User talk:Rossami

Purged into page history as of 22:05, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 23:22, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

Guy Fawkes

While a colorful story, I suspect Guy Fawkes being the eponym of the informal term for an individual is apocryphal. Rather than Semantic progression, I think this explanation is more likely just good old Fake etymology: someone in the past guessing at the origins and their conjecture spreading as an urban legend. Can one cite a scholarly reference for the assertion that Fawkes is the model? I couldn't find one, so I'm thinking the story belongs elsewhere or nowhere. Color me skeptical.--StanZegel 04:04, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It is definitively sourced that way in my copy of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1985, p 544. Rossami (talk)

WikiProject Wiki Syntax

I wondered about that. It seems to me there must be some standard for itemizing lists, but I wasn't aware of one. Perhaps changing them to 1., 2., etc.? I also figured that somebody was watching the pages, and when they saw a change, would fix my changes if I affected the actual meaning (not necessarily a good assumption, I guess). That is how I found out about the effort - somebody changed one of my watch pages. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 15:01, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Homeorhesis

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Homeorhesis

You said "The result of the debate was transwiki to Wiktionary".

I count:

• Keep: 4
• Delete: 2, 1 referring to a prior version which was completely different.
• Wiktionary: 2, 1 referring to a prior version.

I think you have miscounted.

Ben@liddicott.com 09:10, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't do that count. Somebody else put it in the m:transwiki queue. I just volunteered to clean up some record-keeping and put the header at the top of the discussion page. I did not challenge the decision of the admin who put it in the transwiki queue. Rossami (talk) 09:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Potential speedy case additions or clarifications

Since you seem to have insight into the intent of the cases, beyond what is actually written in them, and you are one of the people with the most conservative interpretations of them (I'm pretty close, actually, at least in terms of what I actually delete), I'd be very curious if you think the article categories here fall into the current speedy cases. For the record I only think one or two do, even tho' all but the resume are pretty routinely deleted, at least by some admins. Also, I guess I'd be curious, out of the ones you don't think are, which do you think probably should be added, either as a new case, an expansion of an existing case, or just a clarification/explanation of an existing case. Niteowlneils 01:12, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the better headers, and comments so far. This shows I was right to get some other people to look at it before taking this "public". I'm thinking of asking Anthony to look at it, as any he agrees with probably would be unanimously implemented. Niteowlneils 03:59, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

VfD - Nexum

Good afternoon, Fvw. Could I ask you to reconsider your delete vote on Nexum? I have been able to independently confirm that the topic is real. I only have one source on the date the concept was abolished but it's consistent with what's in the current article. I know that the current contents are not much more than a dicdef and I normally would vote to transwiki to Wiktionary. I don't think they'd take this one, though. As far as I know, it's not an english word. I'd hate to lose this stub because I keep hoping that we'll get a Roman-law scholar who will expand it. What little I understood of the sources I found certainly sounded intriguing. Rossami (talk) 22:12, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I understand your fear of losing this interesting tidbit of information, but I don't think Nexum is the appropriate place. How about merging the information into Debt and redirecting nexum (though I doubt many people will arrive via the redirect)? I'd support that fully. Alternatively you could transwiki to http://la.wiktionary.org or http://la.wikipedia.org, both of which I assume will happily take it, as long as you're able to translate it to latin, but that would mean the information is accessible to fewer people. --fvw*† 23:03, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

Phan Lien

Cyrius, Hawstom and I are onto it, but the plan is to create a report and then submit that to vfd whole. To surmise, Phan Lien is the wife of the self-appointed "Prince Regent" of the Nguyen Dynasty, "Prince" Nguyen Buu Chanh and it would seem is not entitled to call herself a princess, Buu Chanh isn't a prince. The real Crown Prince and head of the family Bao Long is living in France but doesn't have a public life, though I seem to recall him not liking Buu Chanh. Because it's so complicated and obscure, we think a report is better approach rather than submitting it to the gnashing teet of the rabble. We're getting there, slowly. It looks like Jimmy's going to be up in the arbcom again soon anyway for more misbehaviour. Dunc|☺ 17:58, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Universism

Hi. I guess you did the vote tally chart at the Universism VfD. It seems you got my vote wrong. While I admit it wasn't the clearest vote I've ever made, it ended up being an abstain (though I am tending more towards delete, I still have not officially changed my vote yet). I'd fix it myself, but I've got one of those browsers that can't edit articles after they get to a certain length, and this damn VfD discussion has exceeded that length, which is pretty sad really. Anyway, I'm sure it was just an oversight on your part, but it'd be great if you could correct it (not that it matters; assuming most first time votes aren;t counted it looks like the article's gone). I might change my vote anyway, but as of now I haven't. Oh, and if you (or anyone else) can break up the VfD discussion with an added heading somewhere so those in my position can add to it (using the section-edit option) that would be great. Thanks. -R. fiend 06:27, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Will do. That was a really tough thread to follow. I'll move your vote. That's also a good suggestion to break up the discussion - possible now that it's no longer transcluded. By the way, I'm also choosing to abstain for now. While most new voters are steeply discounted, there appears to be evidence that these might not be sockpuppets in this case. Rossami (talk) 14:05, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Rossami, this is where you use the word "Irony." Just as the Wikipedia article was being deleted for not being "notable" enough, an article and illustration on Universism takes up about half of the Sunday New York Times Op-Ed. I think the Sunday NY Times is the most read paper in the world, or second to something in India no doubt. I have my suspicions based on the amount of email today. No doubt someone will start an article on Universism again, my only concern is that the article not be POV, which BM's early edits clearly were. The last version of the article wasn't POV and was fine. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/opinion/12horgan.html --Deist 05:42, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Speedy deletes

I'll do exactly what you suggest. I have in a couple of instances put a comment on the talk page. This is because listing for deletion is a bit more complicated than listing a speedy! I hate dragging through the VfD process. I'm glad it's there because if it was easy, the number of pages on VfD would probably grow exponentially!

Thanks for the comment on Unbibium. I am quite angry with Geogre. He is on something of a crusade against what he sees as people who vote to keep any and every article. He haunts VfD and I often have him snottily commenting on my votes. When discussing VfD he often claims that I and others form a gang (not at all true -- I am so insignificant that no one has asked me to join a gang, and in any case I prefer to be part of the bigger gang of the Wikipedia community). Yes, I oppose deletionism, but I explain why on my user page. I'm for building something good, not for destroying what I personally don't approve of. I accept that others want a narrower encyclopaedia than I do; and that they work for it in good faith -- I'm sure that Geogre is working for the same goal as I am, although he pictures it differently. But I'm afraid there are some, and Geogre is one, who cannot accept that I and others work in equally good faith for our conception.Dr Zen 23:19, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'll do my best to bear what you said in mind when dealing with Geogre.

BTW, you somehow managed to list my talk page for speedy deletion! LOL!Dr Zen 23:35, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, it was the category thing. I think if you put [[Category:...]], you actually stick the page in the category.Dr Zen 23:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that's the case, that wherever you put the category tag on the page, it puts the page in the category. That seems to be how templates that add the pages to the appropriate category work: the category tag is included in the template text, but no matter where it goes on the page, it has the same effect. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:39, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Misunderstood fiction/fringe beliefs

One of them was an article on Terrax, who is a character from the Marvel Comics universe, a herald of Galactus. The other was an article on the purported Russian psychic Nina Kulagina (a copyvio of the article here). Both got marked by Gtabary for speedy deletion. I let him know that they weren't appropriate speedies, but as I said, both of them were copyvios, so the actual articles weren't saved. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:08, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just to clarify, Nina Kulagina was a real person -- in fact, what I read on her today indicates she may actually be encyclopedic after all; she was supposed to have amazing psychic powers and there are supposedly films of her moving objects with her mind, but there are suggestions that these were deliberate fakes made for propaganda purposes by the Soviets to make the West believe they were losing a "psychic research" race even as they were winning the "space race". But because the article as written took it for granted that everything which had been claimed about her powers was real, it read like science fiction, which is why it was marked as fiction even though she was a real person. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:21, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Quara/cat

You are asking a wrong guy. I can only say that the idea is good. See you at Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD Mikkalai 03:54, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Notability as reason for VfD

Heya, just a comment on a comment you left somewhere else: The idea behind not including non-notable subjects is not just about having sufficient editors knowledgeable; It's because there are significantly more non-notable subjects than notable ones, which would cause a huge organisational problem. If having sufficient informed editors where the only problem the minutiae of wikipedia itsself for instance would be included: We have plenty of knowledgeable editors on the topic. &#0xfeff; --fvw* 02:45, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)

• Your argument is also true though many do not consider it as compelling. Rossami (talk)

A Votes for Undeletion question

The page Marit is up for undeletion; the summary claims that you picked the result Transwiki out of the air, and that it was not transwikied(which seems to be true, as of now). I'd like your perspective on this. Thanks! JesseW 01:23, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Answered at undeletion#Marit Rossami (talk) 20:05, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Box

I like the box around the closed discussions at WP:VFD/Old! That looks great! Joyous 23:54, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

VfD - Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (censored)

Please see Talk:Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (censored) Jooler

Re: transcluding resolved VfDs

That's a very interesting idea. I'm not sure how to do it at this point, but I have a feeling that it's possible using templates and/or stylesheets. My only concern is that there might be a tradeoff. Maintaining /Old could be more difficult because one would have to find and remove listings that do not display as opposed to removing those that show as resolved. I'll work on it if you like though. Cool Hand Luke 08:36, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Meow Wars

I looked back at the discussion for Meow Wars, and it appears that the vote was roughly 2 to 1 in favor of keeping (with one additional vote of Meow), so Willy's vote wouldn't have swayed things one way or the other. By the way, I notice that now the VFD/Old boxes have a slight background color. Even better! Joyous 16:09, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

WP:VFD/Old

All the discussions for December 29 are now closed. I'm not quite sure enough about what I'm doing to close out the day and move its link to the archive. Joyous 23:35, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

(Edited to add) Also December 30, except for Johor Bahru City Square and Penkyamp, which have me stymied. I took part in the discussion for Lorraine De Blanche, and I nominated Moonniyoor nursing home, so I don't feel that I should take admin. action on them. Joyous 01:48, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

I've successfully moved the 29th and 30th to the archives. I keep getting the kind and encouraging error message informing me that the server "didn't return any response to your request" when I attempt to save the WP:VFD/Old page where I removed the links for those 2 days. Sometimes the edit sticks, sometimes not, so I'll check in a little while. I'm off to look at the formal instructions for closing out days, but what you left on my talk page was VERY clear. By the way, I'm in awe of how you handled Penkyamp. Insert clichés about Solomon and slicing babies in half. Joyous 01:06, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

About Penkyamp

Thank you for the arrangement. Yes, my intention is to create better encyclopedia articles. I have beening trying to find external sources of Penkyamp for five months but still cannot find a solid reference. ^_^; I will not re-create that article before finding a good reference.

Please exercise your Sysop rights to remove the link from Penkyamp to my user space. For other links, I can help. Also, before your move, I have copied the content and edit history to User:Felix_Wan/Draft/Penkyamp. Can you also help me to delete that page and its talk page, and then move User:Felix_Wan/Penkyamp there instead? I guess those housekeeping jobs does not need a vote, right?

-- Felix Wan 01:58, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

FYI, I have just removed every link to Penkyamp from the main encyclopedia space. -- Felix Wan 02:28, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

I confirm that my intention is this:

1. Delete User:Felix_Wan/Draft/Penkyamp and User_talk:Felix_Wan/Draft/Penkyamp
2. Move User:Felix Wan/Penkyamp to User:Felix_Wan/Draft/Penkyamp and User_talk:Felix_Wan/Penkyamp to User_talk:Felix_Wan/Draft/Penkyamp
3. Delete the redirects created at User:Felix Wan/Penkyamp and User_talk:Felix Wan/Penkyamp

The reason I prefer /Draft/name is that I have planned to create several drafts and I want to organize them all under User:Felix Wan/Draft. Again, thank you. -- Felix Wan 07:33, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

I think the redirect does no harm. I will leave it there. -- Felix Wan 01:10, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

VFD instruction tweak

This is how that final step reads now:

1. a. Put a link to the day page on Wikipedia:Archived delete debates.

   b. Remove the link to the day page from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old.

   c. Edit the list of days on the main VfD page.

This is my suggestion:

1. a. Edit the Old page by cutting the link for the day, which looks something like {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/Year Month Day}}.

   b. Go to the Archived delete debates page and paste the link at the bottom. Remember to switch the brackets from {{ }} to [[ ]].

   c. Edit the list of days on the main VfD page by removing the link to the date that you just archived.

Suggestions? I left a copy of this on the deletion process talk page, too. Joyous 01:59, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

"VFD top" template

Do you have any idea why the template seems to be putting a line break between the final bracket and the VFD discussion result? For example, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Henry, the short lived. I don't THINK I'm doing anything differently than before, but the result is looking...odd. Joyous 02:01, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

VfD

I tried the new method for a bit, but I find the old method far faster and more efficient. I have always found that the greatest waste of time is closing the debates on pages that have been deleted. People accidentally voting on closed delete debates is not a problem, as any check of the related changes on one of the old archives will show. I thus have long skipped this step, greatly speeding how fast I work through VfD/Old. Instead I indicate that debates have been dealt with by shifting them from the day page to the archive. - SimonP 23:11, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Andrea Christofidou

The anon editor who has been editing this article has reverted to his version four times today. These were at:

1. 9:34, 21 Jan 2005, 172.189.112.141
2. 12:29, 21 Jan 2005, 172.189.15.102
3. 13:57, 21 Jan 2005, 172.189.49.186
4. 14:28, 21 Jan 2005, 172.189.49.186

I have tried different wordings twice and reverted him twice. User:Kappa also tried a compromise version, which he reverted. The third and fourth reverts were done after I alerted him to the three-revert rule. Would you please block him and restore Kappa's version? He has edited under a couple of different IP addresses in the 172.189.0.0/16 block. Thanks, --BM 14:56, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Closing VfD decisions

Good afternoon, dbenbenn. Thank you for your help in closing so many of the VfD discussions.

I was just spinning through the entries on the 17th looking for a few to close myself and the discussion about Wikings caught my eye. (Votes that end up that lopsided interest me.) You closed that discussion as a "keep" and noted that the vote was 9 keep to 1 delete. I counted two delete votes - the nomination by User:RickK and a vote by User:Starblind. I don't dispute your decision but I was wondering why you discounted one of the delete votes.

Curiously, Rossami (talk) 20:36, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sometimes someone nominates an article without themselves having an opinion. Thus, I don't count the nominator unless they make it obvious. In this particular case, it didn't look obvious enough to me, so I didn't count RickK.

I'd probably avoid a page where one extra "delete" vote would make a difference anyway. dbenbenn | talk 22:29, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

P.S., I edited your user page.

Interesting. I interpret the nomination as an vote to delete unless the nominator explicitly withholds that decision. (User:Niteowlneils frequently makes those nominations for procedural reasons but he's always careful to express the fact that he's not voting.) Thanks for answering.

Oh, and thanks for cleaning up my user page. I noticed the duplication a little bit ago but hadn't yet gone back to figure out exactly what needed cleaning up. You saved me a bit of time. Rossami (talk)

I always vote explicitly when I nominate. You're certainly right that a nomination usually implies a "delete" vote. My method probably reflects my inclusionist POV :). I tell myself (rationalization) that an erronious "keep" can always be fixed later. dbenbenn | talk 23:35, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree.

You're right. I was a little trigger happy with the speedy deletion. Thanks for making it right. ike9898 22:47, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

VFD Page change

I have to apologize that I boldly changed the VFD format. It was based on a suggestion on the discussion page, suggesting that days should be placed on subpages, so that if the VFD page were changed around from newest day to oldest day, it would be a lot easier to do. I do apologize if this has created more work for you. However, the other reason why it was done was that it got more and more difficult to try to add a new vfd to the main VFD page. To me, I believed that an automatic link was required, one that would allow me to quickly add the VFD to the page, without having the trouble to go through the entire VFD just to add my vote. Mind you, Wikipedia has enough problems of page loading... loading the whole VFD page with all the votes just to add one just got really annoying. I felt that if each page was subsectioned, then the new VFD would go on a per day basis, showing the VFD subpages for that day, rather than 5 or 7 or more days. Well, I don't think a bot would be that extremely difficult to program, since it would just need to figure out how to visit each day's page and process it like before... -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:26, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Man-made disaster

As I'm sure you know, VfD is not the place to get rid of either redirects or categories. It's true that this was listed on RfD at one point, but the sense there was to keep it as long as the category existed. The category is still there, so I removed the RfD tag. Sorry I wasn't clearer about this in the edit summary - space was limited. Noel (talk) 20:25, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Table at Jewish ethnocentrism

Thanks for creating this table, it was a big help. Jayjg ^(talk) 15:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rossami, my thanks on the table, too. And a question: I notice "Redirect" is classified as a form of "Keep". Is that how admins normally look at the votes? That is, are "redirect" and "merge and redirect" normally considered as "keeps" when determining whether there is a two-thirds "consensus" to delete? For example, if there were 55 "Delete" votes, 20 "Redirect" and "Merge/Redirect" votes, and 25 "Delete" votes, would the admin look at that 55+20=consensus to delete? Or would they look it at as no consensus (i.e. keep)? --BM 19:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for the detailed reply. I must admit that your answer is a bit disappointing. I don't mean I am disappointed in you, as I understand the position the admins are in. But the cards are really stacked against deletion aren't they? First, to delete an article requires a two thirds "consensus". Next "Redirect" or "Merge and Redirect" essentially count as "Don't Delete". If "Don't Delete" wins, the article won't be deleted, and it might not even be redirected, since at that point it is up to the judgement of the admin and how he or she reads the VfD discussion. Hopefully, the admin would at least redirect, but that wouldn't be certain. Do you suppose people voting for some form of "Redirect" realize that they are really voting "Keep but its OK by me if the Admin (or someone) Redirects"? When I've voted Redirect, my attitude generally has been that the article has to go because it does not make sense as an independent article, but I don't have a problem with the title sticking around as a kind of alternative title. When I vote Merge, I'd like to see some or all of the content moved and the history retained, but the article should cease to exist as an independent article. I guess I'm a deletionist, but for me "Redirect" is a flavor of "Delete". If I wanted an article to stay, I'd vote "Keep" or "Keep and Cleanup". --BM 00:29, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• • Your description on BM's talk page is the clearest and most succinct one that I have yet found for this process. Do you mind if I keep it for posterity (perhaps on meta) and wikify it? GeorgeStepanek\^talk 20:29, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I was wondering when this debate was going to be wound up, and the votes counted? It's a purely selfish query; the process is taking up too much of my nervous energy... Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:56, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VfD Old and bot work

It seems that all VfD pages are moved to the Old page by the seventh day. If this is indeed true, I would like to assist in automating the copying of text of the Template:Vfd top and Template:Vfd bottom to each subpage on each day when it is moved. What do you think? -- AllyUnion (talk) 16:41, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, I want to be on the safe side, so I would like to make it the eighth day. Please let me know what day is more appropriate by citing your comments at Wikipedia talk:Bots. Thank you. -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:09, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

On further consideration due to your comments and Joy Stovall's, the bot could auto-tally. But the big question leaves at whether it should be designed to decide the final results, which I believe is extremely dangerous if I do not program it correctly. There will be a big question as to how to count the votes as well.

There are technical issues behind having the bot auto-tally. Not every person's votes are clearly marked in the beginning. We would have to spell out that everyone's vote must be formatted a certain way if we wish to make the bot easy to figure out everything. Scanning for text within the one line would be difficult because not everyone bolds out their vote, etc. Also, there are questions about the weak and strong deletes, a question regarding anyone's vote who is delete but something else, a question regarding unsigned votes, anonymous votes, and sockpuppet votes.

Although I do not think it is impossible, explicit guidelines must be programmed into the bot for it do so, and even then, a person should be checking it over. A simple solution could be to red tag (using an outline) to indicate which ones were bot counted and which ones were human checked. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:19, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have replied to your comments on my talk page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:01, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh! I know. How about the bot still does the adding text portion, but instead, it merely uses an HTML comment to comment it out? -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:38, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

List of Wikis - Anarchopedia

I have reverted your edit removing the Anarchopedia link. The Wikipedia article about Anarchopedia may well have been deleted by order of VFD; the wiki itself most certainly has not been. The VFD decision was to delete the article, not the link to the wiki (which has nothing to do with the Wikimedia foundation anyway). David Cannon 10:57, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Merge complete

Japanese democracy and Minamata Tokyo negotiation have been merged into Minamata disease. I have removed a number of quotes and will be moving them to wikiquote. The article, however, still needs work. --Viriditas | Talk 03:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I redirected. --Viriditas | Talk 04:30, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not a problem. I had no idea if you were going to redirect or delete. I can't see any use for the category at this time. --Viriditas | Talk 04:44, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

List of Meredith Music Festival lineups by year

I've reverted your edit. This Chris Wilson is a quite famous Australian blues musician - searching for "chris wilson" australia blues on Google gets sixteen thousand hits, and is quite clearly deserving of an article. Please be a little more careful in the future. Ambi 01:12, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh, great. You've done it elsewhere too. Please, in future, if you're going to unlink red links, make sure they're actually the same person that the article was deleted on. Ambi 01:22, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I hate these deletion decisions when it's someone with a common name. Unless you are deeply familiar with the person being deleted (which is almost impossible - if they were well known, then their article probably wouldn't have been deleted), it is very difficult to tell whether the "what links here" is showing a valid link to an as-yet unwritten article or was a "spam" link made by the same people who contributed the article.

Knowing that this might be a problem because it's such a common name, I tried to be careful to document the question on each article's talk page. I honestly don't know what I could have done differently.

The backlog in cleaning out VfD/Old is monstrous. I give each one as much time as I can but we have too many people nominating articles for community review and not enough people helping to close the discussion. </rant>

Thanks for your help cleaning it up. Rossami (talk) 15:26, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Talk page for the notability guidelines

Er... Oops. Fixed, now. Tuf-Kat 02:07, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

notable Vietnamese-Americans

-I was just going over some updates on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Vietnamese_Americans

-I noticed that Phan Lien, a Vietnamese American is married to Nguyen Phuc Buu Chanh.

-Phan Lien for the past 20 years is a Philanthropists in the Vietnamese Community to helping assisting Vietnamese children, ánd building schools in Vietnam and the resettlement of Orphan Vietnamese children in the United States through Buddhist and Cao Dai temples.

-It has been removed.

-I think for the lack of Vietnamese-American women that is not listed here on wikipedia is lacking.

-what can be done to re-evaluate this issue.(Bnguyen 10:34, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC))

St. Thomas Tommies

I accept the validity of the VfD vote, but I have to repeat my objection to treating this one team differently than any other team in Canadian Interuniversity Sport. If you're planning to merge all the team articles into their respective universities, that's one thing, but all CIS teams have to be treated exactly the same way as each other. If one's merged, they all have to be merged. Bearcat 23:27, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Regarding consistency, it's just that Category:Canadian Interuniversity Sport teams now contains 56 articles with team names in the title, and one article with a university name in the title. A new person coming to Wikipedia for the first time isn't going to see that and think "oh, they must have some kind of cutoff for notability"; they're going to think "wow, these dumbasses are really freakin' sloppy!" Saying that some university sports teams are notable and others aren't is like saying that some National Hockey League teams are notable and others aren't. By definition, if they all compete on an equal footing in the same sporting body, then they're all of equal notability. And I won't do any merging myself; VfD consensus or not, I'm not going to take on responsibility for edits that I personally disagree with. Bearcat 23:53, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Rigo Murillo

Why did you delete the current discussion? RickK 23:30, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Ah. Somebody changed the link from the main Rigo Murillo page to the new discussion. I was going to the OLD discussion via my contributions. I reverted your edit, I'll change it again. RickK 23:50, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

re: untranscluding long VfD threads

I'd be happy to do it your way. Since I'm probably the person who does it most often (and even that's only rarely), could you help update the template/instructions that I use? I'd take a crack at it myself but I'm not completely sure what your bot is doing so I'd like your advice. See User:Rossami#When untranscluding an exceptionally long debate. (There's also a /Maintenance page somewhere that we should update.) Thanks. Rossami (talk) 14:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I will clarify for you what the bot does. It will get the VFD day page for today, and turn the entire page from a list of {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article on VFD}} to * [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article on VFD]]. It keeps the == Today's Date == as a section header.

If you remove a transinclude and change it to a subsection on the VFD day page, it screws up because it doesn't know how to handle it. In the event that {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article on VFD}} gets too long, all I am asking that you create a page like: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article on VFD/Notice}} and place the short notice indicating that the article's discussion has been removed from the main page.

I hope this clears it up. -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:04, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

An example of this is: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/John 20:16/Notice -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:17, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The other reason is I think that we should keep VFD day pages free of the subst:vfd_top and subst:vfd_bottom. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:25, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. When I close one of the really long discussions, I restore the transclusion. I have no trouble with cluttering up the archive pages. They're not used all that often anyway. Rossami

Postvfd template

I have created a postvfd template. This is to be used with the subst: so it can be left on discussion pages. The use is: {{subst:postvfd|date=January 2005|result=delete|sig=--~~~~}}. I would like to finalize the template before using it. Please correct the template as you see fit. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:08, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Consenting adults

Psst, Rossami, in re Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/John_Hampsey it's usually "consensus" (only one c).

Poor Hampsey, he only wrote a book. What a nobody! Compare Weapons of Star Wars. That's encyclopediaworthiness for you! (Me, I thought that the one Star Wars flick I saw was about the worst movie ever -- a story for eight-year-olds with mind-numbingly banal orchestral music playing full-blast throughout -- but I'm not an American so perhaps am unqualified to appreciate the subtleties of US culture, presidents, etc.)

Incidentally, I don't think that this merits a reply anywhere at all, but if it does, let's have it here. -- Hoary 04:44, 2005 Feb 13 (UTC)

If Hampsey's book had broken publishing records and introduced catchphrases like "Use the Force" to the language and been so influential that a decade after his last one his next one in the series had record numbers of people lining up around the block to be the first to get a look at the next -- then it would certainly be encyclopedic. (Even if it was banal and for eight-year-olds. Stupid American eight-year-olds at that.) -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:45, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Er, I'd never heard of "User the Force". It hasn't been introduced into my language. As for breaking records, that's just a matter of inflation plus hyping via lapdog (paid) "journalism", isn't it? These "records" are routinely broken, no? I thought it's newsworthy when these Hollywood stinkers don't make money: Howard the Duck, Catwoman, um, any others? (Waterworld, I'd thought, but I now read: "Contrary to popular belief, once the worldwide gross is factored in, the movie actually made a profit." No accounting for worldwide lack of taste, I suppose.) My own beef with Star Wars (or the third of it that I sat through) is that it was so noisy I couldn't fall asleep. (I was with kids, so couldn't walk out.) -- Hoary 05:00, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)

OK, I'm not even going to bother with this. There's only so much blind denial of reality that I'll even try to argue with. Here in the real world, Star Wars was a very unexpected smash success; it had a deep impact on popular culture; when George Lucas announced that he was coming out with the first new Star Wars movie in almost two decades but only theaters that met certain conditions would be allowed to show it theatre owners were rebuilding their theaters in order to qualify to show this movie. It was clearly notable even if you didn't like it or it wasn't very good. Sorry, that's the state of things. -- Antaeus Feldspar 05:39, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you. Whether or not it's crap, it's notable. Indeed I've never begrudged each film in the series its own article. However, when Alderaan (to take one example among dozens) gets reverent treatment, then either Wikipedia has gone collectively nuts or Wikipedia is sane and I'm nuts. Incidentally, what impact has this flick had on popular culture, other perhaps than the baleful one of a tendency toward hugely budgeted movies with teen/preteen storylines and carefully thought out marketing opportunities? I read in Star Wars that "The Star Wars films portray a world full of grime and technology that looks like it has been used for years, unlike the sleek, futuristic world typical of earlier science fiction films", which may be true but ignores Solaris (1972). -- Hoary 06:57, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia have way too much spread of fannish detail? Yes, and I've tried to curb that when I see ways to do so. And fans are quite prone in general to Granularity Out Of Proportion To Influence. But to start any argument with "What influence has 'Star Wars' really had?" is frankly an uphill battle, because its influence was incredible. For one thing, it is one of the two films (Jaws being the other one) generally agreed to start exactly the trend that you mentioned: studios turning out just a few films a year, trying by hype and big budgets to make them blockbusters, rather than releasing a number of more modest movies to play the odds. It's also credited with (re-)establishing science fiction as a profitable genre -- it's taken for granted today, but there's numerous stories of movies and television shows that were turned down pre-Star Wars because they were told "Science fiction doesn't make a dime." Basically, you can call them overrated, you can call them hackneyed, you can argue that nothing in them is really new -- but whether that's true or false, they made a big impact. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:31, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Anteus, not wishing to try Rossami's patience even further, I've moved to your comments page. -- Hoary 07:36, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

Regarding Postvfd

Regarding the postvfd template: I think the result is necessary. Especially in cases which have very lengthly debates over the deletion. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:27, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, you can pass {{subst:PAGENAME}} as a parameter for pg. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:28, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VFD nomination process clarification

I would like your opinion about my suggested VFD nomination process clarification. Please see: Template_talk:VfDFooter#VFD_nomination_process_clarification. Thank you for your time. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:01, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Reply from WCityMike

I received your message. WHILE I'M APOLOGETIC ABOUT CAUSING YOU INCONVENIENCE, I'M ALSO AT THE SAME TIME A BIT ANNOYED AT GETTING A MESSAGE CHEWING ME OUT IN CAPITAL LETTERS AND BOLDFACE. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, AND I'M SORRY THAT PEOPLE FELT THE NEED TO VANDALIZE THE VfD, BUT I WASN'T ONE OF THEM, AND I CERTAINLY WASN'T AWARE THAT SEPERATING OUT THE VOTES WAS A WRONG THING TO DO. I THINK THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING IN WIKI'S NOTES ABOUT NOT BITING THE NEWBIES -- I'M A RELATIVE NEWBIE, SO CUT ME A LITTLE SLACK. AFTER ALL OF THIS BOLD CAPITAL TEXT, CAN YOU UNDERSTAND WHY IT MIGHT COME ACROSS A LITTLE HOSTILE? In any case, as I said, I'm still a newbie, but if you require help reuniting the votes and you want to tell me very specifically what I should do, I'll try to lend a hand, although I may not be able to do so until either this evening or tomorrow evening. WCityMike 11:40, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Response

Rossami,

No problem about the overreaction. I found a link to it via Jason's "Kottke Remainders" linklog, and since I'm already on Wikipedia, I thought I'd futz around and make things what I thought would be easier. I did not realize that it would cause any inconvenience. (Also, I didn't realize I had inadvertently deleted any votes, and for that, I am quite apologetic.)

I'll keep the deletion guidelines you mentioned in mind -- there's no problem on my end with you adding them to the maintenance page you spoke of. In fact, I'd appreciate it, as I usually like to keep my talk page cleaned off so that new messages are very clear. (I also had my user page vandalized at one point, so I usually don't keep much of value on it.)

Listen, you seem to be fairly knowledgeable about Wikipedia -- perhaps you could answer a quick, offtopic question for me. Is there any way to get Wiki to not steal my Alt keys? I am very keyboard-driven, and I hate the fact that when I'm on a Wiki page, ALT-F won't activate my browser's File menu but will instead take me to Wiki's search box.

Anyway, thanks for resolving our disagreement calmly. Appreciate it, and again, I apologize for any inconvenience to you. WCityMike 18:49, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. That'll do the trick nicely. WCityMike 22:01, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Cosmic Era vessels

I cleaned up the redirects to this page as suggested on its VfD page. Redxiv 07:15, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Sorry, this was the first time I have ever placed an article up for deletion. I know it was my responsibility to handle the redirects and such, but at the last few days have seen me studing for my collage exams (I was placed on academic probation). Additionally, I am not an administrator (yet...) and thus had no power to remove the page. Thank you for deleting it, I apriciate it very much, and in the future I will make sure to handle all the issues associated with deleting the page. TomStar81 06:42, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old

Your help could be appreciated on VFD/Old. We got stuff from February 8... -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:49, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Awarded for your creativity and thoughtfulness when wading through VfD discussions.

Please accept this barnstar. I'm impressed that you never seem reluctant to handle the tough, convoluted VfD closing decisions that lots of people shy away from. Joyous 03:26, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Deletion votes and username

Thanks for the advice on the deletion votes - I'll try to be more descriptive of why I think these things should be kept. However, it was not my understanding that a vote would be discounted simply because no explanation was given. Re my username, while I understand that many people harbour predjudice against trolls, my username expresses my belief that in building a neutral, accurate encyclopedia, creative and innovative approaches are helpful. I believe that trolling is an important part of any wiki, and without people who are willing to creatively challenge accepted assumptions and groupthink a community may stagnate or fail to maximise its opportunities. Many people who say they are against 'trolling' are actually, when you talk to them about it, against vandalism, personal attacks or timewasting, none of which I condone. I think that w e need to be more tollerant of different approaches as a community, and more willing to try to understand each other - in that way we can build the best encyclopedia possible. Thanks for you advice, hope to see you around, The Recycling Troll 10:47, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Rossami, although I'm not sure that the comparison with sockster, which looks like a particularly blatant vandalism attempt, is very fair, I will put the explanation on my userpage. The user Clockwork Troll, I think is a counterexample, although s/he was persuaded to change his / her name because of predjudice from others. I hope to begin to redeem the term, and to build better understanding of its true meaning. The Recycling Troll 14:22, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VfD tags

If you need to edit tags to point to another page, you should replace the entire part with {{ }} brackets instead of just the part inside the brackets. It works better that way. ;) (I fixed it for you.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:26, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nelli Kim

Could I bother you for a quick delete of Nelli Kim and a move of Nelli Kim/Temp over it? It's been sitting unchallenged on WP:CP since February 9, and there's a request for the move stuck onto the bottom of a vfd that I'd otherwise close. —Korath (Talk) 12:00, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Never mind; Dbenbenn took care of it. —Korath (Talk) 21:08, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)