User talk:Tarquin/Archive 5

Hi, can I ask, why you removed the link from the name Sophie on theBFG page? http://www.sophie-dahl.com/hello.htm Spt 12:58 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Could you make me an administrator? So far I've been told to wait for Ed Poor. 172

I'm not a developer, so sorry, I can't. -- Tarquin 20:53 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree, Tarquin, but you agree with what? With Cunc's qustion? Or with my response to it (on his talk page and in Talk:Communist state Tannin 09:43 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Well, my thoughts are pretty much this:

it's daft having two articles which seem to be on the same thing
I don't know enough about the subject to know whether:

there should be two articles under these two names, but the content needs reworking
there should only be one article

Fred's stuff reads like anti-commie propaganda
not sure why Cunc leapt in to his defense like he did
having two articles only feeds Fred's MPOV plan, and I don't want wikipedia to get infected with this meme
in short, I should probably stay away from it, as I don't have sufficient knowledge in the field.
we could water down Fred's stuff by saying "since there have been only n communist states so far, and most of them suffered from prior problems, the following generalizations are just that, and from a very poor sample space"

-- Tarquin 12:55 May 10, 2003 (UTC) oh and PS: I trust your judgement in this matter :-)

Yea. Sigh. It could be done in one. Maybe. But if so, only by a group of people working together with goodwill and without a political barrow to push. The trouble with Fred's stuff is that it's mostly right (barring exaggerations) but ... well, let me put it this way: I watched a football match on TV just now. My side scored 16 goals and I remember every one of them. So far as I recall, the other side scored nothing. So how come the scorebook says that we only won by 5 points? (5/6th of an Aussie rules goal) (Because I ignored all their good plays, of course, as a good Collingwood supporter should.)

It's that sort of 'truth' that he writes, and the thought of the time it would take me, you, and 17 others to balance it up by deleting exxagerations, adding qualifications, and rounding the thing into a coherent whole terrifies me. I just don't have the time for that stuff. If I thought it was just a matter of doing it once, sure. But, allowing for reversions, sabotage, and assorted kinky distractions, I'd lose at least a solid week of good editing time.

Right now I'm averaging two good, solid new fauna entries a day, and the only time they ever get modified is when I get something horribly wrong, or sometimes when I sing out for some help. What would I rather have? One article about the things that Fred hates so passionately and 14 good new fauna entries? Or no new fauna entries, and a protracted edit war over an article that would otherwise be so biased that no-one would take it seriously anyway?

I write very slowly, Tarquin, and for every word I write I read quite a few hundred, checking as I go. (My local bookseller loves me - and so he should, the amount I spend there!) I really don't have the moral courage to take on someone with opinions ten times larger than his factual knowledge. (This sticks out like dog's balls: any historian would spot it in 10 seconds flat.) Perhaps I should, but to hell with it. Besides, fauna is more important.

Best -- Tannin

I understand your position entirely. :-) Fauna is more important. -- Tarquin 17:06 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin, look at the Cow page. There is a picture, not a diagram. JohnQ

sure. it's a lovely cow. the cow goes moooooooo!!!! your point? -- Tarquin 17:06 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Some people would have said this is a mooo point. I mean, to be neutral, the best is to think how we produce common articles. Of course we can put a warning text, and I think this is a good thing. But the photograph is the best! JohnQ

my cat's name is mittens -- Tarquin

At least, you don't loose your sense of humor. Good! I like this kind of attitude. ;-)

llort a era uoy

How old are you? (MaryMary alias JohnQ)

You first, kid. I'm certainly more mature than you. -- Tarquin 08:45 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

lol. Braggart!

Faut te calmer! C un lieu de réflexion et de concertation. JE ne suis pas sur que cela soit la place pour des "JE vais me le payer ce petit connard", vraiment. Et encore une fois, mon but n'a rien a voir avec mettre de la pornographie dans ce site, certainement pas. Marymary 09:58 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

calm is for the weak. -- t

no calm is for the strong -- a (je suis pas toujours strong)

Salut, Tarquin
Sincèrement, je crois que ce gus, JohnQ aux multiples avatars, fait perdre beaucoup d'énergie à trop de monde. Il a ouvert un débat, on peut débattre, mais pas avec lui ;D
Je suis s$ur que le Q de JohnQ est là pour dire "cul" en français ! car il cause français, le bougre ; je ne suis pas assez calé pour comparer ses écrits en anglais et en français pour vérifier si c'est la même personne, je deviens parano, j'ai l'impression qu'il agit avec un pote ;-(
Allez, bonne continuation
Alvaro 22:18 May 11, 2003 (UTC) s/$/û/g ;D Alvaro

John c'est Jean... Jean Q... Jean Cul etc....

Ericd 22:21 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin, I don't understand your interlanguage hack you described on the wiktech list and then linked to on the Wikipedia:WikiMoney page. Could you describe it to be in more detail? LittleDan

Sure. Suppose we have a set of pages to link together on en, fr, eo, de and es. Each of those 5 pages needs a different list of links:

en needs: fr, eo, de and es
fr needs: en, eo, de and es

So if you have all 5 pages open, you need to do a LOT of copying and pasting. The most efficient way is to put together a list of all 5 page links, and paste it to each page. Then delete the "self-link".

My idea is this: simply have the system ignore the self-link. So you paste the same thing onto each page:

en, fr, eo, de, es

Much less work :-) It's only meant to be a temporary solution until we get some sort of form system running. But since that may not be for a while, this seems to me to be a quick hack that wouldn't take much to implement.

Specifically, the system ignores any link of the form [[xx:anything]], where xx is the language code of the ''current wikipedia''. So on the English wikipedia, [[en:foo]] has no effect, it's just ignored. -- Tarquin 19:34 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

That alone would help out a lot - it is a pain in the arse to make the separate lists. --mav

go tell the dev list, mav! I've had zero feedback ion the idea apart from Anthere saying it was a good idea. -- Tarquin 19:42 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing Hull for me! I moved it with exactly that intention, then somehow forgot that I was working on it. Andre Engels 08:34 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the redirect on AOC. I think I might have left the database in an inconsistent state by clicking the move button twice, but it looks like it's fixed now. Thanks, Wnissen 22:51 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Argl, j'avais pavu que tu passais par là ; j'ai mis tout ça au clair, avec l'orthographe correcte : Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée ; j'ai modifié ttes (!) les pages de redirection, ainsi que les pages avec les entrées fautives ; cependant, il y a un lien sur lequel je dubite et m'interroge : TLA, qui cause d'informatique ! (cf. ci-dessous)
Alvaro 00:15 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée

(List of links)

The following pages link to here:

   * Appelation d'Origine Contrôlée (redirect page)
   * AOC (redirect page)
         o Brie cheese
         o Saint-Nectaire cheese
         o Wikipedia:WikiProject Cheeses

         o Roquefort cheese
         o TLA
         o Burgundy
         o User talk:Tarquin 
   * Appelation d'Origine Controlée (redirect page)

bof. j'y comprends rien a TLA. -- t

Thanks for the edits on the music therapy article that I started -- very good edit!

~eeka (Triangular)

you're welcome! -- t

I removed the redirect from Binswanger's disease and replaced it with a brief description and a link to Multi-infarct dementia. See also Talk:Binswanger's disease. Jfitzg

Hi Tarquin, I just tried to mail you to say your message got through to the list, but I got an "undeliverable" message back. Let me know if you need more detailed info. Regards, -- sannse 15:42 17 May 2003 (UTC)

thanks! but weird.... I still get the messages from the list. confusion abounds .. -- Tarquin 15:51 17 May 2003 (UTC)

talk to user talk:TheStick

Tarquin, if you are around, would you please give your advice on José Bové

Otherwise, I am gonna move absolutely EVERY disputed article in the meta space, and it is gonna be messy. Your advice ?

Re SI prefix: The "new material", as you call it, was at prefix, together with a request to merge it with SI prefix. KF 08:36 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin, I'm no maths guru, but I confess to some suspicion of User:Stupidmoron's contributions so soon after the other nonsense, now deleted. Mind running an eye over them? Tannin 13:42 20 May 2003 (UTC)

physics rather than maths. I'm not sure, best ask TOby or Axel. -- Tarquin 16:24 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Axel says he's OK. Good! We need more quality contributors. Thanks Tarquin. Tannin

In magnitude you said "the modulus of -5 is 5". What do you understand is the meaning of "modulus"? I know two conflicting mathematics definitions of the word: the absolute value (as here), and to divide and take the remainder ("%" in C) in modular arithmetic. Do you know which is correct, or are they related in some way? CGS 16:14 21 May 2003 (UTC).

I caught you on Village Pump, so you can ignore this. CGS 16:18 21 May 2003 (UTC).

You mention you are a "sloppy typist" (you didn't say if it was slow/painful or not, btw) -- you might like speech recognition (no typos, just misrecognitions). Try IBM Via Voice or Dragon Naturally Speaking (I use the latter). With some practice, it's really nice and fast (but you /do/ need practice).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoiceGroup is a good place if you decide to give it a go. -- Stephanie

thanks for the recommendation. I have an old IBM viavoice (the 98 version I think -- it dictates to Word or its own text editor, but not to other apps unless I've set it up wrong). The problem is one of habit. dictating a written text is fine -- if I want to type up a quotation from a book, no problem. But for things I'm making up as I go along, like PG Wodehouse I find I make too many hums and has and pause often. It's very annoying to have these turn into words! on the other hand, I know people who say they can't type directly, they must write on paper first, and I think they're bats. So it's probably a habit I could acquire with practice -- Tarquin 16:48 31 May 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure about viavoice, but Dragon lets you dictate anywhere (and create super-cool macros to do repetitive tasks). I agree that "composing out loud" takes some practice, but you get used to it. And it's nice when suddenly you have a burst of words coming up to be able to spit it all out without being limited by typing speed (yeah, I do type pretty fast -- but I speak faster!). You get to correct it after of course, but at least it's recorded :-) (if you dig in my weblog you might find something I wrote about composing-typing, composing-writing, composing-dictating and the effect of dictating on style... maybe in French) -- Steph

Determine the veracity of this statement:

As x approaches 0, F(x) = 1 / x2 is not approaching a limit as it is unbounded; a function which approaches infinity is not approaching a limit. Note that as x approaches infinity, F(x) = 1 / x2 does approach a limit of 0.

Pizza Puzzle

I am of the understanding that this is the Product Rule; not merely a product rule. Pizza Puzzle

you'll have to look up the maths conventions, but I'm fairly sure the theorems take a litle "t" too. -- Tarquin 14:25 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

and where would those be? The science laws seem to frequently be capitalized. Pizza Puzzle

It should of course be capitalised. This is yet another of these annoying occasions when wiki seems to have a passionate determination to lowercase things that should be capitalised. It hardly does wiki much credit when the formal name of a rule that as the name of a rule is treated as a proper name is put in wrong. But then most of the political science terms on wiki are in a form that if used by students would see them docked marks, but every effort to correct them on wiki leads to edit wars with the same couple of users who seem to spend their entire time on wiki chanting the mantra "lower case, lower case, lower case" . (BTW, Tarquin, you aren't one of them!) FearÉIREANN 21:15 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

ROFL, good call on the election issues! Are you going to be the official Wikipedia news anchor? -- John Owens 09:33 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

lol I don't think I'd make a terribly NPOV reporter... :) - Tarquin 09:35 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ho ha! Beat you to it. ;) -- goatasaur 09:35 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

lol. vandalism doesn't last long around here! :-)

Received your request on the article I wrote about Tardi - I'll try to write a brief outline of the ligne claire ASAP :) MarkBoydell

nice! -- Tarquin 20:26 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm not too sure why you change the link to Jacques Martin. I'd thought it shoudl link to Jacques_Martin_artist as the current JM is not the comic strip artist... Anyway, I'm nto sure how to deal with this so you probably know better :D Mark 22:17 GMT

I'd just like to go on the record as asking you to please not bite off my scalp. ;) last new "paragraph" in the diff --Dante Alighieri 08:33 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tarquin, You edited (M)Talk:Gene Roddenberry, but I can not see any difference. Is this a Wikipedia problem or did you not change anything? Fantasy 08:25 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A single apostrophe: "it's" -> "its". :-) (I remember you saying somewhere you're not a native English speaker. The rule, BTW, is that "it's" always means "it is". It's one of those confusing rules.) -- Tarquin 09:41 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I found it, it was just a comma "," too much, sorry for bothering you. It was so small on my screen, I really had to look hard for it ;-) Fantasy 12:06 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

PS: Many thanks for correcting my errors!

I have posted a reply to comments you made on Talk:Dirac delta function. Cyan 06:04 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hey. Finally answered a comment you left on Talk:DDT back in April. If you're still interested... Graft 00:07 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

thanks. Interesting (and worrying) stuff. -- Tarquin 07:42 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I thought you might be interested in the opinion poll going on now at Talk:Clitoris. MB 17:52 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That was pretty rude, deleting a bit of humor from an article that was all fictional and in good fun! (oh my, here is someone else's nonsense - we can't have that) Dmsar 15:29 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It wasn't funny, and it seemd to me like yet more France-bashing. If the fictional EPA within the Superman comics has said that, then fine, quote it, but make it clear. If it's just your personal humour, get a room. -- Tarquin 16:06 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

France bashing?? please. I suppose the nose-picking "humor" on your page is funnier. I can take the reasoning behind the "fictional EPA" argument which makes sense, but when I see an edit I've made completely deleted and dismissed with a comment like "rremove nonsense", I tend to get a bit irritated. And now, "get a room"; where did THAT come from? Let's try to leave our personal problems out of the discussion. Dmsar 16:42 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The nose-picking stuff on my page is on a user page, not in an article. It's not particularly funny, but I wrote it in response to something that was happening elsewhere on Wikipedia. You would have had to be there. I'm sorry if I offended you, but what contributors personally find funny doesn't belong in the articles. -- Tarquin 20:17 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

cool. Hope we can cooperate in the future. Dmsar 20:21 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

-) -- Tarquin 20:41 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Can you fall in love with a user page? Gritchka 08:59 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes I'm certain that it happens all the time. ;-) -- Tarquin 16:48 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

163.1.242.5 scared me at first, but aren't the redirects harmless? Ксип Cyp 10:47, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

At that speed I'm fairly sure it was a bot. With our current server problems, we have (AFAIK) a policy that bots MUST be authorized, registered, and drip-feed their edits. (Plus there's the fact that I think the decision on the Manual of style was to encourage uniformity in fate names) -- Tarquin 10:51, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Seems to be continuing under a slightly different IP, probably will be finished in a moment... I think it's a new user that probably hasn't seen the bot policy yet... (Wasn't criticizing blocking, by the way, wondered for a moment whether it was safer to block and ask questions later.) Ксип Cyp 10:54, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There is a response now at User talk:163.1.242.5. Ксип Cyp 11:52, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

10:45, 5 Aug 2003, Tarquin blocked 163.1.242.5 (contribs) (unblock) (are you a bot?)
10:52, 5 Aug 2003, Tarquin blocked 163.1.242.101 (contribs) (unblock) (please contact the mailing list)
- Unblocking these, as he said he would stop, and appears to have a very dynamic ip address anyway. Ксип Cyp 11:52, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Um, Tarquin, why did you zap my nifty pipe [[Skytrain|SkyTrain]]? I put that in after much thought because although the target page is called Skytrain and I don't want to rename it until I figure out whether it needs disambiguating or not, the Vancouver system is most definitely SkyTrain capped exactly like that Vremya 22:33, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ah. You could make a redirect. -- Tarquin 07:31, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Can you please take a look at my attempts to give a kindergarten English definition of injection, surjection and bijection, as per an earlier poster's request? -- Karada 09:44, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

it's a good attempt, but I fear that attempts to simplify the language just end up with too many clauses & too many repetitions. I'll mull on this, but I think the simplest explanation may be what we already have, and that the lay reader may be obliged to go read up on the meanings of terms such as 'domain' and 'codomain'. -- Tarquin 10:54, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well hi...I am a stranger here...albeit noones a stranger but a rich and glorious relation of sorts in a cyber-led multitude where everyone knows ever one else - after a remote-control fashion. Plus my name is arqui (but i am a different man from the AI man in the UK!!! anyway, popping off to execrate something or other. Tarquin C

hello! welcome to wikipedia! -- Tarquin 13:13, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I like how you composed your Image:Scissors.jpg photo, especially that wrinkly white background cloth. :-) Great photo! --Menchi 15:15, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

really? wow, thanks! the wrinkly white background cloth is just an old tablecloth I pulled out of a cupboard because my usual tablecloth has a strong check pattern which would have looked confusing. I just threw it on the table any old way! :-) -- Tarquin 15:36, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why is Pan Am flight 103 listed on the Main Page? The article has not been updated with a current event... Could you update that article? --mav

(William M. Connolley 10:58, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)) Thanks for keeping an eye on the GW page...

You messed with my page, now I'm going to mess with yours. If you like French anti-Americanism so much, take a look at my hex:

JoeM

Being against US anti-french propaganda DOES NOT mean I'm in favour of french anti-Americanism. -- Tarquin 08:49, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

What of it? Theres plenty of crap there now... If your looking for a less harried explanation, I just gave one on WP:VP.

rant about US bias

I just wrote a particularly heated response to you on Wikipedia:Village pump. Please don't take it personally, as I have nothing but respect for you as a Wikipedian and (as well as someone can know someone over the 'pedia) as a person. I'm just disagreeing with a specific set of statements on a specific issue. Wikilove. --Dante Alighieri 22:45, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

nice case of doublethink there. Have you been practicing? None of my comments were directed at people in particular, but the past week I have been dealing with a LOT of US bias and blinkered US-POV in articles. I felt this particular news item made a suitable wake-up call. -- Tarquin 22:49, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's just the problem, your comments should have been directed at people in particular. The alternative is to brand all US contributors. I'm not saying there's no US bias. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to eliminate US bias and US-POV (along with other bias and POV, btw). But the problem is when you write something like this:

This would seem to suggest that US writers have an inflated view of the importance of US events -- or they assume they are writing for the US, not for the world.

it's really hard to not take that as an insult. I'm not saying you were at all being intentionally rude, just that it seems to me to read that way. Again, no doublethink, I really do respect you. It's just your wording that I take issue with. I said it was your statement when I was writing above. That's not really true as we agree that US bias should be eliminated. --Dante Alighieri 23:39, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

point taken. I should have said "some US writers" or even "the wikipedia group-mind has..." -- Tarquin 08:53, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think a lot of the problem was that, for you, the Brazilian Space Agency thing wasn't the sole cause of your rant, merely the final straw? When that happens, and the rant's just about that final straw, to someone else it often seems like the rant is overblown and disproportionate to the stated issue -- because it's about more than that.

We're also dealing with two seperate issues of bias. The explosion not being put up as major news probably IS a case of news from outside the English speaking world being considered unimportant. That nobody had written an article about the Brazilian space agency, though, is a quite different issue, and you're not going to get many people agreeing that it speaks to anything more than us not having many people here who know about the subject. Naturally, and inevitably, the English-language Wikipedia is going to have fuller coverage of English-speaking nations.

I'd suggest also that THAT bias is not a 'US bias'. It's a bias towards nations where English is spoken. I feel it's a little much to characterise such a bias as being the fault of the US or American writers, except inasmuch as they numerically form the majority of the world's speakers of English as a first language.

I suspect, also, that a degree of such bias is inevitable. Contributors to Wikipedia are always more likely to write about what they know; thus more likely to write about things in the nations that they know or for which more sources can be found in the language they know. Granted, we should work against such bias as much as we can but I doubt that we can ever eliminated it; furthermore, I expect Wikipedias in other languages have equivalent biases. --Morven 18:32, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm sure I saw someone say the largest English-speaking nation is India... -- Tarquin 20:23, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

As a FIRST language? Few Indians I've known have had English as their primary tongue, though Indians may indeed comprise the largest group who know English. --Morven 20:35, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Le Mandarom nouveau est arrivé !!!!

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumisme

Fait moi plaisir Tarquin...vraiment plaisir ! Dis moi que j ai fais un super boulot et que maintenant tu comprend tout. J ai une raideur sévère dans la nuque...ouille Anthère

aie! je ne sais pas a quoi m'attendre! ca fait 2-3 jours que je ne lis pas le fr: .... --Tarquin 08:53, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)~

Sources

From http://ps.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Tarquin -- Yo. Glad to see someone taking point on this one. I added source.wikimedia.org to Brions Todo list for sister projects. He may or may not get around to it sooner or later-maybe ;) If your bent on sticking stuff here, I have to warn you that it may be that you have to wait for Brion to mass-convert a bunch of old wikis with content. If you wait a bit, I think he might be able to just set up a fresh new wiki, and the stuff here can be handported there. -戴&#30505sv 19:39, Aug 31, 2003 (UTC)

I've made a few more changes to http://ps.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Appel_Du_18_Juin -- the sort of thing I think an eventual interface should include:

links to Wikipedia articles about the text in all languages
translations of the original as subpages

Do we have a page on that wiki to discuss this sort of thing yet? -- Tarquin 20:13, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

ImageXXX

THese were a mistake, I'll delete them. I use "GrayXXX.png" usually. --Magnus Manske 09:39, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

rant about US bias

Sources

Categories

ImageXXX