User talk:Coolcaesar

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia!

Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Try the Tutorial, and feel free to experiment in the test area.
• If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk
• Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
• Remember Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
• Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Good luck!

[[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]]

P.S. One last helpful hint. To sign your posts like I did above (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type ~~~ (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use ~~~~ (4 tildes).

Another welcome!

Keep up the great work on L.A. topics! jengod 17:52, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Yet another hello

Wow! You're doing some very constructive work on Southland articles. Very nice, and welcome to the Wiki! --avnative 05:08, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Edit summaries

I noticed that you recently made an edit summary: Affirmative action; 19:11:26 . . Coolcaesar (Talk) (Fixing the spelling, the idiot who wrote this doesn't know how to spell affirmative)

While I totally understand your frustration, it's generally better not to put it into edit summaries. See Wikipedia:Wikitiqute. ;-) Thanks for working on Wikipedia. The comment above reminded me that I should look at the entries on LA (I'm a LA native). JesseW 02:15, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, people like myself do make spelling mistakes all the time. I always check my work, but sometimes miss things. Please, though, as JesseW said, don't call me an idiot for spelling affirmative incorrectly. (Yes, I was the one who wrote the lines that containted misspelled affirmative [1]). Personal attacks aren't at all constructive, it's better just to make the correction and move on. —siroχo 23:37, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Cities vs. Towns in California

Just curious about the edit you made to city, where you said in California, a town is any incorporated settlement with less than 10,000 people, and a city is any incorporated settlement with more than 10,000 people. Do you have a source for this? I recall looking at the CA constitution and legal code and I don't recall seeing any such distinction between cities and towns. What I recall, all incorporated municipalities in CA are considered "cities" under the law, although they can call themselves either a city or town. older≠wiser 17:10, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

Please be more careful

You pasted in the whole Los Angeles, California article in place of the section on education when you lasted edited it. I just fixed it; I had to merge in two sections that had been edited since. Please be carful about that in the future. It's a hassle to fix. The section on education is quite good, though. JesseW 08:20, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Excellent work on Avalon, California

Good additions you made to the article on Avalon. Good work. JesseW 06:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Gary Webb

Your contributions to the Gary Webb article seem to be in error. Please be careful to check your facts. --Viriditas | Talk 21:49, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the point. Your facts were wrong, no matter where you got them. The obituary made errors that you didn't bother to check, including giving the wrong title of his book. I apologize for my tone, but I see this kind of thing so often it upsets me. Surely, you cannot be faulted for not bothering to check the facts from an obituary, after all, you probably expected them to be accurate. Check your facts. Newspapers should be the paragons of objectivity, but unfortunately, they are not. --Viriditas | Talk 22:37, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you got the title of the book wrong, which makes me think you haven't read it, so your comments about Webb come off as uninformed. I don't think that you can guage the quality of Webb's work by his supporters, nor what the "majority" think of him, so I must discard your argument in that regard. I am not interested in conspiracy theories (nor does my edit history demonstrate any interest) nor political ideologies of any kind. I am, however, interested in facts -- facts which seem to be lacking on the current page. --Viriditas | Talk 23:13, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Miranda

Even if police can get knowing and voluntary waivers from most accused criminals-- which I would like to see empirical studies on before it is included in the article-- I fail to see how this would "hurt" a suspect. Anyway, whether Miranda was intended to decrease the number of confessions or inhibit interrogation is debatable in itself. I furthermore doubt that this was the main reason the Clinton administration refused to fight Miranda-- I'm guessing, probably correctly, that it had more to do with a reluctance to alienate liberals who would have been upset if Miranda was overturned.

If you want to put the info. back, I would insist you cite empirical studies or well-known legal authorities, because it all sounded fairly dubious to me when I read it and still seems dubious.

NP

Okay, I've read your note on my discussion page. I remain utterly unconvinced.

I still totally fail to see how Miranda "hurt" criminal suspects, and I would delete any reference to Miranda "hurting" criminal suspects from a subsequent article. I think it is a rather absurd conclusion, because you would have to "compare" criminal interrogations pre- and post- Miranda, which is beyond the scope of wikipedia anyway. The fact that many Miranda suspects do waive their rights is NOT an indication that Miranda is failing. Miranda only attempted to provide that suspects are aware that they do not have to talk to police. It in no way attempted convince suspects that they shouldn't talk to police, and it in no way attempted to silence suspects. Again, THE ONLY PURPOSE OF MIRANDA WAS TO ENSURE SUSPECTS ARE AWARE OF THEIR RIGHTS, not to silence them.

Note that the question of whether Miranda "hurts" suspects is a different question than whether confessions "hurt" suspects. Both conclusions, of course, are debatable. I heavily doubt your conclusion that there can be no such thing as a confession borne of free will. Sometimes, guilty people actually do have consciences and wish, rationally, to confess their crimes to remove an emotional burden.

I would also note that your entire note represented your opinion and the opinion of law review writers. These opinions are highly, highly debatable and should not be included in the article.

In what sense Miranda represented a compromise is a matter of pure conjecture. Whether the justices ever seriously considered the ACLU's "jailhouse lawyer" proposal is questionable. Indeed, seeing as NO JUSTICE ENDORSED THIS POSITION, this opinion in Miranda does not appear to represent a "compromise." Furthermore, the ACLU's proposal was an absurd proposal as a matter of Constitutional law. If you are one of those people who believe that Supreme Court justices actually do attempt to produce the correct resolution of a case on the basis of the Constitution, and do not simply craft "compromises" that please them, then your "compromise" argument additionally fails.

I am not convinced that Miranda's protections are so ephemeral that they can be "evaded" at will. The Supreme Court addressed a so-called "loophole" in Miranda in last terms Missouri v. Seibert, concluding that police may not interrogate a suspect without Miranda, and then Mirandize the suspect and then reinterrogate that suspect. The point is, THIS WAS THE MAJOR "LOOPHOLE" critics pointed to. Whether significant "loopholes" remain AFTER MISSOURI V. SEIBERT, furthermore, is a conclusion outside the scope of an encyclopedia article.

Whether that practice represented a "loophole" at all is debatable (Justice O'Connor, who dissented in Seibert, would object to the characterization of that practice as a "loophole"), and for you to argue that subsequent cases have "weakened" Miranda or "created loopholes" is based on speculation and opinion. I don't care if law review articles have come to this conclusion; their job is to express opinions on the law, but they do not represent absolute truth. The opinions of law review articles, especially contested ones, should not be cited in an encyclopedia articles as truth.

Whether the subsequent cases on waiver rules "weakened" Miranda is also debatable. Perhaps a law review writer believes they did "weaken" Miranda, but the Court has always applied Miranda in these cases; whether or not they have done so in a proper way is a matter of opinion. Miranda punted on the waiver issue, and thus subsequent cases had to flesh out what constituted a "waiver." But to imply Miranda is totally ineffectual is ludicrous.

It does not require argument, of course, to show that a study showing retarded people cannot understand Miranda does not suffice to prove in any way, shape, or form, that the warnings are "hypertechnical." This is total nonsense. The warning, which any Law and Order viewer can recite off the top of their head, is not "hypertechnical."

I once again must vigorously disagree with your arguments and conclusions.

NP

California#Transportation

That is not a "better picture" - come on now, plus the size is not good. Leonard G. 04:19, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nice job on freeways!

I kinda let that little project of mine slide when school got heavy--thanks for helping out.

User of term "vandalism"

I am affronted by your use of the term "vandalism" regarding your removal of my transportation funding edit to the California article. While you may not like my arguably NNPOV language, and are welcome (as are all of us) to rewrite it as desired, or even eliminate my edit as being couched in provocative or biased language, an accusation of vandalism is totally inappropriate. As far as the facts of the matter discussed are concerned they are accurate as best as I can determine. Please feel free to write a paragraph regarding the underfunding of public transit and the relative overfunding of highways. I would be happy to see this matter presented in appropriate circumlocutionary style.

Sincerely, with best wishes, Leonard G. 18:47, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)