User talk:Stephen G. Brown

Serbo-Croatian

Hello! Serbo-Croatian is not the second language spoken in Slovenia. It is at most, the third. By "Popis 2002" made by SURS, it has 36265 people speaking serbo-croatian as mother tongue. However there are 54079 people with Croatian. Nevertheless I cannot agree with what it is qritten in the text. Serbo-Croatian is not the second language in Slovenia. The second language could be maybe English. However if we look as official languages, the second language is Italian, and partially Hungarian.

Check it out before deleting my text,

urbansson Urbanson (talk) 10:33, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Joy,

Perhaps 17 million is the correct number, but I trust Ethnologue, which shows 21 million total for all countries as of 1999: < http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SRC >. I also have an older Ethnologue figure (Grimes, 1992) that indicates 19 million speakers. I don't know where your 17 million comes from, but I suspect it's either old or qualified and limited in some way. I know I make the occasional mistake, but I do take pains to have accurate and up-to-date information whenever I write anything.

--Stephen 09:27, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, about Ethnologue, please see the last section of Talk:Serbo-Croatian language where this same matter is already discussed to an extent. --Joy [shallot] 12:17, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Stephen, I do appreciate your edits, but you either don't appear to have a Wikipedia account or the signature links are invalid. Please create an account if you don't have one, as you're now practically anonimous. Thus, I can't access you through your talk page, where such points normally belong:
- How is it that love has long accent in English? Even in the dialects where it does, loving certainly doesn't.
- Long unstressed syllables are not so common in English. Fifties is about the best I could manage.
- Lj is AFAIK (being also a lateral) a sonorant and thus is not normally marked as "voiced". As I know, voiced/voiceless distinction is not normally indicated for sonorants, as they don't have voiceless pairs.
- I dislike your edit on subject-verb agreement like "The majority of linguists think". As you have noticed, my English is not perfect, but AFAIK it's an open issue whether the verb should agree with the grammatical subject (majority) or logical subject (linguists), i.e. both variants are acceptable depending on the variant of English (and I strongly prefer the first). Is it an AmE/BrE issue or what? See this sci.lang thread.
Duja 09:00, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Duja, I'm logged in, and when I click on Preferences it has my name, nickname and e-mail address. It doesn't ask for any other info, and I don't know how to make my signature link any more valid. I tried clicking on the "Talk" following my name in the Watchlist, and it opened a talkpage (which includes a message from Joy).

Found it (apparently). I was seduced by the fact that your user page is empty, so on the link of your signature Wikipedia offers me to edit the page. You could spare a few words on yourself there, if only just to avoid such confusions.

As for "love," I was just trying to find an example to match the [á] in the table. This letter shows up better in the table than [í], I think. But you're the expert on S-C, and you should choose the English words you like best. But then I think you should change the vowel in the table from [á]/[à]/[â], etc., to the right vowel for your example.

English [i], however, seems like the best candidate for approximations, as 1) it remains [i] regardless of short/long and 2) I can't find many examples in English with long unstressed syllables (fifties has unstressed [i:] aka [ij] in AmE). OTOH, as you said, I can't find enough i's with diacritic marks in Unicode table (and they're ugly). However, I don't think that the current mismatch would confuse the reader.

Lj is unvoiced in some languages (such as some American Indian languages), and on the Lateral consonant page, it is listed as a "voiced palatal lateral." At the moment, it does not link to anything, but as soon as someone gets around to defining it, the link will be voiced palatal lateral. I was simply planning ahead.

But it doesn't match the current Wikipedia naming system for sonorants -- (cf. Bilabial nasal (m), lateral alveolar approximant (l), alveolar trill (r) ). I fail to see how it can possibly be unvoiced. Checking... Wikipedia pages on the subject are in a mess. Compare links from Approximant consonant and e.g. X-SAMPA -- the naming scheme is not systematic, leading to many missing links. I don't care if it's one way or another ("voiced" ommitted or not) as long as it's consistent.

And no, the construction "the majority of linguists is" is completely unacceptable in both American and British English. It is not an open issue at all. In this particular construction, the verb agrees not with the head noun "majority," but with the referent "linguists." The majority of people are blond, but the majority of the book is in English. Even if the word "lingists" were only implied, the verb would still HAVE to be in the plural: The majority were imprisoned; A majority are in favor of it.

I belong to a linguists' group (http://forums.compuserve.com/vlforums/default.asp?SRV=ForeignLanguage) that is very strong on English (American and British) grammar, style and usage, and if you like I could get some comments from some of them for you on this issue.

In fact, I have just looked "majority" up in my Fowlers Modern English Usage (Oxford), and he affirms that "majority" in this sense MUST have a plural verb. --Stephen 11:18, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Then, consider that matter settled (guess I'll have to re-check AUE FAQ ;-)). FYI, it's the opposite in SCr -- the grammatical subject agrees with the verb rather than logical one.

Duja 15:07, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Underlining

May I ask you to do the same with the óther sections in the article? And also with Bulgarian lexis? Or at least to tell me how I can do it myself, I am not really a formatting genius... VMORO 15:35, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)~

Could I ask why you're adopting underlining? The Wikipedia standard when referring to a word rather than the thing it denotes is to use italics. Underlining looks ugly and could mislead people into thinking that it indicated a link - and even in the case of links, many users set their browser to suppress the underlining, for aesthetic reasons. Maybe the problem is that you think the "italic" version of Cyrillic looks too different from the upright version, but many other articles use it. rossb 10:41, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've used underlining in this case because of the Cyrillic script. I've been reading and writing Cyrillic for longer than most people have been alive, so for me italicized Cyrillic presents no problem. However, italicized Cyrillic is difficult for anyone who is new or unaccustomed to it. We've already discussed this on Talk:Bulgarian_language, including possible solutions. Notice, for instance, how these Cyrillic letters appear in italics and other formats: вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол.

We did the Bulgarian language page using italics at first, but the result was terrible ... and unreadible. You are welcome to do it a different way if you can think of a better one, but my opinion as a long-time professional typographer is that underlining is a vast improvement over italics in this case.

That other articles use Cyrillic italics does not strike me as a valid argument. Any article intended to be read by people who do not regularly use Cyrillic should not use Cyrillic italics, unless it's a discussion about Cyrillic italics. All those other articles should be changed.

As to users who set their browser to suppress underlining ... then they will simply see regular Cyrillic in contrast to the surrounding Roman text. It will be still much easier for them to read, and the appearance of the page will still be superior to one filled with a lot of Cyrillic italics.

The same holds true for words in any other language that uses some unusual letters. Italics tend to make them unreadable. For example, the Azerbaijani name for their own country: Azərbaycan Respublikası vs. Azərbaycan Respublikası ... italics kill the schwa. —Stephen 12:06, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I take your point about the unfamiliarity of italic Cyrillic. The m for T is pretty confusing, and on holiday in Ukraine last year I was quite puzzled as to what the backwards s might be. But I wonder why you rejected bold as an alternative? Certainly whenever I see underlining on a web page, I have an urge to click on it. More generally, since you're proposing something potentially affecting a number of articles, shouldn't this be discussed on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)? By the way the italic schwa looks fine on my browswer (the much-maligned MSIE)rossb 13:19, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, the second thing we tried on the Bulgarian page after rejecting italics was ... bold. It was certainly an improvement as far as legibility, but it was grotesque ... too ugly for words. As far as I can see, the choice is between underlining and a font change.

It won't hurt anything if you click on an underlined word, and the lack of action will be a good indication that it's not a link. People quickly learn not to click on RED links (because they don't go anywhere worthwhile), and they will figure out underlined words just as quickly.

You must have a really good font if you can see an italic schwa. The fonts that came with my Windows 2000 and Word 2000 don't have that letter, or any other unusual Roman italics.

I have never visited the Village Pump, but I agree that it should be discussed, so that something can be done about the other pages. One page in particular that I've noticed is the Common phrases in various languages ... all those italics make it illegible and unusable, besides the way it looks. Italics on a monitor are even worse than italics on paper, and even on paper they should be used with extreme discretion and vanishingly seldom. Underlining is a far better tool, both for legibility and for esthetic appearance.

—Stephen 16:52, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Killer language

Hello, Stephen. I'm hoping you can take a look at Killer language. That article was marked for cleanup in mid October, but it isn't showing on October's cleanup list. I'm not sure if it ever was listed. Google gives 1,090 hits for "killer language," so I assume it is a term that is in actual use. Is there useful material in that article? Should it be cleaned up or should it redirect elsewhere? Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 06:50, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I had not seen this article before. It's an interesting outlook, if a bit strained. It discusses a problem that is both real and very serious, but I don't see how this view (of ascribing the death of one language to the "actions" of another, rather than to the laws, policies and practices of governments and societies) could be useful or effective. To solve the problem of dying languages, attitudes and laws have to be changed, and blaming English seems pointless to me. And in recent years, attitudes have indeed been changing (I'm not sure why), and minority dialects and languages are suddenly becoming respectable.

I suppose we could keep the article around for a while, since it seems to be popular. I'll clean it up a bit. —Stephen 09:32, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you. That article has been on my 2Bchecked list for a while. I'm just now getting around to working on the 2Bchecked list. Thank goodness you edit regularly -- it wasn't difficult to find you when I went looking for a linguist. Happy editing! SWAdair | Talk 09:44, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Re: IPA template

The IPA template should not be used for a couple reasons. The template itself is misleading when used for anything other than IPA. Its tooltip says "This is an IPA-transcription...," which it is not. And as Michael Z. mentioned at the article's talk page, a better solution would be to use a different template specificially designed to handle Cyrillic text. For now, a better solution would be the Unicode template. In fact, Template talk:IPA even recommends this. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 02:24, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, I was aware of the problems. It’s just that IPA was better than nothing at all. The Unicode template is an improvement over the IPA, and in fact that’s exactly what we’ve been doing in en.wiktionary.org articles for the past few weeks. —Stephen 07:45, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Stephen,

I just wanted to quickly thank you for your attentiveness in the Azerbaijan entry not allowing vandal Rovoam to get along with his sneaky vandalism. He introduced his "traditional" vandalism in this edit ([1]) (just above the "Line 66"), which unfortunately went unnoticed by User:Picapica ([2]), but you fixed it promptly [3]). In the past Rovoam tried to introduce similar sneaky vandalisms in Azerbaijanis (e.g. [4]), Azeri (e.g. [5]) and many other Azerbaijan-related and even unrelated entries, such as Ottoman Empire (e.g. [6]) or Ottoman Turks (e.g. [7]).

This person has been literally terrorizing various Azerbaijan and Turkey-related entries in WP, adding sneaky and blatant vandalisms of anti-Azeri and anti-Turk character. I am grateful to you along with many other editors, who track down and neutralize all his spurious edits.--Tabib 13:35, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

• You’re welcome, Tabib. We’re experience similar problems with some of the Slavic pages, especially those concerning the languages and peoples of Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia. Where I’m from, such ethnic and cultural bigotry was dealt with and virtually eliminated decades ago, and today we find it difficult to believe that these attitudes are still rampant in large parts of the world. —Stephen 06:46, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unicode fonts

There has been a lot of discussion about {{unicode fonts}} and the order in which the fonts should be listed. What happens is that the browser (usually IE) scans the list and uses the first font it finds which is currently installed. This is why the rarer fonts are listed first: if a user has installed one of these it will be used. If you front-load the list with the more common, less populated, fonts then those users who have installed the less common better-populated fonts do not gain the benefit.

The article you asked about, Bulgarian language, looks fine to me. I note with interest that it actually uses {{unicode}} for "(Ѣ, ѣ)" and "(Ѫ, ѫ)": how do those now look to you?

That must be because you have some of those unusual fonts installed. I inserted the {{Unicode}} template into the Bulgarian page precisely so I could see the letters. Since the fonts were switched around, all I see in the above four letters are big, blank boxes. —Stephen 7 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

If you are working extensively in cyrillic, there might be benefit in co-opting {{cyrillic}} (which currently REDIRECTs to {{Cyrillic alphabet}} for some reason) to specify fonts which are rich in cyrillic characters (as with {{polytonic}} for greek): would that help? HTH HAND --Phil | Talk July 7, 2005 10:59 (UTC)

Hmm. Perhaps I will make a new template using the "Unicode fonts" font order before they got switched around. The problem will be finding all of the instances of {{Unicode}} that I have inserted. I think there are quite a few of them...it will take a long time to find and change them.

As I understand it, Windows (or whatever program it is that handles this) only considers the first couple of fonts in a list. Fonts deep in the list might as well be taken out, because they are ignored. If you don’t have a font that comes early in the list, then you get the default font, which I believe is usually Times New Roman. However it works, these lists do not work on my machine unless my fonts are at the head of the list...and I only have the standard Windows set. —Stephen 7 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

I have Code2000 which appears fairly close to the front of the list: maybe this would help since it claims to have good coverage of Cyrillic. You could also try here. --Phil | Talk July 7, 2005 15:39 (UTC)

Zlatiborian

Why you dissagree with Zlatiborian language?

Nahuatl wording

Hello, Stephen,

You recently worked on the Nahuatl page, and described your edit as consisting of minor wording changes. Most of the changes are, but this one struck me as relatively major, where you deleted the stuff I've italicized:

the devastating loss caused by the burning of thousands of Aztec manuscripts by some of the Catholic priests (it is also well known that many missionaries helped translate the texts before they were burnt and/or kept copies of them). (See Nahuatl transcription.)

(a) Seems a bit disingenuous to call that minor. (b) There's a bit of discussion on the Nahuatl talk page. See what you think.

--Lavintzin 14:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

The original statement that the manuscripts were burnt by the Catholic priests simply meant that the destruction was carried out by them as a group...it does not say or imply that each and every priest took part in or even condoned the destruction. The addition of "some of" does not change the meaning, but it's superfluous and I think the original wording is better style. As for the part about "well known," that adds a spin that the statement does not merit. If it's well known, you don't need to say so. As for "helping translate", I believe their help was pretty minor...if it had been significant, then the destruction and loss would not have been so great. (Anyway, it goes without saying that some of the priests helped to some extent, since they were the ones who spoke and wrote good Spanish.) Also, their "kept copies" were depressingly few. To me, the "stuff italicized" seems nothing more than whitewash, and does not represent important information. The only parts of it that seem reasonable are redundant, since it already says that, but worded better.

Instead of putting something as airy as the stuff italicized, it would be much better to write that "some of the priests managed to save XX manuscripts from the destruction" and that "some of the priests managed to get XX manuscripts accurately translated" (substituting the correct number for XX, of course). That would be useful information. —Stephen 11:28, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

chimp language

Hi Stephen,

I reverted your reversion of me. The wording of that paragraph implies that not all human languages are 'language' in the normal linguistic sense. It may be that chimp sign has some degree of syntax, though I believe that's a very controversial claim. But even if it does, it doesn't approach the most basic human pidgins, let alone any native language.

kwami 08:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Then I believe you’ve misunderstood the wording in that paragraph. There was no implication whatever that any human language is not ‘language’ in any normal linguistic sense. You stated that you were reverting my "unsubstantiated claim that some human language is as syntactically impoverished as chimp sign." I made no such claim, and the original wording said nothing of the sort. What you’re saying is that Kanzi’s signing was no more language than dogs barking or pigs grunting, and that the original claims that some human languages are nothing more than that. In fact, what it said is that all human languages ARE languages, and that Kanzi’s signing goes far beyond barking and grunting and actually approaches what we consider true language.

The original said that Kanzi’s signing has semantics ... in fact, it does, and I’ve never heard of any study that disputes that. The original also said that Kanzi’s syntax is much simpler than most human languages. The only thing that I can imagine you disagreeing with is the word "most." However, some trade languages (jargons, not pidgins) start out very poorly as languages go. If a jargon reaches the stage of a pidgin, then certainly it has a more complex syntax than Kanzi’s.

What you said is this: "While animal communication has debated levels of semantics, it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do." The original wording was correct when it said simply that "animal communication has semantics" ... but you assert that it has "debated levels" of semantics, yet you’ve given no evidence, documentation or explanation of the debate. Next you stated that "it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do." That’s a very wishy-washy way to put it...it’s as meaningless as saying that Korean has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that English does. But it leaves one the impression that you’re claiming that it has been shown that Kanzi’s signing does NOT have syntax in the sense that human languages do. Forgetting for the moment the open-ended negative, if you’re going to make that claim, then you should be able to describe Kanzi’s syntax and clarify how it is fundamentally different from the syntax of all human language, including jargons. I’ve never read a study that supports what you’ve written.

Let me ask you if you are fluent in Ameslan or a comparable human sign language. I learned Ameslan at a young age and I know its intricacies and the ways it differs from spoken languages. You really have to know a human sign language of this type in order to judge Kanzi’s communication reasonably.

The bottom line is that the original wording was simple, correct and not in dispute, except for the word "most" (and I believe that some jargons may justify the use of "most"). But what you’ve changed it to IS in dispute, and I don’t think there is any evidence to support it. —Stephen 11:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

From what I've read, fluent ASL signers who have witnessed the interactions tend to be highly dubious of the claims of chimp language. This isn't an area I've followed for a while, though, so I don't have refs for my claims. I'd be happy if for now we just removed the word 'most'. Jargons as you describe them are marginal as languages, and not what comes to mind when the phrase 'human language' is mentioned, so that if we say 'most' human languages are more complex, not a few readers will come away with the idea that there are tribes in the Amazon with languages more primitive than what chimanzees use. kwami 21:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Bulgars

Thanks for the help in clearing up the Bulgar dispute. I was under the impression that the Iranian theory was a nationalist claim, as that is what the posters above me indicated, and they were the only ones who cited sources. Most contributors here aren't professionals, so it's sometimes hard to tell whether you're dealing with crank theories.--Rob117 22:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

hi, i need protection about "Bulgars", the article is under attack by Slavic nationalists. they want to remove all sources in the entrance. thanks for your help.--Finn Diesel (talk) 18:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I’m not an admin on this wiki. As a first step, you need to try to engage the nationalist in a reasoned discussion at Talk:Bulgars. —Stephen (talk) 19:02, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

IPA for Arabic

Hi, your experience with creating an Arabic transcription at wiktionary might help at Wikipedia talk:IPA for Arabic as we're trying to hash out a reasonable IPA transcription system of MSA for Wikipedia articles. Care to contribute? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

For phonemic transcription of consonants, I suggest this: ا=a/aː, أ=ʔ, آ=ʔaː, ب=b, ت=t, ث=θ, ج=ʤ, ح=ħ, خ=χ, د=d, ذ=ð, ر=r, ز=z, س=s, ش=ʃ, ص=sˁ, ض=dˁ, ط=tˁ, ظ=ðˁ, ع=ʕ, غ=ɣ, ف=f, ق=q, ك=k, ل=l, م=m, ن=n, ه=h, و=w, ي=j, ء=ʔ. It might be better to stick to phonemic transcriptions here, since actual pronunciation can vary quite a bit depending on locality of the speaker, gender, education, circumstance, and other factors. Emphatic consonants affect not only nearby vowels, but also other nearby consonants, so that a ت in the vecinity of an emphatic consonant is pronounced like ط, and there are other mutations in consonants when next to some other consonants (sometimes these changes are reflected in the spelling, but not always). In reality, ق is often pronounced ʔ, but this is subject to a number of factors and can vary in the same word by the same speaker. Words in isolation are often pronounced differently when preceded or followed by some other word. Since MSA allows as syllables only CV, CVː, CVC, CVːC, CVCC (occasionally in foreign loans, a syllable initial CC is found), a helping vowel is often inserted, or a vowel is elided, depending on how a preceding or following word or suffix affects syllable structure, which stretches across word boundaries. When Arabic borrows foreign words, as in names and so on, the script works differently and is used as a true alphabet, not an abjad.

If we stick to phonemic transliteration, you only need the vowels a, i, o, u, aː, iː, uː, eː, oː, and the diphthongs ay, aw, iy, iw, uy. If you really want to do phonetic transcription, you will also need æ, ɑ, æː, ɑː, ı, ʊ, ɛ̈ı, ɛ̈ʊ. —Stephen (talk) 17:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism

You reverted some vandalism to Table. Thanks. Just a warning that some vandals put in a whole series of vandalisms one after the other and you only reverted the top one. Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism has a bit about all this. I'm afraid vandals can be quite nasty. Personally I use WP:Twinkle to roll back and have 'enhanced recent changes' switched on in profile under recent changes. Dmcq (talk) 09:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I’ll give Twinkle a try. —Stephen (talk) 16:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

AIV

Thanks for your recent report to WP:AIV. In the future, please use the reporting format displayed in the comments for reporting vandals. This will give the reviewing admins the information necessary to quickly respond to the report. Using the established format also allows the page to be cleaned up by the helper bots after a user is blocked. Thanks. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 10:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Appearance of vandalism

Your recent reverts to Dominica had the appearance of abetting a vandal. It has been re-reverted. Student7 (talk) 01:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I was not abetting a vandal, I was confused about whether the remark was being added or deleted. When I saw the remark highlighted in red at Dominica, I confused the sequence and thought that 174.96.56.126 had added it. I’m used to the way Rollback/Revert works in sister projects, which give you the final result of a revert with the difference between versions, serving as a doublecheck of the action. Twinkle does not have this useful feature, so wheneven I revert an edit here, I do not see the effects of the revert. Possibly there is a way to use Twinkle so that you do see a differences comparison, but I have so far not found that feature. —Stephen (talk) 19:20, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the Arabic help

I read your user page. The combination of linguistics + font development must make for some very interesting work. I will probably be running into you again on Wiki. For anybody who wants to read SGB and my discussion about Arabic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muslim#Plurals_.28in_Arabic_and_transliterated.29 NinetyNineFennelSeeds (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to take the Muslim talk page too far afield, so I'm here on your space again. This is the lead sentence of Romanization of Arabic: "Different approaches and methods for the romanization of Arabic (Arabic: رومنة اللغة العربية‎ rawmanat al-luġa al-ʻarabiyya) exist."

I'm curious, which style did Wiki editors select in this main article in respect to rawmanat al-luġa al-ʻarabiyya? Btw, on the discussion page, I came across an interesting remark by User:Dbachmann back in 2006 relating to DIN 31635. NinetyNineFennelSeeds (talk) 23:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Thats DIN 31635. All Arabic transliteration schemes come up short and they are useful only for the casual user who does not want to bother learning the alphabet or sounds. For most students of the Arabic language, the only purpose a transliteration fills is to show where the vowels are and which of the three basic vowels each one is. Everything else is clear from the Arabic script itself. —Stephen (talk) 23:49, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Looking forward to more contributions

I can see you contributed to "Contracts" article. If you have some spare time would you like to contribute to http://www.wikilawschool.org It is a non-profit law school study guide resource for law school students. Looking forward to your help! Thanks for kind consideration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.202.38.234 (talk) 07:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Coffee

Hi Stephen, could I ask you to look again at this edit of yours, please? I'm no expert but it does look like a Flat white to me. The real point though, is that edit you reverted was almost certainly made in good faith and therefore cannot be vandalism. You ought to be leaving other than the default edit summary when reverting non-vandal edits. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

You could be right, I have never heard of a "flat white" coffee. To me, "flat white" is a matte white, a nonglossy color. Latte means milk, which is the medium used to make the fern design in the coffee, and coffee with heavy milk is called a latte. Perhaps "flat white" is a regional term? At any rate, the name of the jpg in question is Latte_art.jpg. Change it if you are sure, but I honestly think it is latte.

I would be glad to leave something other than the default edit summary, but I cannot imagine what I would say, other than "latte, not flat white" (which seems like a pointless comment). —Stephen (talk) 14:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm certain that the terminology is a regional variant - seems like Australian/New Zealand from the Flat white article. The image taken from Flickr is labelled Coffee cortado there! Like you, I don't think it's a big deal what the coffee is actually called.

I agree it's a pain in the ass, trying to find something useful to put in place of the default message for an AGF edit; but it must be very dispiriting for a newcomer ip editor when their good-faith contributions get reverted without any reason they can understand. Thanks for all your efforts anyway and happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 14:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

February 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Pancake, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. RobertMel (talk) 01:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You are mistaken, I only reverted a vandal. When you reverted me, you reintroduced the vandalism. I don’t know what you were looking at when you thought that I had produced a bad edit, but your revert was improper. —Stephen (talk) 01:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I was intending to revert the IP vandal, you reverted him and didn't see your revert. So basically I thought I was reverting him. My appologies. RobertMel (talk) 01:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

lol

[8] Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 19:15, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

Why do you keep removing referenced info in Tadevus Kosciusko article? That info doesn't match your schema of beliefs and of representation of the world, so you just delete it? Stop being a child. Act like adult. Accept the world the way it is, not the way you want it to be. Tadevus Kosciusko is partly Belarusian. It is proven. So back off.

Ales hurko (talk) 19:22, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

You don’t even look at what you are doing. Latin wiki has no article about "Taddeus Kosciuszko", it is "Thaddaeus Kosciuszko". As for my "keep removing referenced info", it is a deliberate lie. I have only removed a reference one time, by accident because of the nature of Free Belarus's multiple reverts. As to backing off, who do you think you are? —Stephen (talk) 19:40, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Ownership of articles

Hello Stephen, this comment at Talk:Poles is not acceptable, telling someone to not edit an article looks to be an attempt to claim ownership. Feel free to debate the proper inclusion of information in an article, but don't tell other editors that they can't contribute at all, thank you. -- Atama頭 18:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

That is not an attempt to claim ownership at all. A Belarusian kept removing a person that the Poles consider to be an important Pole from the article. I am not Polish, but I believe that if the Poles want to have him as one of their own, it is not up to other nationalities to deny them that right. I did not write the article or any part of it and know little of the history of Poland (although I can manage to read some Polish, since I speak Russian). And I did not tell him that he can’t contribute at all, but that he should contribute to articles where his personal interests are not in conflict and not at odds with most of those who the article is about, such as articles about Belarus or Israel. If his contribution to the Poles article was to add relevant and accurate information, I would have been all for it, but since he was trying to delete Polish history, I felt that, since he was not Polish and was not being objective, he should contribute somewhere where he could be more objective.

In the meantime, that contributor (along with several of his socks) has been blocked at least twice and both of the pages which he was trying to de-Polonize have had to be temporarily protected to stop his work. —Stephen (talk) 03:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

VeriChip

I'm sorry, what is vandalistic about the story. —Preceding unsigned comment added by General the (talk • contribs) 12:47, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

It isn’t vandalism, but it is unsourced and unsupported by any evidence. It’s just a tale. —Stephen (talk) 13:21, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Fiber versus Fibre

Hi Stephen, I have added a note in the Talk section of Spar article. Boatman (talk) 11:07, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope it will help. I think most of the fiber/fibre edits are by the same person using various IPs and logins, but I’m not sure. —Stephen (talk) 12:06, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi Stephen, There is another user (or maybe the same one) who has the er/re bug in other articles. I wish they would devote their energies to making useful edits to enhance the articles! Boatman (talk) 19:35, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I do, too. —Stephen (talk) 22:22, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

uk/us spelling

Hi. I noticed this and then found you've been reverting these disruptive IPs for days. I think it needs to bump-up to ANI or SPI for consideration of a range block. I'm not really seeing a pattern of specific articles being targeted, so semi prolly won't be effective. Cheers, Jack Merridew 21:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it’s one or two people, but he or they constantly change IP addresses. —Stephen (talk) 23:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I have asked to have the Horse racing article semi protected. Maybe some other articles need to be protected also? – Josette (talk) 23:18, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The other pages that they’ve been hitting are: Spitting cobra, Human sacrifice, Headhunting, Les Arcs, Springtail, and Spar. —Stephen (talk) 23:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I requested protection for all of the articles with a note that it seems to be the same IP. – Josette (talk) 23:51, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I appreciate the help. —Stephen (talk) 23:53, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:RFPP All semi-protected for 3 days except Spar. (They only seem to have edited that one once). Hope that helps! – Josette (talk) 00:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Beautiful. Yes, Spar was only hit once, it was the lead-off. —Stephen (talk) 00:50, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I've got these all watched now and just handed the non-bug off to Cas. I'll notice if these are hit again.

You seem an old hand who's returned in the last year; I've been here as-long and am around a lot, so if you need back-up, give a poke. Cheers, Jack Merridew 01:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I will, thanks. —Stephen (talk) 01:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

June 2010

Hello. Regarding the recent revert you made to Lag: you may already know about them, but you might find Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace useful. After a revert, these can be placed on the user's talk page to let them know you considered their edit was inappropriate, and also direct new users towards the sandbox. They can also be used to give a stern warning to a vandal when they've been previously warned. Thank you. -- Rick Van Tassel ^{user|talk|contribs} 14:51, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I did indicate that it along with the other edit made by this user were vandalism, which I’m sure the user was fully aware of, and I felt that marking it as vandalism already implied a warning. After only a couple of quick reverts done this way, the vandalism almost always ends. However, I did not know about Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace, but I suspected that there must be such a list somewhere. —Stephen (talk) 09:12, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello, would you be so kind as to give us support!

Hello, my name is Claudi Balaguer (user Capsot from the Catalan Viquipèdia and the Occitan Wikiccionari). I hope you're doing fine and I sincerely apologize for this intrusion. I've just read your profile and I saw that you're a learned person deeply interested in languages and linguistics, so I suppose you know too well what are a minorized language and culture and maybe I am not bothering you and you will help us... I'm a member of a Catalan association "Amical de la Viquipèdia" which is trying to get some recognition as a Catalan Chapter but this hasn't been approved up to this moment because Catalan is not supported by a state even though our Association is working real hard. We would appreciate your support, visible if you stick this on your first page: Wikimedia CAT. Thanks again, wishing you a great summer, take care! Capsot (talk) 20:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Courcelles (talk) 17:47, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

In regards to accepting the changes to the article BP. Generally removing citation needed templates with out addressing the issue at hand is not a common practice unless the reason for the introduction of the template was unfounded. A statement such as "BP is one of the most valuable brands" with out a citation does not fit into that category and could possible be WP:OR or included from a conflict of interest. There are literally thousands of brands rated higher by Forbes. Mkdw^talk 04:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the FACT template had slipped my notice as I was focussed on the meaning of shortest and whether it was a significant fact. —Stephen (talk) 04:42, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment

Hello! Regarding your edit summaries in your two recent reversions [9] and [10] in Alexander the Great: 1) there was an ancient Macedonian language, so it was not too early for mk, referring to the ancient language instead of the unrelated modern Macedonian language that you obviously had in mind and 2) calling Alexander a Macedonian implies his ancient Macedonian origin, not a modern Slav Macedonian one. My comments are only to tell you that "Macedonian" in ancient history has nothing to do with the modern slavic sense of "Macedonian"; there was nothing wrong with your reversions, I just comment your edit summaries. Thank you! - Sthenel (talk) 15:02, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

The Macedonian of that era was completely different from the Macedonian of today. Ancient Macedonian was a Greek language, not a Slavic language. You seem to be in agreement with me, so I don’t know what the argument is. —Stephen (talk) 15:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes I agree with you after your answer. My comments concern you edit summaries alone. Calling him a Macedonian refers to him being an ancient Macedonian not a Slav; but you reverted an edit that called him Macedonian saying that "he was not a Slav", which means that he cannot be called Macedonian because Macedonian=Slav. Something like this happened in the first reversion and the summary you provided that led me to wrong conclusions. I can't make it more clear. Anyway, there is no argument and it's not important. - Sthenel (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I believed that the editor in question thought that Ancient and Modern Macedonian were the same language and was trying to say that Alexander was a Slav, not a Greek. I know the difference between the two Macedonians, but I believed that the editor was confused about it. Even if he knew the difference, his edit gave the impression that Alexander was a Slav. —Stephen (talk) 16:22, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Who knows, but the way you answered in both your reversions gave wrong impressions and caught my attention. Never mind! - Sthenel (talk) 19:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Croatian grammar

Hi,

Just a heads-up for Croatian grammar. Several-month-long discussion on merging this with Serbian grammar and Serbian and Croatian grammar/Serbo-Croatian grammar (the latter probably best because Bosnian and Montenegrin redirect there too), with notices given at the languages wikiproject. However, Croatian grammar keeps getting reverted into a content fork, with the argument that it isn't a fork if you give it a different name. I made a stub of what I thought it would be that wouldn't be a fork, but that gets reverted too. I don't really care, though, if it's s.t. along those lines (itself really just a sop and probably mergeable into Croatian language) or a rd. as people had originally agreed. — kwami (talk) 20:17, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. So the way Croatian grammar reads right now is pretty much what we want to keep for a while. —Stephen (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Please take a better look, last few days I'm adding new content every day to article Croatian grammar, and it is no way content fork (see arguments on talk page). Please check talk page before reverting, thank you for making Wikipedia better, not worse. SpeedyGonsales (talk) 06:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

This has already been discussed in detail. Do not add any new, old, or other content to Croatian grammar, it is a redirect. —Stephen (talk) 07:28, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism warnings

I see you have been doing quite a bit of work against vandalism. Thank you for your excellent work in this area. I thought it worth mentioning the value of posting warnings on vandals' talk pages, which you have (at least sometimes) not been doing. There are several reasons for this. The most obvious reason is that quite often a vandal will give up after a couple of warnings. Another reason is that when Huggle is used to deal with vandalism, it automatically checks for existing warnings, and after a few warnings it will make a report at Administrator intervention against vandalism, which is likely to result in the vandal being blocked. A third reason is that if a report is made to Administrator intervention against vandalism (whether automatically or manually), an administrator is very unlikely to take action if the vandal has not been warned, or has had only one or two warnings. In view of these facts I think it is well worth the small amount of time it takes to post a warning message. I see you are a long established editor, so I expect you know of the standard warning templates at WP:WARN. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I should use them more often. Vandals usually give up so quickly that there is no time. This morning was exceptional. —Stephen (talk) 09:41, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is true that they often give up quickly. Very often, particularly with IP vandals, after one or two silly edits they never come back, warned or not. In those cases it is clearly a waste of time giving warnings. However, I see it from the point of an admin working in anti-vandalism, and it is so much more helpful to me if there are warnings in place that I think that the gain when it is helpful outweighs the loss when it isn't. Apart from the advantages I have mentioned above, there is also the fact that if a vandal has a warning on their talk page, Huggle automatically flags up any further edits by that vandal, and gives priority to vandals with higher level warnings. This means that I am alerted to the editor even if there is no report at WP:AIV. On the other hand if the vandalism is just reverted without warnings then I get no such alert, so I can't take action. Obviously you know what you are doing, and it is of course up to you how much use of warnings you make, but seeing it from an admin's perspective I would encourage you to give warnings. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Lion edit

Wasn't me, so that means that this IP isn't exclusive to my computer. Not that you'll believe me, but there you are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.123.148.34 (talk) 00:57, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe you. That can certainly happen with IP's. You can avoid this problem by registering a user name that is just for you and no one else. —Stephen (talk) 01:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

κῶλον

Mr. Brown, I think that you misjudged the "coulrophobia" thing and also posted a rather inflammatory comment. I speak Greek natively and the term "kolovathristis" means literally "the one who has a stilt up his butt", as the term "kolo-" means "ass". The term "kalo-" instead means "foot", so kalovathristis is the one who walks (with his feet) on stilts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.202.6.227 (talk) 11:59, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I don’t know Modern Greek and this is obviously a difference between Modern and Ancient Greek. In Ancient Greek (which is the source of the word), I know of no form like "kalo-" that means "foot", but τό κῶλον means foot, leg, knee, limb, member; also, part, side, wall. If κῶλον has come to mean butt in Modern Greek, then I did indeed misjudge his intentions, but in Ancient Greek it means leg and is the correct spelling. —Stephen (talk) 13:06, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

October 2010

Serbo-Croatian do not exist.

• isn't official language of any country
• no exist by ISO
• Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are similar, all slavic languages are similar, but languages, no language

name Serbo-Croatian is inovated 1953 by politic reasons

• you have titles/sycnhronization of film an Croatian, Serbian... no Serbo-Croatian
• in school you can learn Croatian, Serbian... no Serbo-Croatian
• books are write in Croatian, Serbian... no Serbo-Croatian
• you have translate books from Serbian to Croatian and same... why if is one language?!
• political idea of fictional language serbo-Croatian never have success in nation (in time when scr was official, all speak Croatian, Serbian...)

Serbo-Croatian is stupidness like slavic language; you speak one slavic language, you can understand very good all, but Russian and Bulgarian are'nt one language. How you can recognize fictional language? I am Croat and it is aggresion against my language (my country, my nation). I SPEAK CROATIAN. SERBO-CROATIAN IS FICTIONAL SHIT INOVATED BY ANTAGONISTS OF CROATIAN NATION! Serbo-Croatian - never exist, do not exist, no exist in the future. Sorry if I was so emotional.

--Jolo Buki Original (talk) 12:41, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

As I said, we have heard all of your arguments many times. You’re wrong but I am not going to repeat the same reasoning for each separate person. Discuss it on the Serbo-Croatian language talk page. On English wikipedia and English wiktionary, we recognize Serbo-Croatian as an important Slavic language. —Stephen (talk) 12:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The message you left me

I'm sorry, you must have me confused with another person. I do not edit on the main wikia, only the PR Wikia and sometimes a few others, but not on the main site. 69.171.163.0 (talk) 02:55, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Tyrannosaurus

You accepted this edit: please be more careful when accepting edits with change data without any explanation. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 20:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don’t know how that happened. I had intended to revert it, not accept it. Must have it the wrong button. —Stephen (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I see--I think I almost had something similar a while ago. Is it so that "Accept" is the only option? I wonder. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

About Mosques in Cyprus issue

Sir Stephen Borwn I would like to express you my concerns over the pictures of mosques in Cyprus. I live in Cyprus and I know that this mosques don't exist in Cyprus and is a part of so called Northern Cyprus which is actually Turkish occupied part of Cyprus which Turks reverted all christian churches into mosques. So I would transfer Maronite and Armenian and Halla Sultan pictures into Religion part and I would delete mosques which are found in cultural monuments. Do you agree sir? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Austria12 (talk • contribs) 16:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If the mosques are located in the Republic of Cyprus, then they should go under the heading of Mosques, the way we have it. Americans and British are generally not interested in mosques for religious purposes, but for cultural and architectural significance. Churches are also mostly of cultural and architectural interest to English-speaking tourists, and so churches, includes Roman Catholic and Armenian, should be described under Churches. I understand that Greek Cypriots have certain views about Turks, Moslems, and mosques, but this is the English Wikipedia and we have a different view. We like both the Greeks and the Turks. So if the mosques are located in Cyprus, then they should be the way that we already have them. You can add Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic material under the Church heading. —Stephen (talk) 16:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Sir I am not at all concerned with the opinion of foreigners over my own country's culture. An opinion of a very respected by me British citizen can be absolutely misleading and doesn't consider the historic roots of a monument, a church, a mosques. Existence of Mosques in the republic of Cyprus has disappeard. Mosques in Cyprus are not even representing the 5% of people who live in Cyprus. Please allow me to edit the section on religion as I desire and I evaluate it from a neutral point of view. If there was a whole section made for muslim minority in the UK ,or a if there was a picture which was writing about Mormons who are representing a large percentage of US population wouldn't that be a misleading picture of the USA? Neutrilisation of my country's culture and history sir in order to "fit" in foreigners or Turks ideas and interests is unacceptable to me.