Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Derek Ross (talk | contribs) at 00:12, 13 November 2002. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Hi Derek--welcome to Misplaced Pages!

On the David Hume article, you de-CamelCase'd some links (AnEnquiryConcerningHumanUnderstanding became An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), but in doing so you didn't change the latter link to one that actually works. You could do this in one of two ways: by redirecting the former to the latter page (and moving the scanty text of the former to the latter), or else by writing the link like this: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In this particular example, by the way, I don't think it matters very much that the link was broken, because there's nothing there but the text of the Enquiry, and nobody, I imagine, is going to come to Misplaced Pages to read an outdated text of a philosophical classic. But, well, it's the principle of the thing--we don't want to make links broken. I haven't checked the other articles that you've de-CamelCase'd, but if you could check and reinstall the links, that would be good. Thanks. --Larry Sanger

Sorry about that. I wasn't intending to make any changes to the links and I'm not sure why it did what you said. As a fan of Hume, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from reading his work! I was just trying to change existance to existence. I'll go back to all those pages, check out the links and fix them if necessary.

Nice work on the translation of the Declaration, Derek. Thanks! -- Paul Drye

Hi Derek -- among the very necessary changes you've made to article names for various rules, I noticed you were changing the names of some articles (like for Roman Emperors). I know that that kind of fits in with some of the discussion on nomenclature, but frankly, the "of the Roman Empire" sounds just WRONG to me. Could you hold off on the renaming till we can discuss it on the History talk or nomenclature or whatever it is page? We've got a couple ancient history and classicist types that I'd love to hear from on the subject before anybody goes to the trouble of revising all of these article names!! Thanks -- JHK

No problem. I'll hold off. I only did the Constantines because they were clashing with the Scottish kings. To be frank I'm not too happy with of the Roman empire either and I did consider using of Rome. In any case I'm perfectly willing to wait until this has been properly thrashed out. I've no wish to do a whole lot of tedious renaming then find out that nobody likes the new names! -- Derek

Thanks! JHK aka J Hofmann Kemp

Derek, I notice that you have changed the format of the years pages. I do like the +5 and -5 date range, as it is useful to browse through years. I created many of these pages by hand, and am frustrated that I need to now go through all of these pages again and put in the 'Year in Review links for the previous and next centuries. I also note that you deleted the hierarchical summary links which doesn't make sense to me either.

ie: 1951 1952 1953 - 1950s - 20th century

I know how much work is involved in what you have done, just regret the work I have ahead of me to fix the pages to the more useful format. -- BenBaker

Ben, my reasons for changing the format and deleting these navigational links were as follows.

• The navigation part of the page was taking up more lines than the information in some cases.
• Even where it wasn't, it had an undue prominence. People don't go to the timeline so that they can find out how to reach other parts. They go there in order to find out about Events, Births and Deaths during a given year. So the navigation shouldn't take up more than a couple of lines on the screen. Even the format which I settled on is arguably too large and should probably be moved below the real information.
• The links which I deleted were all present more than once apart from the Year In Review links and redundant links take up precious screen space. I don't feel that there is as much utility in the Year in Review for the previous and next centuries as there is for the other links and that is why I decided to remove them. It is still easy to get to them by going through the previous and next century links in any case.
• The navigation links were inconsistent from year to year. I realise that this is because several different people have been working on them.

I'm not quite sure what you mean about deleting the hierarchical summary links since each of the links still exists in an obvious position somewhere else on the page. I've actually introduced an extra level of hierarchy with the millenia pages for use in prehistory where timing is vague.

In any case I have no great love for the current format that I've been using. I'd prefer something more compact but at least as useful. Before you start changing everything back, I think we should agree on something better than what we have at the moment, so that we can work together on making a consistent, easy to use bit of navigation that doesn't take more than three or four lines. That way it'll halve the amount of work that we each have to do and keep both of us happy. -- Derek

Derek, thanks for cleaning the vandalism from my page, i never even noticed it till i checked RC just now! cheers! -- Asa Winstanley

Hey Derek. Thanks for the welcome. I found the Decades and Centuries pages about 19 seconds after I posted my query about "wouldn't it be neat if...". As soon as I posted it I said, wait a sec... hmmmm... and sho nuff... there they were. GMTA I guess! :) -RobertL30

Many thanks for the kind compliment re Budapest, Derek - I wouldn't have worried if I'd known you were starting an article. Have you any plans to tackle Belgrade? (I imagine we're both working through the "most wanted" list", and I'm putting off "Cotton" and "Wheat") One query, though: I incorporated your AD 198 for Aquincum, but another source indicates 106 or earlier. Any preference? Cheers, David Parker

No real plans to do Belgrade. The only reason that I did a stub for Budapest was because I'd visited on business last week and I had my guide book handy to pull a few facts from. It was a nice city to visit. The Roman remains at Aquincum are well worth seeing and the city as a whole has some great buildings going back to the Turkish occupation and before. As for Most Wanted, I only plan to do stuff that catches my eye. Re the 198 date, that's what the guidebook said for the date when Aquincum became an official Roman colony. The same guidebook says that the Celts founded the settlement soemtime in the 1st century BC and that Aquincum is from the Celtic for Many Waters referring to the local springs and spas. So your source for 106 may well be better since I'm pretty sure that the ancients Celts didn't write my guidebook and it didn't say where it got the info from! -- Derek

Per your comment about the kings pages in relation to the British Monarchs article: All I was doing was providing redirects to the British Monarchs article. The reason why, was to fix several broken links I have created over the months. It would also be odd to have a direct link to "British Monarchs" within a king or queen article - that term just doesn't flow like, king of England, for example ("king of England" is a redirect to "British Monarchs"). I didn't make any queeny broken links, so I didn't bother with that (there weren't that many anyway...). And while we are on the subject, the term "British Monarchs" sounds and looks like a proper name of a sports team. I would suggest changing that to British monarchs or beter yet the singular (and therefore easier to link to in an article) of British monarch to avoid confusion - I will fix the redirects I created to match the new article name if it is changed. -maveric149

Hello, Derek

Yes, there is something funny going on with Mary Stuart, isn't there? But I think it's part of the general wikipedia problems, and nothing personal!

Nice to see Scotland getting a bit of expert attention, anyway - from you, that is. user: Deb

Hi Derek. Thanks for the changes you made regarding the Gregorian calendar (October 5 - October 14). You made me look into the subject and I learned something. That's a good thing about Misplaced Pages. Thanks! -- G_from_B

Thanks Derek for your comments on the city naming debate. I'd like to raise a few responses here instead of on the subject page to keep the debate from spinning out of control in yet another direction. With your having raised the issue of multiple Newburghs we may need to review just what we mean by "where required". It is also important to remember that outside of the United Kingdom the knowledge of UK counties is somewhat wanting. Some even draw the conclusion that Scotland is a part of England.
In the simplest situation of only two cities to be disambiguated,
1. There is one city outside the UK and one in the UK.
2. There are two cities in different nations of the UK.
3. There are two cities in the same nation of the UK. My proposal was designed for situation 1, and yours for situation 3.

In disambiguating Aberdeen, South Dakota and Aberdeen, Scotland is it necessary to show the Scotish County?

In situation 2 would it be sufficiant to put and ?

In your example would there be any benefit to using the format ?

Could you please answer on my talk page. Eclecticology 02:40 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)

I appreciate your reply. The debate has gone a long way from the time when the Yanks believed that duplicate country names could happen in no universal country but their own. What you say about people who found communities not feeling the restraint of Bureaucracies on Geographical Names is true everywhere in the world. Our two positions aren't that far apart. I admit that limiting the examples to cities that only occur twice appears simplistic, but it is an essential stepping stone to solving more complicated situations. I also accept that the bulk of the labour fro disambiguating British place names will fall on British shoulders.

I think that most disambiguations will develop by degrees. It may very well start as Newport, Rhode Island and Newport, Wales, and the person who started that may not even imagine that there are several other Newports in the UK. The next person may realize that there is "one" in England and proceed to Newport, England. He may know about Newport-on-Tay in Scotland, but think of that as a completely different name. It may not be until yet another Wikipedian comes along that Newport, Wales becomes Newport, Gwent and Newport, Dyfed.

Your example of Kincardine was an interesting one. I also found a Kincardine Parish in Perthshire, that few people might be presumed to know about. Of the two Scottish sites that you mention my old Times Atlas of the World shows the one in Fife as "Kincardine on Forth", and the one in Aberdeenshire as "Kincardine O'Neill" in Grampian. Even though I agree with your proposal for listing these two, how would I know whether to use Kincardine, Aberdeenshire or Kincardine, Grampian?

In an attempt to reconcile our approaches I would propose amending my proposal at the beginning to read "Where required, and you know of no other place in that nation of the UK with the same name, ... " What I had in mind when I first wrote this version was the question of the usage "Scotland" as opposed to "United Kingdom".

PS. I love the humour of Ivor Cutler.

Welcome to Misplaced Pages! --Ed Poor

What?? I'm sure that I've been contributing for longer than you have, since last summer at least. It's a bit late for Welcomes.

LOL, a bit belated, eh? -- a newbie

Hey Derek, welcome to Misplaced Pages! ;-)--branko

Derek, there is a vote on the city naming issue at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (city names). Since you participated in the debate, you may want to let your vote be counted as well. Jeronimo

Thanks, Jeronimo. I know about the voting and I've added mine to the issues I care about. However I don't care about some of the issues because they seem pretty trivial to me, so there's no point in my voting on them. I'll just go along with what other people decide. -- Derek Ross

I'm curious; what is the problem with "momentarily"? I've *never* heard anybody use it to mean anything other than "in a moment" or "for a moment" personally... Khendon

That's a big enough problem for me in a moment is time sequence; for a moment is duration: that's quite ambiguous for me. At the least it interrupts my reading flow. However people also think it means at that moment or temporarily. It's best just to avoid using it. -- Derek

Check the definition on dictionary.com Khendon... there does seem to be a usage problem identified with the word. Greg Godwin

Hmm - even so, the meaning "for a moment" is unquestionably valid - so why the change in Sleep apnea from (for example) "stops breathing momentarily during sleep" to the clumsier "stops breathing for a moment during sleep". And there's certainly no question of ambiguity; what would the potential misparse be? -- Khendon

Even though a sentence is grammatically and even semantically valid, it may still not flow well. Sentences using momentarily often fall into that category. If you don't like for a moment change it to something else -- but not momentarily, please. -- Derek

Whats the deal? Why were my posts removed? What does "reverting product placement" mean? You say it was copyrighted material, but I just got done writing these additions (for Daniel Amos, the Swirling Eddies, Terry Scott Taylor and Lost Dogs) 30 minutes ago. You *won't* find them *anywhere* else, because I wrote them. 100 percent my own words. Stop screwing with my additions. Please. There are other musical artists listed, why can't my favorites be listed too? I was working on additions for other musical artists - should I just abandon my efforts because my favorite styles of music are not welcome here? - jazz77

Just being careful. I haven't a clue what style of music the bands are, so it's a bit difficult to decide whether I like it or not. My reason for doing what I did was that anonymous IP users who contribute gushing text on bands -- copyright or not -- look like they're part of a record company publicity machine rather than people who want to contribute unbiassed material to an encyclopedia. You've taken a step forward by registering a nickname. If you just make the text a bit less sycophantic, a bit more NPOV, there will be no problem from me or anyone else. -- Derek Ross

Derek, I believe the last versions were not copyrighted. Some were missing a bit of NPOV, and I had never heard of the people, but it doesn't make it "product placement" I think.--AN

Fair enough, AstroNomer. Maybe I'm just too suspicious, it read too much like advertising bumf to me. -- Derek Ross

I understand that I suppose. However, I posted information on a dozen artists and bands yesterday (which I now know had some possibly copyrighted content problems). Just going through my favorites. Perhaps I have been "gushing" a bit too much on certain artists, but that was not my intention. I was just trying to give as much information as possible (well known artists that worked on some of the records, songs that had some degree of success, etc) as well as a "feel" for each artist's sound. I'll try to tone it down in the future. - Jazz77

Okay, in that case I apologise for being a bit quick off the mark -- Derek Ross

I get the feeling that I can't spell "successful" -- GWO

Could be! <grin> I wouldn't worry though, there's a lot of it about. -- Derek Ross

where is the page with the character map of different text symbols? Lir 22:04 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)

I could be wrong but I think that this is on Misplaced Pages:Special characters

Derek,

I changed your Supreme Court reference in BBC to the United States Postal Service, it seems more of a valid comparison, to me. If you disagree, go ahead and change it. -- Zoe

yah Lir 23:02 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)

The sure sign of Armageddon: a generation that knows nothing of the Twinkie -- Someone else

Naah, it's just that Scotland is still in the pre-Twinkie stage of civilisation -- Derek

Derek, thanks for telling me about the colon (:) character for commenting out false positives on the spellcheck list. I put back most of the words I took out. I'm keeping out contractions: they don't cause trouble and shouldn't be on the list. Don't you agree? --Ed Poor

Seems reasonable to me, Ed.

Thanks for fixing the spelling error in "propaganda". I can't believe I did that. -- GABaker

Hey, we all do it from time to time. Sometimes the hand is quicker than the eye. When I do it, I like to think of it as a typo rather than a spelling error. -- Derek

I've noted your change of "practice" to "practise" in the divination article. Although I, in Canada, would use the same spelling as you. Some of our American friends view "practice" in such circumstances to be correct. Eclecticology 13:45 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

Authoritative source: http://www.bartleby.com/61/85/P0498500.html

Thanks for pointing that out, Ec. I assumed that they always spelt it using the -s- form, like license. If they always spell it practice, then it's not a mispelling, just a US variation, so I'll stop changing it. -- Derek

Hey, when was it agreed that British English spellings were wrong and American English ones correct? I've noticed that your sterling efforts to reduce 'mispeelings' have branched out into removing u's from humour, even when talking about British subjects. (15.43 GMT, 29 Oct)

Hmmm, looks like I was being over-zealous with humourous. Okay, since I'm British myself, I'll leave it alone. There are plenty others. -- Derek

Hey Derek-- how did you make that .ogg? It crashed ogg123 for me... DanKeshet

Sorry about that, Dan. The process was:

1. Isis uploads a wav file (mono, 11kHz,
2. I use Advanced WMA workshop to convert it to a WMA file.
3. I use the same utility to convert the WMA to an OGG file.
4. I don't check it because the PC I'm using doesn't have a sound card.
5. I upload it to Misplaced Pages
6. I check the Wiki link on another PC with a soundcard.
7. WinAmp3 doesn't crash but I don't hear anything either.
8. I revert the Wiki page.

I'll have to try again. -- Derek

I uploaded a version I made with oggenc, on quality level 0. (I had to resave the WAV file from Sound Recorder as regular PCM to get it to read in.) It's about half the size of the WAV (~125k instead of ~250); I can get it down ~85k-ish but the quality gets pretty bad at that point. --Brion 00:17 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

Thanks, Brion.

Derek: I've set up links on the project page to the 'clans' page Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Clans of Scotland/Clans of Scotland and the 'tartan' page Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Clans of Scotland/Tartan, with some suggestions on the 'clans' page for subjects it should include. My editor has just dropped my work for this month on me earlier than I expected and with less time than I need to do it, so I'm not going to be able to do anything on Misplaced Pages for about two weeks (maybe more). So would you please touch base with User:Ram-Man and User:fonzy and you all go ahead with those pages and the 'clan ross' sample page? Or, if nobody wants to do anything in the meantime, just let it sit, and I'll be back to it when I can. Thanks. -- isis 17:22 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)

Okay, Isis

Thanks for the catch on Great Western. I changed your redirect to a disambiguation because Great Western had two inward links, neither of which was about the railway. I also merged that stuff into Isambard Kingdom Brunel, though it needed a bit of rewriting. --rbrwr

And a nice rewrite you did too! I had to catch the train home from work. That's why I didn't straighten things out properly myself. -- Derek