User talk:Carcharoth/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

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A welcome from Middle-earth WikiProject

Hello, Carcharoth/Archive 4! Thank you for joining WikiProject Middle-earth and contributing to improve Tolkien-related articles. We are glad to have you join in the effort! Here're some good links and subpages related to our WikiProject.

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask on our talk page. Thank you for your contributions and have fun editing!

Didn't think you needed to know all the items above, since you alreay know—but just to welcome our new member(s). :) —Mir l e n 00:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Anything that doesn't fit in the 'things to do' page or is too long, you should place it in the talk page. —Mir l e n 14:51, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Ptolemaios etymology

Hi Carch. I noticed your question about the etymology of the Ptolemaios on Bill Thayer's talk page. In short, the etymology of his name is pretty clear: ptolemos is an old form of polemos ('war'); -aios is a fairly typical adjectival ending; Ptolemaios should mean something like 'warlike'. (To do this yourself, you can use the Greek dictionary search at Perseus). How to track the name into modern Greek is not something that I can help you with. Bucketsofg 22:04, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Ptolemais

Hi Carch. You asked about "Ptolemais". This is merely a feminine adjectival formation from Ptolemaios, and it was used to name several colonial foundations of the Ptolemies because the word city in Greek is feminine. So Ptolemais means something like "Ptolemy's (city)". I think these basic facts can be found in the Perseus dictionary entry that I pointed out to you above (e.g. here). Bucketsofg 22:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

LSJ

If the link you use in Perseus is "LSJ", then I would cite it thus:

H.F. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon s.v. "Ptolemais"

Bucketsofg 23:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Category tags on User:David Kernow/Wikipedia:Browse by overview

Hi there. I noticed that this page ... still has the category tags on it at the bottom...

Oops – thanks for letting me know about my oversight. All tags now deactivated and I suppose I'd better check those on my other user pages are as well. Best wishes, David Kernow 12:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

People by language

Carcharoth, Thanks for your feedback with this issue. I'd like to know whether I need a consensus to do this, or not. I think Category:People by language would be the best name. The Category:Polyglots would fit as a subcategory of that one I'm proposing. Again, thank you for your words. Best, Mxcatania 17:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Philology

Carcharoth, yes, Philology is not the same than Linguistics, since Philology is for ancient languages while Linguistics probably not. There is a little confusion over there... I think Tolkien was both philologist and linguist. I'll work on it to tide things. Mxcatania 17:32, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

RFA Thanks

Hi Carcharoth. Thank you for your support vote on my RFA. The final result was a successful request based on 111 support and 1 oppose. --CBDunkerson 20:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

April Role call

If you're still interested in WikiProject M-E, make sure to sign the role call for April on the discussion page! —Mir l e n 05:27, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: Military categories

Great work! I'll have to take a closer look at how the Mongol categories nest, but I don't think there would be a problem with making the "Military history of the Mongol Empire" a sub-category of "Medieval warfare" and then removing the latter from "Battles of the Mongols". Kirill Lok s h in 13:31, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Given that the "Mongol Empire" is pretty vaguely defined, I don't think there's any need to create more categories. I would be extremely surprised if we had any articles on Mongol military matters that were outside of its scope. On the other hand, renaming the categories ("Mongols" → "Mongol Empire") would probably make sense for the sake of consistency. Kirill Lok s h in 13:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Categorization history

As backgournd, these were the guidelines before January 16th of this year. I started talking about this in January of 2005(!), though the conversation had been happening before I joined in. There were some previous discussions here, here and I think some even earlier. I just scanned the archives and it is interesting to see how often the same issues come up (like piping using a space or * for eponymous articles). It is hard to understand some of the conversation withou having a snapshot of the way things were. When categories first started, they were of little use because few articles were categorized. They also duplicated a system of lists, which many people had put a good deal of effort into creating. Prior to March of 2005 there wasn't any way to create a table of contents for categories, so there was good reasons to subcategorize, remove duplications, and keep categories small. After my initial frustration with the categorization structure, I worked with User:Rick Block and others, to figrue out a way to create a TOC for categories, with the hope that the possibility of navigating large categories would change the thinking about Categorization. This led to Template:CategoryTOC which was a quick success. The most recent discussions, which ultimately led to the rewrite of the Categorization page started here.

BTW, I really appreciate your comments at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. I hope you will stick around for a while. I noticed, looking over the archives, that many people who were active in Categorization policy are not participating these days. I also hope you get a chance to scan through the archives. I find it fascinating to see how things change over time, and how much stays the same. -- Samuel Wantman 22:52, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Happy Easter—or whatever it is that you celebrate!

Happy Easter, Carcharoth! But even if you don't really celebrate it (like me), here's some delicious chocolate to eat! —Mir l e n 18:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Update

There is a poll/proposal concerning the renaming of our WikiProject. Please vote here to share your opinion! —Mir l e n 19:34, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The Lord of the Rings Peer Review

I have make extensive changes to our Lord of the Rings article in an attempt to work it up to Featured Article status. In order to find more suggestions I have listed it under Wikipedia:Peer Review. Under the guidelines to nominations I am required to notify others of knowledge in the area to review it. I have decided that the best group for this would be our WikiProject. So I ask you all to look at the article and make any suggestions you can. Hopefully we will be voting this FA soon enough. Sorry Guy 00:53, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Chess articles

Hi there. Following up a discussion elsewhere, would you be able to point out something explaining what needs to be done with converting chess diagrams. What are these old and new formats you are referring to? Thanks. Carcharoth 09:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I looked at about fifteen chess articles, and I didn't find any diagrams in an old format except Chess strategy and tactics. However, all of those have arrows drawn on them, which can't be done in the new format, as far as I know. So they probably don't need to be changed. So maybe someone has gone through converting them. (I converted several, but when I was doing it there were quite a few I left.) So I don't know of any particular area that is especially in need of help. Just look around where you think you can contribute - openings, middle game strategy and tactics, endgames, player biographies, rules, etc. Welcome aboard. Bubba73 (talk), 15:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

PS - you can look at List of chess topics and see if you have any ideas. Bubba73 (talk), 17:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

RE:Discussion at Maedhros page

Hey. Things have gotten quieter — I'm just exhustated in general I guess. But no, you didn't miss the May role call. I'm planning to initiate that later. However, if you want to go ahead and start it up, go ahead. By the way, I'm not totally against your ideas, in fact, I do support it most of the time, I just have a few disagreements. Anyway, thanks for curbing the Tolkien scholar tendencies of mine — I do appreciate it, because it's constructive for me as an editor. :) —Mir l e n 23:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

How can I help?

Hi, I signed up for project middle earth yesterday. I've been adding infoboxes for battles and places. Are there any tasks you guys are currently working on? Where can I help? Most of the tasks listed on the things to do page seem to be completed. --Barnikel 04:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Socialist realism

User:Aaron Brenneman/Gallery of Socialist Realism Hope it helps. -- ( drini ☎ ) 17:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Image copyrights

Following up your comment from the Main Page talk page: "As I understand it, taking a photograph or scanning 2-dimensional works of art does not involve any creativity and thus does not generate any new copyright." - are you sure that copyright is limited to creative activities? I know from experience that a lot of time and effort can go into a professional, high quality scan. It is the 'stealing' of the results of that effort that picture libraries are probably trying to minimise by using a "copyright" label. They may even have a justification under some laws. Carcharoth 15:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

PS. I'm aware of Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp., but hopefully that won't kill the incentive for museums and such to digitise their collections and put them on display online. Some sort of secure watermarking will probably be used, or maybe is being used. I still think, that as a courtesy to such institutions, there should be a credit line acknowledging the role that a museum of institution has played in making an image available to the public, or in obtaining the image in the first place. Carcharoth 15:35, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident that the difficulty of a process does not affect the copyright, only the originality of it (our Bridgeman v. Corel article says as much.) A similar verdict was arrived at in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service. You're right that this does not apply worldwide - I think France has stricter copyright laws, for example. Whether this is a good thing or not for getting good quality art displayed online depends on your perspective - the Louvre is becoming more restrictive on taking photographs of their exhibitions which means that if anyone wants a copy they have to go through official channels and (in France, at least) scuppers any chance of getting a freely licenced copy. I can understand where the museums are coming from, but I disagree. --Cherry blossom tree 18:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. There is one other area I'm not sure about, and that is restoration of old photographs and touching up of scans of old, dirty and degraded pictures in old books etc. At some point, enough work might go into something for it to be considered resetting the copyright clock. The restoration has improved the end product, though this end product is still sort of a copy of the original. Carcharoth 19:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm no lawyer (and that applies to everything else I've said, I suppose) but as I understand it that would probably still not be considered original work, since it is basically attempting to make the photo look the way it used to. You could also argue, however, that restoration was a creative act since it is aiming to make the image look more appealing rather than simply more like the original. I suspect that the former argument is the correct one but I'd get a more informed opinion before putting my house on it. --Cherry blossom tree 20:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Samwise Gamgee article

Instead of revert the edits I thought it would be better to ask you in your talk page. I have a few questions about your recent edits to Samwise Gamgee.

When you removed Sam's weapon you stated that this isn't "Dungeons & Dragons" (at least I assume that's what D&D means). You also mentioned this in the "Template talk:Infobox Tolkien". What does that mean?
Why did you remove the image in the infobox? Do you plan on doing this for all charecter's articles? Cause as of now Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Gimli, Saruman, Merrry, and Pippin all have pictures of New Line Cinema's actors on them.

--Ted87 20:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I've moved this discussion to Talk:Samwise Gamgee. Carcharoth 20:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Middle-earth spelling

Thanks for doing the research. Yes I think we should go with the Amon Hen spelling, not the misprint. I have tried not to change any correctly wrongly spelt examples. Rich Farmbrough 09:30 18 May 2006 (UTC).

re: armenelos map

Hi,

I've fixed the tags on both the en-wp and commons pages. atanamir 18:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Is there demand for such maps? If there's some article with maps needed, i'll be happy to make something for them. (in fact looking at this armenelos one i can make it look better as well). atanamir 21:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Shutter stuff

All looks fine to me. You done well. (I should probably note that I am somewhat groggy and have spent a week away from the 'pedia, but nonetheless, good job!) Girolamo Savonarola 12:59, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Roll call

At this point I'd suggest waiting 'til June to do another roll call. It also might be worth-while to separate the 'roll call' from the participants list. The participant list can be a collection of everyone who ever signed up for the project without taking away from the impetus provided by having a monthly roll call/pledge of action. --CBDunkerson 15:34, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll wait til June. Good idea about having the roll call separate from the participants list. This is the first place on Wikipedia that I have encountered the concept of a roll call. I was a bit taken aback at first (sounds like being back at school), but I like the idea now. Maybe rephrasing it as "active members" is a bit better. Trouble is, there will always be those names that are long-term inactive, which is why I like the idea of a "thanking past participants" bit. How should this be done? I would guess any changes would need to be discussed among active members at the WikiProject?

Another thing, is that I'm still really trying to get the hang of the ropes here and stay on top of things and keep organised. Even in what is really quite a small area of Wikipedia, I still feel that things get unmanageable very quickly. Too much spotting one thing, then moving on to something else before really finishing that thing off. Still trying to find the balance between organising, editing, reading Wikipedia content, and reading/learning Wikipedia policies and tools! Oh, and also the delicate balance between "being bold" and "forming consensus"!

Maybe the idea I saw somewhere (either the portal or the WikiProject) of agreeing on a collaboration of the week might help? Carcharoth 17:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

If you try to keep on top of everything this place can quickly become a full time job. Most of the time I'd say to go ahead with 'be bold' unless someone objects or you know in advance that it is going to be controversial. Doing a bit here and there and moving on does get things done in bits and pieces. Sometimes it is good to make a concerted effort and do a larger project all at once, but so long as there is forward motion its all good. Collaboration projects are good, but you have to expect people to have outside entanglements and even other Wiki-work that pulls them away from always being able to volunteer week in and week out. Thus, they really need a large user base or a longer time period for completion. --CBDunkerson 21:55, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

London July 2005 bombings - location maps

Hi there. I was wondering if, as the latest uploader of one of these two files, you'd be able to help with corrections to:

The problem is that both (still) show the wrong location for the Edgware Road bombing. The train had just left Edgware Road on the Circle Line/District Line tracks and was heading towards Paddington - hence the marker needs to be on the green/yellow line, slightly to the left of Edgware Road.

Okay.

I'm also confused as to why the 7 July 2005 London bombings article is linked to the PNG file, but that that file is "not there", but seems to redirect in some way to the SVG file. Has the PNG file been changed to SVG and the link from the article not changed? Carcharoth 18:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

It links to the PNG file fine for me. ed g2s • talk 18:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is no file history or page history on the page because the file is from the commons, which is where wikimedia projects (e.g. en.wikipedia) look if the file is not stored locally. If you click on "...description page there..." on the image page it will take you to the commons page with the file history. ed g2s • talk 19:01, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. They aren't straightforward, but definitely something I will think about for the future, perhaps in the summer when I have more time on my hands, although if you find anyone else with technical expertise, all the source data is available. ed g2s • talk 00:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Merlock Mountains

Hi, I've redirected this new article to The Mewlips ( prompted by your edit summary ) as there seemd to be no possibility of expanding this into a full article Peripitus 12:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but I have no idea if categoring redirects is ok. I havn't seen any instance of it and it does lead to two entries in the same category for one page which may be undesirable. Best to check with the village pump. Peripitus 13:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Gorcrows

I saw your discussion at the Pump. I'm wondering why Gorcrows are included in Category:Middle-earth races when all that is known about them is that they croak in their sleep? Also, is it customary to include fiction creatures in an already fictional universe in Wikipedia? I can see where you might want to include them in WP, since someone might see the term in the book, and look it up here, but I don't think they should be included in a category. I mean, we don't even know if they're a race or a creature, and we don't know if they're ficitonal or real. Also, even if they didn't have an article title (or redirect), they'd still show up in a search. And lastly, the plural form should not be used as an article title. -Freekee 15:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Does the Gorcrow really need to be in a category for the purpose of browsing? Since there is no information on them (except where the term appeared), following a link doesn't do the reader any good. So the only reason for there to be a redirect is to ease searching, if a reader decides to look them up. And since the article on the Mewlips would show up in the search results, having the redirect page is not strictly necessary (though I don't object to its existence - just seems like extra work). Anyway, I think having the Gorcrow in a category is not helpful, could be considered clutter, and if it were up to me, I would remove it. -Freekee 03:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

In regards to your statement, I do see your point that people clicking on it from the category might expect an article, rather than a redirect. That wasn't really my point. I think finding a redirect is only a little bit confusing, as you mentioned. I think the problem is that they will expect information. They'll look at the list of creatures, and think, "Gorcrows? I've never heard of them. I wonder what they are." But all they will learn is that (whatever they are) they croak in their sleep. Long story short - I think it would be reasonable use of a redirect in a category if the article was worth categorizing as such. -Freekee 05:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Re:Diaphragm disambiguation

Thanks for bringing this up! I mistakenly thought that I saw the Wiktionary entry having those definitions, but I'm glad you know that they don't, because they are important to include in the page, in that case. I've modified Diaphragm, and I think it should be satisfactory - I added the links to Urogenital diaphragm and Pelvic diaphragm, and then separated some of the entries out. I separated out body related ones, optics related ones, and left the rest in "Other", since I couldn't think of any other good separation categories. If there are other good categories, please go ahead and separate out more! This way seems like it provides all the information, but doesn't make the page too overwhelming. -- Nataly a 12:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

As for shutter, it was a good idea to separate out the sections. Since the list isn't super long, per the longer lists section of the MoS, I changed the headers to be smaller. For the piping in the 'Movie projector shutter' link, it seems appropriate to pipe the link there; this is an occasion where it is worthwile to link to a specific section of the article, and you're right, you definitly don't want the actual syntax of the link showing up. I made a few other minor changes per MoS:DP, but it looks really good! Keep up the work :) And let met know if you have any other questions. -- Nataly a 13:26, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That is lovely :) I've added the disambig-cleanup tag to it, so it will at least show up on Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup. Unfortuately, you can't manually add it to the list, and will have to wait until the next dump occurs, but you can always mention something about it at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links. -- Nataly a 13:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Obviousness

I appear to have mistakenly pointed out Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links to you, without realizing that you had already been posting there (and therefore would already know about it...). I knew you had posted on one of the disambiguation talk pages, but thought it was a different one - I apologize for pointing out the obvious in what might have been a not very nice tone on my part! -- Nataly a 19:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

We're definitly all still learning! Thanks for understanding. -- Nataly a 21:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

ME reference templates

Thanks for tidying up the Simbelmyne article. I noticed that the reference style you used was to refer to the chapter, rather than the page number. This seems like a good idea, as it would avoid the messy thing with page numbers. I wonder if the book title link could be to a list of editions, or if the reference template, while giving details of one edition, could incorporate a "other editions" link - or would that contravene the house style of Wikipedia? Carcharoth 15:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, references by chapter/section are fairly standard in online discussions because of the page numbering issues. Wikipedia allows for the possibility of more detailed references, but obviously there are still alot of issues to work out in making that viable. As to links, I think the title should probably link to the Wikipedia article on that book, but it would make sense to have information about editions in each article or a sub-article linked from the main one. For instance, the information at Template:ME-ref/TH could be merged into English-language_editions_of_The_Hobbit. --CBDunkerson 01:28, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Tau Beta Pi

Hello. I believe you were intersted in this? [1] -- Avi 16:17, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Response to old post archived at Archive 2

Your work on the disaster articles and their categorisation has been important. You should consider joining us at the WikiProject for disaster management WP:DM. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 22:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Military people category naming

I was wondering if you could perhaps comment on the current proposal for naming and structure of various military people categories? Some opinions from people outside the Military history project would be helpful for us. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 16:40, 30 May 2006 (UTC)