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WillowW
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Userbox sorting

Hello WillowW...

I am currently sorting through the userboxes but need help. Would you be willing to spend a little time today with me going through them and putting the uncatagorized ones into the already existing catagories? I know that I am missing a few here and there and coming up with new categories is getting more difficult. So, care to lend a hand for a little bit?
—Lady Aleena talk/contribs 23:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Aleena,

Sure, I'll help out, although you should know that I'm still a relative newbie and might make unexpected mistakes. Is there a master list somewhere of the user boxes as yet uncategorized? Point the way and I'll do my best. :) Willow 10:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Oops, just found Category:User templates and it all came into focus; I feel silly! But if I should be looking elsewhere for userboxes to sort, please let me know. Thanks! Willow 10:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello there...see the work you have done...good job so far. Take a little break so I can catch up and see where we are, okay? - LA @ 16:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey Aleena,

Sure, I'll pause for as long as you like; I have lots to do in other areas, anyway. I more-or-less finished "ethnicity", "profession", "favourite subject" and "Myers-Briggs". I was thinking of tackling "Personality user templates" (such as Happy) next, then maybe "Age-related user templates" (such as 20s, 80s,...). A "Nationality user templates" category might be good, too, for userboxes like "Irish citizen" and such. It's going faster than I thought! :)

Talk to you soon, Willow 16:24, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

GREAT JOB! Keep up the good work...we have only about 40 more user templates to go to get to 1 page. You have done great work! Thank you! - LA @ 21:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Aleena, thanks for your nice note! :)

Sorry but I've gotta run now -- have fun with the rest! Willow 21:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

We did it! Thanks again! - LA @ 22:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

"User American" template

I took out the line break you had added between the </noinclude> and <noinclude>, because it messed up the formatting if user boxes ended up in two columns instead of one. Richwales 23:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Rich, I'm really sorry that linebreak caused a problem; thanks for fixing it! I'm a relative newbie, so I only just now realized how the line break could mess up the formatting. I'm being careful to avoid extra linebreaks in my new categorizations and will go back and correct the old ones. Thanks much for clueing me in! Willow 09:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

protein fold question

I've started thinking about expanding Category:Protein folds and noticed it has a subcategory Category:LRR proteins with only two entries. I was wondering if you originally had plans to add more proteins? Opabinia regalis 02:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, O! I'm traveling on something urgent, so I won't be able to write much for the next few weeks, I think. I did plan on entering more LRR proteins; I took the category as meaning "proteins with at least one LRR domain". You probably know that the LRR domain is a pretty common protein-protein interaction domain, so the category should be well-stocked by the time everyone gets done with it. Did you want to work on it? If so, have fun! :) Willow 01:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. 5 eyes = 2.5x more perspicacity, no? ;)

P.P.S. One way to tackle the protein folds is in order of their "popularity", i.e., the number of evolutionarily independent protein families that adopt that fold. That's why I started with the top three (the TIM barrel, the ferredoxin and flavodoxin folds) and gradually started expanding from there to a few common protein-protein interaction domains: SH2, SH3, LRR, WD40, etc. You could also order the folds by enzymatic pathway, or some other way that might tie in nicely to one or a series of Wikipedia articles. Anyway, just a few thoughts to help. :)

Thanks for the suggestions and hope you enjoy your trip (if it's the sort of trip that's enjoyable). I doubt I have the time or attention span to go through systematically, but I've been planning to do some expansion of the protein folds category for a while now, and this is as good a time as any to get started. I'd love to see individual proteins eventually cross-referenced with their pathways, but that would be a big job for the existing protein articles and there might be some danger of redundancy with existing databases like BioCarta. I do think categories alone can't really do the job because proteins don't naturally sort themselves alphabetically :) Opabinia regalis 04:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the good wishes; the trip is happier than it could have been, at least. Good luck with the protein folds and protein folding; I'll try to help out when I have time. Say hi to your cat from me ;) Willow 15:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The cat in question is an 11-week-old kitten who hasn't figured out yet that she doesn't belong on the computer. She'd say hi back, but she's busy with the phone cord at the moment. Opabinia regalis 03:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Kittens that small are so much fun to hang out with and to watch exploring. I initially read "phone card" and I was really impressed that she was already calling around — a precocious 11-week-old kitty! ;) Thanks for the pick-me-up and, I have to say, you're adding great stuff from the protein world: barnase, barstar, beta turn, alpha solenoid, etc. — all hypnotizingly cool topics. I was about to say Helminths rule! but then I realized that Opabinia probably isn't a helminth, is it? How does it get classified? I'll try and add something if I can; maybe repeat domains? I don't have any literature handy, though. :( Willow 04:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, the mischief this cat could get into if she could make phone calls. She's such a cutie though, even if my apartment does look like a bomb went off in here. And she does the difficult duty of being my backup alarm clock.

Thanks for the additions to some of the new articles I've created lately. AFAIK Opabinia is currently unclassified, at least at the phylum level; possibly lobopods, but that doesn't narrow it down much. Despite the name, I don't actually know as much about "macro" biology; anything bigger than a cell is getting into fuzzy territory. Proteins are about the right size. Opabinia regalis 06:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The improvement of wikipedia newtonian dynamics articles

Hi Willow,

I read your exemplary comment on the centripetal force talk page (july 9th 2006)

I'm thinking about joining the wikiproject physics, I would like to contribute to the improvement of the wikipedia physics articles. I'd like to tell you some more about what is the focus of my interest.

The following three articles have huge talk page histories: fictitious force, centrifugal force, coriolis force
The reason for that, I believe, is that in the education of physics there is no consensus about those subjects. I get the impression that different textbooks contradict each other on the subject of centrifugal force, some stating that it exists, some stating that it doesn't exist.

My personal point of view is that I distinguish between calculation strategy and physics understanding.Usually with newtonian dynamics equations, all the terms in them represent actual physics phenomena. The centrifugal term and the coriolis term are exceptions to that: they are not physics operative factors; the only purpose of the centrifugal/coriolis term is to take a coordinate transformation into account.

I have started a website of my own, it has about ten articles now. (I have a lot of animations in my articles, quite a lot of them have also been uploaded to wikipedia.) The purpose of my own website is to show that in many cases the physics explanation without invoking a "centrifugal force" is more straighforward.

I like your style. Will you please check out the newtonian dynamics articles on my site? I want to contribute to improvement of the wikipedia newtonian dynamics articles, but in order to do that I need to find wikipedians with similar views on the education of newtonian dynamics. --Cleonis | Talk 21:33, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Cleonis, for your really nice letter! I certainly do want the basic physics articles to read well and be accurate, just as you do, and if I've understood correctly, we also agree on discerning apparent physics from true physics, Schein from Sein, as they used to say. If you can be patient, I'll look over your web-site and the fictitious-force articles when I get back home in a week or two. I'm nursing someone, which takes a lot of attention; I can steal only a few hours here and there, mainly for work that doesn't take too much mental effort. Talk to you soon! Willow 05:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I have written a user subpage article to present my proposal on how to use the expression apparent motion In my opinion, the definition that is used most widely (but rarely declared explicitly) is the one that I describe in my user subpage article.

I hope you will do well with the person you are taking care of the following weeks. In the meantime, I'll be patient, and I will nurse my articles. --Cleonis | Talk 12:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

biology

Thanks for your contributions to biology-related Wikipedia articles. --JWSchmidt 22:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, JW! :) It means a lot coming from a contributor such as yourself. I pitch in where I can; I remember all too keenly how bewildered I was as a student. Willow 05:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Two-body problem

I reverted your changes to the two-body problem article because it appeared to blank an entire section. If you're sure that it makes it more cohesive revert it back again, otherwise perhaps it would make more sense to discuss on the talk page... St.isaac 06:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, St.isaac, you're totally right and I'm sorry for being so hasty. I got carried away and, focused on the article, I didn't stop to consider the feelings of the editors who had written the parts I deleted. I laid out the reasoning for both parts on the discussion page; I was sleepy, so they weren't the most articulate, but I hope everyone will understand and agree with the rationale. Thanks for the reality check, Willow 05:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!

Why, thank you for saying such nice things about the essay on my user page -- I had no idea when I wrote it (to remind myself of why I am here, on those bad days!) that others would get so much out of it. I am really glad that you enjoyed it.

As for Duran Duran, you're remembering the yacht from the "Rio" video -- you can refresh yourself and your memory by watching it here.  ;) The yacht was rented for the video shoot, and I've never been able to discover her name. Lead singer Simon Le Bon later bought his own yacht called Drum. Hope that answers your questions, and that you have a great day! — Catherine\^talk 21:01, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and I meant to add, I'm glad you're doing so much to add to our information about knitting -- I just started knitting this year (learning how was actually my Christmas present from my crafty best friend) and I'm loving it! I've enjoyed figuring out cables, and am in the middle of my first lace project (the Kiri shawl). I still have a lot more to learn; haven't attempted any garments that require joining, or tried DPNs yet, but I'm eager to keep expanding my skills. Good to know there are some other Wikipedian/Knitters out there....  :) — Catherine\^talk 21:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Before you feel concensus coming on (photon article)

You need to read the papers at: [1]. You are not dealing with a teachable person here. You are dealing with an absolutely CLASSIC physics-crank. Learn from this specimen. If you finally give up and quit before learning what you need to learn from this experience, you will be poorer for it. For you'll simply encounter it again in the future, and still have the illusion that if you only had been nice enough, and logical enough, and reasonable enough, and clear enough, and patient enough, that you could have done something constructive. Wrong. The wrongness of this assumption is what you need to learn here. That is the lesson which life has chosen to present to you, right now. I'll be interested in what happens (ie, in whether or not you actually DO learn it, or go away with your illusions intact). Good luck, Mr. Phelps. SBHarris 21:05, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Dr. Harris,

I appreciate your kind efforts to open my eyes to the ineluctable denseness of some people. It's true, some people cannot be taught some things, at least not on a practical time-scale. I have already had some experience with devotees of misguided physics; one was a suicide, and I had the unhappy task of refereeing his final manuscript at the request of his son, my friend; perhaps not coincidentally, the manuscript was on a revised aether theory intended to supplant special relativity.

Nevertheless, I believe in listening to people closely, to hear what they are trying to say. And I believe in redemption, having been mistaken so often myself. Some people can sometimes learn. In the Talk:Photon case, I judged it was worth the effort since there seemed to be such a small discrepancy between your positions, despite all the heat and harsh words. It was a simple matter of hearing and teasing apart the various ideas and dealing with them one-by-one, calmly and rationally, with concrete examples and references, instead of charging past each other like blood-maddened bulls. A different time, I will perhaps judge differently; but I hope you agree that the serene approach made at least a small contribution to resolving the dispute.

As for my "illusions", I really don't mind them; living without my illusions would be like breathing with one nostril. ;) I may be unteachable myself, since I can't learn to despair of people; but I take comfort from the historical example of other similarly foolish teachers. Willow 09:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. "Good luck, Mr. Phelps." is a reference to Mission: Impossible, right? Unfortunately, I've never seen the TV show or the movies, but Google and the IMDB helped me out.

Inertial frames

Hi Cleonis and Gregory9,

Our discussion was getting a little long, and I wanted to have it all in one place to think about, so I made a new subpage for us here. I'm back home now, but it' s harvest time, so I'm up to my elbows in tomatoes and pickling cucumbers — can you be patient with me a little longer? I'm trying to understand the arguments. Thanks! Willow 01:46, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, the length is due to my comments. Yeah, I am very, very eager to disseminate my ideas. But patience is the name of the game here. Will the seeds I spread spring roots? I can reasonably expect to be listened to only if I am patient. I have added the subpage to my watchlist. --Cleonis | Talk 10:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course, take your time. And Cleonis, may I please ask a favor? There was a reason I approached Willow directly instead of posting on the inertial frames talk page. This is a subtle subject that I'd like to have an open discussion about. I appreciate your input, but it is clear you have already made up your mind. So now that you have presented your opinion, may I please ask that you wait till the discussion is over before further pressing your idea? Thank you. -- Gregory9 09:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I've been posing the question of defining an inertial frame to several physics gradstudents that I know. The best comment I've ran across so far is that our notion of coordinate systems has evolved considerably since Newton's time (of course), or for that matter, even since the time of the "Aether" with its notion of "real/absolute" length and time. So it is both inappropriate to define the modern concept of inertial frame with Newton's ideas, and also dissatisfying in some sense to just present the modern concept (since many older ideas don't make much sense out of context, and also because many laypeople still tend to think of space and time in Newtonian concepts).

I agree with that to some extent (especially the warning about viewing older ideas out of context), but I believe current concepts are more "backwards compatable" than he seemed to be implying (maybe just state explicitly what the previous ideas implicitly assumed). Since modern concepts may seem too abstract, maybe the best way to present it in the article is to give some type of definition with modern concepts but then show how the idea evolved over the years by referring to how experimenters operationally defined it (to give it a more concrete feeling?).

But before considering such things, of course we still need to figure out the best way to define an inertial frame in the first place :) -- Gregory9 20:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I added a comment on the dedicated subpage --Cleonis | Talk 00:34, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Willow, I realize you have been busy (congratulations on the photon article making feature article status!), but I was wondering if you'd had time yet to think some more about the issue of defining inertial frames? -- Gregory9 12:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

User:WillowW/Scarf and shawl design

I moved the article here so you can keep working on it without it being deleted. When you think it is ready, simple move (using the move tab) back to its proper location in the article space. Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers, Petros471 13:45, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I just seen your userpage. That's a lot of articles! Keep up the good work- probably just best to keep a sandbox or two in your userspace to work on new articles. Petros471 13:47, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Protein templates

Just noticed your templates primary to tertiary. They are excellent. :) David D. (Talk) 16:52, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, David! I'm not perfectly happy with them myself, but I liked how they linked togther and I tried to make them helpful to students. Organizing the nomenclature felt like sorting butterflies. ;)

I just read on your user page that you are "Theoretically, I'm a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, although I haven't contributed much there." Are you joking? The contributions to this project are most important on the article pages. Your contributions are VERY significant. Look forward to bumping into you more on those pages. David D. (Talk) 16:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again for your kind words — I look forward to seeing your contributions as well! But you're way too nice; you should measure "significance" by taking the ratio of (work done)/(total amount of work that needs to be done), which is of order $\varepsilon$ for me.  ;) By the way, you should say "Hi!" to User:Opabinia regalis, who is a prime mover in molecular biology and protein stuff — although I don't think he's a member of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology. He's the one who inspired me to work on the templates, and who shaped them as well. Willow 21:23, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I have met him on RNA interference page. Definitely another prime mover. David D. (Talk) 21:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow. I don't know about prime moving - I usually feel like whatever I'm doing is barely half-finished - but since I seem to cross paths with both of you on occasion, it's worth mentioning that I'm actually female. And in keeping with the theme, great job with those templates, Willow; they make those articles a lot easier to worm your way through. Opabinia regalis 04:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Well you keep things moving in the right direction. That is good enough for me. :) David D. (Talk) 04:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree. We're all really, really lucky that you're here.

Thanks for the encouragement about Talk:Photon — I laughed about there being no light at Photon! It's still surprisingly hot there, even though I'm doing my best to help the article and keep everyone calm, two goals that might not be mutually compatible. The article is now roughly OK, though, so maybe it would better if I just withdrew. :( There's lots to do elsewhere! :)

I'm a little mortified that I didn't pick up on your being female — sorry! I thought so the first day, but then I somehow got zapped by stupidity. Is it OK to refer to you as "she" from now on, or should we keep it low-profile? I kind of keep it low-profile myself, since it shouldn't really matter and may make some editing more difficult. Willow 12:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh, that's cool - I think everyone I've ever "met" on the internet thought I was male at first :) "On the internet no one knows you're a dog" and all that. I don't much care about pronouns in general, except that I tend to skim over "he" thinking "Well, that's not me!" and then my brain falls behind. Opabinia regalis 04:56, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject Newsletter!

We have a new newsletter!
As you've no doubt noticed, there's a new Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject newsletter, which will be sent out about once a month to all WP:MCB members. This newsletter is designed to perform two equally important functions. Firstly (and obviously, perhaps) it will serve to inform the members of the MCB project of such things as important discussions, votes, and article improvement drives. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the periodic correspondance will hopefully encourage a greater level of participation from the MCB community by acting as a gentle reminder of many of the the interesting tasks that are awaiting completion. If you prefer to receive this newsletter in the form of a link, or not receive it at all, you can add your name at Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology/Newsletter/Opt Out List.
New project feature: MCB Article Improvement Drive
Have any pet MCB subjects that you think need attention? Have you been longing to be part of a team of like-minded editors working toward a common goal? If so, the MCB Article Improvement Drive is for you! On the first of every month a new article is selected by the MCB with the goal of promoting it to good article status. Make your nominations and cast your votes now, because the first article will be chosen on September 1!
Discussion: do we need an MCB director?
In an effort to organize and motivate the MCB activities, it has recently been proposed that a member of the MCB project take the role of "director", who would be responsible for the administrative side of the MCB project, including but not limited to coordinating recruiting efforts, spamming the newsletter, and maintaining the Article Improvement Drive and MCB Portal. A special discussion/vote page has been created for this proposal, and the vote will run until 23:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC), unless the community decides otherwise.
Odds and ends: what else you got?
In an effort to raise our profile and possibly attract some new blood, a shiny new MCB project banner template has been created at {{Template:Wikiproject MCB}}. Please add it to the talk pages of all MCB-related articles.
Signed...
ClockworkSoul 06:39, Sunday August 27, 2006 (UTC)
If you wish to opt out of having the newsletter posted on your talk page in the future, you may add yourself to the opt out list Newsletter concept and layout blatantly "borrowed" from the Esperanza newsletter.

Revision style not appreciated

Last time I checked, Wikipedia was supposed to be a joint effort. I add a little, you add a little, someone else adds a little, and we blend it together. As an example, on 08/26/06 added the following sourced quote to the photon page:

• According to the 2003 views of Nobelist Martinus Veltman, for example, "we propose that electromagnetic fields are made up from photons. Therefore, electric and magnetic forces must now be assumed to be due to the action of photons."

This now seems to have been deleted by you. Within a period of twelve hours, you blanked every word I added to the photon page. You replaced short word “linked” captions with paragraph-sized (captions are supposed to be short and keyword linked) captions of your own wording. I am going to assume that I am not a photon expert and I am going to assume that you are not a photon expert. Yet, my entire contribution seems to have disappeared? Thus, I want to thank you for my very rewarding time spent in the photon page at Willo-pedia. --Sadi Carnot 17:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Reference

Dear Sadi Carnot,

I'm terribly sorry that my edits left you feeling as though you had wasted your time at Photon. Although it may not seem that way, I was actually on your side, as you might be able to see from the discussion page. Rather than deleting all of your images (as some seemed to be thinking), I managed to work in five of the seven images you posted. They make a nice contribution to the page, don't you think? I'm sorry for not keeping your text, but it didn't seem that important compared to your images and was covered already in the next section of the article.

The Martinus Veltman quote is indeed vivid, but that concept is already covered in the article and supported by links to the original references. Although he is a Nobel Prize winner, MV contributed neither to the development of the photon concept nor to the idea that the electromagnetic field is mediated by photons; that was the work of Einstein, Dirac and a few others, as described in the article. As I understand it, MV's contribution was to the mechanisms of the electroweak interaction, a theory that is described briefly under the "Photon as a gauge boson" section. Since we don't even mention the contributions of Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga to quantum electrodynamics in Photon (being a side topic that doesn't pertain directly to photons), it's perhaps OK not to mention Veltman's contributions to the electroweak interaction.

I hope this explains the rationale behind the edits more fully. You can be justly proud of your contributions to Photon, which I hope will be maintained indefinitely into the future. I do try to work for consensus and community building, and I hope you'll forgive my lapses; your letter was a helpful reminder for me to go more slowly and be more considerate. Willow 10:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

MCB project template

It looks fantastic, thanks! – ClockworkSoul 17:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Clockwork — your message made my day! :) Willow 20:15, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Carboxylation

I've moved this to a subpage on your userpage so you can work on it: User:WillowW/Carboxylation. Once there's something there you can move it back to the real title. Thanks/wangi 20:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)