User talk:Nickshanks/Archive2

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Hungarians in Romania

Hi. I made the map of the Hungarians in Romania. It's here Image:Hungarians in Romania.png bogdan | ^Talk 16:21, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Much thanks! – Nicholas

Wikimedia UK

You have expressed an interest in Wikimedia UK. Just to let you know I've posted a draft Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association of the proposed "Wikimedia UK" charitable company on Wikimedia UK/Memorandum of Association and Wikimedia UK/Articles of Association. It is proposed that these will receive initial approval by interested parties at a meeting on 27 November. I will put together a brief agenda for the more formal aspects of that meeting soon. Memo and Arts of Association are a company's constitution, and need to be agreed before the company is formed (though they can be changed at a later date). Please feel free to comment on the relevant talk pages (I'd rather the proposed drafts are left unedited so that it is easy to see what is going on) - particularly if there is something there that you would disagree with at the meeting, details of which can be found on the Wikimedia UK page on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Kind regards, jguk 19:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Iranian plane accident

Please stop making trivial changes (e.g. aeroplane, airplane) to the article, as there is little point in doing so. That's why I changed the ten-stor(e)y part to ten-floor a while back; people on both sides continuously changed it. Thanks. Jibbajabba 18:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure airplane grates on you just as aeroplane grates on me, and I'm also sure that it's been changed back and forth at least a dozen time since the article's creation, but since that's the way it is, leave airplane where it is and aeroplane where it is. Again, it's just like the stor(e)y part, except I think you and I can both agree that saying they were in a "fixed-wing aircraft" sounds even stupider than aero or air. :P Jibbajabba 18:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, at least we have something "neutral" now. As I said on the talk page, even though I'm an American, I'm beginning to hate Noah Webster (although the plane probably wasn't invented when he was alive :P). Jibbajabba 18:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there's really a difference in the on board, not to me anyway. And yeah, I say quarter and half. But airplane is the only thing I've ever heard anyone say (from California and only been to places like Hawaii any Mexico though). Jibbajabba 19:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Nickshanks/IPA

What on Earth did you do to produce that? Lol... Just curious. Jibbajabba 21:09, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Reasoning behind edits dealing with Akahi Nui

I'm wondering why you have previously added "Akahi Nui" under "Monarch" on the Hawaii article [1]. This makes no sense as the State of Hawaii does not officially recognize anyone to be the Monarch of Hawaii and there has been no official monarch of Hawaii since Liliuokalani was overthrown in 1893. I've noticed you've added Akahi Nui to your new "List of Monarchs of Hawaii article as well. I've reverted all of these changes for now, but I'm wondering if you have a reason as to why you added Akahi Nui to these articles. 青い(Aoi) 06:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I had come across this guy via Hawaii-based websites that teach some of the local language, and found that wikipedia didn't have very much mentioning him. The American government doesn't seem to recognise him but apparently Hawaiians do, so I felt he should be mentioned directly in the article (given the NPOV principal of presenting all points of view). For what reason did you revert them? What the US government says shouldn't be the only opinion presented on wikipedia (and probably should be ignored most of the time!) Nicholas 13:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Most people in Hawaii have no clue this guy even exists. More importantly, most Hawaiians do not, in fact, recognize Akahi Nui as their King. When this guy first appeared, a lot of Hawaiians just got angry at him (such as this sovereignty group). This man is a pretender, nothing more. Writing that he is the official King of Hawaii is like writing that Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou is the King of France, in that there is more than one person who could claim the throne (including at least one other person whose claim is more universally accepted than Akahi Nui's: Quentin Kawananakoa). While I agree with you that what the US government says shouldn't be the only opinion presented on Wikipedia, writing about Akahi Nui in a way that makes him appear official and recognized in a way that he obviously isn't is strongly POV. 青い(Aoi) 21:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, okay. I figured it was just a case of history being written by the victors (the US) to the detriment of the Hawaiians. Thanks for informing me :) Nicholas

Telugu fonts for Mac

Hi Nick, I see that you have developed Kannada font for MacOSX. What does it take to do the same for Telugu font since telugu and Kannada scripts are very similiar. All the gang from telugu wiki would be greatfull if you can help in this regard. Thanks --Vyzasatya 19:01, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure, I could do that no problem, but would need someone to help guide me as to the script, how it works, any peculiarities etc. Nicholas 23:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

The current freely available unicode fonts for telugu donot render telugu properly. (I tested it on firefox,Safari on OSX..IE doesnot even render). I guess its due to the fact that these fonts are not written for Mac rendering system. This links to some unicode telugu fonts. Pothana and Vemana among them are free and can be tweaked. I will send you some screenshots of how it renders in Mac and how it is supposed to be rendered. --Vyzasatya 17:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

New British Empire map and "bunch of stuff"

Hello Nicholas, this is Sean_II. I noticed on Owen's page you had proposed unifying my original anachronous map with your British Empire map. Sorry I haven't checked in for a while. Anyway, I went through about 2 other versions of the map, and in response to many comments seen on the British Empire discussion page and the image discussion page itself, I came up with this (see Image:British Empire Anachronous 4.PNG). Having looked on your map, I noticed I missed some of the Indian Ocean, mid-Atlantic Ocean (St. Helena, etc.) and Pacific Ocean possessions as well as the Ionian islands. I made an inset map of the Caribbean since I cannot get bored doing my own islands. In case you are wondering I drew the map based on MANY other maps (from lib.utexas, matthew white's 20th century historical atlas, some books, and from the info at worldstatesmen.com), so I am pretty sure it's accurate (although I am not sure about the British sphere of influence in the Yangtze River Valley in China, but that's just one point. Anyway, before this message gets too long, I'll just say that I would be interested in unifying our maps and Happy New Year to you!-- Sean_II 20:40, 02 January 2006

'Burglarize'

synchronised with User talk:Pharos: Burglarize doesn't exist outside the US, and since the Main Page is not US‐specific, a real word like burgle should be used. Burglarize sounds about as dumb as agentification would to mean becoming an FBI agent! I urge you to reconsider your reversion. Nicholas 13:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Mark Felt is certainly a US topic and "burglarize" isn't going to confuse anyone. Let's not talk about "real words" here; all words are real. Anyway, if you look in your dictionary burgle is actually a messy back-formation from burglar. So there. Don't be such a grumpy prescriptivist!--Pharos 13:45, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

"Mark Felt is certainly a US topic" — I'm not complaining against its use in W. Mark Felt, but on the supposedly dialect‐neutral Main Page.
"all words are real" — but only a small subset of those are present in the English language.
"burgle is actually a messy back-formation from burglar" — didn't know that (nor can I verify the claim as I haven't an etymological dictionary).
"Don't be such a grumpy prescriptivist" — I'm not grumpy at all, I asked nicely for you to reconsider a reversion you made. Perhaps it is you who is the grumpy one? And describing 'burglarize' as not a real word (which is correct in all my experiences) is not being prescriptivist at all, not that there's anything bad about either extreme. My point was that it is not a neutral term. Perhaps if burgle is unacceptable State‐side, a different word can be found? Nicholas 14:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry if the joking nature of this comment wasn't obvious. I certainly didn't mean to call you "grumpy" in a negative way- this may be another dialect thing, but in my experience this word almost always has a humorous connotation. As to Main Page content, I don't know if we're going for "neutrality" as much as widest understandability, and I would guess "burglarize" is probably more understandable to "burgle" users than vice versa. If you still think burglarize is unacceptable, we could always go with "break into".--Pharos 14:45, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Alas it was not obvious! To me at least, grumpy is quite negative, usually applied to senior members of society who lack social consideration, or tact. See Victor Meldrew. And I might postulate that 'burglarize' is a messy forward‐formation ;-) I like your suggestion of break into and have made the change. Thank you for meeting me in the middle. It's marks a pleasant change when common ground can be found. Nicholas 15:04, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Georgia article titles

For the past 1 1/2 years, I've felt afraid that there has been more and more evidence that Georgia (country) will be moved to Georgia. Now the votes are tied. Please answer this question:

Will there be a time in history where the voters who want it moved outnumber the voters who don't by at least 10 votes?? Georgia guy 21:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

How long is a piece of string? Nicholas 21:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Measure one with a ruler. Georgia guy 22:45, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Improved maps

Hello again, well I take it from your swift moves in placing the British Empire Anachronous 4 map into the article that you liked it. Thank you. In the meantime, I have used your map and copied the missing islands into my anarchronous map. In addition I have tried to more clearly show the status of the various islands in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Using a number of other maps I tried to show the various Pacific domains, although the map is a little unorthodox in that it would show all of the Pacific extending from Japan and Australia all the way to Pitcairn without showing the western coast of North America or without splitting the Pacific and putting Polynesia (French), eastern Kiribati, Pitcairn, etc. on the same side of the map as the Americas (I did this because of the inset map of the Caribbean + the map Key being in the area where French Polynesia and Pitcairn should be). I would hope this map would not be too radically different from the normal wikipedia maps. I was thinking of running it by you and Owen before putting it in the article (no need for any tedious reverts from other wikipedians over the map), so would you prefer that I upload it or e-mail it? Also I have been trying to create a similar map for the French Empire(s) (well the French colonial empire, but I think I can incoporate Napolean's Empire in Europe) and I have a nearly complete version, would either yourself or Owen like to view it and help in refining it? --Sean II 23:21, 14 January 2006

Just upload it, you are being too careful tip‐toeing so as not to tread on anything, but it means everyone else has lapped you by the time you get to the first bend ;-) Upload it, put it on the article so everyone can see it, and if someone should want to refine it, they can. I bought myself a book called "An Atlas of the British Empire", so I can check against that. Nicholas 08:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

your dhivehi wikipedia user page

I have started translating your Wikipedia user page into the Dhivehi language at its Wikipedia (as per your request), and will complete it shortly. I am not wiki-fying it because of the lack of content as of right now. I am not very sure how the Thaana script will show up on your PC so I suggest that you install support for East Asian languages if you are running Windows XP. Leave a message if you need any additional help regarding this. Take care. --Fizan 13:57, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate it! And nope, I don't have a PC and am not running Windows. It shows up like this (Mv Lady Luck is the font). Nicholas 17:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

re: Pedophile activism

Hi, I'm messaging you because you're listed as having recently edited this article. What is going on with this article? I saw that the name changed again, its been protected, is tagged NPOV disputed, etc. Is it coming into shape, or what? Per some discussion starting with the article's AfD a couple weeks back, I created a project structure to address this article, here: User:Herostratus/Pedophilia I'm not an expert on subject or article, so I'm asking current editors -- Do you think this would still be useful, or what? Thx Herostratus 14:43, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not following it, I just corrected a few spelling/grammar mistakes. I hadn't seen the article before Saturday and don't know why it was protected. Nicholas 14:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:In the news

You might find reading Wikipedia:In_the_news_section_on_the_Main_Page interesting. Morwen - Talk 22:56, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The rules are linked to from the comment in template:ITN. If the Ford layoffs aren't updated yet either, that needs removing, too, yes.

Well I was meaning that company layoffs aren't encyclopaedic (even if they have been added to the article, they ought not to have been) (rule 2), and that the layoffs were not really of international importance (rule 3) as it only affects the US. Nicholas

By the way, I have checked the version of the article New Horizons at the time I made my edit here and I will stand by that - it said nothing at the time about being the fastest 'launched' spaceship as well as being the planned fastest ever one so it sounded rather like a mangling of the Jupiter gravity assist factlet. Morwen - Talk 23:06, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I was referring to this edit, and I think you just mis‐understood what the (rather badly worded) content meant. The departure speed of the craft relative to the Earth is what was being commented upon. Indeed it is expected to get to Jupiter in only thirteen months! If that wasn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article at the time, you should have checked another source. Sorry. Nicholas 23:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I understand what it meant correctly. The article didn't say that - I linked to the article at that time, not my edit. As to "you should have checked another source". Well, as I said before, I will stand by that - we shouldn't be having content on the front page that we don't have in actual articles - this is just another facet of the articles being updated thing. I try to fix ITN to conform with the long established rules and what does it get me? - I shouldn't have to defend myself here. Morwen - Talk 23:21, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not attacking you at all, I did tried to apologise, as I am the new admin here and just getting my feet wet with this. I have a lot of respect for you as a longstanding editor, so please don't take anything I say badly, it's not intended that way, I was just trying to reply promptly. That said though, if something is important enough to warrant putting into one or two lines in the In the news section, then I'm sure within five minutes it'll be added to the relavent article anyway, and you won't have to worry about this sort of stuff.

Ok, sorry - probably being oversensitive. It's not that harmful in itself, indeed, but as a general principle I think we need to keep it. Morwen - Talk 23:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

hymen image

Hi, you mentioned that Image:Types of Hymen.jpg was copyright. Is there a reason you didn't list it for deletion or consideration? Avriette 17:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Probably one of the following:

• Forgot
• Too lazy
• Didn't realise

Hope it's not too much of a problem. It's gets automatically listed in the copyright category, which I presume people monitor. — Nicholas (reply) @ 17:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Russian User page

Sorry it took me a long time to respond - i did a bit of work on your Russian user page per your request. Will go on some time in the future ... --Amir E. Aharoni 17:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

svg handling; clickable links

Nick,

I’d like to upload svg files (maps) using links to wikipedia articles. Example on the right (from scattered disk)

...

.

Objects (circles) should be clickable links to respective articles. The links in svg are supported locally (both IE and Firefox) but ‘dead’ once uploaded to wiki. I understand that wiki transforms .svg to .png either on the fly or in a batch rather than serving them to the client(?). Are <a> tags ( from xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ) transformed to image maps? Is there any way to have clickable maps from .svg? If you’re not the right person to ask these questions please point to someone else or point me to a doc. Any help greatly appreciated! Eurocommuter 14:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Eurocommuter: Nick asked me to respond to your SVG question. No, because SVGs are rendered rather than utilized directly, Wikipedia only uses the graphic portions of SVG. The extended markup is not available. I don't believe there is any kind of time frame to be able to do this. ℬastique▼^parℓer♥^voir♑ 00:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Caption for Tironian glyphs

Hi. I noticed that the caption at Tironian notes contains some error. I'd fix it, only I don't know what it's supposed to say. —JerryFriedman 00:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I see this:

Tironian et, U+204A "⁊".

with the U+ linked to Unicode. If that's not an error, I have no idea what I'm supposed to understand by anything after the comma. Also, there was some discussion of this in alt.usage.english, and people weren't sure whether all three glyphs meant the same same and were just aesthetic variants, or whether there was some more important difference. Might it need a fuller explanation? —JerryFriedman 18:12, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The U+nnnn but is it's unicode assignment in hexadecimal. The character in quotes that looks like a 7 is the subject of the article. I don't know any more about the character than I have read in the article (including whether there are differences between them, though I suspect not). — Nicholas (reply) @ 13:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

ˈlɔŋgəst ˈɑɹɾəkl nem

haɪ nɪk, sɑɹi bəɾ aɪ dəˈliɾəd jɚ ˌnɑməˈni fɚ ˈlɔŋgəst ˈɑɹɾəkl nem. ɪt wəz pɹəˈpozd fɚ dəˈliʃən n ju ˈdɪdn əbˈdʒɛkt ɪn taɪm. ænd ɪt ˈwʌz ˈpɹɪɾi ˈsɪli! Angr/talk 06:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, oh well :) — Nicholas (reply) @

Town names disamb.

Hi,

I noticed that you moved Baja (Hungary) to Baja, Hungary on Jan 3. I admit it looks better but all Hungarian town names are disambiguated with the name of the country being in parentheses; it'd be a terrible pain in the ass to change all of them. Is there some official policy on this?

regards,

Alensha 20:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Hungary is the only locale where I've seen this, everywhere else uses commas. Sure it would be a PITA if one person did every page, but if someone with a bot or many people could do it, it wouldn't be so bad and wold conform. DO you know of anyone with a page moving bot? — Nicholas (reply) @ 23:47, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that most of the articles themselves don't exist yet, but there are lots of red links with parentheses. Anyway, I'll fix them in the county articles I'm working on now. Alensha 20:26, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Changing them in the county articles is no problem, but there must be lots of other pages which refer to them; I hope they'll be found sooner or later :) Alensha 20:42, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

HuWiki user page

Its translation is nice, it seems that others have already made minor corrections to it :) but seeing all those red links I'm a bit ashamed of our wiki, we don't have articles on anything :( Alensha 21:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

13 colonies Userbox

Sorry I didn't respond earlier, I had to go find which template you were referring to :) Its that whole new T1 criteria for speedy deletes -- political factions, seperatist movements etc can be very divisive and inflammatory. It looks like some people are working on an actual userbox/template policy though, so that may all be moot soon. If you don't think it meets the T1 criteria, feel free to restore. .:.Jareth.:. ^babelfish 14:25, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

T1 is a criteria for deleting templates Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Templates. If you want, you could always just put the code on your userpage instead of using the template; I've done that with my userboxes since the current debate makes some of them disappear randomly at times :) .:.Jareth.:. ^babelfish 15:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about

I have no idea what you're talking about, though I would sure like to know who is that bozo who copied my photo of the first Web server and posted it on his Web site! I don't even have a Web site at the moment, and I use SBC Yahoo! (now part of AT&T) for Internet access, which means my IP address is usually dynamically assigned in the 4.246.42.* range. --Coolcaesar 19:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)