User talk:Gadfium

User:Gadfium/archive template Please add items to the bottom of this page. I will normally reply on this page to any conversation started here.

ACG English School

I started from scratch, just using 1 paragraph that was extracted from a recognized institution: The Auckland University.I was about adding more information, always with the proper reference.. but you deleted everything without a warning. Any comment about it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starjim (talk • contribs) 21:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The article was deleted after a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ACG English school. That discussion took into account that the University of Auckland listed them under "Other English language courses in Auckland".

I note that other articles deleted in the same AfD have also been recreated. However, there is general consensus on Wikipedia that secondary schools are notable, even though these school articles are lacking in independent sources. There is no such view that English language schools are notable, and if you wish to contest the AfD, you can open a Deletion review.-gadfium 23:37, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

DGG said: "Not just spam, but spam intended to mislead without actually lying". This is a false presumption, the University of Auckland would never endorse such a thing of a dubious school. The English School, all along with the The University of Auckland Certificate in Foundation Studies, are programmes from the UoA. Many of the current UoA students comes from this programmes because this is the way for the Uni to prepare them for their education levels. So you request notability, the UoA confirmed that by endorsing this School. It's curious how an article from a newspaper could represent notability but a formal mention from a University isn't. If that is the case, I wonder what is left for being notable for Wikipedia then? Shall I present a written letter from the Uni directors to speak in behalf the ACG English School? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starjim (talk • contribs) 02:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

See my advice above.-gadfium 03:40, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Rhys Darby

Hi. Thanks for finding and adding this. I searched for RSs before removing the DOB and all I turned up was Wikipedia mirrors. It looks as if I didn't filter for .nz sources, which I guess is what you did! -- Trevj (talk) 09:36, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I think my google searches automatically promote .nz sites. There were a lot of sites I ignored as mirrors or unreliable sources.-gadfium 09:43, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania

Enjoy! Schwede66 05:51, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks.64.105.101.218 (talk) 04:52, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference Update & Survey (your opinion requested)

Credo Reference, who generously donated 400 free Credo 250 research accounts to Wikipedia editors over the past two years, has offered to expand the program to include 100 additional reference resources. Credo wants Wikipedia editors to select which resources they want most. So, we put together a quick survey to do that:

• Link to Survey (should take between 5-10 minutes): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N8FQ6MM

It also asks some basic questions about what you like about the Credo program and what you might want to improve.

At this time only the initial 400 editors have accounts, but even if you do not have an account, you still might want to weigh in on which resources would be most valuable for the community (for example, through WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Also, if you have an account but no longer want to use it, please leave me a note so another editor can take your spot.

If you have any other questions or comments, drop by my talk page or email me at wikiocaasi@yahoo.com. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:17, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

July 2012 Study of authors of health-related Wikipedia pages

Dear Author/Gadfium

My name is Nuša Farič and I am a Health Psychology MSc student at University College London (UCL). I am currently running a quantitative study entitled Who edits health-related Wikipedia pages and why? I am interested in the editorial experience of people who edit health-related Wikipedia pages. I am interested to learn more about the authors of health-related pages on Wikipedia and what motivations they have for doing so. I am currently contacting the authors of randomly selected articles and I noticed that someone at this address recently edited an article on Age-related muscular degeneration. I would like to ask you a few questions about you and your experience of editing the above mentioned article. If you would like more information about the project, please visit my user page (Hydra_Rain) and if interested, please visit my Talk page or e-mail me on nusa.faric.11@ucl.ac.uk. Also, others interested in the study may contact me! If I do not hear back from you I will not contact this account again. Thank you very much in advance. Hydra Rain (talk) 21:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

You are wrongly tagging my posts as vandalism

Gadfium,

You are compromising the integrity of Wikipedia by wrongly tagging my posts as vandalism. Consider this a warning. The NASA Apollo program was perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign in U.S. history. The time has come for the truth to be known.

Do you really believe this photo was taken on the surface of the moon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_17_Cernan_on_moon.jpg

I see you describe yourself as a bureaucrat and also claim to be educated as a scientist. It may be that you need to chose one or the other.

-- ApoGnosis

Your fringe beliefs are covered by Moon landing conspiracy theories. Posting them to mainstream articles as fact are going to get you blocked.-gadfium 20:00, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

User:Gadfium The fact that you use the following techniques shows that you are not a critical thinker, but a conduit for state propaganda:

Appeal to authority

Appeal to fear

Labeling

Oversimplification

Milieu control

ApoGnosis (talk) 20:14, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing yourself to my attention.-gadfium 20:31, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

User:Gadfium

Ok maybe my last comment was a little overwrought. I am on a crusade for truth, but perhaps it can be conducted without the help of Wikipedia.

Regarding the above

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

(Not a real notice actually, an obvious sock of one of the above users reported you and was blocked by me. But procedure dictates you should be notified so here it is. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 17:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC))

Thanks. They're obviously a sock of someone, but I don't see any reason to believe that this is ApoGnosis.-gadfium 20:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Was the timing behind it that draws the connection. I made an CU request to verify. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 07:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI, it was ApoGnosis, among others. [1] ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 08:18, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Napier climate

You removed a plot of climate, remarking we don't need a climate chart and a weather box. I added the plot because there is a specific message not communicated to the reader by a table. A table is useful for presenting precise values and comparing individual pairs of numbers. A plot is the better method for communicating pattern and shape. I expect people are primarily interested in the broad climate pattern, hence why I added a plot. Occasionally people will be interested in specific values. So there is a need for both. The plot also enables people to visually contrast Napier climate with other location pages that present this same plot. This is very tedious with a table. See this web page more more discussion . I think both the chart and table should be standard across major towns of New Zealand, and just the chart for minor locations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twilding (talk • contribs) 00:38, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. I like the plot more than the table, but the table does show more data. I accept your point that the two could co-exist, although the addition of the plot to Napier left a lot of ugly white space. This could probably be avoided by re-arranging the text and graphics.

It seems awkward to have the same data repeated twice. The long-term solution might be for the plot to be included as a display option for the table. There was a discussion about that at Template talk:Weather box/Archive 2#This template or template:Climate_chart but it seems to have petered out without resolution. An editor did produce a combined template, but it is not visible any more because the sandbox it relied on has since been edited for other purposes.

Are you aware of any non-New Zealand articles which currently contain both the plot and the table?-gadfium 01:01, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

No. I see a lot of climate tables for cities. I was struggling to decipher the pattern from these, so was relieved to find several climate pages with the nice neat chart. I agree the white space is awkward. My attempts to remove this before posting was fruitless. The table is something I would normally leave to an appendix. Does wikipedia have such an option? Twilding970 (talk) 09:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The WikiMedia software allows footnotes sections separate from references, so it would be technically possible to move the weather box to an appendix section with a superscripted link, but I am not aware of any article which has such a substantial table in a footnote. It is also possible to collapse a section of text, e.g.

Extended content
This is a collapsed section

but this is used in articles to hide collections of links to related articles, and not data.

I think the best place to get insightful discussion about this would be at Template talk:Weather box.-gadfium 20:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for clearing up the page on Dementia

Many thanks for clearing up the article on Dementia, by removing the nonsense that you referred to as spam and which seemed to me as some one trying to insert advertising into the article. Not only was the insertion a plain violation of Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not, it was misleading - it referred to Alzheimer's disease and dementia as if they were different conditions. Again, many thanks for removing the nonsense some tried to put into this article. It is good to see that misleading inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles do get removed quickly! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 08:15, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello

Thanks for your message re: Martyn 'Bomber' Bradbury. I am well aware of Wikipedia's "neutral" POV and am well versed in wiki protocol. Bomber Bradbury is a noted dick in this fair country and I feel the article should reflect this. I cannot provide much in the way of support for this, outside my own feelings toward the man, however if I ever meet him in real life^TM I plan to smack him in the face in a manner which may make the local news in which case I'll link to it as "Bomber Bradbury is a noted dick, a dick to such an extant that random people smack him in the face when he leaves the house". Cheers. Ace McWicked (talk) 23:34, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

FAO interests

Gadfium, can you give some advice? There is a question on my talk page which furthers a discussion where you originally participated. An editor is claiming they have a "mandate to enhance FAO presence in Wikipedia", though they do not corroborate that. The editor has also claimed that the person "responsible for FAO external media communication ... has agreed to start making contacts with Wikipedia responsible/editors". If that were to be the case, do you know what procedures such a communicator should follow. Jimmy Wales recently took some interest in issues like this on his talk page. Are you aware of any outcomes to that issue and whether there are clear guidelines that such a person could be referred to? Thanks. --Epipelagic (talk) 20:24, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I suspect that the mandate that they refer to means they have permission from their superiors at FAO to spend some time on establishing a presence on Wikipedia, and not a mandate from Wikipedia to do anything.

The appropriate route for someone wanting to do some direct editing in support of FAO would be for them to post at the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject United Nations asking for advice. It would certainly be appropriate for them to work with this wikiproject, and it might be appropriate to set up a subproject to deal with FAO, and perhaps a subportal. Conflict of interest guidelines will be relevant.

To propose a collaboration between Wikipedia and FAO, the best place to start I can think of is the GLAM Contact page.

There is certain to be someone in the WikiMedia Foundation who has the job of coordinating with major organisations such as FAO. Unfortunately, I don't know who this is (it has been Sue Gardner in the past, but now she's the Executive Director). I suggest you ask at the help desk for further information.-gadfium 20:57, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that :) --Epipelagic (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2012 (UTC)