User talk:Mich Taylor

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Such drastic rewriting ought to be discussed. —Tamfang (talk) 08:10, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"the Anglophone heraldries"[edit]

Has anyone but you ever used this term? ;) —Tamfang (talk) 18:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No that I know - but Anglophone is a perfectly ordinary word to use instead of English-speaking (much used for example in some parts of North America). There are many Anglophone heraldries: English, Scots, Canadian (though also Francophone), South African (which also uses Afrikaans in its online records, and other languages in its formal work I believe), USA (militarily and coastguardwise and the)Zimbabwe (which seems to function in English), Australia (though without a heraldic authority of its own), New Zealand (ditto).


Among the Anglophone heraldries most folk only talk and write about English heraldry from which the other countries' heraldries (especially those with their own heraldic authorities) are distinct, though not totally different! For example South African heraldry does not depend on a heraldic authority for the legality of arms, while in Scotland arms are illegal, criminally so, if not granted and recorded by its heraldic authority, etc, etc.


I talk about the Anglophone heraldries when I mean all of them and about the separate countries, regions etc when there isd a need to.

It seems to me to be a good term because it notes the commonalities and the differences (by using the plural).

Mich Taylor (talk) 19:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

NO NEED TO SHOUT SO IMPRECISELY[edit]

At least once I've changed something like

to

(note the more precise link). I hope you'll try it sometime. —Tamfang (talk) 04:44, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand (if not share) your wish to "get a lot that is wrong ... right," but your additions are less likely to be undone if you take the effort to clean them up. Is it so urgent that every heraldry article be adorned with obscure external examples, at the expense of making them unreadable with dense badly-formatted blazons? — By the way, have you seen User:Tamfang/blazons? —Tamfang (talk) 20:03, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cross[edit]

Frankly, I'm rather doubtful whether Wikipedia is very interested in your personal opinions as to what is allegedly "very, very rare" etc. in that particular context. AnonMoos (talk) 14:26, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Among other things, Wikipedia is not an armorial. You may have a perfectly valid rule-of-thumb understanding based on long personal experience, but such expertise may not end up being very useful for Wikipedia if you insist on phrasing things as statements of your personal opinions. AnonMoos (talk) 18:01, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep your personal politics out of it[edit]

Wikipedia article Cross is not the place for you to display your personal attitudes and opinions about the Crusades. In fact, you seem to be confused about several things... AnonMoos (talk) 17:06, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately for you, your statement seemed to be phrased in the particular way it was in order to express your opinions about modern politics -- since the Crusader conquests covered a large area from Cyprus through southern Turkey to north-western Saudi Arabia (in terms of modern state boundaries). If you're against imperialist and colonialist conquests, then I'm sure that you'll condemn the unprovoked Arab invasions of the decade of the 630s AD, which resulted in a colonialist empire in which a small minority hereditary Arab warrior caste was supported by taxes extorted from the majority of non-Muslim non-Arab inhabitants -- the Umayyad caliphate was the very definition of an exploitative colonialist empire oppressing native populations! AnonMoos (talk) 18:09, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, your points under (1) are very significantly inaccurate. The Levant is NOT the same as Palestine, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was NOT the only crusader state (take a glimpse at File:Near East 1135.svg etc.). The Cross article is not the place to discuss the Crusader states at all, much less to tendentiously and selectively condemn them in a manner which seems designed to intrude modern politics. AnonMoos (talk) 18:55, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ankh duplication is pointless[edit]

The Ankh is not a distinctively-heraldic symbol; it's a non-heraldic symbol "very very rarely"[sic] incorporated into heraldry. It will save everybody a lot of effort all around if you actually start discussing things, instead of trying to unilaterally trying to impose your will on the article. AnonMoos (talk) 17:19, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a certain amount of difficulty trying to understand the comments you added to my talk page on this subject, but one thing remains clear: there is a group of traditional cross shapes conventionally used in heraldry (whether they have strong Christian symbolism or not, which often they don't seem to), and the ankh does not belong to this group -- and if it did belong to the group of traditional conventional heraldic symbols, then it would be only discussed in the "In heraldry" section (not in both places in the article). AnonMoos (talk) 19:01, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dude, either a shape is predominantly heraldic or it's not predominantly heraldic. In the first case it belongs in the heraldry section, while in the second case it belongs in the non-heraldic section -- no redundant duplications! AnonMoos (talk) 03:58, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please respect other people's talk pages[edit]

Sorry dude, but I don't want my comments here cut-and-pasted onto my own user talk page in that particular semi-mutilated form... AnonMoos (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We really don't care how intensely and passionately you loathe and despise Israel[edit]

I fully understand that you hate Israel with every single bone in your body from the very depths of your being, and would do anything to écraser l'infâme; however, the violence and vehemence of your passions has no place in editing Wikipedia articles, and is especially out of place and useless in the article Cross, which is not remotely about modern middle-eastern politics. Do I really have to spell it out for you in words of one syllable or less??? You could write that the Crusaders "occupied Palestine", and then I might write that the Crusaders "liberated the Levant coasts from 460 years of Muslim oppression" (see above) -- and as long as as it's purely a matter of my personal opinion vs. your personal opinion, then what basis is there to choose between the two wordings?! Maybe you should step back from editing Wikipedia for a while, and learn about the ways things are done here, until you "get it" a little more, before trying to impose major restructurings on lengthy and complicated articles such as Cross. AnonMoos (talk) 03:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't care about your uniformed speculations about the state of my underwear, either[edit]

What I do care about is you behaving a little bit less like an asshole, and making a little bit more of a sincere effort to find out how things are done around here. If you don't want to be thought of as an asshole, then don't resurrect material which a user has deleted from his or her own user talk page without a very specific valid reason. AnonMoos (talk) 16:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

bolding[edit]

It's standard to emphasize terms of art on first mention. It's highly unnecessary to bold the word flaunch every time it appears in the article Flaunch; doing so dilutes the value of boldfacing. —Tamfang (talk) 02:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Consistent style helps the reader get to the meat without having to examine and analyze every word. Even without that, I'd still undo your excessive bolding, for the reason mentioned. —Tamfang (talk) 17:29, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

www.national.archsrch.gov.za[edit]

Those links are totally useless; apparently they are temporary. If from such searches you can extract a permanent link, do so. If the content appears in a frame, right-click on the frame and choose "show only this frame". —Tamfang (talk) 02:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tried the link you put on my Talk. It said "All Search Manager User ID's in use. Please try again later." That's unusual; generally I get a menu – never any content. —Tamfang (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep related comments in one section.
How useful is it to tell the reader, in effect, "There's something on that site – trust me – if you can figure out how to find it"? —Tamfang (talk) 17:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't deny it's potentially useful, to someone who wants to do heraldic research, to know where there's a search engine. But it is not useful to someone who simply wants to see an example of a bend engrailed tenny, who would be MUCH better served by a link to the content — which the links you've been inserting appear to be but are not. —Tamfang (talk) 18:17, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(afterthought) If you're going to make each reader do the same search, why contribute to an encyclopedia at all? Why not simply say "The information is Out There, go find it yourself"? —Tamfang (talk) 20:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't assume that everybody who doesn't get things 'right' is being perverse and needs telling off!

Hm. Seems I'm faced with a dichotomy between "telling off" and leaving you in the dark as to How We Do Things Here. —Tamfang (talk) 19:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The key job is good information, not following other people's tastes.

The key job is making good information clear and accessible. If sloppy incoherent style detracts from that, I for one am not prepared to embrace it. Some of the people who contribute to style guides such as the Manual of Style may well be snobs and pedants, or motivated by a wish to keep out the riffraff, but I like to think that some are sincere in having the reader's convenience in mind. —Tamfang (talk) 20:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

external links[edit]

"Please post only encyclopedic information that can be verified by external sources."

(Emphasis added.) This does not say "use external weblinks wherever possible," let alone in preference to internal links. On the contrary, Wikipedia:External links says: "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia, which are external links, but they should not normally be used in the body of an article."

Other websites – however authoritative – may vanish without warning; Wikipedia can be counted on to exist as long as Wikipedia exists. ;)

If my list of blazons led you to the article Bassecourt and that in turn led you to [1], why not suppose that the reader can also find the municipal site (whose front page is rather less informative than our article) from the article? —Tamfang (talk) 06:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I am convinced that internal heraldic links are to reliable and trustworthy information I will use them.

I guess that means you'll only link to articles that you have rewritten. —Tamfang (talk) 06:46, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating - are the articles, as a result of my editing, fuller, better illustrated, more technically correct, more introductive of and linked to reasonably reliable, trustworthy and even authoritative sources of information. Does the reader get a better deal? Is the reader led on to other things?

Obviously you think so. I think they're pointlessly cluttered, sloppy, and harder to read. —Tamfang (talk) 17:17, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

About the chevron éclaté: My first instinct would be to remove it, and write on Talk:Chevron "I've never heard of such a thing, and I reckon the reader can do without that knowledge." And then as an afterthought I'd write, "...but if someone can document it I guess it can go back in." ;) — But you bring up this very marginal example to defend your habit of dragging in external links – contrary to policy as I keep telling you – in preference to abundant WP illustrations (many of which probably are not hoaxes). If you think the definition of chevron needs explicit independent support, the appropriate thing is a link at the bottom of the page (perhaps in footnote form) to a dictionary, not a blazon within the text of some ugly piece of English civic armory. —Tamfang (talk) 17:35, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Please note that the pile article uses words, at the very beginning of the article, and a picture, at the very beginning, to show what a pile is. I don't think there's any question that " the picture doesn't adequately explain what a pile is, how is another picture going to help?". And it's going to help maybe because it takes people to thoroughly trustworthy external sites - something very necessary given the state of Wikipedia's heraldic unreliability and untrustworthiness. When Wikipedia's heraldry gets to the stage of some other parts of Wikipedia then it won't be necessary to use 'external links in body' - to reassure the reader! Unlike the results of an editing of yours that left more than one totally incorrect pictures of piles, added an incorrect statement about piles meeting in a point and one about the width that piles should be drawn to avoid confusion. Some quick checks to reliable sites online before writing etc would have avoided those errors.)

You seem to be conflating erroneous with unsupported, resulting in a policy of infinite regress: you won't use links within Wikipedia heraldry articles until nothing in Wikipedia heraldry articles links to Wikipedia! —Tamfang (talk) 17:46, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Did you consider the lead paragraph of Variations of ordinaries unreliable, or is the deletion another expression of your love for freedom of style? —Tamfang (talk) 06:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's funny how you pic on one little misleading original sentence and don't comment on the other changes.

It's the first thing I noticed. I'm cleaning up after you (as usual) on Ordinary (heraldry), and haven't yet had an opportunity to look at "Variations" any more than that (I had to glance at it in order to make a proper link to the Cotise section). —Tamfang (talk) 07:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your recent edits[edit]

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forms of names[edit]

I wish you wouldn't write "Smith, Canada"; that looks like a place-name. It's no great crime against brevity to write "John J. Smith (CHA)", or "Town of Moose Ridge, Alberta". (And please do link place-names to their WP articles.)

Also – I haven't noticed if you've done this recently – to anyone who hasn't been weaned from the Your Name's Crest marketing myth, "the Canadian arms of Smith" would mean the arms used in Canada by everyone named Smith. —Tamfang (talk) 18:24, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say you habitually wrote "arms of the Smith family". I said you have used an ambiguous form that invites such a misunderstanding. —Tamfang (talk) 20:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

cadency[edit]

Incidentally, if you're immersed in the Scots tradition, maybe you can provide some more detail about the Stodart cadency scheme? One sees a sample tree endlessly repeated but nothing more, and it's not much of a guide. —Tamfang (talk) 20:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free files in your user space[edit]

Hey there Mich Taylor, thank you for your contributions. I am a bot, alerting you that non-free files are not allowed in user or talk space. I removed some files I found on User:Mich Taylor. In the future, please refrain from adding fair-use files to your user-space drafts or your talk page.

  • See a log of files removed today here.

Thank you, -- DASHBot (talk) 05:01, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

'Exotic'[edit]

Here you go; note definition no. 1. Please, if you are questioning a usage, do so on the Talk page. Don't put strange marks in the article itself. Kelisi (talk) 14:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I refer to this edit, or more specifically the last part of it (I see others took issue with some of your, in parts POV statements and reverted the whole edit but for this bit). Kelisi (talk) 21:16, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"I was not questioning a usage but publicly condemning it." -- Well, you don't do that. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. That was my point. You also have to maintain a neutral point of view. Your personal point of view (=POV) is of no interest and has no place here. You may not characterize anything as "ridiculous", for instance. Kelisi (talk) 00:35, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How did "racism" come into this? Kelisi (talk) 15:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How did that crest come into it? What are you on about? I'll tell you something, though: "Proper" in heraldry, for some charges, at least, refers to a "standard" tincture for that charge, whether or not the charge is really so coloured in real life, or whether or not the charge is even a real object (what would you make of "a dragon proper"?). Kelisi (talk) 00:03, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mich, what is all this garbage about? Who cares how which heraldic authority emblazoned whatever? Big deal! Just learn your English please. We see now evidence that your reading comprehension could use work. This was a discussion about the word "exotic", I seem to remember. "Racism" and one heraldic authority's supposed misdeed putting your nose out of joint simply don't enter into it. Please do not deposit further garbage on my talk page. I'm really not interested in the bee you have in your bonnet about the colour in which flesh is rendered in heraldry. For Pete's sake.

Yes, that message of yours is "insulting". Quite right. Son, would you just please go somewhere and prattle about your "rights" with your shaven-headed friends. Keep off my page. All further garbage will be deleted. Kelisi (talk) 21:18, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

improvement[edit]

Your recent edits are in much better style than before. —Tamfang (talk) 05:56, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian fess[edit]

Now that it's linked to something that shows a C.fess, I have no reason to delete it, though I probably will combine it: a Spanish or Canadian fess...Tamfang (talk) 21:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lacombe, Alberta crest[edit]

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