User talk:Johnuniq/Archive 1

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Re: Co-X Entertainment

Hi there. I couldn't answer sooner because I've been busy on RL. I thought of replacing the redirect with a stub on the company, but I looked at their imdb page and it appears that they are a young company that has only made a few documentaries. Also, I saw no mentions of them on magazines about films, and I didn't see any indication that any of their documentaries has become famous or make a remarkable addition to the field of documentaries or any other sort of remarkable achievement. This probably means that don't have enough notability to even create a stub. They also do documentaries on request (I imagine that they get paid for doing fluff jobs for artists)

I edited the documentaries page to remove the self redirect [1], and I saw that the article not only has been prodded for notability [2], which means that the article will be deleted in 5 days if the prod is not contested, but the that the creator and only contributor to the page has been blocked for "creating non-notable pages", see User talk:Hashmi, Usman, so I assume that the page will most probably be deleted.

That means that the redirect will be orphaned on a few days. Unfortunately, it seems that according to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Redirects, and the speedu templates available, you can only speedy vandalism redirects, nonsense redirects, or redirects resulting from a page move. Since the problem with this one is notability, then it *has* to be nominated on WP:TFD (altought, if it's orphaned, maybe you can get away with using {{db-g6}} or with giving a good reason with {{db-reason}})

Since this user is well-known on WP:RFD, I would just go and nominate it directly. If you don't know how to do it, then tell me and I will do it for you. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

wow.... Rossami rules :) I'll strike some of the items on the list, since they have been are or currently already under discussion --Enric Naval (talk) 00:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Response

No. The whole point is that whereas "citation needed" sounds great, there is no specification for how to decide what was the religious stance of a particular scientist. Would a reference stating that X was confirmed as a Catholic justify describing the religious stance of X as "Catholic"? (The answer is no.) --Johnuniq (talk) 09:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Dear John, to avoid cluttering up the talk page, I put my response here:
Referencing is fine. For example in the case of Augustin Louis Cauchy a reference would demonstrate he spent his life trying convert people to Catholicism. Also Gregor Mendel is a no-brainer as he was both a scientist and a Catholic Abbot....a reference would bear this out. In the case of someone like Enrico Fermi a reference would confirm that he was a nominal Catholic of the type that only turned up for weddings and funerals. I do not see a problem here. Bletchley (talk) 12:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Bletchley (I'm a "keep responses together" person, so I hope you see this). I take your point that our discussion is getting lengthy, and might burden readers, but I'm not sure that talking here is a good idea ... however, I'm happy if you are.

If precise information is known about a scientist, I believe you are correct, and the more details displayed, the better (although in practice you would want a limited subset of details in the infobox). The problem is that "Catholic" and "Nominal Catholic" are very imprecise terms: they don't necessarily mean that the scientist had any particular belief in common with Catholic doctrines. Someone could be labeled "Catholic" simply because they were raised in a Catholic tradition, and they never "rocked the family boat" by expressing anti-Catholic feelings. Another "Catholic" scientist could have written about their Catholic beliefs. There is no reasonable way to summarize these widely-differing situations in an infobox.

The cases you mentioned above are valid, but for Enrico Fermi, "Catholic" was removed three hours after it was added, so someone objected to the label. For Albert Einstein we have "see main text", and religion was recently removed from Richard Dawkins.

So long as the religion field is available in a scientist's infobox, we will have enthusiasts who find some biographical reference referring to "Catholic", and who then apply that label to a scientist, regardless of what is known about the scientist's beliefs, and regardless of whether there is any known influence of religion on the scientist's work.

I know that Wikipedia has lots of disputed issues, and disputation is not a reason to omit valid information. The problem is that there can never be a reasonable way to sum up a scientist's religious beliefs in an infobox, so even in principle, there is no way to determine a procedure to decide whether a label is applicable to a particular scientist. Of course, in some cases (like Michael Faraday) we can "recognize it when we see it", and we know that the label for Faraday is applicable, but those cases are rare because most scientists do not write about their personal beliefs.

I think this matters because, as you pointed out, the issue of religion vs science is very hot. Undoubtedly, some editors will want to apply "Catholic" to any scientist who had even a brief encounter with Catholicism, while other editors will want to remove all religious labels. I think that the resolution is very simple: remove "religion" from the infobox, and quote reliable sources in the article. Where appropriate, give details of how the scientist was influenced by their religious stance.

On the template talk page, I said that an argument could be made to support keeping the religion field if the template doc was updated, perhaps to read:

religion : Normally omitted. Include only if the article discusses how the religious views were expressed by the scientist in the context of their scientific achievements.

Your comments above about referencing would need to be spelt out in the template doc (currently, it just says "religion : Religious beliefs"). I would be a lot more relaxed about keeping "religion" if the doc clearly implied that a label should only be added if it currently has a link showing that the scientist really did have the belief (so a newly-added label with no reference could be removed). --Johnuniq (talk) 01:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

John, I agree with you that religion should only go in the infobox field if there is a source where the scientist has self-identified him/herself, eg. Michael Faraday, or where it is amply self-evident, eg. Gregor Mendel as he was also a monk, or Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who is probably the most famous Jesuit. For scientists where there is no source where he/she has explicitly bought it up and/or religion is only nominal, I agree it should be left blank. And I agree I was therefore wrong to put a religion in Enrico Fermi, when he was only a nominal Catholic. I like you idea of inserting such guidelines on the infobox page, without need to delete the whole field. Did you want to have a crack at drafting something up? (In the few rare cases, like Albert Einstein, where there is a large section on religion in his biography and no suitable single "label" exists, it is acceptable to just put "see article" in the religion field. This has been there nearly a year in the Einstein article and has survived 100s of pretty vicious local editors there...so you don't want to delete that or you will start a huge war against their local consensus :-) Better leave sleeping dogs lie, and not fix something that ain't broke. If you could put a "draft policy" below our present discussions on the infobox talk page, we could all help to chip in and tweak it up. Bletchley (talk) 07:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've put some thoughts about what the template doc might say in the last two paragraphs of my message just above. Here is another: If a religious stance is specified, the article must discuss how the religious views were expressed by the scientist in the context of their scientific achievements, or, there must be a link to a reliable source stating that the scientist expressed the religious stance over an extended period...

But even that's not adequate. A biography for scientist X may state that X attended a Catholic school and occasionally visited church as an adult. Does that indicate that X had a Catholic religious stance? Or was X merely following tradition to avoid conflict with a parent? What would satisfy me is if X had written about their beliefs: then extracts could be quoted in the article, and the label would be justified. However, it seems a little unfair to require certain historical figures (you mentioned two) to follow this rule when it is clear that the scientist's behavior was indistinguishable from an enthusiastic follower of their religious stance.

Particularly with the rise of creationism (using technology devised by scientists!), we should not make it easy for people to attach simplistic religious-stance labels to scientists. Of course in many cases the label is justified, but I imagine we simply do not know what the beliefs of many modern scientists are (unless they have written about them).

I might think about the template doc a little more, later. I wouldn't want to cut short the discussion for a while yet, although I'd be happy to join in if you wanted to start a new section calling for a discussion on what the template doc might say. I'm also thinking I really should add a comment alerting people that there are these discussions here and on your talk page. --Johnuniq (talk) 22:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I essentially agree with you. Where we are different, is that I'm a bit more relaxed about not trying to overly worry about some editors being too simplistic or inserting poor references. I think once we have an agreed "policy" up on the template page, we'll begin to find that editors that deviate from this will get their work corrected by other editors. This is how wikipedia operates and I'm very happy to leave things to evolutionary forces in this way without overly trying to second guess how future editors might behave :-) So at the end of the day it seems that you & I agree all along, it's just that I'm a little more relaxed. And hey, who knows? In 5yrs time the tides might change and a new concensus overturns our opinions and comes up with something totally different. So when it comes to wikipedia I tend to not hold my breath too hard, but just do what keeps an enclycopedia new and exciting. I think it is exciting that wikipedia is not boring like traditional encyclopedias, but does entertain pop culture and things of significant public interest, (for example). Bletchley (talk) 06:48, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry

Your concerns are well voiced and will hopefully elicit the appropriate response. My cheap shots were aimed at another. A great deal of effort went into obtaining the copy-right on that image; their suggestion that it was random or slapped up and that we were that dim witted at the time of the articles inception was taken personally. I suggest you allow the discussion to lay dormant a bit. I've added my last bit of tongue and cheek commentary. If there is no further dialog; consensus is in your favor. Then edit as you see fit.--JimmyButler (talk) 15:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, although no "sorry" is needed. I'm sorry that my first post on the topic was a little insensitive to you in my attempt to be nice to another. Like I said, now I see the image and text in Darwin's Finches I don't want to change Introduction to evolution, and the triceratops picture is excellent. --Johnuniq (talk) 02:05, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Censoring info

You shouldn't censor variances in models of evolution just because of your own POV, beliefs, or what ever. Information and facts presented in a logical way should be available to the general public. If you have a problem with that, you should have created a talk page rather then start an edit war. Sfvace (talk) 03:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think one revert should be considered as censorship or an edit war. I'm happy to let others decide the issue, if you revert me. The fact is that Evolution is a long and highly technical article, and I didn't think it needed another section with links to other topics which (while borrowing the word "evolution") are really quite different concepts. --Johnuniq (talk) 03:43, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Typographical changes

OK, note taken. Leandro GFC Dutra (talk) 11:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is actually a wealth of typographical niceties, but Wikipedia has been turning more and more conservative. For example, typographical quotes were OK, now they are frowned upon, which I totally disagree with: we should not be stuck with typewriter conventions that so uglify text.

In the instance of dashes, there is the horizontal bar, which is not used in English; and the - is but a conflation of separate minus and hyphen characters, the latter of which you saw in one of my edits.

Also there are different spaces to be used in specific circumstances. In English, the thin space as a thousands separator and inside dashes come to mind.

Leandro GFC Dutra (talk) 08:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The issues you mention are actually type and application issues. Things do look great on recent versions of Gnome and Mac OS X. And the search issues… well, they are actually search engine issues, of which I never saw an example perhaps due to using Unicode and Google.

What I see is Wikipedia going the way of DMoz, each day more controls—and less pleasure participating.

--

Leandro GFC Dutra (talk) 15:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Genetic drift

Thanks for the reformulation of the lead in genetic drift. Maybe obvious to you, but I saw the need without being able to fulfil it. --Ettrig (talk) 08:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. No it wasn't obvious ... I sweated for an hour to reword the two paragraphs! --Johnuniq (talk) 10:35, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

RE: Bot cleaning

Hi there,

Thanks for your comments about Thehelpfulbot, I'll explain the answer to each of your questions:

• The bot replaced some double spaces with a single space (excellent!), but did not delete trailing space at the end of lines. Is there a reason to not clean trailing spaces as well?
  • I'm not sure about the rules or policy regarding this, however my bot is just using a script that is already coded by other users, however if this is required then I will see if I can get someone to update the code to fix this.
• The bot replaced "==Heading==" with "== Heading ==". Is there a policy guideline recommending that because, while some like it and some don't, I have noticed some editors removing those spaces when an article had a mixture of both styles (so I've done it a couple of times)?
  • I think this is something to do with the manual of style of Wikipedia, however I am not sure about this.
• Shouldn't the edit summary give a hint that other changes might be made, even if just "and other cleaning"?
  • Yes, thanks for telling me about this - I will update the edit summary to suit this, with "general fixes" for the article.

Hope this helps,

The Helpful One 19:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

212.219.203.242

This i.p. address is the i.p. address for a high school. I myself attend it, and have logged on on these computers a few times. If it is possible, and you know how, and you have the authority, I'd suggest blocking it, as the few people in this small High school that I know do constructive edits, all have an account. I would say something needs to be done, because almost all the edits have been vandalism. Alan16 ^talk 12:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I know it's frustrating – I have been in a similar situation behind a proxy, and shared an IP address used by immature people. I'm not greatly familiar with the processes, but my feeling is that there would need to be quite a bit more abuse before it would be worth referring 212.219.203.242 to the appropriate place. The general guidelines are at WP:CVU. If you notice more vandalism that has not been followed up (with sterner warnings on the talk page, and a possible editing block), let me know here and I'll look at it (if you don't want to do it yourself). I gather that the Wikipedian approach is to tolerate quite a lot of abuse in the hope that people will grow up and contribute helpfully in the future. Heavy-handed banning might just create a bunch of misfits. Johnuniq (talk) 00:35, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Reply

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Ping

See Template talk:Infobox Scientist#Images are still messed up. 129.15.131.185 (talk) 18:45, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression: I'm just a humble editor who happens to be watching Template talk:Infobox Scientist because of an old discussion, so I noticed your post. I suggested a more precise statement of the problem would be helpful because a busy admin won't necessarily be familiar with all the details. It sounds like you know what needs to be done. In that case, I suggest you spell out which line of the template needs to be changed, and what it needs to be changed to. And give a link to a page that illustrates the problem, and a brief statement of what the problem is, and how the change would fix it. I'm replying here rather than on the talk page because everything I'm saying is just noise to an admin who might fix the problem.

I believe you would put a line consisting of

{{editprotected}}

at the top of the section. That attracts the attention of an admin, who would respond and change the template to {{tlx|editprotected}} which renders as {{editprotected}}. Johnuniq (talk) 00:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Brockton Brightfield

If only it had an output of 425 megawatts - wouldn't that be nice! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:00, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Groan ... yes! I was checking a few recent vandal changes by that IP, and my brain didn't switch on until a minute later. You're quick! Johnuniq (talk) 23:05, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Babylon's free dictionary

Hi. What was the problem with this reference? --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Dealing with WP:LINKSPAM is tricky, and if you see I've made a mistake please revert it. I got involved in this fairly recently but have already found quite a few crystal-clear cases where commercial interests have gone to quite a lot of trouble to spam links into Wikipedia. I noticed a report on babylon.com and saw that it had quite a lot of links.

I've removed some of the links that I thought were unhelpful. In the article you mention, the lead starts: "The International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) is an aerospace engineering industry group for improving quality, cost reduction and developing standards.". I removed the babylon.com ref which reads (in full): "A cooperative organization of the global aerospace industry that is mainly involved in quality, cost reduction and process improvement efforts." The article is only four short sentences, and has six references and an official web site; I thought that was adequate, and the babylon link was unhelpful. It may well have been inserted in good faith, but I'm pretty confident there are other cases where similar links are just spam.

I welcome your thoughts. Johnuniq (talk) 22:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Adaptation

Well, as it turned out, I had to rewrite most of this article to get some kind of consistency. The main change was to move from adaptation solely as a product of evolution, to the more important idea of adaptation as a process.

I think it's now well past Start Class, so when you go there next time you might have a think about reclassifying it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations on the excellent work – Adaptation is certainly past start class. As you've noticed, I have been watching, and made some comments on the talk page and a couple of trivial edits. However, I'm not a member of the project (biology is an interest, not a profession). I will try to add some thoughts to Talk:Adaptation, and I might do some minor edits. Don't hesitate to revert or correct any mistakes.

I would be happy to add an assessment request, but it would be more appropriate for you to do that. Johnuniq (talk) 23:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Overall, I've found this a most helpful critique, so thank you for your review. I have responded to most of the comments with changes, often along the lines you suggest. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

As for bright 12-year olds, that's always difficult for a scientific article. I agree the intros need especial care; I've noticed that translations into other languages often use only the intros!
I hope the article as a whole is comprehensible to a keen young student of 15 or 16, when they may meet the subject in school. The main audience is probably college students taking biology courses. I often wish WP would give clearer guidance to its readers, such as to use the links when they don't understand a technical term. Of course that presupposes the linked articles are of a similar standard, which (as you point out) is often not so. Hence, I'm going to go over the "main article" links one by one to try & get the ducklings in line. Wish me luck... Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Lamb of God

I think the article needs your attention. 91.98.184.50 (talk) 14:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

OK thanks. I only edited that article while chasing some vandalism. Someone beat me to cleaning it up this time, but I'll watch the page. Johnuniq (talk) 22:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Dichotomies

Hi, in response to this, may I link you to Category talk:Dichotomies#What is dichotomy anyway? You may be kind enough to reply there. --KYPark (talk) 13:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Johnuniq (talk) 04:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

FES School

Hi, just letting you know that FES School has been redirected to FES Matriculation School (which has had it's speedy removed and since been prodded). Also, a7 doesn't apply to schools so in future please don't nom schools under that criteria. Cheers - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 12:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up. I just copied what was done on the duplicate page; will prod for cases like this in future. Johnuniq (talk) 23:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Cube, Doors of perception and Brouwer

Hi Johnuniq,

I see you have deleted the links I posted on The Cube, The Doors of Perception and Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer with the comment "Spamlink". I don't understand what you mean by that, because all these links have educational value and are non-commercially.

Regards --Controle2 (talk) 18:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry for your rather brutal welcome to Wikipedia. Judging by your above comment (thanks for being reasonable) you are not what we would normally regard as a spammer. Bear in mind that it is extremely difficult to judge when links are spam, or when a user is a spammer, so mistakes will sometimes be made (good edits might be reverted as spam, or bad edits might be allowed to stay).

Here is some relevant information: Project Spam overview, external links guideline, single-purpose account (SPA) information, external link spamming.

Unfortunately, your link additions look exactly like spam (there is no reasonable way editors can distinguish them from spam). The main problem is that your first edits (indeed, your only edits) were to add external links to the same site. Furthermore that site appears to offer various personal opinions on how things should be, and it's not clear what encyclopedic value it adds to the article. My opinions are simply the opinions of one editor, and it is best for you to raise the matter as you have done at Tao Te Ching talk. Let's see how that proceeds. Johnuniq (talk) 01:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

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Talkback

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Link Checking

Thanks, Johnuniq, for fixing those broken links for me!

I'm curious--does Wikipedia run any sort of link checking software to find and fix broken links automatically? 69.251.164.54 (talk) 06:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

There's still lots I don't know about Wikipedia, however I'm pretty sure the MediaWiki software has no system of checking links to see if they are still live. For one thing, in the case we are discussing, what happened was that a web site did not properly renew its DNS registration, so a scammer took it over. The links still worked; you would need a human to determine that the target of the link was no longer the intended site. There are several bots run by users that do various things, but I don't know of any for this specific task. The link bots that I've noticed are looking for spam. Johnuniq (talk) 07:16, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I didn't click on your link until now. You said that "I have finished fixing them" but it seems you only reduced the number of broken links from around 50 to 17. I have no idea why the others remained behind, but thought you ought to know.69.251.164.54 (talk) 07:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned, I did not bother fixing the links on talk or user pages, only in actual articles. There are lots of bad links on Wikipedia, so leaving a few that will probably never be used is not a big deal. Johnuniq (talk) 07:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I misunderstood. I thought you meant you didn't bother to note the corrections of the dead links on all of the pages where they existed, that you just changed the links automatically without the changes registering in the history of all those pages or something. My mistake. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.251.164.54 (talk) 08:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

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Nature since journal

You worded that is not-something[3]. Do you rely want to talk about it? If so please feel free to open the talk page on it. Perhaps you can define your objection Right now its hardly to replay to you in more detailed way. I think you will praise this as best atempt to wikilowe. 24.15.127.200 (talk) 01:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Responded on article talk page. Johnuniq (talk) 02:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Your comments are appreciated! Cheers. --Ckatz^chat_spy 00:20, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

Hi. Why have you so quickly deemed all my entries to be reverted on site?

After the posting about 'conflict' of interest on my discussion page I understand that I shouldn't keep linking to IBISWorld everytime I write an economic/industry entry so I will refrain from doing this anymore unless it is crucial to the entry.

Other editors have been encouraging me to continue going on with this task of adding economic and industry style entries based on proper sources.

The "lollies" I am writing are from legitimate encyclopedic sources that add weight to the article. Can you please outline why the posts are deemed as inappropriate?

I changed the user name because I was advised by an editor to keep posting but from a less promotional name.

I will also remove most of the links to IBISWorld from my old posts as well. (IndustryProj (talk) 13:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC))

I'm afraid that people speak fairly bluntly here, so my comments here may seem inconsiderate. However, we who have worked at Wikipedia for some time have seen an enormous number of misguided edits and we can't take the time to politely respond to each. The person's motivations and intentions become irrelevant – all that matters is what they actually do (your actions are indistinguishable from a spammer with a WP:COI so that's what I said).

Your first issue is that you do not appear to have spent any time becoming familiar with how things work here. Like the large number of other single purpose accounts, your only edits (first as User:IBISWorldWikiProject) have been to insert a paragraph of vaguely relevant material with a link to your web site (a site that sells reports). Second, you post multiple copies of the same response to the various editors who have reverted your edits. In some cases, the response was not at all relevant.

As requested by User:CliffC on the above-mentioned Project Spam page, please do not "remove most of the links"; we will deal with it. Johnuniq (talk) 00:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

MHO

re[4]: a) added verbatim structured ancestral population from source (source added), b) wikilinked to best explanation c) fixed obvious mispeling. I believe obvious but its always OK to ask. 76.16.176.166 (talk) 04:35, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The place to explain your edits to Multiregional origin of modern humans is on its talk page, as another editor requested. I was just trying to make a polite suggestion. Johnuniq (talk) 04:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thinktalk.com and the SPA's...interesting.

Thank you for providing the link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#thinktalk.com

Much appreciated.

I did preserve the other link at Sparks's page on the talk page in case some interested editor decides it really should be there and brings it into compliance with wp:EL, and re-adds it. - sinneed (talk) 02:24, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

AAAAAHAHAHAH! And after leaving this here, I find you had already added another kind response on the talk page before I got there to kill the offending link. :) Sorry to cause you to spend so much time on this spammer. I appreciate the spamfighting, and again thank you for your detailed response. All the best.- sinneed (talk) 02:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

No problem, and thank you for remaining polite while people were removing links in what I realize must have seemed a pretty high-handed manner. Johnuniq (talk) 02:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand. "high-handed"?...well, different from the way I prefer to do it "retail". But there is simply NO WAY to handle things the same "wholesale". No need to reply, I have taken enough of your time. :) I haven't done any serious vandal-fighting in months, my hat is off to you.- sinneed (talk) 02:37, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

spiritoftheages.com

Without seeking to offend any of the editors involved in the decision to remove references to spiritoftheages.com, the comments - including that site has "[n]o encyclopedic purpose for ...[Wikipedia] readers" - seems inaccurate and the action to remove links based upon such comments removes links for readers interested in that artists and artwork accessible on the various links. In making that comment, I would note that spiritoftheages.com is clearly under continuous development - I have noted regular revisions to the site with many of the more recent updates involving the inclusion of considerable material derived from original sources (inclusive of details around publishing, illustrations, the artists and the text related to the illustrations). Some of that information has directly contributed to Wikipedia articles. Further, in a number of cases, the link site (spiritoftheages.com) has highly detailed information of research value that does not otherwise appear to be available on the web - examples that spring to mind are the emerging practice on the site to accompany images with associated text (as is the case in Vernon Hill's illustrations to Ballads Weird and Wonderful), Holbein's illustrations to The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) [in that example, the illustrations are shown with both French and English translations of Erasmus' text], illustrations shown from Der Weiss Kunig (where extracts of translated text from the medieval German is shown on occasions), Der Todten-Tantz (where German and English text is shown with the associated image) and Michaud's The History of the Crusades (where Dore's illustrations are shown with Michaud's associated text). I do appreciate the comments about spam and the like, but believe this to be a significant resource that has relevance to Wikipedia users (and rather than go ahead with inserting references again, would appreciate some considered comment about the points I have raised before taking such potentially inflammatory action). Ruderabbit007 (talk) 09:15, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Replied on spam talk page to identical message. Johnuniq (talk) 11:03, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

There certainly seem to be a lot of assumptions being made by some otherwise well-intentioned editors, including that I am working for spiritoftheages.com and thus, am "obviously ... looking for places fo Wikipedia where ... [I]can inject links to ... [the] site". That response seems overly emotional and loaded with defamatory assumptions that betray a zealotry that is unwarranted in editing - similar to many of the justifications used, including that "the images are postage stamp sized" and the like (obviously the size of the images depends on the screen resolution - and not all users have hi-def screens). For some time, I have been adding information to Wikipedia on various subjects - and I will continue to do so. Ruderabbit007 (talk) 20:25, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

You don't need to post duplicates of your messages. I replied earlier. Johnuniq (talk) 04:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Naomi Elizabeth

The reason this article was nominated for deletion is because it was vandalized by IP address # 71.36.101.63. Prior to the vandalism, the article was approved by several administrators, with a few minor changes. It was posted for 4 weeks before it was altered by # 71.36.101.63, and during that time there were no complaints. All the deletion related complaints were logged during the interval when the article was vandalized. Thanks so much- Hhtttt (talk) 22:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. At the time, I did some quick checking, but I was mistaken, so I have struck out my opinion at WP:Articles for deletion/Naomi Elizabeth. I don't think you are correct about "administrators", but that does not matter. Johnuniq (talk) 02:47, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Estonia–Luxembourg relations

Hello, I've recently tried to restore this page to a version which can be improved upon (a non-protected, non-disambiguation page) and I wondered if I could get your opinion about whether it is currently up to the quality which we expect of every Wikipedia article. I would appreciate your comments on the article at User:Cdogsimmons/Estonia–Luxembourg relations on the talk page there, and further improvements that would get it closer to inclusion status are always welcome. Thanks.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 23:06, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for including me in the discussion. I have been thinking that we should talk directly to sort out some underlying differences about what makes an X–Y relations (bilateral country relations article) notable, so this is a good opportunity. Unfortunately I have some other matters both here and in real life, so I'll need a bit of time to respond on User talk:Cdogsimmons/Estonia–Luxembourg relations. Johnuniq (talk) 02:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

consensus on ded thesis ?

there is no single current scientific citation on H-O on polygenism either.

Please show what do you have to add to something nobody in science debate and how you want to reach consensus? Is your aim to diverge the description of scientific debate between two somehow valid conception the 'mainstream' RR v ME by staffing it by undigestible nonsenses ? 76.16.176.166 (talk) 03:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

When you edit Recent African origin of modern humans (or any page), you should give a brief explanation of what you did. It is not a good idea to put debating points into an edit summary; use the talk page for that. Please do not try to debate article topics on my talk page. Johnuniq (talk) 04:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

side comments / how I may help you?

• It may help if you read firs time skipping text in parenthesis and after it comprehension reading side comments in parenthesis.
• I did not intend this :) to be dramatic emoticon.
• Is that punctuation (sentence by sentence) helpful ?

76.16.176.166 (talk) 05:49, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I really have no idea why you want to post on my talk page. If you have a request to make, or advice to give, I do not see it in the above. You may be used to forums where there are lots of excitable people who will rise to a bait. Haven't you noticed that on Wikipedia, at least in many of the science topics, those people do not exist here. Johnuniq (talk) 07:28, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

re to this:

It would much better if you were to just state your point, and give an argument, without drama. The emoticons and side comments obscure what you are saying. Even the first sentence in your above paragraph is mysterious – please just say what you mean. Johnuniq (talk) 04:15, 13 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.176.166 (talk)

Of course I remember what prompted you to post here; what I don't know is why. If you have some advice (for example, if you want to tell me to mind my own business), just say it. If you want to ask a question (for example, "can we have a chat?"), just say it. The answer to that last question is no, and please be aware that I may remove any further meaningless text posted here. Johnuniq (talk) 09:40, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Good change:[5]. I like your lateral thinking. Fences and windows (talk) 21:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't last long! Our friend needs some guidance. Johnuniq (talk) 01:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I reinserted your "good change" at 00:16. It seem your time 1.58 hour late. How far away :) are you ? Contributions/76.16.176.166 (talk) 10:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Celestial Heights

Hi! Have you read the sources of Celestial Heights before you suggested deleting the article? You said there are no sources to support its land sales is second highest in Hong Kong history. But did you read the source of http://www.robroad.com/data/2006/0719/article_71129_1.htm ? It said "Cheung Kong Holdings to 9.42 billion won huge price "Ho Man Tin plots." This is the highest since 1997, the price of single plots." This shows it is a fact with reliable source. If you don't know too much on Hong Kong buildings, you'd better understand it. But please don't delete it because you (or some of the people) want to delete it. Ricky@36 (talk) 01:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I read that article before commenting. I have put a slightly longer response at the AFD discussion. Johnuniq (talk) 04:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Infobox Writer

Thanks for the heads-up; I'll add {{editprotected}}. Eubulides (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipeda Art Merge

My "merge" !vote was in response to claims in the previous AfD that "sourced content would be lost in a deletion". If the sourced content was covered in/merged to other articles, the arguement of "lost content" has no basis and we are free to discuss whether the article has merit to stand on its own, which I do not feel an article about the "controversy" does.

I have offered another option on the AfD. -- The Red Pen of Doom 01:30, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Polymorphism (biology)

This article, which had been stable for some time, has attracted the attentions of a newish contributor, whose edits are costing me much time and trouble. So I'm asking for some help and/or advice. The main problem, as I see it, is that he doesn't understand enough to appreciate that his contributions are a) not improvements, and b) disruptive. (He is not, as far as I can see, being deliberately disruptive.) This is an article which is on the evol biol slate, and I am not anxious to walk away from it, but it does illustrate the irony that well-meaning but ignorant editing can do more damage than outright vandalism. I have tried to explain on talk page, but he goes on and on. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:58, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean – that's a lot of changes. I'm nowhere near your technical level, but I'll see what I can do to slow it down. Johnuniq (talk) 01:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Evolutionism/Evolutionists

Yes, I had both open at once, I must have chosen the wrong window. However, I'd think personally that the XfD would cover both, so I don't think it is a big problem. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The BAG

Thanks for the comments. No one who read my posts said anything near what ThaddeusB said to me, so, it was worth trying to clear up; but once he continued to show he was not reading anyone's posts, as others pointed out to him, there was nothing to do.

Still, I'm human and appreciate that other editors, such as yourself and Hesperian, and most of the editors at the AfD, and a number on the BAG board, saw that my comments were intended to start a needed community discussion to improve wikipedia by preventing similar events from occurring.

There were low level programming mistakes that should not have occurred. A group that has the right to authorize bots should bear some responsibility for the actions and inactions of bot owners-such as a bot owner who is as unresponsive to errors as Martin was (for months). It's my opinion that this could improve the way bots are used on wikipeida: having someone be responsible for monitoring them, for owners responding to errors, for stopping bots with the most basic programming errors. If I wrote software or an algorithm like this, I'd lose my job. If this group doesn't want responsibility, they should lose the right to authorize bots. Again, my opinion.

Thanks. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your efforts. I am just an evolution enthusiast, but while monitoring pages for bad changes, I have noticed many cases where an IP editor has made excellent contributions. Too much has been written (example) about the current issue, and I haven't worked out exactly what happened at the start, but I suspect that if you hadn't politely and persistently pushed the issue, we would still have thousands of badly incorrect pages. It is natural for people to get a little defensive when challenged, and as I said I haven't read all the material on this, but I have not noticed any acknowledgement from the bot owner regarding responsibility. This is possibly yet another case of a highly capable and intelligent person (the bot owner) who is used to being surrounded by lesser lights, and who can't adapt to the fact that they are now in a bigger pond where it is they who are among the lesser lights. I will follow your example of restraint and not say what I really think, however I will note that while one may not admire Martin's programming skills, you have to admire his confidence for announcing that he will code a second bot to fix the foul ups of the first.

I'm not going to defend the stone wall erected at BAG, but given the large number of misguided people wandering around Wikipedia, it is understandable that some BAG people sometimes act inappropriately because they would be used to seeing clueless reports. Unfortunately the volunteers doing routine maintenance (such as at BAG and WT:WikiProject Spam) get overloaded and can't always respond as we would like.

I am a long way down the food chain here, but if you ever encounter a problem you are welcome to ask me and I'll see what I can do. Johnuniq (talk) 08:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

G'day John

I noticed your comments at Jimbo's talk page, and thought I'd swing by here rather than contribute to the signal / noise over there - hope you don't mind :-) - you raised the possibility that a 'superadmin' is a necessary / desirable role, and I wondered if you'd considered whether or not that would apply to (for example) the german, french etc. wikipedias who don't have such a chap? - regardless, I think the point is interesting, but ultimately not hugely relevant to the specific discussion over there which by my reading is more about a specific block and discussion than the more general abstract point? Nice to 'meet' you anywhoo, and see you around :-) Privatemusings (talk) 11:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. You can possibly tell that I have no idea how things run over there, so you may have located a fatal flaw in my argument. However, I think that en.wikipedia is huge compared with de, which is significantly larger than the others? I suspect that size matters as far as politics and bickering are concerned. I have no idea about the merits of the particular case being discussed, although if I were a great editor and Jimbo blocked me for three hours because of some temporary transgression, I hope I would make my explanations and complaints loudly, and then get on with it. There are less-than-perfect managers in many companies, and they make bad decisions a few times each week. Indeed, there are many areas of society (politicians, judges) where bad decisions are regularly made, and if Jimbo were replaced by a committee, that committee would occasionally make bad decisions. Given that perpetual perfection is not going to happen, my opinion is that the simplicity of a fallible superadmin is preferable to an interminable bureaucracy. However, I guess I'll have to learn how de.wikipedia does things, perhaps in a beer hall? Is there a German equivalent of WR? Johnuniq (talk) 12:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

There is a deWP-specific forum in WR itself, at [6] So far, no other non-English languages there. DGG (talk) 02:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 03:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

You say it like it doesn't happen already

"There may be a tendency for factions of admins to form" I thought that was the primary organising principle on ANI :) Guettarda (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's hope they're not monitoring what we're muttering about...:) Johnuniq (talk) 23:45, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hey, thanks very much for cleaning up the spammed links to the watch site. I took a break after reporting and blocking all the SPAs, and came back to find that you'd removed the links, saving me a whole bunch of additional time. I appreciate it. Cheers. --Ckatz^chat_spy 10:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

A tedious pleasure! I noticed you do a couple of reverts like this where the edit summary was too long, so the link was broken. FYI I added [[WT:WikiProject Spam#Watch fan site|linkspam]] which is shorter. I checked that you blocked all the spammers that I reverted – I imagine that would have been really tedious! Johnuniq (talk) 10:52, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: Rod Beckstrom

Hello - and thanks for the edit

Is there a way to prevent WP:UNID spam links being added to the Rod Beckstrom page? Neither is registered to Rod Beckstrom but rather link to the spammer's Facebook page.

Thank you again. Intersys (talk) 05:19, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing and reacting to the WP:UNID spam. I hope you don't mind, but I have edited your above message to remove the name of the spammer and the sites. The person has a long-term fascination with Wikipedia and seems to delight in having their name splashed around, and per WP:DENY I think we should keep the drama to an absolute minimum.

I'm wondering about your message on Talk:Rod Beckstrom – normally the message would be absolutely the right thing, but in this case I would recommend deleting the whole section because the bad links will be black listed which will make it impossible for them to be added anywhere, so the message will simply be another acknowledgement of the spammer. I would recommend deleting the section with edit summary like "remove per [[WP:DENY]], see [[WP:UNID]]" which would display as "remove per WP:DENY, see WP:UNID".

Re your question: I'm hoping User:A. B. will return soon and will handle the issue. If necessary, I will draw it to A. B.'s attention, and the two sites will be added to the blacklist (and if A. B. doesn't return soon, I will get another admin to do it). Johnuniq (talk) 08:06, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Again, thank you for the tips. Section is removed as per your recommendation. Intersys (talk) 15:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Lamarck/reliable sources

Er, actually it did need saying, because someone has repeatedly removed reliably ref'd material on Cuvier's éloge of Lamark (see hist. of Lamarck article). While I'm here thank you for calming Polymorphism (biology) down; your slightest touch has a magical effect... Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:34, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to pretend that there was a cause-and-effect relationship between what I did and the outcome! Johnuniq (talk) 01:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I have some questions for you

Clearly you are familar with my images as reflected by your comments here: [[7]] I am relatively new to this media and still learning the ropes. I am slowly gaining an appreciation for the nuances of this unique culture and appropriate behaviors which are not clear cut and often acquired through trial and error. I appreciate your scrubbing some of my images, eliminating white space, unnecessary text, etc. As images get deleted, I seem to be referred to various WP articles justifying the actions. However, in other instances the reasons are not as clear. My user name was created by Fred Bauder [[8]], not by me. It is evident that this seems to offend many editors as they cite the usage of my user name as blatant self promotion. This seems to be somewhat of a conflicting message: should I use my real name as a user name or not? One of the other points of contention is the use of my name in the file name and this is cited this as a reason under WP:PROMOTION to delete my images. I fully understand the desire to eliminate links and references to youtube or any other website and have complied with this on subsequent uploaded images. However, I have poured over these articles and no where can I find any prohibition against using your name in the file name. Yet this appears to be a major sticking point. I am quite amazed that other physicians uploaded images (of which you are aware) continue to be posted with hyperlinks to their personal websites with no action by you to remove them. Yet my uploaded images are quite rapidly removed even when posted with no links. Can you help me to understand while a file name identifying my user name is more offensive than a link and why/where this is not permitted? Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to your response. With all due respect. Otto Placik (talk) 05:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Some preliminary points: I have some sympathy for your position since I am quite an experienced wiki editor (even before I reached Wikipedia), yet I am often baffled by details of how things are done here. Also, while I have reverted a couple of edits in relation to plastic surgery, it was someone else who adjusted your images (I know nothing about the scrubbing or deletion).

As you can see from WT:WikiProject Spam, we get overwhelmed by people who want to promote their web site, or product, or whatever. Therefore, it is entirely possible that one person has their work reverted, while another manages to avoid attention. There's even a page (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS) pointing out that the fact that one person manages to post dubious content is not a reason for another to do it. I do not know the details, but it is possible that people reacted to what they perceived to be an attempt to promote the practice of a plastic surgeon that was far too blatant. Having said that, I have to tell you that many Wikipedians really hate promotion of any kind, and if there were more hours in a day, we would remove absolutely all of it. From our point of view, Wikipedia is an amazing success due to the efforts of countless volunteers, and we object to people who try to take advantage of the work.

Regarding User:Droliver: I started looking at the issue when I saw the spam report (not regarding Droliver who is a valued editor). I looked at Breast implant and saw that Droliver had edited the page, and uploaded images. Even after I inspected the upload information of the image I had no idea he is a plastic surgeon. You have to visit his user page to learn that, and the user page does not look like a promotion, and there is no link to his user page in the article or the image. We see a lot of strange user names here, and I had no idea that "Droliver" is "Dr. Oliver" until you mentioned it here (where I replied). The biggest red flag for many editors is when we see a single purpose account with a large percentage of edits clearly connected with a promotion. Droliver is very definitely not an SPA.

Regarding the edits by User:Paravis: Yes, I am astonished that there are still some images with a link to the web site of a plastic surgeon. Certainly if I noticed any similar new activity, I would strenuously oppose it, and if I had time I would like to see what can be done to remove the links. Someone will probably get around to cleaning up in due course.

Regarding your specific question: I suspect that there were two major problems regarding your images. First, there was clearly SPA promotion involved. Second, while we don't like promotion anywhere, it is completely unacceptable for promotion to be visible in an article (including in the names of an image). Third, the text "FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK ON PHOTO" added here makes the promotional intention of the image clear. Johnuniq (talk) 08:37, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed response and explanation. Currently all my images have their links to any website removed as well as the text (FOR MORE INFOR.....). If I were to re-upload my images (comparable to droliver's breast photo) with only my user name and source and eliminate any other name or geographical reference including the file name, would you consider this acceptable and not viewed as "SPA" promottion? By the way what does SPA stand for? Again thank you for your patience and spelling this out for me. Otto Placik (talk) 13:10, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I apologize for that last question. I've read the SPA link. Thanks. Otto Placik (talk) 15:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Some problems cannot be overcome without a great deal of time and effort, so my advice would be to consider whether you really want to spend (say) three months doing four hours work per week by improving articles on Wikipedia without any hint of the work being related to your practice. The problem is that editors have no way of judging the intentions of another editor, and in fact we don't care – what counts is behavior. If a person behaves as an SPA, then the experience of many of us is that the person is extremely unlikely to become a helpful editor, so any border-line activity by that editor will receive a lot of push-back. This, of course, is just my opinion and we are all equals here, so you are free to ignore my advice. I'm just letting you know that I think people would assume the worst if you were to resume any form of editing that mentioned your business, or which seemed to be a repeat (with variation) of the previous activity. After (say) three months you might think about uploading some images using the pattern of Droliver where the image is named for what it is (no promotional component), and where the file information has no promotional content.

Another point that occurred to me (I don't know about other people) is that when I saw the images as they first appeared on Breast implant, one image appeared to simply illustrate what a reasonable procedure might accomplish, while the other image seemed from a fantasy world. I acknowledge that a woman wanting the procedure would need to be shown a wide range of photos so she could decide for herself what personal image she wanted, but the article should (IMHO) treat the matter from an encyclopedic point of view, as a medical article, where an ostentatious display is inappropriate. Johnuniq (talk) 00:58, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I derived valuable insight from your comments. As a plastic surgeon, I view my value as contributing within that area of expertise. I doubt anyone would be interested in my input on oceanoagraphic studies when it is not my field. If Dr. Oliver (droliver) imageas are viewed as valuable and non-promotional then that at least establishes a standard or benchmark that is deemed acceptable by the WP community. Otto Placik (talk) 07:07, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

X-Y relations commenting on !votes moratorium.

I'd like to propose a voluntary moratorium on commenting on others people's !votes in bilateral relations AfDs. At this point, I don't think there's anything to be gained from such comments--obviously no one is convincing anyone--meanwhile, the acrimony rises and uninvolved editors are discouraged from weighing in. See this masterpiece for a prime example. So how about we just don't comment on each others' votes? This moratorium would not cover general comments, i.e. those which aren't indented under and/or in response to a specific !vote (e.g. [9]), but these should be kept to an absolute minimum. I intend invite all of the "usual suspects" to join this moratorium. I've missed someone, please invite them. As I am posting this message to several people's talk pages, please discuss, and ideally note whether you intend to abide by this, here, rather than on this page. Thanks. Yilloslime ^T_C 17:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Your suggestion on this subject was excellent - but I think I have improved on it.

Maybe I am not taking this extremely important issue seriously enough. :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

It's a very attractive result, but yes, it is probably too close to the truth for most people to accept. Johnuniq (talk) 01:42, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Aymatth2, you should definitely use that template on future AfDs! Fences&Windows 19:18, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: Vector dab

• Hi,

Yes, I am aware of the Vector dab; I even thought to add a link to it. I am copying my comment in Talk:Vector (biology):

• In my view, the term vector has many meanings in several unrelated fields. In that dab there is a link to a more detailed dab Vector (mathematics and physics), which is justifiable, given the large size of the latter dab. I would keep the Vector (biology) dab and allow it to grow, and add a {{Main}} template to Vector dab, similar to Vector (mathematics and physics). --Abanima (talk) 12:25, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Replied at Talk:Vector (biology)#Merge disambiguation pages. Johnuniq (talk) 12:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Reply

Hi, I replied on my talk page and on the other main page. Cheers SF007 (talk) 13:27, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia Iranica

Could you explain why links to Encyclopaedia Iranica fail WP:ELNO? I was a bit perplexed by your reverts. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 03:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Items 1 and 4 at WP:ELNO (any site that does not provide a unique resource, and links mainly intended to promote a website). Sometimes it is easy to identify WP:LINKSPAM but in this case there is no objective method to assess the link. One clue is that LinksSearch shows that the website has 1989 links on Wikipedia, and another is the two links inserted in Thomas Walker Arnold (one to the article page and one to the home page of the website). It may be that Encyclopædia Iranica is a valuable resource, but is there to be a link on Wikipedia to every one of its pages? Per WP:SPAMMER#2, it would be preferable (although a lot more work) for editors to contribute some facts learned from the source, then cite the source. However, I do note that this is a tricky case, and perhaps the 1989 links are justified. Johnuniq (talk) 03:58, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Referring to WP:ELNO and claiming that those links (to Iranica) are mainly intended to promote the Iranica website is preposterous. About the 1989 links to Iranica, you can also find more than 200000 links to Britannica [10]. Does it justify removing Britanica links (claiming that those links are intended to promote its website)? Of course, the scope of a specialized Encyclopedia (like Iranica or Encyclopedia of Islam) is narrower than that of a general Encyclopedia (like Britannica), but for those topics which are covered by them, the quality of their articles is better and their coverage is more thorough. Alefbe (talk) 04:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, please clarify what you are talking about Thomas Walker Arnold. Which two links are you talking about? There is only one link to Iranica and it goes to the article about Thomas Walker Arnold. Alefbe (talk) 04:42, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I can't tell if your concern relates to what you think is damage done to the Wikipedia article when I removed the link, or some other point. Please be aware that whatever the merits of the case we are discussing, there are thousands of excellent sites, and most of them would like hundreds of links in Wikipedia articles. Have a look at WT:WikiProject Spam to gauge some of the impact (there are lots of dubious link additions, to music articles for example, that are not reported). So, if your concern is focused on Wikipedia you may understand that it is reasonable to not see much difference between the link additions for Iranica when compared with other sites promoted on Wikipedia.

Re the two links: In Thomas Walker Arnold#External links, there are two links to the web site in the line "Sir Thomas Walker entry in Encyclopaedia Iranica".

I don't know if you have had this discussion with other editors (if you have, you may be somewhat frustrated at encountering another person such as myself). The best way to avoid problems would be to have significant discussion somewhere and form a rough guideline outlining how the links in question should be handled. Then, when you want to add such a link, include a link to the discussion in your edit summary. Johnuniq (talk) 05:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: Jimmy Wales

I respect your revert but im curious why I cannot change quotes. It is common edit etiquette to edit quotes with inproper grammar with brackets inserting text that was not said so the reader better understands the statement. Is this just for Jimmys page? I see it like this on wikipedia everywhere and in newspapers. What rule did I break? Ivtv (talk) 21:47, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Your edit was to change "the truth will out" (part of a quotation) to "the truth will [come] out". There is a slight issue with regard to inserting "[come]" because there is a suggestion that the speaker was blatantly incorrect and requires correction. Newspapers often need to quote statements made in the heat of the moment, and corrections may be required. Here, however, we would generally not need to quote something so incorrect that it cannot be reasonably understood. However, the main point is that "the truth will out" is a well known phrase with a history (use Google to search for the phrase, including the quotes). So, inserting an explanation is not needed, and it breaks the cultural reference. Johnuniq (talk) 01:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok sorry. I thought that Jimmy was being incorrect with grammar. Thank you for the clarification and prompt response Ivtv (talk) 01:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

gettysburg linkspam

hey - I reviewed change and while I absolutely know where you're coming from, it looked like this link provided a depth of info on artifacts that the main nps site (focused on visitors details) did not provide and AFAICT, not easily reachable from the main nps site. So I reverted in good faith. If you still disagree, lets take it to the talk page. On a related note, I saw your Hudson River School article and interestingly, thought that a different branch from that link was actually one of the best links in that list. I ripped a whole bunch of them out. Anyway, thanks for helping clean out some of the weeds. dm (talk) 14:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks dm – I'm always a little nervous when cleaning out spam because some editors do not understand how articles would look if that were not done, so I am very happy to hear from you, and welcome what you did. Johnuniq (talk) 01:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

?

What is your sense ? 76.16.183.158 (talk) 09:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi 76! Always good to hear from you, but if you have something to say, the talk page of the article would be better. Johnuniq (talk) 09:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You didn't get the question. The question is: what reason you have to revert to nonsense ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.183.158 (talk) 10:27, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

My mind reading skills are getting a bit rusty, so I will await your elucidation on the article talk page. Johnuniq (talk) 10:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Clarity please

Hi, there is disagreement about your comment;

“ Regardless of the nature of this page, the effect is that editors who wanted to impede promotional paid editing have been exhausted by the fact that there is no policy to prevent it, other than Jimbo's words (with the normal objection that Jimbo is not different from anyone else). Given the lack of policy, and the hypothetical philanthropist who might pay editors to write excellent articles, it has been easy to deflect any argument from those who want a barrier erected against paid promotion. ”

at WT:Paid editing. I'm loathe to put words in your mouth and I'm equally uneasy about others doing so for you. Would you be willing to revisit and expand a bit so misinterpreting your view is less likely? -- Banjeboi 18:54, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Replied at WT:Paid editing#Nature of this page. Johnuniq (talk) 02:39, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! It's been a bumpy road but because of the stonewalling I've actually researched the RfC and Wales' talkpage, the Arbcom actions, et al. So it's been a trial but my understanding of the issues are better so I'll try to improve the page. -- Banjeboi 05:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Jonas Kroon

An article that you have been involved in editing, Jonas Kroon, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jonas Kroon. Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. -- Atama頭 07:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mathematics articles (J-L)

Hello, Johnuniq. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mathematics articles (J-L).
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--Cybercobra (talk) 07:52, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Evolution as theory and fact

Thanks for your encouraging remarks about my changes to Evolution as theory and fact. - dcljr (talk) 22:17, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Howdy, thanks for the advice on the RfC. I was in the process of moving this past weekend, which took more of my time than expected. I now have internet back up and running at home. I am not sure withdrawing the RfC will help much of anything, although I can appreciate the sentiment you express. Hopefully additional eyeballs on the issue will help all concerned. Thanks, --TeaDrinker (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite?

You say that you are unsure of what I meant by "However, the infinite monkey theorem applies to the hundreds of millions of years involved in evolutionary changes." Allow me to explain.
The infinite monkey theorem states that a very unlikely event can occur if enough chances for it to happen are allowed. Millions of years allows events that are less likely, to happen. The previous sentences in the paragraph are statements of the alleged unlikeliness of evolutionary changes. Therefore, the infinite monkey theorem bears upon those statements.
If this is still unclear, please say. I hope to reword the sentence so it is clear.
I will admit I did enjoy the irony of it being a theory involving monkeys, applied to the controversy about evolution :) But I would not have added it if it was not also directly relevant. Anarchangel (talk) 09:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The infinite monkey theorem does not apply to evolution because the monkeys type randomly and only stop if the entire Hamlet is produced correctly (which will never happen). In the context of evolution of the eye, for example, it would be more appropriate to refer to the weasel program because natural selection is an essential part of the process. One might invoke the monkeys for abiogenesis, but I suspect that it would be a poor analogy because the infinite monkey theorem is bogus: it is absolutely impossible for any number of monkeys in any amount of time to write Hamlet (see the calculations in the article). As I recall, Hoyle was talking about the chance of a protein molecule being assembled from elements, but biologists do not claim that anything as complex as a protein molecule was assembled by chance in one step (it was lots of smaller steps, filtered by natural selection).

Let's leave it for 24 hours and see if anyone else joins in at Objections to evolution, or perhaps you would like to revert me, or raise it on the article talk. Either way would be likely to get more opinions. Johnuniq (talk) 10:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It only has to be four letters: A, C, G, and T. I take your point that a weasel is better than a monkey, now that I have read that article. As for proteins, unless someone refuted this while I was not watching, which is quite possible, you can get them from an asteroid of just about any size landing on some amino acid goo, lightning strikes, probably other things. It is the DNA to tell the proteins what to do that is hard, or more likely, too hard for someone to have figured it out yet.

Maybe I will find a citation for what I was looking for sometime. I was not really making a big point, just that within a larger sample of time, less likely things are more likely, than in a small one. Anarchangel (talk) 06:14, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

It is definitely time to visit the talk page of the article, but I can't resist one more comment here: the first reference in Hoyle's fallacy is somewhat tedious, but as far as I can tell (I am not an expert), it is a good account of the situation. I am fairly sure it is saying that abiogenesis, while requiring long periods of time for sufficient trials to occur, does not require anything like the infinite monkeys in terms of improbability (and as mentioned in infinite monkey theorem#Probabilities, the monkeys are usually misunderstood). Johnuniq (talk) 08:36, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Polite humouring

Unfortunately if I were to stop editing talk pages, I wouldn't be able to communicate with others as I am with you now. Even if you mean article talk pages, I think communicating on those is very valuable and helps to prevent or better solve disputes that may occur within the edit summaries of an article. Now, if you're asking me to stop editing others' comments on talk pages: I'm not doing that, I'm refactoring them, as WP:RTP says refactoring is NOT editing, it's minor. Now that aside: I am actually willing to stop doing this for a period of time while people have a discussion. After all, arguing like this gets depressing and I like taking time off while people collect their thoughts. The problem here is that no discussion seems to be happening: telling someone to simply stop editing isn't constructive. I have simply asked what is violating policy. The rule pointed out was misinterpreted and I pointed out the policy page which contradicts this. What period of time do you think I should volunteer for here? A week or something would be reasonable, I think, for people to apply to make the necessary changes/clarifies on the WP pages so they can properly explain how I'm being disruptive. The previous block was about redirects, not refactoring, so threatening to reinstate a previous block which was over a separate issue is something I don't understand. Tyciol (talk) 17:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that you know that people are objecting to the editing of comments made by other users like this, and you don't seriously think that anyone has asked you to stop making your own comments.

Wikipedians do not want a rule to cover every situation. We rely on collaboration and common sense, so whether there is a policy against the editing of talk pages is not relevant (and indeed I have edited an article talk page once or twice, for example, by moving a new comment inadvertently inserted into the top of a long page, to the bottom, while answering it).

You do not accept that editing comments made by other people on article talk pages is a bad idea, and you think it is helpful because they look better after refactoring. And you are not convinced by my comment about the time that many different people will spend wondering why changes are being made to talk pages on their watch lists, or why if anyone ever did need to study an old talk page, they would need to look at it as written, rather than as refactored by another party. Given all this, I do not think you will find much benefit from talking to me because all I can do is repeat the points I have made. Johnuniq (talk) 00:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)