User talk:Gene Nygaard

For older talk, see

• User talk:Gene Nygaard/2004Dec-2005Apr (Litre,Special Fraction Characters, Deletion, merge, do nothing?, Edit summary, Mass is not weight, Middot, Ansari X Prize, Unicode code pages, Welcome to the Wikipedia, Aquarium volume, Balsam poplar, Significand, Death Valley National Park FAC, Magnetar distance units, Bot to undo damage by bot putting in U.S. census places, Thank you!, Degrees symbol, cm for height of people, Continental United States, BC / BCE dating convention, Europa (moon) edit, Units and nbsp, mid dot, Cheddar, Villages in Hong Kong. The bot thing, Devil's Lake, helium nonbreaking spaces, template:Infobox_U.S._state, California State Route 57, SuperCroc revert, Second/seconds, what is the least ugly in-line math in Planck units?, mass flow meter, Sequoia, Specific impulse)
• User talk:Gene Nygaard/2005May-2005Jun (Sugar substitute, Trinity anniversary, Slrubenstein debate, USS Mississinewa (AO-59), Gustav II Adolf-vote, merge Tonne?, PA 103, lots of edits, not an admin, Pounds force, Aircraft loaded weights, Camel, Aluminium)
• User talk:Gene Nygaard/2005Jul-2006Jan
• User talk:Gene Nygaard/2006Feb

Zion tons

OK, I'll admit I jumped to conclusions without going off to try to research it. I'm beating myself now with a red pencil to teach myself a lesson. Ouch ouch ouch.  :-) Elf | Talk 05:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Olympic conventions

I just responded to your post on the Olympic Conventions talk page. Whether this will change anything depends on whether or not you want to get into a revert war with Jared. I fully support your point of view that there really isn't anything that's been resolved yet, but I haven't felt like going at it with Jared.

Please see discussion at: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#spaces_before_unit_symbols. Regards bobblewik 13:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Nygaard, I think your objection might have been written in haste. Although the Modern Games no longer use the word "Modern" in most contexts, they were established with that title in use, and most reference works I know distinguish entries by referring to the "ancient" and "modern" games. I wasn't meaning to impinge your territory or anything, but I want to leave the way clear for my fellow historians to do what they should be doing. See my response at talk there, if you haven't. Best wishes, Xoloz 16:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

indexing

FYI, just want to let you know that when indexing Arabic/Persian names, there are prefixes which are not equivalent to first names. For example, Mirza, Mulla, Haji, and Siyyid are all common prefixes that give information about the person, but are not names. So the standard for indexing Arabic/Persian names is to leave them out. Mirza Abu'l-Fadl should go under "Abu'l-Fadl, Mirza", and so on. Also, usually names will have a suffix, which is not a last name, but an indication of what city they come from, so Mirza Abu'l-Fadl-i-Gulpaygani means "Mr. Abu'l-Fadl of the city of Gulpaygan".

Cheers Cuñado - Talk 05:59, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with skipping titles in indexing, no matter what the language. I'll generally do so when I recognize them as such. Of course, it helps when they are identified as such in the article.

Of course, when I see five or six "Mirza" in one category with only about 20 entries in all, and all of them are already indexed under the M, that looks like a pretty good course to follow.

The toponyms are of course names too. Whether or not they should be used for indexing is sometimes debatable; sometimes it is traditionally done differently not only in different geographic regions, but in different fields of activities. It can also vary in different categories, and it can depend on how a specific person is generally known in English. This is, after all, the English Wikipedia.

Now, will you help with stripping the diacritics and the like to get proper indexing?

What do you think about ' and = and spaces in the indexing?Gene Nygaard 06:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

BTW, in most cases, titles don't belong in the article's name, so we may have some issues about proper naming of these articles, too. One problem is that there are a zillion subpages under Wikipedia:Naming conventions to wade through to see how it should be done. Gene Nygaard 06:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

apothecaries'

Hi! I can't see what your unicode symbol says, but you seem knowledgable. Do you think £ was ever used for the unit of weight? And does lb not belong in the table too, as the more usual symbol? And can you give some examples/references? Not wanting to be a prick, but I really want to know, and be sure. Thanks. Skittle 19:04, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the £ symbol may well have been used for that apothecaries pound, which is now obsolete, by some people—but I didn't bother putting that one back in. The other one is a crossed "lb" with a horizontal bar going through the upper part of the letters. If you want to see the ℔ symbol, you should be able to add a unicode font and set your browser to see them. The Wikipedia Technical help FAQ has a link to this site for help on that [1]. Gene Nygaard 19:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't think there was a reason to add it, but I didn't know whether you had or not. Skittle 17:55, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Indexing of Māori pages

Hi Gene. Any reason you’re adding the page name to the category listing for pages such as Category:Māori people? I thought the index defaulted to the page name, so it seems redundant?

e.g. Māori people has [[Category:Ethnic groups in Australasia|Maori people]]

I added macrons to the indexing for that page and Rāhui, but now wonder if this is linked to the passing mention of sorting above? Barefootguru 17:48, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

You are damn lucky you didn't catch me when I was fuming mad, and let me cool down a bit. They need to be indexed according to the English alphabet. You still see all your squiggles (or bars in this case).

If you want to make yourself useful, go to Category talk:Maori and start cleaning up the mess there. Category redirects work only imperfectly; someone trying to go view the category that is a redirect get sent to the one redirected to instead, but that doesn't keep people from adding items to the category which is a redirect, and those items are not seen in the category redirected to.

There are probably a zillion subcategories with the same problem (okay, maybe only 10 or 20 or so). I've emptied one of them, but maybe even that one has had something addedd by now, so check all of them. What you need to do is to make sure that the macron or whatever other squiggles might appear is included in the category name but is not included in the sort key, for example, you need to go to article Māori Party and change the indexing along these lines, from

• [[Category:Maori]]
• [[Category:Maori Party]]
• [[Category:Political parties of minorities]]

to this

• [[Category:Māori|Party]] ((Probably best to drop the Māori entirely in indexing this category, but be sure to capitalize the first letter you do use. In this category as in the others, if any of the words have macrons or whatever, strip them in sort key part following the vertical bar, so if you want it under "M" rather than under "P", use "Maori Party".)
• [[Category:Māori Party|*]] (putting a * or a space as the sort key will put the article dealing with the same subject as the category at the top of the listing)
• [[Category:Political parties of minorities|Maori Party]] (applicable in all other situations)

Gene Nygaard 18:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, though too much time for me. I’ve already asked for help with the Māori category, so have added a link to here. Barefootguru 18:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

There should also be a link to a page discussing the problem with category redirects in that notice which appears in the pink box on Category:Maori and likely the other redirected pages. Gene Nygaard 18:20, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Ronald Collé

I did not just 'slap' a tag on the article. I carefully explained my reasons on the talk page. I was following the trail of an editor who left an insult on User:Academic Challenger's talk page, and who has edited three articles, 50 Cent, Ronald Collé and K.A. Maroufi-Collé. I strongly suspect that the Ronald Collé article is a vanity one, as it looks like the editor who started it is the child of Ronald Collé and K.A. Maroufi-Collé. I also note that the Ronald Collé article still does not have any sources cited. Out of curiousity, how does Ronald Collé meet the criteria of Wikipedia:Notability (people)? -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 03:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

My major point is that there is enough doubt there to make it not non-controversial. Use WP:AfD instead; it doesn't belong in this test-stage, as-yet-unapproved shortcut procedure, and if you keep nominating things that might be controversial, then that procedure may never be approved.

We have articles about every fictional Pokemon character, and they appear to be more prolific than rabbits. We have articles about some Bangladeshi cricketer who played one "test match" back in the 1950s.

It's about time the sciences get a fair shake in comparison to sports and entertainment figures.

Where's your evidence that none of the professional journals in which he is published has a circulation of 5,000?

Publishing in those journals is one thing. Isn't being the editor of one of those professional journals also evidence of notability?

Note further that the template itself says, probably not clearly enough, that a way to get it out of this speedy process for non-controversial deletions is to delete the template. Gene Nygaard 22:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I share your concerns about the glut of articles about trivia. I'm reluctant to go straight to AfD. I've mostly given up trying to participate there. It was just too frustrating. The question is moot for now, however, as the article has been blanked as a possible copyvio. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 23:48, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Please see my comment at WP:PROD

I've replied to your comment. I look forward to your response in turn. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:46, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Please calm down

With reference to your recent edit summaries (here [2] and particularly here [3]), I think you should perhaps calm down a little. I understand that it annoys you when people overlook category sorting, but you should still remain civil. Calling people "incompetents" is not generally a productive tactic. --Stemonitis 12:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes a big two-by-four is the only way to get people's attention. But thanks, you are right, I could do it better. I can understand this being overlooked in an article where there have been no debates about moves with or without "the"; I don't really think there is any excuse for it being overlooked when there have been some debates. How do you propose educating more people of this necessity? Gene Nygaard 13:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. I was wondering whether a sentence could be added to the screen that you see having moved an article (where it requests the user checks for double redirects), to the effect that he/she should also look at the category indexing. The only problem is that for most moves the category indexing is not an issue. Still, it could be added, I suppose, although I wouldn't know where to propose that. --Stemonitis 13:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Template:MedalGold and the like

What in the world were you thinking of in creating this family of templates? Have you ever even looked at the resulting (recently renamed) categories?

There must be some way to include—and use—another parameter, rather than just taking the article name and using that for sorting purposes.

Please respond at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports Olympics. I am fuming about this. Gene Nygaard 11:22, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

As User:Stemonitis says, please calm down. Also, check the history of the template. My last edit to it was [4]. I did not add the categories. -- Jonel | Speak 12:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Please learn to be civil. I responded to your alarmist post. Staxringold 15:23, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

A Special Thanks

Hey thanks a lot for your edit to Paul Jan Bakker. I created the article but being Indian, was not sure about the Dutch spellings. So thanks for correcting it. (P.S Why dont you archive your talk page? I use Dial-up & it took like a whole minute to load your Page!)

Srikeit^{(talk ¦ ✉)} 09:45, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:RM

Please take a look at Talk:Elector of Brandenburg. Thanks! —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 08:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Gravitational constant

Thanks for improving my edit re dimensions of G. As you say, it should be length cubed etc, rather than metres cubed. I'll make further change accordingly. Lucretius

Reidar Särestöniemi

Could you please stop reverting my changes to Reidar Särestöniemi? I accept the fact that the accent marks have to be dropped in international categories, but I still steadfastly maintain that in categories specific to Finland, Finnish spelling and Finnish indexing must be used. It is used everywhere else in Finland-specific categories in the English Wikipedia. Are you going to change them too? I propose that a general discussion and poll is started about this to establish a policy. JIP | Talk 19:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's still the English Wikipedia. The guidelines have already been established.

Gene Nygaard 19:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Could you please link to the said guidelines? I have looked but not found. I agree with some of your actions but not others, and a guideline would be nice to have. Thanks. --Eddi (Talk) 02:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, what do you think? That the Unicode letters are sorted according to Finnish alphabetization rules? I think you've got another guess coming. For example, in Finnish footballers the players are not sorted according to the Finnish language indexing rules, or it would be:

• Simo Valakari
• Alexander Weckström
• Mika Väyrynen

How would you index Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg in Category:Finnish politicians?

Did you follow Argentine Spanish language indexing rules when you created Nilda Garré just last week, on 14 Mar 2006?[5] No, you didn't:

• [[Category:Argentine politicians|Garré, Nilda]]

Of course, just as you shouldn't be expected to know and follow Argentine indexing rules on the English Wikipedia, nobody else should be expected to know and follow Finnish indexing rules on English Wikipedia.

More to the point, just a couple of days earlier than that, when you did a trivial, meaningless edit of Verné Lesche [6], capitalizing the "C" in Category:Finnish speed skaters, did you fix that sort key even in that category for proper indexing under Finnish language sorting rules? No, you did not. Did you fix the sort key in the other categories in which you made your piddling invisible change (needlessly cluttering up the watchlists of those watching it) so that they sort properly according to English language sorting rules? No, you did not. In the category People from Helsinki which you yourself added, did you fix originally enter the sort key to sort properly under either Finnish or English language sorting rules? No, you did not.

There are only a few Finnish people who appear out of order in their categories; in sparse categories, improper indexing doesn't always show up. Where it makes a difference, several of them have already been properly indexed by people other than me, and likely some by me as well. Gene Nygaard 19:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You are right that Unicode lettering does not always automatically match Finnish indexing, as in the cases you've pointed out:

• V versus W
• proper order of Å, Ä, Ö
• Finnish makes a great point of indexing Å, Ä and Ö correctly but ignores all other accented vowels

But you are using these exceptions as a "two wrongs make a right" argument to justify knowingly and purposefully replacing correct indexing with incorrect, thinking "if it doesn't work for everything, it shouldn't work for anything". I would like you to stop doing that. JIP | Talk 20:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, it is still the English Wikipedia, and the "correct" indexing is still according to the English alphabet. We index things the way English speakers would look for them. Sure, it would likely be different on the Finnish Wikipedia. But so what? Gene Nygaard 20:52, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

When I look in a Norwegian list, I'm not surprised if I find my name listed after Nygren, and let's say after Arne Nygård and before Sverre Nygård. But in English indexing, I might still find myself between the Nygårds but before the Nygrens, or I might be before Nygren but with Nygård indexed as Nygard and between Nygaard and Nygren. Gene Nygaard 21:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to take this issue up in a general discussion and poll. I know I'm not the only Nordic person here to want Nordic names indexed correctly. Our little argument is far too little to result in a decision that would constitute a policy. JIP | Talk 21:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject North Dakota

Wikipedia:WikiProject North Dakota is official! Sort of. Lot of cleanup needed on the project page and plenty of work to do making a decent to-do list, etc. etc., but it all starts somewhere. Thanks for all your help! --AlexWCovington (talk) 05:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Jorge Peña Hen

Thanks for sorting out the indexing. The several explanations up above here make sense, to me, anyway. Not sure I'd like to meet you on a dark night, though! Best. GuillaumeTell 14:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

One of the problems people have understanding it is that the piping for the sort key works differently from the piping for the embedded links; in the latter it changes what readers see, but for the sort key it does not. Gene Nygaard 15:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I see now that there is more than one reason why people complain about article categorisation, and I suddenly realise why I agree with some of your edits and not all edits. Some categorisation may be less controversial but more difficult to explain. To improve understanding and reduce traffic at you talk page (assuming you want to reduce it), it might help to give a link from the edit summary to a project page with a quick and easy explanation. --Eddi (Talk) 14:17, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Lauren Etame Mayer

He is nearly always referred to simply as "Lauren" - it is the name printed on the back of his shirt (rather than Mayer), and it's how he's called on official club webpages [7]. Category:Brazilian_footballers sorts players commonly known by one name on that name (e.g. Ronaldo, Romário) in amongst players known by their full names (Fabio Rochemback, Evandro Roncatto) with no problem, so why not the same with Lauren? If it helps, I can move the article to Lauren (footballer), to emphasise the fact he is known by one name. Qwghlm 11:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

If this character were in Category:Brazilian footballers, you might have a point--for that category only.

I'm usually called by my first name, too. That doesn't mean I don't have both.

What name does he use when he buys a house, or a car? Gets married? Whatever?

I don't particularly care what you do within the category for some specific club. But see, for example http://www.sportscheduler.co.sz/olympics2000.htm (Lauren Etame Mayer) and http://www.the-shot.com/olympics-2000/ (Lauren Etame Mayer). So it would clearly be inappropriate for the Olympics category and the Cameroon national team category, as well as the birth category and the like. Gene Nygaard 13:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

In my profession (and in yours, I am sure), I am referred to by both names. In Lauren's profession, he is only referred to by the one. While there is an argument for the births category to use his full name, for the ones relating to sport it should use the (nick)name he is commonly known by. Qwghlm 14:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

He is referred to by the full name in connection with the Cameroon national team, gold medalists at the 2000 Olympics. Gene Nygaard 14:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

People in the U.S. used to import people from Cameroon and cgive them a first name only. If the British are still doing that, you can go ahead and change it in the Arsenal category. Gene Nygaard 13:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

His use of a single name is entirely his own choice; to infer connotations of slavery is highly distasteful and I find that statment offensive. If that's the level you are going to descend to, then I won't bother engaging you in any further discussion. Goodbye. Qwghlm 14:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot

Fair comment, I will attempt to reduce the occurence of invisible edits, in defence to watchlists. Rich Farmbrough 20:55 27 March 2006 (UTC).

Category:Baseball records subcats?

Hi. I'm the closing admin of the CFD regarding this category, and while I have the reverse merge properly decided...I'm afraid I couldn't figure out what you said needed to be done with the various subcat proposals. I'm contacting you three (Gene Nygaard, Mike Selinker, and Wknight94) who were most involved with the subcat discussions in the hope that between you all the subcat scheme can be accomplished. I'm sorry for being thick. ;) --Syrthiss 15:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

TR-3B Stryker II Deletion

Hi, the TR-3B Stryker II is on debate for deletion, well many of us are trying to keep it up, I was hoping you would add a keep to it since you helped it. Right now they are complaining that we are all new users trying to keep it up and it would be nice to have someone who has been around a little longer, make a keep post. Elgae Nacirema 07:46, 31 March 2006 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/TR-3B_Stryker

Mertola and Meda

Why that indexing in Mértola and Mêda? I find it strange. Could you explain me the reasons of doing so? Why do you add the names without diacritics in the index? I would like to learn about it. Thanks! Afonso Silva 17:06, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Because they don't come after Murtosa in English indexing (I don't think they do in Portuguese indexing either, do they? But that's beside the point here, in English Wikipedia). Gene Nygaard 17:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you also find it strange that pt:Meda in the Portuguese Wikipedia doesn't have any squiggly thingies? I do. Maybe we have some fixing to do here, too. Gene Nygaard 17:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the explanation! I noticed that some time ago, but I didn't remember. The diacritics count as a different letter, it's very very strange for me. I even posted about it on general complaints but I received no feedback. In Portuguese wikipedia happens the same, for example, Sátão comes after Soure. After all, the software is the same, isn't it?

About Mêda, it is one of the 3 or 4 naming disputes in the list of the 308 Portuguese municipalities that I recently finished. The Portuguese version claims that Mêda is the former name, and now it is called Meda. But both the coat of arms and the municipality official website present Mêda, so, I decided to mantain the diacritic, or the squiggly thing, as you call it, hehe. Regards! Afonso Silva 17:36, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it should work the same in Portuguese, so you could probably show people how to get the categories sorted better there, too. It doesn't work as well as it could; better software could allow changing of order, and in some languages certain diacritics are usually sorted after the letter without diacritics but before the next letter (rather than somewhere off after Z), etc. but at least we can get them closer than they would be without the sort key in the categories. You did notice that this works differently from piping in ordinary links, didn't you? In the regular links in an article, piping changes what is displayed; in the category piping, only the sort order is changed, not what is displayed. Gene Nygaard 17:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a software change would solve that, but I heard a swedish complaining that it would be strange for him seeing a letter with a diacritic listed under the letter without a diacritic, so, it is a war of opinions, you english don't use that kind of things, so, it's not your fault. Perhaps the solution will come from the cell phone sms and internet chat mania, that is forcing the Portuguese youth (at least a big majority, I'm only 20 and I use them) to abandon the use of diacritics. Of course there will always be someone concerned with the removal of about 25% of the phonemes from our writing and we will continue using them. I would like to change that fact in the pt wikipedia, but my only contributions there are related to the english version, like including "+en" and stuff like that, I dislike the Brazilian Portuguese, and because they are the majority, the pt wikipedia is almost entirely written in Brazilian Portuguese. Anyway, I'm aware that in the category page they continue as they were, with the full name, that also happens when you choose to index an article as "xxxxx, The", but thanks for the explanation! Afonso Silva 18:06, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Indexing in Arabic

Hi Gene,

just noticed your changes to Husni al-Za'im to index it under "a" instead of "z". "al-" is the Arabic definite article, and in academic works in English it's standard practice to disregard it for indexing purposes. (another example is Jamil_al-Midfai) Palmiro | Talk 18:27, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

It is also fairly common English practice to index definite articles in foreign languages. See Wikipedia:Categorization:

• People with multiple-word last names: sorting is done on the entire last name as usually used in English, in normal order and not (for example) according to the Dutch system that puts some words like "van", "vanden", etc... after the rest of the last name. Example: [[Categorie:Nederlands voetballer|Basten van Marco]]; [[Category:A.C. Milan players|Basten, Marco van]] → [[Category:A.C. Milan players|Van Basten, Marco]]
  Exceptions Note that some people are typically called this way in English, for example: Beethoven, [[Category:Classical era composers|Beethoven, Ludwig van]]; similarly: Montesquieu, [[Category:Enlightenment philosophers|Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de]]

There really isn't any clear-cut way to do it, and "academic works" is rather indefinite (something which likely varies in different fields of activity) and not necessarily the standard to follow. Can you cite any "academic works" indexing Husni al-Za'im under "Z"? I don't particularly care which say this one is indexed. But in this particular case, al-Za'im wasn't indexed under either "Z" or "A" in a couple of the categories. Gene Nygaard 18:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, in the case of Jamil al-Midfai, he was improperly indexed under a lowercase a, which I changed to an uppercase A since our categories are normally indexed case-insensitively in the initial letter. Gene Nygaard 19:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Academic works: pretty much every one I have at home that has an index, as far as I can recall. Of course they are all specialised on Middle Eastern history, politics or religion, but I think these are the ones to follow. I'll check on them when I get back to the house and get back to you. Palmiro | Talk 19:07, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Which brings up another point; the rules often change when the subjects are world-wide in scope. For example, in Isaac Asimov's Azimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science & Technology we find "AL-KHWARIZMI, Muhammed ibn Musa" under A, not under K as someone has put him in all the categories in his entry at Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Gene Nygaard 19:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Checked the first 12 books that came to hand, and all but one systematically indexed names under the substantive name rather than the definite article. The only exception (which is quite slopply edited in other respectes as well) eliminates the article or assimilates it to "Abd" in all placenames and personal names, but lists "al-qaeda" under "a". The remainder are all published by a variety of reputable British and North American publishers, with the exception of one published in Beirut. Palmiro | Talk 14:44, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Flow through nozzles

Gene, thanks for getting rid of the extraneous round bracket in the exhaust gas velocity equation in Flow through nozzles. However, your changing of the numerical value of R (gas law constant) from 8314.5 to 8.3145 is incorrect and introduces an error that is equal to the square root of 1000. The very reason that the article includes an example calculation was to provide a "sanity check" for anyone trying to alter the equation. Try your value of 8.3145 and the final answer will be 100.6 m/s instead of the correct 3181 m/s.

Now let's discuss the units of R. Yes, R = 8.3145 J/mol·K, but there are literally dozens of other equivalent values of R in various other units. For example, look at the many tabulated values of R in Gas constant, or in the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", 56th edition, CRC Press, page 232, or in "Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook", 6th edition, McGraw Hill, page 1-18.

Please note that since 1 J = 1 N·m, there is no difference between my using N·m and your using J as part of the units of R. And also note that 1 J = 1 N·m = 1 kg·m² / s² and that brings in m² / s² under the square root sign which is what is needed to obtain the desired exhaust velocity in meter per second. But, more importantly, the kg unit requires the use of of the kgmol unit (or kmol, if you prefer that) rather than the mol unit (which is a gram mol (i.e., gmol) ... which introduces a factor of 1000. And incorporating that factor leads to 8314.5 rather than 8.3145 as the numeric value of R for these specific units.

Sorry to be so long winded in explaining why that factor of 1000 is needed. In any event, as a compromise, I have made some changes to make the units a bit more "classical" rather than what is in very "common usage" by many, many engineers:

1. I have retained your J unit rather than my equivalent N·m units.
2. I have change my kgmol unit to a kmol unit.
3. I have changed the molar mass units from my original kg/kgmol to the equivalent kg/kmol which is required to have consistent units. Note that the numeric value is the same 22 whether we use kg/kmol or g/mol ... but the kg/kmol is better here because it brings in that required factor of 1000.

Now please don't take offense when I say that changing style or deleting an extraneous round bracket or changing "miles" to "mi" or italicizing parameters are quite acceptable and I thank you for doing so. But when you change a numerical value within an equation from 8314.5 to 8.3145, you really should be more careful and make a sanity check to see if you have done the right thing. If I had not happened by to see the change you made, other readers using the formula would come up with very incorrect answers. I don't want to sound as if I own this article because I know that once it is written I no longer own it. However, in your place, I would have made an attempt to discuss a numerical change of that magnitude with the original author before I made the change. Regards, - mbeychok 20:00, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

P.S. My reason for spelling out miles was that readers in metric countries might not know that "mi" is an abbreviation for mile. Do you not think that might be true?

No, the use of kilograms doesn't require the use of kilogram moles. In fact, the keepers of SI chose the gram mole as the SI base unit for amount of substance, not the kilogram mole.

My number wouldn't change the results, since 8.3145 J/(mol·K) = 8314.5 J/(kmol·K).

Yes, you might need to do dimensional analysis and make sure your units work with the formula. If you take the square root of something in units of joules per gram, the resulting velocity will be in units of 10√10 m/s, rather clumsy units to use.

So you do have a point, in that your method makes it less likely that someone will make a calculating error.

The formula doesn't really depend on the units used. I will grant that your way of doing it makes it easier for users to end up with J/kg = m²/s² before taking the root, but my figures weren't incorrect.

The formula would also work for temperature in degrees Rankine, M in pounds per pound mole, and R = 49720.1 ft·pdl/(lbmol·°R). Since the pound moles cancel out just like any other moves do, that gives you ft·pdl/lb as the units before you take the square root—I think you can figure out the resulting units of V_e in this case, can't you? (A poundal is 1 lb·ft/s².) Note that since they involve ratios, the units of specific heat and of pressure don't matter, as long as the same units for each quantity are used all the time.

There are various other ways to select consistent units giving a valid result in this formula. Gene Nygaard 21:37, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Re the miles. My objection is to the mixture of spelled out words and symbols in one unit; it should be either miles per hour or mi/h (general Wikipedia usage also accepts mph for this unit, but not kph for km/h). In many context, using the symbol "mi" is in fact much less ambiguous than using "miles", because nobody intentionally uses "mi" to stand for nautical miles, but many people do use "miles" as nautical miles without identifying them as such, in contexts where nautical miles are common. Gene Nygaard 21:46, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

"My number wouldn't change the results, since 8.3145 J/(mol·K) = 8314.5 J/(kmol·K)."

Gene, I agree that 8.3145 J/(mol·K) and 8314.5 J/(kmol·K) are equivalent and, as I said before, there are a great many equivalent values. But there simply is no denying that, if your 8.3145 J/(mol·K) were left as the definition of the parameter R, 95% or more of the people reading the article and going on to use the equation would use 8.3145 and arrive at a very incorrect answer. The other 5% or less would be experienced rocket scientists who would know to do some dimensional analysis and change to 8314.5 J/(mol·K). That is precisely why most engineers do the dimensional analysis ahead of time and specify an equivalent value of R consistent with the units of the other parameters ... so as to prevent errors by subsequent users. That is also why there are so many published tables of equivalent R values and so many published explanations of how to convert from one R value to another R value. Take a look at the two publications mentioned in my earlier remarks above.

I also agree that the keepers of SI chose the gram mole as the SI base unit for the amount of substance. But nowhere is it written in stone that we cannot use other completely equivalent values. A kmol is simply 1000 gram moles, and kg/kgmol is numerically equivalent to g/mol, and a molecular weight of 22 can be expressed as 22 g/mol or 22 kg/kgmol or 22 kg/kmol. Again, nowhere is it written in stone that we must all use the same "cookie mold" and always use gram moles whether or not other equivalent values are more useful in many contexts.

I believe that part of our difference is that I am 83 years old and spent about 50 years as a chemical engineer ... and chemical engineers the world-over routinely use kgmols and US chemical engineers also routinely use lbmols (pound moles). There are quite literally many dozens of undergrad and postgrad level chemical engineering textbooks wherein you will find those units being used. Now perhaps the younger generation engineers and even some newer textbooks may be using gram moles more often, but I see little if any evidence of that in the engineering literature. On the other hand, chemists and many physicists have always favored the use of gram moles. Wikipedia is a multi-discipline community and as such it ought to tolerate multi-discipline usage of equivalent parameter definitions and equivalent units of measurement (although I agree that lbmols are archaic and must pass out of use). - mbeychok 23:37, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Gene, one further comment. I know that many authors of textbooks and technical journal articles prefer to present equations without specifying the units of any of the parameters in their equations ... leaving that open for the readers to do. In my opinion, that is a recipe for disaster! I once worked for Fluor Engineering and Construction (one of the world's leading E and C companies) designing and building refineries and petrochemical plants that each cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Making a mistake in units when designing plants of that cost magnitude would be extremely costly, and would constitute an extreme safety hazard for the personnel working in those plants. For that reason, I always specify the units of each parameter in any equations that I publish anywhere no matter how expert the intended readership may be. mbeychok 06:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Date formatting & overlinking

Regarding the note you left on editing the Jimi Hendrix article, is it true that linking the year is necessary in order for date display preferences to work correctly? That's not my understanding at all: I'm no Wiki-expert, but it seems to me that all the preference formatting does, really, is present a month-day date as either "February 12" or "12 February". The year links you put in the article are separate from the month/day links (as in [[February 12]], [[1969]]); how could they possibly interact with the other parts of the date? ==ILike2BeAnonymous 07:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. You can see it by looking at the Jimi Hendrix article with your preferences set as they are, before and after my changes. Then change your preferences, and look at both versions again. It's a matter of the presence or absense of a comma. I don't like to see 12 February, 1969. It is also necessary for the 1969 February 12 or the 1969-02-12 format to work at all, for those who have selected one of those options.

Of course, the people who do like to see "12 February, 1969" or "February 12 1969" are out of luck; those aren't options on the current preferences list. Using ordinal numbers with a "th" (or a dot like the Germans do) also keeps preferences from working (either 12th February 1969 or February 12th, 1969). So does using a "year in xxx" (1969 in aviation, 1943 in music) link for the year.Gene Nygaard 11:48, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

My use of AWB

The tone of your comment on my talk page seemed a little off. I was simply using AWB to tidy up some articles last night. If you look around line 55 on the Speed of light article you can see some slight changes were made. I don't quite see what your problem is. What is this 'invisible spaces' you're on about? --Wisden17 16:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how you find "line 55". Why don't you just tell me exactly what those changes are?

There are twenty-one paragraphs plus one header that show up as being changed on the differences page. Yet I can't see a single difference. I don't like my watchlist being cluttered up with nonsense like this, when you cannot even find any significant change being made--but still have to wade through those 21 paragraphs to determine that this is useless time-frittering. Gene Nygaard 16:31, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

You really seem to have quite an attitude against me. Let me point out two things, one I'm new to using AWB, and secondly I was using it to try and clean-up and help Wikipedia. I don't see why you need to have such a bad attitude towards me. I got in contact with User:Bluemoose as I wasn't 100% sure what AWB had done in this instance. I accept now that all it did was white space removal, and I'm sorry for 'cluttering up your watchlist'. However, I think you really ought to read Wikipedia:Assume good faith as it was a genuine mistake, and I don't see how being aggresive helps a situation. --Wisden17 19:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

All I did was to ask you to "cease and desist"; don't read too much into that. I've probably been more abrupt with others who should be more expecte to know better, who are doing the same thing. If you are making some other changes that people can see, by all means go ahead and deal with the invisible spaces, too. But if that's all it is doing, you are better off canceling the edit. Gene Nygaard 19:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, yeah sorry it's just that first thing going onto Wikipedia after I've just tried out AWB for the first time and having telling me to cease and desist just seemed a little harsh. What I'm still not quite sure of is: what are these invisible spaces that I deleted, how are they caused? --Wisden17 19:48, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes it is two spaces rather than one at the end of a sentence. Or even between words in the middle of a sentence, for that matter. This doesn't make any difference in what we see; it shows up as one space anyway, in Wikipedia or in html in general.

Sometimes it is spaces before and after the == in headers; once again, it doesn't affect what we see.

Sometimes it is spacing between paragraphs. Using more than one blank line can affect what we see. I still wouldn't bother changing that as the only change. An additional problem is that people have sometimes used this as a workaround to keep images from bumping into each other or to move text below an image; there are better ways to do that, however, but making just taking the lines out without doing something else may affect the display negatively. Gene Nygaard 19:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Kalina of Bulgaria

I noticed you moved Kalina from Bulgaria to Spain. I realize that she was born in Spain, but as a member of the royal family of Bulgaria is she not Bulgarian?--SVTCobra 02:45, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Tortuga

Hey Gene, See my comment on moving Tortuga talk:tortuga. I don't agree with you or with the other guy who agreed with you. But your argument has made me realize that it should definitely be Tortoise Island rather than La Tortue. I provide an exhaustive defense of this on the discussion page. Thanks anyway, for your interest. Fowler Pierre 04:53, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Gene,

As you probably noticed, I switched my main support from Tortoise to Tortue after Macrakis explained the rules/lack thereof to me.

Do you think the opponents of moving Tortuga will allow the debate to stay on the talk page for now? I don't have time right now to go find supporters of a move to comment/vote (though I'm certain they're out there and would have strong opinions). But I think it would be a travesty for debate to be closed down while Tortue has a plurality of the citations.

If more cites for Tortuga were to be added, I wouldn't feel as strongly about it. I just don't want to be in a position of having to tell Haitians that Tortuga supporters set up a criterion (common usage) and after that criterion was met, they continued to "oppose" any move. Suffice to say that will not do wonders for their view of the English project's neutrality.

As a footnote, I learned the other day from an external web site [[8]] that there actually was an English colony on the island in the 17th Century, with a governor to make everything official. And the colony was named Tortuga! Didn't know that. All else being equal, that would cause me to drop my bid altogether. But it appears that the colony never controlled the whole island, and the rest of the island was a French colony at the same time. There was apparently full English control from 1655-59 (acquired by "some Englishmen who sailed from Jamaica"), but there is no reference to the crown in this period, so it may be that it was just privateers. In any event, this web site suggests that French were the first recorded people on the island (1625), and it would appear that the island was the first place in Haiti to actually be French. Admittedly this has little relevance to the name debate, but it's makes a fascinating background to that debate.

Thanks again for your interest in the article. Fowler Pierre 13:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Concerning Icelandic articles

You've been editing a lot of Icelandic articles, changing categorisation to sort by the patronymic: This should never be done -- the patronymic is just "Son of Someone" You don't sort people by whose son they are -- certainly not in either Icelandic or Russian. The English convention of sorting by surname does not apply. Also, you are changing spelling so that articles use 'd' instead of 'ð' etc. vide Guðmundur Arason et. al. As far as I know, the use of 'd' instead of 'ð' is just an English bastardisation, and is not the case in serious scholarship concerning these men. . I believe these changes are fundamentally mistaken, and I would like to have this issue clarified by an admin before you hack away at more articles. -- Palthrow 17:29, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not a bastardization; it's an English spelling, using an English letter. This is the English Wikipedia. The Gudmund and Gudmundr spellings are very common for this person. This is an encyclopedia; we are trying to spread information? So why on God's green earth would you want to hide this information from people searching with a search engine?

In fact, this should probably be brought to requested moves to change the article name to the most common English name, in accordance with the naming conventions on Wikipedia.

You do indeed sort by patronymics; especially in English and many other languages. Furthermore, it is done even in Icelandic when the indexing is not by first name, not that it matters much here because this isn't the Icelandic Wikipedia.

Furthermore, why in the world did you reindex so that "Guðmundur" would continue to appear after anybody named "Gunnar"? That's is wrong in English indexing (it doesn't really matter much that it is also wrong in Icelandic indexing, but it is). Gene Nygaard 17:36, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

BTW, is that -ur ending an anachronism? Gene Nygaard 17:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Even though this is the English Wikipedia, it doesn't change the fact that names should be spelled with the characters they contain in their native tongue. Would you drop the hat on e's in French accents? Would you omit 'é' characters in Hungarian names? No....in the same way, Icelandic names should be spelled with their Icelandic characters, hence "Guðmundur" or "Guðmundr", not Gudmund. The phonetics for 'd' and 'ð' are completely different. I might add that 'ð' and 'þ' (eth and thorn) are Old English characters -- adopted by the first Icelandic grammarian -- and thus are not Icelandic-specific i.e. this is not like using Chinese characters, say.

Concerning patronymics, the relatively large number of Icelanders working on Wikipedia seem to more or less abide by the Icelandic naming conventions in terms of indexing -- i.e. no sorting by patronymic. This I regard as a sensible policy. Patronyms are not surnames, not family names, they are *additional information* -- they tell of a person's origin. Would you file Joan of Arc as "Of Arc, Joan"? Seems pretty daft to me.

Finally, Icelanders themselves never sort by patronyms, for precisely the reason outlined above.

For clarification, the -ur ending is the ending of many Icelandic names in the nominative case, e.g. for Arnaldur, Þorvaldur, Kristmundur, etc.. The declensions for Guðmundur are: Nom: Guðmundur Dat: Guðmund Acc: Guðmundi Poss: Guðmundar. All Icelandic names are "by default" in the nominative case, unless they occur in certain parts of a sentence. Also, since all nouns in English have only one case, the nominative, it seems reasonable to employ the nominative when listing an Icelandic word or name -- Hence "Guðmundur" or "Guðmundr", not "Guðmund". Cheers, -- Palthrow 18:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure--in 19th century or 20th century rules. Nobody used -ur in this Gudmundr's time.

But first of all, why do you want to hide information? Gene Nygaard 18:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

You couldn't be more wrong. There were more declensive cases in Guðmundur's time than there is in Modern Icelandic, and -ur ending was pronounced and used. However, the writers of the manuscripts were pressed for space since they wrote on calf skins, and omitted vowels when writing the endings of cases -- thus you have the word maður (which means "man") spelled maðr, Guðmundur spelled Guðmundr or Guðmndr, depending on manuscripts. Written Icelandic is fairly new -- dates back to the early 12th century -- the Nordic settlers only had runes. If you look at the research done by Icelandic scholars, incl. Sigurður Nordal, there is evidence to indicate that the -ur ending was pronounce in fashion similar to today's, and, indeed, it is impossible to pronounce the 'dr' ending without interjecting a short vowel sound between the d and the r.

Concerning your accusation that I want to hide information, I quite frankly have no idea what you're talking about. I have no interest in hiding any information -- I merely want to see the articles which I (and others) have written categorised in the correct fashion. This does not hide the article from people using search engines, since almost all search engines (incl. the mother of them all, Google) do not distinguish between 'ð' and 'd'. A Google search for "Gudmundur godi" and "Guðmundur góði" bring identical results. -- Palthrow 18:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

So, enter "Gudmundur" in the search box right here on your Wikipedia page, then hit "Search" (or "Go", it doesn't matter). Then show me exactly where your pet article shows up. Gene Nygaard 18:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, try comparing this and this -- identical results, mate. At any rate, the amount of "Gudmundur" spellings is in all likelihood due to those unfamiliar with Old English characters mistaking the 'ð' character for 'd' (or even being unable to produce them on their keyboards). There is a number of Gudmundurs on Wikipedia, but there is also a number of "Guðmundurs", see these results --Palthrow 18:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

It does hide information from some searches, doesn't it? Or didn't you even try the Wikipedia built-in search engine?

It isn't necessarily any "mistaking". It is a matter of using the letters of our own alphabet.

Would you also characterize is:Sverrir Magnús Noregsprins as a "bastardization". Or is it a "mistaking" of an "e" for an "ir" and "u" for a "ú"?

Furthermore, the rules of Google (and it differs on the various other search engines as well) aren't that simple. Consider, for example, the following: Gene Nygaard 19:00, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Google	hits
Guðmundur -Gudmundur	1,420,000
Gudmundur -Guðmundur	314,000
Guðmund -Gudmund	98,900
Gudmund -Guðmund	661,000

Those darned Icelanders also mistake a "d" or a "ð" in is:Ingiríður Alexandra Noregsprinsessa. Can you believe that anybody would do that?

If an Icelander writes a dissertation or an article that is accepted in a professional journal, how is that author listed in the list of authors? How is that author indexed in English in the indexes of these papers? Answer--like this one, of course, even if she is now listed under the B in Category:Icelandic people:

http://www.is4ie.org/dynamic/search.php

Back to Dissertation Subject Listings
Search results for 'davidsdottir' in author_last
Davidsdottir, Brynhildur . 2002. A VINTAGE ANALYSIS OF REGIONAL ENERGY AND FIBER USE, TECHNOLOGY CHANGE AND GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY THE US PAPER INDUSTRY. Boston University.

That's standard. It has nothing to do with whether or not the surname is a "family name". Gene Nygaard 01:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Remember your bragging about "identical results" on Google up above? Now suppose you try this: Þorvaldur [9], Torvaldur [10], and Thorvaldur [11]. Guess what? Not identical results, of course. Gene Nygaard 01:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

is:Sverrir Magnús Noregsprins I would unquestionably call a bastardization, yes. There is a strange convention in Icelandic of moulding the names of royalty and famous historical figures to suit the Icelandic version of the names -- hence "Karl bretaprins" for "Prince Charles", "Atli húnakonungur" for Attila the Hun etc. Similar conventions exist in English for Roman and Greek figures -- e.g. Plato instead of "Platon", Livy instead of Livius etc. No established convention exist for names like Guðmundur in English, hence I think we should go with the originals in order to circumvent confusion. When I create new articles with Icelandic names, I generally create redirects for all the common bastardizations of the name. However, I think the article should rest and be indexed under the actual name of the person in question. Also, the fact patronymic systems are hard to acommodate into some indexing systems (e.g. your scholarly example) has no bearing on the matter. Wikipedia can accomodate the patronymic system. Looking up patronymically named people based on their patronym is a bloody nightmare because of the uniformity: so many people are Jónsson, Sigurðsson, etc. At any rate, the most important thing is that there be consistency -- which is sadly lacking. -- Palthrow 02:00, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, good grief! Wake up and smell the coffee.

Go do your Google search[12] for Slobodan Milosevich, for example. How many of the English newspaper stories covering his death do you find with any sorts of squiggles in his name? There certainly is an "established convention exist for names like Guðmundur in English"; it isn't any "bastardization".

Does Brynhildur Davidsdottir spell her own name the same way in Icelandic as she does in English I don't know, do you?

Looking up patronymically named people based on their given names is a bloody nightmare because of the uniformity: so many people are Jón, Guðmundur, etc.

Another thing you still haven't explained is why in the world you changed the categories that were still indexed by first name back so that it would put "Guðmundur" after "Gunnar" rather than before it? Gene Nygaard 02:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Take it easy, mate. There's no point in getting all worked up. The article on Milosevic is a case in point: It is stored under Slobodan Milošević with redirects for English spellings, while the article refers to him as Milošević throughout. Seems reasonable, just as I argue that Guðmundur Arason should be referred to as Guðmundur in the article, although you inserted the Gudmund version. As for the alleged edit, I'm not sure which one you're talking about.

I would like to suggest that some kind of guidelines be drafted on how to resolve situations like these. The current situation is preposterous, when you end up with categories like Category:Icelandic_people where well intentioned people consistently damage the ordering of the names with their indexing. Perhaps you know whom to talk to? -- Palthrow 03:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure, the article "refers to him as Milošević throughout". Except, of course, for the forty-eight times it refers to him as "Milosevic".

As far as the indexing goes, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out. How many times have you changed the indexing in categories such as Icelandic people? I'm talking about this edit. Why did you change it so that "Guðmundur" would come after "Gunnar" rather than before it? Gene Nygaard 03:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

In the Icelandic person articles I've created, I've always listed them in the format Category:CatName|GivenName Patronymic, which is exactly what I did with the Guðmundur Arason entry. What's your point? 'ð' is alphabetically prior to 'n' in the alphabet, it comes right after 'd' and should be sorted as such. I know that the most active wikipedians working on Iceland-related articles have made it their practice to categorise in the fashion outlined above, and, indeed, that is where I adopted it. --Palthrow 03:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Just like I figured, you are totally oblivious to what is going on around you. Didn't you ever wonder why the things you indexed didn't get put where you thought they'd be?

No, whether 'ð' is alphabetically prior to 'n' in some particular alphabet doesn't matter in the least. The order of letters does also, of course, differ in different alphabets. (And it would be in the English alphabet on English wikipedia in any case; the order in the Icelandic alphabet is irrelevant).

All the sorting goes by is the order in which they appear in the Unicode character set—not the order they appear in any particular alphabet.

That 'ð' is indexed as character number F0 hexadecimal, U+00F0 (240 decimal, you can get it using ð ð) That's way after 'n' which is character number U+006E (you can even get it using n n or Alt-110 on the numeric keypad in Windows). It's way after 'z', which is decimal 122, and it's even way after Ð which is decimal 208). That ð would be indexed in between an uppercase Þ and a lowercase þ; the n would be way before both of them. Get the idea? Gene Nygaard 03:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

A few loose ends:

1. I thought there was something on Category:Icelandic people or Category talk:Icelandic people about it and its subcategories being sorted by first name. I don't see it now. I think I'll stop doing so.

2. Your "Russian patronymic" example isn't applicable, because for most or all of the Russian names we have a family name as well as the patronymic.

3. I suppose you might actually cut the "bloody nightmare" in half by indexing by first names, since matronymics are so rare. But it will still never compare to looking for a "Williams" or "Smith" or "Lopez" or "Hernandez".

4. When you hinge your objection on a silly notion that the reason for indexing certain people by first name is that their particular some of these patronymics are not family names, you would end up with the illogical situation of some Icelanders being indexed by first name and some being indexed by family name (some of which are also of the patronymic form, of course), both within the Icelandic people and subcategories and in other categories as well. That is not conducive to finding anybody. You shouldn't have to know whether or not that last name is a family name or merely an active patronymic in order to know which letter of the alphabet to look under.

5. There are also many non-Icelanders who are listed on Wikipedia whose names are active patronymics, based on their father's first name. The articles don't tell us if these are, for example, but I'd bet that several (likely most) of them are: Erik Jørgensen, Erik Eriksen (explorer), Gunnar Knudsen, Hans Christian Petersen, Otto Bahr Halvorsen, Olaf Gulbransson, Theodor Kittelsen, Sigval Bergesen. My point is that it really doesn't matter if the article tells us or not, whether these names come from one the father's given names or one of (most likely had toponymic last names as well) the father's last names doesn't matter, that last name is still the proper name to index them under in most people categories, the obvious exceptions being those categories dealing with a particular family which are usually indexed by first name. Gene Nygaard 12:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC) clarification made with strikeout and underline 13:14, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's one where I know that to be the case, though the information isn't in the article: Cleng Peerson was the son of Peder Larson Hesthammer. Gene Nygaard 12:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't know about these limitations in the wiki code concerning ordering -- I imagine it deals in an equally unsatisfying way with ô ö, ê è etc? Do you systematically change these to o, oe, e, and e respectively, just to circumvent the indexing problem? How do they deal with this in the French and Icelandic Wikipedias? Is there a way to control the sorting?

Regarding your Scandinavian examples, none of the Nordic countries use patronyms any more, and former patronyms have changed into family names. Icelanders still do -- and there will *never* be a situation where you are supposed to address an Icelander by his patronymic -- all Icelanders address each other, and prefer to be addressed, by first name only, for reasons I have outlined previously. While there do exist Icelanders with family names (generally of foreign origin), this family name will never be used in any kind of public discourse, irrespective of rank or status. E.g. I would address the president of Iceland as Ólafur, and the prime minister as Halldór, and foreign minister Geir Haarde (who has a Norwegian family name) merely as Geir, never as Haarde.

Regardless, I see your point and I understand why you're doing it, so I'll go with the same rules. It strikes me as a question of technical limitations. Perhaps you would like to point out other Icelandic-people contributors this position? -- Palthrow 16:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure, the Norwegians have now switched to family names; but some of the male-line descendants of a Gunnar Knudsen of that time frame may now be Gunnarsen, some may now be Larsen, some may now be Haugen or Kjøs or whatever. My great-grandfather Nygaard and his brothers ended up using three different family names, and the one who went by Gunder Jacobson had one child—American-born at that—named Jacob Gunderson, whose children were Gundersons as well.

Here is what Wikipedia:Categorization says about the sorting:

• Diacritics are omitted: e.g. Étretat: [[Category:Communes of Seine-Maritime|Etretat]], or: Ål: [[Category:Municipalities of Norway|Al]]
• Ligatures are separated: e.g. Æsir: [[Category:Norse mythology|Aesir]]

Of course, there are letters like Ö which are ligatures in some languages and an O with diacritics in other languages. So it's often a tossup which way to go with some of those letters; but either choice is likely to get you closer to what most anybody would expect in English indexing than leaving it to be sorted by Unicode number.

Initial letters, of course, are the biggest problem. Many of the large categories have a navigation tool bar at the top, listing the alphabet. The 26 letter English alphabet, of course, with no indication that some characters may be misindexed following the Z. Furthermore, we usually don't sort the small letters separately after the capital letters, so if what you want to index by starts with a small letter, change it to a capital letter (e.g., to sort category Icelandic folk music in Category:Icelandic music under F, you would use Category:Icelandic music|Folk music, not with "folk" with lowercase f after the vertical bar as it was before I fixed it. Gene Nygaard 10:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

And I thought the Tortuga/Tortue debate was getting obsessive... Fowler Pierre 14:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Ethiopian name sorting

Howdy, earlier I noticed your edit to Girma Wolde-Giorgis. Among Ethiopian names, generally speaking one's "last name" is actually his or her father's name (or, grandfather's name when three names are shown), and the person's first name is used for reference. Hence one would say "the Mengistu regime" instead of "the Hailemariam regime" (as the latter refers to Mengistu's father), "Meles is prime minister" instead of "Zenawi is prime minister," etc. When I come across these I sort them by first name. This being the English Wikipedia, perhaps there's a consensus to follow the Western-style name indexing (and FWIW, when an Ethiopian immigrates to the US, these names all become first name, last name, middle name), but in this case it isn't accurate. But it appears that Arabic names are sorted by second names, which (from my understanding) isn't accurate either...? -- Gyrofrog (talk) 04:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Not a whole lot different from Johnson or Anderson or O'Malley or MacDonald, is it? What about the reversed order, as in "Open letter to Mr. Woldegiorgis Girma, President of the Republic of Ethiopia" at [13]? How common is that? Gene Nygaard 04:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Kelvins

As I told you before, a search of the astronomical literature reveals that the singular form is used 90% of the time. What makes you think you know better than everyone else? Stop changing it, please. Worldtraveller 19:21, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll dispute your figures. For one thing, you aren't factoring in the adjective form; when we talk about a 2.7 kelvin background radiation, there is no "s" at the end of the adjective.

Furthermore, a large number of the same astronomers still write it Kelvin with a capital K—in fact, that is something I've also had to change in almost all of them where I added the proper plural form, as well as many others that either already had the s or weren't supposed to have an s either because they were adjectives or because they were singular. Both are manifestations of the very same problem, a failure to understand the significance of the 1967 change in the rules by the International General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), the keepers of the world's standards. Gene Nygaard 02:52, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, you'd never made that specific claim before, but furthermore--

Why did those working papers for some obscure little IEEE standard on a minor topic falsely claim something that was not supported in any way by either of the authorities they cited in support of their statement? Why haven't you addressed that on Talk:Pleiades (star cluster) Gene Nygaard 02:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

This is so stupid it's unbelievable. I am an astronomer, I'm telling you what the usage is, major journals like Science, Nature, ApJ, MNRAS etc etc follow this usage, and because you can find some style guide that recommends the singular you're now edit warring to apply your personal preference to articles. You really believe that all astronomers are suffering from a 'failure to understand' a 40 year old document? You, I believe, are not a scientist, so you really should not touch science articles to change things you don't understand. Worldtraveller 16:45, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

From Nature:[14]

• "body size, Mi, and absolute temperature, T in kelvins"
• plotted against the reciprocal of the temperature in kelvins
• should reach several Kelvins at
• only several kelvins below the HX line
• The vertical axis is in kelvins
• think in terms of millikelvins rather than, like metallurgists, in thousands of kelvins,
• temperatures of the order of 100 milli-kelvins
• T and Tm are given in kelvins.
• effective temperature parameter, Te in Kelvins
• was measured in kelvins.
• central temperatures of a few hundred million kelvins
• central temperatures of a few tens of Kelvins for 10-km radius icy comets.
• record of 50 nano-Kelvins
• where Tis in Kelvins.
• BTU with ergs and joules; and Kelvins with degrees Centigrade and even Faren-heit

Gene Nygaard 19:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

BTW, in the journals you cited, in how many of them can you find people still using "degrees Kelvin"? Gene Nygaard 19:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I presume you also searched Nature for the singular form? I presume you would have noticed that that returns 728 results, compared to just 15 for 'kelvins'? I'm sorry, but your edits to impose your own preference on astronomical articles are verging on vandalistic now. If you keep on doing this I'll have to file a request for comment, and if that doesn't work, then a request for arbitration. Worldtraveller 17:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

You made your claim as if these journals do not use kelvins. They obviously do.

So what in the world does your 728 results mean? There's a lot of nonsense unrelated to the issue at hand, including

• "additions to the list are James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, the Rayleighs," [there has only been one Lord Kelvin, William Thomson]
• "a 300-degrees Kelvin tissue" [obviously people so out of touch with the world around them aren't going to be using "degrees Kelvins"]
• "(between 30 and 70 millionths of a kelvin" [singular because its absolute value is greater than zero and less than or equal to one. Had they used millikelvins microkelvins, it should be plural, of course—but when they use kelvins without a prefix, it is singular.
• "Xu L , Kelvin D , Ye G , Taub DD ," [some other author whose last name is Kelvin]
• "I thank Kelvin Davies, PhD," [some other person whose first name is Kelvin]
• "results square with Kelvin's original estimate of cooling" [possessive related to William Thomson]
• "a recent observation of Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) vortices " [adjective related to William Thomson, Lord Kelvin]
• "a light box (Kelvin rating approximately 6200°)" [used as an adjective, but then also improper degrees Kelvin without identifying the scale]

21:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

It could be you were being deliberately obtuse, or maybe you're actually not understanding this - not all the 728 are examples of the usage I'm talking about, but far far more than 15 are - the search results, as you must realise, show clearly that the singular form is by far the most common. I haven't seen you editing to impose your own style preference recently, so if you've stopped then thanks for finally listening. Worldtraveller 20:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not the one who writes the rules. I'll get around to fixing any I missed eventually. And I doubt that it is much more than 15, expecially if you through out those using "degrees Kelvin" which are probably more common. Quite clearly, some of those journals do use the proper plural form—maybe not always, but a significant portion of the time. Gene Nygaard 22:27, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like you'd rather believe what you want to believe than actually to check what scientists use. If I see you change any more articles to impose your own preference, I'll treat that as vandalism, as it appears you're just being deliberately awkward about this. Worldtraveller 16:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

You can treat it as whatever you want, but that won't make it so.

What you have managed to show so far is that there are a considerable number of astronomers among those who do follow the rules.

Sure, there are also some dinosaurs still living in the days of degrees Kelvin, but so what? Gene Nygaard 12:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

B.S. Chandrasekhar puts in quite well in a letter to APS News, March 2002.

"More on Plurals

"Arne Reitan (November 2001 issue) says that the plural of kelvin is kelvin, not kelvins. He mistakenly thinks that the international system of units implies an international language with its own grammar. Physics is international, but the words in which it is expressed belong to a language, English, Norwegian, Hindustani, or whatever, and must follow the grammar and usage of that language. Agreed, papers in PR and PRL do not always do so, say some purists. Anyway, in English I write one kelvin or 273 kelvins, but in German I write ein Kelvin or 273 Kelvin. Note incidentally the capitalizing of nouns in German! In English, it is 230 volts, 10 amperes, 55 kilometres, 28 teslas, ...need I go on?"

B.S.Chandrasekhar

Groebenzell, Germany

Gene Nygaard 17:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Ruler and compass constructions?

Can you pop by the above linked discussion and see if John Reid's explanation in his vote satisfies your concern (or just mention it here since I have it watched). Its a keep the way it sits now. --Syrthiss 13:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Apologies

Hello Gene. I saw you were indexing some Scottish & Irish history articles with diacritics in the names. I created some of them, and have edited many others, and I have to confess that I never even thought of the indexing side of things. Apologies & thanks for fixing this, and I'll try to make sure you don't need to do it all over again in a few months. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC) P.S. Do ligatures need the same treatment ?

I think I copied the part about diacritics and ligatures from Wikipedia:Categorization somewhere, but you can just go there and look for "sorting". I'd index æ as ae and Æ as Ae; is that what you mean? Same for œ, but I don't see that often, and ß as ss. Others aren't always so easy German ä, ö, and ü can be ae, oe, and ue as in Müller|Mueller, but those characters in some other languages should be a, o, and u, and I often do that with the German letters too. Sometimes, if an English spelling is given in the article, I use that form in the indexing; some diacritics with c indexed as ch, etc, but without that I just use the letter unaccented. I guess I'd find a couple of options acceptable in many cases, and if someone has a strong preference for one or the other in a particular article, I'd probably leave it.

Of course, I sometimes index Å as "aa" rather than the A in the example on the categorization page.

In sparsely populated categories it is often unnoticeable. The ones I've changed have usually resulted because they were listed out of order in some category. It's not that I have any qualms about changing them when I don't know, if I'm editing the article for some other reason, but I don't bother looking for hte ones that don't show up out of place somewhere. Of course, as more articles are added to a category, more of them will show up out of place.

P.S. There were some of those with a sort key with things like "|Family", something which didn't show up in the article's name and which wouldn't be helpful in the indexing. I don't remember which ones they were; most of them were in one or two categories, but I didn't go to those categories. Maybe I can figure it out and post it here. Gene Nygaard 01:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

One of them was Déisi Tuisceart which was indexed as Category:Ancient history|Peoples, and while if done consistently that would get all peoples under the "P", there wouldn't generally be any indication on the category page (unless someone added it in text at the top) showing why all those peoples are listed under "P". Look at Category:Ancient history, especially under "P". Gene Nygaard 01:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, it all makes perfect sense. I can't think of any reason to index the things under "P" or "F", so I'll have a look at that. I'm fairly sure ancient peoples is the wrong category anyway. "Æ" and "Œ" were what I had in mind for ligatures, used for some Anglo-Saxon history articles, and indexed as Ae or Oe in topic-specific reliable sources, just as you said. Thanks again for the explanations. I feel confident now about adding the indexing myself if I find anything that needs it. Bye for now ! Angus McLellan (Talk) 07:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

weight and mass

I tried responding to some assertions about weight and mass at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft#ParserFunctions Please feel free to join in. bobblewik 21:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Douglas-Bisbee and Douglas Airports

Hi,

Douglas Municipal Airport and Douglas-Bisbee International Airport are not the same airport. Douglas Municipal is two miles east of the town of Douglas and Douglas-Bisbee is about ten miles north. I believe the Int'l Airport used to be affiliated with the military.

There is also a Bisbee Municipal Airport. SportingFlyer 06:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for editing Accidental release source terms

Gene, thanks for Wikifying Accidental release source terms. - mbeychok 20:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Washington, D.C.

Thanks for reverting my edit and pointing this out to me; I can't believe I missed that! (Somehow I misread Use standard abbreviations when using symbols) To let you know, I have changed it back to my previous edit, except fixing this issue, since the majority of my edit (I hope!) did not contradict with WP:MOS. Thanks, AndyZ _t 00:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)