User talk:Gadfium/archive5

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Contents 1 User:24.244.210.190 2 pope molesting 3 Speedy 4 re:WP:RFA 5 Thank you 6 humpback whales 7 why did you remove all my links 8 re: Village Pump - duplicate sections 9 votes 10 Elevation of Tacoma 11 Impersonation 12 My sig file 13 Voting in fir0002 semi FPC 14 User:Billybobjoehik 15 Redundant Links 16 Abortion 17 About adding web sites as external links 18 Abortion 19 Chess 20 FYI 21 Bill Clinton's birth name

[edit] User:24.244.210.190

In case you were curious, it is this IP's first block. I agree with your actions, just saw your comment on ViP. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:24, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pope molesting

what was wrong with what I wrote

What you wrote was not appropriate for this article. The article is on the office of Pope, and what you wrote was about molestation by priests. You made no attempt to tie your text to the article. The chances are, any mention of molestation in the pope article will be removed as being irrelevant, but it certainly isn't sufficiently relevant to be in the first paragraph. You may be interested in our article Roman_Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_scandal.-gadfium 02:13, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy

Yes, very sorry about that, I guess when you're looking at lots of articles you get a bit rushed and need to remember all the important little things to do. I'd thought I'd opened a new article. I'll remember to always check history in future. --Silversmith 09:29, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re:WP:RFA

Working on it right now. --Poiuyt Man (talk) 00:50, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

And done. I was spending some time writing out responses to those questions, but I forgot about replacing the date. Thanks for reminding me. --Poiuyt Man (talk) 00:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

And yes, I realize my number of edits isn't very high, but I'm hoping the overall quality of contributions I've made stands out. I do expect that being denied adminship is a likely outcome, but it's not a terribly big deal; I'd just like the admin powers for the convenience of editing. --Poiuyt Man (talk) 01:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Hey Gadfium, thanks for dealing with my charming namesake and for reverting the message. Best, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:24, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] humpback whales

I´m not sure if you get this meesage - I don´t know why you delete the link to our humpback whale pictures all the time. I think, sorryx I know that those pictures are outstanding and herefor add to goog content of wiki. BTW I would not have a problem to put some of my pictures into wiki. Hope to hear back from you - you may also explain me how I can get in contact with you - I think I have not figured this one out yet. cheers from a half Kiwi

See my reply below this. To contribute pictures, you'll need to get an account with Wikipedia, and then use the "Upload file" link. It would be best if you get an account as commons.wikipedia.org, since pictures uploaded there can be used in any of the different language Wikipedias, but the commons needs to have its pictures copyrighted under the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses (or public domain). If you want to put a no-commercial restriction on your donation of pictures, you'll have to upload them to en.wikiedia.org. When uploading the pictures, say exactly what they are of and what the licence is. You can then add the pictures to appropriate articles. See Wikipedia:Images for more information.-gadfium 19:45, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] why did you remove all my links

Dear Gadfium,

I don´t understand why you have removed all our links - we only contibuted our picture pages which fits to the articles, and we also got very good comments from wiki user that those links are helpful. why do you take the right and remove them all??? I don´t think it has anything to do with spamming if almost every wiki page has external links to whatever the page is about - this includes also links to photographers/picture pages. Our work is done professional and herefor adds a lot to wiki - why don´t you remove all links also to other photographers???? only to me??? As I mentioned I don´t have a problem to make the wikipages better by including my pictures in them . but I don´t think it is in favour of the wiki structure if someone like you just goes in into pages which you never had anything to do with them and just remove all my links - just because you don´t like my pages (for whatever reason) - I would very much appreciate if you come back to me about this concern - again, the idea of wiki is to provide information - what we do, and not to try to control it. I hope you agree and you can tell me your point of view - best regards Rolf

Wikipedia is not a web directory. If we link to one picture site, we should link to all of them, but that would make all our articles unweildy. When I see someone adding such links to a bunch of articles, I remove them. There are undoubtedly some such links in Wikipedia which haven't yet been removed; you can remove them yourself if you'd like. If you really want to help Wikipedia, rather than to promote your own site, please consider donating some of your photos to us.-gadfium 19:34, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

One option you have is to ask the wider community for feedback on whether your links are acceptable. I would suggest that you copy this conversation to your talk page at User talk:Wildnis, add any further explanations of why you think links to your site are valuable to Wikipedia, including links to sample pages there, and then advertise the discussion for people to comment at the following two places: Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) and Requests for comment. If you get a consensus that people like the links, then you've got a green light to add them, and anyone like me who thinks to remove them can be pointed to the discussion. You will need to conduct all further edits of Wikipedia while logged in so other editors will find the discussion easily.-gadfium 23:31, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re: Village Pump - duplicate sections

Nice job on cleaning up all the duplicate sections at the village pump. Before I figured out what had happened, I thought that the servers were having a meltdown.... the section text keep switching back and forth between two different versions. :-)

By the way, how does one become a programmer for a large software company and THEN go to college to study chemistry? Do you already have a programming degree?

- Pioneer-12 17:56, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I've had a number of careers. I was a truck driver for many years, then got bored with that and spent two years of training to become a computer programmer (not a degree, but a reasonable qualification for programming in those days). I then worked for several companies and did some contracting before settling down into a startup which was bought out by my present employer. I'm bored by programming now, so I'm looking for a new career. My intention is to quit work later this year and be a full-time student from next year. It'll then be two more years to complete a BSc, then an honours year, and at least three years to do a PhD. It will take longer if I don't manage to skip over having to do a Masters degree. It's also possible that I'll decide that being a full-time student isn't right for me, and I'll find something else to occupy myself.

I chose chemistry as a major with biochem as a minor, but what I'd really like to get into is molecular nanotechnology. Very few universities offer that as an undergraduate degree option, and none of them local to me, so I picked chemistry as being a good foundation. I looked at physics as a minor, but after a couple of papers decided it didn't interest me as much as biology did.-gadfium 19:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Wow, truck driver to computer programmer... to nanotechnology.... you don't don't see many of those. (Like I should talk.... I've worked in a hotel and an amusement park....) Have you read Engines of creation, by K. Eric Drexler? A fascinating book.

- Pioneer-12 20:37, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I haven't read Engines of Creation, as it was written in the mid 1980s and was already very out of date when I became seriously interested in nanotech. I first heard about nanotech in the late 1980s, primarily through magazines such as Analog, and when looking into it further late in the 1990s I used Drexler's later work Nanosystems as my reference. I recall reading several years ago that EoC was being updated for a second edition, but I don't know what became of that venture. It's quite a long time ago that I read Nanosystems, so I should probably get it out of the library and read it again.-gadfium 01:37, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] votes

Re your vote on styles. I understand and agree. But only casting one vote is effectively a vote against Alternative 1 because it means that less opposition is recorded against its nearest rival. Ireland uses an electoral system called Proportional Representation using a Single Transferable Vote. It works on the same principle as the one being used (only less complicated! I never thought I would find a system more complicated than PR.STV!) What you do is give your bottom preference to the people you want to defeat, and spread your vote in a way that boosts the rivals of the alternative you do not want. So if for example, you find Alternative 3 the one you least like, give it your bottom vote so that opposition to it is recorded. And spread the other votes to ensure the weakest get votes ahead of it. If for example in Ireland I want to ensure candidate 'x' of Fianna Fáil is elected, and ensure candidate 'y' of Sinn Féin is defeated, and there are 15 candidates, I give my number 1 to 'x', my number '15' to 'y' and spread my other votes to ensure that all other candidates beat 'y'.

Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil voters famously used to practice a 'first and only choice' vote by just voting for their own preferred candidate and then stopping. They eventually realised that they were wasting their vote because they weren't using it to block those they were most opposed to, or to build up the rivals to the candidate they were opposed to. To stop Alternative 3 winning, if that is what you want, give it your fifth choice and give your second, third and fourth choices to the weakest options.

Just be careful though not to copy everyone else doing it. If everyone gives the same other alternatives the same order of votes they may win. So if option 4 gets a lot of 2s, give it a 4. Doing a full vote right down the line will have the effect of strengthening Alternative 1 vis-a-vis 3 or whatever. Just voting for 1 and stopping actually weakens it against its rivals if everyone else votes down the line, because while their opposition to different alternatives is recorded, by stopping at 1 your's isn't. That is why though very popular Alternative 1 is being beaten. Remember the winner won't be decided by who has more votes for, but which faces the least opposition. Slán FearÉIREANN\^(talk) 00:11, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I choose not to play by those rules. The issue is not sufficiently important to warrant the time taken to learn that voting system. Incidentally, I voted in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)/Survey on Style-Prefixed Honorary Titles several days ago, and have edited many other pages since; you could have made it easier for me to tell what you were talking about by linking to the page.-gadfium 01:15, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I really don't like the voting system, in part because I shouldn't have to vote on options I don't like in order for my vote for options I do like to count fully, and in part because several of the options require not just a ranked vote but an explanation of how it should work. Why should I explain how an option I wish to vote against should work? Nevertheless, I've changed my vote to include all options as it seems that's a requirement for the vote to be effective.-gadfium 00:24, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Elevation of Tacoma

Removing your comment from Wikipedia:Reference desk#Altitude/Elevation question was a real courtesy. The pool of wikilove just grew. I had not noticed that my edit conflict was on the very section that I was editing (mental note to self: check conflicts more carefully). --Theo (Talk) 09:26, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Impersonation

Thank you for blocking my impostor. Please, could you also roll back this edit, which is the only one that might damage my reputation (he types, pompously)? Thanks --Theo (Talk) 08:32, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't have the ability to remove edits from the database, as far as I know. Only developers can do that. I suggest you either add a reply to it pointing out it's not you, or just delete the comment with an appropriate edit summary.-gadfium 08:37, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My sig file

Hi Gadfium - thanks for the comment. Casito's right though, it doesn't help the server problems. Maybe someone'll fix that sometime and I'll go back to it, who knows? Grutness...wha? 10:31, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Voting in fir0002 semi FPC

Hi Gadfium, I was wondering if you could spare the time to participate in my semi-FPC. For a while, (unable to decide on only one image) I was uploading multiple images onto the FPC page, which caused those who tallied up the final results considerable problems. So to remedy that (going on a suggestion of User:Solipsist) I created a page (User:Fir0002/FPCandidates) in which whenever I had a bunch of photos which I couldn't chose from, I'd ask a couple of people to vote for the best one, or alternatively say that none of them are worth putting onto the FPC page. I'd really appreciate it if you could join in. Thanks, --Fir0002 01:15, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Will do, but not until tonight.-gadfium 01:29, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Billybobjoehik

Hey Gadfium! I was wanting to ask you why you warned me like that. After all, all I was doing was tryin to have a little fun. Actually, my friend Spoonboy had been doing most of these edits under my name (we both decided to create accounts together and tell eachother the passwords). Do you think you could do something about this problem that I have with spoonboy? Please, if you can do anything please do that. Thanks for any help that you can give me. Billybobjoehik

Hey gadfium. Thanks for telling me to stop vandalizing wikipedia. I guess the whole george washington thing is a little extreme. I promise that I won't do that ever again, really. However, I wanted to inform you about something. When I first got my wikipedia account, me and my friend (username spoonboy) created them together. We told eachother our passwords. So actually to make a long story short, he us occasionally causing vandalism under my name. Is there something that you could do to verify that the computer on the other line is actually mine? Please do something. Thanks for wakeing me up, I won't do it again. Billybobjoehik

[edit] Redundant Links

I see what you mean. I vaguely remeber reading about that. Seeing the blue links everywhere makes the article difficult and unpleasant to read. I hope people dont have such an adverse reaction to slightly different date layouts.

[edit] Abortion

No trouble, my change was only a reversion of the POV "abortion-cancer hypothesis" paragraph. Emiao 05:34, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About adding web sites as external links

I did not know that you did not want added websites. The reason for this being that wikipedia is loaded with much more offensively commercial websites.Just look at the external links for Brazil for instance. Since I live in Brazil I am familiar with them. At least mine is a wiki, and a real service, and is not being blatantly commercial or devious in any way. I would like to hear your thoughts on removing all the commercial web sites that are already listed.

After reading your response I have just a few final thoughts. I know that there can never be 100% agreement on anything, much less peoples' tastes or standards of value. Instead of having to police wikipedia using the editors' standards, wouldn't it be more "wiki-like" to offer a commercial category and let the consumer decide. I know wikipedia is a big operation and that the addition of one line of code even for thousands of websites would not be that costly. I'm pretty sure your readership would cull all of the "online drug sale" spam from the content in a short period of time. This is just an appeal for wikipedia to be more "wiki-like" and a little less authoritarian in nature.

[edit] Abortion

I didn't think I could do such a move without messing up the histories, or I would have, --SqueakBox 01:01, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chess

Hehe, no problem. I'm looking forward to listening to it :-D Linuxbeak | Desk 03:48, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

You might want to comment on my game again; it appears that Project2501a is digging himself a hole :-) Linuxbeak | Desk 01:11, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] FYI

I've withdrawn from the RFA due to my attempt at humour that went badly wrong. Figured you should know, and sorry. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:31, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Ya. You have to understand, I feel really rotten about the whole business. Everyking sticking the knife in, and TheCustomOfLife doing the same didn't help. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:36, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bill Clinton's birth name

Dear Gadfium,

One point of contention that I have had with other Wikipedia contributors concerns the continued misrepresentation of the name Bill Clinton was given at birth. It was William Jefferson Blythe IV, not William Jefferson Blythe III. I have corrected this false statement in Bill Clinton's article multiple times, but each time it was reverted to the false name. This is really starting to annoy me. Please, I beg of you, help me to keep his true birth name, William Jefferson Blythe IV, intact. You may look it up if you don't believe me- it should be on his White House biography, and that is what he says in his autobiography. So please, help me to maintain his true birth name and his father's article, William Jefferson Blythe III, not Jr. Thank you. (Posted by Valadius (talk · contribs))

I've checked on whitehouse.gov, and seen the discussion at Talk:Bill Clinton. It looks like you're right, although I'm no expert on the subject. I won't revert your change again.

You must understand that making modifications of this sort to articles without citing references looks like vandalism. I seem to recall that the last time I reverted such a change it was made in the first section of the article but not in other areas, and I reverted because you were introducing an inconsistency without any evidence provided. You can make this easier for any future issues by adding a reference to the website (not just naming it, provide a link. I know to go to whitehouse.gov not .com, but does everyone? I then had to search for his bio), or to the talk page section containing the references. Thanks for your persistence.

By the way, please sign your posts on talk pages with ~~~~.-gadfium 19:41, 30 May 2005 (UTC)