User talk:Thinking of England

Note: Any user talk page I contribute to is kept on my watchlist for at least one week. Feel free to respond here or there.

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Thinking of England, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Hyacinth (talk) 07:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

nbsp

WP:NBSP. Glad to help :) Other useful codes are – for date and number ranges (5–7 October), and — to indicate a thought ("He picked up the shoe—which was by now, very wet—and put it on"). Parrot of Doom (talk) 09:43, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

bah, I don't know how to stop the browser auto formatting those codes, but you can click the edit button to see what I've done! Parrot of Doom (talk) 09:48, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the first link WP:NBSP is part of Wikipedia's WP:Manual of Style, which instructs users how to correctly format articles. Its a massive topic and takes some reading, but it offers some very good advice. I use nbsp in any place where the disconnection of a number from a word might cause confusion. Its especially important where images and tables, and other things which break up the page and disconnect numbers and words, are present. Parrot of Doom (talk) 09:58, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Have a look under your edit window - there are lots of useful little markup thingies, you can insert special characters, or you can change the box to wiki markup, which has things like nbsp in there, as well as nowiki, etc.

Another very useful tool is in your "my preferences>gadgets" (top right of your screen). If you enable refTools, that, on the edit window, gives you a nice little button that enables the autoformatting of references. It can save new users a lot of time. Twinkle is another good tool, although I recommend you be careful using that for the first time as it can issue some fairly powerful warnings on userpages :) Parrot of Doom (talk) 10:13, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Note to self: – "–" and — "—" used above -- Thinking of England (talk) 10:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Citations in leads.

Re [1], WP:LEADCITE states "The verifiability policy advises that material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and quotations, should be cited." and wp:bop: "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." It was challenged [2] [3] and is a quote. -- Jeandré (talk), 2009-07-05t10:08z

Granted, I haven't reviewed our citations policy lately, but it seems to me that citing a quote dozens of paragraphs after it (first) appears in an article is simply not acceptable. And, no, I didn't notice the citation in the "Critical review" section. - dcljr (talk) 04:20, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't strongly object to the edit (so there is not much to discuss here), but it is incorrect to assert that this particular citation in the lead is require by WP:LEADCITE. The sentence you quote is satisfied by the citation in the body, and the use of "redundant citations in the lead" should be "determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus". In this case I do feel that the flow of the lead is hindered, albeit very slightly, by the citation of this three word snippet of a quote in the second sentence of the lead, with the full quote properly cited in the body. -- Thinking of England (talk) 00:43, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

RfD Nominations July 22

(In response to this)
I am the nominator, not Tyciol. I put down multiple entries because the instructions told me to. Xanthoxyl (talk) 05:44, 23 July 2009 (UTC) (Responded to here, here, and here.)

Cameltoe

Just curious, what do you mean when you say:

"The earlier layout was poor, with the camel's toe above the cameltoe, but the removed photograph would provide an appropriate illustration for the (currently missing) etymology. Perhaps a side by side layout would work well."

Nocturnal Wanderer 21:00, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• Regarding the etymology (and borrowing words from one of the references) the "fashion faux pas" cameltoe derives its name from a "visual analogy" with the arrangement of a camel's toes, though this etymology is not mentioned in the text of the article. Thus the photograph of the camel's foot does "fit in with the article" and perhaps even obviates an explicit etymology.
• Regarding the old poor layout, it placed the photo of the camel's foot at the top of the page and that of the cameltoe (the subject of the article) well below so that the latter did not even appear without scrolling down. Being separated from the upper photo with some article text, the lower photo was presented as if it were secondary to the subject of the article. I thought that if the images were appropriately scaled and properly aligned side by side, the visual analogy might be more apparent.
• The current revision looks good to my eye (and on my browser). The photo of the camel's foot has been restored, and while it is still on top, the photo of the cameltoe has been moved up immediately below it. The order makes sense because the latter photo is so much taller than the former, and the lower third of the latter photo is not necessary for the visual analogy. Thus if, as with my browser, a portion of the lower photo is off screen, the visual analogy is still apparent. This would not be the case were the order of the photos reversed.
• I no longer feel that a rearrangement of the photos is necessary, and with the visual analogy well presented I am indifferent as to the addition of an explicit etymology in the text (although one that included the history of the term would be welcome).

-- Thinking of England (talk) 01:08, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree. Nocturnal Wanderer 01:45, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Henry Lerolle

(In response to this)

thanks for your note. innocent spelling error.

glad you liked the article-- hope someone can expand it someday. J. Van Meter (talk) 13:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: Equador, Rio Grande do Norte

(In response to this)

Hehe, I know it's a tiny mistake, but saying Rio Grande de Norte would be like saying West or East Korea instead of North or South...I mean, actually it makes gramatically no sense (Rio Grande do Norte means lit. North Great River, whereas Rio Grande de Norte means Great River of North, suggesting there's more than one possible North direction). I've put a delete word before my comment at the RfD. I created all those articles on Brazilian cities because each of them is the eastern, western, southern or northernmost city of each Brazilian state. I know it sounds useless, but it was a nice excuse for creating more Brazilian cities articles. As I was in a certain hurry, those mistakes occured. There's no problem for dragging that to a RfD, you were just doing your job here. =) Cheers! Victão Lopes ^{I hear you...} 21:46, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I saw it. I'm glad the issue is over now. =) Victão Lopes ^{I hear you...} 19:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Gage/gauge

Gage is an older spelling; it doesn't seem to be in wide use anymore, but I'm not sure if it's necessary to replace it. --NE2 13:19, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I won't track anymore down. It's worth noting that in the majority of my edits the article used "gauge" nearly exclusively, each with a single instance of "gage" (not in a different context) that resembled a typo more than an intentional choice of an alternate spelling. In other cases I corrected the spelling of proper nouns, such as "Narrow Gauge Road" in Pennsylvania. -- Thinking of England (talk) 17:09, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for you note to me

(In response to this)

I put the hatnote on the Oregon page and received this message back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rkmlai#Watching_my_page

I respect Katr's request and moreso hear the feeling she expressed, of feeling "stalked". I choose to recuse myself from the discussion as I am choosing to not interfere in areas she might feel more of an attachment than I do. I hope the best for the discussion. Peace, rkmlai (talk) 02:34, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Happy Thinking of England's Day!

User:Thinking of England has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Thinking of England's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Thinking of England! Peace, Rlevse 01:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC) A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Account request info

I wish to request a second account for use in a manner permitted by policy. My choice is ToE, but this is too similar to Toe(talk|contrib) to be granted without request. User Toe has made only two edits (12), both on 18 October 2005, both retverted in a single edit a few minutes later. -- ToE^T 05:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• The requested account ToE(talk|contrib) was created five minutes after the form was submitted. Thanks guys! -- ToE^T 05:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Okoue/Okoye

ToE wrote

Hello ToE. Im trying to resolve the problem with Vyzas F.C. players at WP:FOOTBALL now. Yes, the redirect is useless. Thank you for reminding me that. --Vejvančický (talk) 09:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

ToE replied

No problem, no harm done. This article is useless in my opinion, completely wrong informations, not notable third-league player. However, the third-league is professional, and I'm not sure with deletion. Have a nice day, ToE. --Vejvančický (talk) 09:37, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Redirect

ToE wrote

Thank you for your tag about the redirect I signalled ToE, I just wanted to say that keeping a misspelled name in the field of taxonomy could be dangerous...I mean that you could be sure that a name is right while it isn't, without paying attention that is a redirect. But there is no problem, there will be many other cases in the whole Wikipedia :D Aytrus (talk) 18:24, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

ToE responded

You PERFECTLY understood ;D Aytrus (talk) 10:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Hitchens

ToE wrote

The article could be much better with so many sources and articles that we have. I'll fix and admit to any mistakes I make, but you always can also. I do have done a lot of editing to Hitchens' article, so I feel self conscious about being over bearing or being seen as owning the article in some way. We can always collaborate, and so on. Jakeb (talk) 14:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

ToE replied

I was originally going to mention HitchensWeb to you, but that's unfortunatley unactive as of now. Jakeb (talk) 19:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

Re: your recent edits

I'm curious, how are you finding all those redirects with invalid or inextant section targets? -- œ^™ 00:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

By seeking out those redirects that link to (or, more specifically, transclude) {{R to section}} but fail to successfully link into the body of their target article.

Ahh so you just click on each one at random then to find out if they link to the target? Ok I was just wondering, I thought you might've had some kind of automated script that discovered these links.

If you are concerned about the correctness of any particular edit I have made, please do let me know as I continually reappraise my own actions. I have been operating under the assumption that if tagged with {{R to section}}, a redirect is supposed to target a valid, extant section of an article. I'd estimate that over half of my edits to these redirects are of updating the link subsequent to a section title name change, but there are a good many cases where the article has changed enough that there is no readily identifiable, direct descendant of the original section, and I have to decide upon some other section of that, or occasionally, a different article. When the originally targeted section is nonextant and no relevant material survives in the current article, I retarget the redirect to the overall article itself and remove the tag.

Oh no, no concern, I think you're doing a great job. Keep up the good work. :)

I am troubled by those redirects which have never targeted any section but appear to have been intentionally tagged with {{R to section}}. I have assumed that these were tagged in error and have remove the tag (unless a section retargeting seems desirable). There is one particular editor who is responsible for creating a handful of these (using AWB) who I should contact to verify there is not some purpose I am missing.

Yes these were probably in error and agree you should contact this editor. -- œ^™ 01:39, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

{{R to section}} and {{R to anchor}} I think I understand, but {{R to list entry}} confused me. From its name I assumed that it would be a special case of {{R to anchor}}, but its documentation describes it as a redirect to a "list of minor entities"-type article, thus not a redirect to a list entry but a redirect to an article which contains a relevant entry. Hmmph. -- ToE^T 01:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes I too thought "R to list entry" was a bit confusing and redundant to "R to section". I usually use it in cases like Coup de maître where it refers to a specific single item in a list such as a list of words. BTW, have you considered joining WP:WikiProject Redirect? -- œ^™ 01:39, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation. I was just reading WP:WikiProject Redirect and saw that the open tasks list there includes, "Add redirect templates to all redirect pages." Is it believed that there is a template for every redirect? I didn't think the list was that comprehensive and it didn't seem to have a catchall template. -- ToE^T 15:16, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I should probably change that, I doubt it's possible to tag every redirect. I just tag the easy ones like {{R from alternative name}} and {tl|R from abbreviation}}, and also the important ones like {{R from merge}}. -- œ^™ 17:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

_[outdenting]
I wasn't trying to pick nits (although accuracy is desirable). When I saw that note I thought that perhaps some sort of tag was necessary to identify redirects in general. I thought that perhaps a "what links here" or category list tool was necessary to generate a list of redirects.

I now see that Special:ListRedirects does include some untagged redirects, though it only returns through redirect #1000 and appears to contain the oldest redirects so the distribution of types is not indicative of the overall population. (Over representation of {{R from CamelCase}}, for example.) Also WP:Quick index and Special:AllPages does display redirects in italics, but it would be nice if you could select for redirects only, and then even filter based on inclusion/exclusion in various categories.

It's also possible to visualize redirects by displaying them in a different color if that helps. See Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#Visualizing_redirects. -- œ^™ 00:24, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Since I brought up {{R from CamelCase}}, it most properly seems to be used for cases such as AccessibleComputing, but it is also used for cases such as Angola/History. While not strictly CamelCase, I assume that it is a proper use as it dates from the same era of old style article titles. If that's so, then perhaps an example of that format should be included in its documentation on WP:Template messages/Redirect pages. It could also be worth including an example like FielD as this single-word style of CamelcasE caused some confusion over at RfD recently. -- ToE^T 23:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes you're right, an example would help. Or at least a link to Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia. Go ahead and update it if you want. -- œ^™ 00:24, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

R to section

Can you confirm that {{R to section}} is only ever supposed to be used for redirects that specifically target a section in the redirect link? I think its documentation doesn't leave much room for interpretation. It says, "This is a redirect from a topic, name or term that does not have its own article, to an article section which covers the subject" not "..., to an article with a section which covers the subject" but I think that is how some people might have misread it.

Not sure I understand what you want me to confirm. I think the documentation is pretty self-explanatory. Every redirect to a section must include the article's title in the redirect link in order to properly redirect to that section. And to me, "article section" and "article with a section" mean the same thing.

>>new<<

OK, this is really important. I am asking "Does a redirect warrant an {{R to section}} template if and only if there is a "#" character in the redirect's target link?"

I would say yes.

Regarding "article section" vs. "article with a section", consider Sorcerers & Secretaries which redirects to Amy Kim Ganter. "Sorcerers & Secretaries" is only discussed in the Comics section of that article, but that section is the first and largest of an article with a very short lead, so the author of the redirect decided (and I agree) that it makes more sense to redirect to the article as a whole than to that section. Now, does this redirect deserve an {{R to section}} template? As I understand it, such a template would be incorrect (and thus I removed it), but if the definition read "article with a section", then yes, this redirect would fit the description perfectly. -- ToE^T 01:04, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah I see what you're saying, and yes your example would fit the description, however you also need to take into account the title of the template, which is "Redirect TO section" so it would be defeating the purpose of the template if it's not redirecting straight to the section.

And I also agree that in those cases where the section which mentions the subject of the redirect is close to the lead, and thus in plain sight (no need to scroll down), there is no need to redirect directly to the section and thus no need for the template. In fact I think a better template for Sorcerers & Secretaries would be {{R from subtopic without possibilities}}. Or you could also just create your own redirect template.. {{R to article with a section}} maybe? :P

So as with many things on Wikipedia, basic common sense is involved, and while there may be different ways to interpret documentation, when faced with questions of correct usage it's always best to just use your judgment. -- œ^™ 01:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't help that {{R with possibilities}} says, "Conversely, if the topic is not susceptible to a major expansion, tag instead with Template:R to section, or Template:R to list entry, depending on how the topic should be handled" only implying the "if appropriate" part.

Well, if you don't think the implication is enough, you know you can just go ahead and edit it to add the "if appropriate" part right? :) Just go ahead and make any changes you see fit, we all trust you know what you're doing.

I hope you don't mind that I've adopted you as a redirect related mentor, of sorts. There isn't an informal forum such as a village pump for redirect chatter, is there? I am happy to raise more substantial questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. -- ToE^T 14:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

No problem. At Village Pump Miscellaneous you can discuss just about anything related to Wikipedia, or the WP:Help desk for help with using Wikipedia. And Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect is the perfect place to ask Redirect related questions. -- œ^™ 16:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

IRC services & redirects to nonextant sections

I've restored the anchors for NickServ, Nickserv, MemoServ, and BotServ. These and other redirects that point to the same target article are subtopics of Internet Relay Chat services and will eventually have their own sections. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Roger that, and thank you for the note. I just reviewed my edit history and those were the only such redirects to Internet Relay Chat services I edited, and I will make a note to avoid messing with the other IRC service redirects. May I ask why you have section redirects prior to the creation of the sections? Is it simply that the sections are planned and so you just got the redirects out of the way first, perhaps mapping out what you plan to do, or is there a Wikipedia practice in which sectionless section redirects are intended to flag something? If so, is this practice informal or is it described somewhere? (I am not trying to sound at all critical here -- I really do wish to understand the common practice so I can avoid making unhelpful edits.) -- ToE^T 13:10, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, there are no set guidelines as to how to plan section redirects such as in the case of this article. I set these up while merging some other articles and sorting out all the existing redirects. I set them up because as the article is cleaned up and expanded these sections will be created. From what I've seen, section/anchor type redirects generally tend to be neglected and most people do not check for existing redirects when modifying a section name or removing it entirely from an article. The {{anchor}} template and leaving a HTML comment in the markup can help at times, but section redirects are commonly broken by other edits. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: DarknessBot vandalism

(In reply to this)

Firstly, apologies for taking so long to get back to you on this - I'm currently abroad, and though I've been monitoring my own talk page I've only just now seen your note on DarknessBot's.
Thank you for raising this issue to me - I have to admit, redirects to 'Target page name' have been noted before, though this is the first that's resulted in problems upstream with 'corrections' to other redirects. What I'll do for now is simply have DarknessBot ignore redirects to 'Target page name', and leave it to the anti-vandalism bots to revert.
I can see your concern with the potential for abuse of DarknessBot to cause vandalism, and more stringent logs and logic will certainly be implemented in the future, however I believe this case was a mostly an issue of bad timing, and isn't likely to happen except in extremely rare cases. To explain how the bot works:- it primarily checks recent redirect edits to see if they're double-redirects, and fix them if they are, but in times of low numbers of new edits (and the bot is idle), it will then download a fresh list of all redirects on Wikipedia, and check through them alphabetically.
What seems to have happened in this case is, 'Abu Dhabi' was redirected to 'Target page name', and 'fixed' immediately by DarknessBot (bad design on my part certainly ^_^;;). After this it ran out of recent edits to check, and instead started on the downloaded list - since 'Abu Dhabi' and the other spellings are right up at the top alphabetically, it then propagated the damage.
I can't see this at all being a common occurrence. Indeed, it's now fixed 96,672 double redirects and only a handful of those did it earn a telling off for.
I'll keep a close eye on him to make sure it doesn't happen again, but I'd rather avoid having to add periodic 'checks' to pages as not only will it increase the load on the bot, but also on wikipedia's servers (DarknessBot runs 24/7, and not on the toolserver). And one major screwup every 100,000 corrections (and close to 3 years runtime) isn't tooooo bad going :)
Thanks again, ShakingSpirit^talk 16:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Per your question on New York Communist spelling

ToE wrote

It is "geneology" in the original. Just checked. Carrite (talk) 03:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

ToE replied

{{rfd2}}

Thanks to a tip from Splarka, I've now replaced {{anchorencode}} with {{FULLPAGENAMEE}}, which seems to have solved all our problems. Actually, I've made that replacement in {{stats.grok.se}} and added this template to {{rfd2}} instead, which gives much cleaner output. Let me know if you notice any problems with the current version. --Zach425 ^talk/contribs 05:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, let's try it out.

Baggy jeans

• Baggy jeans → Jeans (links to redirect) (Template:0expr/Baggy_jeans stats)

Wash because they are dirty.

S&P

• S&P → Standard & Poor's (links to redirect) (Template:0expr/S%26P stats)

Buy, buy, buy!

Kirchhoff's current law

• Kirchhoff's current law → Kirchhoff's circuit laws (links to redirect) (Template:0expr/Kirchhoff%27s_current_law stats)

Apostrophe's can be problematic!

"Ron" Paul

• "Ron" Paul → Ron Paul (links to redirect) (Template:0expr/%22Ron%22_Paul stats)

Reloveution, "y'all".

-- ToE^T 05:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, far from clean indeed!!! That's some pretty disgusting output. The reason I subst'd was to establish a consistent date, but this obviously isn't the way to go. I'll try again... --Zach425 ^talk/contribs 06:33, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's try again:

Kitty cat

• Kitty cat → Cat (links to redirect) (stats)

Here, kitty kitty. ToE^T 08:05, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

It took a little while, but I think I finally got it. Now when we use {{subst:rfd2}}, it should provide the current month & year. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the example below confirms that! Let me know if you catch any other problems with it. Thanks for all your help with everything - as a new editor, it's nice having an experienced set of eyes to guide me.

As for the "Ron" Paul issue, it looks like it's a stats.grok.se problem specific to pages that begin with " - no other character seems to trigger the bug. I've left a note about this on the developer's talk page, we'll see if he ever gets a chance to address it. --Zach425 ^talk/contribs 11:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Doggy

• Doggy → Dog (links to redirect) (stats)

Woof. Zach425 ^talk/contribs 11:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain further...

Could you please explain how you came to the interpretation this edit was the conclusion of an rfd? Geo Swan (talk) 01:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey Geo Swan. Perhaps I've made an erroneous assumption; if so I'll be able to identify and roll them back based on the summaries in my edit history. I'll take another look at the active and closed RfDs before I explain. -- ToE^T

I'm still locating and looking through the various RfDs, but first a quick question to you. Is it your desire that the redlinks to those deleted redirects be kept? (I've no problem with redlinks in general -- I'm just asking about these.) -- ToE^T 02:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Eventually I think there should be an article, or series of articles, about the specific associations with al Qaida and the Taliban. I am just about finished a comment at the {{rfd}}. Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 02:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I've struck out my redlink cleanup suggestion at the RfD and have added a note asking anyone who was involved to either revert their edits or enter your discussion about handling the association characterizations. (I don't know that anyone besides Mako joined in.) As I was motivated solely by a misremembering of the RfD and not by a separate, informed opposition to these redlinks, I have reverted all the changes I made. -- ToE^T 03:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 03:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Alright then. This wasn't clear to me either. I'll respond in more depth on the ongoing WP:RfD. I might wait to see where the conversation goes but I'll probably go ahead and revert my edits were appropriate soon. Thanks for clearing this up. —mako๛ 04:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Black big felids in the UK

It is done. Thanks for leting me know.Againme (talk) 14:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

thanks

Thanks for fixing the typo in T.P. Wiseman! A little thing, maybe, but appreciated, as I've been having some vision problems and don't always catch the things I used to. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the thank you. On a good day I try to fix more than I break. -- ToE^T 00:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Sarah Palin

Hi, I've just attended to all your Sarah Palin redirect requests. Next time you have several similar changes on different pages, it's probably easier to just make one request rather than scattering them on every different talk page. It would just save time for us. Anyway, not a big deal, and thanks for your work here — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, and thanks for the advice. -- ToE^T 08:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Thinking of England. You have new messages at UltraMagnus's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

UltraMagnus (talk) 13:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Guitar Hero: The Beatles

Hi! Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you, things have been busy. I'd say the link is overly tenuous and would advocate the removal of all references to Guitar Hero: The Beatles on the grounds that they were created based largely on a rumor. As far as I can tell (from a quick search), there are no RS's that refer to the possibility of this game as anything more than a rumor. If it were me, I'd probably take it to RfD. Thanks for the consult, I'm flattered to be asked! —Zach425 ^talk/contribs 21:50, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Speights (surname) listed at Redirects for discussion

Thank you for alerting me to the discussion activity at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2009 September 23#Speights (surname). This prompted me to provide a 'weak keep' opinion with explanation ant to alert the Anthroponymy Wikiproject via Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Surname redirect under consideration for deletion. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: History merge

I love history merging pages; it's fun to rescue older edits and move them to the correct place. If you find redirects that have resulted from recent cut-and-paste moves, list them at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. I've history merged Armenian education in the Ottoman Empire. Graham87 02:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Hand merge the edits, noting where they're from in the edit summary. Graham87 11:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I've just history merged it, more for the time information of the edit than anything. If the edits were two minutes apart I would've just deleted the redirect. After the history merge, I deleted the redirect as an obvious misspelling, per CSD R3. I know that the criterion says "recently created", but this is a time to ignore all rules. Graham87 04:59, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Why?

True. But why bother? Why not just leave it alone? Pdfpdf (talk) 01:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(The why is asking about the removal of text following a redirect, in this particular case, a stubbed out disambiguation page, and the "true" is referring to the comment that it was still available via history.)

Hello brother, I did not desire to bring you grief. Regarding this particular redirect, I came very close to first sending you a note, but decided to act instead of talk because it appeared to be a dead sandbox, having not been edited in six months and with almost all of its disambiguation targets still redlinks. I assumed that it was a dead and forgotten idea.

In general, I have been tracking down overly long redirects as they often indicate a problem, such as a cut-and-paste move in need of a {{db-histmerge}} or an incomplete merge in need of an {{R from merge}}. So far, I had only run across one other case of a redirect being used as a sandbox, and as its edits were much more recent, I talked instead of acted (though I haven't heard back yet). If you wish, I would be happy to revert my edit with a note in the comment. I would then just keep that redirect in a list of false positives.

I do not know what other, more experienced editors would think of the practice. I just learned that R'n'B, the operator of RussBot, maintains and acts on a similar list, User:RussBot/Long redirects (his based on number of characters vs my lines of code), and looking just now I see that your Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff appears on his list at #285. I do not know if he keeps a separate white list, though I am not aware of any automated action taken against such redirects. I am pretty sure that they are just listed for case-by-case investigation and action. -- ToE^T 02:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

A good reason to remove text after redirects is bug 7304, which causes the what links here list to be messed up when a link is placed after the text of a redirect. See my message at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Orphaned image deletion bot for an explanation and some examples - I use User:Graham87/sandbox8 to test the effects of this bug. Graham87 05:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, that is good to know. In this case Pdfpdf had carefully wrapped it all up in an html comment, but that is the exception. -- ToE^T 05:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Greetings!

The folowing section is a bit of a red herring:

"Hello brother, I did not desire to bring you grief." - Don't be concerned - you haven't.

In fact, unintentionally (I assume), you have brought me bemusement. Regarding my sentence "But why bother?", I intentionally used the word "bother". (i.e. I meant, "But why got to the effort of doing that?") I am interested that you assumed it was a typo. I guess "bother" is not a word in common usage, but in Australia (outside of trades union and secret societies), "brother" is only used to address male siblings. I assumed you are British, and that the use of "brother" was similar in Britain to its use in Oz. Perhaps not?

Returning to the matter in hand ...

So, I'm deducing from your reply that you "undid" it because you assumed it was "stale". Is that correct?

Well, "staleness" is/was a reasonable assumption. (Yes, I had forgotten about it.)

But you haven't answered my question, which I will reword-for-clarity: "Why revert it?"

It wasn't doing any harm sitting there in a hidden comment. (Was it?)

So why go to the effort of expending time and energy to undo it? Why not just leave it there?

Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(P.S. As we were both unaware at the time of the unintended consequence of it possibly causing a bug, let's leave that out of the conversation for the moment. OK? --Pdfpdf (talk) 11:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC))

(P.P.S. For clarification: As far as I'm concerned, this is "no big deal". I'm just interested to understand why you made the edit. I'm reasonably confident that this issue will have zero impact upon global warming and the arrival of the four horsemen. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC))

Regarding my sentence "But why bother?", ... I am interested that you assumed it was a typo. Ha! I did not assume a typo on your part but experienced a "reado" on my part. (You would think that I'd have noticed the missing comma, if not the missing "r". I just now checked this talk page history to ensure that you were not pulling a fast one.) I do not typically employ so fraternal a greeting, but I thought your usage of it endearing, and was happy to respond in kind. (I did ponder the usage for a bit, and was most surprised at your boldness in assuming a gender. I have been considering making a userbox along the lines of "He/She/It/Whatever -- this user considers gender irrelevant to editing Wikipedia and encourages you to pick a pronoun at random" but that seems a bit verbose.)

Regarding the issues brought up by Graham87, I think that the <!-- html comments marks --> surrounding the text insulate it from causing any problems.

So, I'm deducing from your reply that you "undid" it because you assumed it was "stale". Is that correct? Well, that is why I felt confident enough to remove the text without writing to you about it, but as you point out, that alone is insufficient motivation. (And while I now see that my edit served to undo your two edit taken as a whole, I considered it more a doing than an undoing -- a doing that I would still be happy to revert, if you wish.)

I thought that I had explained my motivation above, so I assume you will forgive me for going into more detail to cover what I might have missed. I am interest in the maintenance of redirects, and have been experimenting with writing various scripts analyzing a pages-articles database dump I downnloaded last month. (I am particularly interest in fragment redirects, that is {{R to section}}, {{R to anchor}}, {{R to list entry}}, {{ER to list entry}}, &/c. type redirects where the validity of the redirect is effected by edits to the target article. As of last month there were 148,606 of these out of 3,912,543 total redirects, and roughly one in four of these is broken.)

Some of my scripts dumped out the bodies of "interesting" redirects, and I was surprised to see occasional entire articles amongst them. You can imagine how a single four hundred line redirect would stand out in a file with a couple hundred other redirects all one to three lines long. The long redirects were relatively uncommon; there were only sixteen over one hundred lines long, and another eighty-two over twenty-five lines long, and the majority of them were left over from merges. I read up on merge instructions and discovered that once a merge is complete, the text below the redirect is supposed to be removed. A good number of the remaining long redirects were the result of cut-and-paste moves that needed history merges.

Realizing that long redirects were typically problem redirects, I worked through my list in descending length to correct them. A side benefit was that the next dump would presumable have fewer long redirects (while they don't cause my scripts any problems, when I glance at a one line redirect I know what it is in a trice, while a hundred line redirect requires some moments' study to locate possibly hidden categories and templates), but my primary motivation was truly that of properly fixing those in need of {{R from merge}} and {{db-histmerge}}.

Your particular redirect was quite different from most the rest, and while I've no problem with it staying, it did not seem to be serving any purpose, and removing the text would keep it from showing up as a false positive on future scans for long, problem redirects.

While my motivation for tracking these redirects down was my own, one I started I discovered that I was far from alone in removing extraneous text following redirects. R'n'B is the most prolific, but there were several other editors I recognized who had already cleaned up some of the long redirects in the three weeks since I downloaded the dump, and I cannot speak for their motivations.

So, did I do better this time? Please let me know if there is some aspect of your question that I have still not answered. Cheers, ToE^T 13:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

"So, did I do better this time?" - Oh yes! Notably!! I was thoroughly entertained by your reply, and enjoyed reading it. (In fact, I enjoyed reading it the second time, too.) Being an antipodean, it is now half-past-midnight here. If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to go to bed now and reply to you tomorrow. But to avoid keeping you in suspense, yes, the information I was/am after was included in your reply, along with a lot of information that I found FAR more interesting than the information I requested. Enjoy your afternoon whilst I'm sleeping. Best wishes, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

"I just now checked this talk page history ... " - <chuckle ;-)> "but I thought your usage of it endearing" - Oh dear. I am sorry to destroy such goodwill from you with my mundane reality. I guess that's a consequence of me being mundane. How sad. "and was happy to respond in kind" - clearly, you more readily entertain a wider range of options than I do. I must admit to a tinge of envy. "and was most surprised at your boldness". Indeed. Sadly, in reality, I am just not that bold ... "but that seems a bit verbose" - Hmmmm. Given that at least 90% of WP contributors seem to be males, I really wonder about gender being irrelevant to editing Wikipedia. I have a suspicion that most women think that there are better ways to spend their time ...

"I think that the <!-- html comments marks --> surrounding the text insulate it from causing any problems." - That's fortuitous. (i.e. a "problem" that doesn't require a solution.)

"but as you point out, that alone is insufficient motivation" - Did I point that out? I seem to recall having had that thought, but I don't remember actually saying it. In fact, I thought I had said the opposite! (i.e. When I said: "Well, 'staleness' is/was a reasonable assumption. (Yes, I had forgotten about it.)", I was attempting to say: "Yes, I think it is quite reasonable of you to have assumed that, because I hadn't touched something for six months, I had forgotten about it.")

"I would still be happy to revert, if you wish" - After having read your information, and thus understanding why you did it, I can see more benefits in leaving it as it now is, rather than reverting back to the lengthier version. So, thank you very much for the suggestion, but I think it would be better to leave things as they now are. Although I may not now be "older and wiser", I am older and MUCH better informed. Thank you. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 10:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Annie Llewelyn-Davies, Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Someone (I didn't bother checking who) moved the page name incorrectly. The correct name as per The Peerage, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Hansard is Annie Llewelyn-Davies, Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, not Patricia Llewelyn-Davies, Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe. Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 11:16, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi. The double "l" is of course a misspelling and should be deleted. (I sometimes don't bother in these sort of cases, because even an incorrect spelling might be the spelling used by some to locate the subject.) But in this case to avoid further confusion any misspelled redirects should be deleted. Thanks for taking care of it, and thanks again for bringing this matter to my attention. Yours, Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 11:29, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Whatever you think is best. You are much more knowledgeable than I am about this sort of thing. As you understand the basic parameters of the correct spelling, I trust your judgment. Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 13:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Gurney Stove and Talk:Pilot engine

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Skittleys (talk) 13:00, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

R to disambiguation page

Hi
Hmm, I don't think removing the template from those pages is correct. Why should it be only applicable for redirects to dab pages with the disambiguator in the title? What's the use of the template and category in the first place?
Amalthea 13:13, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Amalthea, I'm glad you asked. I think that what I'm doing is correct, but if its wrong, then the earlier I know, the less I have to clean up! I think that this redirect is better documented at {{R to disambiguation page}} than at Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages. (I just now noticed the conflict in their descriptions.) I'll put my fixing on hold while I write up my understanding of things, and verify it with you (or someone else in the know) before starting up again. -- ToE^T 13:27, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

That would be good, thanks. As I said I'm not sure what the template is used for in the first place, I'd suggest asking User:Tassedethe and User:R'n'B, they both do redirect and DAB work I believe, maybe they can tell. I can't think of a reason though why it should make a difference whether the title contains " (disambiguation)" or not, often enough one redirect to the other anyway. Amalthea 13:47, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, my understanding of {{R to disambiguation page}} is that it is intended to mark those redirects which are created to be used as intentional links to those disambiguation pages that themselves lack "(disambiguation)" in the name. It is rare for articles to intentionally link to disambiguation pages. Usually, when a page links to America (a disambiguation page), the intended link is one of the targets listed on that dab, such Americas of America (band). Those pages that link directly to America get flagged for disambiguation. Unlike America, England is an article, with its corresponding disambiguation page named England (disambiguation) If a page were to link to England (disambiguation), then the intent is clear and it is not flagged for disambiguation. So a page that intentionally wishes to link to America, uses the America (disambiguation) redirect instead. And it is the purpose of this template to mark those specific redirects. Unfortunately, its name is insufficiently precise to express its restricted purpose.

This is explained at the template page itself, {{R to disambiguation page}}, which states, this template generally should only appear on pages that have "(disambiguation)" in the title. (The same information is transcribed at WP:TMR.) It goes on to suggest that further information is to be found at the category page. Unfortunately, the description there tends to confuse things, implying that membership denotes that the redirects themselves (rather than the links that use them) should not be disambiguated. It does, at least, include a link to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages which explains the process further, including the creation and tagging of such redirects. (WP:INTDABLINK takes you to that specific part of the section.)

This doesn't explain why such a categorization is desired, other than simply to keep track of these particular redirects. Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages implies that it induces special behavior in whatlinkshere, but it's not clear to me that the template is actually causing anything special to happen.

The vast majority (96%) of redirects in this category do have "(disambiguation)" in their name. I am about a quarter the way through removing the template from the remainder. A typical edit would be this removal of the template from the tyredirect Hurricane Olga → Tropical Storm Olga. I won't start back up again until I get the go ahead from someone in the know. -- ToE^T 14:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

My interpretation based on the title of the template is the same as Amalthea's and what it says on the category page. I never thought of it the other way. Looking at the category and template history, the (disambiguation) pages only wording only showed up in the template last year; the original wording was the same as the first paragraph of the category description. There was also some debate on the interpretation of this before on the template talk page, but with no resolution.... All that considered, I would be inclined to support the "not just (disambiguation)" interpretation.

However, I just searched the WT:DAB archives, and this isn't the first time it's been brought up. One particular discussion occurred here. It seems that everyone agreed that it was confusing, and therefore a rename should be done, but it never happened. The creation of {{R from disambiguation}} (which I just answered on my own talk page, but I'd not looked at the history at that point) seems to have been made to help rectify this confusion...but was never documented or promoted or anything. More relevant to the point, though, is that everyone agreed that it was only supposed to be used from titles with (disambiguation), which, of course, is your interpretation of it. Based on all of that, I'd think that {{R to disambiguation page}} should be used only for titles with (disambiguation), whereas other ones like will power → willpower and Hurricane → Tropical cyclone should use templates like {{R from modification}} and {{R from alternative name}}.

On top of all that, there's also {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} and Category:Redirects from incomplete disambiguations, which makes me wonder whether the links to dab redirects should be subcategorised into from (disambiguation), incomplete disambiguation, and something else that's generic....

Soooooooo, now that I've thoroughly confused myself...I'm thinking the best recommendation is to rename that template to something else (like, say, {{R from disambiguation}}!) to make its use clearer...then do something with "R to disambiguation page", either redirect it to the new one or make it an entirely new one that categorises redirects that don't have something parenthetical in the name.... I'd suggest proposing something like this at WT:DAB, WT:WPDAB or WT:RE. Without the rename, based on consensus, I'd use your interpretation.

Did that help at all, or did I just make things more confusing?!?! —Skittleys (talk) 16:24, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is the same as TOE's; that is, that {{R to disambiguation page}} was intended only to mark redirects that were meant to be used as the targets of intentional links to disambiguation pages. Granted, that is not explained very clearly, and I suppose one would have to ask User:Docu what his/her original intent was upon creating this template back in 2004. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:57, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I think I get the reasoning, but don't see the use of the template then: I think it is obvious that if I use a link to a target with " (disambiguation)" in its title, then I intentionally wanted to link to the disambiguation page. Who needs the category on it? The more I think of it, the less useful I start to find many of those redirect classification templates anyway. If there is no bot using the template/category, and the intended use is as you say, I would actually RfD it, since I see no use here for editors, reader, scripts or bots, and if a re-user or some future process needs to figure them out, they are trivially classified through a database query (SELECT * FROM `page` WHERE page_title like "% (disambiguation)" and page_is_redirect=1). Amalthea 20:04, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the R templates were also meant to be descriptive and display text on the redirect page itself and were not intended to be just for categorical purposes. Due to MediaWiki Template:Bug that feature is currently not working though. This came up with the big mess with {{R from other capitalisation}} with the two TfDs, AN/I, and DRV. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but that descriptive text would be just as useful at will power → willpower or Two-by-four‎ → 2x4. Amalthea 07:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

So you are saying a redirect such as ARM which redirects to Arm (disambiguation) should be classified as {{R from incomplete disambiguation}}? --Tothwolf (talk) 01:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I just went through the Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages history, and it seems clear that the intent has always been for "(disambiguation)" style redirects. Its original wording stated, "These redirects are pointed to by links that should always point to the disambiguation page rather than be disambiguated." The wording was confused by a this good faith edit of 8 February 2008. I just reverted that edit and added a bit of the language from {{R to disambiguation page}} to clarify it. -- ToE^T 05:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

That's still contradictory. Both will power → willpower and Two-by-four‎ → 2x4, for example, are intentional redirects to disambiguation pages and should not be disambiguated. If *anything*, all redirect targets of redirects with the template should be renamed to a topic with the " (disambiguation)" qualifier.
But seriously, if there is no known purpose for the templates, what reason is there to keep them? At the very least they could be classified and maintained automatically by bot. Amalthea 07:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see the contradiction. The issue is over the disambiguation of links, not of redirects. The assumption is made that any redirect that targets a dab page does so intentionally; they are not listed for disambiguation. On the other hand, any article that links to a dab page is assumed to have done so in error unless the name of the link includes "(disambiguation)" (perhaps via a piped link). Thus the issue is not that of Two-by-four‎ being an intentional redirection to 2x4, but that any instance of a link to Two-by-four‎ or 2x4 in an article will be listed for disambiguation, while those to 2x4 (disambiguation) will be left alone.

An alternative policy would be to require that all dab pages have "(disambiguation)" in their title, and that every "X (disambiguation)" is linked to from an "X" redirect (unless there is a separate "X" article). That is certainly a viable option, but the current scheme requires an "X (disambiguation)" redirect, not for every dab page, but only for those relatively few that are intentionally linked to from some article. Your "If *anything*" scheme would seems to merge the two methods, and would require that a dab page be moved the first time it is intentionally linked to from an article. Under the current scheme all that is required is the creation of a redirect, as described at WP:INTDABLINK.

As far as the purpose of this tag, I mentioned earlier that Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages seems to imply that it does some voodo to Special:WhatLinksHere, but I don't see it. Tothwolf mentioned above that it serves to label the purpose of such a redirect, and would do a better job if 14323 is ever addressed. That alone might be considered reason enough to keep it as I've seen a few of these redirects over at WP:RFD with the nominator asking why we need a redirect from so unlikely a search term. There may also be other reasons that I haven't thought of.

Finally, at this point I do think that a bot could probably maintain these. I was a little wary of the "generally" in this template generally should only appear on pages that have "(disambiguation)" in the title at {{R to disambiguation page}}, which is why I was scrutinizing the non-"(disambiguation)" redirects that I was removing these templates from. I can't think of such a case where it should stay, but I was still looking for an exception to the "generally". Barring objection, I plan to finish removing these, and I will certainly let the world know if I see an exception. (Then again, perhaps they were all exceptions that I was too dense to see!) -- ToE^T 10:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the contradiction anymore either, I was probably confused. We can agree that if anyone links to a topic following the " (disambiguation)" naming scheme, then the link was placed intentionally, no matter if that target is a page or a redirect, or if the redirect is marked with template or category. I'm also very certain that there is no built-in MediaWiki magic with the template or categories to do anything. So I can only see two possible uses for this: Displaying the informational text, which doesn't currently work, and categorizing in Category:Unprintworthy redirects, which may very well be incorrect (A redirect from "Foo (disambiguation)" to "FOO" or even "Bar", which I expect we have, might well be printworthy).
You have my blessing to carry on with this of course, but for the uses we identified I still think this should be approached differently, to take in all redirects to DAB pages, and depending on the type display one text or the other, and Category:Unprintworthy redirects only on some. Limiting to the redirects with " (disambiguation)" in the title focuses on the trivial part of them, and removing them from the others without replacement will probably invite re-adding the template. Amalthea 11:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

To clarify the above: If consensus finds use for the template, I suggest that you either pass in parameters to specify its exact status or to replace it with a new one, instead of removing it. Amalthea 13:44, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

After rereading the text at Category:Unprintworthy redirects, I no longer think that it is claiming any special power:

When using such redirects, "What links here" on a disambiguation page with links sorts such links separately (e.g. see Special:Whatlinkshere/Georgian )

I have been reading this to say that Special:Whatlinkshere provided special treatment for these redirect (though I could never see it in action) but I now think it is simply saying that Special:Whatlinkshere sorts incoming links via redirects separately from those that link directly, listing them under the redirect, and when that redirect is labeled with "(disambiguation)" in its title, then the WP:DPL people know that the links listed under it are not in need of disambiguation. No voodoo, and again no real relation to the category itself, other that that the category in intended to include such redirects. -- ToE^T 13:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it, a working patch exists for Template:Bug and the display of text on redirect pages. The edit/preview code however was (last I heard) a complete mess and would likely require a rewrite to get it in shape so that you could preview the text while editing redirect pages (this would also fix another bug where categories do not show for edit previews of redirect pages). --Tothwolf (talk) 15:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice to know some figures:

• 115,610 members of Category:Disambiguation pages
• 27,843 members of Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages ( 27,087 now that the category is cleaned up. -- ToE^T 03:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC) )

But:

1. How many of the 115,610 are actually redirects? (Should properly be 0, I would think.)
2. How many of the 27,843 don't redirect to any of the 115,610? (Should again be 0.)
3. How many redirects with "(disambiguation)" in their name aren't amongst the 27,843? (Should they all really belong? (Assuming that the category and template are not to be deprecated, that is.) What about Foo (disambiguation) → Foobar where the target is not a dab? Perhaps Amalthea's SQL query needs to take the categorization of the target into account as well.)
4. How many articles with "(disambiguation)" in their name aren't amongst the 115,610? (Should there ever be an exception?)
5. How many redirects without "(disambiguation)" in their name are there that target the 115,610? (Just for comparison.)
6. How many of the 27,843 are actually linked to from articles? (Their supposed raison d'être -- although such links may have existed once and been subsequently deleted, and there are presumably cases where the redirect is the result of a merge with another disambiguation page.)
7. How many of the 27,843 are of the form "Foo (disambiguation)" → "Bar" where there is no other "Foo" article or redirect?

The last question address Amalthea's Unprintworthy concern, which is an issue with other templates as well. Should {{R from other capitalisation}}, for instance, always categorize as unprintworthy? Should TAR → Tar (disambiguation) really be unprintworthy? (It is tagged {{R from merge}} and not currently {{R from other capitalisation}}, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that change.) Perhaps such templates should have a parameter allowing an opt-out from unprintworthy. -- ToE^T 07:16, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I just ran across WP:MDP which bears here, particularly WP:MDP#Instructions #4 which mentions that adding {{R to disambiguation page}} to the remnant of the move of a dab page makes a future revert of the move harder. -- ToE^T 23:03, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: NGC1039

My memory is hazy of those redirects... it was a project that I had to abandon due to other concerns. I think that the intention was to make redirects from improperly spaced notations. (e.g. NCG1 points to NGC 1, etc.) If this goes against WP convention then feel free to alter or delete those rdr's, I've lost interest in them and claim no ownership.
--Slyguy (talk) 17:13, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, I was not aware of {{R from systematic name}} -- one of these days I'll have to resume the project, or at least add to it bit-by-bit one day at a time...
--Slyguy (talk) 14:22, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Since (due to time constraints) I will not be able to continue that particular project any time soon, please feel free to take control with respect to the missing ones.
--Slyguy (talk) 02:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Redirect templates

Hey there, thank you for your tireless efforts in adding, updating, and reorganizing redirect templates, a thankless but much-needed task. However, I'd ask in cases where you're removing a template on a technicality (and thus leaving a redirect completely template-free) that you replace it with one you feel is more appropriate. If one doesn't exist, then either one should be created or the scope of another should be expanded. I know the redirects left template-free are probably a small percentage compared to the number of ones you add or update, but it still seems counter-productive, and only sets up someone else to make a judgment call later without your eye for nuance. Thanks.— TAnthony^Talk 14:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi TAnthony, thanks for the thanks, and thanks for the advice. I am making multiple passes through this particular list of redirects (the mistagged {{R to disambiguation page}} ones). While it might have been more efficient to retag them on the fly, I used my first pass through to gain a better understanding of the particulars I was dealing with. Also, as evidenced by the long discussion above, the confusion surrounding {{R to disambiguation page}} may be sufficient to warrant the dedicate edit and long summary I gave with its removal. In any case I am working back through the list, reapplying more appropriate templates, but I must admit that I had not initially intended to take care of all of them.

I assume from your remark that you believe that all (or nearly all) redirects deserve some template. If so, then I could really use your advice, as I am confused at the use of many of the templates specifically as they apply to redirects to dab pages. I am almost through retagging about a quarter of my list with obvious cases of {{R from incomplete disambiguation}}, such as with Union (album) (that one with a {{R to anchor}} thrown in to boot). Once that is done, I'm left with more difficult decisions -- decisions that would be straight forward were they redirects to articles instead of dab pages.

Keeping with {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} for the moment, is there any sense in which that would apply to Knob Creek, Tennessee? Clearly it would apply to Knob Creek (Tennessee creek), but is there a distinction? And if "Tennessee" is a partial disambiguation of "Knob Creek", then is "Sir" in Sir Arthur Elton a partial disambiguation of "Arthur Elton"?

I must admit that I am not an avid tagger. My primary interest is in fixing broken section redirects, but when in the process I've run across systematic misuse of some tags, I've worked at identifying and replacing them -- just recently with all cases of {{R from scientific name}} which where not applied to scientific names in the intended sense of biological nomenclature. I sat on that list for a couple of days until I discovered and accepted Skittleys' new and welcome {{R from systematic name}} and {{R from technical name}}.

If it is to be the case of a template on every redirect (and a tofurkey in every pot) then I will make sure to replace what I strip, but I would sure like to vet some of my decisions with more experienced taggers. I don't mind doing it all on my talk page, however I had hoped that WT:RE would be a good forum, but either it's not being watched by many editors or I ask inane questions.

Skittleys is working on some new redirect template related documentation, and I will be happy to work up a cheat-sheet from what I learn. -- ToE^T 15:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

And here is what should be an easy one, as it doesn't deal with the subtleties of redirects to dab pages. I understand the use of {{R from alternative name}} in the sense of alternative names of the subject of the article, such as The Bronx Bombers → New York Yankees, but does it also apply to alternative names of the article itself, such as Hannity (television program) → Hannity? There seems to be a "meta"ness (or possibly even self referentiality there). -- ToE^T 16:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Since we've obviously discussed R templates before, I do know that you put a lot of thought into these edits and I guess we certainly can't expect you to fix every single redirect, LOL. I just wanted to make sure you were replacing templates when possible, but of course I see the obstacles. I do think every redirect should have a template, but the whole concept is relatively recent so I know that at the moment not every situation has a completely appropriate template.

As far as {{R from alternative name}} goes, I've noticed that problem myself; it really does not appear to be intended for alternative title names (as in your Hannity example), but for lack of a better template it seems widely used for this purpose (I've used it myself). In the past you've had a good sense of potential problems/inefficiencies cased by this kind of "double use," do you see an advantage in a separate template, or in expanding the scope of this one in the usage documentation?— TAnthony^Talk 16:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is Template:R from alternate title → Template:R from alternative name, which adds some distinction and would allow for a split in the future if desired, although it appears to have been created simply to catch typos, and I've no reason to necessarily believe that those redirects that use it are of any different character than those that use Template:R from alternative name directly. I do think that the thing to do is to categorize what I can and group the rest into classes to discuss. (There isn't a secret IRC#redirtagger nobody's told me about, is there?) -- ToE^T 17:03, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

And in support of that I created the redirect Template:R from alternative title → Template:R from alternative name. It had 26 accidental transclusions awaiting its creation, and I have no illusions that it will treated as anything but a synonym of {{R from alternative name}}, but it makes me feel more comfortable tagging such redirects. -- ToE^T 01:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You may already be familiar with it, but there is some existing template documentation at Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages although it does not currently cover all of the templates that are in use. --Tothwolf (talk) 05:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Melián → Melian (disambiguation) is a good example of a troublesome tagless redirect to a disambiguation page (troublesome, that is, based on the assumption that all redirects should be tagged). The dab page has mutiple entries for both "Melián" & "Melian", so {{R from title with diacritics}} with its accompanying unprintworthiness seems a bad idea. Perhaps {{R from alternative title}} is the way to go, or maybe there does need to be a new template to cover these as Skittleys suggested above. {{R to disambiguation page}} does seem a logical sounding name, but I don't know how realistic it is to propose changing the 27,000 current uses of it under its restrictive definition to something more descriptive like {{R for intentional link to disambiguation page}} or whatever. Another option could be installing a parameter in several of the templates to allow for disabling of the unprintworthiness. I need a couple of days to survey the template landscape. -- ToE^T 03:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The only value of redirect tagging I see is "redirect with possibilities". Unprintworthy may have peen potentially useful. The rest it seems to me don;t greatly matter - and in some cases are inherently unreliable, like R to dab, obvious, like R to/from alternative caps, or not always well defined, like "mis-spelling" vs. "alternative name" - and are also rather "so what" - why do we want a category of mis-spellings? Are we collecting them? Rich Farmbrough, 00:06, 16 October 2009 (UTC).

Reply

Hey I just left you a reply to your message here: User talk:Captain-n00dle#Inferior Alveolar Nerve Block RfD. Thanks! Captain n00dle ^T/_C 23:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

R from Eponym

Hello! I can see that you do a lot of work with redirects/templates and I was just wondering if it would be a good idea to have a {{R from Eponym}} template as a lot of medical articles have a term which is mainly used and an Eponymous term after the person who discovered it etc. A {{R to Eponym}} may also be a good idea.

To put this into context, I just created a couple of redirects for this reason just today Pancreatic duct of Santorini and Pancreatic duct of Wirsung.

Thanks in advance, best regards, Captain n00dle ^T/_C 00:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't have good advice for you here, Captain-n00dle. I have been working with redirects recently, but I am quite frustrated by the lack of quality documentation regarding redirect message templates and of any central forum for discussion of their related issues. Skittleys is working on an updated and improved version of WP:TMR, and he recently created {{R from systematic name}} and {{R from technical name}} (and their "to" counterparts) to replace {{R from scientific name}} where it was being used incorrectly. (It is intended for scientific names in the biological nomenclature sense only.) Thus, he may be a good one to speak to regarding the utility of a {{R to Eponym}}. -- ToE^T 14:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, I have just dropped him a message on his talk page, he seems to be doing some good work! I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks again, Captain n00dle ^T/_C 20:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I've moved this discussion to WT:RE#R from Eponym. -- ToE^T 02:09, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Your message

Was received but not understood. Did you mean Perl 6? If so, I still don't understand. Thank you. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 14:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC) Stan

Reply archived here. -- ToE 22:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I suppose we could both agree that 8&5=thirteen. -- ToE 22:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Vindicatored?

How's this? Clearer, I hope. (Somehow, I managed to miss the change...) TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 03:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Tighten your shot group, toe

Why do you have such a hard on for my edits, toe? --NEMT (talk) 19:25, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I do appreciate your sense of humor and usually enjoy reading your "practical joke" edits. -- ToE^T 00:49, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you should subscribe to my newsletter. --NEMT (talk) 01:08, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Ref Desk Contribution Deleted

user:Tango has deleted one of you contributions on the reference desk. If you'd like, if may be discussed on the talk page. Buddy431 (talk) 17:53, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This notification could have been better worded. Perhaps:

Due to concerns that the original question violated reference desk policy against requesting medical advice, user:Tango has deleted the reference desk section WP:RD/S#Prescription first aid kit to which you contributed. This removal may be discussed on the reference desk talk page.

-- ToE 00:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Influence of Coriolis on specific air range

Hi ToE. I have given quite a bit of thought to the various ideas we posted at the Reference Desk. I can explain why specific air range (air distance travelled per unit mass of fuel) is lower for an aircraft flying towards the equator, relative to another flying east or west. (It is because, to follow a meridian, the Coriolis force must act on the aircraft and this must be a component of thrust. Less than 100% of thrust is available to balance drag so more thrust is required to maintain airspeed, or airspeed will be slower if thrust is unchanged.)

However, I have been unable to find an explanation for why SAR might be higher for an aircraft flying towards the pole. Consequently I must concede specific air range will be the same for an aircraft flying north as for one flying south. I have posted my latest thoughts below yours. See my diff. Thanks for the discussion! Dolphin (t) 11:58, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Talkback from Von Restorff

{{tb|User_talk:Von_Restorff}}

Section is archived here. I had promised to answer a few specific questions later, but VR bumped his archiving rate from two weeks to one day, so I assume he just wanted to let the entire discussion die. -- ToE 00:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Latin translation

Just swap the words around: Nunquam Fidicen Semper Sarciens. Each pair of words is a clause in itself, so the endings of the nouns are not affected by the change (it's not like you're swapping the subject and the object of a verb). -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:54, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Sarciens is a participle, and participles can have some characteristics of verbs, nouns, or adjectives in various contexts (in Latin or in English). However, in this sentence, it functions as a noun... AnonMoos (talk) 07:31, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Astronomy problems

Help provided for astronomy problems

Hi Thanks again! Don't worry, i don't feel offended when you said that. I like frank people anyway and i'm always glad to hear criticizes from other people. I'm not going to lie but criticizes are actually helping me to be a lot better. I'm also glad to admit things that made up of me. I just asked another question in reference desk with the section named "number 26". Hope you can help me again. Hope i don't bother you too much. I have been trying to study astronomy for months now. Its knowledge is like infinity (i know it's not but it seems like so to me). It comes in so many variety ways that one has to spend all of their high school years to master it and even then there are still some problems that they don't even know. I got to admit that i have a long way to go!! I know for the fact that i'm not going to master all of it this year for sure. Well i think i really need to push hard now. 2 weeks from now is when the competition holds. So i have 2 more weeks to study and that's it. I just going to just my best to get as much out of it as possible, the more = the better. By the way, are you living in England? Nice to meet you! I'm living in the United States. If possible then we can chat through yahoo or something? It's faster that way since i can ask and talk to you directly. I think i can learn a lot faster by doing so. I'm thinking perhaps you can spend like 10 minutes everyday to teach me astronomy for the nest 2 weeks? We can arrange the time. Anyway is fine to me except my school time. It's ok if you don't want to. If you want to then we can E-mail each other to give contact info through Email this use function on Wikipedia. You know this is my dream since i was very little, i have done everything that i possibly could to try to fulfill my dream but i need a teacher like you to help since no one else can. You're going to my savior if you help me. I have nothing to pay back for you now but one thing i can guarantee is i won't forget you. When i grow up, i'm promised to help you back when you need to to show my grateful for what you have done to me. I know it's kind of a long time from now. My goal is to get to this, sometimes in my high school years! Thanks in regard!Pendragon5 (talk) 20:47, 19 February 2012 (UTC) No, I'm not in England, but am on a sailboat currently cruising Southeast Asia. With dodgy and intermittent internet access, this is probably my best means of communicating. If you are concerned about overtaxing the ref desk, you are welcome to vet problems with me if you think they may just be a matter of applying equations. I'm not particularly well versed in astronomy, but am happy to help where I can. Is this your first shot at the IAO, and how many more tries will you have? Is the practice test you are working available online, or something that was mailed to you? Is there a forum of students discussing the practice test and other elements of preparing for the IAO? -- ToE 01:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC) NICE! Southeast Asia is where my home country belongs to before i moved to America! Specifically is Vietnam. Whenever you got a chance to visit Vietnam, let me know. I still have relatives there in Ho Cho Minh city. I'm sure they will welcome you. They don't know how to speak English though. But well i can work things up for you easily. You can stay at my relative's house or eat meals there. So should i just post problems on your talk page here? To be honest, i don't get as much help out of reference desk as much as i got out of you. I think you're really good at astronomy for the most part. Most people know nothing. The practice test is from my teachers. I think the national Science Olympiad passed them out for participate schools. There is a forum but well students are usually don't use it anyway. The forum is just useless in my opinion. Well this is my first year of participate in astronomy yea. I'm currently a sophomore in high school. During my freshman year, i was going to do it too but i missed it because i forgot the deadline. It's not how many more tries, it is not simply just one shot in. There are regional, state, nation competitions and last international. The one 2 weeks from now is the state one so yea. Technically i have 2 more years so i would consider that 2 more tries. On the test there are two parts, one is general knowledge about astronomy and the other one is the specific topic they want you to focus on. Every year they changed the specific topic material. Like what stars, objects in space... they want you to focus on. The specific topic part is pretty easy to me i think, i have no problem with that. It's just like normal studying for my classes but the general knowledge concepts ones are hard. All the problems i have been asking on here are fall into the general concepts parts. The general part is like "everything" about astronomy can be possible in there so the more you know about astronomy the better. I have no clue what other elements needed for astronomy. Science Olympiad is all independent. Students have to start learning from scratch. Their high school teachers won't be able to help the students either because they don't even know the material. How is each student going to prepare for it is one's own business. There is no guild line or anything, you study whatever way you want. The method i'm using to study for it is try to do past events tests.Pendragon5 (talk) 20:25, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Spectrum of stars The initial question File:Astronomystuff4.JPG Can you help me on number 16? Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 20:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC) By the way, thanks a lot for your effort on number 26. I have strong feeling that they must have made a mistake or they supposed to be a lot more clear on what exactly are they asking. I just gave up on that one for now. Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 20:48, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Sure. (I'm online at the moment -- 0440 here in Malaysia -- I'm just up early & posted a more detailed explanation at WP:RD/S#Orbits of stars within globular clusters.) Did you get an answer for Q15, as it is required for Q16? Also, what does the spectral information in Q16 tell you? Anything? -- ToE 20:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Yep i got the answer for question 15. It is about 218 km/s. Star C and D have the same orbital velocity i think. Well spectral tells me about the star's temperature bases from this. What is the H are they talking about? I'm kind of clueless on this one sorry.Pendragon5 (talk) 21:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Hα. What does it mean that the observed spectral line from the star has a different wavelength than that observed in the lab? -- ToE 21:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC) I don't get your question "What does it mean that the observed spectral line from the star has a different wavelength than that observed in the lab?". Do you mean like the question states the observed spectral line from the star has a different wavelength than that observed in the lab? I think so yea. I don't have a picture in my head what angle are trying to solve? I don't know how to interpret spectral line yet. The answer for this should be from 50-70 angles (all they wanted is really rough estimate).Pendragon5 (talk) 21:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Redshift. -- ToE 21:38, 20 February 2012 (UTC) I don't know what does red shift has to do with the angle in this question. Sorry if i'm acting stupid right now but i'm really clueless on even which direction to go to solve the problem. I don't even understand the question them self.Pendragon5 (talk) 22:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC) I think that I do see what they are getting at, and if so, then this question has a lot of unwritten assumptions as well. Have you calculated the redshift z and radial velocity? -- ToE 22:13, 20 February 2012 (UTC) $z={\frac {\lambda _{\mathrm {obsv} }-\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}{\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}}$ I just went for a walk as a break. Just got back. Anyway i don't know how to use the formula so i didn't get to calculate the redshift z and radial velocity. I don't understand the radial velocity term either. It's basically how fast the star moving toward us or moving away from us right? Then radial velocity should be the same as the orbital velocity of Star C, which is 218km/s. Can you do it as an example? If possible draw on the piece of paper to help me visualize. I don't even know what angle are they talking about.Pendragon5 (talk) 23:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC) (outdent) The unstated assumption here is that the binary star system has no significant overall motion with respect to sol, so the redshift is entirely due to the orbital motion of the stars. Depending on the angle of inclination of their orbit, only a fraction of their orbital velocity will be radial to us. If their orbital plane were perpendicular to us, then none of their orbital velocity would be radial to us and there would be no redshift. At the other extreme, if we were seeing their orbital plane edge-on, then at points in the orbit all of the orbital velocity is radial to us, while at other points none would be. The other unstated assumption here is that the redshift varies with time -- that it is different at different points in the orbit, and that the value given for the star's Hα is just one measurement. If what they gave you represents an extreme value, then you should be able to calculate the inclination. If it was just some random value within its range, then you should be able to determine a range of possible values for the inclination. So give me some numbers. λ is wavelength, and the assumption we are all making (well, most of us) is that the wavelength of Hα emitted by the star is the same as what is observed in the lab. Then you should be able to use the non-relativistic approximation $z\approx {\frac {v}{c}}$ where c is the speed of light. What is z? What radial velocity does that imply? Then think about the geometry of the inclined orbit. -- ToE 00:32, 21 February 2012 (UTC) I don't know how to find the inclination. I can't picture the problem in my head. I have never do this type of problem before. Sorry that i still don't get the concepts. Anyway speed of light is 186,282 miles per second. 656.5386/186,282 = so z = approximately .00352? I'm so not understand anything on this, i have been trying to understand it for few hours now T_T. I deserve to be called dump now. Can you just do it for me as an example? If by then i still don't understand then i won't bother you anymore.Pendragon5 (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Try again to calculate z. The formula you quoted for z didn't have c in it; only the two wavelengths. The formula with c is for calculating the radial velocity v. (See redshift.) And keep the units in all your work as it will help you catch a lot of errors. z is a unitless term, but your calculation above would have yielded nm/(m/s) or units of time. (Did you catch that nm was nanometers, a common unit for measuring the wavelength of light?) I've got to run now; we'll work out the geometry later. How much trigonometry do you have? (What is needed for this problem can be easily introduced from scratch.) -- ToE 01:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Well i don't know how much do i need to know to consider is a lot nor do i know how much is little but i can tell you is the highest math class i ever finished is precalculus. Pendragon5 (talk) 01:55, 21 February 2012 (UTC) All you will need is an understanding of the definition of sine and cosine (and the intuition to use them properly). -- ToE 11:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC) So there are two different kinds of z? The second z is the radial velocity, how about the first z? What is the first z stands for? And i do know that the wavelength of light is in nm. Anyway basically i have to put them all in the same unit when i calculate right?Pendragon5 (talk) 01:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Uh oh! I don't know what I said to create this confusion. We've only been discussing one z. It is a unitless parameter which is a measure of the redshift, it is calculated from the observed wavelength, and it is used to calculate the velocity. This same z appears in both equations. -- ToE 11:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC) And to calculate the z, radial velocity. The wavelength needs to be in nm and the speed of light needs to convert to meter per second right? 186,282 miles X 1.609344 = 299,791.819008km X 1000 = 299,791,819.008 m/s. So 656.5386/299,791,819.008 = approximately .0000021899. I have no idea what is that number suppose to mean and how it is going to help me solve the problem.Pendragon5 (talk) 02:05, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Keep your complete units in place and do math to them. You may not have been required to do so up to this point, but it will help you now, and it will be required at some point in the near future. Have you learned the rules for this? You can only add or subtract like units, and they yield the same unit. For instance, you can write 123 minutes - 180 seconds = 2 hours (all units of time), but it doesn't make any sense to add or subtract dissimilar units; for instance, I can't compute 3 days + 3000 miles. Note that you can compute 1 meter - 1 foot, as they are both lengths, but as with the time calculation, you have to scale the values appropriately. You can multiply or divide any units and they are treated the same way as the numbers. So 25 meters/second ÷ 5 meters/second2 = 5 seconds, but 25 meters/second ÷ 5 meters/second = 5, a unitless value. Do you see how that works? You can also square or take the square root of units just as with numbers, so that sqrt(25 meters2/second2) = 5 meters/second. Note that logarithms and exponentiation are only done to unitless values, so that Apparent magnitude#Calculations, for instance, has the formula $m_{x}=-2.5\log _{10}\left({\frac {F_{x}}{F_{x}^{0}}}\right)\,$ where the argument of the logarithm is the ratio of two fluxes, so that the units will cancel out. Applying this to the work you just did, you should have written: 656.5386 nm / 299,791,819.008 m/s = 0.0000021899 ns, and then said, "What?" Not only does your number not make any sense (which you recognized), the units don't either. What are we getting a time for? We'll figure out what's going on with the formulas later (hint: z is not the radial velocity), but first ... Use Units conversion by factor-label properly. I am glad to see you effortlessly convert c from miles/second to meters/second, but your work should look like this: 186,282 miles/s X 1.609344 km/mile = 299,791.819008 km/s X 1000 m/km = 299,791,819.008 m/s. Notice that when you multiply out miles/s X km/mile X m/km = m/s the units cancel out to give you what you want. Always put the complete units on your conversion factors. Your mathematical justification of multiplying a speed in miles/second by 1.609344 km/mile is that because 1 mile = 1.609344 km, 1.609344 km/mile = 1, and you can multiply any term by 1 and not change its value. Also, if you are heading into astronomy or physics, you should get used to using c in SI units, both mks and eventually cgs. (All the general relativists love cgs -- when they are not working in natural units .) Do you understand redshift and Doppler effect well enough to see how measuring the shift in wavelength of a spectral line can be used to determine the relative radial velocity, and do you understand why the radial velocity has the dominant effect on redshift, and the transverse velocity is not a significant factor until the velocities approach relativistic speeds? You don't need to understand the relativistic part yet, but you should be able to look at Q16 and immediately know whether Star C, at the moment of its spectroscopic analysis, was moving towards the earth or away from the earth. Which is it and why? OK. Let me know what we need to do to make the above points clear. Once they are, we will figure out what the two redshift formula do for us: $z={\frac {\lambda _{\mathrm {obsv} }-\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}{\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}}$ and $z\approx {\frac {v}{c}}$. -- ToE 05:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Unfortunately i'm not familiar with redshift and doppler effect well enough (i think i understand them little to nothing, not even close to well enough). Basically the entire paragraph second to the last one is completely something i'm totally clueless on. And i got the points above clear enough now i think. So basically i have to put them in the same conversion unit to cancel them out to get the z. So 656.5386 nm X 10^-9 = 6.565386 X 10^-7 m. So 6.565386 X 10^-7/299,791,819.008 m/s = 2.1899 X 10^-15. I also have a question. $z={\frac {\lambda _{\mathrm {obsv} }-\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}{\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}}$ and $z\approx {\frac {v}{c}}$ why there are two formula for z? What are the differences? I got to admit this is the hardest thing i have been working on in astronomy, so confusing (maybe cuz i'm dumb?). Can you explain which formula individually? And how am i going to plug the information i got from the question into the formula? Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 22:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Don't get too discouraged; you simply have not yet developed the level of mathematical sophistication that is expected from a student tackling problems like these, and this sophistication comes from experience. The confusion is bi-directional, as I've often not understood where your misunderstandings lay, but I think I'm starting to catch where you are coming from. In the context of this problem, $z={\frac {\lambda _{\mathrm {obsv} }-\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}{\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}}$ and $z\approx {\frac {v}{c}}$ are not two different formula for z, but one formula which lets you calculate z from your spectral information, and another which lets you use z to calculate the relative radial velocity (here v). You probably wouldn't have had any confusion if the second formula had been presented at $v\approx zc$, or if the two had been combined as $v\approx {\frac {\lambda _{\mathrm {obsv} }-\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}{\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}}c$, would you? Well, don't expect to be hand fed such pat formulas in the future. You are expected to combine and manipulate equations so that you can solve for your desired value in terms of known values. The reason z is broken out separately isn't just to give you a hard time, but because this redshift factor z can be computed several different ways and used in several places, and combining them all would yield way to many overly complicated equations. Note also that you may drive some redshift problems in reverse, where you know the velocities and need to compute the wavelength of some spectral line. -- ToE 23:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC) Oh, and stop dividing λ / c for this problem. I harped on it earlier not just because it was the wrong thing to do here, but because it was the wrong thing to do and you were doing it badly. Notice that when computing $z={\frac {\lambda _{\mathrm {obsv} }-\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}{\lambda _{\mathrm {emit} }}}$, the numerator is the difference of two wavelengths (wavelengths just being lengths) and thus is a length, and the denominator is a wavelength (a length), so the quotient is unitless, and as long as all your wavelengths are in the same units, (whether nanometers or picofurlongs) no unit conversion is required. Then use you z in the second equation to compute the relative radial velocity. Back to dividing λ / c, this result which has units of time (do you understand how length / speed = time ?) is the inverse of the frequency of the light with that particular wavelength. c = λ f. -- ToE 00:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC) And again noting that there is no reason for us to calculate λ / c, you are still doing it badly: You wrote: So 656.5386 nm X 10^-9 = 6.565386 X 10^-7 m. Don't write it that way because 656.5386 nm X 10^-9 = 6.565386 X 10^-7 nm. Instead write either 656.5386 nm X 10^-9 m/nm or 656.5386 nm X 10^-9 You wrote: So 6.565386 X 10^-7/299,791,819.008 m/s = 2.1899 X 10^-15. Where did the units go? It should be: 6.565386 X 10^-7 m / 299,791,819.008 m/s = 2.1899 X 10^-15 s. We didn't need to calculate that, but since your did, we might as well see what it means. Because c = λ f, you computed λ / c = 1/f, so f is the reciprocal of your answer. 1/2.1899 X 10^-15 s = 4.5664 x 10^14 s^-1 = 4.5664 x 10^14 Hz which is the frequency of the Hα band received from your Star C. BTW, have you taken High School Chemistry yet? That is where the factor-label method is usually introduced, but it is used throughout science. -- ToE 01:17, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Oh wow. It turned out i messed up pretty badly. λ observed is 656.5386 nm right? And λ emit is 656.3 nm? So it that so then (656.5386 - 656.3)/ 656.3 = approximately .00036 for z X 186,282 miles/s = approximately 67.7234 mile/s, so it's the radial velocity right here right? If the λ emit is 656.3 nm then what i don't understand is why the laboratory value is the λ emit? What the λ emit even means?Pendragon5 (talk) 00:32, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Good question, and it is important to understand redshift as it is used a great deal in astronomy. You should read our redshift and Doppler effect articles to the best of your ability. I know that many of our physics articles are not written for beginners -- it is hard to balance completeness and accuracy with ease of understanding -- so you may want to seek out other sources as well. When we study hydrogen in the laboratory we see characteristic spectral lines, one being the H-alpha line with a wavelength of 656.281 nm. When we look at light from stars we see the same pattern of spectral lines, but their wavelengths are not always quite the same -- in the case of this problem we are seeing an Hα of 656.5386 nm. Our assumption is that the Hydrogen in the star is the same as the hydrogen on earth, so the emitted wavelength is the same a our laboratory measured wavelength, and that the wavelength is redshifted or blueshifted due to the Doppler effect. Note that this is not a blind assumption. Young physicists are all the time trying to figure out if the laws of physics are different in different parts of the universe (see our article Variable speed of light, for instance), but there appears to be no reason to doubt that λ_emitted = λ_laboratory. I have no idea why Q16 gives you the observed wavelength to 7 significant figures, but rounds the laboratory value to 4 significant figures, but your should probably go ahead and use the value they gave you. -- ToE 01:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Alright λ_emitted = λ_laboratory is all i need to know for future uses. I didn't know λ_emitted = λ_laboratory at all since the beginning, no wonder why i was like so lost. I still don't understand the concept of λ laboratory. Why is it 656.3 in the problem as they state but not 656.28 nm? Or is .02 is too small and they want us to not even consider about it? Oh wait a minute, they rounded it on purpose right? Alright we are at 67.7234 mile/s then what? What is next? What do i do with the 67.7234 mile/s radial velocity to find out the angle, and sorry that i'm pretty stupid on this. Until now i still can't imagine up what the angle am i trying to solve T_T. Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 01:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Whoever wrote the problem should not have rounded λ_laboratory, but they did, so that is what you should use. I assume that you know the speed of light to be 186,000 miles/second or 186,282 miles/second. Learn 3 x 10^8 meters/second. That is accurate to better than one part in a thousand and is the value you will be expected to use in most physics problems. (Use higher precision where necessary, such as during actual experiments, but carrying the extra digits doesn't forward the purpose of most exercises.) The magnitude of 300,000 km/second can be easy to remember if you know 186,000 miles/second and that there is a little more than one and a half km per mile. That gives you c = 3 x 10^5 km/s = 3 x 10^8 m/s. (In graduate school you might hang out with the wacky cgs crowd and use 3 x 10^10 cm/s, but will eventually become a naturalist and use c = 1 with no units at all!) So, what is the radial velocity of Star C in km/s? -- ToE 02:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC) To answer the question above you asked, i haven't take chemistry class yet. As my plan, i will take it in my senior year as my junior i will be taking physic class. Approximately 109.065 km/s radial velocity.Pendragon5 (talk) 04:11, 22 February 2012 (UTC) "Approximately 109.065 km/s radial velocity." How does that compare to the orbital velocity? What does that mean? Will something look familiar when you work out questions E, F, & G in the model question below? -- ToE 05:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC) So it's slower than the orbital velocity which is 218 km/s. About 2 times slower, what a coincidence? I have no idea what is that tells me.Pendragon5 (talk) 22:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Is Star C moving 109 km/s toward you or away from you, and why? The author of the question set up the numbers so that the radial velocity was half that of the orbital velocity so that the next part would be easy (once you visualize it). You should see the answer as soon as you figure out sub-questions E, F, and G. -- ToE 00:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC) File:Astronomystuff9.JPG Why are we assuming that it is at the straight angle from Earth? I just put 4 as an example, there could be so many locations the binary system could locate compare to the Earth. How do we know which one is which? I still can't understand the angle concept. Since the star is ALWAYS moving then isn't the angle will just always changing? This is so CONFUSING! GOD!Pendragon5 (talk) 03:52, 23 February 2012 (UTC). Note the line on the paper says All four =... And the line to those four ellipse are the line of sight when we look at them if that where the binary system isPendragon5 (talk) 03:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC) (outdent)Since it's the red shift then it's moving toward me with the speed of 109 km/s. That doesn't makes any sense to me. The star is simply just rotating around itself, it will never move toward me an inch.Pendragon5 (talk) 02:33, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Two problems. First: "Since it's the red shift then it's moving toward me". No. What is the difference between redshift and blueshift? (Read the blueshift article!) Second: "The star is simply just rotating around itself". No. Remember problem Q15. Star C is one half of binary system with Star D. The binary system rotates, but Star C is revolving (or orbiting) around their center of mass at 218 km/s. See the difference? Star C is moving like the tip of our second hand (where the center of the clock is the center of mass of the system). Star C is not represented by the entire second hand itself, but by the very tip. If you wish, you can glue a second second hand to the first that points in the opposite direction. (So one points at 9 while the other points at 3.) Then the tip of one second hand represents Star C while the tip of the other second hand represents Star D. That more fully represents the binary system, but all they are asking about in Q16 is the motion of Star C, so one second hand could do. -- ToE 02:51, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Ops, redshift = moving away. Anyway i just found out the different is positive = moving away, negative = moving toward. So it must be moving away from us. And yea by rotating i meant since it is the binary system. I already know the 2 stars are rotating around each other in the ellipse orbit. What i don't understand is, they will stay in that orbit forever until they explode so therefore they actually never move any closer to us.Pendragon5 (talk) 03:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC) I think i can picture the binary system now but not the angle we're trying to find. How do we know which way the binary system is rotating compare to our Earth perspective. Well, from question 15, you know nothing about the orientation of their orbital plane from our perspective, but the fact that they asked you for Star C's orbital velocity implies that its orbit is pretty circular. If its elliptical orbit were highly eccentric then the orbital velocity would vary greatly, being highest at periapsis and lowest at apoapsis, so by asking for the orbital velocity, they are making an unstated assumption that the orbit is roughly circular. Question 16 gives some more information, which, along with a couple of other unstated assumptions, lets us figure something, but not everything about the binary system's orientation toward earth. First, they clearly want us to use the ratio of the orbital velocity to the observed radial velocity to determine the angle of the orbital plane wrt (with respect to) our line-of-sight. There is an unstated assumption here that the radial velocity is entirely due to the orbital velocity at some angle to the line of sight. If we were told that the binary system as a whole had some net velocity toward or away from the earth, we could take it into account, but since we were not given such information, we can't do anything with this problem unless we assume that there is no net radial velocity of the entire binary system. Up to this point we haven't assumed anything about orientation of the binary system with respect to us, the observers. It could be squarely facing us (90°) so that the circular orbit actually appears circular to us, and could be rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise as viewed by us. Or it could be edge on (0°) so that the stars don't trace out a visible circle or ellipse from our point of view, but just appear to move back and forth. Or it could be anywhere between 0° and 90°. But wait, if it was at 90° (square on to us) then we would never detect any radial velocity (just like the tip of the second hand on the clock aimed squarely at you which never comes any closer nor moves any farther away, even momentarily), and the math you've done with the redshift shows a radial velocity of half the orbital velocity. So we know that the orbital plane is not at 90° to our line-of-site, that it is not squarely facing us. It must be inclined with respect to our line-of-sight, sufficiently far from 90° for the for orbital velocity of Star C to, at some point in its orbit, manifest itself as a radial velocity of the value you calculated. But, as you have described in the clock face edge on, the tip of the second hand is at times moving towards you, at times moving away from you, and at times doing neither. So with an orbital inclination of 0°, the radial velocity (wrt you, the observer) is constantly changing. This exposes another unstated assumption of the question, that the redshift they gave was not just from a random measurement. Had they measured the redshift for a full ten days (the binary system's period), they would have found at times a blueshift, at times a redshift, and at times neither. Since they are asking for "the angle between the plane of the systems orbit and the line of sight of the observer", and this does not change as Star C orbits -- the star will be at different places in the orbital plane at different times, but the orbital plane remains the same -- they they must have given you a particular redshift, and the only one which make sense to give is the maximum one. So the radial velocity you calculated must be the maximum Star C experiences (wrt to you, the observer) anywhere in its orbit. Have you visualized the orbit sufficiently to see where that occurs? Then you just need too determine the inclination where that maximum radial velocity matches the one you calculated. Finally, there are a couple of things we will never know about the orientation of the orbit because not enough information was given. We don't know if the star's orbit is clockwise or counter-clockwise as viewed from the earth, and we don't know in what direction the orbital plane is inclined. This is equivalent to not knowing if the clock started out facing you or facing away from you, and not knowing which edge your assistant tilted toward or away from you. Did your assistant tilt the "6" up toward you, the "12" down toward you, or the "3" or "6" to the side toward you, but that is OK, because we weren't asked that information; we only have to figure out the angle of inclination. For ease of visualization, without loss of generality, you may assume that the clock started facing you and that you assistant tilted the "6" up toward you and the "12" down away from you. -- ToE 21:34, 23 February 2012 (UTC) What angle? You have also expressed confusion regarding the "the angle between the plane of the systems orbit and the line of sight of the observer". Perhaps you should consider a model. Imagine a clock with a second hand which extends just about 13.66 inches from the center of the clock, so that the circle drawn by the tip of the second hand has a circumference of 2180 mm. Now "juice up" the clock so that it spins the second hand around once every 10 seconds instead of once per minute. Do you see the analogy? Orbital period of 10 seconds vs 10 days & orbital velocity of 218 mm/s vs. 218 km/s. The face of the clock represents the plane of our binary system's orbit and the tip of the second hand represents Star C. Have someone hold the clock across the room from you at eye level, pointing squarely at you so that you can clearly see the face. A) what is the angle between the clock face and your line of sight?, and B) what is the radial velocity of the tip of the second hand with respect to you, the observer -- that is, how fast is the tip of the second hand moving toward or away from you? Now have your assistant tip the clock 90° so that you are observing the face edge-on. C) what is the angle between the clock face and your line of sight?, and D) what is the radial velocity of the tip of the second hand with respect to you, does this velocity change with time, and how would you characterize it? -- ToE 01:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC) File:Astronomystuff6.JPG is this the description of the clock you described? Visualize is never my strong point, especially in this case since i'm completely unknown to the concept. The answer for A should be 0 degree of inclination right? And for B the hand doesn't move closer and way from me because it is just rotating around the clock, and the clock is just stay where it is. I have a feeling that i probably visualize things wrong so far. God, wish you have a camera and just draw it and upload it here, it would be a life saver for me. I having problem visualize this since yesterday even after countless hours of efforts. Sometimes there is something i just don't get it and it remains like that for a while.Pendragon5 (talk) 02:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Don't get what you mean by "juice it" either.Pendragon5 (talk) 02:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Wiktionary:juice#Verb: "2. (transitive) To energize or stimulate something" In other word, do whatever is necessary to make it run faster. -- ToE 02:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Re answer A, No. If the clock face is perpendicular to your line of sight, what angle does the plane of the face make with your line of sight? -- ToE 02:39, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Re: "Visualize is never my strong point" -- Then that is something you better work at. It will be quite important for calculus and analytic geometry as well as vector analysis courses. The flip side is that learning the math will help you visualize better. -- ToE 03:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Re: "wish you have a camera and just draw it". The camera is not the problem. I am clean out of four dimensional sheets of paper. -- ToE 03:06, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Once you answer question D -- and I don't need a mathematical formula; a short description will suffice -- then questions E, F, and G are where the very simple trigonometry (though perhaps not so simple visualization) comes in to play. What is the radial velocity of the tip of the second hand with respect to you when the clock is tilted as E) 30°, F) 45°, G) 60°? At that point the answer to Q 16 will pop out! -- ToE 03:15, 22 February 2012 (UTC) File:Astronomystuff7.JPG this angle? Alright i just can't picture it. I don't think i got line of sight either? Is the line of sight is just the line coming out from my eye that goes straight in any direction i look?Pendragon5 (talk) 04:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Alright let say i clock at this clock from my laptop as i sat exactly in front of my laptop. and let assume this clock is as same as my eye level. Is this the scenario were you describing? Is my line of sight will make 90 degree angle at the plane of the clock?Pendragon5 (talk) 04:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Re: "Is the line of sight is just the line coming out from my eye that goes straight in any direction i look?" Well, yes, but in the context of the problem they expect you to be looking in the right direction, that is, in the direction of the binary system. In the context of our model, look at the center of the clock face, and if the clock is aimed "squarely at you", then your line of sight will be perpendicular to the clock face, right? Thus your line of sight makes a 90° angle with the plane of the clock face. If it is tilted edge on, where you can't read the numbers at all, then your line of sight makes a 0° angle with the plane of the clock face. At 30° the numbers would be visible, but fairly distorted (foreshortened by a factor of 1:2 because sin(30°) = 0.5). (Note that in analytic geometry, it is common to measure angles from the surface normal, so what we are calling 90° would be 0°, but they are explicitly asking for "the angle between the plane of the systems orbit and the line of sight of the observer".) -- ToE 05:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC) So, are you ready to answer question D? -- ToE 15:50, 22 February 2012 (UTC) I don't think i ever even hear about analytic geometry before not until you mentioned it to me before. Don't understand this part "(Note that in analytic geometry, it is common to measure angles from the surface normal, so what we are calling 90° would be 0°, but they are explicitly asking for "the angle between the plane of the systems orbit and the line of sight of the observer".)" Introductory Calculus courses and textbooks are often titled "Calculus and Analytical Geometry", and George B. Thomas's text by that name is particularly well known. The only reason I brought up the concept of the surface normal was that at one point when I asked what angle your line of sight made with the plane of the clock face when it was pointed squarely at you (so that you could read it easily), you replied 0°. The answer was wrong -- when the plane is perpendicular to your los (line-of-sight), it makes a 90° angle with your los (that's what perpendicular means, right), and that's what you need to know for this problem -- but I wanted to point out that your 0° answer made sense in some context. I could expound on the uses of surface normals in astronomy, and discuss why the orbital angular velocity vector is perpendicular to the instantaneous orbital velocity vector, but that is tangential (so to speak) to the discussion of this problem, so if you want to discuss such vectors, ask after we get an answer to this question. The important part is that you understand that when the clock face is aimed squarely at you (so that you can read it easily), the plane of the clock face makes a 90° angle with your los, and when it is turned edge-on (so that you can't see the numbers at all), it makes a 0° angle with your los. Are you seeing that? -- ToE 00:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC) The angle between the plane, is it this one? Is it the angle between the blue disc and the red ellipse? And the angle between the line of sight and the angle between the plane as i'm looking directly to to that picture? Or from the left or from the right?Pendragon5 (talk) 22:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC) That image is showing a dihedral angle between the intersecting planes, but I don't see how to use it to illustrate our problem. The image File:Angle of incidence.svg which appears at Angle of incidence might help. θ is not the angle we are talking about -- θ is measured against the surface normal as discussed above. What we do want is the unlabeled complement of θ, that is 90° - θ, what they call the grazing angle in that article. -- ToE 00:59, 23 February 2012 (UTC) So, if the angles make sense, what is the answer to sub-question D? Specifically, when the clock face is edge on (0° with your los), with the bottom of the clock (six o'clock ) closest to you, what is the radial velocity of the tip of the second hand (with respect to you, the observer) as the second hand passed the 12, the 3, the 6, and the 9? Recall that we constructed the clock so that the orbital speed of the tip of the second had was 218 mm/s. -- ToE 01:10, 23 February 2012 (UTC) So the angle we are looking for is 90 degree - angle of incidence = ? angle, correct? As it passed from 12 to 6, it is moving toward me and from 6 to 9 is away from me with the speed of 109 nm/s? What can that information going to help us to solve the problem? Still can't picture the angle we're trying to solve.Pendragon5 (talk) 02:44, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Yes, the angle between the line-of-sight and the plane is 90° - θ_incidence, but there is no particular reason to think of it in terms of the angle of incidence here; I was just going after an illustration. Re: "109 nm/s", I'm sure you meant 109 mm/s, but where did that figure come from? What is the instantaneous radial velocity (with respect to you, the observer) of the tip of the second hand as it passes by the 12, the 3, the 6, and the 9? Yes, it will all average out to zero because the clock has no net motion towards or away from you, but the tip of the second hand is at times moving away from you, at times moving towards you, and at times doing neither. If you can characterize that, then you can consider what happens when the clock face is canted at a 45° angle to your line-of-sight, and then the behavior of this binary system may start making sense. -- ToE 04:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Yea i meant mm, i saw nm for some reasons. This is a similar model of the binary system but in smaller scale, it's in mm instead of km. So the clock has the inclination of 45 compare to my line of sight, and my line of sight is directly point at the center of the clock? I don't know if it's relevant. Then i would guess that would make the speed goes up to 109 divided by square root of 2 mm/s because i just use the triangle 45-45-90. Pendragon5 (talk) 04:49, 23 February 2012 (UTC) But where are you getting 109 mm/s from? The tip of the second hand has an "orbital velocity" of 218 mm/s. -- ToE 21:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC) I got it my friend! 218 mm/s is the hypotenuse since the whole orbital plane is 45 inclination from the plane. So the 2 legs are 109 due to 45-45-90 angle, one of them is correspond to line of sight that's why we saw its speed 109 instead of 218 because we see it as perspective of the line of sight. I already talked to you some more at the bottom of this page! Everything is all CLEAR NOW!! HAAHOOO!Pendragon5 (talk) 03:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC) You do "get it" as is made clear by your answers below, but there appears to be a confusion of numbers immediately above. I doesn't really matter now, but you first appeared to mention 109 mm/s as an answer for the 0° case, where the maximal radial velocity of tip of the second hand is 218 mm/s. Then you seemed to be addressing the 45° case with (218 / sqrt(2)) mm/s ≈ 154 mm/s but again stating 109 mm/s = (218 / 2) mm/s, which, as you clearly now understand, is the answer for the 60° case. -- ToE 00:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Shoot, something just crossed my mind, not sure it's correct but i have a feeling i got it eventually. No time to do it now, i will figure it out tomorrow. For now it's time to sleep lol.Pendragon5 (talk) 04:49, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Q26 And let me be clear on something, on number 26, they didn't not ask about orbital angular velocity nor do they ask about observed angular velocity right?Pendragon5 (talk) 21:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC) I'm pretty sure they were not asking about observed angular velocity (proper motion), but I do think that they were asking about orbital angular velocity of the stars orbiting their respective clusters. Isn't that what you were thinking when you calculated the 23/2 ratio? (Perhaps we are using the term differently. For a circular orbit the orbital angular velocity is 2π/period.) I've also tacked one more coda to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Orbits of stars within globular clusters. -- ToE 22:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Yea i was think they asked for orbital angular velocity too. Redshift -- my Q 17 Re: "Alright λ_emitted = λ_laboratory is all i need to know for future uses." If you say so. If I were writing these questions (and I could see asking this one, but would have made explicit the couple of unstated assumptions I mentioned at WP:RD/S#Spectrum of stars), I would follow it up with: Q 17: The spectrum of Star D was measured at the same time that Star C's Hα line was measured as 656.5386 nm. What was the wavelength of Star D's Hα line? With an understanding of redshift and the behavior of your binary system, this should be a pretty easy question to figure out. -- ToE 07:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC) I suppose an even easier question would be: Q 18: The spectrum of Star D was measured 120 hours after Star C's Hα line was measured as 656.5386 nm. What was the wavelength of Star D's Hα line? While I wouldn't be surprised if the actual Q 17 matched my suggestion above, there is now way they would use my Q 18 "gimme" question. You see the answer? -- ToE 07:12, 22 February 2012 (UTC) I don't even know how to do number 16 yet lol. I have no knowledge of the information i have found and have no idea how to connect them together to find the angle, and again i'm still very blurry about the angle i'm trying to find. This is pretty frustrating. For all problems i have done and my life there is always some pictures were given with them so i never have to visualize things up. Plus it's harder to communicate like this, if you are my teacher in my life then it would be a billion times easier (exaggerated).Pendragon5 (talk) 22:42, 22 February 2012 (UTC) File:Astronomystuff8.JPG Which edge am i looking at when i tilted the clock 90 degree? And tell me edge number as i already labeled on them.Pendragon5 (talk) 22:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC) - - For ease of discussion, have your assistant tilt the lower edge (six o'clock) up toward you. -- ToE 02:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC) The beauty of my Q17 is that you don't need to have done any more of Q16 that you have already completed, and of my Q18 is that you don't need to have done any of Q16 at all, other than visualizing the orbital arrangement. But at the moment they are distractions, so let's concentrate on 16. -- ToE 01:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Alright finally i got everything down now, it would be very easy if you just draw it as the triangle but well by doing that i won't understand the whole picture so i have to learn it in the hard way (so many hours of trying to figuring out what you meant and visualize it to make sense out of it) and it is worth it. Since it, the orbit plane, is tilted 60 degree from out line of sight so the actual velocity is 218 km/s but when we're looking at it by the line of sight it is only 109 km/s. It all made sense now, to find the angle i just have to do arccos: 109/218 = here we go 60 degree! Thank you a lot for your patient and countless effort to explain lengthen lectures. And to do number 17 i need to be clear on something. At the point of Star C is moving 109 km/s away from us, the star D is moving 109 km/s toward us. $z\approx {\frac {v}{c}}$ So according to the formula and since it's moving toward us it will be (-109,000 m/s)/3 X 10^8 m/s. So the red shift is approximately -.000363. And to inverse the z formula, i got appropriately 656.06154 (note i used 656.3 as the emit).Pendragon5 (talk) 22:13, 23 February 2012 (UTC) Congratulations! I'll write up some final thoughts on this problem tonight. -- ToE 03:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC) Real-life intervenes; it may be several days. -- ToE 00:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC) And forgot to answer number 18, the answer for number 18 is 656.5386 nm haa.Pendragon5 (talk) 19:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC) HAAA the nomad planets are pretty weird. I kind of don't understand how it all works out. If they don't orbit any star then how can they form into the planets? And if they don't orbit around any stars what are their movements? Or are they just stand still where they are?Pendragon5 (talk) 04:43, 26 February 2012 (UTC) The above apparent non sequitur is a response to User talk:Pendragon5#Nomad planets. -- ToE 23:04, 27 February 2012 (UTC) Final thoughts Apparent magnitude-distance relationship Hi! You know the formula for this? Like if they give me the distance of the stars from Earth or its apparent then i can plug in the formula and find out the other missing information. Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 01:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC) Do you have a particular problem in mind? Specifically, what missing information are you seeking? The formula given at Absolute magnitude#Computation $M=m-5((\log _{10}{D_{L}})-1)$ comes directly from the inverse-square falloff of radiation (such as light) with distance and the definition of absolute magnitude as being equivalent to the apparent magnitude of an object at the standard luminosity distance of 10 parsecs. If that is what you are trying to determine, then I'd be happy to work throught the formula with you. (Have you done anything with logarithms yet? They are a simple but very helpful tool, especially for working with numbers which vary over a large range.) If the missing information includes more than than, then they are presumably expecting you to use the absolute magnitude along with more given information (star type, for example) to compute additional values (star mass, for example). -- ToE 02:16, 1 March 2012 (UTC) File:Astronomystuff10.JPG Well yea i have done log before. I don't think i can post pictures on Commons anymore since i don't own the copyright of it. I just post it here the last time for temporary use. Alright the problem i'm trying to solve is problem 2 of section C. The number on the x and y axis are not readable in my copy so i just make up some numbers for them. Well it doesn't matter what numbers on there as long as i know how to do it then i can apply it to any numbers.Pendragon5 (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC) It would appear that you need to "use your resources and knowledge of variable stars" to determine, from the graph they gave you, what the absolute magnitude of the star is. Once you have that, then the formula above will give you the distance. Is there something characteristic about that intensity curve? You might want to read our articles Cepheid variable and Standard candle. -- ToE 03:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC) I think i know how to do it now. Thanks! Re your #27 on WP:RD/S, it deals with the Inverse-square law I mentioned above, in particular, Inverse-square law#Light and other electromagnetic radiation. Have you read that section? You also need to know that mW is a linear measure, not a logarithmic one like dBW. -- ToE 03:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC) I already got number 27 too! Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 03:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Special Barnstar Hello! Thanks a lot for your countless effort of teaching me about astronomy. You are my first teacher and the best so far in astronomy. I'm really appreciated your hard teaching. This Barnstar stands for your effort of teaching me! It's the only thing I can do for you now. Thanks A LOT again. Hope you have a great day!! (I probably will contact you sometimes again next year) Pendragon5 (talk) 00:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Some little extra things i want to tell you. I just attended the state competition today. I was very excited about it and expected to get like top 3 or something. I turned out to be 12th rank out 33. I am really disappointed at myself, i don't know what happened. They didn't return the tests back so nobody knows what did they do wrong on. I thought i did really well and expected me to get top 3... But I somehow ended up with 12th T_T. I still don't understand what happened. I think they should have given the tests back so people can learn from the mistakes they made. I have no idea what kind of mistakes i made, i thought i got almost all of them correct. So anyway i think it could have been worse without you. Well on the positive side, i still have 2 more years to try so I guess I need to try harder next year. Alright thanks and cya! Take care!Pendragon5 (talk) 00:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Almost forgot, i have the last problem i want to ask you for this year. What is not true about molecular cloud? a: it contains helium b: it contains iron c: some of their particles coated with ice d: entire cloud contracts as the whole Thanks!Pendragon5 (talk) 03:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Actually there is another one problem. Alright i was given 4 pictures looking through different wavelength or electromagnetic radiation of one star and the problem asked me to identify which picture is correspond to each of the following options: Optic, X-ray, radio wave, Ultraviolet. So how am i suppose to know which one is which?Pendragon5 (talk) 03:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Interesting. Can you describe, in general terms, how the pictures differed? -- ToE 03:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC) They are different in colors as far as i can tell.Pendragon5 (talk) 14:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Colors would be artificial for all but the optic (and optical images are sometimes rendered in false colors), so that would only tell you something if there were some standard convention used. These were just "fuzzy blob"-like images, not detailed images of solar surface structure as found in Sun, right? If they were all of the same shape, were they also all of the same size and intensity? -- ToE 00:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC) (I'm offline for several days while traveling.) 4 pictures are of the same object. 2 of them look the same but the other 2 look different. I don't have them with me, it was part of the test. I only have it somewhere in my memories. I have no ideas about their intensity, they are just pictures with no labels or anything. Different colors and little in shapes that's all i can tell.Pendragon5 (talk) 22:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC) International Astronomy Olympiad (The following is a response to questions asked here. -- ToE 00:34, 12 March 2012 (UTC)) Physic or chemistry first is up to the student's choice. I can do chemistry before physic but unfortunately it's too late to change now. The registration was last month, students are expected to stay with classes they have signed up which means they don't allow any change after the registration time. About the question you asked me. I can't do it in my head. I used the formula that used apparent mag, absolute mag and distance. According to my calculation the answer is -3. And like i said before, they don't expect students to memorize formula. It's up to the students, it's one own's advantage to memorize formula due to the time limit. Pendragon5 (talk) 21:53, 9 March 2012 (UTC) Well I don't know how chemistry classes could have prepared me for my physic classes but in my school, the prerequisite is precalculus, which is the math i need in physic. Well in my school this is how physic classes work. There is honor physic then AP physic. I will take both next year consecutive of course and take this exam in May Advanced Placement Physics B (My AP physic class is designed for that exam). My math classes in my junior year is Calculus courses all year and i will take AP calculus BC exam in May too. And in my senior year as my plan for now i'm going to take multivariable calculus and linear algebra. About the preparations for astronomy next year. Let me tell you the timeline first though. It started around October every year and then in February is the regional competition (not to brag but it is very easy, all multiple choices). Beside, you may not know but astronomy is not the only thing i need to worry about (it is by far the one i'm interesting in the most and spent the most time but not the only thing). I have to get ready to some other events in SO too. There are like 20 of them (astronomy is 1 of them), each students need to choose at least 2 or 3 or up to 5 if you think you can handle it. I had 3. Well i do spend sometimes every week from October to work on SO stuffs but well not as much as since January. Since January i worked a lot harder because part of it is it is closer to the competition but another big reason is i don't really have much time in first semester, which ended in February. Beside SO, i have my classes and a bunch of other activities which consumed a holy cow of time everyday of my life. My first semester, i had about average 4-5 hours of homework everyday not to consider other activities and clubs i'm in and home chores. I was so exhausted during my first semester due to the lack of sleep and so happy that it is over now. My second semester is a lot easier now but doesn't mean i have time to rest. I just have more time to sleep but well it's life. Always have something for me to do. One more thing about second semester is i need to study hard for my AP exams coming up in May. I have 2 this year. The state one is much harder due to the format and only first place got to go to national (so i have 11 more ranks to go, which i know for that the fact that i have a long way to go or in other word i need to improve a lot). Technically i have 2 more years but i'm think this way, on my first time at the national competition, chances are i won't be first place. So if i made it in my senior year = no more IAO for me. So i need to make it to national in my junior = doesn't guarantee an IAO spot for me but higher chance for sure. So yea i have 1 more year is what i should be thinking. Thanks for letting me know about the true fact, to be honest i was underestimate everyone at the state competition until the results came back to me. I still can't believe it and still wonder what kind of mistakes i could have made (one thing that i think they did not do a good job at is they didn't give back the tests so students can learn from their mistakes for later years, i don't know why but i'm sure they have their own reasons to not give them back) So anyway right at the beginning i know for the fact that i have little chance even i have tried my best. Well plus and to be the first place in national or international, i think i need some luck too. I know that one self knowledge is the main thing to determine how well you do but let put them this way. Knowledge is infinite so there will always be some chances that you encounter some problems you haven't learn before but someone else will know how to do it. It doesn't mean you study less than them but luck may not favor you that time by the fact that they gave you the problem you never done before but someone else has done it. Or some people may have been a lucky guesser once. Well in general term, the more you know = the better chance to win but that doesn't mean you will win, you just got a higher chance. Let say person A study 1 hour a day compare to person B study like 5 hours a day. There is a chance that person A will win but a lot less compare to person B. I guess i have made my point clear, so effort is majority yet it's not everything i needed to win. I also need some luck so my IAO dream can come true. Of course i'm not going to rely on luck (i'm just trying that i probably need some). I still try to best effort to reach my goal and yep even though i may not make it. But it's ok. The fact that i know i have tried my best is all it matters. I will be little upset but well i just have to move on. I'm an optimist guy btw, at least i try to be haa. Anyway enough for side talking. Let get to the main point. I have all the astronomy tests in the national of the past few years. I'm going to just spend a great time in the summer to try to solve for them. I have completed one of them. I meant like i have done the entire test of a single year. The one i have been asking on here is that one i completed. The problems i did at state were indeed easier because those problems we have been doing are from national. But well there are some problems at state i didn't know how to do like the pictures as an example and few others but the rest i thought i did correctly. Anyway perhaps, those problems that i didn't know how to do was the reason why i was 12th rank. Or maybe i just made quite a bit of stupid mistakes which i will never find out what mistakes were they. (WOW i just noticed i just wrote a very long one lol, i don't know why i told you all of the above but well teacher should know quite a bit about the student, shouldn't they :D? I guess so you can have a perspective at my life and therefore = better for both of us somehow lol) Pendragon5 (talk) 22:29, 12 March 2012 (UTC)