User talk:Dpbsmith/Archive08: Difference between revisions

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Note: I will usually reply to your messages here, not on your own Talk page.

Eyeglass prescription

There seems to be a lot of broke image links in Eyeglass prescription. FYI, in case you can help repair that. Samw 15:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(I responded on my talk page, to your message). I'm continuing that response here. I found copies of all the lost images on answers.com; the article URL is: http://www.answers.com/topic/eyeglass-prescription and the specific images are: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/2/2c/Specrx-letterscamblur.png , etc. As I said on my talk page, I'd be happy to reuplod them for you if you can provide me the needed info - i.e. yes, you created them yourself, and license them under GFDL, or PD if you like. JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Ropo vandalism

Hey, no problem. Unfortunately, the dude was editing through a highly-dynamic IP, so I'm taking a ton of flak on my email... :( Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

i'm sorry about newfoundland dog

Heya,

I reverted the puppy-dogs link on newfoundland dog again. I tend to get rid of sites like this every single day from all the dog pages. There are a million puppy picture sites like this, while they don't sell anything - they simply exist to get eyeballs at banner ads and google ads. Site owners seem to be really insistant that they get linked everywhere possible - i think that one has been reverted like 9 times.

Wikipedia is a prime target for banner ad and google adworsd sites because if you get in wikipedia your links get copied to a ton of mirror sites as well and your google numbers go up. Besides If we leave one, we have to leave them all. Suddenly the external links section of every dog article becomes filled with this sort of thing.

I tend to think that wikipedia should be held to a higher standard than to serve as a link farm to sites like that.

The person's motivation behind the site

And they use sitesell.com, which specifically, tell people to add sites to wikipedia

- Trysha ^(talk) 03:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

AfD policy

Thought you might like to take a look at this given your comments on WP:DRV recently: Wikipedia:GNAA deletion policy. —Locke Cole 03:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

newfoundland-puppy-dogs

I do agree, the puppies are cute. We have a newfie/lab service dog cross who looks mostly newfie (huge guide dog!), so I have something of an affinity for them.

There's been a lot of spam that I have been very sad to revert especially when it's breed rescue spam.

- Trysha ^(talk) 22:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

MIT POV edits

Hi there. You seem like a good contributor, but I wanted to leave you a note on your anti-POV/boosterism edits to MIT. I don't agree with a lot of your edits in this area -- see my note on the talk page comparing our POV to the Encarta article. Noting what is special and unique about a university and distinguishes it from others is not POV -- it's part of the definition of a useful article. And I don't agree that every positive fact needs to be balanced out by a negative or mediocre one -- on balance, MIT has a lot more good things associated with it than bad things, that's what leads to a positive overall reputation. A lot of your "NPOV" edits remind me of a characterization of the media's "objectiveness" on politics in America -- that if one side were to claim the Earth was flat, the media would publish a headline saying "Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point". After all, the earth isn't perfectly spherical. But c'mon, there's a difference between patent boosterism and objectively informing people about why MIT is considered a great university. That's one of the reasons people look up the article! -- BrassRat 17:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whom

The sentence sort of works as it is, if you conceive of the indented quotation as part of the sentence as a whole ("Hillerman spins a tale of the committeemen, 'made pale from the weak sun...', and who ... became captivated by the Sangre de Christo..."). But I agree that it would be better, both grammatically and stylistically, with the "captivated" clause split into a separate sentence. I'll do the honors. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your parsing is probably what I was thinking of when I wrote it. If I was thinking when I wrote it. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Public Ivies

Ten Wikibucks says you'll hear cries of "Christmas Massacre" in response to your bold changes at Public Ivies... but I think they were solid edits. Cheers, JDoorjam 02:03, 26 December 2005 (UTC).[reply]

edit summaries

I think it might be to your advantage not to use a link to "Avoid Academic Boosterism" (as here alone as the edit summary. If you think something is academic boosterism, it's better addressed on the talk page of the article in question, as quite clearly the issue of what might constitute "academic boosterism" is not universally agreed to, and discussion of the sam is not much enhanced by that link. - Nunh-huh 01:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Point taken. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to "does Yale have a special interest in educating government leaders in some way that is distinct from Harvard and Princeton?", it's not something that I have particular interest in/knowledge of, but have always heard rhetoric about expectations that Yale graduates would not simply be but would lead. (E.G. Richard Levin's "As Yale enters its fourth century, our goal is to become a truly global university—educating leaders and advancing the frontiers of knowledge not simply for the United States, but for the entire world." I'm sure all colleges say such things, but it's true for some and not for others. Off the top of my head, I think Harvard has similar expectations, and expect that Princeton has lesser expections. Harvard has certainly made its view of itself as a breeding pool of politicians explicit with the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Yale seems to do similar things through its School of Law, the Center for Corporate Governance, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, and School of Management. - Nunh-huh 17:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking of putting this in (as a direct quotation):

. ISBN 0252064542. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |Chapter=, |Others=, |Coauthors=, |Editor=, |Month=, |Location=, |Authorlink=, |Pages=, and |Edition= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Last= ignored (|last= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help) p. 12:

"Yale has long been a training ground for the nation's elite.... Since 1789, Yale men have held some 10% of the United States' major diplomatic posts. Fifteen members of Congress each year, on average, are Yale graduates."

It doesn't speak to the question of whether any more blue than crimson blood flows in U. S. government veins, but at least it's a citable source. It goes on to mention some presidents, though being published in 1995 it doesn't mention the recent run of Yale presidents and candidates.

I also have a very vague idea that Yale has traditionally been a wee bit left of Harvard... does that ring true?

Thoughts? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Gilpin is a historian, and I suspect her figures are sound. (Though her agenda in the book would, I think, lead her to exaggerate the gulf between the university and its workers.) I'm not sure why every fact about Yale should be "compared" with Harvard (more blue, more crimson): I think simple facts are good enough.

I am in agreement with you on that... the only reason I raised the question is that if it could be shown that training for government service was a traditional Yale "specialty" and was not a traditional Harvard specialty, that might make it the sort of truly-Yale-thing that would justify mentioning it in the lead. On the other hand if (forgive me) number-of-government-careerists who graduate from Yale is just another random metric on which Yale ranks second then it's not article-lead stuff.

(For the record, AFAIK no U.S. presidents at all ever attended my own alma mater. We have to make do with astronauts).

I don't think it's true to say Yale is left of Harvard...I suspect it's varied over time. The founding of Yale was essentially a reaction against the (religious) liberalism of Harvard. And in the 300 years since I think at one time or another Harvard and Yale have swapped left/right positions several times. At present, I think it's true to say Harvard is more conservative/stogy/doctrinaire, and Yale more liberal/diverse/creative but that's just my opinion and just lately. There's a strong faction at Yale that's quite conservative politically (the Political Union has a Tory party!) and even religiously. - Nunh-huh 19:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your opinion matches my third-hand impression of what I think I remember someone-or-other saying there pretty sure they heard about Yale. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

P. S. This is interesting:

. ISBN 0805067620. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |Chapter=, |Others=, |Coauthors=, |Editor=, |Month=, |Location=, |Authorlink=, |Pages=, and |Edition= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Last= ignored (|last= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help) p. 141:

[circa 1959] Stewart recalled that [Yale president Whit Griswold] had been "very disappointed" with what he had found of Yale's alumni around the country: "As he would go from city to city, the Yale graduates would be the heads of the local Red Cross, the community chest, various do-good campaigns... but the Harvard people would be the heads of the symphony orchestras, the museums, and the intellectual things. And he thought that was the difference between Harvard and Yale that he would like to work on changing."

(cited by Kabaservice as "interview with Zeph Stewart, 25 Nov. 1991."

Griswold then went about systematically recruiting Harvard people who had graduated from Yale!

Dpbsmith (talk) 19:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting (I think you left out a word between systematically and Harvard?), though I'm not sure Griswold's assessment of what is intellectual and what is not would be universally agreed to at today's Yale (actually, it probably wasn't in the Yale of his day!). Griswold was an educational reformer and his presidency marks the beginning of the "modern" Yale. Brewster certainly fostered a more liberal (political) spirit at Yale, and it may be this period of the 60s that you are thinking of when you think of a more liberal Yale. - Nunh-huh 19:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Prestige

I'm glad someone else agrees that academic boosterism is getting out of hand. I've been watching the Berkeley article since my freshman year (2002), and it's slowly gotten more and more self-congratulatory, to the point where the same claims are repeated multiple times in the article (usually something along the lines of "Berkeley is the bestest in A, B, C, and D-Z"). I'm not particularly interested in getting into arguments about what an "appropriate" level of bragging is, so I've pretty much limited my edits to consolidating claims. But I also agree that, as a student at the university in question, it's outright embarrassing to see such obviously biased editing of questionable informative value wildly mushroom. I always figured that articles for the most "genuinely" prestigious and reputable universities would have a minimum of such boosterism because their students/alumni wouldn't feel the need, but apparently that is not the case. I suppose people need to more clearly realize that articles on Wikipedia are supposed to be informative, not propaganda pieces. - Gku 21:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

love you NPOV work...

I really like what you did with the Cornell article, so I thought I'd point this out to you as badly needing some attention. Best of luck, & keep it up! Cornell Rockey 05:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I rose to your bait... hope it won't get me too badly hooked... actually I didn't think it was too bad unless it was read as implying that private schools are prestigious because they are academically better because they are not public. The NPOV tag refers to the Bob Jone comment, but I don't actually see a problem with that part. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:10, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Psychic surgery

True but just because Psychic surgery is quackerly it doesn't mean it is pseudoscience. I could be argued it is simlar to faith healing in that respect.Geni 02:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pseudoscience

The category Pseudoscience as written is a pejorative declaring a positive finding that the claims are false. It applies correctly in many cases (phrenology). Because of the pejorative natural of the entry, it does not apply to many articles - precisely the ones you object to - making the reference POV.

Suggestion: rewrite Pseudoscience more like Pseudohistory to neutralize it, then add the links back. Farseer 02:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 156: / Line 156: @@
 === Pseudoscience ===
-The category Pseudoscience as written is a pejorative decalring a positive finding that the claims are false.  It applies correctly in many cases (phrenology).  Because of the pejorative natural of the entry, it does not apply to many articles - precisely the ones you object to - making the reference POV.
+The category Pseudoscience as written is a pejorative declaring a positive finding that the claims are false.  It applies correctly in many cases (phrenology).  Because of the pejorative natural of the entry, it does not apply to many articles - precisely the ones you object to - making the reference POV.
 Suggestion:  rewrite Pseudoscience more like Pseudohistory to neutralize it, then add the links back. [[User:Farseer|Farseer]] 02:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)