User talk:Perceval/Archive1

Welcome to the Wikipedia

Welcome, newcomer!

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!
• Remember to use a neutral point of view!
• If you need any help, feel free to post a question at the Help Desk
• 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:Policy Library
• Wikipedia:Utilities
• Wikipedia:Cite your sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:Wikiquette
• Wikipedia:Civility
• Wikipedia:Conflict resolution
• Wikipedia:Brilliant prose
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Wikipedia:Peer review
• Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
• Wikipedia:Village pump
• Wikipedia:Boilerplate text

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!

ClockworkTroll 21:12, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ukrainian presidential election, 2004

Please take a look at the actual events that are reported here: http://www.razom.org.ua/ --Steschke 16:43, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

CSD

Please keep in mind that Speedy Deletion is not for articles you think might not belong on wikipedia. There are a few strictly defined criteria for speedy deletion at WP:CSD, the rest goes to WP:VFD and gets voted on. --fvw* 18:58, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

My bad, i'll reexamine the rules more closely. Thanks. —thames 20:13, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week

League of Nations is the new Collaboration of the Week. Please join in helping make it a feature article.

dc

Glad to know ya! Katefan0 18:30, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Georgetown and such

Hey Tom! I haven't logged into my Wikipedia account too often of late (a temporary hiatus, at worst), so I just now saw your message. Heya! Of course I remember you. I had no idea you were such a prolific Wikipedian. Awesomeness. -NattyBumppo 08:00, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Landauer

Do you have proof that Landauer is Nichols' grandfather? —ExplorerCDT 03:05, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The New Republic Online currently features an article entitled "The Ends" by Leon Wieseltier which contains the assertion at the end of the second paragraph. See [1].

Thanks for the TNR link and the l/p. I have two emails out to professors who would know, so if they independently confirm, I'll put it back in under trivia. However, I wouldn't call the Freikorps a "fascist mob"...inherently POV...sure they became the bulk of the Nazi SA and were largely right-wing, but they were putting down a "rebellion" against the Weimar Republic. —ExplorerCDT 05:15, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Those positions are fine by me. —thames 14:52, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hunter S. Thompson

Please see Hunter S. Thompson metaphysical image discussion

--Stbalbach 04:41, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Chickenhawk

Thanks for the feedback. I think I actually got to this page through your user page, must have bounced across another of your contribs somewhere else. Kaisershatner 18:41, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Guess

Wrong! best wishes --SqueakBox 16:07, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week

The article you voted for, Origin of the name California, is now the Translation of the Week. Please help work on it. — J3ff 22:51, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Olin College

You're absolutely right that the article is too "rah-rah" to be NPOV. That's one of the reasons I submitted it for peer review. I figured getting some new editors involved would help. I'd be the first one to admit I'm a bit biased on the subject.

Can you try to make some NPOV edits on the article? I'm going to do the same as soon as I have enough time to really sit down and think about it. --L33tminion | (talk) 20:25, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

wikiquote..

thank you for putting the chickenhawk quotes into wikiquotes. i was a bit unsure about how to do it, but now i see how easy the syntax is. Kingturtle 20:46, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda

Could you please vote on the proposed move Links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda → Alleged links between pre-invasion Iraq and Al-Qaeda? The vote is here . Thanks. ObsidianOrder 17:16, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

COTW Project

You voted for Decolonization, this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article. Tony Jin | (talk) 05:08, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

The Decline of the West/German

Hello, did you want this translated? Should it go in The Decline of the West? The German you posted on this page is actually just a series of notes, rather than a proper article, and I haven't read the book so it would be a bit hard to translate, could you improve the translation once done? Here's the start, for example:

Synopsis

The following information consists of quotations from the book

III. Contemporaneous political epoques

Prehistory: primitive types of races. Tribes and chiefs. No "politics" yet. No "state".

I don't really see how the translation would fit into the existing English article, especially as it is just the third section; if you'd like someone a bit less clueless than me to look at it try posting it on Wikipedia:Translation into English and you may be lucky :-) Saintswithin 14:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi Saintswithin,

You've caught the page at a bit of an in-between point. After reading Decline I undertook to improve the awful page we had in the English version [2]. One of the resources I looked into was the German version of the page on Decline: de:Der Untergang des Abendlandes. On that page, they have the synopsis of the book's phases of rise and decline. I thought it would be useful to have that on the english page as well, but it turned out to be too long and involved to put on the main page.

So I created Spengler's civilization model and started (poorly) translating the German page's synopsis there. I made The Decline of the West/German so that I could machine-translate the synopsis (machine translators only translate a couple hundred words of an article, and thus wouldn't translate the whole German page).

If you could help fix my translation of the German synopsis into the Spengler's civilization model page, it would be an immense help. I've kinda gotten stuck, and it's been holding me up from completing the other parts of the article.

I think this article definitely has potential, and once it's done I might consider sending over to peer review. Certain sections need to be completed, and the intro needs to be totally redone, but it's got a solid foundation at this point.

So, in short, your help translating would be greatly appreciated. I will also post it over on Translation into English—thanks for the link. —thames 14:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

D.C. meetup

Hey there. Saw your name on the list of D.C. Wikipedians, so I thought I'd let you know about the D.C. meetup this weekend. Come out if you're interested in meeting other Wikipedians (local and otherwise). If you want to just meet us for dinner, we'll be at Brickskeller around 6pm on Saturday. Isomorphic 19:41, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for coming out. We'll have to get people together in D.C. again some time. Isomorphic 06:23, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Stay in touch

That's always been one of my favorite photos of Nikola.... see ya around. TTLightningRod 05:14, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Billy and the Boingers

Thanks for adding the Billy and the Boingers link to the Notable Artists list on Virtual band. Really appreciated. --Jb-adder 07:43, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

David Helvarg

Hi: I found your comments at FAC really helpful. Please could you explain the basis for your abstention or give me some more actionable pointers now that I have made further changes? Thanks. --Theo (Talk) 10:55, 19 May 2005 (UTC) I am sorry that you have not replied to this. I hope that it is an oversight. --Theo (Talk) 10:05, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for supporting the FAC. --Theo (Talk) 22:33, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You earned it. —thames 02:28, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

COTW Project

You voted for Roaring Twenties, this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article. Falphin 03:25, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

History of Central Asia

I have listed History of Central Asia on Peer review in the hope of eventually bringing it up to Featured article status in the near future. I have long felt it was quite good, and have recently done some edits and improvements so that in conforms to the featured article guidelines. I know that you did a lot of good work on it and am interested in your opinions. Do you have any views on the article and on what would be needed to get it to featured status? - SimonP 01:45, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

Neoconservatism

As many neoconservatives were former leftists, there is an assumption that they supported various aspects of the welfare state. But from my reading (and this comes from Irving Kristol's work of the same name and other sources) by the time they actually make the shift and adopt the new ideology, they turn away from the welfare state, aggressively. I would be open to counter-examples. Look at the response to The Great Society, and to college Affirmative Action in particular. Lester Spence 14:40, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Two COTWs

Hiya Thames, I've gone ahead and created a page for having 2 COTWs, it's at Wikipedia:Collaborations of the week - your improvements to the page are much desired! Cheers, Talrias (t | e | c) 22:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template:Methodism

The cross you suggested is the official symbol of the United Methodist Church, but is not representative of other Wesleyan groups, such as the AME Church or the British Methodists or the Holiness groups. John Wesley's image seemed a little more universal to me. KHM03 14:25, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Starfleet ranks and insignia

The article has been improved drasticaly, I think this is a good enough reason to reopen the FA status of this article. To be fair I am notifying all parties involved with the article on old candidacy. If I forgot one of you, its not intentional. Thats all for now --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 1 July 2005 00:15 (UTC)

Nirvana image

Hi! I wanted to let you know that the image at the top of your user talk page, Image:Nirvana-bio tile.jpg, is up for deletion at WP:PUI. kmccoy (talk) 7 July 2005 23:38 (UTC)

contentious material

Good day Thames:

We met in DC during the meet-up several months ago. I hope your doing well. So sorry to bother you with this, but might you take a few minutes to review aetherometry, and its highly contentious talk page. Any comment you may have would be welcomed by me. I would like to see the page un-locked, so that maturity is at least possible. As it stands, nothing can be done there as two sides have formed, and one side appears to dominate the article space with the consent of admin. What the admin may be failing to notice, is that the contributors willingly acknowledge that the topic is non-mainstream, and as such, the detractors take this as evidence of the subjects unworthiness for examination and article space. ISBN material is available and inclusion was offered, yet deleted from the main-space. Peer-review by alternative energy proponents has also been offered, and deleted from the main-space. Terminology and experimental results have likewise been offered and subsequently deleted from main-space. Classification from "non-mainstream" has been changed to "pseudoscience" and quickly "protected to combat vandalism". Your thoughts? TTLightningRod 18:11, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Good to hear from you TTLR. Unfortunately, science topics are not my area of expertise. I read through the talk page and teh VFD archive but couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on. I just don't have the time right now to get involved in that dispute. I do, however, wish you the best of luck trying to achieve consensus with overactive 15-year-olds like Natalinsmpf, etc. Best of luck, you'll need it... —thames 19:39, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Not to worry about your limited availability, I thank you for taking the time you did, especially as you singled out one of the niftier players.

Simply put, the primary object of the dispute, comes to a fundamental scientific position on the role of thermonuclear/gravity dominance in our physical universe. What is at play in the cores of stars, including our own Sun. What holds matter together, what pushes it apart. so on and so forth. A fringe group of otherwise unrelated scientists working with non-mainstream subject titles like Plasma Cosmology, Electric Universe Models, Aetherometry.... have been suggesting that simple electricity plays a more important role than the one allowed by standard cosmology, the standard model, and "institutionalized" "pop science" largely funded with tax dollars. The ensuing mix of high-end mathematics, heretical investigations in science, Big Money, Big Corp, Big Oil, and Big Politics........ makes for Big Drama.

My own time has been sucked into that difficult subject, and I was simply looking for others who might have a more neutral point of observation. Thanks for the good luck wish, I do need it. Take care... e

Space geostrategy

You created this stub a little while back, and haven't updated it since. Are you planning to do so? jglc | t | c 12:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I've got a good book on geostrategy with space info in a couple chapters. I've just been busy with work this past week (stayed till 8pm twice... ugh). If you want to pitch in that'd be cool too. See you around. —thames 13:28, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Copyright

Your article Edwin A. Finn Jr. has been tagged as a copyright violation as it appears to have been copied directly from Finn's official corporate biography. I hope there are not more of these lurking in your contributions. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:44, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

offense

As someone who believes in Jesus, I can assure you I meant no offense with the comment or deleting my talk page. I agree that I shouldn't have said that. The comment on the template page was out of a lot of experience with people coming in and needlessly amplifying any information that might be damaging to Islam, and when it's deleted they call for justice and objectivity. In this case I was trying to show that he was editing with extreme bias, and it is relevant. The stab at his intentions was not necessary.

I deleted my talk page because you put the same thing on the template talk page. And it's my talk page. Cuñado - Talk 17:27, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I understood why you were concerned about Klonimus's edits. I'm glad you agree in hindsight that the jab at the end was unnecessary. As far as your talk page, my understanding is that talk pages are records, and that changes should not be deleted unless they are vandalism. There are things I might like to delete from my talk page, but they ought to remain as a record for other people who want to look into my contributions to wikipedia, and relations with other wikipedians. I think cross-posting the comment was legitimate.

I do look forward to moving beyond this rather minor issue--we've done a lot of very constructive work together on this template, and I think it's in far better shape now that it's ever been before. Cheers.—thames 18:13, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Chickenhawk II

Thames, could you please explain why you've twice deleted the link I posted on the Chickenhawk (politics) page to Roy Zimmerman's Chickenhawk MP3? Frankly I don't understand why you think the song doesn't belong there. It's a political commentary on the perception that a number of prominent figures in the Bush administration -- there's a roll call toward the end -- are militarists when they themselves either did not serve (Cheney et al.) or pulled strings to stay out of dangerous conflicts like Vietnam (Bush), and on the perception that there are many in the United States who believe, as the song puts it, "We all make sacrifices, and in a war that's what the poor people are for." I think it has as much relevance to the topic as any of the articles that have been posted, and it is obviously not an illegal download since it appears on Zimmerman's own website. Your note says "non-notable" but I'm afraid I have no idea what that means.

If there is a Wikipedia policy against posing MP3s, or there's some other reason why you've deleted it, I would like to know what it is; otherwise I would like to respectfully ask that the link stay in the article.

Scriptwriter 16:58, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Roy Zimmerman is not a notable musician. Furthermore, his song about chickenhawks is not a notable song in any way. By comparison, the Rolling Stones are a notable band, and their song "Sweet Neocon" is a notable song--there have been news items and newspaper articles about the song. There has been no such coverage of Zimmerman's piece that I'm aware of, it's not on the radio, it's not on allmusic.com, you seem to be the only person who knows about it. I appreciate that the song is about chickenhawk politicians, but I don't think we should include the mp3 in the article, because it's not something that's terribly important to the topic, and won't really add anything to the reader's understanding of the topic. There are many political songs, but we don't include links to them in their respective articles unless they are *very* notable. Otherwise, any clown with an mp3 could legitimately claim a place to put their favorite song on each respective article. —thames 06:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Isaac Newton

Thanks for your contributions to the Isaac Newton article. I feel they do add something, and I'm glad you took the trouble to put the stuff in. Unless there are any further comments, I'm putting it up for FAC soon. Look out for it. Borisblue 04:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Boris, best of luck with the FAC. I'm pulling for it. Good working with you. —thames 04:08, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

It's on FAC here: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Isaac Newton/archive1--Borisblue 17:23, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

BTW, the article was getting a bit long, so I moved the parts about his religous views to Isaac Newton's religous views and just left a summary in the main Isaac Newton article. I wasn't sure how to summarize the parts you added, so would you mind helping? Thanks. Borisblue 21:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I was just wikifying that section actually. I don't think the article is too long. I think it should remain in the main article, not on a subpage. Frankly I don't think there's enough material to justify a subpage. —thames 21:37, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... all right; but Wikipedia:Summary style says <30kb is ideal, and that was why i summarized it. I guess it's OK to leave it in. I was thinking that it needed tidying- there were two sections dealing with his religous views and i just merged them.

People have been ignoring that rule with prejudice. It's now more like a loose guideline than a rule per se. I definitely agree with the merging of the religious views--that was a good call. —thames 23:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Adminship?

Hmm, with a long history of work on contentious articles without conflict, frequent reverts of vandalism, and level-headed temperement, I'm a bit surprised you haven't been made an admin yet. Would you accept if I nominated you? It'd be great to have more administrators who know how to handle disputes with grace (like that weird argument on the Newton peer review lol). Plus it would make all the vandal-fighting you do on your pol sci articles a lot easier. Borisblue 01:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of support. It was my understanding though that admins were supposed to take on extra duties, like promising to scour the Recent Changes or stuff like that. I love contributing, but I don't really have enough time to take on extra responsibilities, so I've shied away from looking for adminship. If you still feel like nominating me, I'll have to be upfront about that limitation. In any case, I'm flattered. All the best. —thames 03:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

It's done: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Thames. New RFA policy says you have to put it in the RFA page yourself, once you've answered the questions. All the best! Borisblue 15:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

A few reminders: try not to campaign, and don't vote for yourself. More than a few RFAs have been hamstrung because the voters didn't like that behavior. Borisblue 15:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Liebnitzian hylozoism

User:Geogre made a comment about the philosophy in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Isaac Newton/archive1, and I'm afraid that isn't my area of expertise, and I'm not sure how to respond. Would you mind helping out? Thanks. Borisblue 21:05, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

International relations theory

That looks like a copypaste move from International relations. Could you check that and, if it is, fix it? Thanks. -Splash^talk 02:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

That's exactly what it was. I'm going to rewrite the section in the IR section to be more of a summary, with a link to IR theory as the "main article". It'll take a few minutes. —thames 02:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but you need to mvoe the history with it to preserve the GFDL. -Splash^talk 02:34, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Shall I copy/paste the relevant history, the whole history, or is there a better way? —thames 02:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a better way. I will delete the copypaste move and move the old article there with its history. That will leave a redirect at International relations which you can edit freely. Sound ok? -Splash^talk 02:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

No, I may be wrong. Hold on. -Splash^talk 02:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds lovely. Fire away. —thames 02:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

No, I was wrong. I got confused and thought the International relations theory was a new article, which it isn't. Too many Firefox tabs open at once. So your move is really a merge and for those it's enough to indicate the source in the edit summary, and we take it that people can work out the authorship for the GFDL. Sorry to have troubled you. -Splash^talk 02:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's basically just merging a section into a new article space. You were right to be concerned though. Thanks for your vigilant patrolling. See you around. —thames 02:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)