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# User talk:Carcharoth/Archive 11

Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12

## DRV

Sorry, I thought you would have noticed it on your watchlist. You can probably still find the list in the google cache, though, or on the wayback machine. Unfortunately not many people responded to your proposal, despite it being mentioned on the DRV as well. Your index page looks pretty good, didn't we have templates to do that automatically for categories? >Radiant< 08:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

No probs. Thanks for explaining. We do have templates. {{largeCategoryTOC}} is an example, but the layout of that and the one I copied from the LoPbN layout are different. Carcharoth 16:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

## I nominated my article Tompkins Square Park Police Riot for FA status

From the nomination page:
(self-nomination)This article is simply excellent. Excellent writing, interesting subject matter, improved during its Good Article trial, and eye-witnesses have left notes on the Talk page that talk about the article being so accurate, it's like they were living it all over again. Written in a NPOV and heavily cited with the highest of sources, it includes GFDL media, is wikified to the fullest, a fantastic "See Also" section, and looks at the story from every angle. --David Shankbone 18:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. Not sure why you left it here though. :-) Carcharoth 16:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

## Cool Cat MFD on DRV

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 May 30#Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Cool Cat -- Ned Scott 05:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I actually think my vote in the original MfD was wrong, as David Levy's arguments and Cyde Weys inadvertent recreation persuaded me that keeping a redirect is best. Pity I missed the DRV disucssion though. Thanks for the note anyway. It made interesting reading. Carcharoth 16:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

## Messier Objects

I got all the images from here [1] which I believe is actually public domain, but which asks for attribution, so I uploaded them as attribution. You can use them in any article you like - they're free. I didn't put them into other articles just because I didn't think of it - I see no reason not to. As for the images on the list, if you prefer the 2MASS images, feel free to switch them - I see no reason not to. Personally, I'd prefer visible light images where possible - but I found a sorted stack of free images so I went for it. Galaxies and Nebulae aren't really my thing, so otherwise I'm not sure how much I can help, but I've been working on getting free NASA images into articles where appropriate recently. Since some are very nice. WilyD 17:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

## As an aside

On the subject of animal populations on the move, see this (IMO) brilliant idea: [2]. Marskell 17:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Amazing! Thanks for that. The concluding bit here is great: "In the coming century, by default or design, we will constrain the breadth and future evolutionary complexity of life on Earth. The default scenario will surely include ever more pest-and-weed dominated landscapes, the extinction of most, if not all, large vertebrates, and a continuing struggle to slow the loss of biodiversity." - reminds me of the best phrases from Profiles of the Future. Carcharoth 18:03, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

## RE: Aagh! :-)

So far I have been assessing all of the peerage articles, like the "Duke of..." as lists, as most of the article consists of a chronological list of the Dukes/Earls/etc. - • The Giant Puffin • 14:34, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

## Haydn

Thanks for spotting my mistake - I should've noticed the lack of a star on the page, sorryabout that! Walkerma 17:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

## Squeaky wheelz

Hey, thought I might let you know: "the squeaky wheel" is I think a metaphor for like a wagon wheel or some other older device using multiple wheels. Like, even if all the wheels suck, only the one making the noise will be remedied. Like how even if a bunch of people are being jerks, the one making the most fuss will be iced. My elementary teachers used to say it to me when I'd get in trouble, hahahahahahaha. Hope that helps ^_^ Milto LOL pia 23:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

## Re: That RFAR

Thanks for appreciating what I tried to say at that mess of an ArbCom. Now I've come to find out that an article I tried to salvage has been one of the things put through the ringers. More and more, I'm finding this case impacting on my editing, even though I've barely ever interacted with its actual parties.

Sigh. Serpent's Choice 21:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

## Talk:Wizard (fantasy)

Sorry not one I can help with as far as edit history is concerned, as you will see by my edits at the time I found it very confusing. --Philip Baird Shearer 23:56, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Give Tux a hug!

--Psychless Type words! 01:44, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! But I have to be honest and say I only added it for some of the letters. The majority were added by User:Mahanga with this edit. Carcharoth 08:15, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Oops, well I didn't look over the history well enough. Thanks for telling me. I'll give one to Mahanga right now. --Psychless Type words! 15:15, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

## Re: Introductory style in articles

Thanks for the comment about the Egyptian dynastic articles; if nothing else, it served as a welcome reality check for me. I probably wouldn't feel so frustrated in this situation if: (1) said person responded to questions on her/his Talk page, (2) was not editting in good faith, & (3) was not so obviously (well, at least to me) wrong. If I may ask your advice, can you think of a way to begin a conversation with this person that does not require someone to perform an indef block? I suspect this will only cause this contributor to either leave or open another account & continue to edit in the same manner. And no, this person does not have email enabled for this account. -- llywrch 17:44, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

PS -- About multiple forms of names in an article. Probably the best example of what you are thinking would be almost any article on a person or place related to Ethiopia: there is no standardized practice of transliteration, so spellings can vary widely & confusingly for them. (One example is the former province of Illubabor: I've seen it transliterated as Illu Abba Bora & Elubabore by different authorities.) Add to that the complication many settlements & ethnic groups have multiple names (e.g., Addis Ababa is referred to as Finfinne), & many Ethiopian articles require a line or two to list all of the possible alternative names. But my point in mentioning this is to suggest that if you can find one of these articles, & re-write the lead paragraph to fit more in line of what you'd prefer to see -- I'd be interested in the result. I may even adopt it & revise as many other articles that I can find to conform to the example -- I'm always open to new ideas. -- llywrch 18:01, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
I prefer to use Islamic physicians and scholars as examples. Usually at least three names there. Try Al-Razi for starters. You have a whole paragraph of confusing names, followed by two different dating systems as a bonus. To be fair, the very next paragraph immediately introduces the subject and his notability, so it's not something I've ever made a tremendous fuss about. Carcharoth 18:28, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yep, we're hopefully going to deal with him. If he won't see reason then, unfortunately, Wizardman will have to take action against him. --Psychless Type words! 15:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC) 01:13, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

## Response posted in the wrong place...

Here! :) Jenolen speak it! 03:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

## re: Nice portfolio

I wondered over to your user page, after replying to your comments at WT:NOT, and found Billy (pygmy hippo) among other gems of articles. Nice going! I love the userpages design as well, with the tabs. Might imitate that one day. I dunno, I find articles like those you wrote so interesting, but the line with people and tabloid-style journalism articles feels different somehow. Writing about a person should, I think, require a different style to that when writing about a magazine article (the Sinatra one), or a famous pygmy hippo. Collating from different sources to write the definitive article on something like that is OK, but doing it for a person can be an invasion of their privacy, or a short stub that can't really be expanded. I suppose the closest thing I can find in your collection is John Dau, which could be merged to God Grew Tired of Us. For example, why does John Dau have an article and not Daniel and Panther? Hope you don't mind me using this article as a discussion point! Carcharoth 21:19, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Carcharoth, thanks for the nice comments! I want to be clear that I'm not a fan at all of tabloid-journalism and internet memes, which are the causes of 90 percent of our BLP issues here at Wikipedia. But I do think it is being approached as censorship. Personally, I have no interest in these kidnapped babies and 15-kilobytes of fame pole-vaulting hotties. It's not something I like or really care about which is why I've mostly avoided the heated debates on the topic. But, I think it is censorship when we delete the handful of these articles which are well-sourced. I'm not necessarily saying it's wrong to delete them, I'm unsure. I wouldn't say that censorship, in any possible context, is a bad thing. Broadcast television for example is censored; I don't really think anyone has a problem with that. But I'd raise the same objection if somebody said "TV is not censored, it's just editorial discretion!" As for John Bul Dau, I think it's the first article I created and my understanding of Wikipedia has evolved a lot since then. But the reason I made an article for Dau and not the other characters in God Grew Tired of Us was 1) that Dau was the more prominent character, 2) Dau had also been featured in National Geographic and the Washington Post so there were multiple independent sources and 3) Dau's charity has received media coverage. Thanks again for the nice comments, and feel free to use my userspace design! I was teaching myself how to use tables and such and just got carried away! --JayHenry 21:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Not much to add, but wanted to thank you in turn for the nice reply! I'm afraid I rather expect people to be defensive, but it is nice to be able to discuss things calmly like this. BTW, I haven't seen the film God Grew Tired of Us, I presume you have? It sounds good. WOuld you recommend it and is it generally available? I noted the year of release in the article, though at the bottom it only said "planned for release". Do you know what happened with that? Carcharoth 21:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I believe that I saw God Grew Tired of Us in one of those indy movie theater in January. It's very well done; given the subject matter it's unsurprisingly very hard to watch at times, so very depressing to know that we live in a world where people can do this to each other. Good catch that the article needs updating about the release date. I'll try to discover if it ended up released in the fall or the winter and I'll see if I can't find how wide of a release it was. According to Amazon the DVD is being released in August of this year. --JayHenry 21:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

## Good morrow

I'm reading some books about Catherine de' Medici at the moment, so she's a possible. To be honest, I've been spending more time reading books and reviewing peoples' articles at peer review recently. I did knock up John de Critz en passant—murder trying to find anything about him, I must say. I'd be grateful if you'd give it one of your lookovers (I expect I'll do Robert Peake the Elder soon, too; same sort of chap). Now, here's something that might interest you (as one of our foremost links detectives) to look into: who the heck is "John de Critz the Younger", if anyone? You'll see from my note on the talk page that I have a growing hunch that two John de Critzes have been conflated by historians and critics into one: either that or he was a right vigorous old geezer. Our man is often called "John the Critz the elder", but I'm blowed if I can find anything material about any John the Younger at all, as such. Tis an enigma on the cathedrals-of-Oslo scale, and no mistake.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed your wikibreak. qp10qp 22:40, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I thought the one you read was Paul van Somer I: thanks for your edits to that (I don't know, Jacobean painters, eh, once you've seen one, you've seen the lot). You are right that the article is highly padded around a tiny few actual facts about de Critz, but I looked high and low for that padding and I was determined to stuff it all in, right down to the last duck feather, if it was the last thing I did; anyway, I like to give people something to read when they click a link, I suppose. I have thought about doing an article on Jacobean painters, but I need to get hold of some of Roy Strong's books first (he practically rediscovered William Larkin)), not that he's likely to have much on poor old John de Critz, forced to paint barges at the age of eighty (I don't think).
By the way, that policy of red-linking in Anne and James has worked a treat: apart from your John Chamberlain (letter writer), Egil's Old Bishop's Palace in Oslo, and my van Somer and de Critz, someone has done a Kirk o'Field article (though they've chosen the less classy gap-after-the-apostrophe style), and there's even a stub on Conrad Vorstius now. It's satisfying. qp10qp 23:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I will definitely get round to adding to John Chamberlain (letter writer) and Conrad Vorstius one day. And I intend to do a full article on Darnley's murder (intentions, intentions), which I have some corking sources for. John Guy's moment-by-moment analysis of it is electrifying; and once you add the David Rizzio murder as a prologue and end with Mary Queen of Scots and the casket letters (rubbish article: another one to improve), you have a potentially gripping article, full of action and mystery, better than fiction. Incidentally, well spotted about the connection between the two pictures: you're quite right; and I do think he was indoctrinated a bit. Oh, I love looking at pictures: have you read Yomangani's wonderful An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, which is at FAC at the moment? qp10qp 00:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

## All partief

Here you go. --Tony Sidaway 00:22, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah. No double ff's. That would be the German ff. Thanks! Carcharoth 00:23, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh and you muftn't miss the sequel: [3]. --Tony Sidaway 00:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
LOL! Carcharoth 00:27, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

## Magic cloak

I was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to cheer Bishonen up by pointing out that her The Country Wife is one of our best articles and that featured status is worth something, because we put all that we love into all that we make (you'll recognise the reference). Someone had stuck one of Bishonen's best articles up for review and someone else was being offensive to ALoan during the discussion over it, and Bishonen had clearly had enough, I think rather for ALoan's sake than her own. What I was trying to put over, though I expect it seemed wishy washy, was that when you put the amount of time and care into an article that gets it to featured status, that is a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing that no longer belongs to the maker because it has been given. You have made something special, which exists apart from you. The love and care you invested will reach people, and they will sense it. I'm dismayed to find top-quality article writers like Bishonen, ALoan and Geogre becoming worn down by the dreary fusspotting over citations that goes on; but what they did remains: the people who appreciate their articles outnumber those who fuss by far and will want to defend those articles. I think of the Lothlorien thing sometimes when I am stitching away at articles: it's the only way I can make sense of why I am going to so much trouble. qp10qp 01:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if you could answer ALoan's relatively incomprehensible comment on my talk page. At first I thought something odd must have happened to the dear chap during his wikibreak—abduction by one of those sects who talk in tongues, perhaps—but then I realised this was only Tolkien in tongues, and so quite up your street.
I'd also be interested in your take, if you have one, on an issue I've raised on the Talk: Anne of Denmark page. qp10qp 19:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

## Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oxford University Chess Club

Hi, you might want to convert your Comment into an action recommendation? BlueValour 01:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

## LoPbN

Sorry, it's a busy day. I'll get back to you on that, give me a few days. Cheers, >Radiant< 17:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem. Maybe by then I'll have consolidated my thoughts somewhat, and drawn up an even more detailed plan! :-) Carcharoth 17:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

## discerning to fulfill / This labor, by slow prudence to make mild / A rugged people

Hi Carcharoth,
(Wow, I did almost leave a message on your not-a-talk-page.) I can reply with questions, general points, and thoughts, but I'm not in the bot business. What you're proposing though sounds doable, but it's a big project, and I think a variety of technical opinions will be helpful in finding the best solution.

I'm trying first to get a sense of your overall goal: to create an essentially automated biography index? Do you want to use categories, or you're open to whatever works? The following are random thoughts and I haven't really examined their consequences:

• Is there a precedent for putting DEFAULTSORT on talk pages? I don't suppose it really matters, but generally there isn't "stuff" at the bottom of talk pages so the text is more likely to go missing. I suppose the defaultsort keyword could be placed anywhere. Inside the WPBIO template, maybe? If other templates followed this course, the system would contain redundancy and would have the potential to cause competing (different) sorts, in which case I'm sure nothing horrible will happen.
• What math project does: interesting. I didn't follow all the transclusions involved, but I doubt their method would scale to WPBio.
• If we're in the biography metadata business (indexing, basic bio information), why not store it all in one place: the WPBio template? By that I mean moving PERSONDATA from article pages to the WPBio template. The category sort would, if possible, come from PERSONDATA. Big change!
• I am willing to update my article assessment script (do you know of it?) to start adding DEFAULTSORTs to the talk page instead of or in addition to the "listas" parameter. The assessment factory is so busy that by the time I do it, they may have assessed everything!
Outriggr § 04:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments! I don't know what is usually put on talk pages, but I realised that the aslist parameter of WPBiography is duplicating what should be used as a DEFAULTSORT key on the article page. Knowing how Wikipedia works, I reckon there are plenty of articles where only one or the other is used, so sorting that out is one goal (and finding out how widespread such inconsistency is would be one of the first steps). There is also existing data in the Persondata template, as the "name" parameter there is in the DEFAULTSORT format already! Possibly tweaking Template:Persondata may simply integrate the two. Persondata should probably remain on the article page, though I like your idea of putting persondata in the WPBiography template, there may be disadvantages to that.
As for the overall goal: "to create an essentially automated biography index" is exactly right. Using DEFAULTSORT allows this to be done using a category. Other methods, I'm not sure about. Anyway, asking the assessors to fill in the listas parameter might be a good first step. Doesn't matter what it is called, as long as the information is there (it can be tweaked later). I saw someone (was it you?) say that listas already involves the DEFAULTSORT magic word. Does that sound right?
To complicate things still further, there is another metadata format called Hcard. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Microformats#Persondata and hCard.
Anyway, I'm encouraged by your response. I'll try and bring all the discussion together over the next few days and start up a proper page somewhere. Would you have any ideas for name or location? WPBiography seems like a good location to me. Carcharoth 09:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
PS. Where doe the section title quote come from? :-) Carcharoth 09:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Let me answer the easy question: the other day I was quoting Ulysses in my edit comments. Every one of them I think was apropos; wouldn't you agree that your project is to "make mild a rugged people [biographies]"? :-) –Outriggr § 23:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Maybe I should try reading Ulysses again... :-) Carcharoth 23:29, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Oops. I thought you meant Ulysses (novel). The Tennyson poem is brilliant! I read this and immediately thought of Wikipedia: "I mete and dole, Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me." LOL! Carcharoth 23:31, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Ha! (You'll know I've gone over the edge when I start leaving quotes from Ulysses (novel) in my edit comments. "The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea." :-) –Outriggr § 10:08, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that information at the bottom of a talk page is always vulnerable. On the other hand, embedding useful data inside the (already complicated) WPBiography template is not optimal either. In my view, these common data should be read from a common source. The most obvious way to do it is to transclude them from a subpage, as discussed on my talk page. I have now produced a "proof-of-concept" at Alexander Grothendieck. Here the DEFAULTSORT for the article and the listas parameter in the template are both transcluded from Talk:Alexander Grothendieck/Persondata. This subpage is also used to provide some of the infobox information and to fill out the Persondata table at the bottom of the article.

I've commented further at Template talk:Persondata#Persondata on a subpage. Geometry guy 16:35, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

## Biographical articles

After reading your edit on the subject of how people approach the writing of biographical articles, I think that you might be interested in what I wrote in the pretty coloured box at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 May 23.

You might want to read about cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing too. It isn't quite the same thing as you are discussing, but the "I know. I'll add a bullet point to a Wikipedia article." approach is a similar one. Uncle G 15:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for that. I agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote there (I wish we could link directly to DRVs - well, we could if people would set the system up properly). I especially like the bit about education. There are editors out there who will adopt correct practices if the point keeps getting (politely) hammered home. There are those who won't, but that is always the case. The cargo cult comment was even better: "Simply amassing raw data, and hoping that an encyclopaedia article will magically arise from it, doesn't work". I've actually done my fair share of this adding of snippets of information, but over the couple of years or so that I've been here, I've come to realise that this approach is OK for a while, but eventually someone needs to actually write the article and give it substance with real content and sources. Another approach, is to get a moderately well-organised category of fairly good articles, and then use material from those articles to write a summary-style overview of the wider subject area. I wonder what the name for that is, and whether that is any better (in the long run) than what you describe.

Anyway, you should write essays based on those two items you pointed out, and point many more people at them. Those that weren't aware of the issues, but stick around, will benefit, and the churning mass of new editors ariving all the time might benefit as well. Even if not essays, maybe a collection of diffs to some of the mini-essays? Carcharoth 16:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• I've been mulling over how to write up the second for some time, now. But It's not actually necessary to write an essay for the first. I wrote it as something that we should consider elaborating and adopting. It seemed to me that it was something that a lot of editors were progressing towards. I, for example, had already covered the ground of presenting things in the way that the sources do at User:Uncle G/On notability#Dealing with non-notable things.

After writing it, I went to the Village Pump and to several other talk pages to advertise the idea and trigger some discussion. By the time that I reached Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons I found that other editors had already added it to the policy and a discussion was already underway. You can see the result at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Articles about living people notable only for one event.

What I find interesting is that Fred Bauder reported here that Jimbo and others had been working behind closed doors on a "major initiative". As far as I can tell, that initiative was this. As I said, a lot of editors appeared to be progressing towards the same thing. ☺ Uncle G 12:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

• I'm sure I saw your notability essay somewhere before, but I've now added it to my bookmarks page so I won't lose it again! Some great stuff there, and some amazing examples. I liked Mill Ends Park! As for the cargo cult encyclopedia writing essay, well, you probably need to find a better name for it first! (What does "cargo cult" mean?) Maybe "Different ways of writing encyclopedia articles" and cover other approaches? The essay does strike deep at the concept of wiki editing, so you might want to find a balance that preserves the advantages of wiki editing to produce aggregates of raw material, which can then be knocked into shape by a writer or a subject expert. Would the concept of article incubation help? Obviously not everyone can write perfect articles from scratch, but the point you make about how addition of trivia decreases as the article gets better, is extremely relevwant. Also, what do you think about the idea that if a category contains lots of good, well-written, reliably-sourced articles, but the overview article is rubbish (or non-existent), that a summary-style overview article can be written using the earlier efforts that wrote the subsidiary articles? The usual model is the other way around, to spin smaller topic articles off from a broader article, but I think it can work well the other way around as well. What do you think? Carcharoth 12:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
• You've very probably seen it before. There are also User:Uncle G/On sources and content and some others. As for what a cargo cult is: See cargo cult. I'm not sure what I think about your idea yet. I'll keep mulling this whole area over.

One interesting talk page to read, if you are thinking about article development in this area, is Talk:Phenomenon. See also the article's edit history over the past 5 years. Uncle G 15:13, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

• PS. Is cargo cult programming more relevant to explain the analogy? Carcharoth 15:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
• Well the basic ideas are those of mimicry and of belief in the magical creation of articles. Uncle G 19:38, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

## :)

I'm glad someone took a chance to look at my page :). I suppose I'll put {{editprotected}} on the page and hope everyone doesn't start yelling at me later. Also, I've noticed you aren't part of the assessment drive. Go here if you want to be... --Psychless 18:03, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I found it too: very funny, and a very flattering portrait of yours truly!! Geometry guy 19:43, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

## Re: category flattening

I responded on my talk page, but should probably mention here as well that I used a java class that I wrote myself to do the category flattening; anyone can run it if they compile it (using, for example, BlueJ, which in turn uses javac) and then run the bytecode (BlueJ can also be used for this). Both require the Java Runtime Environment. GracenotesT § 02:56, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

## Kirk o' Field

I liked your amusing summary suggesting some form of Jacobean tabloid journalism - made me smile. I would pretty much agree with your assessment, but would hesitate to classify either Darnley or Bothwell as non-notable :) How bizzarre that this modest little article about the scene of one of Scotland's great unsolved murders appears on the talk page of an ArbCom case dealing with BLP issues!!! Wikipedia never ceases to amaze. Cheers. --Cactus.man 13:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Carcharoth 14:01, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

## DEFAULTSORT key

I responded to your post on mw:. You might also want to know that there is a setting on mw that sends you an e-mail when a page you're watching has changed. I guess Wikipedia has this disabled due to the massive number of e-mails that would need to be sent. --Catrope 18:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. If you see this reply, there is a bot being written to do a similar thing here - see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3. If your API script could be a simpler way to do this, please comment there. Thanks. Carcharoth 21:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been keeping an eye on the talk page, and so have at least some of the other arbitrators.

• The "BLP Admin" thing seems like extra hoops here; I don't think that reducing the pool of people available to nuke BLP vios really helps matters, and I don't see why "regular" admins wouldn't be trusted to do so responsibly.
• As far as blanking goes, it'd have to be a blank+protect to have any effect at all, since we'll just be provoking edit-warring otherwise; and once you've forced admin involvement, I think it's cleaner to simply delete the thing.

Kirill Lokshin 01:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Carcharoth, do start a proposal page; that Kirill Lokshin doesn't see the advantages of keeping the history accessible just suggests that one of the problems here is that he's been an admin so long he's forgotten how Wikipedia looks to the rest of us. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:37, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

## Edit intro

I saw your post to Portal talk:Current events. I've replied there, but you might want to test it out yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Chacor&action=edit&section=new&editintro=User:Chacor/editintro

Chacor 12:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. Since it says that there has to be the additional &editintro in the URL... – Chacor 13:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, now my talk page is acting up after I added that link. Clicking it seems to make the archive box bigger and the link doesn't open... – Chacor 13:12, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm almost certain I didn't have that problem before. I wonder if editintro caused it? But that can't be, because if there isn't editintro= in the link it still adjusts the box position... Chacor 13:25, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

## My WPBio bot

I finally answered your questions on my talk page. :-) – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:33, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

## More like this?

I don't know how similar it is to An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump but I have another FAC with an artistic leaning up at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Four Times of the Day. It's somewhat ground to a halt, so, if you are interested, your comments and/or support would be appreciated. Cheers, Yomanganitalk 23:23, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

## Re: Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park

Done on both images. ^demon[omg plz] 11:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Both look good to me. ^demon[omg plz] 13:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

## Royal burials

Hi, I noticed a post of yours from a few months ago about creating a list of royal burials, and I thought you might be interested in this that I've been working on. Burial places of British monarchs - I've sourced it from Wikipedia articles at the moment - the only general source I could find contains quite a few mistakes.--Sandy Donald 13:07, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow! That's great work there. Thanks for letting me know, and good luck with getting more pictures. I live in the UK, so could take/replace some pictures if you wanted. Carcharoth 13:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Any help is appreciated. I'd quite like to have pictures of the tombs themselves where possible, rather than generic ones of what the building looks like today. I also need to find more sources.--Sandy Donald 13:20, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

## BLP

No, thank you; SlimVirgin is allergic to me, and I want to get back to editing real articles after this bath of unpleasantness. If I do any projects, it will be a genuinely light process of article evaluation, intended to supplement GA. Let me know when your computer gets better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

OK. Good luck with the article editing (I want to get back to that as well...) Carcharoth 15:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

## LoPbN

Hi there! I don't mind at all if you move those index pages to the relevant Wikiproject. Perhaps it can be of some use to them. I think some plans for extended meta-data would be very useful; you may want to try contacting one of the devs for that, but failing that there's always the pump and the bot request forum. I'm not convinced that generating lists is such a good idea unless you have some way of keeping them current. HTH. >Radiant< 15:32, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I think if ever such a list reappeared, it would work with metadata like Wikipedia:Persondata. That could generate "name, birth date, death date, short description" for a list, and would be edited in the article (or on a page tightly associated with the article). Thus the maintaining of a separate page would no longer apply. Some of the more detailed LoPbN features, like distinguishing people named John, and those with surname John, might get lost, but theoretically you could get that distinction entered in the metadata somehow (slightly different fields like "known name" and "sort key" and "surname"). Of course, this designing of databases for biographical information has all been done before, but I don't know which is the best system to use. Anyway, thanks for the response and the idea to move the pages to a relevant WikiProject. I'll see how things go. Carcharoth 15:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

## Dear Carcharoth

No problem, and thanks for the kind reply. Much appreciated. Sorry this reply is so short, but I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment. Carcharoth 08:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

## Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/CharlotteWebb

Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/CharlotteWebb. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/CharlotteWebb/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/CharlotteWebb/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Newyorkbrad 23:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

## REVERTS THINGOL

Hi Cacharoth, having a bit of an edit/revert difficulty with new editor, YLSS, on Thingol article. Perhaps your diplomatic presence will help resolve things. ThanksTttom1 03:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I was asked for an easy way of counting blue links on a (long) page (see here). It may be you have an answer in your capacious back pocket ... Occuli 13:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out #4 of Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_directory to me. But in my opinion, that might not stop issues at the Virtual Console list. People seem to have agreed to a compromise: but it still lists the points (in a smaller way than before), which seems to violate #4 anyway. Here is the compromise version that's been offered to the North America list of VC games: [4]. Should I post the link to #4 on the list talk page? Because frankly, a compromise doesn't need to happen (on the list page) seeing as how no one has objected to this addition to the What Wikipedia is Not addition. RobJ1981 15:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't look too bad, actually. What you might be better off doing is insisting that a date is given for the prices in that table (ie. as of January 2007), plus a clear link to the source of the information (whatever website was used). Carcharoth 15:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Well I suppose, but I'm not sure a link to the website would work. As people have put it in the article in the past: and it's just been removed (not sure why though) from what I've seen. Also, besides the Virtual Console lists (for 4 different regions of the world), there is 2 areas on the Xbox Live Arcade article that are price issues. Xbox_Live_Arcade#Xbox_Live_Arcade_games_for_the_Xbox_360 andXbox_Live_Arcade#Xbox_Live_Arcade_games_for_the_Xbox, I'm not sure what to do there. As I can imagine, if the prices get removed...people will complain. But seeing as how the prices are listed on the NOT page, policy should outweigh editor's complaints (in my opinion).RobJ1981 15:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The trouble is, quoting that policy page at people won't always work. You still have to engage in talk page discussion with people who object. The best argument, in my opinion, is saying that prices are ephemeral trivia. The only reason people want to know the Wii Points (or whatever) is so they can buy the games. It doesn't contribute to an encyclopedic understanding of the games. Just ask for sources that discuss the price of the games, and reject simple listing of data. ie. Prose about prices and why they are important, not lists of prices for the sake of prices. Carcharoth 15:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I posted on the list talk page about it. I can imagine people will be upset at me, because I'm technically going against the compromise. I was originally for a compromise, but violating a policy to please some editors doesn't need to happen. RobJ1981 16:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

## Haymarket Bomb article

Hi,

Did you think to checkthe talk page before moving this item? There was already a lively discussion about whether and where it should be moved to. It would have been a courtesy to check it out first! Regards, Lynbarn 14:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I checked afterwards, and added my thoughts to the discussion. No harm done. Thanks for the note though. Carcharoth 14:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

No Problems, besides, it's been moved again since! I hope the perpetrator(s) are less evasive! cheers! Lynbarn 14:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

## Operas

Category:Operas would probably be interested in a Carcharothian flattening of the subcat structure - as you will see they prefer to have all the operas listed at the top level and of course may be fretting about some that are buried deep down.

Re redirects - I thought, looking at this category (which is large and well-organised) that there might be a case for having a redirect to operaXXX named (say) OperaXXX, itscomposer, year and putting this at the top level (instead of the article) as a more informative route to operaXXX. (The opera people are very particular but renaming a redirect if nec is easy.) Perhaps this is contrary to some naming rule or other. -- roundhouse0 14:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Populating the top-level of a category structure with redirects is an interesting idea! One problem is that people will still get confused over what they are being offered, and what if people want to add more than just composer or year? I think a sortable table might be best for what you want there. As for flattening, try User:PockBot. Much easier than a manual flattening. Carcharoth 15:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks - Pockbot is beavering away as I write. In the case of the opera people I expect they would come up with a consensus and shoot anyone who strayed from it (and why not?). (It is a disadvantage of the category system that one usually gets a list of names without any further clues.) -- roundhouse0 15:58, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Hey. After seeing your demeanor and your quality of edits during the biography assessment drive, it surprised me to find out that you were not an admin yet. If yuo wish to be an administrator, I would gladly nominate you over at WP:RFA. Let me know of your decision. Wizardman 00:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Still sorting out some problems in real life. Nothing serious, but will only be around sporadically, so best to wait until then. Thanks anyway. I really appreciate it when people take the time to say kind things like this! :-) Carcharoth 07:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

## Biographies of living persons policy

I'm responding to this comment which was made on a page that's unlikely to be much watched because the arbitration case has closed.

You took issue with my statement that "Our policy has long advocated that unsourced or poorly sourced negative material should be removed without discussion". Well that's a straightforward error of fact.

Going to current version, I see this in the lead:

We must get the article right.[5] Be very firm about high quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just highly questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles,[6] [7] talk pages, user pages, and project space.

And this has been around for well over a year. From 4 June 2006:

We must get the article right. Be very firm about high quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about living persons should be removed immediately from both the article and the talk page. [8] These principles also apply to biographical material about living persons in other articles.

I wonder how many of the recent problems have arisen from a failure to understand that self-censorship is expected in cases where harm could be caused. This overrides the general principle of open discussion but does not compromise accountability and transparency because non-public methods of communication exist. If an editor removes some material under the BLP and I don't understand why I can email him. Raising a crusade against him because I think he may have erred is never right. --Tony Sidaway 10:16, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I should have realised you were talking specifically about BLP. I was talking in general about removing unsourced stuff from any article. Also, you'd be surprised how many editors don't have e-mail enabled. One reason for the focus on admins, I suppose. Anyway, the problem ultimately comes down to assuming good faith. There have been many times on-wiki where I've read edit summaries, checked the edit, disagreed with what the edit summary said, and changed things or contested it on the talk page. Being unable to do that when seeing the edit summary "egregious violation of BLP" in the deletion log of a red-linked article understandably makes people uncomfortable. Assuming good faith becomes hard when there are over 1000 admins and you haven't interacted with the one you see making the deletion. In essence, assuming good faith relies on being able to see exactly what has been done. When that is possible, it is easier to assume good faith in cases where there was a mistake. When you are not clear about what exactly has been done, that process of rationalisation is short-circuited. And on a side topic, the word "egregious" gets overused far too much. It seems to be the latest wiki-buzzword. Carcharoth 11:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, sorry I just realised that my words were ambiguous. Unless you understood that I was referring specifically to the BLP, my statement would look odd.
On your response, I understand your point "assuming good faith relies on being able to see exactly what has been done." I think a lot of people have that problem. But it doesn't. Assuming good faith simply relies on unwillingness to assume malice. That is sadly lacking as can be seen from the talk page of the proposed decision. Of course in a BLP removal you can still see what has been removed, and in a BLP deletion an admin can see what has been deleted. Failure to assume good faith in such circumstances is worrying.
I tend to agree with you that the word "egregious" is most egregiously overused (grin). --Tony Sidaway 11:34, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

## Question

Can you help me with proposing a new guideline for What Wikipedia is Not? I noticed you were somewhat active in the discussion about prices (but the whole discussion has died down a bit). I noticed there is something on the project page already, but some people have claimed it wasn't official and not agreed on. So because of that, they choose to ignore it. Frankly, all these video game download prices need to go. They are recent prices, and certainly aren't historic or anything similar that would be acceptable for Wikipedia. Several people have stated in the past: they visit the articles so they can find out the prices. This certainly isn't what Wikipedia should be used for. In my opinion, the discussion should stay active until something is in place that people can follow. Otherwise this issue will come up again and again (or just be ignored: and prices will pop up in more articles, which doesn't need to happen). RobJ1981 19:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, what is there at the moment is probably the best you will get for now. If you feel people aren't listening to what you say, and ignoring what is on that page, I would enter some form of dispute resolution, or get advice from others. Sorry I can't help more at the moment, but I'll try and keep up-to-date with what is happening. Carcharoth 09:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

## Middle-earth in popular culture

You'll have to find the references and sources first, because rewriting it now or restoring the article now would bring up the original AFD's concerns again. The original article was entirely unsourced POV original research, which led to the unanimous delete consensus on AFD, so I would be very hard-pressed to just restore the article for any reason. If you do find sources that could be used to rewrite the article in a neutral manner, go on and do it in your userspace, or take them to DRV if you feel you still need what was there (though that stuff likely won't prove very useful). --Coredesat 18:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I see no problem with that, so I've gone and done it: User:Carcharoth/Middle-earth in popular culture. Just note that if there isn't significant change in a timely manner, the page may be MFDed or deleted per CSD G4. --Coredesat 02:19, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Now waiting for the book I ordered. Will be a couple of weeks unfortunately. Carcharoth 21:54, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

## Jenna redirect

OK, I've deleted the redirect (as CSD G7). Your alternative seems like a fair compromise. Waltontalk 09:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Given that this concern has been removed, would you be happy with the upgrading of WP:HARM to a proposed guideline? Obviously, feel free to tweak any aspects of the wording that you're not satisfied with (as we're still at the consensus-building stage here). Waltontalk 10:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, I've started a new discussion thread at WT:HARM. Waltontalk 11:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

## FYI

Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Requests_for_approval#.22Request_for_Bot_Approval.22_seems_to_be_broken. – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:20, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

And now Quadell seems to be broken. :) I've been busy with species stuff. I'll try to do the WPBio test tomorrow. All the best, – Quadell (talk) (random) 04:27, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I have run the trial. See all the gooey details at User talk:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run. – Quadell (talk) (random) 15:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll look at that later. Carcharoth 15:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey Carcharoth! If you make up another list of WPBios to run, I'll try out the new code. – Quadell (talk) (random) 22:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

## YWIMC

Your wish is my command. -- 04:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I tossed in a reference at Great_Lakes#Passenger_traffic, but there's not much of a history section. (There's a project for someone!) The shipwreck section doesn't contain many specific wrecks at all and I don't think this one belongs there. -- 16:18, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

## Arthur Conan Doyle

...you added a DEFAULTSORT to Arthur Conan Doyle. Unfortunately, there was (a) already an existing DEFAULTSORT and (b) your DEFAULTSORT was incorrect. He should be sorted under "Conan Doyle, Arthur", not "Doyle, Arthur Conan". Carcharoth 23:12, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Carcharoth. I'm sorry that I didn't notice there was an existing DEFAULTSORT for Doyle, and I'm always happy to be corrected, but would you mind explaining your view that "Doyle, Arthur Conan" is incorrect? His surname was Doyle. Conan was a given name and was not used by his father Charles Doyle or his son Kingsley Doyle. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography lists him under 'D' as ‘Doyle, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan (1859–1930)’. Regards, Xn4 23:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I was going by the article, which says "Conan was originally a given name, but Doyle used it as part of his surname in his later years", and also refers to him as "Conan Doyle" throughout. Your point about the DNB is a good one. I'm not sure what to do here. It has also been discussed at Talk:Arthur Conan Doyle#Doyle or Conan Doyle?. I'll copy all this over to the talk page for discussion. Thanks for pointing this out. Carcharoth 00:08, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

## thanks for your words of cheer,

but to be honest (and I tend to be that, if nothing else) at this point I am not tht interested in getting MY articles upgraded as I am in questioning the whole process. Or at least how it is being implimented. I did not know about the links that you sent me and will check them out. I have posted most of the pictures, and probably listings at the United States section of List of equestrian statues, and I have done a lot of military and military related sculpture research. Cemetery stuff too. However, I am also involved in a HUGE architectural sculpture venture that actually values my opinion and original research, so my wiki production is down. (to be cont.) Carptrash 18:17, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

## Genetics introduction article

The discussion on the Introduction to genetics article seemed to conclude that the article was poor quality in comparison to the genetics article itself that it shouldn't be linked from the top of the genetics article — this misleads the reader into thinking the intro article might be appropriate material to learn from, when in reality that article needs a lot of work. Do you disagree with my moving the link to the intro to the "see also" section? I don't believe the introduction article has been worked on or improved since the discussion. If you feel the genetics article itself could use some clarification in places, please let me know, I'd be happy to attempt rewriting sections of it. Madeleine 22:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the 'introduction' for genetics is, at the moment, not a very good one at all. Please feel free to move the hatnote from both articles, or remove them altogether. If you remove them, please manually re-add the categories Category:Introductions and Category:Articles with separate introductions to the relevant articles. Thanks. Carcharoth 09:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I hadn't known to do this, thanks for letting me know. I hope the edit I've made adding the category to the genetics article (after removing the seeintro tag) is correct. I'm leaving the note on the introduction to genetics article to guide readers to the main article. Madeleine 21:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
That might not be the ideal solution, as not many people will now even be aware that the introduction article exists. But I'm also reluctant to return to the previous state, as the other concerns (it's not really an introduction) are still a concern. Hmm. A merger might be best. I'll raise this somewhere else, but would you agree with merging? Carcharoth 21:53, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I would, but I'm biased — I wrote almost all of the current incarnation of the genetics article. I tried my best to make the subject accessible while remaining encyclopedic in coverage. For that same reason, it would be difficult for me to do a merger alone; I would rather have someone tell me what points need clarification rather than a vague blanket request to merge in what I feel to be an inferior article.
In defense of the intro, it was written before the current incarnation of the genetics article, and a lot of editors seem to favor the abstract idea of an intro for this material. Perhaps people will want to keep the page there a starting point for writing a better intro article that we could point readers to in the future, even if they are not guided to it now. Madeleine 22:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I had a quick scan through the genetics article, which while good seems to be to suffer from the negative effects of "summary style" when used on very large topics - namely that while the individual sections are good summaries of what they are describing, the overall article lacks a coherent flow, a narrative taking the reader from beginning to end. Does that make sense? Carcharoth 22:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I have to admit, it's upsetting to get that criticism. I wrote this stuff from scratch (and later threw away the old, disconnected material), and I put a lot of thought into trying to give some coherence and order to covering material. I even posted my outlines on the discussion page: Talk:Genetics#Adding new material?
1. First, a general review of properties of genetic traits: first singular, then multiple.
2. Then a review of the molecular basis for these observations, starting from small, going to large scale, and a footnote on epigenetics.
3. With the molecular basis covered, I wanted to mention research techniques for studying genetics, notably DNA sequencing.
4. Finally, I went into mutations (changes to the DNA molecule), and from there I go into evolution.
Maybe you have more specific criticism. For example, mutation might more naturally follow after (2), but I wanted to include it with evolution and I wanted to cover evolution after (3) because I wanted to mention DNA sequencing in the context of "molecular clock" and creating phylogenetic trees through genetic comparison. Or maybe you want a couple lead-in sentences at the front of some sections. The interconnectedness of the different subjects makes it very difficult to address in linear fashion, but I tried my best. Madeleine 23:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if that criticism was distressing. I did only look very briefly. By the sound of it, a couple of lead-in sentences at the beginning of some sentences might do the trick, but more likely I need to read the article properly before shooting my mouth off... :-( Sorry about that. Will read it in more detail later, if I have time. Carcharoth 23:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Please, if there are specific parts of the article that don't read well or need expansion, let me know. I didn't mean to be averse to improving it further. I never got much feedback on my additions and was planning to submit it to peer review after adding references for the 4th section. Madeleine 00:27, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Review on talk page. One thing I forgot to mention is that overall it is impressive coverage of the subject, just needs a final polish and a narrative thread. Carcharoth 00:57, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

## Interesting FAC

Certainly is. We're broadly in agreement about the 'principle'. Just a note - you mentioned search and replace - I once installed User:Zocky/Search Box but it doesn't work with IE7 - do you know of one that does? --Joopercoopers 15:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't, I'm afraid. I use Word, but that sometimes messes up certain characters of wikicode, so it's not ideal. Carcharoth 21:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

## Making changes?

Should Polbot's defaultsort function actually make changes, or just compile a list? This is a serious question. I'm leaning toward "it will just log", but I wanted to make sure you're cool with that. Here are the advantages:

1. It'll be much quicker. That's important.
2. Many of the changes Polbot has made have turned out to be incorrect anyway.
3. The ones that were correct were largely not all that useful, e.g. adding {{DEFAULTSORT:Saki}}, which is the default anyway.
4. If the log is adequately detailed, a future function could go through it and make the changes later.

Are you sold? – Quadell (talk) (random) 19:20, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in replying. Of course I'm sold on this! My initial idea was just to gather data, and I'm still very happy to see your bot do just that, and let me (and others) analyse the data (you too, if you want!). Though adding defaultsort when the title is an adequate default sort is not entirely useless. It at least embeds a sortkey into the article, rather than leaving people wondering if the title should be the sortkey or whether the sortkey is just missing. On the other hand, if you are just going to gather data, let me think about other parameters that could be gathered. Well, I've checked and I can't think of any more parameters that are needed. However, the next trial run is still needed to check that the log output is in the right format and can be manipulated as needed. So do you want to make those changes, run the bot over the 150 without making any change, and I'll check that I can manipulate the data as intended (and you can do the same). And then we should be ready to go. Only problem then is deciding where to put the data... Lots of separate wiki pages, or keep off-wiki and post the results after we've analysed it? Carcharoth 01:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Will do. Now, about that data. . . it's going to be a lot of data. I'm not sure the best way to handle it. The way I get the WPBio transclusions is by looking at api.php with parameters that tell it to look at 500 WPBio transclusions at a time: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=embeddedin&eititle=Template:WPBiography&eilimit=500&format=xml
(This may be more technical than you wanted, but bear with me -- it could be useful info for you.) I then process those 500, write the log, and pull the next 500. I could do up to 5000 at a time, but with such a tendency for Wikipedia to get overheated and crash in the middle, I think it's safer to just do 500 (so not so much work is lost when it crashes). Anyway, that 500 mark is a good time to write the file. (If I were to write at every bio, it would be slowwwwww.) I could write them to separate User:Polbot subpages, 500 at a time. That would be 760 pages. Or maybe 1000 at a time, for 380 pages. I think that makes the most sense to me. Sound good to you? – Quadell (talk) (random) 03:18, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
One thought. If you do it that way, how do you know where to start from for the next 500? What if more pages are tagged with WPBiography during the period it takes you to write these 380 pages?
(interrupting) If you check out the xml link above, the first section says <embeddedin eicontinue="10|WPBiography|57594"/>. If you pass that string back in, it takes up where the last batch left off. It's the same process "Next 500" uses when looking at categories or "what links here". It basically looks at the next 500, starting with the 57594 record.
As for handling the data, give me the results for 150, and I'll come up with a set of results after a human has checked it, like a template, that can be applied to each of the pages of 1000.
Will do! We just need to iron out a few more details. – Quadell (talk) (random) 19:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
What would be needed is for a human to check the list, do various filters, and then suggest values for the missing data. What is the best format to return the data in, having in mind the idea to get a bot to add the data? Carcharoth 09:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't matter, so long as its consistent. Maybe a list with lines like
*[[Aaron Burr]]|ds=Burr, Aaron

. . .meaning set the DEFAULTSORT of Burr, Aaron. Or whatever. – Quadell (talk) (random) 19:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

## Nice Birdie

And nice birdies they are. Thats one advantage of hi-res digital that you won't get from film. Though I still prefer film.

Let me know when you've seen it and I'll delete that image. Peace.Lsi john 00:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I've seen it. Thanks! :-) Carcharoth 00:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

## Re: 1.8 million articles blog

My whole point in repeating that number is that, regardless of how we categorize them, there are still a %&$#-load of articles that need attention & work. Bots can only accomplish a very small targetted & trivial part of this work. (It fails to help improve Wikipedia if the spelling in a biography article is correct, for example, but of its 1500 words, 1000 deal with a trivial part of a person's life -- say allegations of an unpaid parking ticket or someone's alleged sexual preference.) As for statistics on Wikipedia articles, at the risk of unwanted flattery I have to admit Carcharoth I almost always turn to your work first! If you don't know the answer, then I'm not sure anyone does. And as for the stats.wikimedia.org page, IIRC due to the size of it's database, to run a query that would return those figures would seriously impair the performance of en.wikipedia. (Erik, aka Eloquence, would more likely know the answer.) I'm just thinking out loud here, but maybe it should be locked for 12-24 hours once every 3 or 6 months so backups & statistical analysis can be performed. (BTW, no I'm not a prude. But somehow "%&$#" conveys what I want to better than any specific vulgarity -- & perhaps the first word that came to your mind when you saw that was something more colorful than "shit" or "fuck". ;-) -- llywrch 16:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

About being a statistics expert: yes, I was confusing you with Carnildo, who apparently no longer as active (or as visible) as he used to be -- an effect of being on Wikipedia for a long time. (His lower profile, I mean, not my confusion. I guess I see the first syllable, & jump to the erroneous conclusion that you are him or vice versa.) Take a look at some of the pages in his personal space, e.g. User:Carnildo/The 100, for some interesting surveys on the quality of Wikipedia articles.
As for the "Endless September" concept, I've haven't entirely bought into it at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Wikipedia has always struggled with its core of "acculturated" members being outnumbered by newbies -- & some of the newbies prove to understand Wikipedia & its ideals better than the oldtimers. But as someone on the WikiEN-l list pointed out (I'm too lazy at the moment to find who it was -- someone back in June of this year), the environment has clearly changed: it's become more adversarial than it used to be. Why this is so -- because of the competitive nature of improving articles with other people, or because as membership grows, Wikipedia is suffering from a regression to the mean in personality types (a fancy way of saying that there are only so many people in the world with the personality type that best fits Wikipedia, & we've drained that pool & are moving on to other ones) -- I don't think anyone knows. -- llywrch 17:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for that pointer to that thread. As a result, I just diddled away an hour of my employer's time reading that. :-) More seriously, I am fascinated by how the thread went form being hostile to the idea to acknowledging that, yes, there is a problem. Not sure if a solution will emerge from it, though. -- llywrch 19:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

## Topos

The editor KSmrq is insisting on putting the seeintro template in the article, which links to the non-existent article Introduction to topos, which is a redirect to the article Background and genesis of topos theory, which is not an introductory article but just what its name suggests. This editor actually has a personal vendetta against me and insists on reverting any edit I make. Please join the discussion and make him see reason. Loom91 11:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, please take a look at the talk of intro to math of general relativity. It must be moved to some other name (preferably as a precursor to merging), and I'm looking for suggestions. Loom91 11:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear. I might have started that, as I created the redirect before I realised it wasn't a real introductory article. How about I nominate that redirect for deletion, and then we take it from there? Carcharoth 11:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
To safeguard against the future, it would probably be best to delete that redirect. Loom91 12:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Deletion requested using {{db-author}}. Carcharoth 12:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. KSmrq is getting on my nerves. I guess I just need to avoid math articles for a few days to cool down. Meanwhile, an anon is repeatedly reverting me at Introduction to special relativity, even after I attempted to reach a compromise by putting his historical content (of what relevance to the article, God knows) in a footnote. Since you seem to be online, will you take a look at the matter? I'll like to resolve this without wasting the time of the guys at WikiProject Physics. Loom91 12:56, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Recently, everything I do seems to be controversial :-) I was thinking of running for admin towards the end of this year, but I'll need to be extra careful about potential controversies to polish my reputation after this. Do you know if the 3RR applies for reverting anons? Loom91 13:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
No idea, sorry. WP:3RR will probably help. Carcharoth 13:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

## Introduction to special relativity

See talk for above. Surely you dont also want to suppress a major phase in the development of the subject that has informed everyone from Einstein to Feynman.

No. Just don't overdo it. Work with the other editors and come to some sort of compromise. Carcharoth 13:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, the other guy just will not have any mention of imaginary time. Full stop. No compromise. Even though this was a major part of the history of the subject and fills a conceptual gap.
Is it needed in the introductory article? Carcharoth 13:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Now the anon has ecided to escalate the situation by deleting large chunks of text and again inserting his para about imaginary time. It's also untrue that I'll not have any compromise, I put the material in a footnote. I'm pushing 3RR, so could you please revert him? Loom91 13:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Loom91 13:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

## Middle-earth categories

Some time ago I've proposed to rename a couple of M-e categories, namely Category:Mountains of Middle-earth, Category:Hills of Middle-earth and Category:Realms of Middle-earth, since their designations differ from the rest (there's some eight cats named "Middle-earth X"). On WT:Me nobody seemed to oppose, yet this was turned sown on WP:CfD on the basis of that the real locations are categorised as "X of Y" (my counter proposal to rename the remaining eight M-e cats was ignored). I would like to know your opinion on this as possibly the next thing I'll do will be merging minor places in Beleriand. Also can't you move Beregond (Middle-earth)? The admins on WP:RM seem to ignore the remaining M-e requests. Súrendil 14:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an admin. I claim to like editing too much... Give the people at WP:RM time. Lots of time... As for the categories, can you point me to the previous discussions? Carcharoth 14:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Here Súrendil 14:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Interesting discussion. Good points on both sides. The thing is, for categories like this that (almost) no-one else cares about, and that are very specialised, it is unlikely that anyone will be trying to type in the right name. So you can create the new category, copy the existing text and category tags over, and re-tag the articles to move them to the new category. It is incredibly tedious, which is why renames are normally done through CfD and a bot, but it is possible to depopulate and 'move' small categories manually like this. All you are left with is to decide what to do with the existing category. There are two options. Either renominate at CfD as an empty category (after which someone will be bound to find the previous discussion and object), or turn the empty categories into 'soft category redirects' by using Template:Category redirect. That latter solution would be my preferred option. As for which format, I prefer Category:Middle-earth X, as most of the categories follow that convention already so it is less work to 'manually' rename them. But don't try this manual renaming for controversial or large categories, as that will likely upset people. Carcharoth 14:54, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Hang on, I've just remembered why those categories are named the way they are. See Category:Realms of Aman. That one couldn't be changed. Hmm. What do you think? Carcharoth 14:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

This category is completely redundant. Ilmarin and Araman are to be merged into Minor places in Arda, Valmar should go to Category:Middle-earth towns and cities. We are left with 3 or 4 major articles that can be moved into the parent category. In any case, such locations as Araman, Avathar, Ilmarin can hardly be called "realms". Súrendil 15:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Good points. I lost sight of the forest in the trees there! :-) I'd suggest that Valmar be merged with Valinor, unless there is a lot to say about it, and leave a redirect in the towns and cities category, though it is almost certain that someone will try and revive the old Middle-earth/Arda/Aman debates. Carcharoth 15:21, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

## Nice idea but...

Despite what you may think, The K Foundation burn a million quid isn't a featured article just yet :), not so far as I know anyway. Of course, it ought to be (!) and maybe that's the source of confusion :)

Nonetheless your edit is good as Category:Redirects with possibilities is somewhat redundant to Category:Redirects from books. Cheers. No reply needed, just having a bit of fun... --kingboyk 16:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah. It was being touted as one for April Fools this year, but then George Washington (inventor) sneaked in at the last minute. Carcharoth 16:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah. I think we should bat for next year... it would make a perfect April Fool's day story I'm sure. --kingboyk 17:05, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

_ _ If you wouldn't mind, plz look at my note at User talk:Afasmit#LoPbN, and say either "I understand", "give me more detail" (preferably with questions i should answer), or "I can see enuf to know I'm not interested". I ask that bcz i find it too easy to write enuf for my audience to give up reading it even if they are interested. (I'd fail at judging the right stopping point.)
_ _ Beyond that speaking for itself: I see great value in the long term of having the Cat give vital stats, nationality, and something (usually one word) on source of notability (for at least names shared by multiple notables, and names easily confused among multiple notables); nevertheless, i think you are on the right track, especially if for a shorter term the developers can be gotten to support supplemental Cat entries (e.g., italicized) that reflect the spellings, wordings, orders (e.g. the error Cardinal Tom Jones), etc. of Rdrs' titles (or, preferably of selected ones).
--Jerzyt 20:18, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to reply here, and say "yes, I think I understand, and I am interested in more details, and I have questions!" So here are the questions:
(1) Cat-oid features - I presume here you mean some way of having the category show something like the annotation that was present in LoPbN (ie. birth and death dates and who the person is), but getting this directly from the article, rather than being annotated separately (part of the reason LoPbN became unmaintainable). I think there are two ways this could be done: (a) have the category entry show the title and then the first few sentences of the article, followed by a ... Hopefully, in well-written articles, this would show the birth and death dates and who the person was and where they were from; (b) Use the "short description" and other fields in the Wikipedia:Persondata template.
(2) DEFAULTSORT tags in redirects - I wasn't aware they didn't work in redirects. I'm sure they do, as you can categorise redirects. Have a look at Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects. The key here would be to include redirects from alternate names in any overall categories for people, where they would appear in italics. The cat-oid extension required here would be to have the redirect also display something like "for REDIRECTNAME see REDIRECT DESTINATION", so people instantly realised what they were looking at. Just like the blind entries in a printed index "For Leo Blair see the family section of the article on Tony Blair." Possibly the judicious use of redirects would allow something similar to the "people known as George" pages that listed all the King Georges, or maybe indexing the redirects the correct way would make all the King Georges appear together?
(3) For category indexing being more scalable, are you referring to the way they only display 200 on the first page? That is probably unavoidable. What is already possible though is to link directly to the required point in the index. eg. Living people called McDonald. You just type in McDonald at the end of that URL, or whatever surname you require. If a category for all people existed and they were all DEFAULTSORTed correctly, this would be very powerful for creating disambiguation pages by name. The one problem is that it lists everything "from that point onwards", rather than cutting off at the end of the McDonalds. If you look at the way the prefix index works for all pages beginning McDonald, you see that it cuts off at the end of the McDonalds. Compare this to how "all pages" works, giving instead: all pages starting from McDonald. The former behaviour (cutting off at the end of the McDonalds) is what I think is needed for the cat-oid.
(4) My preferred format to access such an index is the 26x26 grid. Indeed, I copied this from you to create User:Carcharoth/List of living people compact index. But as I said before, you can tailor the URL to drop the reader at any point you desire.
Finally, I'm not sure if you are aware, but redirects do currently appear in categories in italics. Have a look at Category:Middle-earth redirects for a very organised system of redirects, and for better examples of categorized redirects in action, please do look at the page I pointed you to earlier: Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects. The real problem though, and the reason why I am trying to get people to help, is getting an appreciable portion of the biographical articles DEFAULTSORTed, or at least putting them in a category so that a system similar to that at User:Carcharoth/List of living people compact index can be used. A lot to think about here. What do you think the ultimate aim should be, and what needs doing first? Carcharoth 21:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

## Rock Springs massacre

Well, it's been awhile but I have a few more tweaks to go and Rock Springs Massacre is ready for FAC. I have made a few last notes on what I see left as far as work and hoped you might be able to undertake a copy edit and/or brief look at the article one final time. Thanks. 11:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

## Re: That TfD

(Re: your message on my talk page.) Ah, I see. Well, I think the discussion would have ended as a delete anyway, so let's let it be unless someone raises objections. Mike Peel 19:58, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

## Re: {{Tolkien-Language-stub}}

Hi Carcharoth - a couple of things about this recent entry at WP:TFD - first, stub templates should normally be taken to Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion when they are nominated for deletion (as it says at the top of WP:TFD). Second, stub types should be nominated prior to being created at WP:WSS/P - that way there can be discussion as to whether they are useful or not, saving you and others time and effort. In the case of this Tolkien-stub, there are only some 240 articles which use it, so for the purposes of editorial use it is not large enough to really need splitting into subtypes (the optimum size for any stub category is between 60 and 800 stubs - this falls nicely into the middle of that area), and to be a viable subtype it would need 60 language stubs for a Tolkien-language-stub (note lower-case L as per stub naming guidelines). Full information about proposal and recommended stub creation practice are at WP:STUB. Grutness...wha? 00:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Grutness, thanks for the rundown on stubs. I vaguely remembered that stubs should be dealt with somewhere else, but failed to actually see this despite 'reading' that page. Scary. As for the creation of that stub, it wasn't me that created it. I ran across it while tidying up some templates and other administrative stuff for the Middle-earth WikiProject, but it hadn't been fully set up and (as you say) not approved (though I didn't realise that). I then finished setting it up, by creating a category for it to populate, and started to merrily sort stubs. I soon discovered I hate doing that, and I could tell it wasn't really going to be helpful. So I reverted myself and set about dismantling the Tolkien-language-stub system. So, I think, all's well that ends well. Carcharoth 01:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

## Misplaced talk page comment

It's ok to leave it as it is now, as the discussion on that topic is over OhanaUnitedTalk page 14:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. One of the reasons I pointed it out was that I was quite shocked to stumble across that comment there (you were saying I hadn't read your comment properly). I hope that my response has shown that I had read your comment properly. Carcharoth 14:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

## Quo Tardis

Well, you're certainly varied in your interests. I've just read the articles. I think I tried to read a Sarah Fielding once but though it was readable and lively and reminiscent of Henry, it struck me as rather superficial and I gave it up.

What have I been doing? Well, I was going to do Catherine de' Medici but became sidetracked by the quagmirish William Shakespeare. I rather opposed it at FAC and I think generally upset its team of editors with my remarks; so I've done quite a lot of work on it (second half) since, to try and put my money where my mouth was. But it's so much harder to do a literary article than a pure history one, and I've had to put in a lot of reading and buy a lot of books. Then I got sidetracked further by the unexpected FAC of Soviet invasion of Poland (1939), which I had copyedited for Piotrus; that came in for some stick and I rewrote it another twice, but we got it through somehow, and now I am back to reading about dear old Shakespeare.

One thing I've learned is that I love working on articles from my own books but hate working from websources, Google Books, etc. That's no fun to me: I like to sit with a glass of port rustling pages in the lamplight. I've got plenty of books on Catherine and various Jacobean and Elizabethan topics, and I hope to be able to stick to topics of that sort in future. It's no good planning, though; tasks appear out of the blue on Wikipedia and set fire to one's backside.

When I get to the murder of Thomas Overbury and the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, I intend to recruit your Sherlockian services for the purpose; we will need not only to write good articles but to solve certain remaining mysteries about those murders withal. However, the speed I am going, I won't be hitting those subjects in the near future. qp10qp 21:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

## VPM query

It's an interesting question that you posed, and one that most unfortunately has me spending way too much time clicking on Special:Random and then trying to remember whether I've edited the resultant articles. In any case, it is, I think, quite probable that the iteration by which you are likelier than not to have encountered an article that you edited is even greater than that postulated by Lanfear's Bane (you may well already know all the following, in which case I ought, of course, to apologize for my verbosity). If we are to propagate your overall edits per page average to your mainspace edits, we are given 1839 unique mainspace pages edited. The likelihood against your encountering an article you've edited on any given random article click, then, is 1034 in 1035. In the equation ${\displaystyle \left({\frac {1034}{1035}}\right)^{y}=.5}$, then, the likelihood of your having encountered an article you edited reaches one-half on the yth iteration; solving logarithmically (viz., by solving ${\displaystyle y=\log _{.9990338164}.5}$ for y), we find that the likelier than not click is 717.06068. For a frequency of editing per page one-half that of your overall average (that is, if you edit mainspace pages at a rate of 1.6 edits/page, such that you have xx unique mainspace pages edited), the likelihood against is 517 in 518; the logarithmic equation for y is ${\displaystyle y=\log _{.9980677521}.5}$; and the likelier-than-not page is 358.79118. Even were you to have made each of your mainspace edits to a unique page (which we know not to have happened), the likelihood against would be 302/303, with an attendant logarithmic equation of ${\displaystyle y=\log _{.9966964286}.5}$ and a solution of y=209.47076. So, yeah, the odds of reaching an article you'd edited on your sixteenth click were rather remote; in 1.7 edits per mainspace page analysis, only once in every 8515 tries of sixteen clicks (the sum, that is, of the series ${\displaystyle \left({\frac {1}{518}}\right)^{16}+\left(\left({\frac {1}{518}}\right)^{15}*\left({\frac {517}{518}}\right)^{1}\right)+...+\left(\left({\frac {1}{518}}\right)^{1}*\left({\frac {517}{518}}\right)^{15}\right)}$) would you reach a page you'd edited. Thanks, in any case, for raising a rather stimulating issue. Cheers, Joe 05:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Huh. I never knew any of that! Thanks. :-) Carcharoth 10:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I've added some material to the Genetics page, notably the entire "Gene expression and the creation of phenotype" section. Although I don't think I can give the entire article a narrative, I hope this helps tie things together by connecting the molecular stuff with the effect on phenotype. Madeleine 01:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

## Re:

Done. —Xezbeth 11:54, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

That was quick! Thanks. Carcharoth 11:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

## Tolkien battle articles may be deleted

Battle of the Pelennor Fields, of all things, is on AfD! Second Battle of Hogwarts was recently deleted and redirected to Harry Potter's war article, and they've set their sights on Tolkien battles. Apparently, their reasoning is if you delete one fictional battle you'd have to delete all of them. If they have to go, which I really hope not, let's just transfer them to Tolkien Gateway or another wiki. (I mentioned this on the M-e project page, and to CBD.) Uthanc 09:59, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

## Giggy's essay

Feel free to undelete if you think this is the best course of action. I must say I did not give it too much thought and you seem to be much more aware of the whole situation. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 23:15, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes of course, you're not an admin... I don't claim to know you that well as an editor but my first reaction is that this does not make any sense. You've been here since basically forever and as far as I know you're not prone to getting into nasty conflicts. If you're interested, I'm very much ready to look into nominating you for adminship (I'd just have to take a bit of time to spot check your contributions to make sure I'm completely comfortable). In any case, unless you expect a particular issue to really blow up in your face, going through RfA is really, really, easy (though not always). And being an admin does not mean you have to give up editing and trust me, blocking vandals is so boring I guarantee you won't want to spend that much time doing it. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 03:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I think the tipping point will come when (a) I really need the tools (I've managed well without them, so far) and (b) if I ever feel that things change so much around here that the time has come to stand up and be counted. I do have a couple of other people hanging on a nomination, so I'll have to think about that as well. I do intend to rummage through my archives and let everyone who brought this topic up know if and when I do intend put my name forward. Carcharoth 10:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

## My RfA

Hi, Carcharoth, and thanks for your participation in my RfA. I've withdrawn it, and will be writing up an "analysis" of it, which will soon be available at User:Giggy/RfA/Giggy when it's done. Please come around when you get the chance, and give me feedback on how I can improve. Thanks again, Giggy UCP 04:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

## I knew there was a word for it

I knew preface wasn't the right word :). If you want to add a category to a template, you just do this code {{#if:whatever|whatever|[[Category:Articles that use the phrase whatever]]}}. If you do plan on making a change to the template, please make it on this page. If you check the talk page you can see two extra parameters I've added. I've made some other minor changes relating to the appearance of the template. The parameters won't be used right away, but the code will be there once we figure out how the other few hundred thousand assessments can be signed. I also read your paragraph in the HP7 article. And the book was read eight hours after I got it so I don't have to worry about "spoilers" :). Oh, and good news, Geogre is helping out the B.A.D. *rolls eyes* Regards, Psychless 05:30, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I'll have a play around over there. You seem to be learning template stuff pretty quickly. Do you think you could "manage" the WPBiography template? Carcharoth 10:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I doubt I could "manage" it. I can add parameters and simple things like that but I really don't have a clear idea of how the whole template works. Psychless 13:08, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've been playing around at that template. Have a look at User:Carcharoth/Sandbox2 and User talk:Carcharoth/Sandbox2. The latter has non-bio=yes, the former doesn't. The category has worked fine, but I'm wondering why non-bio leads to the talk page not being put in the "unassessed articles" category - I can't see where that is happening. Any ideas? I'm now going to try the listas bit. Carcharoth 13:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
• Have a look at the changes. Do you think they will break anything? Carcharoth 13:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

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