User talk:Marc Kupper

General of the Armies

You may wish to voice your opinion at Talk:General of the Armies since you were involved with this article before. -OberRanks (talk) 03:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads up. I'm not sure how I can best contribute given the lack of available time but added a note to the talk thread. --Marc Kupper|talk 07:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

HGould notability

It seems funny to me how you people reach consensus based on rumors. Neither Spuyten Duyvil nor Copper Beech Press are vanity presses. It shows up the amateurishness of this project, where living people can be cited on Wikipedia, then have you so-called editors "delete" their previous entries based on supposed non-notability... then the web contains this hanger-on site basically saying "this living person is not notable". The process is offensive & laughable.

Hhgould (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:47, 5 March 2010 (UTC).

Getting published has nothing to do with notability. Please see WP:N, WP:PEOPLE, and WP:AUTHOR. The first has the general notability that applies to all articles. The second expands/contracts WP:N a little when articles are about people, the third is part of WP:PEOPLE but it adds additional ways an author can be notable. All of them are based on recognition or "notice" by others and not on what the subject does.

I truly wish this was better understood. Many articles are created every day in good faith only to be deleted. Part of the problem is that it's a Wikipedia philosophy that there be no "gatekeepers." If each person had to run their article proposal a crew of experienced sets of eyes I believe there would be far fewer heartbreaks. Those people would be "gatekeepers" and so it's not done. However, any editor can request a review or feedback from experienced Wikipedians. We *want* more articles but also want them to be about notable subjects.

In the welcome message at the top of your talk page there's a link on creating your first article. Step 5 is where someone can ask for an initial feedback and step six allows you to create an article where you can then run it across more eyes. Also in the welcome under getting started is "Getting mentored." Finally, the article creation wizard in the getting started section is excellent.

If you look in my userspace at User:Marc Kupper/Park Foundation I was putting an article together. I thought a scholarship fund with nearly $400 million available would be notable. As I hunted for references and evidence of notability (step 4 in "creating your first article") I came to realize the fund is not notable. The article is parked in my userspace for now though at some point I'll move my findings to Talk:Park Foundation and hopefully someone will find the notability evidence we need for Wikipedia. --Marc Kupper|talk 01:16, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

well isn't that nice. As far as I'm concerned my criticism still stands. The process is amateurish & offensive to persons. If you so-called editors & gatekeepers cannot come to firm decisions BEFORE you publish articles, the whole system is out of whack. In fact it is more than offensive. It is positively harmful to my professional standing as a writer. [User:Hhgould|Hhgould]] (talk) 15:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Henry, you are a Wikipedia editor exactly like I am. All of us, including editors with administrator status, and IP users that don't create an account, have equal standing and say when it comes to editing and comments on talk pages. Other than the IP user accounts, all editors can also create a new Wikipedia article and start working on them. Any person, including IP editors, can nominate an article for deletion and any person can participate in the discussion on if nominator's position is valid. All of us, and that includes IP users, also have equal say in developing consensus on what the various rules and guidelines should be and/or changing them. There simply are no "gatekeepers."

In this case, an editor created an article for Henry Gould but either did not understand, or chose to ignore, Wikipedia's notability guidelines. At some point an editor noticed the article and that the subject did not appear to be notable. They can't delete the article but rather nominate it for deletion where still more editors look it over, and also try to locate evidence that the subject is notable. Many times the effort succeeds and the article is not deleted. Or, people agree that while the evidence is weak, that the article should be retained. If there is no agreement on if an article should be deleted then the default is that it is retained. Thus, the only articles that end up deleted are those where there is community agreement that the subject is not notable.

If you have evidence that Henry Gould is notable per WP:N, WP:PEOPLE, or WP:AUTHOR then please document the evidence and the article will instantly be restored by one of the administrators. You then add the evidence to the article and at that point the article would never be deleted other than by someone challenging the evidence and showing that it's not valid. If you don't have evidence, but feel that WP:N ... WP:AUTHOR are unfair then you can try to develop consensus to have them changed.

Please be aware of WP:COI. While you can create and/or edit an article about yourself doing so is discouraged. It's best to run proposals past a neutral third party. The welcome message on your talk page lists resources for locating these. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes

Notes to myself about the pending changes trial

• Help:Pending changes, Wikipedia:Pending changes (Terminology, Trial, sub-pages), and Wikipedia:Reviewing.
• Pages with pending changes (tagged), pages using pending changes, statitistics, log.
• Also see Special:ListGroupRights which lists the current rights assigned to groups of users and Wikipedia:User access levels which explains them.
• Wikipedia Signpost coverage includes:
  • 31 Aug 2009 Flagged protection and patrolled revisions.
  • 06 Jun 2010 "Pending changes" trial to start on June 14.
  • 16 Jun 2010 Pending changes goes live.
• Pending Changes wiki is the development/test site. --Marc Kupper|talk 08:15, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Sockpuppet notice

I have created two sockpuppet accounts for testing the pending changes functions. User:Marc Kupper (sockpuppet1) is a confirmed user account and User:Marc Kupper (sockpuppet2) is an unconfirmed user. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:30, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

TFD

Hello, see this. sent by userbox maker —I-20the highway 02:25, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you - I removed the userbox from my page. It turned out I was the only one using it. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Senate write-ins

I reverted your edit to Lisa Murkowski, but ended up adding a clarification to your change. She and Thurmond would be the only successful candidates to win as write-ins against a candidate whose name appeared on the ballot. Knowland's election apparently involved all write-in candidates. The difference is that being listed on the ballot is a significant advantage, so Knowland's feat is a bit less significant, since he wasn't running against someone who was listed. JTRH (talk) 13:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. I saw what you did and think it would be better if we take the line you added out as it's entirely about Strom Thurmond which does not fit well in the lead for an article about Lisa Murkowski. We'd ignore Knowland in the Murkowski article and instead add the details that you brought up to the Write-in candidate article on why the Knowland write-in was atypical. Thus now we are nearly back to the original wording before my first edit about the write-ins. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks! JTRH (talk) 14:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and User:Tkguy/Asian fetish

Because you participated in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asian fetish, you may be interested in subsequent discussion about these userspace drafts. I have nominated User:Tkguy/Asiaphile and User:Tkguy/Asian fetish for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asiaphile (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tkguy/Asian fetish (2nd nomination), respectively. Cunard (talk) 06:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads up. I added comments to both AFDs. --Marc Kupper|talk 11:33, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Carl Brandon Society

Hi Marc. Please provide referenced proof for the listed awards if you can, otherwise they may be deleted under WP:BLP. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 06:40, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I replied at Talk:Carl Brandon Society#referenced proof for the listed awards and credits. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded for the removal of irrelevant content on the article Nescafè, which many users would keep on the webpage for its (weak) link to the product. Happy editing! --Delta1989 (talk/contributions) 23:10, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Death of Osama bin Laden

Hi, there is a disagreement about how bin Laden was shot, whether it was by one person or by two, but there are enough sources saying it was by one person that it has to be included as a possibility. Special ops are well known to use the "double tap" technique so this seems plausible, but I know the CBS version says he was shot by two people. This requires more editing. Brmull (talk) 22:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry - I had not realized there was a dispute about the number of shooters. I'd seen news articles that did not mention the number at all. A couple of weeks ago a more detailed description of the raid was released that appeared to be reliable and had three shots (the first missed) with the SEALs then moving into the room where OBL was with the second and third SEALs shooting (the first pushed the daughter out of the way). Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to hunt down the articles to re-inspect them nor to find the dispute on the # of shooters. Though I removed the double-tap mention I was thinking at the time that SEALs likely train in a two person double-tap with one doing a center of mass shot to disable and freeze the target long enough for the second to make the kill. That's my own theory - no sources at all. :-) I'd personally lean towards three or four SEALs inserting themselves into the room with two shooting as these guys train for teaamwork and coordinated assaults. There's reliable-sources on how they train but unfortunately, that does not help at all in deciding if OBL was double-tapped.

I see you undid my edit on Death of Osama bin Laden. I undid a similar edit I'd done to the Double tap article. I simply don't have time at the moment to put the care needed into sorting out the references and seeing if any seem reliable enough on the "double tap" point. Unfortunately, the media's run wild with theories from anonymous sources. Hopefully you have more time - I may check into this next weekend. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Marc, in the Double tap article I'm the IP-editor who brought up the subject of removing this, then called 'Famous Double Taps', section. I'm also the one who reverted your last revert. I did so, not because I don't believe OBL wasn't killed by a double tap, but because I thought this section, as it is right now, is irrelevant. Maybe if we (well someone) could elaborate on the fact of special units using the double tap, i.e. "Navy Seals have been trained to use..., in the case of OBLs assassination..." or something like that, it would contribute more to the article. I'm totally not qualified to do that and I'm not gonna revert this now, but that's just my two cents. I wrote this on the Double tap talk page as well. Regards 217.93.174.98 (talk) 01:19, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Coverbind

Thank you and I understand about the external link. I did not realize until after I edited it that the others were links to other Wikipedia articles. I am still learning and starting to create a new article for Coverbind that educates readers and is relevant to those topics.

Hello, Marc Kupper. You have new messages at Stacylstein's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Stacylstein (talk) 12:46, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Good luck with Coverbind. I took a look at Unibind plus VeloBind and got the impression those articles should not exist on Wikipedia as the subjects do not seem to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

About the edit

Hi,

I would like to point out that the valuation of temple assets is ongoing and not officially done. The reports in media are therefore speculative. The Supreme Court of India has asked an authority on valuation -Central Valuation Institute of Lucknow- to carry out the valuations as mentioned in the article. ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 07:56, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand - My comments were not about official or unofficial valuations but rather that people had added two sentences to the article were not supported by the sources given.

The first sentence I removed had was far above any of the valuations reported in the media, and did not provide a source at all. Most sources say the upper possible valuation is about 1 lakh crore or about USD$ 22 billion. Someone had added a sentence to the wikipedia article "Zee news reported that the value of the Ancient offerings made to the lord Padmanabhaswamy may be in excess of 500000 crore ( USD$ 100 Billion)." That was an extraordinary claim and needs excellent sources. There were no sources and so I deleted the sentence.

The second item I removed gave a range of valuations of 60,000 crore to 1 lakh crore. It had two sources. However, the first source states "500 billion rupees" which would be 50,000 crore, not 60,000 crore where the was no support at all for the 1 lakh crore claim. The second source did not mention values. There was a second issue with this sentence in that it did not fit in with the overall flow of that section which is chronological (earliest to newest). A couple of paragraphs down from the sentence was a paragraph about the values that's well sourced and the Wikipedia content reflects what's in the sources. A third issue was this sentence was redundant. We already had a paragraph that discussed 50,000 crore to 1 lakh crore valuations and so there was no need for a sentence that repeated what was in the paragraph. It was because of all three things that I deleted the sentence.

Just took a look at the sources for the section that's well sourced and saw that one of that has "Rs 1.2 lakh crore." I've updated that section to have ₹1.2 trillion (US$14 billion). --Marc Kupper|talk 08:47, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

As it is, there are people who say that valuation in media is speculative.1, by former Justice S. Rajan who is an observer appointed by the Supreme Court. Anyways, the valuations are going on and one can not be sure of the wealth, even as the speculations do not consider antique value(though it is not a museum/auction house, it is a temple and I am not sure how the offerings to the deity will be 'valued').

According to me, it should be mentioned that the valuations in media are speculative and in any case not reported by valuation authority to the Supreme Court as directed. ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 09:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

This news article says "The committee had not been asked to appraise the value the contents of the different vaults opened so far, and instead only make an inventory of the treasures in the temple." The article then says "But having got an estimate of the kind of valuables in the temple's cellars ... rough valuations put the wealth of the temple ..." Unfortunately, that news article did not say who is making these rough valuations, if the people making the valuations have access to the inventory, photographs, etc., and what their qualifications are as appraisers of value. It's possible the entire valuation saga is uninformed rumor. Much of it is speculative.

Per this page gold is about Rs 2.2 million per kilogram. Assuming the value is somewhere between 300 billion and 1.2 trillion rupees we have between 137,221 kilograms to 548,885 kilograms (151 to 605 tons) of gold. I doubt that seven elderly men can lift and weigh 151 to 605 tons of material in the four days it took this story to go from zero to multiple billions of rupees. Thus the odds are high that all of the valuations are uninformed speculation. It'll be funny if the "official" valuation is 50 lakh rupees. Imagine all the press and breast beating about vanished wealth. :-)

I don't have much available time today for Wikipedia editing. My main hope is that the Wikipedia article accurately reflect what the sources are reporting. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:43, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, the speculations are wild and there are many interested parties, like the state Govt., making a show of security measures trying to make a point that the wealth will be safe there, though the museum value of it over time is much more and legal(more legal than loot) perhaps.

The court has asked a valuation institute for inventory valuation, not the committee - I agree with that. The committee is just making an inventory I think with proper proofs.

As far as value of gold in weight is considered, it does not take into account its antique worth. Some of it is thousands of years old, others hundreds and so on. As also I mentioned, it is not auction-home/museum but as offerings of temple. So I don't know who will value what and how much. As I mentioned, such weight-based speculations are just speculations. ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 05:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Regarding your edit summary about {{Web}}

Hi Marc. It does not matter much at all since your removal was proper but yes it did redirect to db-web, from 2006 to 2009.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:16, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Nescafe

Marc,

Last week, I tried to correct some er. vandalism on the Nescafe article which you promptly reverted. I sent you an e-mail about this (which you can now ignore because as you can see I now have a proper account). I think that I know what I did wrong to cause you to revert the change (i.e. did not explain why the change was made). I have also corrected a citation (which was a dead link), I am not totally sure what the retrieved date is. I guessed that it means the day that I found the correct citation i.e. today. Since this is the first time I have tried to contributte, I would appreciate it if you would let me know that everything is ok or if it is not, can we have a discussion?

Op47 (talk) 11:12, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I did not see the e-mail and I also now realized I screwed up in reverting you. I read the "diff" backwards and though you were trying to add the name "Vernon Chapman" to the article without a citation. Had I spotted that you were removing it I likely would have checked the Nestle web sites. I just checked and sure enough, there's zero mention of Chapman.

I did do a cleanup to your edit. Wikipedia allows multiple references to the same source using <ref name="some name">the usual ref stuff here</ref> and elsewhere in the article to use the same source you would use <ref name="some name"/> without needing to have a closing "</ref>." The ref you added was a duplicate of one already in the article and so I merged them. Note that the other "ref" has a sneaky little "/" at the end of it. The one that defines that named ref does not use the "/" and refs to the same source would use the "<ref .../>." version.

I had some questions about the retrieved date myself. See Template talk:Cite web#What is the accessdate used for? for my question. While I'm still fuzzy on the value of the date it looks like you did the right thing in changing it to today's date as you also changed the URL.

The entire Nescafé article is in really sad shape. I started to clean up the legal section but it's going to take hours that I don't have this weekend. I did discover when re-checking the name of who created the coffee that Nescafé themselves offer conflicting histories. The "Nescafé History" part of http://nescafe.com/coffee_history_en_com.axcms (identical page on nescafe.co.uk) says "Seven years later, they found the answer." However, the "The Origins of Nescafé" section of http://nescafe.com/coffee_origins_en_com.axcms (also on nescafe.co.uk) say "Eight years later, they found the answer." I updated the article to use "seven or eight years" and cited both Nescafé pages. It does not seem matter if we use nescafe.com or nescafe.co.uk for this one as both go to the same web server at 195.177.34.126. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Thankyou Marc Op47 (talk) 06:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Virginia Seismic Zone

So i noticed this chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Seismic_Zone#List_of_earthquakes and saw that the magnitudes were in no particular order so i decided that it would make more sense for them to be in order. Is there a tool to order thinhs like in MS Word or is that something that I would have to do myself? Dan653 (talk) 02:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like someone converted the list into a table, probably by hand, and made the table sortable. Is that what you wanted? I'd need to look at the edit history to see who did that. The table was not there yesterday. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

It was this edit where someone converted the list into a table. I'll do one cleanup to the table to make the date's sortable. As for a "tool" - I suspect it had to have been done by hand. The problem was the old format was free format. There was some consistency in that the date was first and separated from the text with a colon. If the magnitude was known it was last and prefaced with "Magnitude ". There was no clean separator between the location and description. The editor could have used a tool such as sed to convert the old list formatting into a table but for a list this small I suspect it was done manually. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:40, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

It's possible you may not know about how to sort the table. Click on the arrows to the right of the header names. The thing has two small arrows at first and it turns out you can select top/down or bottom/up by clicking one side or the other. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:57, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

No I didnt know that though, thnks. Though I don't get what sed is... Dan653 (talk) 01:29, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Did you see the "sed" article on Wikipedia? For example, if look look at the edit that converted the table. You will see that the old list had:

1. An asterisk "*"
2. The date formatted as "month day, year" or "month day-day, year"
3. A colon followed by a space ": "
4. The location and sometimes a description
5. Some entries have a period or semicolon, space, "Magnitude ", space, digit, dot, digit.
6. Some entries have a <ref>... after the Magnitude stuff
7. The entry for May 16, 2009 has the ref split over multiple lines.

Here's three sed lines that deals with that list and converts it into the core of a wikitable

s/^\* *\([A-Z][a-z]\+ [0-9-]\+, [0-9]\{4\}\): \(.*\)/|-\n| \1|| ~magnitude~|| \2/

s/\(.*|| \)~magnitude~\(||.*\)[\.;] Magnitude \([0-9]\.[0-9]\)\(.*\)/\1\3\2\4/

s/~magnitude~/unknown/

There's still some manual cleanup needed but 90% of the work was done including the moving of the magnitude from the middle or end of the line into column 2 of the table. The first sed line recognizes the basic layout and converts it into a wikitext table format. It puts the string "~magnitude~" in the second column. The second line parses the buffer and for those that have a period or semicolon followed by " Magnitude " followed by a digit, dot, digit, it drops the digit, dot, digit in the place of the "~magnitude~" we left earlier and deletes the old " Magnitude ..." stuff so that we have the location/description text followed by our references. The third line only matters if the second line was unable to find a magnitude and changes the "~magnitude~" to "unknown". Conveniently enough, I did not need to do anything special about that entry for May 16, 2009. Sed ends up just copy/pasting the extra lines into the result and it ends up working fine in the resulting wikitable.

The only thing I need to do by hand now is to scan the text and for those items where we have both a location and comments/description and to stick a "||" between the two. I doubt that task could be automated but at least the task is as simple for the human as reading the text and deciding if and where to insert a "||" in it. I then add the wikitable header and footer and am done. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:01, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Biggest Edit

This is my biggest edit so far, I think everything looks good just wanted ur opinion http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2011_Battle_of_Tripoli&action=historysubmit&diff=446591448&oldid=446578676.

That looks pretty good. One comment is that per WP:REPEATLINK we generally only wikilink the first instance of a word. Thus in that table we'd only link surface-to-air missile once, tank once, etc. If it's a large article then sometimes you will see a second wikilink for the same word, particularly if it's one that was not used often in the article. I went ahead with that cleanup to the table plus got rid of the word "tank" and "radar" after every instance of those in the table as they were in dedicated columns. It may be better to have "tank" once on the first line rather than linking it in the header the way I did. The General points on linking style section says "Section headings should not themselves contain links" though is silent on table headings. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:35, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I added the &nbsp; between the day and month to prevent them from wrapping onto two lines and added a
between the month and <ref> to force a wrap at that spot. It was looking ugly to see "22" over "August^[124]" and so now it's "22" over "22 August" over "^[124]". --Marc Kupper|talk 04:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

K thnks for the tip on style and the wiki markup language. Dan653 (talk) 22:03, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Re: File Names

Hello, Marc Kupper. You have new messages at Daankets's talk page.
Message added 07:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Apology

I feel as though I owe you an apology; Let me explain why.

I just read through Talk:Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden/Archive_4#Take_2 and spotted your comments about referencing problems in the article and how the edit notice seemed to support a certain style. I created the edit notice, and to be honest I had no idea we had different styles when I added it to the death of bin laden article. It was for me an attempt to make sure that our editors would not be stuck gong through an infinitely vast number of 404 error pages attempting to track down sources for the information then being added at a rather frantic rate to the article. If I had known it would create trouble for you or others on the page I would have refrained from adding the notice and simply accepted the fact that later editors would have to do more work to find and ensure the citations were accurate. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:56, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you TomStar81. That was a moderately sticky situation as we had a number of editors (maybe just a couple) insisting that a particular citation form be used. I did not have a opinion for which form should be used but was concerned that they wanted to leave warning notices on the talk pages of people who used list-style references. Many of the editors at the time were newbies and I saw no reason to bite them for struggling with references as they attempted to copy the list-style that a third of the article was using. Your role was apparently accidental. --Marc Kupper|talk 10:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Rank Opinion

Could use your opinion at Talk:General of the Armies. -OberRanks (talk) 18:07, 23 October 2011 (UTC)