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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Foxbunny (talk | contribs) at 11:26, 23 April 2009 (note about awesome wm article). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Question about Gai Daigoji edit

Hey there, I recently posted an edit to the "Gai Daigoji" page involving the band Gai Daigoji. This was the first time I've tried to edit on Wiki. I saw that you said "rv. no evidence band meets WP"MUSIC. myspace doesn't help..." I'm not sure what I did wrong and I was wondering if maybe you could explain so I could correct it. Thanks.

FNORD

Hi! This is Icarus!, being non-Wiki (I'm not logged in...), saying thanx for the work on the Discordianism page! Keep it up!24.176.20.60 16:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

TINC. --Gwern (contribs) 15:34 22 August 2007 (GMT)

Miyamoto Musashi

Hi Gwern, Thanks for undoing my edit. I had misread the sentence so I got it wrong. Fg2 10:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Many eyes and all that. --Gwern (contribs) 12:56 22 August 2007 (GMT)

Can you help me with the Susan J. Napier article

Hello, I'm a Wikipedian from zh:. Recently I'm trying to do some improvements to the NGE article in zh. Long ago I knew the Napier article When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain. And I think a anime article really needs some critical POV, so Napier's article would be very helpful for improving the quality of the Chinese article, and I also value this very much. But I can't find the article anywhere with any online method. Finally, I find you have a scan copy. So could you please send me a copy? (sicaral-gmail-com) Of course I know the copyright issue. Thank you! Sicaral 13:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey. I did have a scan copy at one point, but I extracted everything I considered of value for the NGE article, and I *think* I deleted it (I am perpetually low on disk space). At least, I can't find it on my hard drive anywhere, Gmail searches turn up nothing, and the file upload service I used to send them to $yD! (talk · contribs) deleted the archive a long time ago. So I'm afraid you're going to have to hope SidiLemine held onto the PNGs; or you could ask FileHO! to undelete it (see [1]). If none of those work, see User:GunnarRene/Sources; GunnarRene apparently is claiming to have a copy. --Gwern (contribs) 15:33 22 August 2007 (GMT)
Thank you all the same. That... "GunnarRene is taking a long wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia next fall." and there's no email address, OMG. So maybe I can only ask for SidiLemine. Sicaral 21:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From Dan Weinreb

Hi. This is in reply to your comment on my edit of the Symbolics page. Yes, my change is "unsourced"; unfortunately I don't know of any "source" for this. The only written source I know of is Stallman's book, but that's his own account of what happened, and just because he found a publisher and wrote his version in a book does not make it true. The actual facts are that only 3 or 4 of the Symbolics founders were employed by the AI lab (4 if you count Dave Moon who was half-time). I don't know why the original author particularly referred to Richard and Marvin; if you count Marvin as a "hacker" then there were dozens of hackers who did not leave the AI lab. Symbolics's founders came from many different places, including Lawrence Livermore Labs, the IIASA in Vienna, the MIT Lab for Computer Science, Honeywell LISD, and so on. I'm sorry about the text not flowing -- I was trying to make as minimal an edit as I could that would be consistent with the facts, because I thought that would be appropriate Wikipedia etiquette. I'm very new at Wikipedia and regret if I have done anything wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanielWeinreb (talk • contribs) 13:27, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I would be happy to go into more detail about exactly who the founders were and where they came from, to the best of my recollection, but I thought that would be too much information and would really not fit in the flow. If there were some way to do footnotes (probably there is, and I don't know it) I guess it might make sense to put in a footnote with an enumerated list of the founders. If I can remember them all. I actually think there were about 20 people who were considered "founders" in that they received founder stock, which was the criterion for the use of the word "founder" within Symbolics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanielWeinreb (talk • contribs) 13:32, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there certainly is a way to do footnotes - a number of ways, actually, although in that article I use the simplest, which is to insert <ref>Reference information</ref> wherever the footnote is warranted. Obviously the formatting can get more complex; for the loathsome details, see Wikipedia:Footnotes.
The list of founders would be a good idea for the Symbolics article, definitely. I never saw it mentioned, but did everyone who signed up at the start get founder stock?
As for Stallman; yes, just having published some stuff may not make his account any truer, and certainly not a few people have disputed his accounts - but the important thing is that his version is all down in black and white and so if one editor uses it as a source for statements in articles, other editors can check up on it and thus it is verifiable.
People violate stuff like verifiability and reliable sources all the time, sure, but standards have to be higher for people involved in articles - for obvious reasons. It may seem like an unfair burden, but take it from me, a few sessions editing articles on stuff like the Israeli-Palestinian thing, or Scientology-related articles (in my personal experience), or similarly contentious subjects, and all of a sudden hard-line interpretations of RS, V, and COI suddenly begin to look really really good; not to mention, just avoiding the appearance of COI and POV can be valuable, as all the recent new coverage stemming from the WikiScanner tool has taught us all. Anyway, this is all good stuff to keep in mind in the future. --Gwern (contribs) 17:53 25 August 2007 (GMT)

Blank lines before stub templates

It's actually extremely common practice, for the simple reason that they tend to look like complete crap when rendered, if the template is smooshed into the foregoing text, navboxes, etc. On a more general note, wiki comments aren't an especially good substitute for talk pages. Alai 01:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's common, as I said. I've only rarely seen it. I just visited Special:Random about 20 times, and of the 5 stubbed articles, only 1 had a double line between the stub template and the categories/external links. And comments are a great way to draw attention to a single very specific point that doesn't really make sense as a entire talk page section. --Gwern (contribs) 01:54 3 September 2007 (GMT)
And you'll have noticed that the other four looked like complete crap, I trust. Even taking your statistics at face value, 20% of the stupendously large number of articles with stub templates is an extremely common practice. And "great way" seems a very unlikely characterisation of your means of asking rhetorical questions -- I've had to start an "entire talk page section" to respond to it, in any event. Alai 02:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You've had to start a talk page section because, instead of addressing my comment as I meant it to be - by providing some reason to believe that it is based on anything but the fiat of the few editors who have ever frequented that page, some source for why this ugly advice (yes, ugly. I've gone and looked at an example more closely, and I find it appears to have a ragged block of around 3 or 4 lines, and generally appears disconcerting, as opposed to the neater and more compact appearance of a single newline) is anything but a peculiarity, and having addressed the concern raised by the comment, removed it as taken care of - and you have instead begun to argue with me over the merits of it. I had intended to argue against it if no good reasons could be adduced for it, but based on the strength of your arguments (why yes, 20% is an extremely common practice - not) perhaps I should've assumed it was baseless to begin with and begun arguing on the talk page immediately. --Gwern (contribs) 02:15 3 September 2007 (GMT)
How was I supposed to know how it was "meant" to be addressed? And how the heck would I have done that, without the allegedly terrible cost of a entire talk page section? Let me guess, this is supposed to be the equivalent of adding {{fact}} to guideline pages? I've not removed it as "addressed", I've removed it as "in a wholly inappropriate place". I don't follow why you assert it's "ugly advice", but I'd prefer ugly guidelines to ugly articles. (The actual substance of my point, which you don't address at all.) What has an example that doesn't follow the practice suggested in the guideline got to do with whether it's good practice or not? I don't see what weakness you've identified in my explanation: that you've summed it up entirely inaccurately is not at all helpful. I suggest you do take it to the guideline talk page; replying on your own talk page is a far from reliable way of having me see it. (Though I won't deny that that's a very common practice, too.) Alai 02:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You were supposed to know since that's what it asked - where the heck the sources were for this assertion. And yes, it was a nice version of fact. I don't like the overuse of fact and it didn't carry quite the meaning I wanted, so I didn't use it. The advice is ugly because it produces uglier pages.
As for what's weak in your statement, I'm not sure if you're being willfully obtuse, but I will say, yet again: the only argument you've made in favor of that part of the guideline, the only argument which doesn't bear on my own supposed sins in inserting a comment or whatever, is that it produces articles which to you seem to look a bit better (I don't include the specious 'oh but everybody does it' argument because it's demonstrably not true). Do you see the problem with this? --Gwern (contribs) 21:33 3 September 2007 (GMT)

Question

Are you an administrator? If you are, could you please delete the old version of: Image:SporadicAlbum.jpg please? --Victor (talk) 03:29, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I am not. You may want to visit WP:CSD. --Gwern (contribs) 13:54 3 September 2007 (GMT)

Quote from the O.C. Bible

I'm not sure about your ebooks but in both editions of the book that I have (ISBN: 0-441-17271-7 mass market paperback from 1990 and 0-441-00590-X hardcover from 1999) the scene between Paul and Reverend Mother Mohiam on roughly page 11 or 12 goes as follows:

"'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," Paul quoted. "Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.'

I have read the book 11 times as well as all the sequels and the prequels other than Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune. I don't appreciate your condescension. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ppuccio (talk • contribs) 00:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Really? Then what about the appendix:
"JIHAD, BUTLERIAN: (see also Great Revolt) -- the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.""
Or Children of Dune:
" Mentats were necessary. The human-computer replaced the mechanical devices destroyed by the Butlerian Jihad. Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind! But Alia longed now for a compliant machine. They could not have suffered from Idaho's limitations. You could never distrust a machine."
--Gwern (contribs) 01:13 4 September 2007 (GMT)

Eva plot summary

Thanks for letting me know about that, I'll need to keep up with that page. :-) Willbyr (talk | contribs) 01:37, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NP. --Gwern (contribs) 02:10 4 September 2007 (GMT)

How'd you find the SR S2 parodies on my user space?

I'm keeping it here until and if ever such a parodies page could be resurrected with adequate cites. It was previously deleted. BrokenSphereMsg me 02:07, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The magic of "What links here". --Gwern (contribs) 02:10 4 September 2007 (GMT)
I daresay you've found some amazing things that way. --BrokenSphereMsg me 02:12, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, an astonishing number of NGE-related userboxen, and more Eva references across all sorts of articles I never conceived of. Plus: a lot of odd redirects. --Gwern (contribs) 02:14 4 September 2007 (GMT)

Kirby

There is no point in writing bios on academics unless you indicate why they are important--at least with the current positions and major publications. I saved Simon Kirby from speedy deletion by adding this information, but it should have been there in the first place. It will need something more, however, it order to avoid deletion by some less drastic method like Afd. DGG (talk) 10:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I was in a hurry at the time. You're right that the post was not up to my usual standards. --Gwern (contribs) 16:00 9 September 2007 (GMT)

Categories

Hi, Gwern. Thanks for trying to fix the categories for the article on Hakuin Ekaku, but that's not how categories work. When you want to add someone to a category, for instance, you should use their name, such as "[[Category:Buddhist philosophers|Hakuin Ekaku]]". This will cause their name to appear in the list of articles for that category. (Yes, it's different from the way links normally work). Hope this helps. --ubiquity 22:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I'm uh, pretty sure that you're wrong. Categories do work that way. They've worked that way ever since my very first edit in another account way the hell back in '04, and I double-checked Wikipedia:Categorization just to be sure. Piping is only needed in categorization links if you want it to be sorted in the category by a different name. In this case, if you want Hakuin Ekaku to be listed under Hakuin Ekaku, no pipe is needed because that's exactly the name the article is under. It'd be different if one wanted it to be listed as "Ekaku, Hakuin", but then you'd still be better off with a {{DEFAULTSORT:Ekaku, Hakuin}} anyway rather than duplicating it. (I did make a typo in changing the Buddhist philosophers to philosopher, singular, but I've fixed that.) --Gwern (contribs) 00:30 11 September 2007 (GMT)

You're right. Sorry to have reverted you. I was just so used to doing it the other way that it never even occurred to me it was wrong. Thanks for setting me straight. --ubiquity 02:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. It's strange, but this seems to happen to me often. --Gwern (contribs) 02:16 11 September 2007 (GMT)

Your recent edits

Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 22:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did sign, but there was a coding error in SineBot, which has since been fixed. --Gwern (contribs) 19:14 18 September 2007 (GMT)

Jihad in Ismailism

Tell me if my current edit is fine with you. Thanks. --Enzuru 18:11, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's much better than the previous ones. I have no problem with the text saying that the Nizari are pacifist now or that jihad has sometimes and increasingly so in modern times been interpreted as inner struggle; it's just the previous versions looked seriously unbalanced and POV to me. Ideally there'd be some cites for all of this, but the current version is workable. --Gwern (contribs) 19:17 18 September 2007 (GMT)

Atala T

I am the arthor of both Atala T articles and im here to tell you that I have replied to the deletion page and Im requesting that you please look at what I have to say and reply to my talk page

--Muriness 23:18, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen the reply. --Gwern (contribs) 13:01 16 October 2007 (GMT)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:NGE-angelic-days-cover-2.jpg)

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Orphaned non-free media (Image:NGE-angelic-days-cover-3.jpg)

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AFD for Vsevolod Holubovych

Note that the mess of an article has been stubified and notability has been established. The nominator is withdrawing the AFD. Please review the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vsevolod Holubovych and considerif you wish to switch your !vote. Regards. -- Whpq 12:44, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Gwern (contribs) 12:59 16 October 2007 (GMT)

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Redirect of Danger Ranger

leftHello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Danger Ranger, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Danger Ranger is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1).

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Danger Ranger, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. CSDWarnBot 09:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Recent DBZ AfDs

Sorry about that that, it was the first time I attempted to sort an AFD. (Duane543 22:53, 25 October 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Live and learn. --Gwern (contribs) 18:34 26 October 2007 (GMT)

Rikdo

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Rikdo Koshi, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. If a part of an article is not according to wikipedia standards, please help by improving it. But dont tag it as nonsense by adding some text, as that is regarded vandalism. Thank you :) Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 18:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excirial, I think you need some more experience before you go around reverting and slapping vandalism templates down... --Gwern (contribs) 18:34 26 October 2007 (GMT)

Your edit

Your edit seems to have done something unintended. Compare the previous version, where the indents work, with your version, where they don't. Can you fix this? Maybe just revert and readd your comment? Thanks, Picaroon (t) 20:29, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Library of Alexandria

Replacing a dead link with a failed internet wayback machine dead link is "exceptionally lazy" as you would say. I've removed the section once again. Not only is there no source but the whole paragraph represents nothing but speculation "If the collect had survived to the early 700s." it did not so why have this in the article? ThanksRastov 05:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about? The Internet Archive link works perfectly fine for me; it loads and one gets a page, as one should. --Gwern (contribs) 14:26 12 November 2007 (GMT)

Yesterday it was hitting to a 404 from two different computers. Regardless the paragraph is without merit as it talks about where the collection would have gone had it not been destroyed. If it clearly says the Al-Azhar collection contains no alexandrian texts, then why is it included in the article "Library of Alexandria"?Rastov 19:42, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You don't think such a statement is relevant? If A->B, then surely ~B is an interesting thing to know... --Gwern (contribs) 21:47 12 November 2007 (GMT)

Thats the whole point is not A->B. Its A was destroyed, oh and B exists tooRastov 02:52, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Picaroon (t) 21:06, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Duly noted. --Gwern (contribs) 02:24 30 November 2007 (GMT)

Disambig and archives

If you are going to fix disambig links, please limit the namespace you are editing on so you don't run the risk of editing talk archives. -- Ned Scott 02:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page archives need updating too! --Gwern (contribs) 02:24 30 November 2007 (GMT)

Wiki Wars

We seem to have forgotten about it after it was finished. I cleaned it up today and was wondering if you had any more suggestions before I submit it to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) (or if you know of a better place to submit it). Nufy8 (talk) 19:29, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I have time. Offhand, one thing I think we didn't do too well on was consistency in naming - and I always wondered whether it was a good idea to have sigs. --Gwern (contribs) 02:26 30 November 2007 (GMT)
I tried removing the sigs but something about it just didn't look right. I think replacing the sigs with the character's name (e.g. --Lord Willy) would look best, but that would take a lot of work. Nufy8 (talk) 03:34, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you could do a search-and-replace of most sigs, which would only break the inconsistent ones anyway. --Gwern (contribs) 18:09 30 November 2007 (GMT)

Re: Lolcatese

Image:Lolcat2.jpg is hilarious, but I think the text could be made more 'lol'; like instead of reading, "I made you an article... but I deleted it", maybe "i writed u an article... but i deleted it"? --Gwern (contribs) 23:32 29 November 2007 (GMT)

All I can say to that is:
– Gurch 01:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lol. I obviously must put that on my user page. But I notice the lolcat2 is still not changed... is my idea so risible? :( --Gwern (contribs) 02:27 30 November 2007 (GMT)
done – Gurch 03:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Even better - I like the obese person's suggestion better than my own! --Gwern (contribs) 18:08 30 November 2007 (GMT)

AfD nomination of Captain Obvious

An article that you have been involved in editing, Captain Obvious, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Captain Obvious (3rd nomination). Thank you. lk (talk) 17:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mindless

If you're going to call an edit of mine mindless, please wait until I redirect an article that clearly asserts notability. I fail to see how redirecting a bloated plot summary to section that adequately covers the topic is anything close to mindless. TTN (talk) 15:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are deleting content without the slightest effort to even vary your edit summaries, much less gather any consensus outside your own head. Your edits are destructive and repetitive, varying not in the slightest. Mindless seems to be perfectly appropriate, as you pay no mind to what others think. --Gwern (contribs) 16:10 10 December 2007 (GMT)

Re: Monad transformer

Thanks. It's just a stub with one reference and one external link. Feel free to expand it! — greenrd (talk) 23:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I ever learn more than what you wrote, sure! --Gwern (contribs) 13:44 13 December 2007 (GMT)

Re edit summary

Hi, I saw you fixed the link over at Talk:Dune (novel). Thanks for that. I'm confused about your edit summary though. What do you mean by 'fail'? ColdmachineTalk 10:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing in particular; it was just an easy fix. --Gwern (contribs) 13:44 13 December 2007 (GMT)

Re: Fuyutsuki

Hello.

Why did you remove the Fuyutsuki entry from Neon Genesis Evangelion timeline? Does a particular new book invalidate all the existing info giving his birth date as 9 April 1955?

Indeed there are some source that say the birthyear of Fuyutsuki is 1955, but the newest official book "THE ESSENTIAL EVANGELION CHRONICLE SIDE A" (ISBN 978-4789770187, We've Inc. & Sony　Magazines Inc. Japan, 2007/10) declares the Fuyutsuki's age is unknown. Therefore we must not write the birth of Fuyutsuki in NGE's timetable.Rider of Midland (talk) 07:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fuyutsuki was born in 1955 for an awfully long time after all.

No, it has been said on the GAINAX's official site that Fuyutsuki is elder about 10 years old than Gendo Ikari (48), but there had been no official data which showed the birthyear of Fuyutsuki by the publishment of "Evangelion Chronicle" in 2007. After that, "THE ESSENTIAL EVANGELION CHRONICLE SIDE A" reconfirms that Fuyutsuki's age is unknown. We should be subject to the Newest statements.Rider of Midland (talk) 16:37, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal

It has been proposed that WP:EPISODE be merged into WP:WAF. Your input is desired, so please comment here. Ursasapien (talk) 11:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments on the manga article

I'm one of the folks working on upgrading the manga article. You mention wanting more pictures -- how I wish! But there are two formidable problems. One is copyright -- we need fair use rationales for all such images, and the number we can insert is sharply limited by Wiki procedures. Second is sheer size -- images suck up bandwidth like crazy, and the article is already long. If I had my way, I'd fill the whole article with pictures -- we're on the same wavelength about that! But I don't see how we can do it. In any event, thanks very much for your comments, and we will take them to heart as we continue to work on the article. Timothy Perper (talk) 04:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AfD Nomination: Xmonad

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, but all Wikipedia articles must meet our criteria for inclusion (see What Wikipedia is not and Deletion policy). Since it does not seem that Xmonad meets these criteria, an editor has started a discussion about whether this article should be kept or deleted.

Your opinion on whether this article meets the inclusion criteria is welcome. Please contribute to the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xmonad. Don't forget to add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of each of your comments to sign them.

Discussions such as these usually last five days. In the meantime, you are free to edit the content of the article. Please do not remove the "articles for deletion" template (the box at the top). When the discussion has concluded, a neutral third party will consider all comments and decide whether or not to delete the article.

Sorry, bad AFD link. Here's the right one. Catofax (talk) 10:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I noticed. Rest assured I shall respond as appropriate. --Gwern (contribs) 01:15 24 December 2007 (GMT)

Your peer review comments on manga

One of your comments was that there was no section on shonen manga. We just added it, settling one of the major issues (to both of us, it seems). Thanks. Timothy Perper (talk) 23:37, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great. It's a nice section. --Gwern (contribs) 02:00 4 January 2008 (GMT)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Past-master-book-cover.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Past-master-book-cover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 18:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Botspam - Dealt With! --Gwern (contribs) 02:00 4 January 2008 (GMT)

Manga Peer Review

Just to let you know that I've replied to the suggestions you made when you peer reviewed the manga article. Timothy Perper (talk) 20:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I've looked at them, and don't really have anything further to say. If there's no room for more pictures, there's no room... --Gwern (contribs) 18:14 8 January 2008 (GMT)
The problem with images is related to what you've just seen, where User:Beyond silence put not only Wikipetan into the article but also another image. Then other people come along (have come along) and remove those images. And it goes round and round in circles. We've had a number of discussions on the talk page about what pictures to use, and consensus has been hard to come by. Personally -- I mean if it were up to me alone -- I'd plaster the article with dozens of images. I think we're on the same wavelength about that.
BTW, I put a reply on my talk page about your observations on the future of Wikipedia.
Timothy Perper (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, actually - I'm not thrilled with the image of Wikipetan either. I've always thought it was very ugly and reflective, at best, of a very modern and commercialized style, and certainly not the very first image someone should see. --Gwern (contribs) 17:38 9 January 2008 (GMT)

Re: User:Haza-w/cactions.js

Thanks for the heads-up. As you might have noticed, I've only just returned to WP after a fairly prolonged absence, so I've completely forgotten everything about the script... hopefully I can get back into the flow of things!

Anyhow, the fix has been made. Thanks for noticing. haz (talk) 16:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Two less errors cluttering up my error console! --Gwern (contribs) 16:37 10 January 2008 (GMT)

Centralized TV Episode Discussion

Over the past months, TV episodes have been reverted by (to name a few) TTN, Eusebeus and others. No centralized discussion has taken place, so I'm asking everyone who has been involved in this issue to voice their opinions here in this centralized spot, be they pro or anti. Discussion is here [2]. --Maniwar (talk) 18:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of Finger tree

A tag has been placed on Finger tree, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to have no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent. If the page you created was a test, please use the sandbox for any other experiments you would like to do. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions about this.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Redfarmer (talk) 20:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Gwern (contribs) 02:49 17 January 2008 (GMT)

The stupid Evil Overlord list entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Overlord_List

Look -- in the External links at the bottom, the first link is incorrectly attributed. LostCoastGaming.com is not Jack Butler's website and he has not asked permission to host that content with us. If you won't let me correct the entry, then I'd ask that you delete it to clear up the misattribution.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.48.207 (talk) 22:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you really think "(Copyrighted, but not created by Mr. Anspach, but on the whole a much better list than the one above)" was appropriate? --Gwern (contribs) 22:48 10 February 2008 (GMT)

John Locke

Re. your wikigroan on your talk page: This has since been done, but only because unnecessary commentary was removed from the Lost article (not due to expansion of the philosopher's article). I'm not sure that was your intent :) Ral315 (talk) 20:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was not! I find this distressing. I shall keep that goal until Locke becomes bigger than the other at its vastest extent. --Gwern (contribs) 00:31 4 March 2008 (GMT)

Raymond E. Feist

Are you interested in the Raymond E. Feist series? Currently, there has been a new Wiki-project set up especially for anything to do with Raymond E. Feists' works and that includes characters, items, places, reces, etc, etc. If you are interested why not sign up at the members section at WP:RAY

Not particularly, but thanks for asking. --Gwern (contribs) 06:27 5 March 2008 (GMT)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Past-master-book-cover.jpg

Thank you for uploading Image:Past-master-book-cover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale provided for using this image under "fair use" may not meet the criteria required by Wikipedia:Non-free content. This can be corrected by going to the image description page and add or clarify the reason why the image qualifies for fair use. Adding and completing one of the templates available from Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy. Please be aware that a fair use rationale is not the same as an image copyright tag; descriptions for images used under the fair use policy require both a copyright tag and a fair use rationale.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it might be deleted by adminstrator within a few days in accordance with our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions, please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 16:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ringworld / Orbitals

According to a ref in the Halo (megastructure)/Orbital (The Culture) articles, the Banks version is the inspiration for Halo. However, I won't revert your deletetion because it was simply the wrong place for that info anyway. Cheers Ingolfson (talk) 10:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am very surprised to hear that. I'm still a mite skeptical because it seems so unlikely, and the ref in 'Halo' doesn't seem very close to the writers, but... --Gwern (contribs) 17:24 16 March 2008 (GMT)
I can see your issues, however you should realise that Banks is very popular as well.Ingolfson (talk) 08:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm actually still having trouble getting used to that idea, since I had always thought Banks was a good writer (I've read most of his Culture stuff) but Niven more popular. Goes to show... --Gwern (contribs) 15:46 17 March 2008 (GMT)

Thank you!!!

A million thank yous!
You added a little light to my day when you disambiguated all of those links, so here is a little light for you. - LA @ 01:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you would like the little ribbon to go along with this, let me know. :) - LA @ 01:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, 'sfine. --Gwern (contribs) 01:43 19 March 2008 (GMT)

Gofer (software)

Oops, sorry about deleting those categories... the article was a bit confusing, it seemed like it was just an IDE. I guess the name of the article was also misleading -- Gofer (software) rather than Gofer (programming language).

CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:06, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah; the article sort of says it ('supporting a language based on version 1.2 of the Haskell report') but I'll admit that's hard to draw on. --Gwern (contribs) 23:57 25 March 2008 (GMT)

Revert on Xft

Hey,

You reverted a minor edit of mine on the Xft article, so before you do it again I thought I'd clarify that "free" and "free software" are not usually capitalised in proper English. 62.63.162.71 (talk) 12:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they aren't, but I've always done it; useful for reducing the ambiguity. --Gwern (contribs) 16:13 27 March 2008 (GMT)

Revert of Skuld

You may be interested in the centralized discussion on the return of the main character pages for OMG located here: [3]. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 04:51, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting reading. --Gwern (contribs) 18:09 29 March 2008 (GMT)

Skuld

I assume, therefore, that you are going to improve the article to meet notability and sourcing concerns? I am willing to give it a chance in that case. Black Kite 19:23, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure I will, eventually. --Gwern (contribs) 03:49 1 April 2008 (GMT)

Re: Essjay

His old userpage had several automated links which, if you access his userpage, IRC will automatically pop up.... nat.u toronto 20:25, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't follow. I've visited Essjay's user page with a number of browsers, starting long before the scandal, and IRC links have never automatically popped up unless I clicked on them (just like for mailto:, nntp:, ftp:, http: links...).
Are you sure the problem is not a faulty client on your part? --Gwern (contribs) 03:46 1 April 2008 (GMT)
I'm sure it's not... nat.u toronto 04:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of Cruel Fairytales

An article that you have been involved in editing, Cruel Fairytales, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cruel Fairytales. Thank you. B. Wolterding (talk) 19:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your behaviour on Jim Bell

I was quite disappointed to notice your drive-by removal of an image from the Jim Bell article. There was a lengthy discussion underway on the article's talkpage on the issue, and it was inappropriate of you to unilaterally impose your own version without making an effort to reach consensus with other editors. Wikipedia is built on collaboration, not edit-warring; I urge you to self-revert and come join the discussion on the talkpage about how best to improve the article. Regards, Skomorokh 09:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your most illuminating comment. Skomorokh 16:49, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've added my justifcation on the talk page. --Gwern (contribs) 18:17 5 April 2008 (GMT)

Search with Wikipedia

I am not sure to contact regarding this matter, but I saw that you are a pretty active wikipedian and so I thought I would ask. I am very tired of the crappy search engine that wikipedia uses. Is there not some way to mimic google's search where if you misspell something it asks you "Did you mean _____?" or displays close matches to what you are trying to say? If I am unsure how to spell something, it come back blank and then I search google, it finds what I mean, I click yes and then the wikipedia entry comes up on google. Is there anything that can be done?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.152.99.117 (talk) 15:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If I were in such a fix, I would Google around with a 'search Wikipedia with Google' query; that should quickly turn up one of several possibilities. Personally, I would go with a Greasemonkey script. (But on the other hand, I wouldn't be doing that anyway, since I want to know when a search fails so I can create redirects.) --Gwern (contribs) 17:45 9 April 2008 (GMT)

images from northwester.edu

I was doing something like this last night (instead of my homework!), and found my way to your userpage, where I was immediately interested by the words "you", "can", "help", "wget" and "upload.py", and the meaning imposed by their relative positions to each other. So, I hacked up a bash script before I went to bed, and I've got 105 of the 148 downloaded. From what testing I did, uploading them all's going to be a bear, especially since the one I tested couldn't really be optimized at all by optipng, so they're all going to be rather large. They should be showing up here, if you're interested. I'll probably need you to go through and give 'em licenses, since I don't know squat about the source. Cheers! Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 16:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With my upload speed of ~58 KB/S, it'll supposedly take about 45 mins just to upload the first 150MB file! Yeah! Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 17:05, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...though I got an upload size exceeded on the first image. I've have to play around with ImageMagick some. Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 22:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad to see you're helping out! I added that ToDo item back on my old computer; I would've done it then, but I had basically maxed out my drive space. Fortunately, my new one still has about 300 gigabytes left.
Anyway, as you've found out, there's a filesize limit. After asking in #wikimedia-commons, the thing to do is to convert those TIFFs to PNGs, and then compress them as much as possible. TIFFs compress well, so even if you can't handle the >600 megabyte maps, the others should fit in under the ~20 megabyte size limit. --Gwern (contribs) 00:24 10 April 2008 (GMT)
A nice fellow over at the ref desk wrote a perl script to resize images down to a certain specified filesize, so I'm slowly going through them and resizing and uploading. However, I've gotten the first of the notices that there's no license specified, but I'm not really sure what I should put them as. If I give you a list of the images, will you tag them appropriately? Or even, just tell me what the licensing is so I can do it myself? Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 03:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and should I be uploading these to commons instead? Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 03:28, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Commons, yes, and the license is public domain by reason of age - according to the press releases about the African map collection like this one, they all date from centuries ago. The library cannot claim any copyrights because of the Corel case.
Anyway, I don't think you upload any lossy versions, but if you absolutely must, make sure you link back to the originals! --Gwern (contribs) 03:49 12 April 2008 (GMT)
Ok, so I did a little research and asked a few people, and so I'm uploading them currently to commons with a PD license. I'll have to go through and move the ones I'd already upped. Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 04:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cabal update

The 1.3.x version number is what I saw in the snapshot tar of the dev-repo. Thanks for correcting it :) --OMouse (talk) 23:37, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the snapshots are very up to date; Cabal is pretty active, so one needs to follow the darcs repos. Should be interesting when they finally resolve the parallel build and the link problems and can do a stable release (probably won't be in time for GHC 6.8.3 though). --Gwern (contribs) 23:55 9 May 2008 (GMT)

undo at Zui Quan

No reason given. I was mediating that for medcab a while back, but the discussion died. When you undo, can you please provide a summary of why? Xavexgoem (talk) 18:17, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll provide a summary why when he provides a summary, a summary why he's removing a perfectly fine reference. --Gwern (contribs) 18:20 18 May 2008 (GMT)

Cordwainer Smith

<i>fmt</i> Oops, sorry. I've been writing HTML all day. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't sweat it. If I hadn't caught it, some bot would've. --Gwern (contribs) 20:27 19 May 2008 (GMT)

requesting speedy-delete of typo Phule's compnay

A tag has been placed on Phule's compnay, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect from an implausible typo.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you believe that there is a reason to keep the redirect, you can request that administrators wait a while before deleting it. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. I would encourage you to write a real article for Phule's company and/or create a redirect to Phule (character) if you think that is more appropriate. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:20, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Robert Asprin passed away a few days ago. I thought you might want to know. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:22, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had no idea! How terrible; now he cannot finish up Phule's Company or M.Y.T.H. :( --Gwern (contribs) 03:42 26 May 2008 (GMT)
An administrator declined to delete the redirect, so I changed the redirect to Phule (character). In any case, the and the book both deserve at least stubs if not full articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
True enough, but lazy as I am, I doubt I will be writing them anytime soon.
(And it is a perfectly plausible typo, as it is very easy to type in the wrong order - I made that typo searching, so I should know!) --Gwern (contribs) 03:42 26 May 2008 (GMT)

RfD nomination of Abortion (murder)

I have nominated Abortion (murder) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. delldot talk 01:32, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have commented. Although I wonder why all my redirects seem to be coming up for deletion... --Gwern (contribs) 03:43 26 May 2008 (GMT)

Eva quote IP

Agreed; he did it once more after your revert. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 03:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How irksome. We shall have to deal with his vandalism suitably should he not stint his scissions. --Gwern (contribs) 12:37 8 June 2008 (GMT)

RfD nomination of Gaemcube

I have nominated Gaemcube (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Vivio TestarossaTalk Who 21:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RfD nomination of Gamaecube

I have nominated Gamaecube (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Vivio TestarossaTalk Who 21:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User pages

Please don't edit User:RussBot subpages. It doesn't help to disambiguate links on a page that is specifically designed to list links to disambiguation pages. --Russ (talk) 22:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. --Gwern (contribs) 15:00 10 July 2008 (GMT)

Galactic Center Saga

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

Sorry

Sorry for the mistake that i have made Mimihitam (talk) 13:44, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of Gaba Kawa

An article that you have been involved in editing, Gaba Kawa, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gaba Kawa. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Eastmain (talk) 17:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary

You're being uncivil again. Tedickey (talk) 20:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Better uncivil than reverting good edits. --Gwern (contribs) 20:30 5 September 2008 (GMT)
Actually it was a poor edit, but given your attitude, it's expected. Tedickey (talk) 20:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You can claim all you like, but repeating what was just said, better, and through a quote will never make a good piece of text, and removing it will always be a good edit. --Gwern (contribs) 10:28 6 September 2008 (GMT)

Piotr Woźniak (researcher)

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Piotr Woźniak (researcher), and it appears to be very similar to another wikipedia page: Piotr Woźniak. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 18:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading Image:RuriH.JPG. You've indicated that the image is being used under a claim of fair use, but you have not provided an adequate explanation for why it meets Wikipedia's requirements for such images. In particular, for each page the image is used on, the image must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Can you please check

  • That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for each article the image is used in.
  • That every article it is used on is linked to from its description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --FairuseBot (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus poll on Rebuild of Eva 1.0

Folken keeps forcing his edits on the Rebuild of Eva 1.0 article and I keep reverting them to my version, and basically I feel that Folken is ordering us around even though he has no authority to do so because he is not an admin, and he didn't do much to help setting up these articles, only nitpicking on things we wrote. Be that as it may, I feel the only way to stop him from bullying us around is to make a formal vote at Talk:Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone#Summary length for consensus. Heck, vote against my position if you feel that is the proper course of action; the point is that Folken does not have the authority to single-handedly constantly be laying down decisions like this and such decisions should be made, I feel, with the support of the whole project. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (talk) 23:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Distributed Proofreaders verb

Re: recent change of verb in the Project Gutenberg article.

Interesting point. However, I have seen in the Distributed Proofreaders forums a number of times, variations on the idea that what is done there is more like transcription than proofreading.

For example here's a quote from [4]

"to be completely accurate, we don't proofread as much as we transcribe. Our job is to make as faithful a copy of the original, warts and all, for posterity. So what we are proofreading is the transcription to make sure it is faithful."

I find this definition of proofread:

  • v.tr. To read (copy or proof) in order to find errors and mark corrections.
  • v.intr. To read copy or proof for purposes of error detection and correction.

The usual idea there is that in proofreading, you are, using your own knowledge and experience of what is correct, making changes to a not-yet-final copy of a text. On the other hand, at distributed Proofreaders, the end-goal is to produce a digital transcription of a physical book, with the focus nearly always being "match the original page image."

I find a number of possible definition of the verb "transcribe"

  • 1. To make a full written or typewritten copy of (dictated material, for example).
  • 2. Computer Science To transfer (information) from one recording and storing system to another.
  • 3. Music
    • a. To adapt or arrange (a composition) for a voice or instrument other than the original.
    • b. To translate (a composition) from one notational system to another.
    • c. To reduce (live or recorded music) to notation.
  • 4. To record, usually on tape, for broadcast at a later date.
  • 5. Linguistics: To represent (speech sounds) by phonetic symbols.
  • 6. To translate or transliterate.

Often, a key point there is movement from one media to another. This does seem apt for describing what is done at DP.

Ruzulo (talk) 00:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously, I disagree. I've done a little work at DP myself, and most of the texts are transcribed by the computer - the scanner and then the OCR software takes the original medium (the physical book) and then spits out text files. That's the transcription right there, per definition 2. The CS definition is the right one to use for this sort of project. Then, when an actual human goes over the text comparing it to the scanned image, what they are doing is precisely what your proofreading definition says: they are doing it 'in order to find errors and mark corrections.' The software can't possibly do the proofreading step, as it's already created text files which are as accurate as it knows how to create. --Gwern (contribs) 17:07 15 October 2008 (GMT)
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the overall purpose of DP is to produce a digital transcription of a book, and a proofreading segment is a part of that. What do you think? Ruzulo (talk) 01:40, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that would require a little research into aspirations and method. I haven't done work at DP in a while, but as far as I can remember, the produced e-texts maybe aren't really transcriptions but new versions (correcting typos and errors in the original, omitting the illustrations and typography, and so on). --Gwern (contribs) 02:46 21 October 2008 (GMT)

Removal of deletion discussions without archiving

Hello Gwern, I noticed that you removed two closed discussions from the animanga deletion sorting page earlier today. I would like to kindly ask that you refrain from simply removing closed discussions from this page in the future, without first archiving them to our deletion archive. I regularly archive closed discussions myself, so if you don't want to involve yourself in the archival process, you can just leave closed discussions on the page, and I should be along within a day (or two, on weekends) to archive them myself. Thanks in advance! —Dinoguy1000 17:04, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see. My mistake. --Gwern (contribs) 17:08 17 October 2008 (GMT)

Re: Cactions bug

You're absolutely right; it was to do with the formatting of MediaWiki's global variables, which I had completely overlooked. It should now be fixed (Ctrl-F5 ought to do the trick). Many thanks for the report, and I hope that you continue to enjoy the tool! haz (talk) 10:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good to hear. --Gwern (contribs) 13:22 24 October 2008 (GMT)

Proposed deletion of Shadowknight

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Shadowknight, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because, even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Terraxos (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Not even looking for archive links"

I actually did look for archive links before commenting out the ref, and the particular search terms I used just didn't return the archive link that you were able to find. I'm just saying this to remind you not to assume that people are lazy morons when maybe they just didn't happen to go about the search in the same way you did. Best, —Politizer talk/contribs 16:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You know what ultra-clever search term I used? I went to archive.org - you know, the people who have been archiving websites since '96 - and I put in the the 2 URLs.
Yes, I know. It's really too much of me to expect people to use the Internet Archive for the purpose it's meant for. Why, no doubt most people haven't even heard of it, much less have the technical chops to go to archive.org and use the big search box in the middle of the page.
And it's foolish of me to expect people to know about the detailed, step-by-step instructions for handling dead links at guideline and policy pages like Wikipedia:Citing sources#Repairing dead links. It's a bad problem I have; this isn't the first time (or even the fifth) that this situation has occurred. I'll try to work on my unreasonable demands. --Gwern (contribs) 16:52 15 November 2008 (GMT)

Re Mind Game Film Article...

And it mentions quite a lot the plot section -does-. Which ties into the other problem. If there is plot information so important as to be in the article, it should be -in- the plot section. Plus, all the characters are mentioned in the plot section as well. Lots42 (talk) 21:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully my rewrite will address your issues. It bore out my belief - the summary omitted quite a bit of data. --Gwern (contribs) 23:57 23 November 2008 (GMT)

Haskell function

Haskell function is right, according to lecturer RL —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.252.234.45 (talk) 13:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you are referring to the recent edits to Haskell such as this.
Your lecturer is wrong. I'm not too shabby a Haskell programmer myself, and let me tell you: the given example is three kinds of wrong and got beaten with the fail stick. I can't even figure out what this example is trying to do!
Let's start with the typesig: 'Int -> Int -> Bool'. Our mystery function takes 2 numbers and does some sort of comparison. The obvious functionalities are 'first is greater than second, equal to second, or lesser than'. But none of those work! Because any Haskeller with an ounce of sanity would write the three functions along the lines of 'foo x y = x > y', 'foo x y = x == y' and 'foo x y = x < y', or perhaps they would treat the problem with the contempt it deserves and write pointless definitions such as 'foo = (==)'. Needless to say, none of these definitions or possible variants go anywhere near a guard construction.
So the type sig is hopeless, and the name 'isBool' is of as little help, as it is either mindnumbingly trivial, or just plain wrong. A 'isBool' function would have the type sig either of 'Bool -> Bool' in which case it is utterly trivial ('isBool = id'), or the type sig would be 'a -> Bool' which is a contradiction, it makes no sense in Haskell and is impossible.
Let's look at the function itself. First and most obviously, 'otherwise false' is wrong in two ways: the boolean literal is 'False', not 'false', and also it would have to be 'otherwise = False'. Secondly, there is no function body, no function name and list of arguments. Presumably what was meant would be 'isBool x | x = True'. This is broken in two ways: firstly, it is ill-typed as there is only 1 argument where the type specifies 2 arguments (partial application isn't even a remote possibility as a literal is being returned, not a function), and secondly it is incredibly stupid - the branch will only be followed if x is True, but if x is True then there was no reason to call isBool! See my earlier comment about triviality.
And I think that's enough. I'm actually pretty impressed at how much utter failure has been packed into 10 tokens there.
Oh, and it will be a cold day in Hell before I allow this 'function' into the article. --Gwern (contribs) 02:43 26 November 2008 (GMT)
lol... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.252.234.45 (talk) 11:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A cogent reply, worth of an intellect of your class. --Gwern (contribs) 16:35 27 November 2008 (GMT)

Monads

Sorry about not being a comment in the revert. I wrote one buut the embedded Firefox in my internet tablet ate it. The original lost comment said something like "keep commentary to the talk page".Diego (talk) 17:50, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commentary is perfectly appropriate in the article; that is what the comment markup exists for. It seems silly to me to start an entire talk page section over a single minor technical point. --Gwern (contribs) 19:26 6 December 2008 (GMT)
And how is one supposed to reply? Diego (talk) 22:04, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
One replies with action. If an appropriate resolution of the raised issue is adding a ref, one adds a ref. If the best solution is removing the commented-upon text, one does that. If the existing material is best left alone, for subtle reasons not apparent to a passing editor, one removes the comment and adds a comment explaining why for future editors. And so on. It's not that hard. --Gwern (contribs) 23:51 6 December 2008 (GMT)

I replaced the red-links with section links. Do you believe that section links are worse than links to pages that have been deleted or merged into a section of a page? --AndrewTJ31 (talk) 01:21, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it is a very rare page indeed where redirects to sections cannot be suffered to exist. There are many reasons it is better to link to [[Gehirn]] than to [[List of Neon Genesis Evangelion...#Gehirn|Gehirn]]; the DRY principle is crucial in this context.
And they didn't need to be red-links. It is the work of a few seconds to make a satisfactory redirect. --Gwern (contribs) 03:32 12 December 2008 (GMT)

Etheron, California listed at RfD

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Etheron, California. Since you had some involvement with the Etheron, California redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). meco (talk) 17:01, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Noted. --Gwern (contribs) 18:06 12 December 2008 (GMT)

Contesting prod for Awesome (window manager)

I have removed the {{prod}} tag from Awesome (window manager), which you proposed for deletion. I'm leaving this message here to notify you about it. If you still think the article should be deleted, please don't add the {{prod}} template back to the article. Instead, feel free to list it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Thanks!

Yes, I assure you I'm familiar with the PROD process.

I'm still not sure exactly what you're looking for. As I (and a number of other people) said in the talk page after you marked the article as non-notable, either all window managers are notable or none are. With the exception of the glitz of compiz/beryl, none of them have the amount of formal mention that you seem to be looking for. If you want to delete all of the window manager articles from Wikipedia, I guess you could try, although that seems like a markedly non-constructive use of your time. But singling out one? I don't think so. --Roguelazer (talk) 17:58, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I obviously disagree. I think there are plenty of ways in which window managers are not an 'all-or-nothing' proposition. In no other area of WP are articles all-or-nothing (we have articles on Luke Skywalker etc without articles on Vetter Piin or Docking Bay 18; and so on for every other subject area). Why then are window managers so special?
There are plenty of ways we can distinguish window managers. Desktop Window Manager is notable because as the default Vista WM, it is used by millions, and it is no exaggeration to say that it will ultimately be used by hundreds of millions (and perhaps billions) or people. 9wm and larswm are notable for pioneering the modern automatic tiling paradigm; Ratpoison and Stumpwm are notable for being a divergence among tiling WMs and doing manual rather than tiling (as well as Stumpwm's unusual Common Lisp/interpreter design). KWin and Metacity are notable for much the same reason as Desktop Window Manager. Compiz and Beryl have at least three arguments, holding any numbers of firsts in compositing WMs, popularity, and being research vehicles. twm is the default X.org WM. The UWM (computing) WM is, as far as I can tell, the first X window manager. XMonad has a number of things related to being a research vehicle - being the first to use the zipper in window management, and so on.
You see? Is that so hard? Let's do it for Awesome. Let's see... ah, hm. It was the first window manager to use XCB? Er. Perhaps you can think of a better one.
As for your final argument about singling out - well, Wikipedia:Other stuff exists addresses that better than I could. --Gwern (contribs) 20:01 13 December 2008 (GMT)

Rikdo Koshi

You're missing my point entirely. This is the only article in the category, and the character list is the only other article that fits within it. That makes the category pointless and redundant. TTN (talk) 23:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. I did miss your point then. In that case I have no object to removing and deleting that category, especially as Rikdo is already in the character list. --Gwern (contribs) 21:55 25 December 2008 (GMT)

added and updated your page User:Gwern/Nix Package Manager

I added a piece to the User:Gwern/Nix Package Manager article. I updated the links in most cases to http://nixos.org. Please review the additions. please post comments by starting my talk page (Ricgal (talk) 02:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I also started a User talk on the page, to add my voice in support of notability of the article. (Ricgal (talk) 02:37, 4 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Cool; thanks for the updates. Nix is an interesting topic, and one of the things I've been meaning to get around to doing - the problem is a good article would take quite a bit of time to do. Such an article would need to cover:
  • Nix the distribution
  • The garbage-collection analogy to file systems
  • The Nix language
  • The package manager, its hash paths, and how it emulates a conventional Linux system
    • and its advantages/disadvantages compared to other '2nd generation' package managers like [[Zero Install]
This is all available in the theses and papers and websites, but someone needs to read them carefully, taking notes, and putting it all together. I kind of lack time right now, alas. --Gwern (contribs) 03:14 4 January 2009 (GMT)

RfD nomination of Combo (computer and video games)

I have nominated Combo (computer and video games) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. ZXCVBNM 21:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OMG edits

like anyone honestly cares about OMG lol?!?!?! who cares about OMG?!?!?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chicagobearz (talk • contribs) 02:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You did, apparently. --Gwern (contribs) 04:32 13 January 2009 (GMT)

Curious

Can't tell if it's misintentioned ignorance, or if Yusef al-Ayeri is supposed to be the same person as Karim el-Mejjati, but I can't understand your addition of an external link about KeM to an article about a seemingly-unrelated person. Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 05:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's a cite for al-Ayeri being head in Saudi Arabia. --Gwern (contribs) 05:20 15 January 2009 (GMT)

Library images

Ah, I had forgotten about that completely. All of whatever I had is long gone, but perhaps this weekend I'll take a look at this and throw some sort of script on my server for it to chug away at. Xiong Chiamiov ::contact:: help! 08:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No rush - it's not like the library server is going away anytime soon. And IIRC, a number of those images would still be over Commons' limit. So it might make sense to just wait until we can do a proper job of it. --Gwern (contribs) 22:38 25 January 2009 (GMT)

A RfC you participated in is being discussed

Thanks ...

... for catching my error at Zeno of Elea. Paul August ☎ 22:18, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

NP. I was sure that was just an error from how the introduction was written. --Gwern (contribs) 22:39 25 January 2009 (GMT)

Jack King (NASA)

Thank you for the rename on Jack King (NASA). Can you explain the comment "are you kidding?" TJRC (talk) 22:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't see how the original name violated guidelines, and was horrible in at least 3 distinct ways, then I can't really explain it to you. --Gwern (contribs) 02:11 7 February 2009 (GMT)
My apologies, I didn't realize you valued your incivility over education. I guess since you're not willing to explain, I won't know not to make the mistake in the future. Thanks for nothing. TJRC (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of Terrence Webster-Doyle

Someone has nominated Terrence Webster-Doyle, an article that you created, for deletion. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terrence Webster-Doyle. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Richard Hock (talk) 17:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great Jedi Purge and Order 66

Best Gwern, the Great Jedi Purge is not self Order 66, Order 66 was but a part of the Great Jedi Purge. Tim Auke Kools (talk) 19:24, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And this would be in regard to...? --Gwern (contribs) 20:20 14 February 2009 (GMT)

A little something for you...

The Lonely Geek Barnstar
This barnstar is in honor of your depressing, unloved presence on IRC on Valentine's Day, 2009. Roses and kisses work for some, but you, noble Wikipedian, have important things to discuss on the internet with people you barely know who you'll probably never meet. Here's to you! FlyingToaster 20:44, 14 February 2009 (UTC) [reply]
Th- thanks? --Gwern (contribs) 23:35 14 February 2009 (GMT)
I can't help but chuckle at this (and then die a little inside as I realize it describes me, too (except for the IRC part)). =/ 「ダイノガイ千？！」(Dinoguy1000) 01:36, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I knew you were one of us when I noticed you correctly nested your parentheses. --Gwern (contribs) 02:02 18 February 2009 (GMT)
Indeed, I can't stand incorrectly nested (or worse, unclosed) parenthetical thoughts... 「ダイノガイ千？！」(Dinoguy1000) 08:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really necessary to modify links in old archived deletion discussions, as you did here? It seems counterproductive, in that you could be changing the meaning of someone's comments by making it appear that someone linked to something different than what they intended. What purpose is served by this change? Wouldn't it make more sense to obey the note at the top of the page in big red letters, "Please do not modify it"? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:34, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. And I'm not, unless you can show an example where someone meant the obscure item from a nigh-forgotten American show and not the web site that Wikipedians use routinely in deletion discussions. It serves to link people where they meant, and to reduce the number of ambiguous links. And not really. --Gwern (contribs) 18:50 22 February 2009 (GMT)

Blub

Well done with the Blub edit on Paul Graham! I didn't realize the concept was so widely discussed. Binarybits (talk) 21:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Perhaps now you understand why I was a little irritated by your removals; Blub could practically be a stand-alone article! --Gwern (contribs) 02:46 25 February 2009 (GMT)

Bot updates?

I think you used to have a bot update pages such as Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Japan. Do you still do that, or do you know which bots do this? Thanks! ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:07, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

'fraid it wasn't me; I have no idea! I'd check the history to see if that'd do the trick. --Gwern (contribs) 14:48 11 March 2009 (GMT)

It's not my fault

Hello (Marudubshinki) Gwern,
I am the user 87.6.52.181: Piero on Italian Wikipedia (total edits: 4146; first edit: 2004).
Today (4 April 2009) in my work I have consulted your Wiki (which I admire) and I saw that you have done [5].
It is not my work.
My IP address changes every time I connect to the Internet (dynamic IP address). For example:

87.10.55.202 in 29 November 2007
82.58.25.74 in 13 January 2008
82.58.22.110 in 14 June 2008

Sorry for my English very poor...
Sincerely
Piero —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.6.52.181 (talk) 10:51, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Um. Ok. --Gwern (contribs) 13:38 4 April 2009 (GMT)

Awesome (window manager)

I have expanded the original article, dug up some new references, and corrected some of the errors. I have also taken the liberty of removing the stub template and replacing it with expand template with a short TODO list of topics that need (more) coverage on the talk page. I hope that the page is now able to stand on its own feet. --Foxbunny (talk) 11:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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