User talk:SMcCandlish/Archive 18

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

Archive 18

Archive 19

Archive 20

→

Archive 25

May 2008

Not an admin?

Resolved

 – Not seeking admin status at this time; too busy IRL.

Wow, I must say that surprised me, I see you around quite often. Unless there are problems somewhere I haven't found, I think you'd make a great administrator. I'd gladly nom you at WP:RFA if you want. Let me know of your decision. Wizardman 05:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Do it, SMcC!

– Noetica^?? Talk 07:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I will. I have held off because my first one failed (partly via sabotage by a sockpuppet), and the people who were strongly against me probably still are and have probably multiplied in number, due to my (anti) involvement in the WP:ATT fiasco. But that was almost a year ago, so tempers may have cooled. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Here ya go. You have so many contribs that I kept the nom kinda short; probably better that you talk about some of them. I have no reservations about nommming you though, only question is if you'll pass WP:100. Wizardman 03:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I am out-of-state right now on business but should be able to look into this next week, and gather my co-noms (I think I've had 5 offers or so). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

One objection I can see is that you are too argumentative, and of course there are good and bad sides to this quality. It may be to everyone's benefit for you to address this issue right off the bat, preferably succinctly :] Your sockpuppet-sabotage claim here can be a cause for worry. People may not oppose you for your (anti) involvement in ATT, but the way you handled it (I don't remember, incidentally). –Pomte 00:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Understood; I *am* argumenatative, but I believe that this is a positive quality in an encyclopedia-building enterprise. The way I argue, yes, that is the main sticking point for some people. I do not suffer fools lightly, and while I've gotten remarkably more civil over time, my patience still has limits when it comes to people trying to push a PoV, trying to delete things (or keep them) without any policy basis for doing so, and insisting on adding spammy links. <shrug> I'll either be accepted or I won't, and I'm not going to sweat it either way. If I were power-hungry I would have sought RfA many times by now. The only reason I want it is the expediency of the tools, and I've already been given rollback power by admins, so some of even that simple motivation is now moot.

Oh, as for the sockpuppet sabotage, I can prove that. The culprit, after a big WP:SSP investigation, actually confessed.

Anyway, I am too busy right now to do an RfA, or for that matter to do much in the way of admin duties, so I'm going to decline the current nomination until my life settles down again a little bit, probably in a few months. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi again, just thought I'd ask what the status is on this. Your edits have trailed off, so maybe it isn't the best time, but I figured I'd ask if you were still interested, since it's been a few months. Wizardman 04:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Still on hold. I may be able to take this up in August. I will actually be out-of-country and mostly offline for all of mid June through mid July. I should not seek admin status if I don't have the time to actually be an effective admin. Thanks for checking in though. I have not forgotten about it, I simply haven't had the requisite time for it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Match of interest

Resolved

 – Just a note.

Hey buddy, how's it going? I have no idea if you have cable but ESPN classic is advertizing Jimmy Moore vs. Luther Lassiter for tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. I'm betting it's them battling as old men, but I thought you'd like to know.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Rats. I don't get ESPN Classic.  :-( Thanks for the note though. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Snooker rankings

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Hey, I've been goin through a lot of the old talk page comments on Snooker, and I saw this Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Snooker/Archive_2#Probable_solution_to_the_hunt-and-update_infobox_rankings_problem_every_year. Would it still be possible to implement this, as the Snooker season is nearly over and it will be soon time to update the rankings again... - Nick C (talk) 00:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why not, but it is beyond my template skill level to do it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Same here, probably have to change them manually again. - Nick C (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Backlog at Category:Wikipedians seeking to be adopted in Adopt-a-user

Resolved

 – Just projectspam.

WikiProject Good Articles May Newsletter

Resolved

 – Just projectspam.

The May Newsletter for WikiProject Good Articles has now been published. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:16, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Provenance vs provenience

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

It's both, see Google using the words archaeology and provenance -- and we have provenance -- but you can distinguish if you want to-- see http://archaeology.about.com/b/2006/05/16/provenience-provenance-lets-call-the-whole-thing-off.htm and in this case I'd go for provenance. Doug Weller (talk) 16:33, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

See WP:GOOGLE; the fact that search engines can turn up hits for something is not evidence of anything encyclopedically useful. I did not say that "provenance" is not a word; of course it is. I said that the field of archaeology uses the variant "provenience". They actually have subtly different meanings. An artifact can have both a provenance and a proveniance. If Joe Smith digs up an ancient pot in the desert, the spot at which it was found was its provenienance. If I buy it from Smith, Smith was (for me) its provenance, but its provenience remains unchanged. Lastly, About.com is not a reliable source either. To the extent it is not material pulled from WP itself, it is written by random people (like WP) but who (unlike WP) rarely if ever cite any sources. AllExperts.com and other competitors share the same problem. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

PS: Further clarification: Proveniance and provenance are only the same with regard to the original finder of the artifact. Provenance is just a general English word, while proveniance is an archaeology, paleontology and geology term-of-art with a narrower meaning. The difference between them is important at articles about artifacts with confusing histories, such as at Crystal skull. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I should have specified what you can find on Google. About.com is not as bad as you suggest. Kris Hirst, who wrote the article, is a retired archaeologist and from my personal experience with her good at what she does at about.com. But if you won't accept what she says, how about Paul Bahn's Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology? "Provenance or provenience, the source, place of origin or location of something." And my Oxford Dictionary has 'provenance - the place of origin or earliest known history of something' 'provenience - US term for provenance'. But I can find US archaeology papers that use provenance. I think this site from the Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[1] sums up the problem. There is no 'correct' term, and the field of archaeology uses both to mean the same thing - not all the time, and some people make the distinction you do. And I wish you were right, it would be simpler.--Doug Weller (talk) 19:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure, there are always exceptions at About.com and even AllExperts.com; it's the nature of the sites and their lax sourcing requirements that has WP:V and WP:RS regulars concerned. When was Bahn's published? Oxford is just plain wrong; it's important to keep in mind that until very recently Oxford dictionaries were not frequently updated. I doubt that the current OED still says that (though it may be that it will observe something to the effect that the -ience spelling is more common in US materials). I have it on CD-ROM, but it's a pain to use. Will fire it up if you want me to. Anyway, "provenience", in US or UK English, is virtually unknown outside of archaeology and related fields, so the suggestion that it's simply the American spelling of "provenance" is an absurd one on Oxford's part (and hardly the only one of this sort - their editorial staff's understanding American English after 1960 or so is sometimes very amusingly off-kilter, and the etymologies they provide sometimes differ very significantly from those provided by a preponderance of competing dictionaries; I get the feeling they are a bit insular). Most Americans who have not taken an archaeo. or paleo. class have never encountered the term at all. The papers, how old are they? I keep asking this, because when I was in college ca. 1989 the issue seemed to be a relatively new one, but we were instilled with the technical distinction between the terms. I strongly suspect that the -ience spelling was still in the early phases of adoption and that some academics were being more activistic than others about it. I acknowledge that my insistence that there is a distinction is colored by my own educational background. I'll moderate it thus: There is a distinction recognized well (but not 100% accepted yet) in modern North American archaeology jargon (and related circles) that is not as well recognized in other forms of English in that field, and not recognized much at all outside the field; Wikipedia should make use of the distinction because it is a meaningful one, and use of it will not outright confuse or mislead readers unaware of it or aware of but displeased with it. Better? :-) Actually, I am firing up OED-CD now (gimme ten minutes or so...), since I'm genuinely curious if it says something more sensible now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Disappointingly, the current OED says "= PROVENANCE. Now chiefly U.S. (and to some extent Canad.). Elsewhere provenance is the more usual form." So they have not even caught on to its usage as a term-of-art at all, nor to the fact that most Americans use "provenance" in general writing. Maybe I should write them a letter... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:30, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm talking about recent stuff, eg "Proceedings of the International School of Physics “Enrico Fermi” Course CLIV, M. Martini, M. Milazzo and M. Piacentini (Eds.)IOS Press, Amsterdam 2004 Scientific methods and applications to archaeological provenance studies (European you note). Bahn's book is 2001. The UI page is 1999. The two words used to confuse me until I realised how inconsistent their use was. I'd like to see a distinction but I don't think that it is possible to say that there is a clear one although you can say,if you can find a reference, that there are people who say there is. I've looked and haven't found anything I thought was really helpful. And I'm not at all sure you can say it about outside of North America. Then of course there is archaeology/archeology (both used by various archaeological societies in America, so you can't even say one is an American spelling as both are), and artefacts/artifacts -- another one where people are continually changing spelling on Wikipedia. I guess you know that the general rule is either the first spelling in the article rules or context does (Stonehenge would always have 'artefact'. It's a minefield.--Doug Weller (talk) 05:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I hear ya. "Arte-"/"arti-" is very definitely a Commonwealth vs. North American spelling issue like "tyre"/"tire", and so is subject to WP:ENGVAR (in which context actually trumps first major contributor) - Stonehenge should definitely use "artefact", Chaco Canyon should definitely use "artifact" and Indus Valley Civilization should use whatever spelling belongs to the English variant of the first major contributor, since English isn't a major language in the region. "Archeology" should simply be abandoned in WP articles. From what I can tell, that spelling isn't really used any longer by people in the field, on either side of the pond, and the OED doesn't even recognize that it exists at all, which surprised me (and I'm an OED critic!). Several American dictionaries do, but if you go to any university campus in North America you'll find the course offerings use "archaeology". The OED' preferred "archæology" should likewise be avoided, as ligatures have been obsolete in Modern English for at least two generations, even in the UK; no one uses them but very persnicketty old people (one of many examples of how the OED may be huge and impressive, but quite outmoded).

Anyway, my stance remains the same: if the field itself has (incompletely) established a distinction, and the average reader will not be confused or misled, it is better to make use of the distinction. A similar example would be the use of the term "english" in pool playing. This is a particularly North American usage (I heard it plenty of times when I lived in Canada), but indistinct - it can be used (but isn't always) to mean sidespin (left or right) or top- or bottomspin applied to the cue ball. British, Irish, Australians, etc., do not use this term, and use more specific ones ("side", "screw", etc.), but they are not recognized by North Americans. North Americans also have specific terms not recognizable to others ("draw", "follow", etc.) To save the day, there are non-dialect-tied (albeit more technical sounding) specific terms, which are recognizable to other English speakers (namely "sidespin" and the others first mentioned above), so when I edit pool articles, I try to ensure that they use those more specific, technical-sounding and universally understandable terms, even if they would not be the preferred term of this group or that group, and even if the distinction might be lost on some, or seem overly nitpicky to some (there are American English speakers for whom "english" means sidespin only, just like there are people for whom "provenance" and "provenience" are 100% synonyms).

The "Kris's Archaeology Blog" piece seems to confirm the sensibility of this: While there is a lot of confusion, two clear definitions emerge, and while I was no where near as precise, up above, as these definitions, what I wrote actually conforms to them (without fully encapsulating them).

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

An intereseting minefield, though. SMcCandlish's suggestion of writing to the OED is not a bad idea. Someone should also write to the leading US dictionary, if there is one. Webster's Third New International Dictionary? Or write to a few archaeology journals on both sides of the pond? Carcharoth (talk) 06:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think every US-published dictionary would claim to be the leading one. >;-) But the unabridged Websters 3rd Intl. has a reasonably fair claim to the title. There are also at least two major-publisher Canadian English dictionaries (I don't know if there is an unabridged monster-size one; while I lived in Canada I did see two substantial ones, about the size of the abridged US Webster's 3rd Intl. and other typical major American dictionaries, from competing publishers.) There are probably also .au and .nz dictionaries of a similar character. I have a Webster's unabridged, but have not bothered looking in it for purposes of this discussion, as it dates to 1972, and so almost certainly precedes the rise of "provenience" as an archaeo. term-of-art. PS: Thank goodness "proveniance" and "provenence" aren't also recognized as valid Modern English spellings! Then the matter would be truly hopeless! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You might be interested in this thread

Resolved

 – Responded as requested.

WT:MoS#Bot being made, to convert " &emdash; " to "&emdash;". I've already gone several rounds on this one. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I popped in for some comments. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, I notice you did a lot of work recently to WP:Manual of Style (diagrams and maps), but it's still marked with a "failed" infobox. Does that page have a future? If so, please let me know when it's not "failed" any more, so that we can talk about an appropriate cat. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Most "failed" proposals don't return, but a few do successfully after significant input. I don't have much interest in that one any longer; I just tried to make it make more sense (esp. in the context of other guidelines like WP:MOSFLAG) while it was in play. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Correct English

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Hello. Is your English that good (en-6)? :) .. perhaps you could help me in this little thing. when you say "Wiki Love" does that mean "the kind of love that exists between users on the wiki" or does it mean "Wiki is love"? Thanks.--Alnokta (talk) 17:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm a professional writer/editor (among other things), and a major contributor to WP's Manual of Style; I also have to look up the spelling or definintion of a word only about once every 2 months or so. <shrug> I know English better than anyone else I have ever personally known. The en-6 babelbox is kind of a joke, meaning "en-5/en-N and then some" but phrased in a silly way.

To answer your real question, there's an essay on the topic at WP:WikiLove. I don't entirely agree with it; while I do not WP:BITE noobs, I don't take as hippy-dippy a view about dealing with their errors and transgressions. 00:40, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is lucky to have someone like you. I have to google words all the time :).--Alnokta (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)