User talk:Benc/Archive/1

Welcome

Hello Ben, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela . 23:21, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Detroit

Thanks for the dates in the Detroit article - that method of listing voting years has always bugged me. Rmhermen 00:15, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Law article disambiguations not needed

Please stop moving law articles to a US disambiguation unless you can prove that there are other laws with the same name in other countries. Rick K 05:41, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Okay, no problem. Didn't mean to step on any feet; I was unaware of the convention of not disambiguating law names. Could you point me to the relevant discussion? And if you want me to revert the few I've done so far, please let me know, I'm happy to fix them. --Benc 05:47, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Don't know of it being any relevant discussion, but it's certainly a bad precedent. We have who knows how many articles whose titles are the names of laws. Are we going to make every one of those disambiguate to the country of origin? I do know policy is not to disambiguate if it isn't necessary. Yeah, you should probably move them back so as to keep them standard. Rick K 06:13, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Reverted. You're right, it makes more sense to do it that way. Thanks for catching it before I did all the Uniform Acts. :-) By the way, I kept the disambiguation on the Uniform Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (U.S.) because of the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (Australia). The wording is not identical, but is close enough to warrant the disambig. --Benc 06:34, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

May-December romance

Thanks for the good job on the merge-redirect. I think it's important that "May-December romance" remain as a a redirect; while the new article is more solid, it is also less searchable. I've done a Google search for relevant famous May-December couples, and have not come up with very much outside of Hollywood, yet I know the Upper Class (whatever that may be) are also very much into marriages of convenience or arranged marriages, as are a number of other cultures. Seems no one on the net is talking about it though. Denni ☯ 23:05, 2004 Aug 14 (UTC)

I agree, "May-December romance" should remain a redirect. Thank you for writing most of the article's content. :-) • Benc • 23:08, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image:Anarchy_symbol.png

I looked at your sandbox and saw that you were planning on doing a few things to the image, so I went ahead and did them. It should be good now. I also deleted Image:Anarchy_symbol.jpg because it was a degraded duplicate of the PNG version. It was a bit smaller, but the size wasn't worth the lack of quality. The latest version I uploaded is only 6.4 KB anyway. Guan aco 04:03, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. (I removed it from WP:IFD, too.) • Benc • 04:04, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Merge and redirect instead of VfD listings

Hi, Benc, thanks for your patience with my oldermenyoungerwomenolderwomenyoungermen confusion on VfD. (My defense would be that confusion was kind of appropriate.) I was very interested by the comment you made:

In fact, I don't think any of the three pages should've been listed on VfD... the nominator should've merged them and listed it for cleanup.

You can do that ...? I've never thought of being bold in just that way, but it would certainly save a lot of time for everybody. You're saying that if I see a clutch of substubs that belong together, I should just change them all to redirects, merge the text in a new article, and send it to Cleanup, (or clean it myself), without first consulting anybody? Wouldn't that outrage a lot of people, who want each information atom to have its own entry? There seem to be a lot of them around. Or am I supposed to start a whole thing on each of the stubs' talk pages first? That would make the procedure even more timewasting than VfD, I think. Not sure I understood your meaning, but I'm intrigued. Bishonen 10:13, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you certainly can do that — as they say, be bold in updating pages! A lot of time is wasted on talking about changing articles, and VfD is often a hot spot for wasting time, unfortunately. A lot of Wikipedians don't realize that a significant number of articles on VfD don't need to be on there, if someone would only step in and fix them! It took me a little while to realize this, myself, and only after asking explicitly. Check out Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Cleanup on VfD articles: bad form?. Anyway, thank you for your concerns, and good luck rescuing articles from VfD — Wikipedia needs more editors like you who are willing to whip those stubs up into something useful. :-) • Benc • 10:23, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

P.S. - as far as outraging those who want everything just so — don't worry about that for one minute. I've never had anyone complain to me about articles I've rescued from VfD. • Benc • 10:26, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

European Union Olympic medals count for 2004

Hi there,

I wonder would you consider reversing your decision to delete this article. I have substantially rewritten it. A united EU team is not going to happen. I've discussed potential EU co-operation towards the olympics, and kept the table. I believe the table is valid, for us Europeans/EUians to see how the area has fared as a whole. Please comment on my talk page if you still feel the article should be deleted.

zoney ███ talk 00:57, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Response on your talk page. (The short of it: I decided to keep my vote to move the contents of the EU-Olympic article to an article with a broader (and therefore more NPOV) subject area.) • Benc • 07:55, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Transparent Aluminum

Good edits on this page. I didn't even think of the whales part as being a spoiler, so thanks for putting that in. Fuzheado | Talk 04:21, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. • Benc • 02:19, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Re: Age disparity

See User_talk:Sam_Spade#Parasexual.2FHomosexual. Sam [Spade] 22:31, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Insanity templates

Thank you for nominating the insanity templates for deletion. I was thinking about them on my way home last night and had decided to nominate them myself. You beat me to it. Rossami 13:15, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anarchist Symbolism

I thought (I had hoped) that we were coming to a consensus on the anarchocapitalist symbol issue, but an anonymous user has significantly altered or removed (I don't know if "vandalized" is the right term) the section repeatedly in the last day. I'm not sure what to do about this. Do you have any suggestions? --Pmetzger 15:32, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Responses at: Talk:Anarchist_symbolism#Vandalism and User_talk:213.100.52.73 • Benc • 02:15, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

adminship

Dear Benc,

Yes, I will treat the "keys to the mop closet" well. :-)
Thank you very much for your vote in (strong) support of my nomination for adminship.

-- PFHLai 03:51, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks, and congrats on adminship. :-) • Benc • 04:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Flags

Thanks for the tip. Io 14:17, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Welcome. • Benc • 04:12, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Featured article archiving

Benc - (speaking as the chief maintainer of the featured articles and candidates) - your edits to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log have made them quite a bit prettier, but totally unmaintainable. It took me upwards of 10 minutes to archive 5 nominations (that works out to roughly an hour a week spent archiving). Simply put - I refuse. (for the record, your edits are a form of m:instruction creep, which I oppose in all forms). I think we need to work out something better. →Raul654 05:14, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

[For my own reference, response at User talk:Raul654#FAC archives. • Benc • 04:20, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)]

Exploding whale talk page

Hi, I notice you added a FAC contested tag to the exploding whale article. Why? All the objections were dealt with! - Ta bu shi da yu 01:54, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The {{fac-contested}} tag is for previous candidates; the {{fac}} tag is for current ones. The tag change was part of a mass update — I changed {{fac}} to {{fac-contested}} for all articles that were in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations. It wasn't me adding an objection to the article. In fact, I hadn't even read the FAC discussion until just now. :-)

Looking back at the discussion, it looks like Meelar, Pcb21, and Eequor had objections that were never withdrawn, so that's why someone archived the nomination (it wasn't me). FWIW, I would probably support the article if it was re-nominated.

See also: Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#A precedent, which is a discussion about your wonderful exploding whales. :-) It looks like there are some folks at FAC who want it re-nominated, too. • Benc • 04:09, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks / weasel terms

Thanks for the correction ---- Charles Stewart 18:37, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No problem, • Benc • 18:51, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Olympic mascot

Hello. I thought I should let you know that Olympic mascot, your AOTW nominee, was created a few days ago. It was then featured at DYK on the MainPage yesterday. :-) -- PFHLai 19:02, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)

Nice! It looks like a lot of people are collaborating on it, too... guess I could jump in. :-) • Benc • 20:03, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wish those people had voted at COTW ... :-( -- PFHLai 20:15, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)

Oh, that's no biggie. I knew I'd nominated the article way too late for it be voted up before the Olympics were over. CotW nominators need to think at least a month ahead, I guess... • Benc • 00:01, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Todo template

Thank you for your attempt to solve the IE cache problem. I'm not sure how it is supposed to work though, so I could not test it. Could you give some explanations in the Procedure section of the Wikipedia:To-do list page, or its talk page ? Thanks Pcarbonn 21:13, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gladly. :-) It's on the talk page. • Benc • 21:42, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fac archiving

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Grad school started this week and I've been *BUSY*. To wit - yes, your solution (archiving to a summary spot and letting someone else come along later and clean it up) is fine with me. →Raul654 00:45, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

redstar2000

Hi, I'm pretty new here, though I'm trying to contribute. Unfortunately, someone made an article which was then listed on VfD, and I've been trying to frantically update and fine-tune it to get it acceptable. I made major expansions to it, but it seems like it's not gonna work. I'm currently working on expanding the history section, the guy's involvement in the SDS and other movements, etc. Do you think you could give it a look, and see whether you think it deserves a chance to be expanded rather than deleted? The page is redstar2000. Thank you. --Che y Marijuana 22:35, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm going to have to continue to abstain from comment. I haven't heard of Redstar2000 until now, but then again I don't generally follow anarchist authors. In other words, I don't have anything intelligent to contribute to the discussion as to whether he's notable or not, which is the whole reason the article is listed on VfD. Also, instead of leaving messages on multiple user talk pages, why don't you drop a note on Wikipedia:Requests for comment and/or Wikipedia:Village pump? Good luck, • Benc • 22:55, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Choice of username

Hi, Benc. :)

Wow, would you believe, the thought honestly never occurred to me, which is odd, because I work with admins all day long. Your pointing it out to me, however, makes the matter perfectly clear: it does look like the kind of user name that an Admin would use. The Adm is actually short for Admiral, and is based on an old private joke of mine.

If the world were a nice and safe place, I would have no objection to using my real name, and in fact, I have no objection to giving my real name out to respected members of the Wikipedia community, but I fear the wrath of POV warriors and the annoyance of Trolls too much to make my name available for general consumption.

I had been considering changing my user name to Scripter. I've just checked, and it doesn't seem to be taken. My only concern is that I've read where a change in user name is viewed by some in the community as being suspicious in and of itself. Presumably, I'm new enough and innocuous enough that it won't be seen as a problem.

Thanks for the heads up. :) soon to be Scripter, or maybe something else... let me think about it for an hour or so :) 20:49, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

func(talk) 21:39, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC) <-- pretty spiffy, huh? ;-)

Hah, pretty clever. :-) • Benc • 21:41, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about Wikipedia:Trivia

Sorry for that confusion. I'll wait until your designated date (: —siro χ o 03:48, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Heh, are we synchronized today or something? :-) • Benc • 03:50, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We must be, one second apart on the apologies —siro χ o 03:51, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Jello Belt

moved from User talk:Benc/About me

Ben:

Where does a user go to make comments to another user? This is the closest place I could find.

The Jello Belt picture you put up is a kick, but it also needs to be edited. It extends all the way through eastern Idaho to Yellowstone, further into Wyoming (the SW quadrant of the state) and through all of eastern Arizona almost to the border. San Bernardino, CA is Mormon/LDS (founded by Brother Brigham) as is Mesa, AZ.

There isn't that much Mormon/LDS influence in N Central or NW Nevada, nor in Eastern CA across the border from NV.

Thank you, though, for your insight.

Dale Jeffery / rdale444@yahoo.com Wikipedist since 2001/2002.

Dale, thank you very much for your correction. Being an East Coaster myself, I hadn't ever heard of the Jello Belt, though I had heard of the other "Belts". I made all the "Belt" pictures in one batch. In creating the picture, I just went by the article text, which wasn't nearly as precise as your comment.

I've updated both the picture and the article text to take into account your corrections. If you see any places where additional corrections are needed, please let me know here on my talk page or on Talk:Jello Belt (which is on my watchlist). (Or feel free to make the corrections yourself, of course.) Thanks, • Benc • 08:06, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

COTW

Hello, Benc. Just saw the 'inuse' tag at COTW. I hope you are fixing my mistake. Right ? I need to restore the legit. edits by Davodd that I have reverted by mistake, but I don't think I should go in and make changes while your 'inuse' tag is still there... -- PFHLai 00:39, 2004 Sep 9 (UTC)

Now, I can see what you are doing at COTW. I'll check back a little later to undo my mistakes. -- PFHLai 00:59, 2004 Sep 9 (UTC)

I'm finished with the page. Incidentally, it looks like the mistake you were trying to fix (updating the next pruning date) was unintentionally fixed as part of my edit. • Benc • 01:08, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Now, I am done, too. -- PFHLai 01:21, 2004 Sep 9 (UTC)

Staunton

Hi. I saw your redirect for Staunton. Just to let you know, there are several other places named Staunton. You might want to check this page for some. It would be better off as a disambiguation. Danny 23:03, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're right; thanks for the disambig. • Benc • 07:03, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

RD header

I've created Template_talk:RD header as you suggested in Wikipedia_talk:Reference desk#Instruction bloat. Now to hack it to shreds without mercy... AlexG 19:03, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Template

Sorry I deleted it. I actually very much wish deletions included a reason. I don't remember deleting it--according to the timestamp, I did it around 5am, my local time, which is MUCH earlier than I usually get up. Maybe I was sleep-wiki-ing. :/. Seriously, I think it's another sign I need a serious Wikivacation. And I should avoid editing when I'm not really awake. It looks like Mike Storm is working along the same direction: User:Mike Storm/sandbox2. Niteowlneils 04:02, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No problem. Get some rest, my friend. :-) The idea of a Template:Deletebecause is being discussed on Template talk:Delete. • Benc • 04:26, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"wikipedia:trivia" now in thinktank!

Hi Benc,

I added following sentence as 2nd paragraph to wikipedia:trivia:

For use as "inclusion criteria and NPOV" in the Wikipedia:Policy thinktank - project started by user:Benc (and others) september 4-5, 2004.

If you don't think a good idea, just remove (don't forget in that case to also remove from "policy thinktank" page.

Note that I also provided a link to wikipedia:categorization of people in the "see also" section. Part of the discussion page of that article also has "exchange of ideas" about categories vs. lists when wanting to group trivia (regarding people, but probably more widely applicable). The present (preliminary!) state of the "categorization of people" article mentions only that wikipedians are "divided" over this topic - so I expect that some more clarity might result from the "trivia" discussion.

--Francis Schonken 19:45, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thakhallus

I don't think thakhallus will go too much further. In fact, if anything the text under List of Urdu language poets might move here. What say?--iFaqeer 03:06, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

[For my own reference, response at User_talk:IFaqeer#Thakhallus. • Benc • 19:53, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)]

Descriptive linguistics

Before you get too carried away with redirects... descriptive linguistics has a much broader meaning than simply the opposite of prescriptive linguistics. It refers to the whole tradition of fieldworkers producing descriptive grammars, typically of unwritten languages with no prescriptive tradition to begin with, and prescriptive linguistics has little if any relevance to it. - Mustafaa 07:43, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Response at Talk:Prescription and description. • Benc • 07:53, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

More on descriptions and prescriptions and descriptions and...

I've done the delete and move as requested by you, however you now need to go and sort out the 'what links here' links. I've also deleted the two user pages requested for deletion by you. Now back to work... -- Graham ☺ | Talk 10:31, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks. And, yes, I know I've got some more grunt disambig work to do. :-P • Benc • 19:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And now I'm done. Next time I'll be sure and let ideas for page moves simmer for a day or two so I don't create more work for myself, hehe. • Benc • 22:21, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Skumle humle

Thanks, Benc. Actually I suspect that there's a White Power subtext in Skumle humle, though I'm not sure (I'm Swedish, a real Dane might know better) so I kind of don't want to start up about it publicly on VfD or call for a speedy on that account specifically. It's trouble, if you're not sure. See, courtesy of Google, there's a Danish online forum called SKUM, no telling what the acronym stands for, or maybe an online forum for an organization called SKUM. Anyway, there's White Power type chatting on the forum, and Skumle humle's "book title", the phrase "To keep the dirt out" seems to refer on the forum to keeping immigrants out of Denmark. Lovely, isn't it? Oh, hey, I see the link's coming up red now. Good. :-) Maybe you deleted it (not sure whether you're an admin)? Bishonen 20:12, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's a good thing to have multilingual Wikipedians like yourself so we don't get skunked by joke entries like this. :-) (And no, I didn't delete it as I'm not an admin.) • Benc • 22:19, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I did, because I am and the article was utter nonsense. Just thought I'd let you know. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:03, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Danke. • Benc • 15:13, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tack to you both. Bishonen 15:37, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:English pronunciation

Hi Benc, glad to have saved you from spelling-related embarrassment! --Lancevortex 11:49, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Adminship

Would you accept an adminship nomination? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 22:08, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

done. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Benc. :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 22:56, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

beta Systemic Bias section

Hi, if you wish to help contribute to a beta version of a Wikipedia page section designed to counter-act Wikipedia's systemic bias, please sign the bottom of this section on the Village pump - Wikipedia:Village_pump#Systemic_bias_in_Wikipedia. If not, no worries.--Xed 04:16, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pirate Radio

Why did you revert my edit of Pirate Radio? A bunch of sections were mindlessly duplicated at the bottom of the page, such as history of pirate radio in britain, france, external links... Why, precisely, do you want these duplications back in the text? I also put the origins of pirate radio at the beginning of the article rather than as the last entry. Why do you object to this? Isn't this sensible? EDGE 04:50, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

This was my mistake; I apologize. I assumed the edit was vandalism without fully investigating it. ~~I'm fixing it now, undoing my reversion.~~ Nevermind, you have already done so. Why did I think it was vandalism? Several reasons:

Your edit summary was "TAKE THAT RICKK". Please use something a little more descriptive, like "Removed duplicate sections" :-)
The article has had a recent rash of vandalism. I assumed this was an extension of it.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience. • Benc • 04:56, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No problem. My edit summary refered to RICKK's (or some similar administrator) belief that I cannot contribute anything of worth to this site. I am proving him wrong. EDGE 05:02, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Longest English Words W/ One Syllable

Thanks! I was kind of hoping someone would take the hint. The longest words I'd been able to come up with were 8 syllables, such as straight or breathed. -Litefantastic 12:37, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Glad to help. :-) That article was a fun one to write. • Benc • 17:36, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

duplicate categories

Hi Benc, since you just moved the "category side effect" warning, could you also modify it to explain that some of the categories are listed more than once (see Wikipedia talk:Template messages#duplicate_categories)? (I'm relatively new and don't want to mess with such a central page without knowing exactly what I'm talking about.) Thanks. Fpahl 21:43, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done; see Template:Category side effect. Also, I wouldn't be worried about messing with a central page if I were you. Your intentions are clearly for the best; if you make a mistake along the way, someone will surely see it and fix it. :-) Thanks for pointing out the fact that it needed additional clarification, by the way. • Benc • 22:18, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for the encouragement. Fpahl 22:26, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To-do list for CoTW

I'm wondering why you are using the to-do list for previous Collaboration of the Week articles (e.g. for astrophysics). The task you propose "Improve this article to featured-standard" is so vague that it can be put on any article. Wouldn't it be better to be more specific, or to not use the to-do list at all ? What do you expect from the readers of that to-do list ? (I believe that there are already enough ways to promote the CoTW collaboration mechanism, if that's your purpose; I also believe that this presumed misuse of the to-do lists reduces their general attraction by generating bad will) What do you think ? Pcarbonn 21:54, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your point is well-taken; this is somewhat of a misuse of the to-do list mechanism. I wasn't necessarily trying to advertise COTW, but it definitely appears that way. More than anything else, the "Improve this article..." was meant to be a temporary placeholder, to be replaced with actionable items. Actionable to-do items have been added to a number of COTW graduates (see Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/To do), but the "Improve this article..." message hasn't been removed in those cases, which it probably should.

I can start going through and peer reviewing the previous COTW articles needing actionable to-do items, though you (and anybody else interested) are certainly welcome to collaborate on this. Thank you very much for pointing this out to me. • Benc • 22:01, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thumb twiddling

Thanks for the improvements to the article, and for your good words. KeyStroke 14:20, 2004 Sep 23 (UTC)

The move to RfC

The reason that I posted the question to the village pump was that there wasn't an edit dispute going on, which is what RfC is for. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 05:45, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Your bookmark table

Hi there, I stumbled upon the bookmark table on your user page and I like how you managed to put it all in a clear outlined table. I've currently linked to yours on my own user page. Would you mind me making a copy for my own use? :) [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 08:43, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

BTW, how did you make the box around

"Older discussions are

located in the archive.

—Benc" on top of this page? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 08:58, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

- Thanks for the replies to both questions on my talk page. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 07:09, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

You're a sysop!

I'm pleased to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. Congratulations!. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | Talk 00:22, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thank you — I'll do my best. :-) • Benc • 17:58, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Congratulations, Ben! [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 18:28, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

An open thank-you

As of 27 September 2004, I am an administrator on the English Wikipedia. This message is for everyone who voted on RFA/Benc (including the neutrals). I didn't want to spam everyone's talk pages, so I'm doing it here instead:

I'd like to send out a big thank you to everyone for their kind words and the support for making me a sysop. I'll do my very best to use these powers sparingly and appropriately. Thank you for your trust — I will be sure to "guard the keys to the WikiJanitor mop closet." :-) • Benc • 17:54, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:U.S. Southern Wikipedians' notice board

Hey! I've created this new notice board specifically for articles related to people from the U.S. South. If you are interested in contributing, leave a message on the page and add articles you feel need to be reviewed, contributed to, or started. Mike H 21:13, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:U.S. Southern wikipedians' notice board/USSCOTW

The Southern Collaboration of the Week board is now up. Please vote or nominate other articles. The first voting ends on October 3. Mike H 14:19, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks!

Benc - many thanks for supporting my adminship, and congratulations on your own! Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 04:55, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And also a thank you from me, for directing me to Meta-wiki (Wiki addict article), I'll take a look at is! regards, --georingo 08:14, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! + better GFDL -> GPL linking

Hi benc, thanks for helping on eigenplane. If you're interested in something else maths related in wikipedia (and i thought i wrote a long rant on this, but i'm not quite sure where...), IMHO it's rather self-defeating to have GFDL encyclopedia articles writing about mathematics (or science), containing text and formulae, without at the same time strongly favouring external links to GPL or GPL compatible software. Of course, the software doesn't always (yet) exist, but often it does, and IMHO it would be good idea to make people writing or correcting articles feel that they should search for some free software equivalent. In fact, surely just about any article could be associated with some sort of free software which does something which enables the reader/user to do more with that idea, to test it, integrate it with other info, etc etc.

As someone with a job in science, i can say that most practising astronomers use some mix between free software, not-quite-free software and outright-commercial-closed software, and are generally not quite aware of the diffferences between free and non-quite-free software. The feeling is often "the ends justify the means". If wikipedia only gives people the end results of knowledge without giving them the power to test that knowledge themselves, then we will only have a small-r revolution in knowledge distribution, not a real big-R Revolution which will help save the planet. :)

My feeling is that something could be added to the basic template for writing/editing articles to encourage links to free (as in speech) software. However, i thought that rather than trying to campaign for this (i'm sure that any change to the basic editing form would be very strongly debated :), it makes more sense simply to do it for the subjects where i think i can contribute - people are more likely to take this seriously if i do some work myself. So for eigenplane, i've submitted an article to a scientific journal, it's freely available as a preprint (external link on eigenplane) (but not GFDL - i need to get brownie points for my dayjob), and the GPL software is downloadable. If other people like the idea, then maybe it will spread.

As a short term step towards this, if anyone has any ideas for a better free software template, please see:

Talk:Computer algebra system and Computer algebra system for how it works
Template talk:Free software

These comments, are, of course :), GFDL, so feel free to cut/paste/modify/extend/debug/reuse on a more appropriate page of the wikipedia than your talkpage. :) Boud 13:22, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

suggestion

I read User:Benc/Feature requests, and I think you have really good ideas. In fact, I think you should add another request: that hovering on a link would open a little information box, just as happens when you put your mouse on an image. This little information box should show the beggining of the article that is being linked, or a little summary.

This will help those who are reading an article but are not familiar with a all the concepts (in physics, for instance). But this should be optional, since it might annoy some users.

[132.66.16.12, 13:43, 3 Oct 2004]

Re: BJAODN comment

But in the future, let's wait until it's actually deleted, okay? -- [User:Benc]

How am I supposed to copy the deleted article's content after it has been deleted? After all, I am not the only person to contribute to BJAODN early - there is even one article there which was in fact never deleted. BJAODN is for fun, not for disputes about technicalities. -- Mike Rosoft 10:16, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, but also: BJAODN is for fun, not for hurting anybody's feelings. I was not disputing technicalities — I was just being cautious about this borderline case. How would you feel if a good-faith contribution of yours got sent to BJAODN, perhaps with a snarky comment like this is why you shouldn't edit Wikipedia on acid? I was unsure if the article you're referring to was a "good faith" effort, hence the suggested delay. Whenever we're laughing at other people's contributions — no matter how silly they are — it's important to keep civility in mind.
  Anyway, about my comment. I didn't mean to say that we should always wait until deletion. Rule of thumb: whenever there are a fair number of "keep" votes on VfD or wherever, that's a good sign that some people's feelings might get hurt, and the article should only be moved to BJAODN upon deletion, if at all. In this case, the keep votes were sockpuppets, which is why I reverted myself. • Benc • 21:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  - Fine with me. -- Mike Rosoft 11:29, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Images

Take a look at the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), subsection "Risk of inappropriate images appearing". Thoughts? -- Dwheeler 04:07, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)