I think there has now been another run through by Dana, Malleus and me since you last weighed in?? Want to peek and see if we fixed everything you were worried about? Given that 0.7 deadline, I'm wanting us to get this thing up to GA so we can link a stable version for the 0.7 project. Montanabw^(talk) 04:25, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:11, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Copyedit request

Hi! Could I request a quick copyedit for Manu Sharma? It's a 730 word article, so shouldn't take too much of your time. I'm testing the waters for short FAC noms. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I looked quickly, it's passed WP:GAN and it's certainly good enough for Version 0.7. I'm putting off all FAC-level copyediting until after the Oct 20 0.7 deadline; I'll put it at the top of my copyediting talk page so I won't forget. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:57, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Do you have a birth date for him? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:01, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Minor issue

Wikipedia:UPDATE is linked to from a large Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:UPDATE number of articles. If you find me another target better to directly link those article notes to, I'll go through and repoint them. MBisanz ^talk 18:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

One of these days, I'll turn my newbie pin in. Okay; before today, WP:UPDATE (all caps only; WP:Update wasn't taken) pointed to Wikipedia:WikiProject Update Watch. I asked over there and got no answer, and there was very little activity at that project in the year it's been around. If you have an automated way of repointing those links to that wikiproject, then yes, please. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:46, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Okey, I'm all over it. MBisanz ^talk 18:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Stonewall image may be up for deletion

See discussion here --Moni3 (talk) 19:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Handed over my 2¢. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

In order to justify the image more, I had to expand the article a bit. If you can check over what I added and make sure the emphasis on the photo is strong without making information redundant, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. --Moni3 (talk) 17:30, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Already done, lookin' good. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Is Howcheng's edit, moving the picture, okay by you? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm ok with it. Thanks. --Moni3 (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

There you go!

		The Editor's Barnstar
		For Dank55, for getting a Featured article on Stonewall riots. Rock on. Moni3 (talk) 02:11, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Was it as good for you as it was for me? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Will you let me know how it feels June 28, 2009 - the 40th anniversary - to see it on the main page and know that you helped to shape common knowledge of the biggest event in the gay rights movement? --Moni3 (talk) 02:19, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

That was all you, and I'm already tingly. I'll get a lot more tingled if I can get John to put some major time into Wikipedia; I'm wearing him down. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:30, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Harvey

Not a problem. Actually if you want to help me bring something up to par for 0.7, I fixed up the only WikiProject Warhammer 40,000 article to be selected for 0.7 and I would appreciate a review for GAN. The article is Warhammer 40,000 and it isn't too bad of a read for an outsider (I think). If it is, that's a problem I have to fix! :) But take your time. I was happy to help with Harvey. Protonk (talk) 17:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, I just saw your notice that you are watchlisting talk pages again. You can reply here or there. Protonk (talk) 17:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Mistake

Sorry, Dank55, but I am not the guy you accuse of vandalism. I am using a library computer in the main Miami Beach Library. Please, do not erase my posts in wikipedia. Cheers. Ron —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.90.59.74 (talk) 20:33, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

WT:BLP#Titillating sources

I don't want to get involved in the policy discussion, but I would suggest framing things as "let's not use titillating language about things that happened, just because previous sources use titillating language" rather than "let's not talk about things that happened that are titillating." In the Jan Morris example, I think it is inappropriate to take the words "James Morris had a sex change in order to become Jan" (paraphrasing) from a source, whether that source is reliable or not, because it reflects outdated language (we do not use terms like "sex change", nor do we say that transition is about "becoming" anything other than what one is, as opposed to changing one's outer presentation.) I don't think it is inappropriate to mention that she is a person who transitioned at some point in her past. SparsityProblem (talk) 02:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

No need to respond at that page if you don't want to; your work on individual article talk pages is very valuable. I think it's a slam-dunk that we can get the latter. I would prefer to get the former as well, although not to help out Jan (who had significant notability as James, and as far as I can tell, doesn't mind mentioning the name at all, but thinks that the idea that she was ever really male is silly, as do I.) I can agree not to push the former; I'm hoping some other people weigh in so I can get a sense of how this will play out. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Copy edit requests

Hi. I was about to post a request for copy editing on an article - Anthony Burgess - that is slated for Version 0.7, but saw that articles need to be free of maintenance tags. That's fine, and I'm going to request that the article I was going to post be pulled from the release, because it has serious issues that are far from being resolved. However, the article would greatly benefit from a thorough copy edit, preferably by outside editors who haven't been involved. A very brief backstory: The article has been written and maintained by one registered editor and an IP, and fiercely guarded by a couple of IPs. When I came across the article, it was, and still mostly is, a huge mess of unrelated lists of "stuff", as can be noted here. I endeavored to pare some of the superfluous "stuff", and tagged it for multiple issues. It ultimately has been protected to stop the IPs from flatly reverting the efforts to improve the article. Which brings us back to now, with an article that really needs help. Can you direct me to a group, or somewhere where a request for copy work can be made? Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 08:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Articles only need to have sources that the editors have widely accepted (otherwise, copyediting is irrelevant), and be free of current edit wars (otherwise, good copyediting is likely to get reverted). Burgess is too volatile currently to list at WT:1C; you might try one of the noticeboards or dispute resolution forums. Cyndi Lauper has a recent and unresolved "unreferenced" tag; you might try asking for help at possibly relevant wikiprojects. I'm happy to help with Lucky Luciano, although I'd like to leave it in the list for a while to see if we can get a volunteer. Thanks for making WP:V0.7 better! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Now YOU have new messages!

I wrote a small response on WT:BLP. Maybe if I'm lucky no one at WT:MOS has thought of my solution. Thanks for the essay and the messages... ;) Protonk (talk) 03:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's only fair :) I just made what I hope is my final edit to that thing, but I'm going to get feedback from some transsexual friends. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

FACR

Dank/Archive 3, you posted at one or more of the recent discussions of short FAs. There's now a proposal to change the featured article criteria that attempts to address this. Please take a look and consider adding your comments to the straw poll there. Mike Christie (talk) 19:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Lucky

Thanks much, and at risk of being corny, good luck. This was just one article where I didn't know where to go with it. I've been busily doing copy edit on some high profile actor articles (see Drew Barrymore in about 3 hours, I hope) trying to ready them. I may find myself welcoming fictional articles soon. Wildhartlivie (talk) 22:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll have to try and scare something up for sourcing. One of the reasons I was hesitant to do much with the article was because I don't know much about him, or have sources for him. I've a few crime books so I'll look through them. On a completely different note, would you just take a quick look at Drew Barrymore now as compared to Drew Barrymore yesterday and see if it has an improved flow? It had nothing whatsoever about her production company. Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:53, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Skimming the diffs, it looks like everything you did was an improvement. I'm going through the whole article now. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:02, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Copyeditors are writers, too!

		The Writer's Barnstar
		For your tireless copyediting of featured article candidates - there has been a noticeable improvement in the writing quality of FACs and much of that is due to you. Thank you for focusing on this crucial aspect of the encyclopedia! Awadewit (talk) 20:41, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That's very sweet, thank you! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:59, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

• Aw, thanks! Awadewit (talk) 21:31, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Kannada literature in the Western Chalukya Empire

Hi Dank55. If you are free, can you copy edit this article. It is currently in PR and I dont expect many changes. Thanks,Dineshkannambadi (talk) 23:50, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Wish you the best of luck with your robotics articles.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 23:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Dan55, you did a wonderful job on my last nomination and you can proudly display a golden star on your user page stating you contributed to that article, or I can do it for you. I have no problems. You can do the same this time around also. Many people have helped me in various ways so far, to write all those FA's, and you make me feel guilty that perhaps I may have overlooked adding them as co-nominators. I dont even ask User:Michael Devore's help anymore but she is all the time improving my articles and has been doing so for the past 6-8 months, though always in the background. I can add her name also as a co-nominator, if she wants (I will ask her). I am a content person, you are a stylist. It takes both of us to get the job done. I only hope that some of the users who have helped me in the past do not feel offended that their name was not on the nominators list. Hope this helps.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 23:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

From existing comments on PR/Talk page/my user page, things that need to be rounded up are,

• Making the lead follow a pattern (even if it is not verbatim) that Moni3 suggested.
• Seperating out political and cultural developments in lead section as suggested by Sundar (on my talk page)
• Reducing content with smart copy edits and otherwise by 5% of article size.

Dineshkannambadi (talk) 17:27, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem. See you around. Dineshkannambadi (talk) 20:57, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Dan, it was suggested that you would be a good person to copyedit this article. Do you mind? I've worked really hard on it; my goal is that it reach featured status before the 40th anniversary of the book's publication in 2009. Thanks so much in advance! --Figureskatingfan (talk) 00:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, anyway. I was just following up on the suggestion. We all gotta prioritize, I know. Thanks for the quick response. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 03:44, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Re:Robotics articles

Hi Dan - I've put together a list of articles I started at User:Jiuguang Wang/Contributions. Do you see anything on this list that you might like to work on? --Jiuguang (talk) 00:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. I commented at that page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Systems

Thanks for joining the WikiProject Systems. If there are some things I can do for you let me know. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 23:48, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I felt free and replied on my own talk page. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 00:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi could you take a look t the two questions I have ask you on my talk page. If you don';t know, please let me know. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 12:45, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Thanks

Well, I certainly will. Have you thought about adminship? - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 15:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I've considered it, but I'd want to learn more about XfD before I run. I'm working on 0.7 deadlines at the moment, then I'd like to collaborate on robotics, AI and science journalism articles. XfD comes after that. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

We're married

Dude. Srsly. Or siblings. Exhibit A. I lolled. Then had to tell my real wife what I was laughing at. --Moni3 (talk) 01:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

• It's funny, I kept following your or dan's edits in my watchlist until it disappeared in this sea of nested points and what-not. :) Eventually I just said, here be dragons, and tried to find little gnomish things to fix instead. It's true, you guys have this secret connection...that or my powers of comprehension have waned considerably. Protonk (talk) 01:55, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Moni's just very intuitive. She can work with anyone, even me; she's doing a great job with Dinesh at Wikipedia:Peer review/Kannada literature in the Western Chalukya Empire/archive1. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:59, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but a cursory look at my talk page will show that I have foiled that intuition. No one can interpret my comments when I have fewer than 200 characters to articulate them! Protonk (talk) 02:02, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I have a brother 3 years older than I am, but most people growing up thought we were twins. We used to be able to finish each other sentences and communicate in grunts, chirps, half-finished sentences, and break up laughing. I didn't realize what we were doing until one day a guy was watching us said trying to follow our conversation was impossible. I didn't realize what we had done to the talk page. Maybe we should behave and make things clearer to all involved. --Moni3 (talk) 02:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Well ... there's not a lot more to be done on that article, I think we're in the home stretch. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:09, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

FA-Team new mission

Hi Dan, You've probably noticed that the FA-Team has just launched a mission to help WikiProject AP Biology 2008 and WikiProject North of the Rio Grande improve articles towards featured quality. I'm hoping you would like to join in and support a few articles, especially from the biology project. If you can, please add your name to the articles you are watchlisting on the mission page. Thanks, Geometry guy 20:15, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Harvey Milk

Hi Dank55, You left a message for me regarding a link I created for Daniel Nicoletta in the Harvey Milk article: yes, I am planning to create an article for Daniel, but please feel free to remove the link from the Harvey Milk article if you feel it will affect your chances for 'Featured Article' status, since there are other links I can use to begin the article. As you probably know, Daniel Nicoletti took almost all of the photos of Harvey Milk that are used in the media, as well as the ones used in the memorial in SF, CA, as well as the ones used in the article on Wikipedia, so I'm hoping that the article I'm planning won't get speedily deleted and will stand a chance, since I believe Nicoletta is an important photographer and historical figure. Wish me luck! Intheshadows (talk) 20:05, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, good luck! Those are very valuable photos. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:09, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Your De-Self-Accidental-Vandalisation of my talk page

Thanks! :-) SkyWriter (Tim) (talk) 18:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Update

Very useful. Thanks. -- davidz (talk) 22:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure, helps me keep up. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding links to Wikipedia namespace pages

I took the discussion to WP:ANI, and then to WP:VPP. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:22, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the support!

Thanks for supporting my successful Rfa! Hope to work with you again in the future! Thanks also for chiming in for me on the Cold fusion issue.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 18:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure, it was an easy call to support you because I'm familiar with your work, and I'm glad the 'crat agreed. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

GA reform redux

I've recently had a chat with a couple of the contributors, and we think it may be worth revisiting the GA reform proposal put together by the working party during the Summer. Since you contributed to the proposal's development, I was wondering if you'd care to comment? I've left a brief recap at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Reform#GA reform redux; your input would be much appreciated. Thank you, EyeSerene^talk 13:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Suitport

I seem to remember hearing about a demonstration suitport that NASA had built, but I don't know if it was fully functional, and I can't find a reference for it. It has definitely been proposed by NASA for use in future programs, as evidenced by their inclusion of it in the illustrated rover concept. It shows up a fair amount in industry discussions of near-future architectures, as a "when" rather than an "if". Unfortunately, the best info I've seen on it came from conference presentations (International Conference on Environmental Systems, run by SAE), which aren't publicly available. I understand if the sourcing issue keeps the article short of "Good" status, I'll keep looking for sources that highlight the notability better. Thanks for your quick response. — Swpb^{τ • c} 00:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course, you never know what will float to the top of google when you give it a few months, and just after posting the above, I found an AIAA paper (or at least the first page of it) that seems to indicate NASA Ames was using a real suitport as early as 1995, which I've now added to the article. — Swpb^{τ • c} 01:11, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

It's true that there's one sentence in that paper that gives me hope, so we're good to go. I'll start the review process. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Email

Dan I'm so sorry, I haven't checked that email in forever and I just saw yours (about 20 days late!). Protonk (talk) 06:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

As I recall, I was asking for your opinion on something that was a little worrisome, but it's not a problem at all now. I'll post on your talk page next time I have a question, you're my "go-to" guy for some issues. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:17, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

on images

Dan, I thought I would explain why I have been following the discussion about images. I'm not planning to keep following that discussion in detail on the MoS talk page.

I've always been surprised that, although many people on the MoS page are concerned with the appearance of pages, nobody discusses another serious problem with our layout, which is the excessively wide text block. I know that in professional publishing, columns of text are typically between 50 and 80 characters wide, since this is much easier for the eye to follow. My own research publications are typeset with narrow column widths in journals, and narrow columns are what I'm used to reading.

So I have Wikipedia set to display pages with the text block fixed at 7 inches wide (which is 700px my screen) and a slightly larger than default font, with a 1em margin. This gives me about 70 characters per line in running text, which is easy to read. The layout also simulates, to some extent, the way wikipedia would look on an 800x600 screen.

I try to keep an eye out for display hacks that looked good on the browser of the person who made them, but don't work for other people. A common issue is when editors move the table of contents around to "remove white space"; they don't always realize that the white space is only a result of them making their browser window so wide, and that their attempted fix makes the situation worse for other people. Fixed size images aren't as much of an issue, because I don't read a lot of articles that have excessively large images. But occasionally I run into a huge image that leaves a 1" column of text beside it. Unfortunately, the current MoS language is written in such a way that it would be very difficult for me to justify reducing the size of these images to something reasonable.

I do see the rationale for some images to be larger than 180px (I think a default size of 24px would be better). What might be nice would be for the guideline to give editors leeway to make images larger when needed, but also encourage them to keep the size under 350px unless the image is displayed in a context where there is no text to either side. The images that truly need to be 500px seem to be maps and other diagrams, which don't need to be floated to the side. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I would totally support tweaks to MOS along these lines. My goal in the discussion, of course, is/was to push back against the notion that nothing mattered except for what the image policy page says today, when everything else (including what the image policy page used to say) was pulling in the other direction. As you can see, I've got some other stuff going on at the moment, but I'll come back to these issues in about a week. Thanks so much for your input, which is exactly the kind of broad, informed input we need. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

WSF

Thanks for the message – and knowing you're ready to help with FAC-bound science articles is useful information indeed. Markus Poessel (talk) 17:06, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I am indeed, and I'm actively recruiting others who will do the same. We should form a roving gang. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:44, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Primate

Thanks for that. I just haven't read WP:DASH closely (or often?) enough. I'm still smiling over the 'stationary office' that turned up in that article. William Avery (talk) 22:12, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Set in their ways, are they? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:54, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

1910–12

I am disappointed in you.

I admit that 1910–12 can mean something other than the triennium, in the right context, but that's true of all of English; consider bear. It has a normal meaning, and it only means something else in parallel with 1910–09 and the like. The argument that we should adopt novel formatting to avoid ambiguity in a handful of places is the sort of thing that's making Wikipedia look perverse to literate speakers of English; it should be discouraged, not coddled. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:40, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• Just a talk page stalker here but...what is this about? I'm certainly without the right context to understand any of this. Of course I'm not a "literate speaker" :) Sorry, couldn't help but get the dig in. No harm intended. :) Protonk (talk) 23:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia_talk:MOS#Small_ranges_of_relatively_large_numbers. Do you prefer "1910–1912"? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

It's WT:MOS#Small ranges of relatively large numbers. I'll answer over there. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)