User talk:Masterpiece2000/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Hello, Masterpiece2000! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking

or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already loving Wikipedia you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Happy editing! Newyorkbrad 02:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

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Specific questions?

Newyorkbrad seems to have more than covered the links - wow, what a lot of stuff! Probably my first advice is not to be intimidated by that. Wikipedia: Five pillars is simpler. Anyway, if you have specific questions, do ask. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 02:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I saw your note on my talkpage. It is late here, so I will write you a response tomorrow. Regards, Newyorkbrad 03:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Brevity is the soul of wit. :-) Click these:

--AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 03:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

And you asked about WP:AFD and WP:RFA, as well. But before clicking those links, I think you may want to read over Wikipedia:Consensus. It would clarify your questions on "voting". Have a great day : ) - jc37 09:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Anyone can participate in RfA and AfD, but your view may not be "counted" if you are not logged in under an account. Also, they are not votes (often referred to as !votes). When closing discussions, the closer is supposed to take into account each rationale, and determine the consensus. But rule of thumb, when you start getting more than 15% or so oppose in an RfA, you probably won't pass. - Crockspot 16:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Some answers

Hi. I saw the questions you asked on my userpage the other day, but by the time I came here to answer them, someone else already had. But now you added some more questions, so here are my thoughts:

(1) What should I mention in my user page? What kind of information should be included? The answer is that, within reasonable limits, it's totally up to you. You can include background information about yourself, the work you plan to do here, or any other reasonable things you want. Take a look at the pages of a few experienced contributors and you should get a good idea of the possibilities. For more information, see Wikipedia:Userpage.
(2) When you were new to Wikipedia, what did you do? Did you studied all the rules? Did you talk with other users? Your answer will help me. I started by writing a few articles on topics I knew something about, then I started editing some other articles; and after awhile I started getting involved in the "Wikipedia:" space pages, such as Requests for adminship or requests for arbitration. I also asked at the Help desk sometimes when I had a question. Some things one learns by reading some relevant pages or doing them rather than by studying up, although the latter is helpful too.
(3) And, one more (slightly trivial) question: What is Barnstars? I saw lots of 'awards' in your user page! A barnstar is an informal pat-on-the-pack for good work, given by one Wikipedian to another. More information at Wikipedia:Barnstars. Hope all this helps, Newyorkbrad 18:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Some more answers

Our policy on "original research" can be found here. You are right that in general, original research is not allowed. However, if a person is notable enough to have an article, including one or two non-controversial facts such as a graduation year based on a private communication is probably not going to be a huge problem, unless someone thinks there is reason to question the information. For example, if it's known that a person was born in 1950, then saying that she graduated from high school in 1968 might not require a source, but saying that she graduated from high school in 1962, or in 1990, probably would. At least that's my personal opinion; others might disagree.

For your other questions, you can take a look at featured articles and good articles for some background. In general, when you have a question, you can generally find basic information just by doing a quick search under the terms you are interested in. Hope this helps. Regards, Newyorkbrad 21:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Gore commentary

If you have an issue with other editors removing your comments, please bring them up on the talk page of the user in question, not on the article namespace. The rather odd note on talk:Anastrophe is irrelevant, because Anastrophe doesn't get to pick-and-choose which parts of Wikipedia discussion policy to obey either.

As for the deleted section, Anastrophe was perfectly correct in removing it to try to steer conversation towards productive editing of the article. The personal opinions of random, pseudonymous members of the Wikipedia community thankfully have nothing whatsoever to do with the selection of Nobel winners, and nor do they have anything to do with editing articles, so such commentary doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Chris Cunningham 11:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I know that personal opinions of Wikipedians has nothing to do with the selection of Nobel winners. You don't need to remind me. Your opinion or my opinion doesn't count. What I am saying is there are notable people who have criticized the selection of Gore. Those criticism should be included. Masterpiece2000 12:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

When they are given names and references, I might be inclined to discuss this. I think it's fair to say that the award surprised a lot of people. Whether any of them are in a particular position to be commenting on who the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to is another story. Chris Cunningham 14:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I will find notable critics of Gore. I am sure there are many critics. I have no doubt in my mind that the award was a political gimmick. Masterpiece2000 08:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Deleting a category without no reason

Why did you remove the Jewish American scientists category from Roger Myerson article?--Gilisa 13:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I didn't do that! Masterpiece2000 13:02, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, Sorry!!!--Gilisa 13:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

It's only a prize, even though I'll never get it....Best--Gilisa 13:06, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: Criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize

See my reply on Talk:Al Gore. As for copyright violations, I noticed several phrases which seemed to be lifted from the article; I thank you for citing the source, but try to sum things up in your own words after reading it. --Tom (talk - email) 17:19, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Talk page of a new article

It isn't always necessary to create a talk page for a new article, if there's nothing to say. Some things that are often placed there:

New articles are sometimes placed into the scope of a WikiProject as they're created, by placing a template (for instance, {{WPBiography}} for a biographical article); this will let bots keep counts of article quality more easily and attract editors skilled in the right area when it comes to rating and maintaining the article. (This isn't always necessary or possible, and is usually done after the article is created rather than immediately.)
If you know of any obvious deficiencies in the article you've just created (for instance, you know nothing about a certain aspect of the article's subject, but you know it should be covered in the article), you can mention that on the talk page.
If you know of sources that may be useful for future expansion, but haven't used them yourself, mentioning them on the talk page will be helpful for future editors. (If you did use the sources yourself, write them as references in the article.)
If you are copying the article from another GFDL website, the talk page is used to write its previous history for copyright reasons. (This doesn't come up if you write the article yourself.)
The talk page of a new article is also used for explaining why it shouldn't be speedy-deleted; hopefully this won't come up in articles you create, though.
If you really want the talk page to be a blue link, you can just transclude the {{talkheader}} template onto the talk page, which gives new users an overview of what talk pages are for.

Hope that helps! --ais523 07:53, 19 October 2007 (U T C)

Better formatted references

You asked me for some advice about formatting references better.

First, you don't need to worry about getting the format spot-on unless you want to. It's more important that you make sure the references are there than that they are formatted correctly; they're much harder for other users to find in the first place than for other users to format.

However, if you do want perfectly formatted references, there are a range of templates to help you. For instance, if you want to reference a web page, you could use the {{cite web}} template to do that. (See the full list.)

Each of the templates in question has documentation on the template description page; for instance, to find out how to use {{cite web}}, see Template:Cite web. The description page tells you what parameters you can fill in and how, and gives several examples. Note that you don't have to give all the information that the template can accept, and often you can't; simply give all the information that's relevant (in the case of a web page, it might be the name of the web page, its URL, and the date on which you visited it).

Hope that helps! --ais523 19:16, 27 October 2007 (U T C)

Re: (User talk:ais523) Some questions

The short answer is that you place {{subst:uw-v1}} (or v2, v3, v4 for subsequent vandalism) and your sig on their user talk page. The shorter answer is 'see WP:UTM'. (WP:UTM, which lists all the warnings you can give, is worth a read, although don't try to memorise the whole thing! It's often useful to use templates like {{subst:uw-t1}} for earlier warnings if there's any chance that the 'vandalism' could be a test rather than real vandalism, for instance.)
If an article you've added is incomplete, make sure there's enough information there to show that the subject is notable, and preferably enough sources to verify what you've written. You can use {{stub}} at the bottom of the article to show that it's incomplete and needs expanding, or {{sect-stub}} as the text of a section if you haven't written that section but have written the rest of the article.
The Featured Article and Good Article processes are somewhat different. See WP:WIAFA and WP:WIAGA respectively for more information about what is considered a Featured and/or Good article; see WP:FAC and WP:GAC respectively for information about how to nominate an article for one or the other of the standatds.
The centralised information about templates is at Help:Template. Wikipedia:Transclusion and Wikipedia:Substitution explain the two ways of using templates; Wikipedia:Template messages is the starting point for trying to find a specific template. m:Help:ParserFunctions and Help:Magic words explain the rest of advanced template syntax that isn't explained in Help:Template, if you feel like writing your own advanced templates.
Here's a bonus answer that you didn't ask for, as well: you can create a numbered list by starting each entry in the list with the # character (you can't break to the next line inside a list entry, unfortunately).

Hope that helps! --ais523 10:20, 2 November 2007 (U T C)

Chemist biographies

Hi, I saw that you were complaining that Stone has already written every chemist biography! ;-) If you want to find some that haven't been created yet, you can look at the redlinks in the articles listed at Category:Chemistry awards for ideas. Cheers, Itub 10:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It is great to have help with the scientsist biographys. You can have a look on some of my creations, sometimes I need some help with my phrases and the sbelling is alwais var fron goot. Theodor Zincke, Heinz Gerischer, George Ernest Gibson, Eduard Zintl Karl von Auwers, Rolf Huisgen, Otto Folin, Otto Ruff, Sergey Reformatsky, Peter Griess, Traugott Sandmeyer and Ludwig Gattermann. --Stone 11:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: (User talk:ais523) A request

I've tagged the categories in question for deletion. Normally, category splits and moves would be done via the categories for discussion process; I don't think there's anything wrong with your bold splits and merges, but I've tagged them so that a second administrator will take a look and see if speedying them is appropriate. --ais523 11:19, 4 November 2007 (U T C)

Reply

Thanks a lot! Kind of you to have noticed. As for what you can do to help, there's still lots to do... The main problem with the lists is that most of the names don't have any references to verify the fact that they went to Oxford at all, or the college / years they were there. It's a boring job (as I found out) but if it's worked on gradually the lists will get there eventually. You might be interested in the Oxford University Wikiproject, if you haven't seen it already (although you're a member of a few projects already, I see, and I wouldn't want you to get burned out!). Regards, and happy editing! Bencherlite ^Talk 13:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, referencing University of Oxford is probably more of a priority at the moment, as it's being considered for Good Article status and needs more refs to help pass. Bencherlite ^Talk 15:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: (User talk:ais523) Numbered list

A numbered list starts with the hash character on every line.
This is an example, which you can see by editing this section
The reason it didn't work in your sandbox is that you were trying to put the list inside a table; lists are separate from tables. (You don't need a table to write a list, and you can't continue a list from one table cell to the next.)
Hope that helps! --ais523 09:19, 5 November 2007 (U T C)

Removal of Category: Jewish American scientists

What's the wholesale removal of the category Jewish American scientists from individual articles? The category is still under discussion.--Loodog 17:38, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I noticed you removed the category Jewish American scientists from the Samuel A. Goldblith article. Would you please explain why you did that because Goldblith is exactly that? Chris 21:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Be carefull! ethnics religious and nationality are sharppool and most of the people get eaten up by the ignorrant sharks from both sides! Saw it with Copernikus, Pregel and others. To go there and change something, even in good faith, makes them hit you hard unfair and try to get rid of you!--Stone 21:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

My concern is not out of bigotry or bias. I am just curious why he deleted the category. That is all. Chris 21:31, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you are one of the few which are capable to discuss, and that's good. I think the jewish scientist might be a category to keep, but the ethnic and religious beliefs normally have no influence and should be mentioned only if the person was influenced by the fact. For example this is true for all the jews which where forced to leave Germany.--Stone 12:53, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Please be advised that your mass deletion of Category:Jewish American scientists tags from nearly two hundred articles constitutes vandalism. I have already reverted your edit of Lynn Margulis, but I have no intention of wasting my time undoing all the rest of them.

If you do not wish to be reported to WP:ANI, please see to it that all of your other category deletions are reverted in the next 24 hours. The simplest way for you to do this is to go back through your User contributions, click on the (hist) link, then click on the (undo) link for your edit and save that page -- but only if there have been no other edits to that section since the edit which deleted the category. (In that event, you will need to restore the category manually.) Cgingold 12:25, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello, Masterpiece2000. I guess I have succeeded in getting your attention. I am glad that you have acknowledged your mistake, and I accept your explanation that it was because you are still relatively new to Wikipedia. However, you still need to restore all of the deleted categories ASAP. This is not contingent upon the outcome of the CfD discussion for Category:Jewish American scientists. The sooner you get started, the easier it will be for you to take care of this -- because the longer you wait, the greater the likelihood that another editor will make a change to the same section, which would prevent you from being able to use the simple "(undo)" method that I explained above. As for the warning I posted above, there is no reason for concern about that unless you insist on not reverting your edits. Everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to demonstrate that you learned from your mistake and cleaned up the mess. Okay? Cgingold 12:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern on this, but if this category is part of the CfD, then please let the discussion progress before we do any mass category deletion. Chris 13:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

They are right, It's considered very bad form to mess with the contents of a category while a discussion is underway. If there is a consensus to delete then there are scripts which will take care of all that. -- Prove It ^(talk) 14:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that ... sorry for my lateness in getting back to you, it's early in the morning where I live and I just got up... -- Prove It ^(talk) —Preceding comment was added at 14:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as you've cleared up the problem, I don't see any real harm in removing the warning itself -- I assume that's what you're concerned about. But the discussion should remain, that's just standard for every user's talk page. Like I said, we all make mistakes, and I thank you for taking responsibility and cleaning up the mess. Regards, Cgingold 15:46, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Now, everything is alright. Masterpiece2000 09:26, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply

Well, I would be glad to tell you my opinion-but please give me 1-2 days for doing so, as it probably would be a long answer and for now I'm abit occupied with the 'real world'. Cheers--Gilisa 09:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, well, I did my best, almost :) Cheers--Gilisa (talk) 09:08, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: Vandalism

Thanks for letting me know! However, if you come across vandalism in the future, it's best just to warn the user in question yourself. Add {{subst:uw-t1}} (for vandalism that could be a test) or {{subst:uw-v1}} (for vandalism that's obviously malicious) and your signature to the Talk page of the user in question, to warn them. You can change the 1 to 2, 3, or 4 for repeat offenders; if a user continues vandalising after that, report them to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV) and an administrator will deal with the situation. See Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism for more information. --ais523 17:57, 9 November 2007 (U T C)

Re:Featured articles

Yep - if you have time, please look over the article and comment in the FAC discussion. The FAC procedure is described at the top of WP:FAC page; basically you stick a template at the top of an article create a subpage with the nomination and add it to the list at WP:FAC page. Do note that it's a very good idea to have an article pass the WP:GAC review before going for FAC.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 13:58, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey Rama

86.137.61.15 00:20, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I am not Rama's Arrow. But I think he was a very good Wikipedian. Masterpiece2000 09:19, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Your question

In response to your question, Rama's Arrow was a respected contributor and administrator here for a long time. He wrote, as you observed, a number of excellent. He left Wikipedia a few months ago as the result of a dispute, the details of which are really not important now. I would rather think less about why he left and instead hope that maybe he will return contributing sometime soon. Regards, Newyorkbrad 05:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: (User talk:ais523) Strange!

It's due to a change in the software; there is now a new default signature. See bugzilla:11913 for the software report. I'm planning to write about this in the Wikipedia Signpost sometime soon, by the way. --ais523 10:42, 19 November 2007 (U T C)

Re: Friendship

Well, if friendships can be on wikipedia, and here I must add that I believe it can-than we are friends :) Best--Gilisa (talk) 11:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC) BTW-are you a Brazilian?

Re: Technical knowledge

Yes, I'm from the UK. The prohibition on social networking on Wikipedia itself is so that it stays at its original purpose of being an encyclopedia. There are a few people who confuse it with websites like MySpace, which is why the rule against social networking (WP:NOT#MYSPACE) exists. Socialising with people outside Wikipedia is, of course, allowed, even with other Wikipedia users; there's Special:Emailuser/USERNAME which you can use to contact people by email, for instance, and some users use Internet Relay Chat for that purpose.

As for my technical knowledge: I picked much of that up from reading Help pages and other similar documentation orignally. I subscribe to the developer's mailing list and bug tracker (although I'm not a developer myself), so I have a good view of what's possible in the software and what changes are being made (and I write about these changes in the Signpost so that other users get information about these as well). I have done a lot of programming in the past, which helps as well.

As for understanding the inner workings, there's both the technical side of things (how to do things like complicated markup or set up systems like CAT:AFD, for instance), and the policy/community side (how to run for adminship, make a proposal, or join in community discussion, for instance). You mention RfA; there is no minimum requirement to comment there, although to '!vote' (comment in the Support/Oppose/Neutral sections with a number), you need to have been here for long enough that the bureaucrats can be reasonably certain that you aren't just someone else trying to double-vote (you easily meet this standard). You can voice your opinion on whether or not another user can become an administrator; different people have different criteria for this, but mostly it depends on whether you can trust the user in question to not mess up the wiki through either malice or ignorance. (There's very little a non-admin user can do to seriously mess things up, and such problems are usually easy to reverse; that's the way that wikis are designed to work. Admins can do a lot more to cause problems - it's generally bad form to say exactly what due to the chance that a potential malicious admin may read this conversation - so it's important to trust them.) As well as the chance of seriously messing up, there's also the problem that an admin bad at judging consensus or whether to take actions can cause problems over a period of time due to making many bad decisions. RfA contributors normally try to judge whether someone should be an admin or not based on their contributions and logs, and personal interactions with the candidate; there are a whole lot of useful links for evaluating each candidate given on the RfA itself (so you can just look at someone's logs, or their contributions, or check to see if they've been reported for 3RR, just by following those links; note that the 'deleted' link won't work for non-admin users for security reasons). As examples: Ais523 (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi); Masterpiece2000 (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi).

The Village Pump is a set of discussion boards designed for general community discussion about various things, in situations where input from all interested users is wanted, or to ask certain questions. The policy and proposals sections are the main discussion sections where users can propose changes to policy and to other aspects of Wikipedia; the proposals range from being very minor to wide-ranging (for instance, here is a proposal that ended up in a recent software change, which you asked me about earlier). The other section that I look at is the technical section, which is a good place to ask technical questions that are too hard for the Help Desk (for instance, 'can someone tell me if it's possible to do this particular tricky thing with this sort of markup'); quite a few devs read that section (although maybe not regularly), and if you ask a question there that needs a dev to answer, there's a reasonable chance that you'll get a reply.

If you're interested in reading the policies in full (note that you don't have to, because using common-sense is unlikely to cause you to come into conflict with them in a major way), see the list of policies.

I hope that helps; feel free to ask me more questions (or ask in other venues) if you have any. Note that I'm a bit busy in Real Life at the moment, though, so I may not be able to get back to you immediately. --ais523 13:54, 20 November 2007 (U T C)

Archaea article

Looks very good. I fiddled a bit and formatted the references, added a few categories and a template. Good work. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Manuel Antonio Sanclemente

Sure... I'm a bit preoccupied right now but I'll see what I can do probably late on Sunday (CST). If I can't help, there are plenty of native Spanish speakers here too. :-) Grand master ka 07:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, maybe not today, but soon. Grand master ka 21:42, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Aeropyrum pernix for Did you know

Thanks for nominating Aeropyrum pernix for Did you know. Unfortunately it doesn't meet the length requirements; the body text of articles, not including references or infoboxes, must be at least 1500 characters long, this article is only 1200. It would be great if you could expand the article further!

Thanks for your contributions,

Verisimilus T 13:44, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I will expand the article. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 04:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks very much. I can't say for sure as I don't make the final decision, but can see no reason that it should not be accepted once it reaches a suitable length! Obviously, the more quality content the page has, the better its chances. Cheers, Verisimilus T 09:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

A type strain is like a reference strain from which the characteristics of a species are defined. If somebody wanted to compare another archaea with A. pernix directly, they would get the type strain from this institute and use it as their standard. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Polish Biographical Dictionary

Have you read this article? All I know is in there.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 17:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

No. Now I will read it. Thank you for the information. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 02:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

RE:Hello Siva!

Hello! Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. No, I am not an admin. I went through 5 RfAs and all of them were a failure. As a result of this, I do not plan to run for adminship for a long long time! --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 03:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: (User talk:ais523) Similar name

The software doesn't allow names that are too similar to other existing usernames to be created without administrator attention (and as it happens, this is one of the administrator jobs that I do most often); this code hasn't been around forever, though. Generally speaking, a username is rejected as 'confusing' (see WP:USERNAME) if it's too similar to that of an active user (there are a lot of inactive users around, and being similar to them is less of a problem). If you're worried that someone else may create a particular account username that's similar to yours, you can make a 'doppelganger' account to prevent anyone using that similar name: go to Special:Userlogin while logged in yourself, click on the link to create an account, create that account, then log back into your main account and put {{doppelganger|your username}} on its userpage. (When trying this, it may fail with a warning that it's too similar to another name and suggesting that you go to Wikipedia:Request an account; in this case, you can't create the account with admin help, but there's no point in asking for such help because nobody else can create the account either.) Hope that helps! --ais523 09:26, 26 November 2007 (U T C)

Redirecting talk pages is a reasonably common thing to do; redirecting userpages is less common because it can be confusing for new users trying to communicate with you, although some people do it anyway. --ais523 14:23, 26 November 2007 (U T C)

Adhesion plaque

Hi Masterpiece,

I took a look at the article. The thing is that an adhesion plaque is really just another name for a focal adhesion. I think that you are probably going to want to redirect adhesion plaque to focal adhesion. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.--DO11.10 (talk) 23:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

New users

If a user has made contributions and has not yet been welcomed, you can welcome them with {{subst:welcome}} ~~~~ on their talk page, or with a different template in Category:Welcome templates if you prefer a different style of message or to combine a specific warning with the welcome message. (The message doesn't make that much sense in the context of a user with no contributions.) A log of new users is available at Special:Log/newusers, and of contributions by new users at Special:Contributions/newbies. Hope that helps! --ais523 11:32, 28 November 2007 (U T C)

RE:Message from Masterpiece2000

Well, thank you for your kind words of encouragement. Yes, I agree with you that my 5th nomination was a bit too soon. However, I have learned from this and I feel that it is time to move on. Currently, the desire to become an admin is not that strong anymore because of the numerous failures. Anyway, thanks for your kind words. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 03:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

The Meta-Wiki is for central coordination across the different projects (such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.) and different language versions of the projects. See m:Special:Contributions/ais523 for what I've done on Meta (notice the m: at the start, which is what's used for links to Meta); most of my edits there are changing the Help namespace. (Most Help pages here are copied or 'transwikied' from Meta, so if you want to edit them, you need to change the Meta version rather than the local version or your changes will be overwritten with the next update.) It's also used to participate in Wikimedia-wide discussions, for instance steward elections, and discussions about whether to start a new project or close an existing project. There are also some requests that have to be made at Meta; the best known is m:RFP, which is where changes to user rights that a bureaucrat can't manage are made (such as a desysopping); however, consensus has to be gained here on the English Wikipedia first before making the request at Meta, except for a user requesting that their own rights be removed (e.g. resigning from adminship). If you want to help out, maintaining the Help pages is one useful thing to do; participating in discussions (if and when they happen; checking Meta's recent changes is a good way to see which discussions are active) is another. Generally speaking, you won't need to use Meta unless something Wikimedia-wide happens that you want to get involved in, you want to edit help pages, or something needs to be done that's beyond the technical permissions level of bureaucrats here on the English Wikipedia. Hope that helps! --ais523 12:27, 2 December 2007 (U T C)

Summit Middle School (Coquitlam) - article overhauled, invitation to revisit AfD discussion

Greetings! I noticed that you participated in the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Summit Middle School (Coquitlam). Currently, you are the only voice on the delete side of the argument; I have changed position, since the article has been rewritten and properly draws on reliable sources, and the nominator has also withdrawn his nomination. May I humbly ask you to look over the article and see if your concerns are addressed? If so, and if you feel the article should be kept, the discussion can be closed with a speedy keep. If you still think the article should be deleted and have specific concerns about it, you can raise them, so that the group as a whole can see if they can be addressed. Thank you. —C.Fred (talk) 16:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

O Rly?

Did I detect some sarcasm, haha! I would say that about 3% of Californians are cool, and I'm not even willing to put myself in that category. I live in Orange County, so I don't see that many cool people. I see a lot of plastic surgery, and little dogs in purses, but that's about it. I would bet that your hometown contains people of a much higher caliber, and I think that's much cooler that surfing and hanging out at Starbucks ad nauseum. Cheers! the_undertow ^talk 04:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Questions regarding RfA

May I ask why you edited someone elses' comment at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/The Transhumanist 3? There are a number of reasons why users don't bold the oppose in their comments (from traditionalism to protesting vote-counting to mere personal preference), and it is often considered common courtesy that others don't change it. I was just wondering if there was a good explanation for it. Cheers, Daniel 05:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I also came here for a questions regarding that same RfA, although mine is less important than Daniel's: In your oppose vote, you wrote "I also didn't like his answer to question 10 (Question from Pedro)." What about that answer did you not like? I'm asking because I couldn't think of a better answer myself. — Sebastian 17:54, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply on my talk page - I replied there. — Sebastian 08:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

thank you

Thank you for your note. I would certainly welcome your help in making Intelligence Services Act (South Africa) a little better - wanna see something of mine on the main page :) Shiva Evolved (talk) 04:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Call me nosy Ned

I had a little poke through your contributions, and thanks for making so many needed, constructive edits. Can I make one suggestion? That would be to be a little more clear in your edit summaries, so others don't have to guess what the change is. I know edit summaries are a pain, and are sometimes longer than the change itself, but they do help other editors get a clear picture of what is happening with an article. Thanks. Jeffpw (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: (User talk:ais523) Admins

First, there is no technical reason why administrators can't perform erratic or bad-faith actions; I could send the commands to block an established user or delete an important article and the software would do it. However, all administrator actions are reversible; in the case of a bad-faith action, another administrator would likely revert the action very quickly. As an extreme example, see the Main Page's deletion log, especially April 2007 and later; around that time, several administrator accounts were hacked into (and security has been improved since), and some of them were used to delete the Main Page (the other deletions there, apart from very early ones as the Main Page was being created/updated, were either accidental or other administrators cleaning up the mess from Main Page deletions).

Because administrator actions are overturned so easily (even deletions; an administrator can just undelete the history to restore it to the state before deletion; such requests are made at WP:DRV except in emergencies), that's one important safeguard. If an administrator seems to be acting eratically or not giving reasons, they're often asked to explain their actions at the admins' incident noticeboard (which is also often used for other purposes). In emergencies, someone will contact a steward to have an admin's priveliges removed (during the spate of admin hackings, people got quite efficient at this). At other times, discussion on an admin actions might happen on an admin conduct RFC or an arbitration case; except in obvious cases (where a steward will remove someone's admin rights), only arbitrators can cause an administrator to lose their abilities (it's also possible for an administrator to resign from adminship, and administrators have in the past sometimes been persuaded to do so; there's also CAT:AOR, a list of administrators who offer to resign and take a new RfA if enough people dispute their actions).

As for your third question, there's a page Special:Undelete and a subpage of it for each deleted article, which only admins can see (non-admins get an error if they try to follow the link). It's basically the 'page history' view, but it shows deleted revisions of pages rather than non-deleted revisions of pages. (It's revisions, or versions, of a page, that are deleted, rather than the page itself, but by far the most usual thing to do is to just delete the entire page when it needs to be deleted. For technical reasons, deleting only some revisions of a page involves deleting it, then undeleting all the revisions that didn't need deleting.) It also has options allowing admins to undelete some or all of the revisions of the page.

Oversights and developers are the only users who can permanently delete a revision so as to stop it showing even to administrators; oversights generally restrict themselves to deleting permanently things like private personal information, whereas developers occasionally clean out some very old deleted pages (but haven't dared to do this in a while).

Hope that helps; if you have more questions, feel free to ask! --ais523 09:56, 7 December 2007 (U T C)

There are actually even more user groups than you might expect. At the bottom end are some general-purpose ones: there's a group known only as '*' which includes everyone, and gives everyone the right to do things like read and edit pages (blocking overrides the ability to edit), then 'user' which allows you to have a watchlist and userpage, and other similar privileges; 'autoconfirmed', for users who have had an account for at 4 days, allows a user to move pages, edit semiprotected pages, and mark new pages created by other users as patrolled; and 'emailconfirmed' allows a user to send and receive emails. (You are in all 4 of these groups). In terms of other groups available: you already know about administrators and bureaucrats. Stewards are like super-bureaucrats; they can change anyone's rights to anything on any project (so for instance, they are the only people who can remove adminship from someone; they also do much cross-wiki spam fighting because they can make themselves into administrators in any language version easily.) Developers are the people who write the code and maintain the servers; shell-access developers (a subset of developers) can do anything at all, because they can modify the database directly, and don't even need a user account to do so. The other groups are separate from the main sequence, only allow users to do one thing, and are given case-by-case to trusted users (normally ArbCom members); oversights can delete edits so thoroughly that not even adminstrators can see them or undelete them; checkusers can find out what somebody's IP is even if they have a username; boardvotes can view the votes cast in Board elections (so as to be able to remove double-voting); import users can copy page history from other wikis; and bots' edits don't show up in Recent Changes. (The last permission, 'bot', is never given to someone's main account because edits showing up in Recent Changes are good for accountability; normally it's given to accounts that make only automated edits that don't need checking. Compare my bot Bot523's contributions to my contributions, for instance.) Jimbo Wales has a permission 'founder' as well, but as far as I know it doesn't do anything. You can see Special:Listusers to find a list of users with certain permissions here on the English Wikipedia; some of the results may be slightly misleading , though (for instance, there are no stewards here because steward powers only work from Meta).

As for admin accounts deleting the Main Page: at least twice it was because someone guessed an admin's password. (This is why the warnings about password strength were added to the login screen, and also why it puts up a CAPTCHA for subsequent password attempts if you mistype your password; it's to prevent people trying lots of passwords in quick succession.) Once it was because a vandal managed to maintain a trusted username for long enough to persuade the community to grant them admin powers. I'm not quite sure what happened the other times (although there was one occasion on which an admin accidentally deleted the Main Page rather than undeleting it while there was a rogue admin around). The incidents ended with tougher security rules, more logging of password breaking attempts, and developers blocking everyone whose password was the same as their username; for ages, one of the questions that was almost guaranteed to be asked at RfA was "Do you have a secure password?". If you want further information, here's the incident report for the first time it happened; I haven't found the more recent reports in a quick search, but they do exist somewhere in the WP:ANI archives. --ais523 13:05, 7 December 2007 (U T C)

Your note

Hello, and thanks for your note. English is my first language and functionally my only, in spite of the many years I spent studying Latin. I have great admiration for people who are bilingual or multilingual. I hope that you can locate a good and experienced admin coach. You are certainly welcome to ask me if you encounter a problem or a situation you don't understand. I will help if I am able. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:21, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I cannot speak in Latin. That's my point above. In spite of my studies, English is functionally my only language. I don't have time to routinely help you with grammar and spelling checks, but I could certainly help out with specific questions or on occasion. Your usage seems fluent, so I would not expect you would have significant problems with this. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Saw your question

About WP:ARBCOM. I looked through your contributions, and it seems that you are eligible to vote. If I remember correctly, anyone with more than 150 mainspace edits before Dec. 1st is eligible to vote. Look at the arbcom election page for more information, and if you need help feel free to message me. Jeffpw (talk) 13:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Just so you know, Jeff has a typo up there; You need 150 mainspace edits by Nov 1, which you do. There is more information here. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Not a typo, Rjd0060, just early onset Alzheimer's. :-s Jeffpw (talk) 15:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I am not an admin, and I have no wish to be one. The elections are not held every month, but approximately once a year. Thanks for the compliment--you're pretty cool yourself! Jeffpw (talk) 12:07, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Frome WP:ARBCOM: Arbitrators serve three-year terms on a rotating schedule, such that a "tranche" of five positions is up for reappointment each year. In case of early departures, new Arbitrators are appointed for the balance of the unexpired terms. As to how many votes they need, I cannot give you a precise answer. I know for Admins, there needs to be approximately a 70% support ratio, and for bureaucrats it is approx 80%. I would imagine that it is similar for arbcom. Jeffpw (talk) 12:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

RfA questions

Hi, thanks for your message. I am guessing that English may not be your first language? You do ask some interesting questions! To start, yes, I try to help other users all the time. If you ever have questions, please ask. :) As for my RfA, you are right that several people are opposing my adminship. They each have different reasons. I can go into more detail, but I would have to write a very long message! Do you ever use IMs, like AIM or Google Talk? It might be easier to go into more detail if we spoke directly, rather than trying to talk on-wiki. You can also send me an email if you want: elonka@aol.com . Best, --El on ka 19:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

UCFD

Hi Masterpiece,

Thanks for the support. I guess it's no surprise that WP:UCFD is causing confusion -- there aren't really any instructions after all! The explanation at WP:CFD should help, though there are of course some difference. Just copy the template code from there, and paste it at the top of the current discussions on UCFD. I haven't used UCFD that much so don't take my word as expertise, but I'm pretty certain that's accurate. If you'd rather not mess with templates you can always copy and edit the code from another nomination -- just be sure to keep in mind the different formats for deletion/renaming/etc.

Best,

— xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Erm....

Please read our canvassing policy to see why you shouldn't target a group of users when you propose something. I understand your logic, but it is not a good idea. Take care. Jeffpw (talk) 06:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It was just a friendly notice. The messages were neutral and transparent. Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 06:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec)Actually, you sent what looks like an individual message to a select group of users whom you know have an interest in this discussion. It is not transparent. And you sent it at least 49 times. This is clearly discouraged by the policy and I would hope you stop now. Jeffpw (talk) 06:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

You sent the messages to a lot of talk pages, which, even though may appear to be helpful by informing administrators of the debate, really wasn't. If you need to get administrators' attention about something administrator-related (in this case, the debate), leave a notice at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. There, all who want to see it, will see it and you won't have to go to all the trouble of sending out all the messages and receiving nothing back other than looks from grump administrators. Spebi 06:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding in this matter, and I realise that you did not act in bad faith, rather, that you acted in good faith :) I've reverted your messages, and hopefully next time you'll know what to do in future situations of requiring administrator attention. Thanks, Spebi 06:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I, too, know that you are a new user, learning and also being bold. Everyone makes mistakes, myself included. No hard feelings on my part, and if you ever need a hand, please feel free to come to me. Jeffpw (talk) 08:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your kind message. Much appreciated, friend! Regards, Shahid • ^Talk2me 14:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Image question

You want Wikipedia:Images for the official line. Here are what I consider to be the important parts.

The physical part of putting an image in an article is relatively simple:

Click on the Upload file link to the left, fill out the form, and you will end up creating a file called something like Image:Abominable Snowman.jpg. Put the license (see below) in the description, and remember the name of the file.
Go to the article, and put the following at the top of the article:

[[Image:Abominable Snowman.jpg|right|thumb|The Abominable Snowman, in Walla Walla, on [[February 31]], [[2008]].]]

Voila.

There are fancier tricks, such image sizing, and uploading the image to the Wikimedia Commons, where other Wikipedias can use it too, but those are the two basic steps.

However the tough part is copyright licensing. The Wikipedia is committed to making its content editable and reusable by everyone. Most images you find on the Web have at least an implied copyright - the owner, who is usually the photographer, gets to allow or forbid others from using their photo. So most images can't be used on Wikipedia, unless they are under a free license that allows reuse and modification by anyone. This usually boils down to one the following three licenses:

Public domain - a picture that anyone can use, with no restrictions. This is usually either very old artwork, or photos taken by an employee of the US federal government.
Creative Commons licenses Attribution or Share-Alike - there are many photos on Flickr like that. Attribution means that anyone can use it as long as they give the original owner credit ("Photo taken by Joe Schmoe of SomeCompany on February 31, 2008."). Share-Alike means Attribution, plus the work that the image gets reused in also has to be similarly reusable itself (that's called a "viral" license, since it spreads to anything that uses it).
Gnu Free Documentation License - which only the Wikipedia really uses for photos. It's a lot like Creative Commons Share-Alike, and there's a movement to combine the two.

There are a few others, but those are the most common. The basic way we get a free reasonably modern photo for an article, if we aren't lucky enough to find one already freely licensed on a government website or Flickr, is by asking someone if they can freely license a photo. Note that this isn't as simple as asking "Can we use this on Wikipedia?", we have to ask "Can you license this so anyone can use it, as long as they give you credit?", because of the reuse thing. User:Videmus Omnia/Requesting free content is a detailed description of how to ask, from someone who is very good at it. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your vote on my RfA

Thank you for participating in my RfA, which passed with a vote of 41/0/1.

Please accept a slice of panettone as an expression of my gratitude. Feel free to help yourself to some chocolate zabaglione as well.

I am humbled by the trust placed in me to use the tools wisely.

Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 21:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Re:Number of edits

I've just discovered this, don't know if you've seen it before: User:Bryan/List of users by pages created. Chubbles (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It hasn't been updated since November 5. It might be worth asking Bryan if he could have it moved to mainspace (like WP:WBE) so that people who care will automatically update it every once in a while. Chubbles (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome to do so. Chubbles (talk) 02:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, in order to do so, he has to make an official request; he might not want to, or he might have already tried and been denied. I'm not sure, but you might first want to ask if he's ever considered it before. Chubbles (talk) 03:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Samuel Cony

Well, thank you, and great work on the article! Biruitorul (talk) 03:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Evidently I voted twice for the same canidate

I certainly did not do it on purpose but that's the way things go. It is not a big deal to me.: Albion moonlight (talk) 10:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

He voted 3 times for NYB is one problem. Also if you look at milestone you will see that his 150th edit in namespace (0) was on 27 Nov. Hope this clears it up. Woody (talk) 10:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Re Great comment!

Hello FayssalF! How are you? Your reply on Wikipedia:User categories for discussion was simply great. You said: "all admins (be them 'rouge' or not) are subject to the same rules which apply to all. If an admin abuses h/er powers s/he would simply be desysopped." I totally agree with you. If we can have more admins like you, Wikipedia will be a better place. Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 03:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment Masterpiece2000. I hope you are enjoying your time editing Wikipedia. Regards. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 16:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)