User talk:Gene Nygaard/2007 Jan-Oct

bcm versus km³

Dear Gene Nygaard, You said that generally everyone understands km³. I am not sure about this statement and find this use quite unusual and misleading. Could you please give any example in gas industry where km³ is used (maybe just some newspaper article)? Also, if youd could find any article in wikipeedia about gas fileds or pipelines, which use km³, I would like to get a reference. Beagel 18:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Google "natural gas" "km3" [1] 823 hits

Note that Google, as far as I know, won't search for the ³ character, but this gets those that use either html superscripts, or just "km3" and the like.

There are other ways to find more of them. You will of course find many using bcm as well. But as I pointed out, that may be jargon used within the industry, but it is not known outside the industry (there might possibly be other little pockets of its usage in other contexts, even less known).

another search, on AltaVista:

km³ "natural gas" 3130 hits. [2]

AltaVista appears to treat ³ and 3 as synonymous, unlike Google. You can limit them to .gov sites, or to .edu sites, too, to see that this isn't "newspaper usage" but in fact more likely to take place in more serious and professional contexts. Gene Nygaard 18:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

BTW, if you were arguing about "tcf" you'd maybe have a better case. That is common enough in the industry, more so than "bcm", that it is better known outside the industry, too. Gene Nygaard

I am able to use different search engages. However, could you please give any example of use km³ as an unit of capacity of gas pipeline? Concerning tcf (trillion cubic feet) - it's used more in the US gas industry, while bcm is used mainly in Europe. Don't see problem with this. If you look the external links of this artcile, you will find both: tcf and bcm, depending of the source.

In the petroleum industry the unit systems used are Oilfield and Metric like what was mentoned above, all depending on where you are and who you are working with. However I have never come across km³ being used to describe gas field sizes or gas production and if someone was to describe a field or gas production in such a way to someone in the industry it would have no revelace to them, it is not a standard of unit. It would have to be Bcm, Mcm, E3M3, Bcf, Tcf, MMscf, Mscf etc. Philbentley 07:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Surely, we writing for a general audience not only for people in certain industries. km³ is standard SI if some people in some industry want to use something else, then that's their problem. P.S. Hello Gene. Jɪmp 00:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Very true Jimp we are writing for a general audience. And when i searched some news articles by the likes of Forbes, CNN Money etc on Google news in the past month for the phrase km3 in relation to gas/gasfield/ gas field/ "natural gas" it returns one result from Petroleum World. However the units tcf, bcf, bcm return at least 102, 147, 51 hits when used with the above phrases. And these are from Forbes, Reuters, CNN Money, Globe and mail which i think you would agree are also writing for the General Audience. The numbers are in their hundreds of thousands when you do just a general web search for tcf, bcf and bcm compared to the 823 km3 turns up. So its not really just "some people in some industry" using these terms. Cheers Philbentley 17:00, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure it is. But that's beside the point; we at Wikipedia choose to use standard unit symbols, not all the various off-the-cuff possibilities, and km³ is the standard symbol for 1,000,000,000 m³. It isn't surprising at all that financial magazines are too innumerate when it comes to units of measure to even understand what they are, so sure they get passed on unchanged. So what? Gene Nygaard 17:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorting on Ø's

Are you quite sure that ø's should be sorted under o? The ø is a separate character, and is sorted separately in Danish (a,b,c,...y,z,æ,ø,å). Thue | talk 16:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's sorted differently in Danish. But this is English Wikipedia, and in English we sort by the English alphabet. Just look at the navigation tool that appears at the top of many of the larger categories, for example: 26 letters, sometimes 10 digits as well. This is one of those letters which could alternatively be sorted under "oe" rather than "o" in some cases, but Wikipedia:Categorization suggests using the single letter in cases like this. I'll use "oe" if I see some evidence of actual use of that spelling in English (as is the case of the use of "Oerst." as an abbreviation in biological taxonomy), otherwise "o", and usually won't change it if someone used one or the other. Gene Nygaard 16:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

In Danish, I wouldn't be surprised to see my name sorted after Nygren. Not in English, however. Gene Nygaard 16:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I would think that was more graciously handled in software, by making Mediawiki sort ø's under o. That way, no information is lost, and you can choose to sort it differently if you need to another day. Thue | talk 18:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would probably keep it from being messed up. If that were easily accomplished, it probably would have been done long ago. One of the problems is that the same character in different languages is often treated differently. Or in the same language (should ö be sorted as "oe" or "o", for example, in whatever language). The name order part isn't easily automated, nor the thing about sorting River Clyde under Clyde in rivers categories

The capitalization problems are another unresolved problem. Note that our sorting is just by Unicode number, not according to the sorting rules in any language (note that if this sorting is used, Danes would look like a bunch of Swedes in disguise, with "Å" coming before "Æ" and before "Ø" rather than after). Even punctuation or any other characters are sorted. But the letters "a to z" all come after "A to Z". The letters such as "Ø" always come before their own lowercase forms such as "ö". But the uppercase letters with diacritics all follow lowercase a–z and all but one precede other uppercase letters, some of which might be sorted below it in the rules peculiar to any particular language. Gene Nygaard 18:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If that were easily accomplished, it probably would have been done long ago. I don't subscribe to that. There are plenty of relatively easy to accomplish things which are just not done. See for example the Wikipedia blocking system, which just recently had a bunch of obvious fixes applied, such as being able to block only IP edits without blocking registrered accounts. Unicode has sorting rules defined as part of the standard, with different sorting rules for different languages; I am guessing we just need to import the English sorting rules into Mediawiki.Thue | talk 18:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Wrong. That doesn't exist. Unicode provides a method of implementing the sorting, and there are various implementations in different languages. But there is no official English language implementation. Sorting rules vary not only by language, but also by country and also by application to a particular purpose. There is no overall English rule. Gene Nygaard 19:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, then we just choose a particular implementation for English. We would have to do that anyway. Thue | talk 21:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Goran Stanić

Err, no idea what you're talking about. They weren't redlinks beforehand. (By the way, you need to work on your approach.) - Dudesleeper 22:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Cheatsheet if you need help in making a redirect. Of course, maybe its a nobody who might be deleted on notability grounds; can't think of any other reasons you'd want to keep this article hidden. Gene Nygaard 22:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, he's hidden right there on the St. Johnstone page. - Dudesleeper 22:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

More relevantly, he's hidden right here on my talk page: Goran Stanic.

And more importantly yet, he's hidden from anybody who puts "Goran Stanic" in the search box and clicks on "Go". Someone who reads about him in an English newspaper or sports magazine, for example, and wants to see if Wikipedia has anything about him. No, guess not--that was a waste of time.

Furthermore, his article is hidden from anybody reading about this former team.

Are you really so dense, or just pretending to be? Gene Nygaard 23:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad to see you finally did create the redirect. Those redirects serve an additional purpose, also related to the inability to find existing articles: they reduce the likelihood of the creation of inadvertent duplicate articles. Gene Nygaard 15:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Warning

I will not apologize to such chauvinist like you, "English WP is English for English people" etc. I know I fucked up calling you in such various ways, hope I will not call you that in future. You are harassing other users' hard work by requesting references for two senteces stubs and reverting proper sorting and naming. I can assure you, next time you will move Marek Špilár article, I will block you. And you can bet I would do that. It will be only good for the community. - Darwinek 16:39, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

This is Darwinek's response to my request on his talk page:

• " Stop personal attacks. Please stop violating Wikipedia:No personal attacks in edit summaries such as these "crack-ass motherfucker" and "learn Czech motherfucker". An apology would be appreciated. Gene Nygaard 16:29, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

His recalcitrance is duly noted. Gene Nygaard 16:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Marek Špilár

Please stop vandalising pages by moving them to the wrong names, you shall be blocked from editing Wikipedia. National characters are the main name of the topics with the english spelling as the redirect if one. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 20:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

No. You are mischaracterizing the rules of Wikipedia:Naming conventions. But see also WIkipedia talk:Marek Špilár. The problem there was a completely and totally unsourced and unverifiable change. We were being asked to buy a pig in a poke and to rely on improper original research of some Wikipedia editor. But even once you have established a name such as "Marek Špilár" as an acceptable variant spelling, something that had not been done, that is still not determinative of which of the variant spellings gets allocated the one slot available for the article name, the subject of the naming conventions pages. Gene Nygaard 20:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds this [3] enough for you ? ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 20:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Not really; it's not in English. It is evidence that this is an acceptable name that ought to be mentioned in the article. But my point was that the burden of proof for making a change lies with those proposing the change. That point had not been met (and still technically has not been met, since it isn't cited in the article itself). And that only covers the point of that spelling being included in the article; it does not justify removal of the original spelling from the article, and it is not determinative of the naming convention issues.

In this case, it is not only quite possible that he is best known in English as "Marek Spilar", but it is also possible that overall, worldwide, he is best known to the most people under the Japanese spelling of his name, which doesn't appear in the article at all. Gene Nygaard 21:02, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you kidding ? ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 21:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

He is playing in Japan, isn't he? Gene Nygaard 21:04, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

You can't be serious that you don't take under advisement he is Slovak. His article here will be with the correct form, it is not a spelling of different language it is his name. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 21:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Gene, please tell me, why do you still insist on Marek Spilar when his name is Marek Špilár. Please tell me. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 17:19, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

What??? I just pointed out the complete impossibility and falseness of your claim of consensus for something that had never been discussed. Remember, the burden of proof for a change belongs on those proposing the change. That burden had not been met; in fact, the article still remains unreferenced. Gene Nygaard 17:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I don't know how to say it more clear. But I will try. Click here [4] and read the name in the article. What do you see ? ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 17:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see your point. Was there any reference to that article when the spelling was changed in the article? Answer: certainly not. Was there any reference to that article when the article was moved? Answer: certainly not. The burden of proof had not only not been met, but nobody had even offered the tiniest scrap of evidence in an effort to meet it.

Then, as I've already pointed out to you, that link is not in English. So could just go to this EuroSport.com link, and tell me exactly what you see there? Answer: Marek Spilar.Or go to The Internet Soccer Database and tell me exactly what you see there. Answer: Marek Spilar. Need more? There are lots of them. As User:MarkBA has already admitted at Talk:Marek Špilár, he is best known in English under the "Marek Spilar" spelling. Gene Nygaard 17:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes it is not in english and what, it is in Slovak language ? It is his name, it is what he has in his birth certificate. It is not a question of spelling it is the question of his real name. And I don't understand why you are doing this as I saw you are ignoring national characters. Marek Spilar is a redirect to Marek Špilár, which is his name and not a spelling. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 17:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

is that a template?

Regarding this addition, what does that template do ... and ... where is it? — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 23:25, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

No. DEFAULTSORT is something the developers have built into the software. It is something new, first available this month, something I only found out about when somebody else used it. They call it a "magic word". See Wikipedia talk:Categorization where I have added a link to the developer's announcement of it. Gene Nygaard 00:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally (if you'll excuse my butting in here), I have created a template there, which merely forwards the sort key to the magic word, because I'm sure that's the first place people will look to try to understand the system (I know I did). I'm sure the wording can be improved, but it does work. --Stemonitis 00:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that because of THOR's link. Probably a good idea. Gene Nygaard 00:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Peace and consensus

Ok, Gene. Let's make a deal, edit war is meaningless.
I agree with you, that Hraničky cannot be found.
But I disagree with topic's name Hranicky.
I think that much more better is redirect Hranicky to Hraničky. As you mentioned german names in the cities and villages, it is because of far history, many czech cities had a german minority or majority and vice versa. So I propose this:
If topic's name contains national characters, create a plain text us-ascii redirect if none and leave topic's name as it is.
Deal ? ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 11:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

As I see conversation with you is useless.

You did not respond to me and you still reverts pages. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 18:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realize it was you I was reverting, either. I read the edit summary but didn't pay attention to who was making it—and you hadn't been one of the previous editors of that article. Obviously, now, you were seeking an argument, but you only asked a question in your edit summary. I answered it in mine. But if you can show some good reason for including Chinese spellings unrelated to the subject of the article within that article, make your case on the talk page. You obviously haven't done so, since Talk:Jiangyan High School doesn't exist yet. They don't belong there.

And, like I said, I will respond to the above in due course. Gene Nygaard 18:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Jiangyan High School

Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 17:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirects discussion at VP-technical

Hi there. I finally got round to the redirects discussion at VP-technical, and replied there. I noticed you also said: "do you still need to put the categories in the redirect on the same logical line as the redirect itself, to avoid messing up something else? There has been a longstanding problem with using categories on redirects, and that probably hasn't changed, has it?" I seem to remember in the original bugzilla note the developers said this had been fixed, but I can't remember the number. If I find it, I'll put it in the thread over there. Carcharoth 15:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ernst--Mongolia categories

That stuff from Mongolia was when I was a WikiBaby!! Good to see you are still indexing. I'll fix it now Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Mate I honestly don't personally have a problem with you at all -I know that you play a good part in indexing and fixing categories -this helps a lot and improves browsing- and I know you get a lot a stick in pursuing people to clean up. The only problem I have is that you tend to exaggerate certain faults and in doing so I know you have made me feel very poor in the past to the point that it was a little rude. Often your tone is a little crude with users who are overall crucial to the project even though they may have several small faults. I wish you all the best but I really don't want to get into any confrontation. I just think it would be far easier if you suggest to other users rather than intimidate them. See ya. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't confrontational in pointing out the Mongolian categories problems to you, was I? I said I saw that you had done it, and asked you to fix it. I didn't accuse you of going back on your promises, I only mentioned that on Tulkolahten's page after you complained their, to make sure the background was clear. It wasn't like you intentionally refused to fix it; you likely just overlooked it, but in any case, it hadn't been fixed. Gene Nygaard 17:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I didn't to be honest think the category was a major problem I know you put a lot of effort into indexing but I figured four places with a foreign letter wasn't major I just wondered why you made me aware of it. I have alos checked a number of random categories in Slovakia such as Category:Villages and municipalities in Revúca District and it looks fine to me. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, look, Ernst: It may have been only four more than the one or more I fixed in the one category I pointed out that were obvious and easily detectable. But I went to you and asked you to fix related categories as well, because you are more likely to know where to look for others that you might not have properly indexed than I am. Yet, I go now and find Höhmorit, Govi-Altay, a Mongolian town whose article is your creation, still missorted in its other category, even though you didn't notice that it was misindexed by just looking in the Category:Subdivisions of Mongolia in which it also appears. So no, it wasn't "just four"; it is more than that. How many more? You have a better idea than I do. Gene Nygaard 17:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it a problem ? No. Just find it and fix it - that's the principle of wikipedia. If Ernst didn't categorized his article it is his way, not yours. You are not a teacher standing in the classroom and watching fractious kids, you have no permission for that. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 17:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Why are you deliberately trying to stir up an argument here? Gene Nygaard 17:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You have no right to beat anyone for the quality of the article or missing category. If you feel there is something missing - insert tag or fix it. You don't own wikipedia, it is not yours. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 18:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Missorting

Thanks for your warning. I haven't read WP:CAT and I thought categories should be with letters čšž - it seems more "right" in my opinion. I will fix what I messed up. Defy 02:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your help and advice. I will check it out. Defy 02:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Watanabe Tokutarō

Hi, I saw your edit to this article and was wondering what the Defaultsort does? I'd like to (at least in thought) reply to the question you posed in your edit summary, but I don't know quite what you mean. I have created redirects for the two red-links you mentioned... Pinkville 18:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

See Help:Magic words and Wikipedia talk:Categorization#DEFAULTSORT for more on that "magic word", a new option first available this month. And what I meant was that the people who created this and similar articles should be creating those redirects right away. Gene Nygaard 18:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The creator was me - in the midst of writing a fairly substantial article on Adolfo Farsari - the redirects for Watanabe slipped my mind. Thanks for the spur! Thanks for the links, too. Pinkville 18:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Playfair Cricket Annual

Thanks for your work on this. Two minor points:

• Your character for "7/8", as used in the first paragraph, only shows up as a small square here, though the other fractions display correctly. Mybe the old version of 7/8 should be retained for greater compatibility?
• I think that the "Eleven Cricketers of the Year" section heading should have retained its capitalisation, because it's the name of a Playfair feature that itself had that capitalisation.

JH 22:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have much sympathy for complaints about using the ⅞ character in 3⅞ inches, given all the other strange characters people insist on using, even in article names and often hiding the information away without even having proper redirects.

If you change it to 3⁷⁄₈ inches, I probably won't change it back. I never was bothered much by the changes in line spacing it causes, like some other people are. But the "3 7/8" is harder to read and more confusing, and totally unacceptable without a nonbreaking space int he number. If you do, it looks better if all the fractions are the same format.

However, you are probably better off avoiding it. Is eight-inch precision necessary, or even desirable, in this case? I think not. Just stop and think about what it is being used for. People will get a better understanding of, a better feel for the size of the book if you just round it to the nearest quarter inch.

That's especially true if the 10 cm by 14 cm is the original design size. Then what you have to decide is the precision of the conversion. If it were exactly 10 cm, it would be almost exactly half-way between 3⅞ in and 4 in; 3¹⁵⁄₁₆ in exceeds 10 cm by only ¹⁄₈₀₀ of a centimeter, or 12½ micrometers, and only half of a "thou" or "mil". So to the nearest quarter inch, you'd have a booklet 4 by 5½ inches (the fractions for halves and quarters don't have the same problem as fifths or eighths). People would understand that fine, even if you could get a caliper out and show that it was actually an eighth of an inch less on one of the dimensions.

In this case, of course, there is also a distinct possibility that the original, design dimensions were 4 by 5¼ inches, that this was converted to 10 by 14 cm, and then in converting back it was rounded to the nearest eighth of an inch and didn't end up back in the same place it started from. Gene Nygaard 01:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The other possibility is that it is A6 paper size (105 mm by 148 mm), and if so just use that. Gene Nygaard 01:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Carlos Marín

Hola :) Could you please explain to me how spelling the last name of this singer correctly is considered missorting?...I'm not being ironic, I just don't get it...Rosa 16:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll explain that in due course.

But first of all, I'd like to have you explain this "correctly" claim

1. It is of course possible that "Carlos Marín" is correct in at least some sense of the word

• Note, however, that that would not mean that "Carlos Marin" is incorrect. It is not an error to use the English alphabet when writing in English. Nor is it incorrect to use the German alphabet when writing in German, and he was born in Germany.
• Even if it is correct in some sense, that does not necessarily mean that it is the correct spelling to use on the English Wikipedia.

2. There is absolutely no citation to any reliable sources in the Carlos Marín article for this "Marín" spelling.

• In fact, there is nothing cited as a source for anything in the article.

3. This article was improperly moved contrary to Wikipedia:Naming conventions from Carlos Marin by Johnleemk with no discussion, with no explanation in the edit summary, with no sources cited for the change.

4. The article does include one "External link"

• In that external site,[5] his name is spelled Carlos Marin. No squiggles.

After you satisfactorily explain that, I'll be glad to talk how we alphabetize things and about how the categories are sorted and how the sort keys work and all that good stuff. Otherwise, I'll just start the WP:RM. Of course, it doesn't matter which of those two spellings occupies the one slot for the article name, the proper sort key is the same in either case. Gene Nygaard 16:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Although Carlos Marín was born in Germany, both his parents are Spaniards and his mother tongue is Spanish, so he writes his name as a Spaniard would, not as a German. In Spanish, the words that are accented on the last syllable have a diacritic if they end in "s", "n", or any of the vowels. In Spanish, the name "Marín" is pronounced ma-RIN, so it follows the gereal rule of the acute words given by the Spanish Royal Academy. Of course, not many English speakers know about the accent rules in Spanish, including whomever wrote the profiles on the Il Divo singers at their official website. Nonetheless, "Marín" is a very common last name in Spanish so if you google for "Marin" (without the diacritic) you'll actually come up with the name "Marín" (with the diacritic) most of the time. Not adding the diacritic to this name in Spanish means it would have to be pronounced as a grave word (MA-rin), which is wrong given that the singer himself pronounces it correctly. Since you're so keen on contending my claim to actually knowing the ortography rules of my own mother tongue (which seems rather pretentious given that you seem not to speak Spanish at all), at http://www.ildivo.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=7079 there's a list of about a hundred plus inteviews given by Il Divo over the past three years, where you could pic any interview, download it and with some luck hear how Carlos says his own name. About the acute and grave words, the rules are set by the Real Academia Española de la Lengua. About spelling the word "Marín" in the English Wikipedia, the native spelling is correct if it uses the Latin alphabet (with or without diacritics); which means that here spelling "Marin" without a diacritic is considered correct even when it's obviously not so (which I think is awful as it shows a lack of respect for foreign cultures) , but that doesn't mean spelling it with a diacrtic is incorrect either, so my claim to have spelled "Marín" with a diacritic correctly is perfectly viable.

Yes, I recognized I didn't cite my sources correctly when I wrote Carlos Marín's article, I was a newbie at the time and didn't recognize the importance of citing sources for even pop singers' articles at Wikipedia. On top of that, the sources I used at the moment aren't even available now and even if new references can be found (which I'll do shortly) they're scattered everywhere and I'll have to scavenge a heap of trashy online magazines to be able to find them. That's the reason why I'm so reluctant to properly reference the Il Divo articles now that I know how to do it; it's just tedious work which will go unrecognized, as wikipedians like you or Rklawton (with whom I had a similar issue about citing sources for another one of the Il Divo singers yesterday) find pleasure in inane debates over whimsical issues and I know that once I've correctly referenced these articles neither of you would even look at those articles and actually read what I've been working on and least thank me for contributing with something I really know about to the Wikipedia.Rosa 20:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Original research is against Wikipedia policy and doesn't cut it. Nor is the issue pronunciation; the Marin spelling simply does not imply a different pronunciation in English. Nor is the issue spelling in Spanish.

Nor do the Spanish language police you mentioned have any jurisdiction over English usage, in Wikipedia or anywhere else. Do they even have any real jurisdiction over Spanish usage in Colombia? They don't have any jurisdiction over Spanish usage in the United States.

As far as the alphabetizing goes, the category sorting just goes by Unicode number of the characters—and that includes all characters, spaces, asterisks, punctuation, letters, whatever. But we do not sort things that way in English—nor, for that matter, in any other language, but English is the only one relevant here. We sort according to the 26 letters A–Z of the English alphabet, and sometimes the digits 0–9 as well.

Note that the lowercase versions also have different Unicode numbers than their uppercase versions. Wikipedia sorting is complicated by the initial-capitalization-turned-on in article names, and by the default to an article's name for sorting purposes. Ideally, the shorting should probably always be case-insensitive. We get a reasonable approximation of that using the capitalization in the article.

In English indexing, Carlos Marin should appear before Ed Marinaro, not after Thorben Marx, which is more than 1,000 people or five category pages farther down the line on Category:Living people, for example (for what it's worth, the same is true in Spanish indexing, even if the Spanish Wikipedia people don't have enough sense not to misindex him, but that doesn't have any relevance here on English Wikipedia).

For the use of the sort keys, see Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) for more about this. Gene Nygaard 21:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the alphabetizing/indexing explanation...if only we didn't have to go through the diacritics discussion first it would have been excellent...don't you see how neither of us gained anything from it? I already knew that original research doesn't conform to Wikipedia guidelines and the issue with the lack of sources cited at the Il Divo articles is not that it's an original research, but that the secondary sources I used aren't properly cited. Furthermore, you had me explain why I claimed I had correctly spelled that word when it's obvious it doesn't really matter to you that, in fact, I did spell that word correctly even according to Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

To answer your question, no, there isn't a jurisdiction in Colombia which controls the usage of Spanish, in fact, I never mentioned Colombia at all. If you had given a better look at what I stated, you would have noticed I mentioned the Spanish Royal Academy, Colombia is a republic, not a monarchy. The Royal Academy is an institution in Spain recognized by concensus of the Spanish speaking community (in a total of twenty-two countries) as the supreme authority for the preservation of the Spanish language worldwide, therefore it sets the rules on what's correct and wrongful usage of the Spanish language. It does have, however, representatives in every one of those countries, including the United States where this panel of experts (doctors in literature, serious writers, historians) are referred to as the "Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española".Rosa 23:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Obvious to me? You've got to be kidding. No, it is not. So far, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that it is even an acceptable spelling, one deserving mention as a variant in the article, let alone the one that we should be using on Wikipedia. It was specifically to the spelling issue that my comment about "no original research" was directed, not to your article as a whole. OTOH, Carlos Marin is clearly correct and acceptable, supported by the only source cited and many others as well. Gene Nygaard 04:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit summary civility

Comments such as this are not necessary. Simply stating what you fixed is sufficient, rather than delivering a backhanded comment in addition to stating what you fixed. Thank you. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 17:37, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply on User talk:Nihonjoe. Gene Nygaard 19:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep your comments to other editors work in your pockets [6], stop being uncivil and insulting others. Just fix it or don't. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 21:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you just clean your own house as discussed below (and above), rather than venturing into harassment? Still no sources. Still no discussion. Still missorted. Clean it up. Gene Nygaard 21:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Nothing backhanded about it. True, accurate, and useful in keeping track of who is causing these problems.

Now, if you had enough sense to take the hint, and go fix things like the misindexing created by your moves of Shōnen (disambiguation), Ōtsuka, and Sentō, you might gain a modicum of credibility. Even worse yet are the ones deliberately missorted by you, as in this edit of Ema Tōyama.

How many more are there like these? Fortunately, it appears that a good number of your moves have since been reverted or moved elsewhere by other editors. Gene Nygaard 19:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You've never left any sort of message on my talk page about this. I only noticed the edit summary because I happened to glance at the edit summary while scanning my watchlist. Your comments in that edit summary, and your lack of civility in your comments above (stating that it's fortunate that some things I've done have been reverted or changed, or that I don't have "enough sense to take the hint", for instance) are not helping matters any. Please, if you want me to know something, or have a question about something I've done, place a polite inquiry about it on my talk page.

I've said many times here that I'm not perfect, and that I make mistakes sometimes. I'm sure even you make mistakes on occasion. That doesn't mean that you need to be less than civil when dealing with something which may or may not be a mistake. There's no excuse for being less than civil. Thank you. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, to answer your questions about the specific articles mentioned above:

• Shōnen (disambiguation) - this one I just forgot to do the catsorting
• Ōtsuka - this is a disambiguation page and, as far as I know, I have no control over how it sorts. The only cats on the page are placed there by the {{disambig}} template
• Sentō - same as the first one: I just forgot to do the catsorting
• Ema Tōyama - read the talk page and you'll see about this one. The catsorting was just a small oversight when I was replacing the instances of "Tooyama" with "Tōyama".

All of these have been fixed now (except for Ōtsuka, where I'm not sure there's anything that can be done. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 23:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Okay.

2. Actually, you do. And you always have, though not really obvious and probably not explained well anywhere, so I can't fault you for not knowing that. What you could always have done in this case where a category is added by one of those nasty templates is to explicitly add [[Category:Surnames|Otsuka]] on the edit page, and it would override the default article name that the template-added category would have used. Now there is a new-this-month magic word alternative which will also accomplish the same thing but more broadly for any category, {{DEFAULTSORT:Otsuka}}

I would have fixed that last one for you, but I see you already found DEFAULTSORT. But, like I implied before, I'd be very surprised if those are the only oversights on your part. I only looked at a small part of your moves to find them. You have a better idea where other, similar problems might be found than I do. Gene Nygaard 23:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I see I owe you an apology for the "Ōtsuka" one, too, because the Template:Surname wasn't even there when you moved it but rather only added on 11 January 2007 by User:Ceyockey. Gene Nygaard 23:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

What it all boils down to: I have no problem with the message. I welcome people to point out errors (or simply fix them, as that's usually quicker). I have no problem with you, personally. I think you're doing good work on the site. The only issue I have is with the way you are pointing out problems. I looked through your recent contributions, and I'm not the only target of your less than civil comments.

All I'm asking is that you approach these corrections in a more civil manner. If it's a one-off issue, just fix it without an uncivil edit summary. If you notice a pattern, politely bring it to the attention of the editor in question. People will generally respond positively if you present the concern in a non-threatening and civil manner. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 23:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

So, how do you think I'm going to know if it's a "one-off" or not? How am I going to know if it is a "pattern" or not? One of the tools I use in determining that is to record who did it, at least some of the time. At other times, my edit summaries reflect that I have already determined that there is a pattern, and often that it has already been discussed with the editor in question. Gene Nygaard 05:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The easiest way is to look through some of their edits. It's important, however, to keep all of your comments civil, whether in the edit summaries or in comments posted elsewhere. If we can't maintain civility, then no one will be able to do effective work for fear they'll unleash a rash of uncivility against them. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 05:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Waldemar Matuška

Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 18:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Like I already told you, Tulkolahten, false accusations of vandalism are not a very good way to achieve "peace and consensus" (your terminology). Nor is this.

Nor is your deliberate missorting[7] of Waldemar Matuška in its categories. No chance of pleading ignorance there, after not only our previous discussions but also my edit summary there.

Nor is the fact that your move still does not cite any sources whatsoever, Wikipedia:reliable sources or otherwise, for your move, not in your edit summary, not in the article itself which still is completely and totally unsourced with no references whatsoever, and obviously not in Talk:Waldemar Matuška since all that is there are a couple of templates and no discussion whatsoever. Gene Nygaard 19:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:Tulkolahten, no response there:

No deal, Tulkolahten. You know better.

That is not the rule. Start following the rules and we will get along better. BTW, I don't have the foggiest idea what your point is about Hraničky; it was User:Darwinek you were edit-warring with there, not me. (Plus, you edit-warring with him hasn't involved Gränzdorf either in the text or the missing redirect from that with or without diacritics, from what I've seen.)

Under Wikipedia:Naming conventions, the existence of a variant spelling with diacritics does not mean that this is the proper choice for the one slot available for an article's name.

Our English Wikipedia article is at Romania, for example, and not at România with the squiggles. The latter is, of course, a redirect. So you will never get a deal on your proposal as long as it remains contrary to Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

Follow the rules about including variant spellings in the introduction, too, as the guidelines tell us to. You know how you can show good faith in this regard. You can probably guess the consequences, with respect to ever coming to any sort of agreement with me, if you do not do so. Remember, good faith is a rebuttable presumption.

Curiously, while you have insisted that the English spelling variants of the spelling of the subject of the article should not even be included in the introduction of articles as the guidelines provide, you argue (in what you discussed on my talk page and in your edit summaries[8] [9] there; note also that Talk:Jiangyan High School remains a redlink as I write this) that the Chinese variant spellings, even for things other than the subject of the article, somehow belong on the English Wikipedia. The Chinese spellings related (even quite remotely) to the subject of the article remained, yet you put all the unrelated ones back in also. That seems so bizarre to me. Can you give any explanation to help me make sense of that clear and patent contradiction?

In addition to naming conventions and citing sources, following the rules includes the details, such as not using the comma as a decimal point, not starting sentences with a numeral, proper date formats, capitalization of "German" and the like even as an adjective or in reference to the language in English, etc. Sure, I understand that if you are translating from another Wikipedia's entries or some other source, you might miss a few of them. Just show an awareness of the problem and make a good faith effort to catch things like that.

Note that the burden of proof for making a change lies with those proposing the change. If you want to make changes, cite your reliable sources or discuss the changes and your reasons on the talk pages. The burden does not lie with someone reverting unsourced and undiscussed changes. So don't complain about it if they get reverted, just remedy it.

Stopping false accusations of vandalism is, of course, another precondition to any deal. Gene Nygaard 16:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

RE: Nor is this. I can talk about anyone with anyone and you will not persecute me for that. My patience with you is over. You've showed a very bad faith. You continue with the vandalising of pages and destroy works of others. You behave badly to other editors as Nihonjoe and your insulting comment about his work, you ignore consensus on talk pages. You showed bad faith enough so I do not want to discuss with you anymore about anything. If you vandalise more pages you should expect vandal warning as you deserve and report in arbitration comitee. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 20:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• Still zilch for cites on the page under discussion. No WP:reliable sources, not even any unreliable sources. Nada.
• Still an empty-but-for-templates talk page.
• The article remains missorted in its categories. Actually missorted in at least one of the non-stub categories now, potentially in all of them with future additions.
• Don't be lecturing me about not showing good faith. Gene Nygaard 20:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Widespread Anglicisation

Hello Gene. I'd like to ask you for your input in this - literally thousands of articles have been sloppily "Anglicised" already (changing "région" for "region", for example, without modifying the phrase around it in the least to provide the proper context/meaning of the term) without any prior discussion at all, and one is continuing this rampage in spite of an ongoing discussion and WP:RFC about it. As you are major contributor to France-topic articles, so your input in this case is even important. Please help. You can find the discussion here. Thanks. THEPROMENADER 20:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Cheers! THEPROMENADER 21:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I thought you had commented the RFC below as well - if you have a comment to leave there too, please do. Thanks. THEPROMENADER 00:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Jiří Mádl

Sorry for informing you here and not in my talk page. But this I think is very important. The change in Jiří Mádl was only about the name of the article; I did not remove any category; before my edit there few of them in the article, and I did not want to add them in that time. --Aktron 09:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Gene, beware of such tone of your notices and go back and fix it by yourself. Stop beating others for their edits. My patience with you is over, continue with it and I will make steps to give you in the face of Arbitration comittee. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 09:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Kosice Self-governing Region...

...was red because there was no divot over the"s" in Košice; hence Wikipedia viewed them as two separate pages (which could be valid, as there is also a Kosice (normal s) in the Czech Republic). In any case, I tossed up a redirect, so the link is now active. samwaltz 10:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There may be other places called Kosice, but there is only one Kosice Self-governing Region.

Even if there were two, that link shouldn't have been red; it would have been occupied either by the other one or a disambiguation page. Plus, the two separate articles in that case should have had disambiguation links at the top of the page from one to the other, or a separate disambiguation page listing all of them.

Note that while there may be a difference in spelling in the Slovak language, that isn't necessarily the case in the English language, and this is the English Wikipedia, after all. There is no error in using the English alphabet when writing in English.

While we in the English Wikipedia may choose to use the Slovak spelling with the š in this case, it is not a mistake, not an error, when almost all English-language newspapers and magazines and many other writers in English for whatever purpose quite legitimately and properly make a different choice, and choose to spell the name of this town and its region Kosice.

Related to that, you should take note of what happens if you put Kosice in the box on the Wikipedia page and click on "Go". This quite naturally takes you to the article at Košice, and not to the article at Kosice (Hradec Králové District) and also not to the disambiguation page at Kosice (disambiguation). When people on English Wikipedia use that "Go" box entry, I'd guess that the odds are better than 100 to 1 that they end up at the article they were looking for, at the city of 230,000 people rather than the village of 320 people.

It is also likely that more people will put Kosice Self-governing Region into that "Go" box than will ever put Košice Self-governing Region there. Thanks to your new redirect, they will now actually find what they are looking for; in the past, many likely would just have assumed that Wikipedia had nothing about it and moved on. So you have indeed taken an important step in unhiding this information.

Not only that, but without the redirect, a Google search for the phrase "Kosice Self-governing Region" region would not find the Wikipedia article,[10] as you can see by making that search before Google catches up to your addition. Of course, Google isn't the only search engine, either. Even with a redirect, there are others which will not find the Wikipedia article even after you added the redirect, if you do not actually include the variant spelling "Kosice Self-governing Region" in the article itself.

Note also that both Košice Region and Košice Self-governing Region should also appear on Kosice (disambiguation). Furthermore, do we really need two separate articles for these coterminous places? Merging them would reduce duplication and make them easier to maintain. If there is some particular category that would benefit from having one version over the other, you can categorize the redirect.

You should also consider redirects from other variant spellings such as "Koszyce" or whatever. If any of them are used in connection with the region as well as the town, redirects from them would be useful as well. You may have a better idea than I do whether or not this is the case, and even if you don't you may have more interest in looking into it than I do. Gene Nygaard 13:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I should? We're all doing this out of the goodness of our hearts. Feel free to do it yourself. Have fun. samwaltz 18:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a suggestion; I figured you'd have more interest in seeing that whatever information we have about these places can be found and used by users of Wikipedia than I do. If not, so be it. Let duplicate, fragmentsary, contradictory information remain scattered in various unfindable nooks and crannies, unless somebody else jumps in to do it or I get really bored and looking for something to do. Gene Nygaard 18:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

So, the Wiki emphasis is on being bold. Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages. If you see something you want, something that's clearly missing (esp. a redirect page), feel free to add it yourself. There will probably be someone else who will end up searching for the same misspelling, and be glad you did. To add a redirect, click "create a new page", and enter #REDIRECT new page name . Ah well, we each have our own passions. samwaltz 19:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not a misspelling. Gene Nygaard 22:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. To be honest mate I genuinely went through many districts and indexed them but I kind of lost track of where I was and got side tracked by WikiProject Films and I know I didn't complete them all - which I should have. If you can find any other districts not fully tidy let me know and i'll be only to willing to perfect anything. All the best Ernst Stavro Blofeld 10:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S Your talk page is 107 KB long!! over 3 times the limit- why not archive it? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 10:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

David Miller

I agree with you Gene, the David Miller issue happenned ages ago, and it was a rather clumsy attempt on my part to make David Miller (singer) the primary disambiguation. The mayor of Toronto's supporters didn't agree of course and I tried to patch things up as I realized that page was far better written than the singer's page (although I still believe that a multi-platinum selling artist of worldwide acclaim should be primary disambiguation rather than a politician who is unknown outside of Canada...but I just don't feel like fighting about it and in fact it has even been better for Il Divo's David article as it is by far the least vandalized of the divos' biographies) but it seems I didn't make the move correctly as I was a newbie at the time. Just to get it clear, is the idea then to have David Miller (mayor of Toronto) as primary disambiguation page? If it's so I'm all for it.

Just one last thing...it seems a rather curious casuality that just when you and I are having trouble with the Waldemar Matuška issue this David Miller problem I inadvertedly created (and which had remained dormant for several months) is raised precisely by you. I'll assume good faith but it's a bit odd...Rosa 18:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I will be checking up on you, of course, but I don't think that is how I found this problem. In any case, I thought it was rather strange that you would have moved the disambiguation page out of the way to put this Canadian mayor there; thanks for explaining what happened. If you have any ideas on exactly where the current article should go, your comments there would be appreciated. Gene Nygaard 18:41, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Missorting

(Hey my first message disappeared) Dude, thanks for the feedback. I try to do every transaction right, and so I appreciate when someone lets me know that I've missed the mark. Thanks again. CRKingston 06:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Christian Müller (footballer)

thks, I didnt know about the {{DEFAULTSORT:Mueller, Christian}} tag .---Jor70 09:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Åkerström

Low blow, dude. Spread some wiki-love. —MURGH ^disc. 00:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Collation of The Golden Age (film) and La Cartuja

Just wondering if you think it should be sorted under "T" or under "G" and "L" or "C" ? -- User:Docu

G, in any category I can think of. The other one, the appropriateness of the name is questionable. Wouldn't it be better for the name to make clear that it is an island (or at least, was at one time)? Not one of many monastaries, for example? Under L as it stands. Naturally, Las Vegas and Las Vegas, New Mexico should be before Los Angeles, too. Always, in English.

In any case, cities are a different situation from films and rivers. Look at the city listings in most any English-language atlas. In the case of cities, I'm satisfied with a city starting with the English word "The" sorted under T, as at least one is.

The proper indexing may depend both on what that name is, and on the category. That La Cartuja most likely doesn't belong in Category:Islands by river in any case; what belongs there are subcategories for certain rivers, with the actual related articles in those categories. But since there isn't any general category for riverine islands, there is some argument for putting them there, at least as a temporary measure. If so, it could possibly even be sorted one of those Easter egg links, under something that doesn't appear in the article itself (this type of situation is one of the few where there might be an argument for such a link), with it sorted under "G"—more specifically, under "Guadalquivir", its river. What would you think of that? I don't like it much myself, just suggesting the possibility. Gene Nygaard 05:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

For the collation of Golden Age as well as Las Vegas and Los Angeles (both being US cities with "English" names), I agree with you.

Indeed, a general category for riverine islands would be much better than Category:Islands by river. Sorting the article in "Islands by river" under "G" is logical, but has the disadvantage of using an element that isn't displayed in the category listing.

As La Cartuja is also in other categories, i.e. Category:Isthmuses, we should still find a default sortkey that is consistent. Similar to "The Hague" (under "H") or "La Chaux-de-Fonds" (under "C", as on [11], [12] and anywhere else I could find it), I'd go for "C". -- User:Docu

Unless you have another suggestion, I'd sort the municipalities of Switzerland accordingly as well. -- User:Docu

The Hague isn't comparable or relevant at all. That is an English-language article, so there is at least an argument for ignoring it, though some do not do that now and I'd say they should not for cities. Plus, for The Hague, I'd index redirects under "D" and under "S", even if it is under "H" rather than "T".

Aldine University Atlas (1969) has La Chaux de Fonds the right way for English, under L.

Your UK version of Britannica browse also has La Ceiba under L[13], as well as La Crosse and La Grande and La Gruyere (a redirect here, maybe shouldn't be) and La Guaira, etc.

City names are also analogous to the rules for people's names at Wikipedia:Categorization of people: People with multiple-word last names: sorting is done on the entire last name as usually used in English, in normal order and not (for example) according to the Dutch system...

Furthermore, because of the way Wikipedia works, our Wikipedia rules need to follow KISS principles to avoid endless squabbles. Gene Nygaard 07:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that "La Ceiba" is sorted under C even in Spanish and the remaining are in the US. :::::I agree, we should try to keep things simple, and indeed keep Category:Municipalities of Switzerland in the usual sort order, thus please avoid undoing other peoples sorting. Afterall you can still use "search" to find them.

I disagree with applying the rule of thumb conceived for Dutch surnames to names of cities, I doubt someone conceived it to sort "The Hague", it's already marginally useful for non-Dutch names. -- User:Docu

Spanish sorting isn't particularly relevant. It's no surprise that they might ignore Spanish articles, just as in English we usually ignore English articles. And no, since you've messed around with it again, Category:Municipalities of Switzerland is not properly sorted. Please stop missorting them. Gene Nygaard 16:34, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It was completely sorted until you started undoing it, please just leave it.

The only thing there is still to do are the place names with "Saint", "St. ", or "San". To go with the sorting for people, I suppose you'd sort "St. Moritz" under "M". Personally, I think for places names sorting under "S Moritz" would be most appropriate. What do you think of that? -- User:Docu

Jag(i)ello

Would you support either Jagello or Jagiello? What other names would be acceptable for you? -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  23:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Arabic names

You have been applying {{DefaultSort}} to a lot of biographical articles of people with Arabic names, including a bunch of Guantanamo captives.

The Guantanamo authorities have done a disastrously terrible job of managing the Prison roster at Guantanamo. They are still confused over the identities of the captives. A big part of this confusion, IMO, is due to their insistence on trying to shoehorn Arabic names into the European standard of "Lastname, Firstname". I consulted other wikipedians, who are either Arabic scholars, or native speakers of those languages, confirming my observation that non-speakers trying to figure out the surnames, from Arabic names, is a recipe for disaster.

I followed this mistake when I started the List of Guantanamo Bay detainees. But I didn't want to repeat this mistake when I created a bunch of new categories, to classify the Guantanamo captives. I put a paragraph in the category descriptions, expressing the opinion that we refrain from the mistake of trying to figure out a surname for the captives.

FWIW, we aren't consistent with Europpean names, when it doesn't make sense to follow the de-facto standard. Ludwig van Beethoven is sorted under B for Beethoven, but Vincent van Gogh is not sorted under G for Gogh.

Can I ask you refrain from doing this with Arabic names until we have a discussion?

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 21:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Jacqueline du Pré

a couple days ago, i noticed you changed the sorting of the categories for Jacqueline du Pré. i've read the mos and i'm not clear on how the 'du' is handled on wikipaedia, but i'm pretty sure it's sorted under 'Pré' in the real world....please advise. --emerson7 | Talk 03:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categorization of people: "People with multiple-word last names: sorting is done on the entire last name as usually used in English, in normal order and not (for example) according to the Dutch system that puts some words like "van", "vanden", "van der", etc... after the rest of the last name." Gene Nygaard 05:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Re Alpha sorting categories

Hey why are you deleting the COMMENT on the categories "Alpha sort caterories please." There is no wiki policy against it. And cats are easier to read when alpha sorted. It seems that's all you are doing to some of the Argentine bio articles I've started. Don't you have better things to do with your time. Also I noticed ..i notied you are doing that to all my edits. Please tell me a policy against that! And why did you not communicate with me, insted of "CORRECTING LUIGIBOB's work" note. Poor wiki-love man. Luigibob 15:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Also why are you deleting accents and tildes from peoples name. Man do you know what you are doing. NO YOU DO NOT! I will UNDO all of your work you have done on artilces I have edited. When I have time. As far as I'm concerned you are a vandal. Luigibob 15:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The comment is ambiguous, senseless, doesn't show up on article page, and is of no help whatsoever to editors because nobody is going to be able to read your mind to figure out what the hell you intended.

For the rest, start by reading Wikipedia:Categorization. Then Help:Magic words. Then there likely will be some other guidelines you are ignoring, but at least maybe whatever strange urges prompt the ambiguous embedded comments will disappear as well. Gene Nygaard 16:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I have explained about the foreign lettering -as long as it doesn't affect the intergrity of his work I don't see a problem with you indexing - that default does it for you now anyway!!! and I do appreciate when you communicate more pleasantly -as I said I do think you do a good job with sorting categories but it is often your tone that can often deter other users from their good work. Thanks. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

But please don't try to move the titles or names in the pages -they are spanish names so should have the correct accenting. Accenting is very important in spanish names- removing all the accents in the names is equivalent to change the names - it would be like French wikipedia naming Peter Crouch Pierre Crouch. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't bullshit me about correct accenting. There are many of them unreferenced, unsourced moves to improper spellings. A great many bad moves have been done with no reliable sources cited, no discussion, etc. Others have simply been created under bad names in the first place. I will continue to correct them. Now, will you agree never to do any unreferenced, undiscussed moves on your own part? Gene Nygaard 16:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

See what I mean. Why was there a need to swear at me like that? It appears you like to be aggressive. As long as an article is there and has an external link to a source , also using the SAME TITLE then there is not a problem. I don;t understand what you mean about a "bad" name. Articles should be as accurate as possible and this includes the exact names of the people or subject in question. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

A huge number of articles have no links whatsoever, cited as sources or not (and, if I'm not mistaken, that includes hundreds of them created by by User:Ernst Stavro Blofeld, or with his help in the creation by someone else). Furthermore, a still huge number of articles have links only to sources using a spelling different from that used in the article. The rules are best known in English in any case; the mere existence of a spelling with non-English letters in it does not mean that that spelling is the appropriate one under Wikipedia naming conventions in any case, as the specific articles cited above clearly demonstrate. So the articles need to show more than the fact that a word or other name might sometimes be spelled with diacritics in order to meet the naming conventions criteria in any case, and that doesn't even deal with the thousands of articles where the sources, if any, and even other external links not cited as sources, do not support the spelling some misguided editor has slapped on the text of the article, on its name, or both. Gene Nygaard 17:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

And that doesn't even get into those with numerous different versions with diacritics. Gene Nygaard 17:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

And an important part of the work is to make sure that articles are linked by removing red links and connecting everything eventually into good articles. -this will take time.Luigi Bob for one is very sure to link betwen articles Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Careful? Good grief! Luigibob flat-out refused to create Osmar Nunez, and he hasn't created Osmar Nuñez. But none of that has anything to do with not using English when an English term is available, nor with the hundreds of articles using only misspellings of names that never have diacritics, nor the thousands more which might have had diacritics at one time but which have been dropped in English by people who moved to an English-speaking country, by people when they wrote various publications in English, etc. (OTOH, it is never a misspelling to use the English alphabet when writing in English, even though it is an error in English to add diacritics to names and words in which they are not normally used in English.) Gene Nygaard 17:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, there are no squiggles on the i's in the publicity poster depicted on the Historias minimas page. So why does that link redirect to a page whose name has squiggles on it? Gene Nygaard 17:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Pelle Lindbergh

I moved your message to my talk page and responded there. Feel free to run with this if you want to. It sure seems like a lot of overhead to just revert one user's lame decision, in my opinion. Can we just ask an admin to fix it for us? Andrwsc 20:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

"Missorting" at Felipe Calderón

Why are you treating the wording "Felipe Calderón" as missorting? After all, Calderón is the President's last name, and not "Calderon".

There are several people named "Felipe Calderón", including a Phillipene stateman. By convention in wikipedia, we are using "Felipe Calderón" for the President of Mexico, and "Felipe G. Calderón" for the Phillipene stateman. "Felipe Calderon", however, goes to a disambiguation page. If anything, not including the "´" in the "o" is missorting.

Hari Seldon 01:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Just go look at the categories. Are they always in the right alphabetical order? No. Go read about the sort keys in Wikipedia:Categorization.

And even though it is totally unrelated, it is not a misspelling to use the English alphabet when writing in English. So make sure you create those redirects, even when they don't end up there as remnant of somebody's move. Gene Nygaard 01:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

But the President's name is not in English! And as far as I know, proper nouns are not usually translated. I am not against proper categorization. You obviously know more than I do on that. However, I must insist that the President's name is properly spelled. Hari Seldon 02:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Didn't even go an read about those sort keys, did you? It doesn't have anything to do with spelling. Furthermore, that president's name is very often, and quite legitimately and properly, spelled Calderon in English—but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sort keys. Gene Nygaard 03:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Let's put it this way: "Felipe Calderón" comes before Antonino Calderone in English sorting; but in your first missorting, you had him after Mark Calderwood, which is totally wrong in English indexing (for what's it's worth, it is also totally wrong in Spanish indexing, but that has no relevance whatsoever here on the English Wikipedia). Then in the second go-round, you really messed it up, putting him in the F's instead of the C's. Gene Nygaard 03:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I am sorry. I didn't realize that the "defaultsort" did not affect the way the President's name was spelled in the category list. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. Hari Seldon 04:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

California Gold Rush

Gene -

There was a big discussion about weight measurements of gold in the California Gold Rush FA process. Could we revisit the issue of metric conversions after the article's off the Main page? Right now, we have our hands full with vandals, etc. Thanks for looking at this again! NorCalHistory 19:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, no. That big discussion dealt with different numbers; specifically, your use of a recent source talking about "273 pounds" of gold, where you didn't really have any idea what it meant and converted it to 124 kg. The ones I fixed now were dealing with "ounces" of gold, not "pounds". My edits dealt with improper precision in the conversions–you don't gain any precision when you make a conversion, it needs to be rounded off appropriately. And with the improper link to short tons rather than to metric tons.

Of course, if your numbers such as "12,000,000 ounces" came from some source talking about "750,000 pounds" of gold, then we're back with more serious problems that need to be dealt with right away. Gene Nygaard 21:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Merging articles -- WP:Merge

I fixed your merge tag in bending moment. I suggest you skim WP:Merge-- it explains how things are done with examples. Nephron  T|C 19:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Why doesn't "mergewith" default to the talk page of the target article, and "mergefrom" to the articles own talk page. Or even vice versa, for that matter, just so you get the paired templates going to one discussion page? Gene Nygaard 19:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought they did...? I wonder whether it is related to the date being in there???

Any case... I thought I had things consistent a moment ago... but I think we're coming at this from different ends. I see the two merges as two different things. You think all the discussion should be on one page? Nephron  T|C 19:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking "mergewith" was what is actually "mergeto" (and would have thought mergewith would redirect there rather than to merge). What I'm sayig is that you shouldn't have to add the talk page as well when you use one of the more detailed templates than just {{merge}} because you already have the name of the two articles and the direction proposed, and can default the talk page link (let it be overridden if necessary, but what you added to my template shouldn't have been necessary, IMHO).

It is two different merge discussions there. But you had used strikeover on my link to the one discussion that was on the other page. Gene Nygaard 20:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Reverting undiscussed moves

I posted your comments on this subject at Wikipedia_talk:Requested_moves#Reverting_undiscussed_moves. Please comment further if you wish. —  AjaxSmack  08:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

AfD

Could you please tell me what you meant with

"might just as well throw it out as to squirrel it away with Juri Mois a redlink, may start AfD"

in Jüri Mõis? It's an honest question, I really don't get what you mean. ChiLlBeserker 16:09, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It's just that if you hide it so nobody can find it, then it might as well not be here at all (AfD refers to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, for which you can use the shortcut redirect WP:AfD). You need to have it so that somebody who ran across a mention of him in an English-language publication can find him by entering his name in the "Search" box or can get the link to his article to work if he is mentioned in another article; the English publication will most likely spell his name without the diacritics in the first place, and in the second place even if someone sees his name with the diacritics, they likely won't know exactly how to make the specific ones to put them in the search box. (When you are using the search box, you normally don't even have the edit page crutch of a mass of squiggle letters down below that you spend a few minutes wading through so you can try to pick out a match from it.) See Wikipedia:Redirect: "A redirect should be created for articles that may reasonably be found under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names)." Some of the WikiProject pages are probably even more explicit on this. Gene Nygaard 16:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW, redirects won't always be what's appropriate; sometimes it needs to be a link from a disambiguation page, or even just a disambiguation line in an existing article. But the creation of the redirects from the English-alphabet version also serves another purpose—it helps prevent duplicate articles. Maybe the article already exists without the diacritics. Or maybe it already exists with diacritics, but not exactly the same ones or the same number of them, and the existing article has already had a redirect created from the English-alphabet version. In either case, it avoids unnecessary duplication. Gene Nygaard 16:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Third, creating those redirects often fixes already existing links which were previously redlinks in the articles in which they appeared, and gets the readers of those articles directed to the article in which you have been investing your own efforts. Gene Nygaard 16:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I've created the redirects from the diacritic-less name. ChiLlBeserker 16:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

birth dates

I saw you added the estimated dates of birth to the first line of some of the articles about Guantanamo captives.

FWIW, these are just estimates. These estimates are shifting -- President Bush arbitrarily changed the date of adulthood for "enemy combatants" from 18 to 16. Even by this more restrictive standard Camp Iguana should have held than the three teenagers. One American officer justified mistakes by saying, "they don't come with birth certificates." But there was no excuse in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr. His birthdate was not in doubt.

IIRC, in at least one case their estimate was off by a decade.

FWIW.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 22:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Arabic names

I left a note on your talk page on February 11th, about Arabic names, and how they should be sorted.

I requested that you hold off on shoehorning their names into the European standard that the last name is a surname that is inherited from father to son until we had a discussion about it.

I explained some of my reasoning. Now maybe, after waiting a week, I should have left you a heads-up that I was assuming my reasoning had convinced you, and you were just too busy to tell me so. If so, my apologies.

I am going to ask, again, that you refrain from putting {{DefaultSort}} on those categories, and engage in a discussion first.

Thanks! -- Geo Swan 22:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

We have discussed it before back in December, but to no avail. You have brought nothing new to the table this time or last. You are the one who failed to address the points I made.

There are a lot of other problems with your categories as well. I think the first place to go with them is Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. Gene Nygaard 11:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me, I don't remember this discussion. I know I have had a couple of challenges. I don't remember you being one of the challengers. I don't remember leaving any points unaddressed from any of those challengers. One guy, about a year ago, thought that no Arabic name should be sorted on the "AL " portion of a name like "Al Banna".

I'll return when I have refreshed my memory of this previous discussion.

Please feel free to explain, in more detail, the concerns you have about any categories I have created.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 20:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your Johan Magnus Halvorsen example. Is he an exception to the convention that fathers pass their surnames to their children, why should his name be shoehorned into the surname, given-name(s) convention?

I;ve offered you the examples of Ludwig van Beethoven, and Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh is widely known as "van Gogh", not "Gogh". But no-one calls Beethoven "van Beethoven". The sort order that makes sense for Beethoven is to sort him under "B". The sort order that makes sense for van Gogh is to sort him under "V".

Why shouldn't the individuals with Arabic names be sorted under the order that makes the most sense for them? The Trouble is -- we don't know what order makes sense for them!

The DoD ran out of legal options, and had a deadline of 6pm March 3rd 2006 to reveal the identities of the Guantanamo captives. They didn't really comply. Instead they released 5000 pages of transcripts. 5 to 10 percent of those transcripts contained the names of the captives -- in passing. In the weeks following journalists wrote about those fifty or so captives whose names had been mentioned -- in passing -- in the transcripts of their Tribunals. And people, including here on the wikipedia, guessed at what portion of those names were really their surnames, and sorted them upon their guessed at surnames. Those guesses were almost all wrong. What journalists assumed were the captives full names, given names, plus their surname, was almost always the part of their names that came closest to their surnames.

Do some people with Arabic names come from families, or areas, that are sufficiently westernized that they pass on a European style surname, like most Europeans do? Sure. Some do. But we would only be guessing at which of them do.

Further, the DoD seems to be playing some kind of shell-game, where they keep changing how they represent the captives names. It is just like with the ghost prisoner known as "triple-x" -- the DoD loses track of the captive's identities due to their unwillingness or inability to do a competent job of keeping track of their names. The worst example of this is with the three men the DoD reported committed suicide on June 10th, 2006. The DoD, originally wasn't going to release their names. But then the Saudis released the names of the two dead men who were Saudis. They Saudis released different transliterations of their names names than those on the two (wildly inconsistent) official lists the DoD released on April 20th 2006 and May 15th 2006. So, then the DoD released their current versions of the names of dead men. What possible excuse could there be for the DoD to transliterate their names differently on June 11th than they had on May 15th?

The DoD asserted that none of these three men had had pro bono lawyers volunteer to help them submit writs of habease corpus. This was 100% incorrect. I spent several days trying to match one of the names the DoD released on June 11th to the names on the official list. This was the guy who had been on a hunger strike, for almost a year, to protest his imprisonment. The only allegation against this guy was that he had participated in the Tablighi Jamaat movement. This is an amazingly weak allegation. This Tablighi movement is a missionary movement. Three million individuals have participated in it. Participants book a month, or a couple of months, off work, and go to a different country, hook up with a dozen or so other pilgrims, and get billeted in local mosques. They spend a week, or a couple of days, in each mosque, comparing notes about how they practice Islam with how the locals, and the other pilgrims practice Islam. The movement is supposed to be non-political. The pilgrims are not supposed to discuss politics at all. American intelligence analysts justify their suspicion of the pilgrims because Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, and other extremists, were once pilgrims, and because terrorists could use traveling on a pilgrimage as a cover for travel to engage in terrorist training or a terrorist project. Okay. But, if it is the only allegation you can offer against someone, as it was the only allegation to offer against this teenager, then it is a very weak one, when the movement has over three million participants.

Did I say he was only seventeen when he was captured?

This kid, who, almost certainly, had not ties to terrorism whatsoever, was one of the 120 captives who had been recommended for release by his Administrative Review Board. But he didn't know that. The camp authorities don't tell captives this. And his lawyers couldn't tell him, because the camp authorities wouldn't deliver his mail to him. They kept telling his lawyers that they couldn't deliver his mail because his lawywers were addressing their letters to a name that was not on the official roster.

What we learned, when he died, is that the camp authorities had changing the way they transliterated his name. They had changed the transliteration sometime between May 15th and June 11th. We know that they had transliterated his name at least one other way. Were they constantly changing the transliterations in order to thwart his lawyers attempts to communicate with him?

We don't know. We will probably never know. But we do know that he died without ever learning that his release was imminent.

My point in relating this story is to point out how ridiculous it is to rely on the DoD's transliterations.

Sorting these guys by the first character of their first name is the only sort order that makes sense. Shoe-horning them into the European scheme wouldn't make sense if we could be confident we knew what their real name was. We can't be confident we know what their real names are.

One of the three children who was held in Camp Iguana was named Naquibullah. As journalists correctly observed, many Afghans only have a single name. The Guantanamo camp authorities couldn't cope with this. If you look at the official list, although some clerks allowed some Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks to have just a single name, others put FNU or LNU next to their names (for First Name Unknown, or Last Name Unknown). Other clerks arbitrarily renamed them. I joke that they created the "Brothers Ullah", because there were so many Afghans who had single names that ended in "ullah", like Naquibullah, that the Guantanamo clerks arbitrarily assigned the surname "Ullah" to them. So, Naquibullah, was renamed "Naquib Ullah", and according to your shoehorn scheme, would be sorted as "Ullah, Naquib".

If you read the captive's transcripts, as I have, you will come across captive after captive who told his Tribunal: "The allegations I am facing, here in my Tribunal, are not only incorrect, but they are totally new to me. None of my interrogators ever asked me any questions related to these allegations. Inexplicable, if the Guantanamo authorities had managed a competent job of maintaining the prison roster. Highly explicable if the Guantanamo authorities mismanagement of the prison roster meant that they didn't really know who the captives were.even after four years of detention.

Consider Khirullah Khairkhwa and Abdullah Khan. Khairkhwa was a big wheel. He served as the Taliban's last Governor of the Province of Herat in 2000 and 2001. And he had served the Taliban's English speaking spokesman from 1996. He was captured in late November 2001 or early December 2001. There was no room for doubt about his identity. And there was no excuse for American intelligence officials to pay a huge bounty for Abdullah Khan in 2003, when he was denounced as secretly being Khirullah Khairkhwa. Yet that is what happened. All Khan's interrogators in Afghanistan kept insisting they knew he was lying about his identity, that they knew he was really Khirullah Khairkhwa. Because he was so "uncooperative", because he wouldn't admit lying about his identity, wouldn't admit he was really Khairkhwa, he was sent to Guantanamo. He wasn't in Guantanamo very long when other prisoners told him, "Khairkhwa? But the Americans capture Khairkhwa over a year and a half ago! He is being held over in the other compound, less than a kilometer away!"

So, Khan starts pleading with his interrogators, for them to please check the prison roster, so they can confirm that he really isn't lying, that he really wasn't Khairkhwa. He repeated this plea to his interrogators for almost a year and a half. None of his interrogators were willing, or able, to take the obvious step of checking the prison roster.

IMO we should not let a misplaced respect for the surname, given name convention, which, as you have pointed out, is not even reliable for all European names, cause us to make misleading entries. This doesn't serve casual readers well. And it doesn't serve scholars well either.

I'd like you to address the "van Beethoven" and "van Gogh" examples in your reply. -- Geo Swan 23:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you on Beethoven and Van Gogh (note that, at least according to some style guides, the "V" should be capitalized when it is not preceded by a given name or a title, though I don't think there is anything addressing that in our MoS or elsewhere). That is specifically addressed at Wikipedia:Categorization of people. But I note also that unlike the case of "Arabic names", you do not advocate sorting them under "Ludwig" and "Vincent" respectively.

I also agree with you on sort keys starting with "Al-", etc.

The problems with many names you are dealing with are not primarily because they are Arabic, nor due to your speculative claims of "transliteration" problems. The main problem is that these are often people not overly anxious for it to be known exactly who they are or where they've been, people who have often operated under a whole slew of different names themselves. Those problems also mean that it is difficult to figure out what the article names for them should be on Wikipedia, and while it might be safest to err on the side of including more, that means that we often end up with more names in the article name than would normally be used at any one time in reference to a particular person, and more names in the article name than would normally be used for other people.

Where you are going astray is in the notion that the sort order depends on whether or not a surname is a family name gotten from the family name of the parents. It really does not. Snowshoe Thompson is properly indexed under T, even if his father was Tønnes Jensen Rue. John Wayne is properly sorted under W, even if he didn't get either of his names from his parents. And Einar Gerhardsen is properly indexed under G.

Erik Jonsson Helland is not indexed under Jonsson because indexed under other surname, Helland; if he had usually used the Jonsson surname alone, we would index under that. It doesn't matter where it comes from; we wouldn't have to know his father's name to know how to sort his name This is something that would most likely be reflected in the article's name, if our naming conventions were followed. In this case, we actually do know his father. His father Jon Eriksson Helland is the same way, only if not under Helland he'd be under Eriksson not Jonsson. But furthermore, Jon Eriksson didn't get the "Helland" name from his parents, either. They weren't Hellands, and he didn't get that name until he was an adult. He was originally Jon Eriksson Hellos because he was born and grew up on the "Hellos" farm, but his demonymic surname changed after he married, when he moved to his wife's farm "Helland". The patronymic usually didn't change throughout a persons life (though there may be variants when father had more than one given name, for example), but the demonymic could and usually did, being somewhat akin to an address. Nonetheless, that's what we index under.

The problems with your categories are include that they are overcategorized on minutia, they are badly named and inconsistently named, they are a hopeless jumble in their parent category, and a whole slew of other problems. Why don't you create a list page or two instead? Learning how to use sortable tables would probably be quite useful in that regard as well. Gene Nygaard 14:30, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

1. I don't advocate changing Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, or any of the Arabs in existing categories, because there is already a precedent for how they are sorted. Changing the sort order now would upset some people, and would open them up to constant revision. However, I don't see why new groups shouldn't do it right.
2. I disagree that my observations on the trouble American intelligence officials have displayed managing the roster of names should be classified as "speculation".
   1. One merely needs to compare the two official lists, released just twenty five days apart, and see how many captive's names were spelled inconsistently.
   2. When the DoD released 56 .pdf files containing transcripts they also released three .pdf files containing memos summarizing the factors prepared for 121 captives' Administrative Reviews Board hearings. The transcripts were identified solely by an ID number, with the exception of the fifty odd transcripts where the captive's name was incidentally spelled out. The 121 memos bore the captive's name, but had the ID numbers redacted. Those memos dated to the fall of 2005 -- about nine months before the official lists were released. After years of detention what possible explanation can there be for the extensive discrepancies between the spellings of their names on the memos and their names on the official lists?
   3. Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari was one of the 58 captives whose full unclassified CSRT dossiers the Associated Press acquired in 2005, and made available for download. He has just three justifications for his detention.
      1. He traveled to Afghanistan, following 9-11, with thousands of dollars.
      2. He was alleged to have been captured wearing a Casio F91W.
      3. His name was alleged to have been found on the hard drive of an al Qaeda suspect.
      • Well, for crying out loud, if you are going to hold a guy, for five years, without ever formally charging him, or providing him with a meaningful opportunity to refute the evidence against him, because you think his name matches one on an al Qaeda suspect's hard drive, don't you think you have a serious responsibility to spell his name consistently? His name is spelled six different ways in his dossier.
      • FWIW, the allegation about the watch was clearly BS as well. When I first read his dossier, in September 2005, and came across the Casio F91W allegation, I told google to pull up all the online images of the Casio F91W. It pulled up one hundred or more images. It is a very popular watch. I think I owned one, about fifteen years ago. It is a simple, inexpensive watch that keeps time very reliably. But then I read on, as Abdullah Kamel described his distress in learning that the watch was one of the reasons for his detention. In doing so he describes his watch. His description has NOTHING in common with the Casio F91W, other than the Casio name. From his description he was wearing the much more expensive, much more featureful, "Casio Prayer Watch". This is the moment when I knew for sure that something like half of the captives weren't terrorists at all.
      • Abdullah Kamel explained that he traveled to Afghanistan because he was moved by the television reports of starving refugees fleeing the civil conflict. He took money to hand out to ease the needs of these refugees. He was asked if he didn't realize that the USA was about to launch an aerial bombardment of Afghanistan, and an invasion. He replied that no, he did not. When Saddam invaded his country, Kuwait, it took the USA almost a year to prepare a counter-attack. He expected the counter-attack against Afghanistan to have the same kind of delay
3. You write: "Where you are going astray is in the notion that the sort order depends on whether or not a surname is a family name gotten from the family name of the parents." You offered John Wayne, Snowshoe, Halvorsen. And I added van Gogh and van Beethoven. John Wayne, van Gogh, van Beethoven, should all be sorted according to what seems right, following ignore all rules, because a detailed following of the rules, in their cases, is a recipe for constant revisions, from well-meaning people who think they know how it should be. If "Snowshoe Thompson" is how that guy is generally known, then he should be sorted as if that was his real name. Same with Sam Clemens/Mark Twain. IMO Galileo Galilei should be sorted under Galileo, not Galilei. He is universally known by his first name. That is the sort order that makes sense for him. But, none of these assumptions apply to these men with Arabic names.
4. Regarding the categories I started -- well, they are just about the first I started, so I am open to input, but:
   1. You wrote that they were: "are overcategorized on minutia". -- The United States has spent millions of dollars, per person, capturing, detaining and interrogating these hundred of men, based on these allegations. Maybe they seem like things that ought to be considered trivial, to sensible outside ovbservers. But the seriousness of the conditions of their detention, and the seriousness of the kinds of interrogation they faced, the seriousness of the role hung on them in the "global war on terror" makes these things highly significant -- lifts them from the level of minutia.
   2. Could you please explain more fully what you mean when you say when you describe them as a "hopeless jumble in their parent category"? I don't understand what this comment means.
   3. Why don't I create some "list pages"? You mean like Casio F91W, Derunta Training Camp, Allegations that Tablighi Jamaat is tied to terrorism, Al Qaida guest house, Faisalabad? I have already created quite a few. But, I have barely started. They are a lot of work. And, I thought I could use categories to make that work easier.
      • One of the most important "list pages" would focus on the suspicious lists Guantanamo intelligence analysts have used to justify the continued detention of the Guantanamo captives.
      • Some of allegations against the captives are specific enough, and detailed enough to be credible. That someone's name was found on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's hard drive is a strong reason to investigate someone. It doesn't mean they too are a terrorist. As Doonesbury said, even revolutionaries love chocolate chip cookies. Even terrorists have landlords, doctors, dentists, etc -- people whose names it would make sense to record on their hard drive, who probably -aren't- terrorists.
      • Other allegations that a name was found on a suspicious list are much less credible. Some of these allegations could be nothing more alarming than a copy of a newspaper article speculating that Mr Xyz, who disappeared when volunteering on a charity gig, or religious pilgrimage, in Pakistan, in late 2001, may be one of the Guantanamo captives. There are a bunch of captives who faced the allegation that their name was found on an internet web-site devoted to describing the case histories of the "prisoners", in order to put pressure on their home governments to lobby for their release. The original allegations use the scare quotes around prisoners -- a prejudicial writing error we would not allow in the wikipedia. For crying out loud, this allegation could be nothing more alarming than a listing on an Amnesty International web-site.
5. "Sortable tables"? I was not aware that wikipedia supported sortable tables. You mean Meta:Help:Sorting? Are you aware of any pages that use this feature? -- Geo Swan 20:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought I was waiting for you to address the points I've raised...

I thought I was waiting for you to address the points I've raised. But I see you are erasing my requests to sort the new categories I started on the first character of the first name, as if we had never started a discussion.

What's up?

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 22:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

That wasn't the only one I did. I also did Richard Belmar and Ravil Mingazov and probably a couple more.

A big part of the problem is that your requests are one person's notions, not supported by the guidelines.

Other big problems are that those requests are unclear in their application, false in their premises, and badly worded. It isn't clear which people it should apply to--nor to which categories your request applies. All of them I have done so far have been missorted in Category:Living people or in one of the birth or death categories. And that might well be because somebody else has heeded your requests in that regard.

Of course, Richard Belmar and Ravil Mingazov are also good examples of the falsity of the premises on which your request is based.

Of course, they are also dealing for the most part with categories what shouldn't be there in the first place, so there should be no reason for those requests which mislead people. Gene Nygaard 00:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Please explain why I shouldn't regard your plans as just "one person's notions"? I don't agree that you have explained that my requests are "not supported by the guidelines".

Your criticisms of the categorization were vague, and unhelpful. I asked you, politely, to explain yourself more fully. That was two weeks ago. Let me suggest you either stop making your vague, grumpy, unhelpful criticisms of those categories, or you make a good faith, non-insulting attempt to explain your concerns over them.

You write that it isn't clear which categories my request applies to? So, saying, in the comment, that the request applies to -the following categories-' isn't clear? If that isn't clear, the request is also in the categories descriptions.

Its true, someone who was careless when using robot assisted editing placed Category:Living People at the bottom of many of those articles. But I think you are mistaken if you think anyone removed the sorting on a theoretical surname from instances of that category. The person who placed that category didn't take the step of adjusting any sorting of the instances of that category.

I spoke to an editor who was careless in their use of robot assisted editing, and they apologized. Why is this the first time you offered this explanation for your actions?

I am in the process of going through all the articles about Guantanamo captives, one at a time, recording them in some files in my working space that I will then use in my work in article space. As I go through them, to record them, I fix other things I find wrong with them — like moving Category:Living people up above my request. I have been working on this for about three weeks. I ended up expanding some of the articles, which sometimes takes several hours. I'll be finished in another week, two at the most.

I think I have to point out that you could have learned this, earlier, and avoided being unpleasant, and avoided wasting both your time and my time, if you had been more forthcoming about your concerns.

I am sorry, but there is no polite way to say this — I think you might be well-served by reviewing wp:not#wikipedia is not a battlefield. -- Geo Swan 02:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

"The following categories" is precisely one of the things that is unclear, ambiguous, and misleading. That is because you have no control over somebody coming in and adding a category at the end of the list. Gene Nygaard 03:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

But all the bigger problems remain as well. Gene Nygaard 03:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I can't control whether other editors will add additional categories after the categories that follow my comment. But, I do have all those articles on my watchlist, and I check my watchlist regularly, sometimes several times a day, and at least once every several days. Now that I know your impatience over the temporary misplacement of another category is so, um, vigourous, I'll make a greater effort to stay on top of it.

With regard to your "bigger concerns" — perhaps you don't realize, but you keep leaving all these hints about your other concerns, but it seems to me that you haven't really made an effort to spell them out.

Listen, people make mistakes. I make them. Sometimes it is is difficult, or unpleasant to acknowledge when I have done so. I try to do so, anyhow. I'd like to think I manage this, at least most of the time. It is important. Particularly here at the wikipedia, where we are supposed to assume good faith. I know it is a lot easier to assume good faith, when people demonstrably show good faith, by being open about acknowledging fallibility. I don't mock and crow when my correspondents realize they made a mistake, and own up to it. I admire others who can put the interests of a project, like the wikipedia, above a theoretical loss of dignity.

So, if you haven't explained what these other concerns are, because your first hint of them was made in a moment of emotion, and, in a cooler moment, you can't really lay out those problems, just say so. Or, failing that, you can silently abandon the criticism. I don't care which.

But, please, if you still feel your concerns hold merit, I urge you to make at least one real attempt to be helpful. I told you, right at the beginning of this discussion, that I was new to creating categories. I told you I would appreciate any civil help you could give me, to learn how to do so correctly.

You are not obliged to help me. But, if you aren't going to help me, because you are too busy, or whatever, then I think you should consider yourself too busy to keep making these cryptic hints that I am doing it all wrong. I think I have been civil to you. Please be civil to me. -- Geo Swan 18:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You applied your notions to the article on Majed Al-Shammari. Why? You justified your previous controversial edits on the grounds that the living people categories followed my comment, with its request. That doesn't apply in this case.

Gene, I looked into your recent contributions, and saw that you had been blocked recently. I've drawn the attention of that administrator to this discussion.

Cooperatively, — Geo Swan 05:34, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Your concern over category mis-use?

I have born in mind your concerns that I am choosing bad names for categories, focusing on minutae, and failing to organize new categories within a parent category in a sensible manner. When I started using some new categories today, I wondered if they too would trigger your concerns. I am not ignoring your concerns. But you didn't really spell them out in a way that would help me understand them sufficiently to address them.

I know we are all volunteers, with full lives outside the wikipedia, and, of course, that has to take priority.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 08:58, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

One of the biggest problems is that you cannot fix categories yourself. Because redirects don't work well in categories, all requests for renaming as well as deletion should go through Wikipedia:Categories for discussion.

Yes, adding more categories, especially without a clear and discernable plan in mind, is likely to trigger my concerns. Especially the overcategorizing concerns.

As far as the sortable tables go, try a Google or whatever search for "sortable tables" and similar terms on site:en.wikipedia.org and find things such as User:Van helsing/links with an example and Wikipedia talk:When to use tables and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-20/Technology report. Gene Nygaard 15:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, renaming is a problem -- if and when the categories need to be renamed. So, are you in a position to point out some categories you think are good candidates for renaming? Do you have the time to share a couple of names?

Concerning a category creation plan -- what kind of plan is it that you think I should have? I am going through all the articles about Guantanamo captives. Before I started, I created a bunch of categories, to help me track what I thought were meaningful patterns I had previously noticed. And, as I go through the articles, if I come across patterns that I hadn't noticed before, or patterns I overlooked when I chose the categories, I create them. When I have gone through all the articles I will go back and start creating more articles that list the individuals who share the pattern in the category -- or at least the patterns that turn out to be the most interesting to me.

• Afghanistan is said to be the source of well over 50% of the world's supply of illicit opiates. You'd think this would have brought a lot of foreign drug dealers to Afghanistan. You'd think that a lot of the farmers who were captured were farming opium. I only remember coming across one or two farmers who acknowledged growing opium. This time, as I go through the articles, I am paying more attention.

But, I think, this is probably not what you mean by a plan.

I am going to remind you I acknowledged I was new at this, and that I told you I would welcome helpful input about what you thought I am doing wrong.

Can you please clarify for me whether or not I have answered your concern that the categories tracked minutia to your satisfaction? If I haven't, then I would appreciate you taking the time to be specific about which categories you consider to be focussed on minutia. Maybe you will convince me?

Similarly, I would appreciate you taking the time to be specific over which categories you consider overcategorized.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 18:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you give me a hint as to when you might reply to my questions about your stand on Arabic names? -- Geo Swan 07:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Marian Iwańciów

Hello! Can you explain to me why you changed the original spelling and what is the mechanism of 'DEFAULTSORT:Iwanciow, Marian' template for. Thank you! --Riva72 10:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't change any spelling. I fixed the sort key. See Wikipedia:Categorization, and its talk page and Wikipedia:Magic words for DEFAULTSORT.

We have a primitive sorting program for our categories. It just sorts every character (including spaces, punctuation marks, mathematics operators and other symbols, whatever, and uppercase distinct from lowercaes) by its Unicode character number, not by out sorting rules (or anybody else's, for that matter).

Furthermore, you need to create the redirect from the English alphabet spelling Marian Iwanciow. See Wikipedia:Redirects. Gene Nygaard 19:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for explanation. I will create the redirect. Have a nice evening! --Riva72 20:00, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

24 hrs block

You have been blocked for violating WP:CIVIL, WP:POINT and WP:EW. Please see thisRama's arrow 04:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

First of all, I was not notified of any discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, and was not given any opportunity whatsoever to respond to the false statements of User:Blnguyen there.

At WP:ANI, Blnguyen cited a 15-entry slice of my edit history (cf. all contributions), of which 6 had been reverted by Blnguyen between 23:38 and 23:45 UTC 27 Feb 2007 and 4 had been reverted by User:86.144.211.82 all at 20:01 UTC the same day, who, judging by the edit summaries, is quite likely Blnguyen as well (though it really doesn't matter; in the unlikely case that it is a different editor, he likely would have reverted my edits if he hadn't been beaten to it by this anonymous editor). In the other five cases, my edits remain the top edits.

Those 15 entries were from my going through the category listing at Category:Indian Test cricketers, and fixing the ones that appeared out of place in that category. Just go look at that category again now, which is once again a hopeless mess, with most of the entries listed as Surname, Forename but with a significant number of them listed as Forename, Surname. There is no rhyme or reason to it. There isn't even any warning on the talk page text to readers to expect such silliness there, so that they know that they need to look for missorted people by looking under their first names if they don't find them under their last names. There is nothing that would cause a normal user of Wikipedia to expect anything amiss here, to think that this is any different from normal sorting of categories. Note that even for the names Blnguyen talks about, several are sorted under Singh or Khan, while others are sorted under their given names.

Note that User:Blnguyen has also tacitly admitted the unworkability of his supposed rule, by not reverting the corrections which I had made to the V.R.V. Singh and Robin Singh articles, leaving them indexed under "Singh, ..." nor the other Indian cricketer, Shah Nyalchand, leaving him indexed under last name in all categories as well.

Furhermore, take a look at my whole Special:Contributions/Gene Nygaard, not just that 15 edit slice where Blnguyen reverted 10 of them, and you will get a better view of what I edit and how well my edits are received.

Most of all, it is Blnguyen who is disrupting Wikipedia to try to make a point, who is "an individual who opposes the state of a current rule or policy" who "should not attempt to create proof that the rule does not work in Wikipedia itself."

The "current rules and policies" are stated in several places, such as Wikipedia:Categorization of people:

• "If the article is titled "Forename Surname" the category should be added to the article as [[Category:Type X people|Surname, Forename]] (or: {{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Forename}}) so that it will be sorted by Surname."
• "People with multiple-word last names: sorting is done on the entire last name as usually used in English, in normal order and not (for example) according to the Dutch system that puts some words like "van", "vanden", "van der", etc... after the rest of the last name."

and Category:Living people:

• "Organization: This category should not be sub-categorised. Entries are generally sorted by family name."

and Wikipedia:Categorization

• "the entries are people, in which case sorting by last name is preferable (example: Category:Presidents of the United States)."

None of the Wikipedia:policies and guidelines have any exceptions for Indian cricketers with some surnames and not Indian cricketers with other surnames. Furthermore, Blnguyen has not even attempted to discuss changing these guidelines to fit his idiosyncratic rules.

See also User:Stemonitis/Testing ground for some of the points related to sorting of categories by another editor who does a lot of that sorting, and without whom a great many of our categories would be essentially unusable.

Edit warring is not, in itself, a reason for a block under Wikipedia:Blocking policy. As even WP:EW says, "Reversion wars between competing individuals are contrary to Wikipedia's core principles, reflect badly on both participants, and often result in blocks being implemented due to violations of the three revert rule." There has been nothing of the sort here.

Furthermore, this isn't edit warring; certainly not on my part, when in almost all of these cases, I have made an edit correcting accumulated missorting, often by several different editors over time, generally with zero reverts on my part. Furthermore, it isn't yet "edit warring" on the part of Blnguyen, either, though in those cases he listed, he is generally the one who has made reverts. The only factor that could possibly make it edit warring on his part is his blanket refusal to discuss those reversions on the talk pages. In one or two cases, we have each made a couple of reverts, though in one case they have been separated by a couple of months.

User:Blnguyen has made exactly one comment on my talk page, back on 3 September 2006. I immediately responded to him here. He did not take issue with my response, did not reply at all.

Once again, it is User:Blnguyen who refuses to discuss the issue. Just as he doesn't discuss it on the talk pages of the articles itself, or anywhere else.

• That discussion related to Yuvraj Singh, which was reverted now by User:86.144.211.82 with no new discussion on talk page nor in edit summary "revert deliberate missorting by Gene Nygaard to last version by Blnguyen".
• However, that talk page does have old discussion; last part of that was my post seven weeks ago at 14:14 UTC 16 January 2007. Yet my 27 February change was reverted by anon (Blnguyen?) without addressing the points raised there. Nobody took issue with what I said in that 16 January edit, not Blnguyen and not anybody else. There certainly was no consensus for Blnguyen's position there.

Once again, it is Blnguyen who refuses to discuss the issues.

In one of his edit summaries, to Wazir Ali, Blnguyen's summary says "per cricinfo", a cryptic, unlinked remark. Clearly what he intended was WP:CRIC, i.e. Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket. However, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to that effect, nothing whatsoever that would support Blnguyen's misindexing of these people in cricket categories or anywhere else, on that Wikiproject page.

Blnguyen has previously made his arguments on WP:ANI in an discussion to which it wasn't even germane . I addressed the points he raised there, including his mischaracterization of what Wikiproject Cricket says, and what the previous discussion there entailed.

I responded to what Blnguyen said there in this ANI post. He did not reply to it, did not address the points I raised, and did not indicate any continuing disagreement. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive182#Improper blocking by Darwinek

Note that there is not only nothing on Wikipedia:Wikiproject Cricket about sorting some of the Indian cricketers contrary to the normal rules of Wikipedia:Categorization and its subpages, but there is also nothing on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket page about that nor about what was discussed on old, archived discussion there. There is, flat out, none of this consensus falsely claimed by Blnguyen. What had been talked about in the past was using first name indexing in the categories specifically relating to cricketers in three specific countries, and none of those three was India. This would apply to all people in those categories, not to some wacky, haphazard some-by-last-name and some-by-first-name scheme as promoted by Blnguyen for the India cricketer categories, but across the board in the cricket categories relating to those countries, but explicitly not by first name, even for those people indexed by first name in those specific categories, in cricket categories relating to other countries and in non-cricket categories. Note that this first-name categorization is a property of the category, not a property of the person. That is the only thing that makes sense. In the same way, categories dealing with a particular surname normally have all people in those categories indexed by given name rather than surname. The first-name indexing is a property of the category, not of the person.

Once again, it is User:Blnguyen who does not discuss the issue. It is Blnguyen who "opposes the current state of a rule or policy" and is trying to disrupt Wikipedia to make a WP:POINT, rather than going to the guidelines themselves and trying to make his case for changing the rules. Gene Nygaard 10:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Note further that it is evident from Blnguyen's reversion of the sorting of some of the Indian cricketers and not of others, and from his comments on the current ANI discussion about "despite media referring to them by first name" and the like, and the old discussion on my talk page, that what he has in mind is basing the sorting on some factual determination. In other words, a question of fact that would need to be verified within the article on a case-by-case bases with citations to Wikipedia:reliable sources. Because of that, it is entirely improper for him to try to deviate from the standard sort order without first making his case that the factual situation exists on which he would make a contrary determination. That's assuming, of course, that he first gets consensus to do this sorting based on the facutal determination in the first place. In other words, his reverts of my sorting ought to be reverted, even under his ideas for changing the existing guidelines, because he has not established that factual basis under the rule he proposes. Gene Nygaard 11:29, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

In regards to your block, the only thing I have to say is that please do not (1) use incivil edit summaries - in which you try to impugne the edits of other people (2) do not be so rude to others (as evidenced in many of your comments). Now (3) the content dispute that you have with Blnguyen and others needs to be resolved in an organized and respectful fashion. That needs to happen so that this problem does not arise again - if you're having trouble, use the various steps of dispute resolution. I hope you will realize that you have several obligations to fulfill - this 24 hrs block was intended only as a slap on the wrist. It is in your hands to resolve this problem. Rama's arrow 21:50, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Tim Vincent article

I've just reverted it to test what the problem was and then changed it back. The problem is not all articles use the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} template, so they tend to be listed incorrectly, if all articles did use the template then just using the surname would suffice as Wiki would then automatically alphabetise according to the Christian name. I didn't realise that the Christian name needed to be added also, so thanks for informing me of the oversight. I will go about modifying any changes I have made.--NeilEvans 22:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why the edits you made did not list the entries in the correct order, as I've indicated on my talk page, edits I made have listed people in the correct order with just the surname given.--NeilEvans 22:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I suppose if you list only a couple of them, it will happen more often. I'd guess the second level of sorting if everything else is equal is like the sorting of What links here based, I think, on the age of the article. But that's only a guess; it does fit with the way those 1899 births ended up, however. Gene Nygaard 23:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Also see Category:People from Liverpool Faith Brown article uses {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Faith}} and Hugh Stowell Brown article uses {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown}} but it lists Faith Brown after Hugh Stowell Brown, so this shows that giving the first name won't automatically put the name in alphabetical order.--NeilEvans 23:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Evidently you don't understand that every character gets indexed. Hugh is first because only the five characters are indexed, and those five are the same for Faith who also has additional characters to index. The next character for Faith is the comma, indexed as Unicode character number 44 decimal (2C hexadecimal), the next character a space (Unicode number 32 decimal), the next character an uppercase F (Unicode number 70), then lowercase a (Unicode number 97). Gene Nygaard 23:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Canadair CT-114 Tutor and Canadair CL-41 Tutor articles

Gene, how do you get rid of the earlier CT-114 article? It seems redundant now that there is a more comprehensive article created. BTW, can you look over the Avro CF-105 Arrow and its accompanying talk page. There is an odd exchange of communications going on at this point. Bzuk 06:18 6 March 6 2007 (UTC).

What you want to do is to make sure that any relevant information from the old one is transferred to the new one. It's best to put it there even if you remove it as unnecessary after it gets there. Any relevant sources, especially. Look at things like categories, too.

Then you replace the text in the old article with a redirect, like this:

#REDIRECT [[Canadair CL-41 Tutor]]

There is also a template that should probably be added after that, for a redirect from merge. In general, see Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages for step-by-step suggestions.

The Avro page you mention is a redlink, maybe you mistyped that too because there doesn't seem to be any deletion log for it. Gene Nygaard 03:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

See {{R from merge}} for the template I mentioned. Gene Nygaard 03:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Gene, look at both articles if you have a chance, but the new Cl-41 revision seems to do everything the old one did. Check Avro CF-105 Arrow and Talk:CF-105 Arrow. One editor's submissions are starting to dominate the discussions. Bzuk 07:23 6 March 2007 (UTC).

Re: DEFAULTSORT

Thanks for catching that, I will be more careful next time. Jwillbur 05:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Hazel Miner

Regarding the brother's age, I was quoting the local newspaper article and magazine articles I found, even though I did know the census data put him a few days short of 11. I suppose he was so close to 11 that they just called him that. I remember that several of the articles also misstated Hazel's age as 16 because she was within a few weeks of her sixteenth birthday. But thanks for looking up the relevant info and changing the boy's age. It's probably better to be rely on the birth records instead of a news article. --Bookworm857158367 01:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Wanda Gág

Gene, you moved Wanda Gág to Wanda Gag. You may not do so according to your community probation. This is a friendly reminder, please list your proposals on WP:RM. Thank you.--Húsönd 16:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Same for Eggert Jónsson that you moved to Eggert Jonsson, and Šuligoj Roman that you moved to Roman Suligoj (apparently forgetting to maintain the diacritic). I will be closely monitoring your move log from now on.--Húsönd 16:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Please stop harrassing Gene. I see nothing wrong with these moves, which are consistent with policy. If you want to take on of those pages to Requested Moves, do so. Jonathunder 17:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Note especially that the page cited by Husond itself has a big notice a the top: This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is retained primarily for historical interest. as does its parent page, a failed attempt at establishing guidelines at Wikipedia:Community sanction.

Furthermore, the subject of that ban was moves because of my moving pages which did not have the proper redirects, without taking into consideration whether the naming was proper or not. All of these cases involve something entirely outside the scope of that out-of-process so-called "community ban"; they involve my reversions of moves made by other people without any references whatsoever, without andy discussion on the talk page, and contrary to the spelling used in the sources cited in the article itself. Furthermore, one of them involved reversing of the name order to put the last name first contrary to Wikipedia:Naming conventions.

I haven't done any moves like that since this out-of-process "ban". Now I call the need for creating those redirects to the attention of the editors involved in those articles by using the maintenance Category:Articles needing redirects.

Note also that User:Husond himself has a long history of making unreferenced, undiscussed moves. Furthermore, he has routinely opposed moving pages back to their proper name. Like Arpad Elo (this edit and followups and many others.

Note also that in reverting me, Husond provided no references or discussion whatsoever. Could you go back and revert his moves, Jonathunder? Get them back to the names supported by the references; then if the people who made the undiscussed, unreferenced moves still want to make those moves, let them bear the burden of taking it to Wikipedia:Requested moves and making their case for the move. Gene Nygaard 17:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Well Wanda Gag I know about: she's a Minnesotan. The website for her house, which is an historical site, doesn't use the diacritic, nor do local libraries. So that one I reverted with great confidence. Eggert Jonsson plays in Scotland, and the accent doesn't appear to be the most common English spelling, but I admit I don't follow football. Šuligoj Roman I won't change until I've done more research. Jonathunder 18:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You don't need to decide the proper names for those articles yourself.

• Did User:Caledonian Place discuss or provide references for this move of Eggert Jonsson to a name different from all sources in the article. No. Did User:Husond discuss or provide reverences for this move of the same article? No.
• Šuligoj Roman hadn't been moved. But it was created witht the backwards, last-name first article name contrary to naming conventions by User:Rmn1 with not only the normal order "Roman Šuligoj" in the introduction but with last-name-first sort keys such as [[Category:1972 births|Šuligoj, Roman]] (which included characters not appropriate in indexing sort keys that were since, and are still, fixed).

So let the latter one be if you are uncertain. But move the other one to the original name; if either Caledonian Place or Husond has good reason for the move, they should be able to make their case at WP:RM. You don't need to decide it yourself. Gene Nygaard 19:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Probation

Gene, I asked a review of your community probation on WP:ANI (here). Húsönd 04:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Diacritical Marks

Please explain why using punctuation is NOT standard?65.81.28.227 10:39, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

(rv, yes it is, see WP:CAT)

Re. Karl I of Austria

Indeed, my mistake. The link directed to the previous poll and I thought that it had been closed already. I should've taken a closer look to the date. I restored the entry on WP:RM. Thank you.--Húsönd 01:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Changing the section is no longer necessary as I'll just close the poll. 6 days have past and there's no opposition so this is an easy move. Regards, Húsönd 01:35, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

There is of course the problem that people who were interested in putting their thoughts in on either side were mislead as you were by the link to the closed discussion. Even though I supported it, I think it would be fairer to leave it open for a couple of days because of that. Gene Nygaard 01:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking about that shortly after I moved the article. Maybe I'll just leave it as it is for the moment and reopen/relist the poll if someone complains.--Húsönd 01:50, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds okay to me. Gene Nygaard 01:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT

Hello Gene. Thanks for correcting the syntax of my category edit to Eric von Rosen. Your change from {{DEFAULTSORT|Xxx}} to {{DEFAULTSORT:Xxx}} is correct according to Template:DEFAULTSORT but both appear to work. I've been trying to find out what the difference is and why the bar is preferred. Can you advise or point me to an explanation anywhere? Gimboid13 05:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorting

Ahoy! Re: this, if her name is spelled Grünwald, why is it sorted as Grunwald? --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 18:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Because we have 26 letters in English by which we sort things. We don't sort them in some jumbled Unicode number order, which not only doesn't correspond to English sorting rules, but not to those of any other language either, but the rules in other languages aren't relevant here in any case. See Wikipedia:Categorization. Gene Nygaard 18:33, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Sven O. Høiby

Why did you revert my contribution to Sven O. Høiby.— Preceding unsigned comment added by The Prince of Darkness (talk • contribs)

Study up on how the sort keys work at Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting. Then come back if you still have questions. Gene Nygaard 15:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Olympics WikiProject membership update

The Olympics WikiProject is performing a membership update to check for currently active and idle members.

Because your username appears on the members list, we kindly ask you visit this page and put your name under the appropriate section, using the code #{{user|USERNAME}}, in order to renew or cancel your membership.

The Olympics WikiProject team

Fascism and Nazism as representative forms of socialism

I am sorry to bother you, but I really need some help. There is an ongoing campaign by a few editors to portray Fascism and Nazism as representative forms of socialism. As part of this effort (a debate that stretches back to 2004), there are a tiny handful of editors who revert and redirect National Socialism to Nazism. I believe a majority of editors support redirecting National Socialism to National Socialism (disambiguation). I realize we just had a poll on the Nazism page where I thought this issue was settled, but apparently the struggle is not over. Please consider voting in the new poll, or adding a comment at: Talk:Nazism#Survey:_redirecting_National_Socialism. Also consider notifying other editors with an interest in this matter. I am doing the best I can, but need assistance. Thanks.--Cberlet 17:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

AD vs CE at uranium

You are correct, I did originally write AD but then later changed what I wrote to CE since saying ‘In the year of Our Lord’ seemed inappropriate given the context of the article. The style guide actually says that CE dates should normally just state the number and not have AD or CE unless a date range straddles the BCE/CE boundary. So that is what the article now does. --mav 17:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You wrote it as "79 AD" on 9 Jan 2004. It stayed that way, except somewhere along the line someone changed the order to "AD 79" until anonymous user User:71.40.106.202, whether you or somebody else, changed it without discussion 3 Nov 2006. That's two years and 11 months later.

The bogus argument you made here was pretty soundly rejected in the extensive discussions of AD/CE a couple of years ago. There is nothing whatsoever about the subject here which should determine which form is used.

This is one of those cases, an isolated two-digit year standing alone with no other chronology related to it, where the AD should be there--it is helpful in identifying the fact that this two-digit number in fact is a year. Gene Nygaard 21:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Just a note

I apologize for unnecessarily polarizing the MOSNUM debate with my "WTF?" edit summaries last night (my time). I'd had a beer too many and they seemed very humorous to me at the time, but of course today on a second read they come off as very jackassish. I understand your rancour with me, and while I grouched that I was being attacked and bad-faithed earlier today, once I had some WP:TEA I saw that I had effectively engineered all that myself. I hope our further discussion at MOSNUM can be more collegial. I believe we share the same WPian goals even if we differ on some nitpicks. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Josef Vašíček

Gene, you moved Josef Vašíček back to Josef Vasicek. Despite providing reasons for doing that, you know that you may not perform controversial page moves as per your community probation. This is the second time I'm reporting its violation, I shall enforce it by a short block in the next time. Please utilize WP:RM for your move proposals. Regards, Húsönd 21:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

No, that is not contrary to the alleged "community probation" in this case, and "community probation" itself is not a legitimate policy in any case.

I see the Darwinek/Husond tag team is still at work.

Once again, we have Darwinek being the one making an undiscussed move, to a name contrary to that used in all the sources cited in the article, and with no evidence whatsoever that what Darwinek moved it do is correct. Yet Husond thinks I'm the one that needs to take it to WP:RM.

Note that Husond is the very one who unclocked the same Darwinek when he was blocked for personal attacks against me, Gene Nygaard 13:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Darwinek has just been de-sysoped. The arbcom noted:

Darwinek has displayed a pattern of poor judgment in performing administrative actions, including blocking users (Ross.Hedvicek, Gene Nygaard, Mt7) with whom he was engaged in a dispute

Not sure if you saw this. --Duk 21:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Torr consideration

Just thought you may want to check this before i add it to the article -- because the downward force exerted by Hg is equal to mg, thus assuming cross-sectional area A, volume V, and density p exerts pressure P;

$P=pgh={\frac {mg}{A}}={\frac {pVg}{A}}={\frac {pAhg}{A}}$ ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ ^{slurp me!} 17:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:ANI

Gene, I have mentioned you on this post I placed at WP:ANI. As advised, I'm informing you. Regards, Húsönd 01:52, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

wp-ue

A wp-ue rm you might be interested in here. —  AjaxSmack  06:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Flushing, Netherlands

Bit confused about what you're suggesting here - the article has never been moved and went through the RM procedure... Cheers, DWaterson 23:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Viking II (rocket)

Hi Gene! If you have a chance could you please take a look at Talk:Viking II (rocket). Did we all just get horn-swoggled by someone's misreading of a web page? Or is there some clear source regarding this supposed rocket? Thanks! (Sdsds - Talk) 04:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Mizuko Ito

wikipedia is trying to delete mimi for lack of notability Mizuko Ito--Buridan 16:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Request your comments

I created a proposal. Please comment here.

Note: Please analyze each proposal on their own validity - do not reject a proposal just because you rejected a different one. - A Link to the Past (talk) 19:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Marge D'Wylde

A {{prod}} template has been added to the article Marge D'Wylde, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. KenWalker | Talk 07:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Your opinion please (kilogram)

Gene, I did to the Kilogram article what I did to the Specific heat capacity article: I did some wholesale revising of it. It had degraded to a sorry state and needed many errors corrected. In the process, I substantially expanded it. Not surprisingly, the regular crowd of editors to that article have their opinions. I’m wondering what you think of it. On the following criterea, do you find it…

1. informative to the typical visitor to this article,
2. interesting to the typical visitor to this article, and
3. does it enhance the article?

If you have an opinion on the Kilogram article, please leave a note on my talk page.

Regards, Greg L (my talk) 01:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger

I want to merge the Northrop YA-13, Northrop XA-16 and Northrop A-33 into the Northrop A-17 article. At the same time I plan to update it with at least two other sources. And I plan to leave redirects in the old article's places. I fully expect the final article to meet B-class criteria. Please give a pro or con on the talk page. Thanks --Colputt 15:01, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Missorting

I don't see why an article starting with Ü should be sorted under U as they're completely different letters. For transliterating and sorting Ü usually goes to UE rather than U. — Laura Scudder ☎ 23:49, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a debatable issue; our guidelines support me rather than you, unless they've changed. One thing is certain—it was clearly wrong as it was, it doesn't belong after Z. Gene Nygaard 23:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW, it would be Ue rather than UE which sorts differently. I don't have any strong preference on that one. I'll leave them that way when they've been done that way, and sometimes do it myself. You might note that somebody has changed all the people named Müller, at least those in the living people category, to index as Muller; that wouldn't be my preference, I'd use Mueller, but it is probably better to all all of them in one place in any case. There are a lot of Dj entries from one of those D's with a bar, Đ or Ð (but not the other one), and a lot of å as aa, especially from Norwegian and Danish. The guidelines at Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting did support ae for æ and oe for œ, but it looks like some fool has taken that guidance out of there, don't know if it has been moved somewhere else. Gene Nygaard 02:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree it would be Ue — I mistyped. Muller is most certainly wrong, but English speakers do have the habit of assuming the diacritics can simply be disposed of whenever convenient. From looking around at the German Wikipedia, they seem to be going with the Ü for sorting, despite that the normal practice (e.g., in Duden) is to sort it as Ue. No one would treat it like U, though, so I don't think we should start doing it. — Laura Scudder ☎ 00:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

They can be. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with using the English alphabet when writing in English. But this is a different issue. The sorting rules in English use only the 26 letters of the English alphabet.

I don't know what in the world you mean about German; in that language, the ü normally sorts exactly the same as u. Not as ue.

If they don't fix the sort keys on the German encyclopedia, then they have exactly the same missorting problems we have. But it probably remains more of a mess there. There might be a few editors who realize something is wrong, but unless they get somebody like me and a couple of others here who make a concerted effort to straighten things out so that the categories are actually usable, then noting much is likely to get done there, at least not very quickly.

Part of the problem in English, of course, is that letters such as don't only come from the German language. If you are sorting it from some other language which uses the "üe" combination, it doesn't make much sense to sort that as "uee" (I just edited such an article yesterday, don't remember what it ws.

And though German sorts ü the same as u, other languages might sort it as a separate letter. And the sorting order isn't always the same; for example, in Norwegian the and Swedish, the letters ø and ö are sorted as the same letter. But in Norwegian, å comes after them, while in Swedish, å comes before them.

Of course, the default sort order here on Wikipedia, if we don't fix the sort keys, does not follow the sort order of any language whatsoever. All characters (including punctuation, spaces, whatever) are sorted according to their Unicode numbers. That's why we need to fix those sort keys to get the proper sort order. Gene Nygaard 01:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe an even clearer example would be ä, which when transliterated from German often becomes "ae", but when from Finnish is never "ae". But in German it sorts the same as "a"; in Finnish, it is a separate letter after z and å and before ö. Many such examples exist, but sorting rules used in other languages do not apply here on the English Wikipedia. Gene Nygaard 01:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: conversion templates

First off, I suggest you back off for a second and watch your tone. Second, Richmond was the only place where I did this. Finally, these conversion templates make sense for consistency. Sure, a bot might have put those values in at some point. But the reason I did what I did in the Richmond article was because discussions came up about which units should be used, and people don't always format measurements correctly (in fact, I would posit that the vast majority of measurements in articles do not comply with the MOS). A bot did the initial import? Great. Maybe that bot needs to be changed so that it uses the conversion templates. But regardless of what's needed, I suggest you read your comments before posting them. Cheers. —lensovet–talk – 21:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

György Gábori

Hi! I don't know if he's still alive. I've started the article, but I don't know much about his life after he left Hungary for Canada. Maybe remove the Category 'Living people' till I don't know better. Squash Racket 04:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Just change it to Category:Possibly living people then. That's the appropriate one when we don't have any recent information about the person. Gene Nygaard 04:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Squash Racket 04:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi

Good to see you back :) --Duk 16:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

thanks. Gene Nygaard 18:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Defaultsort

You are doing some great work with defaultsorting names. However, I have just removed defaultsort from two of the articles which I created, Iqbal Siddiqi and Naveed Iqbal, both of which, according to Cricket Archive, should be in forename-surname order, see here and here respectively.

Keep up the good work. Bobo. 18:22, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Cricket archive is not determinative of anything along those lines. First name sorting is generally a property of certain categories, not of a person. Furthermore, Wikipedia's WikiProject on cricket decided to sort the players for three specific countries on a first-name basis, and Belgium certainly wasn't one of them. And that has nothing to do with non-cricket categories for the same people, or other cricket categories outside those countries. I'm fixing them again. Gene Nygaard 18:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Glyndŵr Award

Why did you revert my edit of the Glyndŵr Award? I think you are being misled by the font limitations of the software used by some websites. On the MOMA pages for instance, you will find the button 'Gŵyl' (correct form) at the top of the page but 'gwyl' in the text. That does not mean that 'gwyl' is correct and 'gŵyl' wrong. As for the name of the award, apart from the fact that it is named after Owain Glyndŵr, the award itself bears the wording "Gwobr Glyndŵr Award" (see here). Unfortunately I have no printed literature concerning the award, but hopefully the fact that the correct Welsh form is used on the medal itself is authority enough? If "Glyndwr Award" is the official name why isn't it spelt without the circumflex on the Award medal? Can we agree to move it back to Glyndŵr Award then? Enaidmawr 19:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, you didn't discuss any of that when you made your move. Perhaps if you had explained it on the talk page, it would be okay. But as you yoursef have seen and admitted, the sponsors of the award, Moma, do use the circumflex on their web page and they do not use the circumflex for the award. In light of that, I wouldn't find the medal itself determinative of anything. Furthermore, the image of the medal, for some reason, is on Wikipedia, but it does not appear on the page itself. Maybe you should add the image tag instead of an unexplained link to the image, and someplace in the help files you can find the nuances on sizing the images appropriately and adding captions and the like. Gene Nygaard 20:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, it isn't just the limitations of the software in whether or not it can be seen that matters. The MOMA people probably have more sense than a lot of Wikipedia people when it comes to making sure that their information is available and can be found by people using search engines. As it stands now, this article would still have been found before my move because the word Glyndwr would appear on the page when the Google spiders crawled it through the redirect page. But in other similar Wikipedia articles without the appropriate redirects, a search might not find them. Gene Nygaard 21:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• To illustrate this point, try the following search on Google

Glyndwr "chapel royal" site:en.wikipedia.org    [zero hits, at least until my talk page is indexed again]

Gene Nygaard 21:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, just because the bilingual medal uses the "Glyndŵr" spelling as an adjective shared by the Welsh noun before it and the English noun after it, that doesn't mean that MOMA or anyone else would use that version in the English spelling standing alone, as opposed to the Welsh spelling. Your software limitations argument doesn't answer that; at best it would leave it an unresolved question. Gene Nygaard 21:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no "English spelling." Glyndŵr is the standard spelling of Owain Glyndŵr's "surname" used in Welsh and English in any decent source. The authoritative work on Owain Glyndŵr, published in English in 1995, is R. R. Davies' The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr (Oxford University Press). The article about him on this wikipedia is entitled Owain Glyndŵr. The wording on the medal is Glyndŵr. As for MOMA, only their printed material would solve the dispute. As I pointed out, a number of other Welsh words are incorrectly spelt without accents on the text pages of their website, so unless you are arguing that their usage in that case is correct just because that's what on their website you're argument is not valid. As for the search argument, if everybody accepted that as a principle the English wikipedia would not contain any accents whatsoever - and there must be many many thousands of article names of non-English names that use "foreign" accents - some of which must be found in the Denmark categories : are you suggesting we remove the accents from those as well? The image was linked to the article by somebody else. You're right, it would make sense for it to be visible in the Glyndŵr Award article itself. Can we agree on restoring the article name then? I hate "editing wars." Enaidmawr 23:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Precision of conversion / performance figures for handheld guns

It is common practice since decades to specify performance figures for handheld guns very exactly. I am aware that those figures are beyond practical significance (differences in propellant charges, temperature, etc. can easily cause 5 % muzzle energy variation) but it is the way ammunition manufacturers specify their products and people are accustomed to read them. Francis Flinch 17:10, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you look at my edit a little bit more closely

I would strongly suggest you closely look at this diff and then review the warning you left on my talk page.

Specifically:

1. "Also go read up on the rules for dates at WP:DATE. In particular, don't add "th" to the days."

   I am aware of this style point. You'll see that I removed the "th" to conform to the guideline.

2. "Note also that adding "Year in baseball" links and the like to full dates such as [[May 13]], [[2007 in baseball|2007]] also messes up the working of date preferences formatting..."

   Again, this a problem that I fixed with my edit, and not one that I caused.

As far as the category sorting issue, there is nothing in WP:CG that addresses the use of special characters. I have changed {{DEFAULTSORT:}} back to use the unaccented letter.

I sincerely hope that your interactions with other editors are more civil. If you're going to go around biting people, damn well make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Caknuck 22:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Gross Weight Tons

You've mentioned disambiguating GWT in Vessel monitoring system. This is not anything that can be directly metricated, as it's one of a complex (and incomplete) set of nautical measurements in Tonnage. I do not have the time to do heavy-duty editing of Tonnage.

It isn't clear to me what is ambiguous. There are other GWT abbreviations in Wikipedia, but none are measurements; the Google Web Toolkit, for example, is hardly going to be a measurement of the size of a ship. What is it that you want to be done? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

No, what you might need to do is link to some specific definition in the tonnage article, and use terminology consistent with the terminology used there. Or otherwise specifically define exactly what you mean in the article being edited. Gene Nygaard 20:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

And, there are only other meanings in the disambiguation page at GWT, nothing even remotely close to what you are using. That's part of the necessary disambiguation, too. Gene Nygaard 20:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to change the disambiguation page, but I am not willing to dig into Tonnage and put in a complex definition that is relatively unimportant in the context of the VMS article. At such time as I do additional substantive edits to VMS, those will focus on emerging technologies, such as coordination with computer-assisted catch reporting and voyage trip reporting.

At the detail level of an encyclopedia article, I consider it adequate to note that a certain measurement is required for compliance. The article is not a how-to-use VMS, and it cannot be how-to-comply since there are so many local, national, regional, and world compliance conventions. Some Wikipedians feel that it should be possible to disambiguate all domain-specific knowledge by reference to Wikipedia alone, but, from experience in, for example, higher mathematics, that is not feasible. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

This isn't even rocket science, though in terms of screwiness, its about like pretending that specific impulse is measured in dimensions of time rather than of velocity . It is a "weight" ton, a measurement expressed in mass units such as either long tons or metric tons depending on location, as opposed to the volume tons such as the register tons. Shouldn't be all that hard to express clearly in standard terminology, or to provide a reference to a prescribed definition somewhere else. Gene Nygaard 21:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Fine. If it's so easy, you have my blessing to go do it. I said that I had other priorities for VMS and other articles, and GWT is of very small import to the article, when compared with new technologies being added to it. Since you seem certain it has nothing to do with volume or other characteristics of the ship, you must have a definition at hand. Incidentally, was that a Metric or English thread on the screwiness? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:37, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Have your choice—it doesn't matter if you use kgf·s/kg and cancel out the kgf with the kg, or if you use lbf·s/lb and cancel out the lbf with the lb; in either case you need to multiply by 9.80665 to get it in SI units (N·s/kg or the equivalent m/s). Gene Nygaard 21:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

My choice? My choice is to leave it alone. It seems very important to you to have a definition. I don't need to do that. Hint: Wikipedia is a cooperative effort, and your language has a flavor of ordering me to change it to make you happy. No one is stopping you from adding, not replacing, to the article. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/André Kertész:

Thanks for the comment; I've replied there and would appreciate if you kept an eye on the page. I didn't quite understand how to resolve your oppose, but am willing to try. Would you be able to explain to me more clearly or with a step-by-step plan so that I may rememdy the fault? Thanks a bunch! :) Spawn Man 00:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Actualy, I missed the part about the accents, so I think I've fixed the problem now... Hopefully... :) I'd be great if you'd feel the urge to support, but don't feel pressured to - especially if you feel anything else needs work. Thanks for your comments, they truly were helpful. :) Thanks, Spawn Man 01:07, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks--left a note on the candidate page, had an edit conflict with you coming back there. Gene Nygaard 01:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

No, that's fine. I usually put an oppose for even the smallest thing because otherwise my comment usually goes unnoticed (Unlike me, who replies to all problems on my FACs), and then either supports or removes my comments after they've been fixed. :) Spawn Man 01:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Reason for volume mass conversion

Cartridge cases volume measurements are done by precisely weighing them before and after filling them up to overflow with water at room temperature. The weight difference determines the case capacity or for ammunition layman its internal volume. This approach has proven to be the most practical. The exact case volume is a very important piece of factual information for people who (re)load their own ammunition to prevent impermissible overpressure that can cause serious harm and death. Small differences in case volume and propellant charges can easily generate counterintuitive large pressure differences. Because of this case volumes and propellant charge weights and lots of other small arms related quantities are normally specified very precisely. In the real world the internal volume of cartridge cases of the same calibre varies between manufacturers and even production lots. Thus the case capacity presented in Wikipedia articles is not absolute but can be considerate as an average for what-if analysis in specialized internal ballistics software suites, etc. Such usage needs input data in the order of accuracy as presented in the 7 x 57 article to get useable results. I would like to avoid that readers would get the idea from Wikipedia that nice round numbers suffice to safely deal with arms and ammunition. So if you read counterintuitive accurate factual numerical information it generally tends to be stated that way with intent and not for mathematical fun. Francis Flinch 12:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

So, in other words, the grains figures are what is measured. Then somebody converts that to volume. What, exactly, are the parameters used for doing so. What is the density of the water used (or, for example, at what temperature is the water, which would allow that to be done?). Without that, you don't have any of the "accuracy" which you claim to be so important for "safety". Is there some "conventional" value that you use in converting mass in grains to volume in milliliters?

For that matter, what is the temperature of the casing when the measurement was done? Its volume will vary with temperature too, probably as much as or more than the density of water does.

You don't seem to have a very good understanding of the fact that you cannot get more precise figures in making a conversion than what you started out with. Gene Nygaard 12:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

You had enough different ones like that so I could figure out what you, or your sources, have done. You have grains figures to the nearest whole grain, or in one case half a grain (the one that is xx.99 results from having lost the grains figure somewhere along the way and recalculated from the conversion to milliliters). This has been done using a conversion factor of 1 gr = 64.929 µL (or more precisely, somewhere in the range of 64.92868 ± 0.00131 µL, somewhere between 64.92807 and 64.92999 µL). This results, wherever you rounded it, from a calculation based on the density of water at 21.0 °C (69.8 °F), ignoring the fact that it is weighed in air, so the buoyancy due to the displaced air is not accounted for.

Of course, for your figures expressed to the nearest microliter, a deviation of temperature of only as little as 0.1 °C would cause an error in the calculated results. Since that would also mean that the density at a deviation of 0.2 °F from what was used would give different results, it isn't based on water at 70 °F; your overprecise results are sufficient enough to determine that it must be for 21 °C.

Your grains figures alone, with most of them in the 60 grain range and no better than to the nearest half a grain, would only give a legitimate range in the results of about ±0.8%. For a 5.00 ml result, that's about 5.00 ± 0.04, somewhere in the 4.96 to 5.04 range.

In any case, there is no way in the world that you can support a precision more than to the nearest 0.01 ml. Even that is quite dubious. With actual temperature variations, and if buoyancy were accounted for, the volume could change by more than 0.1 ml. And since the grains figures are the original measurements, they should come first, with the milliliters conversion in parentheses. Gene Nygaard 21:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Your conclusions that 21° C is used as the standard temperature and that x.xxx ml is to exact are totally right, since my data is from personal measurements an a European source (that works at room temperature in 0.1 grain increments!) and in Europe 20 to 22° C is generally accepted as an average for room temperature. Remind, the mentioned case capacity figures in whole or halve grains are merely averages for a cartridge article. For example .300 Win. Mag. cartridges from several manufacturers were measured between 89.4 to 95.6 grains H2O capacity and I really do not know if that are the extreme limits to be found in commercial .300 Win. Mag. cases. On the other hand there are also cartridges out there that are much more uniformly produced, but getting down below 0.1 grain precision levels makes not much sense. A reloader strives to work at room temperature, with components at that temperature and tries to work with good precision scales that are capable of discriminating weight differences in the 0.01 gram to 0.001 gram range (proppellant charges are usually specified in 0.01 gram or 0.1 grain increments and at the press of a button the scales will read 0.00… to compensate for external factors). Oddly enough factory loaded ammunition is normally filled by volumetric measuring and not weighed, but factories tend not to get close to legal (or pursue uniformity) limits as some reloaders and competition shooters do. Francis Flinch 14:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC) Sweet clean water at 20° C has a density of ~ 998.2 kg/m3 (Wikipedia is even much more exact on that) at 1 atm pressure (fluids are generally hard to compress). If we change this temperature to 15° C (cool room) or 25° C (warm room) a m3 sweet water will get ~ 1 kg heavier or lighter. This ~ 1/1000 maximal practical accuracy (neglecting the buoyancy of air introduces errors in the order of 1/830 at sea level) and the fact that 10 cm3 case capacity represents a XXL sized rifle case makes that with good equipment and care we can work in real life up to ~ 0.02 cm3 (or ~ 0.1 grains) precision levels with this mass volume conversion method. For Wikipedia articles I think we can suffice to x or x.5 grains or the corresponding x.xx cm3 precision, but please do not let easy going people get the idea that rounding off things to lets say the nearest 5 % will not make any noticeable difference when dealing with high pressure cartridges. Francis Flinch 14:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

That's where I thought we should put the rounding, too--with grains first, since milliliters are merely converted from the grains figures. That means taking out the .0 in grains, rounding up the .99 and using x.xx ml. Gene Nygaard 14:22, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Acorn Stakes

I reverted your edit for the Acorn Stakes to conform with the dozens of other race formats already in existence at Wikipedia. As noted on the articles Talk page, it is part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Thoroughbred racing which advises editors that "For guidelines see the project page." Handicapper 16:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you would kindly show where that Wikiproject supports the use of "kgs", I'll go to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and should easily be able to get some support to help get them in compliance with our rules. Gene Nygaard 16:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Re. Double standard

Hello Gene. I don't think that this case is related to the ones when I told you not to go move-warring. But please feel free to provide some examples of those that you think are not unlike my moving back to original Þingeyri, so that I may compare the moves and objectively pinpoint the differences. Regards, Húsönd 16:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Gene, from now on, all interaction between me and you shall be made through WP:ANI. I'm afraid you have depleted my patience towards your conflicts, accusations and, above all, your unmannerly language. So henceforth, whenever you are willing to report any misconduct of mine, do it at WP:ANI. I shall respond there if I find it appropriate. Thank you. Húsönd 19:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

fix missorting, why is this hidden away with Paivi Paunu a redlink?

Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 15:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Italics

To make italic text, you need to use two ' symbols on each side of it, not one " symbol which gives you "non-italic text". See [14] Gene Nygaard 15:09, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gene!

As the article explains, "Prodhania" is a nomen nudum: it hasn't yet been formally described, and the name appears in quotation marks until a full description has been made. See here for example, or check a book with lists of dinosaurs in them (Lambert, 1993 for example, has a good one). The List of dinosaurs, a Featured List, includes several dinosaur names which appear in quotes, because they haven't been fully published (names without complete descriptions, images, etc), and are therefore not italicized as a proper generic name would be. You've also added italics to the name of the paper discussing the fossils. This is not correct. An article within a larger work appears in quotation marks; the larger work appears in italics. This is the same format used in Featured Articles Iguanodon, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, etc, and the format supported by the WP:CITET templates. I'm reverting your changes for now. Best wishes and happy editing, Firsfron of Ronchester 17:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It appears from my watchlist you've also done this on "Oshanosaurus", too. Are there a lot of articles where you've been making these sorts of changes? Firsfron of Ronchester 17:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

So, can you cite any authority for that rule? Is it covered in Wikipedia:Manual of Style or any of its subpages? If not, I'm not going to change one thing about the way I do things for now. Your first example doesn't exactly support your claims, as I am sure you are aware. It uses, for example: "Pachysaurus" magnus whereas you have used things like "Pachysaurus magnus". Gene Nygaard 18:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello Gene,

Actually, the page I cited does use quotes around both the generic name and the specific name (for example, "Pakisaurus balochistani", "Pradhania gracilis", etc). It does exactly support my "claims". The page uses quotes around the generic name "Pachysaurus" because that genus-level name was already preoccupied (already in use). I invite you to discuss this at WT:DINO, where these conventions have been in use for two years. Further input is always welcome, but I'm sure you agree that a standard look for all nomina nuda is appropriate, and changing just two of them gives the articles a strange look. Finally, you still haven't explained why you changed the format of the citation (quotes to italics on the name of the article); that's clearly wrong (as seen whenever you use a CITET template), and "I'm not going to change one thing about the way I do things for now."-type comments concern me. Best wishes, Firsfron of Ronchester 20:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I see nothing about it as far as discussion, let alone consensus, at WT:DINO, you've pointed out none anywhere else on Wikipedia, so I'm still not changing anything. Nothing explaining any nuances of it, such as quotation marks around the genus and an italic species. Nothing to show it to be anything other than one editor's ideosyncrasies. Nothing showing that some sources do not use both italics and quotation marks. As far as the citation goes, I may have been careless in assuming that an editor who didn't know how to make italics had done that throughout the article. There isn't much I can do about one-off carelessness like that, either. Gene Nygaard 20:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Nomina nuda are usually placed inside quotation marks, Gene. "nomina nuda are written between quotation marks:. eg, ‘‘Laurasiarana’’", "Nomina nuda are distinguished by quotation marks.", "Nomenclaturally unavailable nomina (i.e., nomina nuda and other kinds of anoplonyms, as defined by D, 2000) are presented below ‘‘between quotation marks’’.", "Nomina nuda are non-italicized and placed in quotation marks". This style is used in the literature: published sources including Lambert (1993), pages 170-183. This is also the style used by the active WP:DINO members, and has developed through two years of consensus and discussion, which occurred mostly on the talk pages of articles on nomina nuda. Again, you are welcome to bring this up on WT:DINO, but changing the quotes to italics on two nomina nuda without changing the rest presents style problems, and a number of Featured dinosaur articles (around ten) use the quotation convention for nomina nuda. This would also need to be adjusted on the List of dinosaurs page, which is recognized on Wikipedia for its accuracy and completeness. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester 22:21, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

We do have a WikiProject which covers this. And it is quite explicit at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Tree of Life#Article titles:

Note the following guidelines in using scientific names:

• Names of genera are always italicized and capitalized— Homo, Rosa, Saccharomyces.
• Species epithets are always italicized and preceded by the name of the genus or an abbreviation of it— Homo sapiens or H. sapiens, but never plain sapiens, since such identifiers need not be unique. They are never capitalized.
• Names of higher taxa are capitalized but not italicized— Hominidae, Mammalia, Animalia.

So, if you want to debate it, I suggest you go there and try to make your case. Gene Nygaard 22:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Nomina nuda are not scientific names, Gene. They are informal designations until they are formally described. The guideline you quote covers only scientific names, not nomina nuda. So, if you want to debate it, I suggest you go there and try to make your case. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:47, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You might make such a convoluted distinction in your mind. I don't, most Wikipedia editors don't, and I doubt that the good folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of life do. Gene Nygaard 23:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Gene, I've given you multiple independent sources which back up my statement that nomina nuda usually appear in quotation marks, so a statement that I've made this "convoluted distinction in [my] mind" is an unwarranted attack. You've directed me to a guideline which says nothing whatsoever about nomina nuda, and you've "corrected" quotation marks to italics needlessly and, in the case of the name of the article, incorrectly. I can only hope that you will use more caution in the future. I do not want to continue this discussion as it is clear you want to attack me personally, and I have no interest in that. Firsfron of Ronchester 23:09, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I only meant that it sounds pretty convoluted to me. It isn't me you need to convince. If you convice the WikiProject people, let me know. Gene Nygaard 23:12, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You might also take not of the complete lack of mention of any such nonsense at nomen nudum first. I see why you didn't link it in your discussions above. Gene Nygaard 23:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

That article does, however, support your notion of "not a scientific name", which seemed convoluted to me; but being used that way in one article is not by any means an indication that the Tree of Life rules were written with such a distinction in mind, and that's what you should seek clarification about. Try to get them to agree to any rewording you see necessary. Gene Nygaard 23:35, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Line search/Linesearch

Hi, thanks for voicing your opinion at Talk:Linesearch. I have added some more comparisons between the two approaches and I hope I can convince you to change your mind. Cheers, --Zvika 11:42, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Ageha Ohkawa

Gene,

Ageha Ohkawa recently went through a series of moves. Originally it was at Ageha Ohkawa. User:Samantha Lim88's move of the page to Ageha Ōkawa was not ideal, even though it is the correct romanization per the WP:MOS-JA. The correct spelling is Ageha Ohkawa per the official webpage (click on Profile to left). However, your move to Ageha Okawa, which both drops the medial h and the macron, is the lest appropriate. While your objection is noted, you should have moved it back to what it was before (Ageha Ohkawa). Now it will need administrator assistance to fix. 124.102.25.102 12:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I've requested the move at WP:RM, without macrons. You can discuss it now, if you like. Gene Nygaard 13:32, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems to have been taken care of now. 124.102.25.102 14:16, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Cut & Paste

The likelyhood is that I have done a few Cut and Paste moves. In time, they will surface. Having recently discovered that this is not the desired practice, I will refrain from it in future. The Myanmar/Burma instance was the last as such. Evlekis 17:12, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I've recalled another Cut and Paste instance. Tennis player Jelena Dokić is a similar example to Amer Delić. It went from Dokić to Dokic in April 2006, I switched back it using the paste format on October 30, 2006. For a whole year nobody has remarked upon it even though there was some conversation at the time if you see the talk page. But in keeping with the conditions of Wikipedia, I will leave any judgement on this one to you. Naturally, I will insist that these articles maintain their names using the diacritics but I will go down the proper path for that. If I remember any more, I'll tell you. Evlekis 07:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Kilogram and Gal

Gene. I wanted to express my appreciation for your recent edits to the Kilogram article as well as the Gal (unit) article—all good stuff; especially the Gal work, which was well-researched and cited. Greg L (my talk) 04:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Your comment at [15]

Please do not attack other editors. If you continue, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 22:38, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Imperial or English in Category:Unit display/doc

Can you explain why you think that 'English' is more correct that 'Imperial' in this edit? The system of units described is know as 'English' within the United States but 'Imperial' elsewhere. Since 'English' may be ambiguous in this context given that the United Kingdom, including England, are transitioning to Metric, I believe that it would be more accurate here to say Imperial. Thanks, PatLeahy (talk) 21:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't. Just go look at the disambiguation line at the top of Imperial units, then come back and we can start from there. Imperial is just plain wrong. Gene Nygaard 01:05, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Please answer me one question to help me understand, by English system do you mean U.S. customary units? Thanks, PatLeahy (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

No, English system is broader than that. And imperial system is narrower than your usage, even in what is acceptable outside the United States, even setting aside the fact that within the United States that term is almost never applied to anything other than that best-the-Brits-could-do decimal system, their (in 1824) throwing out all the volume units that had been based on the volume of eight pounds of various commodities, pulling a new unit out of their hats and making it the volume of ten pounds of water. Gene Nygaard 02:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, PatLeahy (talk) 02:24, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

My main point is that it is especially improper, at least for our purposes (not to say that some people don't do it), to use the term "imperial" for any of the units outlawed in the Weights and Measures Act of 1824, including Queen Anne's wine gallon and its pints, quarts, fluid ounces, etc., and the Winchester bushel and the short ton. You were using it in a way that did include some of them. Gene Nygaard 02:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Millimolar in Ellman's reagent

Hi there, the units were of concentration, not amount. The difference is explained at Concentration#Molarity if you are interested. Tim Vickers 03:05, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I was aware of that possibility. I agree with the BIPM and NIST, however, that "molarity" should not be used. Let's just put in the units of measure insted, okay? Gene Nygaard 03:07, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Molarity is what the number refers to, what alternative is there? Tim Vickers 03:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Your idea of using this non-standard measurement is verging upon silly. I have worked as a biochemist for eleven years and I have never used mmol l^-1 and never seen it used. Not once. Tim Vickers 03:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I've taken this discussion to Talk:Ellman's reagent. Gene Nygaard 04:02, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Your comment at Éire Óg Greystones GAA

Your comment, "fix missorting created by half-done, undiscussed move" by myself, was completely inappropriate. First, the only page that linked with the former page at the time, was Greystones, whose link I changed. Second, if a page name is incorrectly spelt, there is no need for a discussion before a name change; wiki guidelines make this quite clear. As you can seem, the move was not "half-done", and your needless confrontative comment was quite unneccessary. Schcambo 17:47, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't incorrectly spelled. But even more importantly, you offered no evidence whatsoever that your spelling was even correct. You provided no references to back up your change. It is arguable that your new spelling is "correct" in some sense; you did not show that it was, however. But it is inarguable that the previous spelling was also correct, if your spelling was correct. It is not an error to use the English alphabet when writing in English, so if your's is correct what you moved it from is correct as well. What we need to do under Wikipedia:Naming conventions if to balance various factors in choosing among the legitimate alternatives for the one name we will have for the article's name, whether the one you moved it from, moved it to, or a different one entirely.

Furthermore, it was half-done in the sense that you did not accompany the move with the requisite changes in the sort keys of categories, so that it would be properly sorted in those categories after the move. Gene Nygaard 18:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

And as far ar your menion of changing a link, your moving of an article does not, in and of itself, give you any authority to change the spelling in other articles. Wikipedia:Naming conventions specifically provides:

• "In particular, the current title of a page does not imply either a preference for that title name, nor that any alternative name is discouraged in the text of articles."

Gene Nygaard 18:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't incorrectly spelt? Well since when has 'Éire' been spelt without an accent on the 'E'? As far as I know, the spelling is in the first article of the Irish constitution which should be reference enough for you, apart altogether from the fact that it's common knowledge in Ireland.

I do get what you're saying about using the 'English' alphabet, but I think you're being needlessly antagonistic here; I would suggest you have a look at Category:Entities with Irish names for a whole list of articles with Irish names. There's quite simply nothing wrong with the practice. Schcambo 16:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no error in using the English alphabet when writing in English.

And if you'd stop missorting these articles in their categories, you are less likely to antagonize me. Just keep that in mind, go fix some of them before I get to them, especially any that are the result of your actions, because I might get real cranky otherwise.

And, if any of them don't have the proper redirects from the English alphabet spelling, fix that, too. Gene Nygaard 16:35, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

"fix missorting"

On this edit (among others). What does the comma (or lack thereof) actually do? For a long time I presumed that it did nothing whatever. I did once get the impression that it did something, but I now don't remember what.

I could of course dick around with it and find out by experimentation (of course finally fixing any problems that arose), but fear that there are too many grim denizens of WP who'd rush to diagnose this as "vandalism" or whatever.

Please reply here rather than on my talk page (I hate pingpong discussions). Thanks. -- Hoary 07:32, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Everything gets sorted. Commas, spaces, other punctuation marks, letters (uppercase different from lowercase). The comma+space has developed as the conventional separator between a person's surname and given name in the people articles.

I noticed Taichi Yamada because it was missorted in Category:Living people. Without the space, he appeared nine places further down in the list, just after Yu Yamada, if I recall correctly. I wouldn't mind if you wanted to test it to see that this is the case. A space gets sorted as Unicode number 32 decimal. The comma is 39, digits 0-9 a little higher, letters A-Z are 65 thru 90, then some punctuation marks, then a-z, then a zillion other letters, in nobody's sort order, sorted according to Unicode number. So when they appear in an article, they need to be put in the a-z (or A-Z) range. It would be difficult given all the sort keys we have and all the articles without any sort keys to get true case-insensitive sorting as well, but some of the things mentioned at Wikipedia:Categorization of people where it talks about ordering the names in a category help in that regard too, though I don't know if I'd endorse everything it says at any particular time. Gene Nygaard 08:00, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I also don't think that where people like this end up should depend on the name order used in the articles (which sometimes gets flip-flopped in any particular article). Therefore, even if this one were in the Japanese "Yamada Taichi" order, the sort key should still have a comma as well as the space (Yamada, Taichi). That's most important in names like Wang, where we have a number of articles for people where that surname is listed first as well as a number where it is listed last. You shouldn't have to know where the Wikipedia article lies at the present time in order to know which of two bunches of a-z listings to look in, you should just be able the one you are looking for. Many people might not even notice the second bunch of alphabetical listings, and just assume it isn't there. Gene Nygaard 08:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

We don't really have two different fields, in the database sense, in our sort keys; it's all sorted in one mass proceeding left to right. The comma and space just give us a sort of pseudo-field separator. Gene Nygaard 08:10, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Ack, you are indeed right, as is clear from Category:Living people. (I'd never looked in this category before; for me, it was merely a category one unthinkingly stuck on articles either in order to prompt some bot to stick a "Don't mess with this guy or we could be done for libel" notice on the talk page or just in order to spare somebody else this silly chore.)

I'm afraid I've missed out plenty of commas in my time ([cough] as recently as a couple of hours ago). I'll start putting them in. Sorry for the fup uck.

PS Yes, "pseudo-field separator": well put. Putting aside the matter of people with double-barreled surnames, WP probably doesn't need anything. But since it already has commas by the zillion, it should indeed have them consistently. -- Hoary 08:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there's quite a variety in the way those double-barreled ones are handled (often, especially if one is primarily used and the other dropped, names such as the Spanish ones are indexed by some people with just the one used; problem is, we often don't know from the articles and it is difficult to determine from other sources, except in the case of a few well-known people). Note too that while we put "Bill Clinton" there rather than under William, in many of these double-barreled ones, the second surname is often the easiest way to disambiguate them, so it often appears in the article names even if it isn't used all that often in most references to the person, further complicating things. Gene Nygaard 08:23, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Even for names of the anglosphere, there's disagreement among what might reasonably be taken as at least moderately reliable sources. Well before anyone dreamed of Wikipedia, I used to be a big fan of the music of Peter Maxwell Davies; some reference books put him under M, others under D. As for Spanish names, I'd suppose that es:WP would be a better guide than no guide at all. -- Hoary 08:43, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Temperature units

Hi, Kelvin is an SI unit and is singular, not plural. If we wish to refer to + 100 °C (degrees Celsius), we don't use the plural - presumably Celsii. The corresponding absolute temperature is +373.15 Kelvin - not plural and no degrees.Pyrotec 23:41, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Wrong. You just used the plural in "degrees Celsius"; the singular is "degree Celsius". That's because Celsius is an adjective modifying the noun "degree". Adjectives don't change in the plural in English, but the nouns do. When we used to use "degrees Kelvin", they worked the same way, of course, when Kelvin was an adjective. But it no longer is an adjective. The CGPM threw out the "degrees Kelvin" name 40 years ago, in 1967 (follow the link to their article and look at the timeline, and go read the kelvin article). Now "kelvin" is a noun, and the plural "s" is added to it in the normal manner.

And the kelvin, like the other units such as watt and ampere and joule, is lowercase. It is just another quirk of the English language that we write our units (the nouns) in lowercase, but in the case of proper adjectives used to identify a particular unit (such as "degree" which is ambiguous standing alone), they are capitalized: the C in degrees Celsius, the F in degrees Fahrenheit, the R in degrees Rankine, and the K in the obsolete degrees Kelvin. Gene Nygaard 00:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that I should have used degree Celsius (not degrees), and I agree that kelvin is low case; and we have agreement that degree in not needed in front of kelvin. However, you changed the Kevin article to read kelvins. No independent evidence has been provided that you are correct in your interpretation. The references do state that abbreviations, such as cm, do not have a pural form - cms in wrong; but named units do not appear to be mentioned.Pyrotec 08:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Here [16] you appear to be arguing the opposite, that second should be used not seconds why the change?Pyrotec 09:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

That seconds discussion dealt only with numbers that are greater than zero and less than one. It had nothing to do with 33 seconds and the like; only things like 0.648 second. And only a what-if way, that if I had originally written the rules, I might have made them different. And that hypothetical difference would be to use the s, when the absolute value is strictly less than one. I don't think I'd argue for that now,

In the same say, when you are talking about temperatures in kelvins, the ones greater than zero and less than or equal to one are singular: 0.003 kelvin.

Note also that adjectives do not change in English. We talk about a "ten-foot pole" when its length is "ten feet", or a "three-meter pole" whose length is "three-meters". Similarly with kelvins, we talk about a "2.7 kelvin background radiation" and the like. Gene Nygaard 09:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

We may talk about a pole whose nominal length is ten feet or three metres, but we write it as 10 ft or 3 metre (or meter), not 10 fts or 3 metres (or meters) (I'm ignoring decimal units in the conversion); similarly we may talk about a device that draws twenty five watts, but we write it 25 watt. Sorry, but I have not seen any evidence so far that named SI units are written in the plural - but I agree they are spoken in the plural. I don't wish to argue particularly about watt or other units; kevins just looks wrong to me.Pyrotec 10:04, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, good grief. Google the exact term "25 watts" and limit it to Wikipedia:

"25 watts" site:en.wikipedia.org

I get 63 hits. Enough said?

Note also that the symbols for unit for units of measure do not change in the plural. See WP:MOSNUM. Not lbs, but lb. And certainly not "fts"; that word has an irregular plural in English, not formed by adding an s but rather by a vowel change. There isn't even an s in "feet", so why would anybody want to add one to its symbol?

Here's the BIPM, the day-to-day branch of the keepers of the SI standards, in their latest 8th edition of their SI brochure, section 2.1.1.5:[17]

• "the triple point of water is exactly 273.16 kelvins"
• "A difference or interval of temperature may be expressed in kelvins or in degrees Celsius"
• "numerical value of the thermodynamic temperature expressed in kelvins"

Gene Nygaard 10:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Manual of style

Please have a look at the MOS before you continue your campaign against the usage of M to denote molarity, the style manual states:

In scientific articles, use the units employed in the current scientific literature on that topic. This will usually be SI, but not always. For example, natural units are often used: ångströms (or angstroms) are widely used in such fields as x-ray crystallography and structural chemistry, and Hubble's constant should be quoted in its most common unit of (km/s)/Mpc rather than its SI unit of s⁻¹.

The current scientific literature overwhelmingly uses M, mM and μM so these are the units that should be used in articles. Tim Vickers 23:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

That style manual text is a recent, disputed addition by none other than you. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Units of measurement. Gene Nygaard 23:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

If you wish to dispute it, please discuss it on the MOS talk page. The change was completely uncontroversial and widely-supported. Tim Vickers 23:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

But not an informed decision. Gene Nygaard 23:54, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Oops. I thought you were talking about the decision to use M on the Enzyme kinetics article. The change in MoS clearly isn't uncontroversial, as is evident on the talk page. Gene Nygaard 00:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

On gravity 'gee'

Whatever you think is best, it just seemed a bit wierd to me. Nice of you to let me know though! Most people don't do that Foreeye 12:52, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Introduction of errors into protein articles

Hi Gene, I've been going through some of your past contributions and notice you have been changing "kDa" into "u" eg diff. This introduces a 1000-fold error into the molecular mass of the protein. I fixed the one I found but I don't know how long you have been doing this. Tim Vickers 16:23, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I didn't change "kDa". I changed "kD" which was wrong in the first place. Gene Nygaard 01:07, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquette alert

Gene. I’ve posted a Wikiquette alert on you for your continued disruptive edits and refusal to accept the consensus view. Greg L (my talk) 18:15, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Block by Rlevse

Gene Nygard, you have not responded to this Wikiquette alert, have a history of incivility, disruption, and related problems, and since Gene L notified of this, you have called people and "ass" - [18], referred to their inferior intelligence- [19], and referred to their lack of competence - User_talk:ArielGold#Improper_use_of_conversion_templates.2C_and_problems_with_what_they_do. See WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF, [{WP:DISRUPTION]]. Based on this, I am blocking you for 72 hours. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Gene Nygaard (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

This is only summarized here, because of difficulty in getting the template to format right for the whole response (User talk:Gene Nygaard#Block by Rlevse). There is absolutely nothing on the Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts page instructing me to respond there; in fact there is not even anything suggesting that I should respond there. It would, in fact, have been counterproductive for me to do so. The comment to User:A.Z. was made in the contest of the Wikipedia essay page Wikipedia:Call a spade a spade. Having been blocked before does not provide grounds for blocking under our blocking policy. The User talk:ArielGold involves nothing whatsoever for which a block is appropriate. The block by User:Rlevse was done with no warnings to me on my talk page nor any other talk page I am following, with no discussion whatsoever of whatever points he or she may have issues with. I don't know him or her from Adam (or Eve).

Decline reason:

Calling people an ass, or dumb, is certainly "inconsistent with a civil, collegial atmosphere", and thus blockable. You should know this, given your block log. Under these circumstances, the other issues raised in the block message, or in your overly long response, need not be examined. — Sandstein 16:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Re Wikiquette alert

1. There is absolutely nothing on the Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts page instructing me to respond there; in fact there is not even anything suggesting that I should respond there. Furthermore, it specifically instructs: "Avoid an extensive discussion of the problem or issue on this page" and "Do not continue your discussion in detail here" .
2. There is no reason to assume that someone who figures he or she could be helpful in responding to a "Wikiquette alert" does not have at least a modicum of competence in assessing the situation. I assume their good faith, and that they will address the issues.
   1. Yet, though it has been been three and three-quarters days since User:Greg L posted his complaint there, nobody has yet responded to it outside that page by anyone other than Greg L even contacting me at my talk page (and responding directly to him would be counterproductive) nor by anyone other than Greg L and myself posting anything in regard to it at Talk:Kilogram. There has also been no substantive response to it on that page; just an editor agreeing to look into it, with no followup. And nobody else has raised any issues there for which I could to add any further response.
   2. I have responded to it, to some extent, at Talk:Kilogram.
   3. Any detailed response by me would have been counterproductive. Any reviewer who looks at User:Greg L's convoluted ramblings at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts, at his refusal to respond to detailed points of contention set forth at Talk:Kilogram, at the history showing his numerous reversions of mundane copyediting and the like, ought to be able to determine for themselves that:
      1. Greg L is a user who has serious problems with Wikipedia:Ownership of articles
      2. Greg L is a user who as serious problems with Wikipedia:No original research, something patently obvious to anybody who actually reads his Wikipedia alert, with his insistence on that his email correspondence with someone outside Wikipedia, asking him to review a historical version of the article, is going to solve our problems.
      3. Greg L has repeatedly reverted mundane copyediting, as in the this most recent reversion of one of his reversions by User:Swatjester in this difference
      4. Greg L has not responded to issues of contention clearly spelled out and listed on the Talk:Kilogram page,
      5. He has instead engaged in personal attacks against me, including improper accusations of vandalism in this edit summary: "Last warning on vandalism. You had better take a look at what a professor of astrophysics at the School of Physics thinks about this at Talk:Mass#Disruptive_edits)" and again in this subsequent edit with the summary which you might miss because of the typo: "Vandalims reverted to last version by Slashme". I have warned him on his talk page specifically not to make false accusations of vandalism.
   4. There are times when "Give him enough rope, and he'll hang himself" is the only logical response. This is one of them.
3. Does anybody really need my help to see that?

Re: You are an ass

This comment was made on the talk for the Wikipedia essay page, not in the main namespace, Wikipedia:Call a spade a spade. It was intended to reflect the values promoted in the original essay (which I had absolutely no part in writing), before it was hijacked and renamed, and it was addressed to the editor who had made that move renaming it Wikipedia:Do not call a spade a spade (after other editors, not A.Z., had corrupted the entire focus of the essay, to reflect the status of the article after their savaging of it). As near as I can tell, the editor to whom I made the comment, User:A.Z., took it in the spirit in which it was intended, complaining about my lack of a sense of humor but not about the terminology I used; here is his or her response to it.

Re: have a history of incivility, disruption, and related problems

I'd dispute that, but primarily the objection here is to both relevance and timliness. Having been blocked before is not valid grounds for blocking under Wikipedia:Blocking policy.

Re: current disruption

Lest you be misled by the irrelevant point made above, there is not even a claim of current disruption by the blocking admin.

There is nothing even alleged to fall under the criteria set forth in detain in [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Disruption]

There is no allegation of persistent gross incivility in the context of the blocking policy language, and especially not in any timely manner which would be required to prevent disruption now, the sole purpose for blocking under those provisions.

Re: ArielGold

I have spelled out my objections in detail [20] here at User talk:ArielGold, and have followed up on her response to them here[21][22]. Note also that she has responded to my complaints in a more civil and constructive manner than her original response here.

That is clear evidence that there has been no conduct [which] severely disrupts the project; that is, when his or her conduct is inconsistent with a civil, collegial atmosphere and interferes with the process of editors working together harmoniously to create an encyclopedia, to use the terminology of the blocking policy. ArielGold's last response makes that quite clear. Gene Nygaard 14:43, 29 October 2007 (UTC) Moved one sentence to proper place Gene Nygaard 14:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Gene Nygaard (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

I am requesting that the declining of my unblock request by User:Sandstein be reviewed by another administrator. User:Rlevse has made his reason for the block abundantly clear that his blocking of me was because of failing to respond at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts, something clearly not required by the instructions there, in fact actually discouraged by them, and something that it would not have been constructive for me to do. In any case, Sandstein based his declination entirely on a peripheral issue thrown in by Rlevse, without ever having discussed it with me nor on the talk page involved. This is not something that even if true, would warrant a block under Wikipedia:Blocking policy, and in any case a 72-hour block is entirely out of line with that policy, especially if it is not based on an entire laundry list of undiscussed complaints thrown in by Rlevse as an afterthought to try to make it look like as though he were imposing a reasonable time period. Sandstein's decline entirely fails to take that into account. It is, standing alone—and that's all Sandstein is now going on—neither grounds for a block at all, nor especially for onw with a time period of 72 hours. There was no complaint about the terminology by the user to whom it was addressed. There was no discussion of my use of it on my talk page or the essay's talk page or anywhere else, not by Rlevse, not by A.Z., not by anybody. There is absolutely no continuing dispute for which a block would be appropriate there, not one in the first place even, but certainly not an ongoing one. I have no interest in any further editing of either Wikipedia:Call a spade a spade nor its talk page at the present time; my concerns have already been addressed, by A.Z., the one who whom my comment was addressed, agreeing with me and moving the page back and by the hijacking of the page being reverted. Blocks are not for punishment purposes.

Decline reason:

Incivility is rarely a "peripheral issue." If you think it is so, you may want to reconsider your involvement in a collaborative project such as this. — Mr.Z-man 20:25, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Some additional points:

At Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts, another editor, User:Bfigura, had said he was going to look into it. The rash actions of User:Rlevse have treaded upon his territory, especially since Rlevse took his action without looking into the merits of the complaint by Greg L, nor explaining in any way how his actions would help in any way in dealing with that Wikiquette alert.

Furthermore, imposing a block on the basis of not responding to what is intended to be an informal, preliminary step is dispute resolution is entirely out of step with the purposes of Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts in the first place. Gene Nygaard 18:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorting thorns

Check out Category:Icelandic poets. I thought that having T/Þ in one section was cluttered and hard to read so as an experiment I moved the Þ names under a Þ heading (which comes last, as in Icelandic alphabetical order). Does this annoy you? I don't mind Þ being sorted as 'Th' in non-Icelandic categories. Haukur 01:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

It isn't so much it annoys me. It simply isn't English sorting order, and doesn't belong on English Wikipedia, whether it annoys me or not. All the Wikipedia categories should be sorted in English sorting order, without exception. It doesn't matter if you characterize them as "non-Icelandic" or not. As you know, we've been sorting categories such as this one on a first-name basis. But it is still English sorting rules. Get another hundred or so articles in that category, and then at some time all the T's will be on the first page, with at least one U so we know we've come to the end of the T's. Someone looking and not finding what they are looking for isn't going to go on to the next page with any logical expectation of finding anything there. You'd be wrongfully hiding information by sorting it contrary to English sorting rules.

You would be also greatly increasing the probability that the same person will be missorted in other categories as well.

Besides, then the sorting gets based on the haphazard nature of which spelling has been chosen, legitimately or not, in accordance with our naming conventions or not, something that can vary from time to time for any article, from among the legitimate choices to fill the one slot available for an articles name. That problem is minimized by following the normal English sorting rules.

There's also the problem that if they aren't under the T's, many readers won't know what the hell at strange thing is even if they do see it. The fact that it is under the T might be the one clue they need to put two and two together, and realize that the weird combination of letters they are looking at is actually supposed to represent what they are looking for, what they are quite reasonably looking for because they are familiar with the term or the person as they are normally known in English and which probably should be the article's name in the first place. Gene Nygaard 01:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, many of the members of categories such as this do not belong exclusively to one country (or whatever basis the category is built upon), but rather include both poets who happened to be born in Iceland yet happened to do most of their work and live most of there lives somewhere else, and some born elsewhere who moved to Iceland. None of our category are the exclusive property of some non-English group. Gene Nygaard 01:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh very well, I've rolled it back. It is true that Þ is often sorted along with Th in English works and the argument that if a few more names are added Þ and T would be on different pages has some merit. I'm not convinced by the "[poets who] do not belong exclusively to one country" argument. The category belongs to one country even if individual members of it do not. Nor do I think that people are necessarily more likely to be searching for Th-forms than Þ-forms. But this is not worth fighting over - since you're willing to go along with first-name sorting I'm willing to compromise on other issues. Haukur 11:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Hijack?

Gene, thank you for completing the "R" portion of the BRD cycle which I started over at WP:SPADE. Now that you've reverted over the opinions of at least two editors, I trust you'll use the talk page to explain why you restored the essay to a state of destructive nonsense. See you there. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Kilogram

Hi Gene,

When you get unblocked, please explain at Talk:Kilogram why the dispute tags should remain on the article. I want you to get a fair chance to state your case. Also, let others who agree with you know about the discussion. Although the process is not a vote, it would be good to get more than one opinion on each side.--Slashme 08:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

People with two given names who usually omit their patronymic

Some of my fellow surnameless barbarians hardly ever use their patronymics and our articles (correctly, in my opinion) omit them from the article titles. For cases like Björk there is no problem with sorting. But when the person goes by two given names we can have issues. Examples include Gerður Kristný, Samy Vellu and Hafdís Huld. All of those were sorted by their second given name until I changed it recently. In one case you had arranged the sorting that way. Should we use second given names as ersatz surnames for the purposes of sorting in non-barbarian categories?

As a curiosity this is what they seem to be doing over at the Indonesian Wikipedia. See my inquiry at their embassy and this response at my talk page. Apparently this is not the way Indonesians usually sort Indonesian names, though. Haukur 22:47, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Just my thoughts on it--I doubt there is a definitive answer that would satisfy everyone, and doubt that it is worth he effort to try to clarify in any great detail.

In some cases it is probably appropriate, and actually used just like a surname (in a legitimate but different, broader sense than that used by our surname article, and including patronymics in Iceland or elsewhere) by the person. That's probably especially true of radio personalities with an on-air name that is actually two given names but sounds like a given name and a last name (I've seen that happen quite often), and that happens with various other stage names and pen names that are derived from given names. But as a general rule, no. Some like Ann-Margret make it clear by normally using a hyphen. The problem, of course, is that our articles, especially the stubs and sub-stubs, often do not have enough information to make it clear what is going on. If it is "Mary Lou" or something of the sort, common combinations of given names where the second one is much rarer as a surname, especially if it includes the actual surname in the article itself, it should clearly be under M in any category (the redirect which should be there, or a dummy one if needed because otherwise it would be a disambiguation page, could be categorized if the full name were desired in some categories, and when that is done a note on the article page is helpful). But in between, there is a huge variety that you'll likely get some arguments about no matter how it is done.

A bigger problem is people with full names given in the article name yet indexed under just the first given name in all categories, and there are lots of them. Even worse are those Easter egg sortings under some nickname which doesn't even appear in the article's own name. Gene Nygaard 23:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, that all seems reasonable. And I agree that the sortkey should bear at least a passing resemblance to the actual article title. Haukur 08:01, 2 November 2007 (UTC)