User talk:Bkonrad

User talk:Bkonrad/Archive1 February 2004 to 1 April 2004
User talk:Bkonrad/Archive2 May 2004 to June 2004
User talk:Bkonrad/Archive3 July 2004 to August 2004
User talk:Bkonrad/Archive4 September 2004 to October 2004
User talk:Bkonrad/Archive5 November 2004 to December 2004
User talk:Bkonrad/Archive6 January 2005 to February 2005

Please let me know if you want me to respond on your talk page. I prefer having discussions occur in one place, so I will generally respond to comments on this page, except for pithy chit-chit, where it's not so important to preserve the context of the comments.

This is my talk page and I reserve the right to remove abusive, bothersome, annoying, or inane comments without any response or regrets.

Also, please don't be offended it I don't reply to a comment. I'm often not inclined to chit-chat, and if I don't have anything to say (or at least anything constructive) I may simply not say anything. However, sometimes I may intend to reply later and simply forget, so go ahead and remind me if I seem to have dropped the ball. (BTW, more than one person in RL has made unfavorable comparisons between my conservational skills and that of a wall, so I'm quite used to being nudged to say something.)

Chicago

Because of your work with the WikiProject Cities I'd like you to take a look at the Chicago article if you have the time & desire. It is currently up for Peer Review (see Chicago Talk) and I would enjoy hearing your feedback to help guide the growth of this article. No response is needed on my talk page. Jasenlee 01:11, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

re: dablinks

Hi - I agree that it's probably not necessary to add dablinks to places like Florence, Minnesota, but I don't think it hurts. My thought behind adding these was that someone browsing to Florence, Minnesota might like to know (if they didn't already) that there are other places named Florence in the world, including the major city in Italy. I've been systematically adding dablinks like these to place names in Japan, where it is not so obvious to me that someone following a google hit on, say, Ichinomiya, and arriving at the town Ichinomiya, Chiba wasn't really looking for the city Ichinomiya, Aichi. It seems the same sort of situation may well occur for nearly anything where there are numerous places/etc. that share the same name (perhaps a Japanese person or a first grader looking for the famous city of Florence arrives at Florence, Minnesota from a google hit). -- Rick Block 15:28, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've posted a summary of this exchange at Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation which I assume you've seen (which has eliciited no comments yet, which actually surprises me). -- Rick Block 05:46, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Central Michigan Univeristy / CMU

After reading the Disambiguation text on the CMU page, I've got a better understanding as to why you removed the link from the Central Michigan University page to the CMU page... thanks. The main purpose I had added it in was to avoid the potential re-addition of Carnegie Mellon information to the Central Michigan University page (after all, none of the other "MSU" schools are listed on Michigan State's page, so why should the Central article mention Carnegie Mellon?).

On the whole, I'm not even sure the Central Michigan University page even needs the mention that the university is often referred to as CMU, since most universities are known by their abbreviation in addition to their full name (and most university articles on the Wikipedia don't bother to mention the abbreviation). For the meantime, though, I'll leave the reference in and see what happens.

Thanks again.

Template:CatAZ

You recently inserted the tag CatAZ into a large category. If you have the time and inclination, I would be grateful if you could visit the talk page Template talk:CatAZ and say which of two version you prefer: with a shaded box and the word Contents, or without the box and the word. --Henrygb 21:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Highway-related stubs

Listen, I am trying to have the best intentions for Wikipedia nowadays. I am a roadgeek, road historan and whatsoever. These stubs and substubs that I generated are not meant to annoy anyone, they are here for historical value and retroactive curiousity about freeway construction projects from the past. --GoofyGuy 03:22, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, since you suggested that link for I-75 construction in Michigan, we could merge all those stubs and some information from Interstate 75 into that article you suggested.

Thank you

Hi Bkonrad, this is just to say thank you for voting for me for adminship. I really appreciate your support and the kind words. I'll do my best to live up to them! Best, SlimVirgin 03:20, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

The value of pre-emptive redirects

I do not think pre-emptive redirects to non-existent articles add any value and as Cyrius points out there is a very serious negative side-effect in making the non-existent redirect look like it links to an article.

You have not answered my specific points about why certain kinds of pre-emptive redirects are valuable, and you have also neglected the fact that that negative side-effect can be averted by a bug fix.

Eastern Sudanic redirects to Eastern Sudanic languages, which does not yet exist. The value of that is something I would have considered obvious, but I'll explain it. Eastern Sudanic is an abbreviation in standard use for obvious reasons, but the non-abbreviated form is the appropriate article title. The pre-emptive redirect avoids the future creation of two disparate article by authors who cannot work together because they are unaware of each other's work, which would later need to get merged.

Similarly, complex societies redirects to complex society.

And a misnomer sometimes redirects to a correctly named article.

A software bug has been reported, which, if dealt with, will make a red link to appear when a link points to a pre-emptive redirect whose target does not yet exist. Michael Hardy 22:44, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Err, well I dismissed your specific points in their entirety. Sorry if you're not satisfied with that response. I still am not convinced by your arguments and feel that pre-emptive redirects to non-existent articles is a bad idea. older≠wiser 23:25, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

My "arguments", such as they are, appear in the section immediately preceding this one. I really don't make any argument per se, more like stating my opinion and agreeing with what others had said. My primary objections are 1) the red link problem which is quite serious and should not be defered upon the hope of a someday technical fix; 2) If you really think there should be an article with a specific name, then create a stub for it rather than simply creating a redirect to a non-existant topic; 3) Your rewording of the policy is Instruction creep. The criteria at present is pretty straightforward. Adding conditions to it only makes more difficult to administer. older≠wiser 03:12, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

That often cannot be done. For example, I know enough to know that Eastern Sudanic should redirect to Eastern Sudanic languages, but I could not posisbly write even a stub article about that. A Wikipedian could easily know, from having read a variety of instances, that coupled harmonic oscillator is not one of those phrases that are always plural, so the plural should redirect to the singular, but may not know whether the topic is physics or music or New-Age philosophy. Such a person could not possibly write a stub on that topic, but could easily write a valuable pre-emptive redirect. Michael Hardy 01:05, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Have you noticed my statement that you and I were both wrong about what the policy says? It says redirects to non-existent targets may be speedily deleted, but lower it says "However, such redirects should not be deleted if ...." etc. One of the items below that says they should not be deleted if they may help prevent later creation of duplicate articles by redirecting a plural to a singular, or a misspelling to a correct spelling, or a misnomer to a correct term, etc. Michael Hardy 02:22, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Papua (Indonesian province) -> Papua Province

new facts for page move at Talk:Papua (Indonesian province), regards Tobias Conradi 05:59, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Treatries of Paris

Yes, I copy-and-pasted some badly formatting texts to Wikisource. One thing i hate is articles linking to Project Gutenburg or some other site for source texts when we have our own project to use. Warmest regards --Neutrality^talk 03:39, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Template:Current U.S. Senators

Please take a look at the current version of Template:Current U.S. Senators. Would you consider changing your vote? --DuKot 19:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Problem regarding Pashtuns

I am trying my best to solve that dipute about Pashuns tribes list in Pashtuns talk page with some logical and authentic refereces but couldn't find any positive result, now will you please visit Pashtun discussion page to make your decision? Thanks !

Haider 16:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

{{welcome}}

I noticed that you attached {{welcome}} on a user talk page with an anonymous IP address instead of one belonging to a user name. For those situations, please use {{anon}} instead as it is specially designed to invite them to create an account. Thanks. Zzyzx11 | Talk 23:17, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)