User talk:John Reid

Talk is getting a little long; I'm deleting old stuff. If you want to see it, you can always dig it out of history.

Eldred Township History

Thanks for adding the history to Eldred Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. I have added the citation and started cleaning it up - my thoughts on what to keep and what to modernize and/or get rid of are in Talk:Eldred Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. Be interested to see what you think - also do you want to add history to other Lycoming County townships? Ruhrfisch 19:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I edit on a random basis. I'm glad this got you started in a new direction. John Reid 01:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your vote on the RFR poll

Hi, John Reid, you voted oppose on the requests for rollback privileges consensus poll, suggesting that people who would like rollback should just become admins instead - that being an admin is "no big deal". While I think that in an "ideal" Wikipedia, this would indeed be the case, I believe that over time standards for becoming an administrator have clearly risen. This is apparent by looking at the RFA system throughout Wikipedia's existence - intially, all one had to do to become an admin was just ask nicely, now we have a complicated procedure. A recent proposal on the RFA talk page for requiring at least 30 minimum support votes and a significant number of existing contributions was given some serious consideration. There is frequent talk of "bad admins slipping through the RFA net", and while you may not agree with that philosophy of adminship it is undeniable that the standards have risen.

Because of this, candidates who pass are already very experienced with Wikipedia. While this in itself is no bad thing, it means that for the month or so before they become admins they are not being given the tools an admin has which would help them to improve Wikipedia, by removing vandalism and performing administrative tasks such as moving pages. The qualities which make a good administrator are not determined by length of stay on Wikipedia or number of friends you have, but by personality and character. Time at Wikipedia only gives familiarity with the way things are done here. However, being at Wikipedia for an extra month doesn't grant any special insight into the ability to determine which edits are vandalism and which are not. This is why I believe that we should hand out rollback to contributors who are clearly here to improve Wikipedia but won't pass the RFA procedure because of their percieved lack of familiarity with policy by some Wikipedians. I think that adminship should be no big deal, like you, however I see just two ways to make sure Wikipedians can quickly and efficiently remove vandalism - either by all those who believe adminship should be no big deal involving themselves much more in RFA, or by supporting this proposal and giving out rollback to good contributors who have not yet been here long enough to become admins. We have to remember that our ultimate aim here is to produce an encyclopedia, and we should balance the idealism of "adminship should be no big deal" with the pragmatism of granting rollback to our best non-admin contributors. I would be very grateful if you would reconsider your viewpoint on this issue. Thanks, Talrias (t | e | c) 13:56, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't important enough for so much talk. Maybe we should just do it and see what happens. I don't know. John Reid 18:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RFA

Hi John Reid, thanks for participating in my RfA discussion. Unfortunately, my fellow Wikipedians have decided at this time that I am not suitable to take on this additional responsibility, as the RfA failed with a result of 66/27/5 (71.0% support). If you voted in support of my request, thank you! If you decided to oppose me at this time, then I hope that if I do choose to reapply in the future, the effort I will make in the meantime to improve and expand my contributions to Wikipedia may persuade you to reconsider your position. All the best, Proto t c 10:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good Luck next time! John Reid 18:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RFA

Hi, just wanted to thank you for voting on my RFA, which went through with a count of (58/0/1), far better than I'd expected. I intend to take things slowly and start using the extra abilities gradually, but if there's anything I can do just leave a message. Cheers, CTOAGN (talk) 13:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, don't start gradually. Grab your broom and go to work. John Reid 17:15, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Joke's RfA

Hi John, thanks for your support in my (successful) RfA! –Joke 16:03, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats! John Reid 17:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fiddler on the Roof

You fixed "subtle vandalism" in the transposition of two letters in Anatevka; it's not clear from your edit sum who did this. Just like to say: it wasn't me! John Reid 17:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, looking through the history it looks like it can't be guaranteed to be vandalism. An anon changed it to "Warsaw" & mucked with the date. Another anon fixed the date but not the place. Yet another anon replaced the placename with the misspelled version. So it could be one vandal & two less-than-competent efforts at repair, or it could be tag-team vandalism or one vandal working from multiple IPs. Hard to say, none of these IP addresses has any significant history. - Jmabel | Talk 18:52, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to think none of it was vandalism; just a series of incompetent editors. John Reid 21:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

TfD - welcome

Hi John. I saw your TfD for the Welcome template. On the one hand, I understand your point. It would be much better if newcomers got a personal welcome. On the other hand, the welcome template gives the most important information a new user needs to get started. Probably the best thing to do would to use {{Welcome}} and write a few personal words. When I first joined, I didn't know about templates and naively thought someone had typed (or at least copy and pasted from somewhere) all that information. I was a little let-down when I learned of the template. On the other hand (again), the person who welcomed me, Renata3, came back to check on me later, and I felt like I was part of a community and not just a number or anonymous user. Just my two cents. Happy editing. --F a ng Aili 15:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've replied in the appropriate place. John Reid 21:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote the vast portion of the Petralli piece

Sir, I resent your attacks upon my work. I have spent years gathering this information. Sorry you feel it needs "work." I've done my best. Perhaps you are perfect? - Keith Creel

Sorry; I've replied in the proper place. I edit at random; it would be much easier for me to find the proper place if you linked to it or to the article in question. John Reid 05:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

Thank you
Hello John Reid, and thank you for your support in my request for adminship! It passed with a final count of 63/4/3. I am honoured by the community support and pledge to serve the project as best as I can. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 16:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eek! A mouse! EEEK! Get-the-broom-hit-it-hit-it-hit-it-eeeeeeek!

Oh. Sorry. Congratulations. Don't make any cheesy rollbacks. John Reid 05:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Panoramas

Hi, John. Thanks for taking a crack at it. The images aren't low quality, I just made a low quality snapshot of the bad panorama, so that you could see the problem. I took them with an 8MP camera, so I think they're pretty good. They're not tiffs, just jpgs at the highest setting. I uploaded some different images for you to try. The problem is more severe with them, but it would be a far more useful panorama to have. If it doesn't work, I can find some pictures that are not very bad but would still be good to have. I'm going offline in a minute, so I might not get back to you right away. Thank you very much, Kjkolb 10:20, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image:DavisDam1.jpg
Image:DSCN0172.JPG (forgot to rename it)

File:Davis-dam-test1.jpg

Okay; this took me about 20 min of Photoshop time, not counting wrench-twiddling. Not much point investing real effort in it but you can see what can be done.

Problems with these images include color balance and rotate; you may also have chosen the incorrect focal length leading to geometric distortion. All these errors are slight and mostly correctable or unnoticeable. Next time you shoot, use a tripod with a smooth pan head and be absolutely sure it's level and firmly seated before starting the series. Use a cable release; go full manual on all controls and don't reset them between shots for any reason. (Unless you're going to try to pan around from a distant scene to a foreground, you madman.) The lens issue is something else; at bottom there is no perfect resolution to the problem, just as the round Earth can never be mapped properly on flat paper. Stick to distant subjects and a long lens; keep the number of degrees of pan between images low.

Much more serious is the problem of excessive overlap. You did not pan sufficiently between the two images, so they contain largely the same scene. It's probably better to aim for a 20-30% overlap instead of the 70% you have here. Any amount of effort welding the panorama is wasted for the small payoff.

Another issue is the water in the scene. I ran the seam down a wide stretch of foreground water rather than through the rocks to the left. The water moves; but the rocks are in the foreground and the relative pincushion distortion is extreme. Everything considered, the test is not too bad. But water in motion is never going to match up very well; it's different in every shot. Key to this kind of work is to run the seam through less-detailed areas. Note that I've avoided entirely the complex control structure and gone through the dam proper; where the weld is nearly invisible. (By the way, what look like very obvious welds are actually reflections of the control structure; the actual seam runs between them.)

If you're not going to reshoot, you need to select pairs or triples of shots that maintain proper overlap of about 20%; with that overlap avoiding as much as possible complex detail, including water and absolutely all motion (such as the bobbing warning buoy line in the middleground). Assuming the color balance, skew, pincushion, and rotate errors aren't any worse than in the test sources, welding should work out fine.

One problem you may have with my work is that you seem to have even larger images on hand. I don't quite understand all your comment, but that's what I read from it. I can manipulate large images but I have trouble compressing them to HVS ProJPEG. We might want to drag another party into this end of the job; or you can try your hand yourself. Please remember that you'll get fairly fine quality from reasonable compression ratios. Each of your source files weighs in at over 5 Mb; that's probably excessive for upload to WP. If I hadn't scaled it down, the test file might have come to about 350K. If you're giving me the best possible starting file, that's fine; I don't mind. But when the work is done and ready to convert, best we keep the file size within sane bounds. John Reid 08:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

File:Davis-dam-seam1.jpg

Thank you

Hello John Reid, thank you for you support in my RfA. I was promoted with a final count of 48/1/0! If you see me making any mistakes, let me know ASAP. -- WB 02:29, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're wasting time thanking me instead of working that broom. That's one. Now get back to work. John Reid 06:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

Hi John,

Just a quick (belated) note to express my thanks for your support in my RfA. You are right about images in sigs - WP:SIG makes this quite clear and I have altered my sig accordingly.

Anyway, as it stands I have around 70%, so I'll need a few more supports in order to get admin status. I have been quite disappointed that most of those in opposition seem to have disregarded the sentiments on my user page - but hey, that's life.

Thank you again for your support! DJR (Talk) 11:45, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We need admins of all kinds, not just nice guys. You're confrontational, which makes some enemies. If you do make admin I hope you'll moderate; if you don't, you may not be effective. Try to remember that adminship doesn't actually give anyone more power; it only gives an admin a broom and a slightly amplified voice. Everything you do is still subject to consensus, which you cannot form alone.

If you do fail this RfA, please let me suggest you be extremely patient before self-renominating. If you have merit somebody else will recognize it. Meanwhile, you needn't moderate your position on any issue -- but you might try moderating your tone. It's wonderfully effective to do so. John Reid 18:34, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]