User talk:Sunray/Archive01

This is an archive of past discussions about User:Sunray. 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 new user and welcome to Wikipedia. A few tips for you:

Peruse Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers and associated pages
Sign talk page entries with ~~~~, which is automatically converted to a name and date
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Have fun.

-- Alexandros 20:31, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I like welcoming people, but I do so voluntarily; Everything on wikipedia is voluntary. I hope you decide to stay with wikipedia because we need good contributors like you. Thanks for the thanks! Alexandros 22:04, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Question re source for Consensus Decision-Making article

(Copied from Angela's Talk page) Angela: Perhaps you can help me. I thought I had a fairly simple query about an article. It was suggested that I ask the question at the Village Pump. This I did, with no response. My question was about the root article for "Consensus Decision Making." I'm looking for sources. I want to edit the article, but I can't find out where some of the material came from or who wrote it. The page history only goes back to January 2003. Suggestions? Sunray 18:12, 2003 Dec 4 (UTC)

Hi, I think the article history probably is correct- ie the January version is the first version and was written by User:142.177.etc. I did try to find out but have got no reply yet. [1]. Angela . 21:01, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your help in querying the last known author of Consensus Decision-Making. I had thought that anything prior to January might have been in an archive somewhere. If 147.177etc. is banned, doesn't that mean he is beyond the pale and thus unreachable? Sunray 06:21, 2003 Dec 5 (UTC)

Well, kind of. Officially he's banned at all Wikipedias, but he is basically being tolerated at the Simple English Wikipedia at the moment, and usually replies to messages there but hasn't on this occasion. Angela . 06:24, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mr. Troll: I don't believe that trolls are inherently evil any more than I believe that sysops are godkings. If you had any thing to do with the consensus decision-making article, could you please contact me, or let me know how I might contact you. Sunray 22:58, 2003 Dec 7 (UTC)

He's replied here. Angela . 19:40, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Poverty in the U.S.

Thanks for your thoughtful contributions to Poverty in the United States. I'm glad someone with social science credentials is a contributor, because all I know is (a) how to read and (b) how to do math ;-)

If there's a whiff of We are better than the rest in the article, than perhaps that should be highlighted as a POV. It might even be a factor in the controversy over the measurement criteria.

Maybe some advocates, irritated by the presumption of "betterness", make the claim that the US has huge numbers of poor people as a way of refuting the presumption of betterness: e.g., "You're not as good as you think you are, look at all those poor people!" It could also be, "Your system didn't eliminate poverty in your own country, so don't you dare try to spread it to my country!"

Or, maybe there's more "real poverty" around then than "1 in 200 Americans experiences hunger on any given day" (0.5%) as a recent official gov't statistic indicated. Maybe it's not just word play or statistical manipulation on the definition of poverty. If so, maybe I'll learn something -- which is always a possible side-effect of writing for Wikipedia :-) --Uncle Ed 17:32, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Reading and math skills are all too rare in our world, it seems. I value them highly. It was such skills that permitted me to succeed, to some degree, in the social sciences racket (and racket it is). More to the point, I think good reading (and editing) skills and the ability to make sense of some of the stats will help us produce a fine article on poverty.

I like your idea about bringing in the "we are the best" POV. Here we could just possibly make a contribution to international relations! After all, it is why Americans are hated in some quarters, toadied to in others and taken advantage of in still others (the mathematician in you will say, “what about the other quarter?”). Ah, loved… of course.

We must never forget the people in prisons and mental hospitals. Although wards of the state, they are poor in most senses of the word. I don't say this from any sort of bleeding heart POV--it is just something I learned from working in such institutions for many years.

As to learning. I learn every time I fire up Wikipedia. That's what I love about it. Sunray 19:11, 2003 Dec 31 (UTC)

Happy new year, Sunray – I couldn't stay away. It was all that peace and goodwill at Christmas. I've resolved to be nice, though. If you can't win, give in, I say. So I'm sticking to the inoffensive topics. I agree that the social sciences are a racket, though. I could tell you (true) stories. That thought is lurking behind qualitative psychological research, I think. Trontonian 22:45, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sunray, I used the subjunctive on purpose at Socialism and Nazism! Why did you change "were" to "was"? Lupo 16:27, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Forget it — I see User:Ed Poor is taking extreme measures... Lupo 16:31, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Socialism and Nazism

see Talk:Socialism and Nazism. I dislike pretty much everything about that page. Also, I'm about to wade back into Socialism. Just thought I'd let you know. Jack 09:43, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you don't like what I wrote, write something and provide a citation. If this is ever going to be an acceptable article, it is going to require ridiculous amounts of compromise. I'm not the only one who mightilly disagreed with how this all started out, and I won't be the last to object before its over. If you actually care about presenting this in a objective, NPOV manner, its going to take a very long time, and alot of debate :) Jack 07:46, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hayek wrote an illustrated tract against Nazism which described Hitler's rise to power as error made by well-meaning socialists looking for a strong leader to carry out their plan. [2] --Uncle Ed 17:27, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

A lengthy scholarly analysis is here. It's surprisingly readable, having hardly any buzzwords. The author argues that socialism transformed into Fascism and Nazism -- in an inevitable progression. Others have made the same claim for socialism becoming totalitarian in Communist countries.

Perhaps the resistance to this, amoung Wikipedians, is the naive faith that (1) somehow Communism is good and/or that (2) socialism can be achieved via political power without destroying individual freedom. I'm convinced that #1 is wrong; and Hayek explains why in his view #2 is wrong.

Sorry for all the confusion, but this is one of the most hotly debated issues of the 20th century. No one can unravel the tangle in just a few words. --Uncle Ed 17:37, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Illegitimi non carborundum. Have a look at where the Socialism article is now. I think it's vastly improved from when you were asking "are we serious" five weeks ago. -- Jmabel 08:24, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good comments on VFD. But, as usual, a page with grade schoolers run amuck is getting the approval from most voters. At times like this, I think that the history articles here are probably beyond redemption. 172 10:58, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello, I've attempted to entirely rewrite nazism and socialism to make it less sucky. Please check it out and give your opinion (although it might be reverted by the time you get a chance to look). Thanks. john 07:48, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Image:Courtroom.jpg

I've been working my way through a giant stack of untagged images and came across this one: Image:Courtroom.jpg. Could you stop by and add the appropriate copyright tag? Or you could just leave me a message telling me where you got the image, and I can update it for you. Thanks! --MaxPower 18:51, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)

Sunray, thanks for fixing those images! I've listed those two images (Image:Courtroom.jpg, and Image:Photo2tn.jpg) on Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion. So they should be taken care of within a week. --MaxPower 13:58, 2004 Dec 14 (UTC)

Belinda Stronach

Your attempt to mediate with micahelm is admirable, but I suggest that you approach this with great caution. michaelm has repeatedly ignored requests from me and others for evidence, or responded to them with only more conjecture. His latest method of sidestepping requests for evidence is most amusing: "I found it on the internet, but I can't find it again - there's my evidence." I don't hold out much hope that we will ever be able to turn him into a constructive Wikipedian. Best of luck. Kevintoronto 20:39, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Where do we go from here? It's apparent michaelm won't accept anything but 'like I said, Belinda is a social democrat. She should join the NDP,' the evidence coming from sources he does not provide and ducks talking about, or that he himself disagrees with. What now? Samaritan 06:12, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC) (crossposted to Kevintoronto and AndyL)