User talk:Keesiewonder/Misc 1

Welcome to the Wikipedia

Welcome, Keesiewonder!

Here are some useful tips to ease you into the Wikipedia experience:

• First, take a look at the Wikipedia Tutorial, and perhaps dabble a bit in the test area.
• When you have some free time, take a look at the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines. They can come in very handy!
• Learn about some of the Wikipedia landmarks by trying our Wikipedia scavenger hunt!
• If you need any help, feel free to post a question at the Help Desk
• Wikipedia has a vibrant community of editors. The village pump is a great place to see the goings on.
• Remember to use a neutral point of view!
• Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Also, here are some odds and ends that I find useful from time to time:

• Wikipedia:Five pillars
• Wikipedia:Brilliant prose
• Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages
• Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can most easily reach me by posting on my talk page.

You can sign your name on any page by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Best of luck, and have fun! – ClockworkSoul 22:50, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hi, Keesiewonder! Everything that you've ever wanted to know about vandalism can be found at Wikipedia:Vandalism. It says it all there with far more detail and clarity than I'm capable at 7am, having woken up with only 4 hours of sleep. ;) – ClockworkSoul 12:13, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Charles Darwin Good articles box

I don't know if it would be possible to change that box directly. I think the people at Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles created the template, which gets transcluded into the various talk pages. The only way to change the Darwin template would be to change the base template getting transcluded, and someone would probably revert such a change pretty fast. The best thing I can think of to do would be to contact the project above and ask them to create a more specific biologist template, based on the ever increasing number of good articles. But I think they created the existing template because they didn't want to get what they saw as overspecific. If you can convince them that there is cause to get more specific, that would probably be the easiest way to get the change you suggested. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Badbilltucker 17:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: Church Street, Burlington (VT)

Hi, Keesiewonder. You have to be an admin to see deleted articles, but that article really was a candidate for speedy deletion. Its text read as follows: Church street has a homeless guy that walks around dropping the f-bomb and tells people to suck . Church Street has the famous resturaunt of Rusty Scuffers. Mike Lonergan, the head coach of the mens basketball team goes there with his family that includes Luke Higgins. Not much good stuff there. :) – ClockworkSoul 05:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

85.92.183.119 spam reply

As it turns out, that vandal was temporarily blocked earlier today (yay). I don't normally deal with spam vandals, but I'm pretty sure the reason that it took so long was simply because not enough people bothered to put the warning templates on that page, and because it may have taken some time to get the attention of an administrator (they're the only one that can block users). Hope this answers your question, feel free to ask me if you have any more questions! --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 12:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• Oh, I nearly forgot. If you'd like more info on IP blocking, check out WP:IP. --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 12:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The policy of letting anons edit wiki is very well established, it's been there since the very beginning of wiki, and it's very probably never going to change. Therefore, it's tricky to get information on the possible debates about it. Try looking at Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is not so great#Controlling problem users vs. allowing wide participation, Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset#Safe behaviors number eleven on the list. Hope this helps. --13:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

AfD

Thanks for letting me know about that AfD. If you want to vote keep and don't know what to say, you can always write "keep per above". HTH, Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:26, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

AfD again

very useful suggestion you made, and will be a good precedent for the future. DGG 05:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

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STUBS

Dogs

Aidi (nice Moroccan herding dog)

Akbash Dog (Turkish guard dog)

Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog

Bichon Frisé

German Pinscher (ancester to Schnauzers???)

Šarplaninac (nice Balkan dog)

Volpino Italiano (would be fun since its in the Spitz family!)

Dog things

Gait (dog) (says almost nothing)

Natural bobtail (might be interesting; does Bridget have this?)

Molecular Biology

Abzyme (monoclonal antibody with catalytic activity)

C3 (complement)

C3-convertase

Greg Winter (British scientist; therapeutic monoclonal antibodies)

Ireland

North Tipperary & South Tipperary

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Cleanup Immunoelectrophoresis (would be good experience!)

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Add Sources

Affectional orientation

Italic type

Nuclear technology

---

Wikify

Gland

Model village

Transgenic animal

---

Expand

G protein

Lupus erythematosus

Poaching

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- ForteTuba 22:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

all caps

Thanks for pointing that out with the all caps comment. It really looked like that guy was signing that comment. I need be more vigilant at looking at actually history of comments. Thanks again. Dkriegls 03:12, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Brookfield

I have done what librarians like me usually do: I emailed him from my university account. DGG 02:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I received today,

Dear David, Thank you for your message. I was born in 1955. Best wishes, John Brookfield

I already put it into the article. I hope we don't get flack that it was just email.DGG 01:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I always keep email, forever. Essentially, all my work is done there (open access advocacy). I think not yet on the page.DGG 17:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to VandalProof!

Thank you for your interest in VandalProof, Keesiewonder! You have now been added to the list of authorized users, so if you haven't already, simply download and install VandalProof from our main page. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other moderator, or you can post a message on the discussion page. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 17:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Can I assist?

If you'd like me to comment at the AfD, could you give me a link, and I'll take a look. By the way, what does your username mean, if I may ask? qp10qp 19:48, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, don't worry about mentioning your animals (the photos are cute), I'm an animal nut too, particularly cats (I think if there was a kittens channel on television, I could watch it all day, no problem). Our cat Cable is only now recovering from the fireworks displays last midnight, which traumatised the poor fellow.

I did hop across to that AfD, and what a no brainer. Wow, your research skills and pertinacity are impressive! Now I know who to come to for a certain type of expertise in future. qp10qp 21:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Head against brick wall

Well, I have a reason for interest in that AfD too, now, because I'm an opponent of the wording "verifiability, not truth", which I fear isn't easily understood by Wikipedia novices, and I'm a supporter of the proposed policy Wikipedia:Attribution, which would combine Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No Original Research, and Wikipedia:Reliable Sources in one, making it much easier to explain policy to people by a reference to one short, clear page. This AfD is a case in point where it would be useful, in my opinion.

I've just read your experiences and opinions above. I have the same mixed feelings about Wikipedia: on the one hand, much of it is utter rubbish; on the other, it has breathtaking potential. The better articles (my favourite article on Wikipedia is Rudolf Vrba, which I hold up as a beacon of what Wikipedia can achieve. I'm certain it is the best article on him in existence.) When I joined Wikipedia, I first just pottered about for months, adding bits here and there to articles: but then I started to feel that it was all just drops in the ocean, and that I had nothing to show for it; so now I concentrate on a small few articles, either copyediting ones by non-English-speaking editors which I think could make featured article, or trying to build something good myself, as with Anton Chekhov (I've got a job seeing the computer for all the tomes about him stacked up in front of me here). If I had any hope for you, it would be that you aim your best work at potentially high-quality articles, where it won't go to waste. In fact, most top-quality editors find ISBN work tedious, I suspect, and would be delighted with your assistance. What I like about you is that you do your thing in a hand-crafted way; good editors particlualrly hate it when they are jumped on by impersonal bots and tagging sprees (one of our best editors has recently been frustrated into leaving over that sort of thing), but I'm sure they would warm to your human touch. qp10qp 17:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Note to self re OPAC in India -> [1]

I realize that your posting asks no question, but I tried to follow up anyway. I opened the link you provided, but in a few random trials, looking for (1) a web site that would respond, (2) an OPAC search screen, (3) all books by anyone named 'Markar', I didn't have any luck. I've gone from thinking that there are no OPACs there, to believing that the search might be worthwhile, though lengthy. EdJohnston 20:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi EdJ! I'm losing the train of thought a bit here ... sorry ... Who is Markar? I would have expected you to mention one of the names in Thakur Sher Singh Parmar. If you've been following all my posts everywhere relating to this topic, my personal/work colleague checked out the Hindi Wikipedia, and didn't find anything on this chap ... How much longer till the AfD closes? Keesiewonder 21:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the 'brain fault'. I ought to have searched for 'Parmar', per the AfD, which has already closed, with a comment by the deleting administrator about the 'hilarious content' which is not entirely unjustified, but perhaps unkind. I'm impressed that you have ways of searching the Hindi Wikipedia. After this was all done, I asked myself whether WP might already have featured articles about Indian topics that we could ask people to go and look it when they wish to write about that area, who want to know what to aspire to which still meets WP standards. I confess that I did look at your contribution history, and in that way came across the AfD, and since I used to participate more in AfD debates, I am irresistibly drawn in to anything interesting. EdJohnston 23:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting history (it's not illegal to store this, is it?)

EdJ, No need to confess, or at least you shouldn't feel bad, about perusing my or anyone else's contributions list. ! Early on in this particular AfD, I was curious about the Hindi WP. Today, when I took a break from work to check the discussion, and realized I had 1-2 people in my workplace who might know about Parmar, or at the very least could read Hindi, I just had to ask. You're a mathy person, right? If I remember correctly from your user page? My undergraduate degree is in math and economics. I don't remember the details (I bet you do!) but in a combinatorics class, I remember the professor displaying an example of ... it takes only some very small number of connections to connect any two people in the world ... I don't remember the proof or the the number of connections, but it was something like 5. So, if true, then there would only be, say, 5 connections between me and Parmar. With networking, we ought to be able to accomplish that pretty easily. Thanks for your correspondence. Keesiewonder 00:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I had forgotten all about

the Hitler Book Incident. it was one of the the early times when I realized that I was going to make my own way through wikipedia and stay off other folks turf. My addition to the hitler book list was deleted because I used a different format than someone there thought I should have used. When I find something like that I change it rather than deleting it, but I figured that I'd just back out. Thanks for the ISBN link, I'll check it out. I post a lot of book references because I'm a book person, but I never have included the ISBN. By the way, I have a puli but have never looked it up on wikipedia. Let's see what this link brings. Carptrash 15:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Keesie

• 
  A Eurasian Lynx kitten. Isn't she pretty? Hope you're doing well:).Nina Odell 14:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

How goes it

• 
  This place is going to the dogs(and cats).:)

I'm archiving my page, and wanted to say "hi". How did the re-organization go of that Wikiproject? Did it ever happen? I thought it was a noble thing, but I didn't quite get all the issues. I hope all is well in your wiki-world. Sincerely, NinaOdell | Talk 04:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Impressions

I am totally impressed.--Mantanmoreland 01:36, 15 January 2007 (UTC) LOL

Seriously, I speak as one who failed high school bio. Maximally impressed!--Mantanmoreland 02:10, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, but all I did was help identify that it was an article that needs improvement within the realm of molecular biology articles on WP. Not to say that there isn't something impressive somewhere that I've written or revealed on WP. How about all those different bulldogs, for example?! ;-) Keesiewonder 02:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Bulldogs is my favorite breed and as a matter of fact - whoa! I am weighing in of that AfD. On bio - the fact that you can evaluate articles on molecular biology impresses someone such as myself.--Mantanmoreland 02:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. I love bulldogs, but know nada about the breed.--Mantanmoreland 02:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Happy King Day

Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul. - Coretta Scott King

• 
  From Commons. NinaOdell Talk 13:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Exceptional newcomer

		The Exceptional Newcomer Award
		Wasn't going to have you left out. ;) Samsara (talk • contribs) 08:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey

Thanks for the comment the other day. Yeah, it's a weird dialogue, huh? Then I got blocked for the stupidest thing on the Folke Bernadotte page, so now I'm having to start over!

Speaking of, I looked through your user boxes -- have you ever been to Scandinavia? I used to live in Sweden. Best, Mackan79 01:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Talk archives

Hi KW. Did you know about {{Talkarchive}}? It can be added at the head of each archive page. That gives a banner to warn people about adding new comments! (example at User_talk:EdJohnston/Archive5. I'm intrigued by the idea of archiving by topic, but wouldn't have the patience to keep sorting things.

Talking about ISBNs has been somewhat broken up lately (across different Talk pages) but I don't see an easy way to centralize it. EdJohnston 15:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi EdJ! I didn't know about Talkarchive! So, I'll implement that this evening. (i.e. I'm at work now and shouldn't be in here!) It is a bit tedious to sort talk by topic, but if I keep it to the "topics" I now have, I think I'll be ok. Could we perhaps just discuss our ISBN stuff at Category_talk:Articles_with_invalid_ISBNs? I haven't posted there since I've been working primarily off of the old list that is almost done. Also, I don't find the need to post a message to say what I've done since it is obvious to me by looking at the category what needs doing. All styles work ... :-) ... Keesiewonder 16:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You helped choose Wall Street Crash of 1929 as this week's WP:ACID winner

AzaBot 01:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Admin Noticeboard

Thank you for your calm words! Much appreciated!Pedro1999a |  Talk  11:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I am interested

Vote early, vote often

in getting people to vote about this picture which was just removed from the sacrifice article, so am contacting everyone recent on my talk page. Please consider taking a few minutes, looking it over, and voicing an opinion. Perhaps not a great picture for a dog lover, but, . . . ..thanks. Carptrash 03:34, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

thanks for stopping by

near by rock painting

and leaving an opinion at that animal sacrifice discussion. Carptrash 15:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, what I wanted was your input and not so much your vote. There are some folks around here (greater Dixon, New Mexico ) who are into Santería and travel to Cuba every year to do who-knows-what, so they are who comes to mind, but that is even more speculative than what the picture. It definately is NOT a 75 lb dog hit by a car and dragged uphill, crosscountry to be given a decent funeral. Here is a painting on a nearby rock that was watching the whole scene, but is not talking. I belive wikipeding to be an art, but to most others it is a science. I believe this to be our users loss, but that's okay. Carptrash 16:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

On the larger version of the rock painting you can see a face, shadow is a mouth and the figure has its arms crossed across its chest. Yes, the dog was a large one, 75 lbs is a conservative estimate. My 55 lb chow chow once broke a leg (in 7 places) on top of a mountain and it took 4 guys taking turns to get her down. The 'sacrifice" took place on similar terrain and I can assure you that no one carried a dead dog UP. It walked. But life is filled with interesting stuff and it is not necessary to understand it all. Carptrash 18:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Norbu went on for about 10 years after that and then moved on. When we got her ashes back from the . . .... whatever, it included an envelope with a six inch steel plate, a handfull of screws and a yard or two of wire that had been holding her bones together. The good news was that she stopped killing little rodents - squerills, rabbits and whatever after the fall. Carptrash 18:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

RFA

Yes - an RFA on that basis is likely to result in WP:SNOW. --Fredrick day 11:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Hi Keesie, I didn't get a chance to thank you for your very nice welcome back. I'm not a prolific editor so most people don't even notice when I'm gone ; ) Btw, you're doing lots of great work here. Thanks for all your efforts. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 07:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You helped choose Rwandan Genocide as this week's WP:ACID winner

AzaBot 23:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

nah

Trying for 20,000 before my birthday - not hard, indonesian project category tagging, tasmanian project article tagging, maritime project article tagging, endless talk, piece of cheese - :) SatuSuro 22:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually on interiots counter I take the unique article and mainspace counts as of being more significant - althought because I have tagged thousands of talks pages of articles for project tags - the talk page edit is unusual for an edit count - so - more detail more complicated... cheers SatuSuro 22:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Your note

Can you show me a diff where you think he is editing again? (He is allowed to edit his own Talk page when blocked). Crum375 02:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem. ;^) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Crum375 (talk • contribs) 02:55, 11 March 2007 (UTC).

Disambiguation page

In case you didn't see me posting on the talk of your sandbox - it looks great. You should copy it to the TBT page. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting vandalism at my user page

Hi, thanks for this. I had actually seen the vandalism, but was in more of a hurry to get to WP:AIV than to revert it:). Thanks also for fixing the stray square bracket I left at Trupti Patel. ElinorD (talk) 00:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You're most welcome. It seemed like the editors/admins who noticed it were also busy putting the appropriate warnings on the vandal's page. Interesting article about Ms. Patel ... I tried to find a category for British crime, but, since she's been acquitted, maybe that wouldn't be appropriate. Do I understand that the same behavior skipped a generation and was present in her maternal grandmother as well? Keesiewonder ^talk 00:14, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not very familiar with what categories are available, but I feel there should be one that would have Trupti Patel, Sally Clark, and Angela Cannings, in it, and also Donna Anthony, another mother convicted on the basis that more than one cot death is suspicious, and later cleared. There's no article on her, but I'd create one if I thought she was sufficiently notable. For some reason, she was never in the news as much as Clark and Cannings. Clark and Cannings are both in Category:British wrongfully convicted people, but of course Patel can't be, as she was never convicted. I'm going to ask an experienced admin about whether some kind of Category:Mothers accused of killing their babies would be appropriate.

With regard to the grandmother evidence, I think the point was that there was a possibility of some kind of proneness to cot death in the family. I have no idea how relevant the grandmother case is, but it was part of the defence. If I remember correctly, Angela Cannings's grandmother also had cot death babies, and that evidence was only given at the time of the appeal. Cheers. ElinorD (talk) 00:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Maternal murder

Hi,please excuse the intrusion! I hadnt realised that I still had your user and talk pages on my watch list (as I had it on during your break) - the whole thing of maternal murder ( I dont know the correct one word for that) seems to resonate with something I did in one of my university courses (or it could have been some other course) - it goes back to at least grecian drama - and then in the last couple of decades or so some american (?) cases got very big coverage, it would be very interesting to see what on earth the correct term would be and see what was on wikipedia about it.. as for generational jumps for that behaviour - there's the magnificent 'healing the family tree' by the scottish .. i have forgotten the author - which suggests certain behaviours/predisositions can be carried down through generations... cripes for a monday morning this is a bit spooky. Anyways - it all got me thinking. Cheers SatuSuro 00:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well I must seem like a fruit case if you read what Fred and I get up to and going on a good night. I think I have only one stalker at the moment :( so I tend to go to gmail (yup I got it) for sensitive issues. I will send an email to clarify it. Its on my Imac so I have to go to another office and put it on - about 10 SatuSuro 00:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

OOOps I didnt meant to have you imply anything about the stalking, Very sorry I should have separated the two phenonmeon. Gawks what a mistake - I was trying to write too much as I have to go out in a few moments. Here in Perth, WA (not washington state of course) a number of us here keep tabs on each others talk pages regularly to check for issues and keep up with things - its accepted between us that is what we do and we sometimes benefit by saving tme circularising info by simply looking at what our friends are up to. Quite separately, totally different subject - I have gained a gmail account and, I have benefited from it when I have been trying to avoid any info being mentioned in talk when I think the person is on as he actually accued me of being a wikistalker - and I suspect its a classic case of him being one and accusing me of being one when I was trying to work on his POV material! My apologies the two threads were insuffciently separated - and I must apologise for the poor sentence construction! SatuSuro 01:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly the category is homeless - it needs somthing like a criminal parent category to not be found in a xfd queue... may be able to try later... SatuSuro 10:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

My understanding from tagging a large number of category talk pages in the Indonesian project is that they really shouldnt be orphans - they should come under a larger category. Will try to do this by the rules - it might take a few hours in between real life and a few other things to get it right. If i get it wrong at first, then will try to ge it right :) SatuSuro 11:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You see I think the Category: Wrongful convictions larger category is assuming that a conviction has occurred.SatuSuro 11:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

And the trupti patel case was in the group of categories Categories: Living people | People from Berkshire | Mothers wrongfully accused of killing their babies is including other categories SatuSuro 11:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough I might get back to real life - think about it and maybe 24 hours might closer to reality to reply again :( SatuSuro 11:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

OK 2 things - the maternal murder has me stumped - also very busy in real life not enough time to dabble in murder and its related subjects. The NZ item - well - there are probably thousands of arts like this - marginal. I'd say it depends whether anyone is prepared to even look - user:grutness is your nz user more likely to know whether it fits or not he- is the stub man - worth dropping him a note. SatuSuro 23:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:ENLANG

• Hi! Saw your name on a list to join Wikipedia:WikiProject endagered languages. The actual membership page is here. Check out some of the discussion for example here. Thanks!--Ling.Nut 04:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

dartmouth

Hey I'm a dartmouth alum getting a phd in sociology and I'm trying to learn more about wikipedia for research purposes (I am looking at how open content projects work/succeed, and why people work on them). Not sure how to send you a direct message, I just wanted to know if you'd mind taking the time to talk to me a bit at some point. Thanks a lot. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Buburuza (talk • contribs) 22:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

Hi; thanks for your note. We could talk right here, or there's a link to the left that says "E-mail this user." Depending on my comfort level, I may reply via email or on your or my Wikipedia talk page. Thanks for inquiring. Keesiewonder ^talk 23:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

conflicts of interest

About subjects of biography pages editing those page, this particular case seems out of control. For an extended period of time, a few Wikipedians have been adding commentary about "Archimedes Plutonium" to several Wikipedia articles. Much of this commentary appears to be in violation of the rules at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons which require that highly reliable sources be provided. I have no way of sorting out which edits are actually by the person called "Archimedes Plutonium" and I do not particularly care if people edit Wikipedia articles about themselves as long as they follow the rules and cite reliable sources. It is absolutely unacceptable when people have to scurry around Wikipedia defending themselves against biographical commentary that is not supported by reliable sources. --JWSchmidt 20:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

frustration <-- I feel that Wikipedia has grown so large, so fast that it is not really a single community. There are parts of Wikipedia that are similar to a traditional encyclopedia and there are parts that are explorations of what an encyclopedia can be when liberated from the restrictions imposed by conventional publishing. Biographical information is one area where Wikipedia should be careful with the experiments and careful with both facts and tone. Having said that, but trying to be honest, I have to admit that I feel differently about Wikipedia biographies of some pop culture figures than I do about Wikipedia biographies of Nobel Prize winners. First, I am significantly more interested in Nobel Prize winners than pop culture personalities. I think this sets me apart from the majority of Wikipedians who create and edit articles about pop culture personalities. The standards for reliable sources that I like to apply to articles about Nobel Prize winners are not the same standards used by Wikipedians who create and edit articles about pop culture personalities. In this particular case (Archimedes Plutonium) I was attracted to the article by a complaint that was repeatedly posted to the Jimmy Wales page. I have no confidence that my judgments and standards are relevant to biographical articles about pop culture personalities. In this case, I have stated my views and I am not really interested in making a big deal over the matter. I think Wikipedia is so large that it probably is not healthy to get frustrated when you see things happening that you do not agree with. Maybe the wiki world is large enough that everyone can find a sub-community where they feel comfortable. --JWSchmidt 22:26, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Your AWB edits

Please avoid making insignificant edits using AWB as you have been doing (five examples: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] – there are many more I could have shown you). By asking for approval to use AWB, you agree to abide by the rules stated at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage#Guide which states 'Avoid making insignificant minor edits', and your use of the tool has broken this. Further use in this way may result in you registration being revoked. Edits such as these do not improve the pages in a beneficial way (such as a spelling fix would) and use up capacity and sever space. You are also not marking the edits as minor! Please ask if you have any questions. Thanks, mattbr 23:11, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for the heads up; I will most certainly adjust accordingly. Regards, Keesiewonder ^talk 00:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  

• I reccomend enabling Regextypo fix, and then get it to skip the page if there is no check. That way you are not making edits that aren't positive to wikipedia!! Reedy Boy 13:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Excellent! Will do ! :-) Keesiewonder ^talk 15:01, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

multi pass regex in AWB?

Hi ... I'm relatively new to regular expressions and am trying to find, for example, this

ASIN: B0007J0TPU.

and replace, yielding this

ASIN B0007J0TPU.

I've figured out how to do this in 2 passes:

Pass 1 Find: (\bASIN:)\s

Pass 1 Replace: {{ASIN|

Pass 2 Find: \b{{ASIN|([A-Z0-9]{10,10})\b

Pass 2 Replace: $1}}

Is a 2 pass regex possible in AWB? Or can you show me how to combine this to one pass? Thanks! Keesiewonder ^talk 02:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

---

As a quick thought, it may be easy to do something for you with the module maker... Im not really a Regex whizz, its really just the basic things that i do. Using the module maker, you can do it in VB or c#, and use like Regex.Replace("(\bASIN:)\s", "{{ASIN|")

Or something, i'll have to have a play at home. Got some articles i can use to test it out on.

Are you using the Find and Replace Method or something?

Reedy Boy 11:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've tried to use the normal flavor of Find and Replace, with the first row for the first pass above, the second row for the second pass above. It seems, though, that the rows are meant to be independent, not aggregate. It is not entirely clear to me yet what the multiline and singleline options accomplish. I will also look at the Advanced Find and Replace ... Keesiewonder ^talk 22:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

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I'm not sure ASINs should be used anyway. There was a big discussion about using Amazon as a source on one of the admin noticeboards recently. Anyway, writing a module might be best as Sam says, or ask the devs if they can put this feature into AWB (if it was ISBNs it would be a dead cert "yes" but as I say ASINs are a bit more controversial). --kingboyk 12:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, there's an advanced find/replace feature in AWB somewhere (written by Ligulem if memory serves), which uses regexes and rules. I haven't used it for a long time as I put the regexes I need into my AWB plugin. I'd ask at the AWB talk page as Sam and I are new AWB devs; you'd get a better response from the old hands. --kingboyk 12:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

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• Thank you both! I'll look into your suggestions. I certainly would not be adding any ASINs. Just redisplaying ones that already exist. Plus, before converting to an ASIN that displays, I'd check to see if there was an ISBN or OCLC available. I'm pretty aware of the controversy regarding ASINs, and personally prefer to only use them as a last resort. There are times when neither an ISBN nor an OCLC exists, but an ASIN does ... and then, maybe only for an ASIN on Amazon's UK site, not their US site. There are ~325 articles that have ASINs that are not linking right now. Keesiewonder ^talk 14:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

This search 'site:en.wikipedia.org ASIN' now gets 1910 results, of which not all are Amazon identifiers. Nearly every reference list that turned up for me had some problem or other. Maybe your project could be part of a 'reference list upgrade' program! (for example, adding citation templates, publishers, etc. Such an effort would be hard to automate, though.). EdJohnston 02:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm going off a database dump and the ~360 (yes, my guess when I didn't have AWB was low) include just the most likely variant of unformatted ASIN. Plus, whatever has been introduced since the dump would jack the number up more. If I can get the regular expression search and replace thing to work in AWB, it won't be impossible to clean up by myself. Or, I could teach other interested cleaner-uppers everything I know about AWB, which isn't much. (AWB is not well documented, IMO, at the moment ..., so it is a puzzle to figure out.) I'm still working on the regex thing. It is now doing what I want, except there are too many trailing closing braces. So I'm getting {{ASIN|B0007J0TPU}}}}. when I want {{ASIN|B0007J0TPU}}. This behavior makes me feel that AWB is assuming somewhere that when it sees my "first pass" which yields {{ASIN|B0007J0TPU it says oh, I'll fix that for you ... and then my "second pass" puts in my pair. But, without my "second pass," AWB also misses the opportunity to close the template. Keesiewonder ^talk 08:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Keesiewonder,

I do not know anything about AWB. However, if its regular expressions are like Perl's, you may be able to use the following in one pass:

Find: (\bASIN:)\s([A-Z0-9]{10,10})\b Replace: \b{{ASIN|$2}}\b

--Kevinkor2 18:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yes! That looks like it'll work ... I was getting close but am delighted to hear from you. I'll let you know how it goes! :-) --Keesiewonder ^talk 22:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)