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Eskies

Hi, nice work on American Eskimo Dog. Regards -- sannse 01:13, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Thank you. My own American Eskimo Dog is never more than a few inches away, when I'm home. They're fantastic pets and friends.

Catholic Encyclopedia

Thank you for fixing Catholic Encyclopedia. I posted it earlier today on clean up, I think you fixed it quite well. The Stuart 14:55, 21 June 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks. The original author did a good job of outlining the Encyclopedia, so it nice to be able to work on a well written piece.

Sanctification

Thanks, Geogre, for adding a useful point to Sanctification. I thought your prose was fine, no need to apologize. Cheers, Opus33 15:12, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• It's certainly one of those areas where people have beliefs so strong that they can't hit NPOV, even if they want to. In particular, it's one of those magic words that means a lot more to the speaker than to some listeners.

Vicar of Bray

George, thanks for your valuable additions to Annotated Lyrics to The Vicar of Bray. I didn't want to mussy the waters on VfD, but I'm not particularly strong on Stuart Age history, so please don't hesitate to correct any misapprehensions I may have inadvertently introduce in my gloss of the song. orthogonal 18:37, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Deleting from Cleanup

Hi Geogre. Thanks a lot for helping to fix articles on the cleanup page! However, it would be really great if you could delete the entries on the cleanup page- just to help keep it as small as possible. Just a friendly reminder, so please don't take it as an insult or anything :) -Frazzydee 23:10, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• You bet. Normally, I do delete. When I don't, it's because I think that the article could benefit from other cleaners coming along behind me. CU is getting extremely ponderous, and that's either because more good people are nominating bad pages, or because WP's increasing popularity is leading to more bad people writing pages. I suspect the latter as well as the former.

Vicar Puritains

Geogre, you spell "Puritans" "Puritains", a form I've never seen. What's the origin and significance of this form? (And oh dear, I apologize, I've been calling you "George" not "Geogre") orthogonal 18:00, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake, then. As for the spelling (the orthography, so to speak), it's actually a spelling used by the Puritans themselves. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, you see the spelling more often than "Puritan." One thing that happens to me is that I can internalize period spellings. I think that "Puritain" was an acceptible British spelling into the 20th c., because I'm relatively sure that I've seen it in secondary literature. It is, regardless, just a spelling mistake. (I've got it better than my friends who were Middle English specialists. Those poor folks ended up entirely unable to spell anything).

Yeah, I saw the "Puritain" redirected to "Puritan". If you would, please consider adding to the "Puritan" article a brief para. on the alternate spelling; I can see this helping both readers of period works and transcribers, such as those over at Distributed Proofreaders. And once gain, you're doing a great job on Annotated Vicar. One problem with Wiki is the lack of articles that giving a broad overview and tying together more specific article; Annotated Vicar, thanks to you, is really becoming both an overview of the period as well as a specific gloss of the song. orthogonal 00:13, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words. I really love the early 18th century. Given a choice, I'll talk about it all day (and these days I spend all day talking about instructional technology, so that's no fun). I've put a poorly worded paragraph at the beginning of "Puritan" about the two spellings. I actually tried not to read the "Puritan" article. If I read it, I'll end up reaching for the Cross Dictionary of the Christian Church Hill's Experience of Defeat and other things lying around. (My subjects of study are all Establishment figures, and it's hard to escape taking sides in the polemics they fought.)

Question: The VfD vote seems to have gone, generally, for "merge with Vicar of Bray." This is possible, though it will make the VoB pretty long. Is that the direction this should go?

Damn it! Now I've read the Puritan article. I knew I shouldn't have done that. It's a greivous article.

BTW, for anyone reading this, I'm now trying to write some of Puritan. I'm having to go slowly, because it's an enormous topic...staggeringly huge, and the present article is far too short. Let anyone who wishes complain about article length: it just plain gots to be long. Geogre 01:09, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• I understand your reluctance to read Puritan; I find vetting articles I'm too close to a bit exhausting. (Take a look at the Dolphin Brain history for an example -- and that was tangential.)

As far as merging Annotated Vicar (AV) with Vicar of Bray (VoB), I'm not particularly concerned. I think (especially with the work you've done) that we can argue that the person The Vicar of Bray, though made famous by the song, is a different entity (not to mention it's a matter of debate which historical Vicar was the song's model). Also, the use of VoB as population genetics metaphor deserves to stand out, and it won't if the two pages are merged. (It's actually via that metaphor that I first heard of the VoB, which made me notice and listen to the song, which lead me to enjoy the song -- I love songs of political satire --, which lead me to share my joy by glossing it here, and thus our present mess. ;-) ) -- orthogonal 02:16, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That's a good argument. I'm not prepared to document it, but I believe that "Vicar of Bray" was a tag as early as 1673. I know that Dryden was taunted with it, and I think that it goes way, way back, possibly to that first Vicar, the Elizabethan one, and was rediscovered in the late Restoration and then amplified in the very tuneful 1720-30's. (It was tuneful, too. You'd be surprised.) Geogre 02:19, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I've been listing to the song, on continuous repeat, since I started the article. For several hours a day. Can't say that it's period instruments, but... -- orthogonal 02:31, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Then you don't want to ever hear "Lillabullero." The thing is a historically famous ear-worm, and its lyrics require as much annotation as "Vicar of Bray." Like VoB, it's a song about the religious convolutions. Essentially, it's an English taunt of the Irish. The song is considered by Irish people as just slightly less offensive than the Deutschland Uber Alles, and yet the BBC World Service still uses it as its segue music because it's so damned infectious.

Oh, and for Cheney Bush Ashcroft, it beggers the imagination. I concluded some months ago that we've got a parody-proof administration. Anything you'd make up as a reductio ad absurdum, they'll do in seriousness. This came to mind when I was reading Catch 22. Milo Minderbinder says, in that book, "I think the government ought to get out of war altogether and leave it to private industry." That's funny. That's supposed to be shocking. Now we find that most of what's being done in Iraq has been contracted to private industry! Instead, I have a definition: "Buch/Cheney: A strange creature with one head, two rectums, and known for practicing autosodomy."

Sid McMath

Thanks for the comment. Any NPOVing of that article is a major undertaking. RickK 20:47, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)

George--Thanks for your and Rick's suggestions for cleanup on Sid McMath. I assure you there are no copyright violations. All the writing is my own except for the brief attributed quotations. This is not hagiography but fact. While certainly not a "saint", the guy was as close to Olympian as a pol can get. Rather than peck at the paragraphs piecemeal, I am "sandboxing" my revisions per your suggestions and will submit them together. 'Am away preparing for trial (yes, another lawyer) and doing some fishing for a few weeks but will try to submit by end July. Thanks for the help. Best, Elia.

You know, I wrote to RickK much the same thing about McMath's qualities. I told him that McMath is as close to a saint as we get in southern politics. He's also the inspiration for Clinton, or cited by Clinton, I believe. Anyway, I did some little editing of the language, more to tighten it up, since it had been listed for POV cleaning. My first reaction on reading the article was, "Well, yeah, but it's true!" My only recommendation, if you'd rather not have me reading over your shoulder, is that you indicate a little bit of the fact that McMath was a political fighter. He wasn't purely altruistic, although I think he was virtuous. Also, some of the language about handsomeness and great victories, etc., will set off people not familiar with the status of McMath. Geogre 00:06, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

George-Good advice; will comply. 'Just checked here before heading out the door, so I won't be getting back to you for several weeks. I will look back here before submitting my revised copy for any further ideas or suggestions you and Rick may have. Thanks. -Elia 6/30/04, 1320 ET

Line numbers in Annotated Vicar.

Geogre, I deleted your line number "5" because I thought it was an inadvertent typo. If we're going to keep the line numbers, can we find a way to set them to the left of the line's beginning, or in some other way distinguish them from the text itself? Even realizing now that they're intentional, they look wrong and distract from reading the line. (Admittedly, I've been playing the song on continuous repeat pretty much since I first started the article two and a half days ago, and reading the lines as I listen. And they say my life's not exciting.) orthogonal 00:23, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I saw that they were a nuisance. I thought that having them would be a way to cut down on the number of amendations at the bottom of the page, but heck if I know how to code the spaces without going into table/indents. I think the best strategy might be hard coding spaces and putting the line numbers to the right of the lines. I'll try that and see if it's still ugly.

Nope, I see that they won't work on the right. They also won't work when I tried to be clever and do a new

5: line like this. Oh, pish. I'll edit the notes instead to try to avoid line number references or wait for a good idea. (Sound of wind blowing across the praire.) Geogre 00:59, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How back linking back to the line rather than giving the number, like the footnotes but in the opposite direction? That's easier on anyone who hasn't memorized the whole thing along with the each line's number. orthogonal 01:05, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

More concerned by the VfD debate now. I don't believe in arguing there. My vote's in, and that's that, but folks need to read the article before they vote. (I also think this is not a Wikibooks article, because there is no literary analysis. It isn't an explication of a poem. It's an annotation of the history/politics.) Anyway, a consensus there seems now to be blob-o-text/blob-o-notes, repeat. That would seem to suggest stanza/note, stanza/note.... That solves some problems, but I don't think it makes a readable or singable text. Geogre 12:53, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Gordon Freeman

Errm, the G-Man doesn't talk about it when Gordon die, it actually *is* a message in the screen. I'd be able to extract it from the strings file, so.. Mind reverting changes? -- towo 09:13, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

• Not at all. I was trying to shorten and clarify the sentence (which had an independent clause in a parenthesis and switched from indirect to direct discourse), but I didn't remember the game (more of a Baldur's Gate person, myself).

gulliver

You made the same mistake I made last week: you put your vote for deletion (for gulliver) on the VfD page itself, rather than the gulliver deletion page which is automatically incorporated into the VfD page. That is, you used the link rather than the "Discuss this" link. I move it, but then there will accusations -- technically correct -- of a "forged" vote. -- orthogonal 02:46, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Aha. Well, I was just too damned eager. I was the first vote, and I think the nominator put the nomination in in a funny way at first and then fixed it. I'm happy to see that it's going to be a landslide vote, so the loss of mine won't matter anyway. Thanks for the move. I couldn't figure out what that was about with your vote getting removed earlier by Wile E., but it seemed like something technical. Geogre 11:41, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) (I'm waiting for someone to observe that any kid who handed in a book report about a N64 character deserves what he gets. I feel the same way, secretly, but I know for a fact that Misplaced Pages is starting to get used by high school classes.)

Precise naming

Thanks for your diligence about avoiding ambiguity. You may have seen someone else take issue with song-related cases, but i thought it worthwhile to provide precise references. & for yr attention, i've copied here (emphasis added here) an entry i added to on WP:CU:

Kill or Cure (film) wikify, expand + Moved from Kill or Cure to clarify namespace use and disambig from common use of phrase. Still needs significant CU. Geogre + Moved back. Per Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (precision)#Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (last sentence), "The basic rule is that, unless you are absolutely sure that a related usage deserves or has an article, no disambigutation is necessary." This is established WP practice, even tho Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions#Be precise when necessary is less clear. Jerzy(t)

I've notice you are a steady contributor & responder to CU entries. Thanks, and hope you'll continue. --Jerzy(t) 19:42, 2004 Jul 8 (UTC)

• • I don't have a problem with not making moves, but there are certainly occasions where I know that another entry is warranted, though it does not yet exist. For example, the first person to write about a favorite school in Windsor, Ontario named Winchester will get that name space. The problem is that, even though at that time no other Winchester entry exists, others are more notable. It seems to me that it isn't a case of calling for a disambiguation page, so much as avoiding future needs to go to VfD and ask for a redirect by being as precise as possible in advance. If "Hound Dog" (a recent example from CU) is in there as the Elvis/Thornton song, then we know that Hound dogs are going to hit against that. A little prevention is worth a lot of cure, here. In "Kill or Cure," it's a common phrase for medicines, as I'm sure you know. Is there a song by the title, a book, a political program in Austria? I don't know, or I'd have objected straight off, but I see value in being clear in advance. I'm very concerned about schools at present: they're simply a mess. I'm also concerned about novels and their film adaptations. Then we have song titles. If it's WP policy to be laissez faire and wait for a problem before fixing it, I'll comply, but I cannot agree that our taxonomy should be catch as catch can. Geogre 20:43, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sex position quote

You wrote on the VfD page on Spoon sex position "To me, this is no different from a recipe for a food for which I haven't the ingredients at hand." LMAO, can I have this quote unattributed under GFDL? That made my morning. Have a nice day. --Buster 18:51, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)