User talk:Sdsds/Archive Apr 2007

ESA Images

Will use of the helpme template summon help? I hope so!

The Multimedia Gallery of the European Space Agency (ESA) Portal has loads of great images. "Most images have been released publicly from ESA." This page [1] describes their policy in detail. Can a template be constructed for this that would legitimize the upload (to wikimedia) and use (in wikipedia) of ESA Portal images?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how to proceed!

Sdsds 06:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly sure what you mean by a template to "legitimize" the upload. From what I see, you can simply upload the images to Wikimedia (giving ESA proper credit), then use in Wikipedia. Larry V (talk | contribs) 08:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't get any success using this approach suggested by Larry V. The image was speedily deleted, even though I referenced the source and the ESA text describing how it can be used. I tried asking about ESA images at Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#ESA_images and got the response:

"The majority of them do not meet our fair-use criteria. --Carnildo 19:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)"

Sigh. Sdsds 22:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Manned Spaceflight and Gender Bias

The term "manned" is already gender-neutral. Confusion over this comes from not knowing the correct definition of the word. "manned" is also a widely used and accepted term in the aerospace industry. While I have no problem refering to the overall space program as "human spaceflight" and other such things, it does not make any sense to edit articles to erase every mention of a "manned mission" or a "manned station." If you look up the meaning of the word, you will find no mention of men or women...just humans. You'll notice that I did not edit every instance of where you changed "manned." I only did it where changing it caused the sentence to be extremely clumsy and more confusing.

However, I must state again that the term "manned" is not gender specfic, and thinking that it is is flat out wrong. Cjosefy 14:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

<<Cjosefy, we agree the term "manned" does not specify the gender of the crew. What your analysis fails to take into account is that the term nonetheless leaves many readers with an incorrectly gender-biased view of the subject. Your claim that my alternative, the use of phrases like "mission with a human crew" or "station with a human crew", is 'extremely clumsy and more confusing' is simply inflammatory, and has no basis in fact. Sdsds 15:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC) >>

• I don't think that we should choose different words because other people might not know what they mean. Understatement is better than overstatement, so choosing to use a term, manned, rather than an entire phrase that says the same thing is preferred. What I find strange is that "manned vehicle" is confusing yet "unmanned vehicle" is not. By your logic do you think many people will assume an "unmanned vehicle" probably has only women on it? I think you greatly overestimate the misinterpretation of "manned," which is perhaps why you feel the need to explicitly point out that a woman is currently on the ISS in the first sentence of the article. There is such a thing as being over-sensitive, and I believe this is one case. The vast majority of english speaking people understand what "manned" means. Cjosefy 17:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

<<Cjoesfy, when we discuss the crew of a vehicle, we mean the persons aboard responsible for operating it. A vehicle can have persons aboard without that responsibility. We call them 'passengers'. A vehicle can have no one aboard. We might call it 'unoccupied.' If we wish to refer to the responsibility for operating an unoccupied vehicle, we might call it 'remotely-controlled' or 'autonomous' (as in a Mars rover) or we might refer to an 'uncontrolled' vehicle. You will notice that none of these terms have any gender bias. As our society's understanding of gender biased language improves, we are learning ways to avoid it. If you doubt that these changes are occuring, just ask a postal worker next time you're at the post office, or the flight attendent next time you're on a commercial aircraft, or the wait staff next time you're in a restaurant. So while 'manned' does not specify the gender of the crew, it is nonetheless gender biased, and modern people are learning to avoid it. For example, check out this NASA image[2] which clearly shows NASA's efforts to avoid the term. This image appears at the top of the NASA page on human spaceflight.>> Sdsds 01:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Good collaboration on European Drawer Rack. I can understand it all now. Thanks! PS. I agree with your view that manned is gender biased. Given it derives from 'man' and not 'manus' then clearly it must be gender biased! Maustrauser 01:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

See usage note 3/4 the way down the page in a grey box at [3] which I believe is from the American heritage dictionary. It clearly says that the origin of "manned" comes from a gender-neutral term and a majority of their usage panel supports its use. This isn't to pass a value judgment, but to point out that the word by definition is a gender-neutral term, no matter what your interpretation may be, and also that significant portions of learned individuals support its use in certain situations. As I've argued all along, the use of "manned" in reference to spaceflight is a legitimate use. I'm not arguing for always use man based terms or anything of the sort, just that its use in certain contexts makes sense and is accepted. Cjosefy 12:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Marriage

Possible text for the marriage article. Comments welcomed.

---

Marriages can create affinal kin

A marriage can create affinal kinship between one of the partners in the marriage and the consanguineal kin of another of the partners. That is, a marriage can make people in-laws. (For example, a marriage can make the husband a son-in-law to the mother of his bride.) A marriage can also create affinal kinship when a partner in the marriage has a sibling who is already married. Again, the marriage makes in-laws. (For example, two women can become sisters-in-law when one of them marries the brother of the other's husband.)

Aaaaa.... (sorry to interject) I was wondering what the term of relation I would have to my brother-in-law's sister. She's my sister-in-law.  :) --Puellanivis 02:57, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

As best I can tell, the "in-law" concept is built on the idea that a marriage creates a unified person out of the spouses: for any relation your spouse has, you get that same relation "in law". So e.g. your sibling-in-law might be:

* the spouse of your sibling (connected to you by blood and then by marriage)

* the sibling of your spouse (connected to you by marriage then by blood)

* the spouse of the sibling of your spouse (connected to you by marriage, then by blood, then by marriage)

If I understand the question, it's about the obvious fourth case:

* the sibling of the spouse of your sibling (connected to you by blood, then by marriage, then by blood)

Normally this connection isn't counted as a sibling-in-law. Seeing it from the perspective of the older generation helps a bit in understanding this. Suppose each mother were to call a meeting of all her children and their spouses. If you and someone else are both called to the same one of those meetings, you and they are either siblings or siblings-in-law. But in the fourth case, there's no mother whose meeting would include you and your brother-in-law's sister. So you aren't sisters-in-law. (Of course these terms are clearly constructionist, so feel free to redefine them as in your own life as you wish!  ;-) Sdsds 06:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The wording above emphasizes that it is a marriage that creates these connections. Sdsds 06:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Marriage

I have been working on a draft on my own for the introduction which I was thinking of presenting on the talk page. It can be found here User:WJBscribe/Drafts. Have you any thoughts? WJBscribe ^{(WJB talk)} 07:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Marriage again

It didn't need a biblical example as both terms were adequately explained. I don't need any help in understanding, but thanks for the offer though. --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 04:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Responded here. Sdsds 04:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If you need to mention Solomon then by all means do so later in the article. And stop being so dramatic, there is no "harm" done to Wikipedia at all. The intro is a secular overview of marriage, it did not need a biblical reference. Specific examples can be given in polygamy if someone doesn't fully understand the term. Who's to say Solomon is widely respected today? And who says people are approaching this article from a christian or traditional marriage perspective? Polygamy and polyandry explicitly state that single-partner marriage is not necessarily the norm. You've made a lot of assumptions. And, please, I don't need any thinly veiled "reminders" on editing denial. Thanks. --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 04:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I explained in the edit summary and offered to take it to talk. Don't use templates on established users, it only pisses them off. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Responded here. Sdsds 17:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Warning templates

I was surprised to see that you have used a warning template on the talkpage of an established user, Dev920. Warning templates are intended for relatively new users who may be unaware of policy, they should not be used for those who already have significant contributions to the project. A simple manually written note explaining your grievance would have been more civil. For a humerous take on the issue, see Template:Templater. Given that I respect both your contributions as editors, I am surprised a problem has arisen. I shall have a look at the marriage article and try and see what the problem is, but please leave off the use of templates except to warn very new users, thanks. WJBscribe 16:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Responded here. Sdsds 17:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I am very troubled by that talkpage comment, which I regard as the views of a single editor. It seems to go against the concensus that was present when the creation of {{uw-own1}} was discussed. I have raised the matter. WJBscribe 17:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!

I just wanted to thank you for being friendly. Your ability to approach sticky subjects with a light touch is really impressive, particularly at Talk:Marriage (linked here for posterity). Interacting with you is vastly improving my Wikipedia experience. Thank you! -- Joie de Vivre 18:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Marriage definition

Both very good points, thanks for catching that! I corrected both of those. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 20:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

my bad...

Just FYI, I simply forgot to add the wikilinks to that first sentence of the Marriage article; I wasn't attempting to censor whatsoever. Cheers, HalfDome 03:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Rocket engines at WP:RFD

I noticed you nominated Rocket engines for "deletion" at RfD, but said you wanted to retarget it to Rocket engine. If you see a page that needs non-controversial maintenance work like that, there is no need to take it to RfD since you aren't even looking for deletion. Just be bold and fix it yourself. —Dgies^t c 03:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! I suppose I didn't ask for the right thing. I should have asked for a deletion. But I wanted to give the other editors of the two articles in question a chance to discuss why the wacky redirect had happened. Maybe there was a good reason for it? Anyway, is it too late to change the admin action taken, and delete the redirect instead? Would that break pages that have likes like [[rocket engines]] instead of [[rocket engine]]s? Sdsds 04:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

On seeing your nomination, I looked a bit more into the history. Originally, there was a very small page at Rocket engine, and Rocket Engines redirected to it. Then that got merged into Spacecraft propulsion and both were turned into redirects there. When the rocket engine section of Spacecraft propulsion got too large, it was eventually split out into a separate article again, but it looks like its plural redirect was forgotten. You could reopen the RfD, but in general redirects are kept as long as they make sense and there is a decent chance someone would type them. Deleting it would break [[rocket engines]] so it would force all those links to be changed and is probably more trouble than it's worth. See also: When should we delete a redirect? —Dgies^t c 05:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Wikiproject Space Missions

Hey there! I would like, please, to gauge everyone's thoughts regarding the Wikiproject that is supposed to be governing pages such as STS-117, Wikiproject: Space Missions. As far as I can see, the project seems to be in total meltdown, with no real updates to the project page since August 2006, inactivity with the project's assessing of pages, and a general complete lack of input from the project. To be honest, I don't think its serving the space shuttle mission community as well as it could, and as such i'd like to propose one of two things happen:

1. The project has a total overhaul with wikipedians who are actually going to keep the project running properly restarting it and operating it as it should be. 2. Forking a daughter project dedicated to Space Shuttle Missions (goodness knows we have enough pages to keep up-to-date) off the project with those contributors who are active in Shuttle pages setting up and running the project properly, enabling pages such as this to have an active wikiproject supporting them.

Just my twopenneth - personally, i'd prefer the fork option, but I'd appreciate other people's views. Colds7ream 16:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

request for conversion: km to NM

Sdsds said on Category talk:Conversion templates:

Could someone who understands this stuff make a template for converting km to NM (nautical miles)? This would be useful in both nautical and also aerospace contexts. Thanks! Sdsds 05:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

There now are two conversion templates {{km to NM|1|precision=4}} → . {{NM to km|1|precision=4}} → . If they don't work as intended, then make a note at Category talk:Conversion templates. Rursus 16:48, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

and : and . Cool! Sdsds 18:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

ISS and Spain

Why did your bot add a Wikiproject Spain template to the talk page for the International Space Station? Sdsds 20:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. At the time, the article (for no reason I can fathom) was in the Category:Prince of Asturias Award winners, which was part of WikiProject Spain. I'll put a note on the person I coordinated with (EspanaViva) to see if it should still stay there or not. I note, however, that Spain is one of the 15 countries involved, so maybe they'll want to keep the banner there. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

On Space Probe

You're right, expand is better than wikify in this case. I think that redirecting to Robotic Spacecraft might also be an option, if the article cannot be expanded much. --ASDFGHJKL=Greatest Person Ever+Coolest Person Ever 23:01, 24 March 2007 (UTC)