User talk:Andy Dingley/Archive 2008 November

Carol Kalish

There seems to be some consensus among the admirers of Ms Kalish that it's a pity so many people new to comics will never know her. Well, I knew her, a little, and if people want to talk about her, I have something to add. It may not seem very nice, but it's truthful, and in most cases, I think, Truth is its own justification. I have no axe to grind, but she was a bitch. 'Nuff Said.

Bear in mind that even Carol's most avid and fanatic partisans, like Peter David and Kurt himself, do not deny that the Revered Ms. Kalish could frequently and easily be perceived as rude by those who did not know her well, so this assessment on my part is hardly novel or unprecedented or even particularly controversial.

Still, the fact that I was ignorant, and enthusiastic in my ignorance, does not obviate my observation that Carol Kalish was astonishingly goddam frigging rude to someone who had been looking forward for quite some time to meeting her.

I also once wrote to The Comics Journal in response to the editorial by Gary Groth about Carol, in which he talked about the flood of glowing tributes that had been written about Carol after her death.

She was mean to me first, Mommy, and besides, every last friggin word is true.

You were really polite to write on my talk page and not just revert. For that I thank you. Renamed from impersonation nick 01 (talk) 12:46, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your opinion at all. I don't really have one myself, having nothing to base one on, but there's a lot out there to support your viewpoint. However what's the best way to write a robust, supportable, neutral encyclopedic article? It's certainly possible to over-do things. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a fair cop. Renamed from impersonation nick 01 (talk) 02:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

plenum

Regarding plenum space, I actually considered creating the article, but I'm not into building codes and such and I couldn't find very relevant material in a quick google search to expand it to much more than a sentence. Therefore I decided to expand the sentence in the disam page rather than write a one-line stub. Han-Kwang (t) 16:02, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Most Significant Change

I can see that the way that this article was originally written may have breached the rules in its style and format, but the factual content was I think very relevant to an encyclopaedia. The method that was discussed is not of interest to myself only.

Frankly I find the task of trying to get the article reinstated, with any necessary changes in style and format, completely daunting. I cannot find the original page, I cannot even find the discussion around its deletion, and when I followed the link you have given me to the deletion review process I wondered if I had wandered into some Kafkaesque nightmare (a print version). Nevertheless I will keep trying. Can you help me by giving me some next steps advice in simple English: a few short and easy to understand sentences? 23:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)rick davies--Rckjdavies (talk) 23:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Help

My regular user account has been blocked, and I am not being allowed to request a fair unblocking. Surely this is quite unfair. Firstly, I have done nothing wrong. And secondly, I received no warning that a blocking was on the approach. I believe there may be third parties involved. Renamed from impersonation nick 01 (talk) 08:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I've done what I can to raise this issue with the admins concerned. Seems that you're "officially" Groth, as far as Checkuser can tell, and so that's as far as things are likely to go in that direction. Assuming that you really are Doc Nebula, I can only suggest some off-wiki communication (such as placing a note on what's obviously your own external web space) might be sufficient reason to have them re-open this and discount Checkuser (as seems to have happened for DollyD.

If you're really a Sock of Groth after all, then I obviously wish you a lint-covered future mouldering in a dusty sock drawer for aeons. And have a nice day 8-)

Scotch marine boiler

Just wanted to let you know I deleted the redirect so you can move your page into it whenever you're ready. Cheers. Thingg^⊕⊗ 01:49, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Andy Dingley (talk) 10:18, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Drop out vs fork end

Yes, a closer reading of Brown does suggest that rear facing fork ends are not drop outs while all drop outs are fork ends. He is quite specific, however, about the inferiority of rear facing fork ends vs horizontal drop outs. That suggests, and my own experience with a single-speed conversion seems to confirm, that horizontal drop outs are just as good as rear facing fork ends at allowing for chain tension adjustment. Is it then incorrect to claim that track bikes use rear facing dropouts to allow for adjusting chain tension, as the article currently does. Is there some reason, other than convention, that track bike continue to use rear facing fork ends? -AndrewDressel (talk) 19:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Re Vandalism Message

Hi Andy, The adding of Tricky was not meant to be vandalism, it was a serious insetion into Wikipedia. I will research how you post on Wiki, but when you look at the list of famous people from the town I would suggest Tricky is much better known in the North West of England.

Please advise me who decides what is legitimate and what is not,

Cheers

Phil —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.79.235.67 (talk) 03:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Tricky is famously from Knowle West, Bristol - as you could see from the article. Claiming that he's from Southport instead would be vandalism. As it happens, I live in both towns (life is complicated at the moment).

I'm sorry I accused you of being a vandal if you're not. Are we talking about the same "Tricky" here? Assuming we're not, then you shouldn't wikilink to Tricky as it's the wrong person and we already have that article established. It would be better to wikilink to [[Tricky (childrens' entertainer)|Tricky]] (which you can enter speedily as [[Tricky (childrens' entertainer)|]] using the "pipe trick"). Even then, this practice isn't encouraged except for obviously well-known and necessary topics, because it merely adds a redlink with little else for explanation. It's better all round to create the Tricky page first, then worry about linking to it. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Your request for rollback

After reviewing your request for rollback, I have enabled rollback on your account. Keep in mind these things when going to use rollback:

• Getting rollback is no more momentous than installing Twinkle.
• Rollback can be used to revert vandalism only, and not good faith edits.
• Rollback may be removed at any time.

If you no longer want rollback, then contact me and I'll remove it. Also, for some information on how to use rollback, you can view this page. I'm sure you'll do great with rollback, just leave me a message if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of rollback. Happy editing! Ioeth _{(talk contribs friendly)} 16:50, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for that. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Squadrons

Thanks Andy. How do you suggest we get them improved then? If Jimbo's goal is high quality articles, and otherwise without the threat of deletion these, along with thousands of other articles, will sit there unreferenced for years and years, what do you suggest as an alternate method? Buckshot06(prof) 14:09, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

It's axiomatic that:

• WP is huge
• Much of it's not of great quality
• You can't delete all the "poor" articles, or they'll only grow back quickly anyway.

The lesson of software engineering and the whole refactoring movement ("it's big, it's ugly, and it's not an option to throw everything away and start again") is that you can work with this, but you can't fix it all instantly. No matter how far from the pram you throw the toys. So get used to it instead, and start working with ways that are compatible with what you're stuck with and can't change.

The key to doing this is tagging. We don't try and fix stuff immediately, we use tags to permit it to be queued. This also splits the workload between editors capable of identifying the problem (mostly a wiki-editing skill) and those capable of fixing it (usually requiring domain knowledge). Such tags should also be at the smallest appropriate granularity and grade (and so potentially this means adding many of them). It's an error to tag for "generally improve" when "intro needed for non-experts" covers the problem with a narrower scope, or "add refs" rather than "inline cite existing refs". That's improving the workload split still further: maybe slightly more effort for the reporter, but a lot more information captured from the reporter and thus less work for the fixer.

The worst case of this is to kill the article when it really needed fixing insted. Baby, bathwater. Wrong all round.

A simple observation is that "threats" aren't a good way to proceed. A great many _good_ articles get deleted by hasty admins who don't understand a topic well enough to competently judge the quality of articles within its remit, but are happy to delete despite. Offering something up for deletion on wikipedia triggers far too many false positives! I doubt that you intended any of your {{prod}}s to result in deletion, but that's what's really going to happen to a bunch of them if you act in that way, because that's how many, many other admins pick things to delete. Nor would I want to share a firing range with someone who pulls triggers "because the safety was on anyway".

As to "sitting unreferenced for years", then is this really a problem? Is there actually a "problem" there? (i.e. are they sitting there "for years", or is it really far shorter) and also "who cares?". Consensus means that the most important places are also those with the most eyeballs on them. If it's that critical that something is addressed, then that's also the article that's most likely to attract the attention and effort to do so. Maybe this is "triage through lack of interest", but it does mean in practice that the most critical problems don't remain ignored for long.

Finally there's the problem of The Lynching of Peter Damian. Find an editor who writes excellent articles that almost no-one else is in a position to write, then do everything you can (whilst being strictly WP:CIVIL and according to policy) to Stifle their work. Then if they complain about this, run them out of town on a rail. And so another good editor is lost to the project, and not just a cataloguer of garage bands, but one of the best we had. Too many editorial and janitorial actions get made without thinking about their effects on the original editors. WP:CIVIL has far too much of 18th century morality about it; you can beat the servants all you like, so long as you wear the right cravat whilst you're doing it. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:43, 27 November 2008 (UTC)