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Revision as of 19:50, 18 February 2008

Archived round about 30K. I will respond on your user talk page. I don't watch user talk pages, so I may or may not respond if you don't reply to me here.

My user talk has slowly become my user page; my actual user page I just find frustrating and I think I'll stick with the poems. I throw extra stuff here. For the record: Tim Marskell, a Canadian living in the United Arab Emirates (though often found elsewhere).

Misplaced Pages:Babel

en This user is a native speaker of the English language.

fr-1 Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français.

This user is a member of WikiProject for writing a featured article per quarter.

This user is an administrator on the English Misplaced Pages. (verify)

• Archives 1 to 21, 2005-2007
• Jan 1 - Jan 25 2008

An interesting theory

Came across this in an inset about Giant Otters in this book: "Love, John A. (1992). Sea Otters. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing. ISBN 1-55591-123-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)", p. 12: "These so-called campsites are cleared of vegetation so that the residents can trample in their smelly feces and urine to warn off intruding otters." I'll let you decide if/how to incorporate it. Cheers, Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 07:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

name for species

Hi Marskell, I notice that you gave Litoria caerulea a touch up - nice work. I would like to hear your opinion on the name of the article. Regards, cygnis insignis 15:00, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Ta for the reply. I believe I have a rationale for moving the page to the unambiguous name, the title of the page you linked, the name above. I see this as being in accordance with WP:TOL, common sense, and the most broadly accepted system of nomenclature, but I am aware that not all editors share that view. We might also avoid the suggestion of OR with our disambiguating title ;-) cygnis insignis 16:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Prague Spring

The former was a regional affiliate of the latter in a unified Czechoslovakia, yeah, isn't that kind of obvious? I mean Czechoslovakia is a well enough known country, and if not, then the name Czechoslovakia pretty much explains it.--The Dominator (talk) 16:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for peer review

Hi, I saw your name on the wikipedia:peer review volunteer page. I'm currently working on a science article called the Kardashev Scale, the page has gone through a lot of changes in the last 3 months, some of them reverts that I wish to overturn. I've sent out some notices to people who have worked on the page previously but I'm having problems getting open opinions and feedback. Their ideas about what they want the article to be about and look like are pretty set. I need outside opinion.

In my opinion the Kardashev scale has 3 primary interests:

• 1) A benchmark used by Seti scientists in there search for extraterrestrials
• 2) A catch-all vocabulary term for a scale used by scientists, in classifying advanced civilizations. This has important implications when speculating on sociological structures of advanced civilizations. But also, it is a necessary analysis when talking what about clues might be left behind or generated by alien species; which then might lead the the discovery of extraterrestrials.
• 3) Because it is can be used for the speculation of advanced civilizations it is a magnet for those interested in science fiction. Not many science fiction writers actually talk about the scale or the power generated by fiction species in power(WATTS) terms, but science fiction enthusiasts are interested in the Kardashev Scale.

My primary goals are in advancing the content area of number 2 and diminishing the fictional content. After all, it is a scientific not a fictional topic. My secondary goals are to find and add published content on the extension of the scale. The feedback I have gotten is pretty much divided between goals 1 or 3. And I don't want to create a editing war!

So please read the article and the discussion page and tell me what you think!!

• 1)Is the article presently fine the way it is?
• 2)After you read it, did you get the impression that it was a science article or a science fiction article?
• 3)Was it too long, too short, easy to understand?
• 4)Was the article interesting, was it boring, did it feel jumbled or was it concise?
• 5)What do you think might be needed to be added to this article, what do you think needs to be edited out?

Thx--Sparkygravity (talk) 18:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, so your suggesting that I should generate a section right under the lead about who uses the Kardashev scale and why, with citations?--Sparkygravity (talk) 23:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Heroes peer review

I noticed that your user name was on the Misplaced Pages:Peer review/volunteers list. I was wondering if you could take some time out of your schedule to head over to the Heroes (TV series) talkpage and give us an honest peer review. The page has gone through some major changes in the last few months, and it would be fantastic if a prominent editor/contributor like yourself, could head over and give us at the Heroes Wikiproject some sound opinion and ideas on improvements for the page. We have all worked very hard at improving the page, and we need great outside, reliable and trustworthy users to come over and help us improve. I you are interested in joining the peer review discussion with other prominent users/contributors, much like yourself, please follow the link. Thank you very much for your help and your continued effort to improve Misplaced Pages and its quality! Misplaced Pages:Peer review/Heroes (TV series)/archive2--Chrisisinchrist (talk) 05:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I need help

I can't read this article, and I need it to finish citing Triton, specifically the "Craters" section. If you could have a look at it and fix up the section, I would be very thankful. Thanks again. Serendious 13:52, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Someone else already provided me with a link to the article, so it's OK now. Triton is now fully cited. As for the FAC, don't stress over it. If we start preventing people from making nominations we run the risk of seriously dampening newbie enthusiasm. I don't really think that Planet is up to FAC yet, but I need to get some rather obscure materials to hand before I can tackle the issues I have with it. Serendious 20:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I spy your talk page Tim. ;-) I provided the article. Joelito (talk) 21:49, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Otter

I started work in my sandbox; I see I'm late :-) A bit more to do, and you can have a look. Some of the Spanish is too vague to work with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:52, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, done in my sandbox. I know a lot of it may not be useful, and you'll need to fix my prose, but take whatever is useful from my sandbox. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Report comments

Hi Marskell. In case you miss it, I've left comments at User talk:Marskell/Sandbox. Carcharoth (talk) 23:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Sirius

PS: Sirius is at FAC. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

FA"s and other work

My current situation makes it very hard for me to do much work on AF level articles or even to create minor stubs. Research is very time consuming and I have little time...just a couple of hours here and there each day...so I have been spending most of my wiki time doing vandal reverts and similar chores...hence, I figured that the tools would have been nice since I could also help clear out backlogs as they present themselves and also block egregious vandals...things that require little concentration compared to research. I hope to have more time soon as I do have one article I would like to get the FA level. Thanks for the kind thoughts.--MONGO 05:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Nightwish

Hi, sorry for the confusion, I voted (Misplaced Pages:Featured article review/Nightwish) and then took another look and got to fixing stuff. I will remove my vote for now, and I think after a few days I can get this one will be back up to FA status. Skeletor2112 (talk) 06:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Help Please

SandyGeorgia sent me here from her talk page suggesting that you may be able to put me out of my misery. I was hoping you can do a pre-emptive strike and block my IP. As weird as that sounds; under the circumstance it may be the only way for me to not become uncivil. So far I've been pretty damn good at chewing off my tongue. If you can't block me --- then can you delete me? I need to get away; but this is like a heroin addictions. Should I blank my page first? Please have mercy. Never--- never --- try to push an article through FA --- especially on the topic of evolution! Please shut down HAL. --Random Replicator (talk) 17:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Delete please. Thank you! --Random Replicator (talk) 19:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually this works better, apparently I'm not the first to suffer withdraw symptoms. I'll see if I can work out how to do it. --Random Replicator (talk) 19:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

FAC: Planet

I went through the whole article in detail (except for the magnetosphere issue). You are welcome to check it again and let me know what you think. Nergaal (talk) 09:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

You mean not edited 100+ edits? Nergaal (talk) 20:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a fairly akward situation to have to explain my actions. Why is it a requirement to have edited the article if when I stumped upon the article, I thought it is good enough to be an FA and nominated it? As per FA review, it proved that I missed some key points that were solved withing a few days. What would withdrawing it now and renominating it later do besides take attention away from the article? I still do not understand your stand! Nergaal (talk) 20:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

That tool is really cool and I am going to assume that it actually shows the real number of edits. I am going to talk to Serendipious and see what he thinks (although I still think withdrawing the nomination is not the best choice). Nergaal (talk) 01:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

If you have a chance, can you give a last glance to Planet? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Dispatches

You're welcome, yes, and hopefully within the next half-hour or so :) Ral315 (talk) 10:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Surface features on Ganymede

You may be right that 'Surface featutes' is more appropriate place for the information about tidal heating and grooved terrain formation. Also you can try to merge the papagraph about imact features into that subsection.

I am sorry but my participation will be limited in the next several days due to illness. Ruslik (talk) 15:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I requested the article to be peer reviewed. Ruslik (talk) 19:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Abu Dhabi

Hello, I wonder if you could offer your opinion in an ongoing dispute at the Abu Dhabi article. This article includes a paragraph pointing out that Abu Dhabi has been mentioned a few times (not many) in a very popular comic strip about a talking cat. The paragraph was added on 2005-01-12, when the article looked like this. Do you believe that a reference in a comic strip about a talking cat is an important fact that should appear in an encyclopedia article about a major city? Please comment at Talk:Abu Dhabi. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.69.96.155 (talk) 00:50, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thought for the next FAC/GAC dispatch

It was nice that you mentioned those people who wrote FAs, but I think it might also be nice to mention the hard-working reviewers. Without their assistance, the articles would not improve! Awadewit | talk 21:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Michigan State University

I'll check later; I just saw the news about internet outages in the Middle East, you OK? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

FAR Q

Marskell, I just found a FAR page on Misplaced Pages:Featured article review/Hurricane Irene (2005) via a VeblenBot link, and it seemed to be open so I commented there. I now see it's not on the FAR page; I almost never comment at FAR so I thought I'd ask you to unconfuse me -- is this closed or was it never open? I thought the "closed" chrome was usually added at the completion of a FAR discussion, giving the different colour and the "this discussion is now closed" header. What's up with this one? Mike Christie (talk) 00:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I usually check the cat once or twice a week to pick up FARs that weren't transcluded; I forgot to do it this week. That needs to be transcluded to FAR, with a note on the FAR and to Nergaal. A lot of the hurricane articles are coming under fire for reasons I haven't deciphered; Titoxd appears to have left. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Mammal collab page done

OK, I'll set this up here - feel free to nominate and foraward to any other editor interested in furry critters. We'll see how it flies and I'll drop a note in the signpost.

Nominating key articles is ok, even if you can't work on them. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:03, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Perhaps you could look at Misplaced Pages:Peer review/Homeopathy/archive2. The article was subject to intense edit warring, but things seem to have calmed down as a result of Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation. The article is reasonably good and could be featured with a bit of trimming and removal of bloated sections to daughter articles. Jehochman 22:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

FA-Team and first mission (MMM)

Dear Marskell,

Many thanks for volunteering to join the FA-Team. We now have a first mission, to help the Murder, Madness and Mayhem WikiProject improve twelve articles towards featured article status. These articles are really interesting, and the person in charge of WP:MMM is enthusiastic about our support, so this mission should be a real pleasure. Please watchlist the mission page and the WikiProject page as well as some (or all) of the twelve articles. The students contributing to these articles are all new to Misplaced Pages, so please be ultra-friendly towards them.

The coordinator for this mission is Wrad (talk), who may suggest further ways in which you can help. I will provide back-up. In particular, it might be useful for you to indicate which of the twelve articles interest you most (or which ones you are watchlisting) on the mission page.

Thanks again for joining in. I think this will be a lot of fun for all of us, and hopefully we can make it fun for the students too and create a few more featured articles between now and April. Geometry guy 21:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

PS. If you have time to add information about your expertise to the FA-Team page that would be great!

Anyone working on the Solar System featured topic

Please come settle the current debate raging over there. Thank you. Serendious 11:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: Marquez + various

(Copied over from my talk page:) Thanks to you both for your advice and input. Re. the point that some articles are more equal than others... I am aware of this. And I realize it's my problem, not yours. I'm interested, however, that you think that the GGM one is probably the most difficult. I've been thinking that The Dictator Novel probably offered the most challenge, mostly because it doesn't easily fit a recognizeable format, as do the biographical or bibliographical articles. In part I hope to compensate for these variabilities by being an active editor myself, as you can no doubt already see. It's very much a project in which I'm also involved. Regarding assessment, I also very much like the idea that students are being assessed by the wikipedia community for something that they are contributing to the public domain. Of course, that works only if they do manage to bring the articles up to having a decent shot at GA and/or FA review. We're still some distance from that. Anyhow, in sum, this is all very much an experiment. So I all the more appreciate your advice. Some days I'm confident; other days, less so. Having the good will of the wikipedia community and the benefit of experienced eyes such as those of yourselves certainly makes me breathe a little easier. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 22:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Prague Spring

Yup, thanks to all your help with that, there's still a lot to do before FA, so it's possible that it might eventually need another copyedit, when I have more time I'll work on the blind-spots that you pointed out.--The Dominator (talk) 14:56, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:FAR/sub

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Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:30, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

FAC on a book

If your workload permits, would you visit David Suzuki: The Autobiography and comment at Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/David Suzuki: The Autobiography? Looking for input, if I covered all my bases. It's a short article, I promise! --maclean 05:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/IRC

This arbitration case has closed and the final decision may be found at the link above. Giano is placed on civility restriction for one year. Should Giano make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith, Giano may be blocked for the duration specified in the enforcement ruling. All parties in this case are strongly cautioned to pursue disputes in a civil manner designed to contribute to resolution and to cause minimal disruption. All the involved editors, both the supporters and detractors of IRC, are asked to avoid edit warring on project space pages even if their status is unclear, and are instructed to use civil discussion to resolve all issues with respect to the "admin" IRC channel. For the Arbitration committee, Thatcher 04:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

FAR input

I did five or six. Yikes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Dispatch

We'll go with yours; I don't know if someone's planning on making sure that someone picks this up regularly. I was under the assumption that someone from the FA team would handle it.

As far as moving it, my preferred method is moving, because it keeps the history intact (cut-and-paste might technically be a GFDL violation). If you do any more dispatches, perhaps you could put them at User:Marskell/Dispatches, so that your sandbox history stays intact, as well as the history of the Signpost article. Ral315 (talk) 01:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Beautiful; I'm happy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

There's a typo. It says I'm active, when it should be inactive. And might I suggest for the next one an in-depth enquiry into the rumour that Sandy will promote for chocolate? Confirmation would render all the guides to FA redundant. Yomangani 17:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Chocolate is good. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a politician's answer. Yomangani 17:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

A platform of change, hope, and chocolate would get my vote. Marskell (talk) 17:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:LEAD

Um, hi, I noticed you edited the lead guideline, but in doing so you removed, not only a relevant statement of the policy, but also a link to the policy of what a definition is for the purposes of the lead.

In Misplaced Pages:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary#Good_definitions it says:

"A definition aims to describe or delimit the meaning of some term (a word or a phrase) by giving a statement of essential properties or distinguishing characteristics of the concept, entity, or kind of entity, denoted by that term."

While it's good to try to minimise the size of the lead guidelines, removing this consensus policy positive statement and leaving only a negative statement about what should be in a definition here is much worse than simply having a slightly longer guideline.

You seem to be implying that the guideline should not follow policy.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 15:34, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Lawson

Not sure how to best present the "Buildings by Lawson" section; it's kinda ugly now, but at least I sourced most of it. I found contradictory info from different sources on the Dunedin Municipal Chambers. Some said he was the architect, some said otherwise, some said another fellow won the contract, but then Lawson used his own plans, I wasn't able to sort it out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, do you 'spose Tony or Cas could lay hands on these sources?

• Chapman Lloyd (2003) In a Strange Garden, The Life and Times of Truby King Penguin. Auckland, N.Z. ISBN 0-14-301879-5.
• Herd, J. & Griffiths, G.J. (1980). Discovering Dunedin. Dunedin: John McIndoe. ISBN 0-86868-030-3.
• Knight, H., and Wales, N. (1988) Buildings of Dunedin. Dunedin: John McIndoe. ISBN 0-86868-106-7.
• Mane-Weoki, Jonathan. (1992). The Architecture of Robert Arthur Lawson. Bulletin of New Zealand art history. Vol 13.
• McGill, David (1997). Landmarks: Notable historic buildings of New Zealand. Auckland: Godwit Publishing. ISBN 1869620038.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Phantom reply on my talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

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Request for peerreview

Hello Marskell, if you have the time I think the article on Nahuatl which I have nominated for a pre-FA peerreview might be right up your ballpark. I would certainly appreciate any comments and suggestions you have that might lead me to improve the content, style and grammar of the article. Thanks beforehand. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 15:41, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Blackface

Yes, I'm still working on it. It's very frustrating that most of the people who aren't happy with the article seem more interested in sniping at it than in doing any solid research in the (rather extensive) literature on the topic.

It would be very helpful to know which concerns you consider valid. - Jmabel | Talk 23:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

collaboration -to start the ball rolling

Cynna Kydd

Thanks for the note. I haven't forgotten about this at all, but I've been really busy over the last few weeks, and really haven't had time to touch Misplaced Pages apart from skimming my watchlist. I do intend to fix the small number remaining issues soon, but it probably won't be this week (orientation week at university, so I'll be very busy). I'm worried it's going to get taken down in the meantime, however. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rebecca (talk • contribs) 15:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

If you know someone

who might have a chance to look at this paper, I would like to know whether Herschel uses any words to describe moons other than "satellite". I tried asking Joel, but he can't access it. thanks for your help. Serendious 16:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Ganymede

Thanks. (Almost) all is well with me. I removed the sentence contaning "the low strength of the higher quadrupole harmonics" and added an explanation for "dimenesionless moment of inertia". However "magnetic moment" requires a lengthy explanation. I think it is better to simply use the wikilink.

I agree that the article is ready to go to FA and I am going to nominate it in the next week. Ruslik (talk) 17:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Co noms et al

Related question at Rick Block's page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Dispatch for Feb 18

Hi Marskell, it didn't look like you had had time to put together a Dispatch yet (although maybe I just didn't see it), so I threw one together very quickly. It's not linked at the Signpost yet because I didn't know if you or Sandy had written one already, or if this is what was intended. Karanacs (talk) 16:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I left comments at WT:FAC; we need a place to coordinate this. Let me know which one we're working on, and I'll peek in during the day. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Your remarks

Your abuse of Crum was totally unacceptable, and you owe him a heartfelt apology. Given your own tendency to follow SandyGeorgia around backing her up in disputes, including disputes of her own making, and attacking people she wants you to attack, it's doubly inappropriate for you to be criticizing anyone else's wikifriendships. Your assumption of bad faith and disrespectul remarks really have to stop. People don't follow you around doing it to you, and you have no right or reason to do it to others. It sometimes feels as though you'd be happy to see certain people driven off the website.

It saddens me to write this, because I had hoped after our last run-in that we could try to respect each other, but it seems for you that this is a one-way street. You are allowed to post insults about me and my friends, but I am not meant to respond, unless I want to risk even more attacks. That can't work. It's a big website, so please let's edit in different areas of it from now on. SlimVirgin 19:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

What you do is worse. You follow her around acting as an attack dog. Anyway, I don't want to get into a protracted debate about it, because it's all poison and it's not what I'm here for. Just please leave me alone in future, and I'll extend the same courtesy to you. SlimVirgin 19:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No, Marskell, no diffs. You know exactly what you've done, and I don't want to play anymore. This is my last comment about it, and if you want to respond, I'd prefer you did it here. I really mean it. I've had enough. If you want to drive me away from Misplaced Pages, you, Tim, Sandy, and your little circle of insulting friends are going the right way about it. I hope that's not what you want, so I'm asking that you leave me alone, at least as far as possible. SlimVirgin 19:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

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