User talk:Daycd/Archive1

——————————————— TALK: DAVID D. ————————————— Welcome. (Contributions) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Current Talk

Welcome to the Wikipedia

Here are some links I thought useful:

• Wikipedia:Tutorial
• Wikipedia:Help desk
• M:Foundation issues
• Wikipedia:Policy Library
• Wikipedia:Utilities
• Wikipedia:Cite your sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:Wikiquette
• Wikipedia:Civility
• Wikipedia:Conflict resolution
• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Wikipedia:Peer review
• Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
• Wikipedia:Brilliant prose
• Wikipedia:Featured pictures
• Wikipedia:Boilerplate text
• Wikipedia:Current polls
• Wikipedia:Mailing lists
• Wikipedia:IRC channel

Feel free to contact me personally with any questions you might have. The Wikipedia:Village pump is also a good place to go for quick answers to general questions. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

When leaving notes for other people on their talk pages, include 4 dashes, like this: ---- to separate your comments from those of others.

Be Bold!

Harvestdancer 17:48, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll try and be bold. I've already got stuck into some track and field projects as well as documenting my home village. Thanks for the info on the ----, that makes a lot of sense. This whole 'organic' encyclopedia is really amazing. The quality of some of these pages is really astounding. It beats chasing anti evolutionists around the place. I also notice that Jason has stopped trying to vandalise the Flew page. I wonder if he is now planning his own page with a POV? David D. 22:44, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I just committed a serious breach of Wikiquette by posting this on your main page instead of your talk page, and for that I apologize. I'm moving this over to your disucssion page where it belongs, where Wiki users leave messages for each other.Harvestdancer 16:30, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Gene therapy

Of course it was a hyperbole to call gene therapy "utterly experimental", but its indications are far from settled, and the results in clinical trials are really quite modest. The setbacks in SCID are well documented.

Wikipedia suffers from "BBC News enthusiasm". Users read about a medical breakthrough in the newspapers, but nobody has explained that this is about animal studies, and that it will take >15 years to market these breakthroughs. Without wanting to be "restrictive", Wikipedia should be more judicious than newspaper editors in what is included on this front. The cupboards of pharmaceutical companies are full of drugs that can never be marketed. JFW | T@lk 01:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Morpholino

(Note from Jon Moulton): Due to the extensive use of Morpholino oligos for research that is not part of the search for antisense therapeutics, I recommend against merging Morpholino with Antisense therapy. Due to the structural dissimilarity between Morpholino and Antisense mRNA, I similarly suggest that these headings should not be merged but merely cross-referenced (see the figure in the Morpholino article for a structural comparison). You may remove nospam if you wish to contact me directly: jmoultonnospam@gene-tools.com)

Hi John, that was really a note to myself and I would not change anything so big without consulting the talk pages of the relevent pages first. Due to time constraints it will not happen soon but thanks for the input. With regard to morpholino I see what you mean about the structure, I looked more closely at your figure. I was thinking of the functional similarity with regard to siRNA, miRNA. It just seemed that the other two articles did not really add too much more but cross referencing could work well too. One of the frustrating things with wikipedia is the lack of a good contents or index type system. I suppose the search function can work well but it would be nice to see concept type pages that can link all these ideas together. I am sure there are many related articles out there that get missed due to a lack of cross referencing. David D. 22:05, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Categories

Hi. I saw your question on VfD and figured I'll answer it off-line here, to avoid cluttering that page up.

The idea of categories is that you can put, for example, [[Category: Biomedical terms]] at the end of an article, and a couple of magic things happen. First, a link will be automatically generated at the bottom of the page to a Category page. Second, that Category page will have your page added to it, and automatically alphabetized. If the Category page doesn't exist, it'll be automagically created. I've added your talk page (hope you don't mind) to Category:Wikipedia categorization, just so you can see how this works. For more info, see Wikipedia:Categorization. --RoySmith 5 July 2005 17:27 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. i think I had a rough idea about how that worked from browsing and even created a few trying to organise the track and field pages. Also i did add the following categories when I created that 'list of biomedial terms' 'header page', Topic lists | Medical terms | Biology lists. Did Elfguy have a problem with those categories, or was he implying that lists, in general, are undesirable?

I think he was just being a little sarcastic, I wouldn't worry about it. --RoySmith 5 July 2005 18:07 (UTC)

Well that's understandable since it's probably the first time he's seeing these lists. As a newbie I thought I may have missed something really obvious with regard to the categories. David D. 5 July 2005 18:39 (UTC)

You probably did, but don't sweat it. I've been editing for about 9 months now, and I'm still missing really obvious stuff. Welcome to the learning process, and if I haven't mentioned it before, welcome to Wikipedia! --RoySmith 5 July 2005 18:44 (UTC)

By the way thanks for putting that list forward for deletion. I hope it goes through since it is just too much junk. I understand that many people say wikipedia is not paper, but there has to be some kind of limit other wise indexing and searching becomes a nightmare. David D. 5 July 2005 17:41 (UTC)

Plant action potentials

Thanks! re: action potential. ITA about the plant action potentials. I know nothing about that, so it's not gonna be me, but it would be a really interesting addition to the page. Synaptidude 6 July 2005 20:58 (UTC)

I'll put together a small section for the end. I don't think it needs to be much, but I do think it is worthy of mention. I am sure many people will get a kick from imagining plants with 'feelings' David D. 6 July 2005 22:42 (UTC)

List of biomedical terms

Thanks for the kind words. It's a shame it seems to have generated so much controversy; that was not my intent! BTW, I saw your note about List of medical topics. Now that looks like a very useful resource! RoySmith 23:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Mute Swan

Ah, so you've discovered Supercool Dude and his swans. What can I say, I think the situation speaks for itself (even if the swans don't). RoySmith 02:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

You've made BJAODN. :) -- Solipsist 20:30, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

LOL I didn't even know it was something to aspire too! You should get half since I was just playing off your own parody 'there once was a talking duckling'. David D. 20:42, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

That's OK, you picked up the baton and ran with it. -- Solipsist 21:10, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

It must be a meme [1], or perhaps I just lack originality. More coincidentally, a couple of days after the original reference to the 'Uggly Duckling', I found myself on the VfD for I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts which is another song made famous by Danny Kaye - not that I would have particularly known who Danny Kaye was. -- Solipsist 12:10, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

There is only one Mute Swan that can Speak named Audrey. She is the only one on Earth that can. I have witnesses. Her mate Cyrus would grunt "Good Morning!" but not speak. She is somewhere in Eastchester Bay and she may have had Cygnets. If she can teach her offspring to talk like she can, it may be wonderful.

Supercool Dude 04:00, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

buzzwords

You are correct, the argument is weak. What caught my attention was a red link, implying we should have an article for a borderline notable neologism. The sentence seemed to suggest that becoming a wank word was a widely accepted next stage after buzzword, although it's really obscure compared to the popularity of the term buzzword and typical usage seems synonymous with buzzword (just by people who prefer expletives when making a point). Rl 06:50, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Some questions..

Hi, as you know I'm new to Wikipedia editing. I have a couple of questions. As you know I've been trying to improve the article on "mutations", and doing that I created an article on "loss-of-function mutation", which is a concept related to "hypomorphic mutation", which you mentioned in the Talk:Mutation page. Now I'm thinking that maybe that was wrong, because such an article is kind of 'dictionary-like', since its purpose is mostly defining the term? (as the "hypomorphic mutation" also is). Would it be more appropriate to include all of these functional characterisations of mutations in the "Mutation" article, and make it so that a search for each of them will direct the user to this article? How can one make several search words yield the same article? (for instance both "Mutations" and "Mutation" will give the "Mutation" article). Juicy fisheye 17:32, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Good question, the best approach is to create a redirect page. you can redirect to the mutation page by putting the text, #redirect [[mutation]], in the body of the page. I suspect, as you have mentioned, that as the article grows you may want to break it up into two different article. The beauty of wikipedia is that it is fluid and this can be a future change.

Some people will find your changes are not desirable but don't worry, eventually a consensus is reached. The talk (discussion) pages are useful for discussing the finer points of an article. Or they can be used to warn other users of large changes you would like to make. In this way people are not surprised when they find their prized article has been split into two. I hope this gets you started. David D. 17:42, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Another useful guide to what is out there is the 'What links here' option on the left of each page. You may find that content from some of those pages is better suited on the mutation page. In this way related articles can be merged so the information is less scattered. David D. 17:46, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Cicuta

Thanks! :-) I didn't realise you'd only just made the redirect until I looked at the history just now, it could've been sitting there 2 years for all I knew - I'd seen there was some genus detail on the C. virosa page which I thought I'd move across to whatever genus page there was, and discovered it was a redirect - MPF 22:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Mendel

Seems to be fixed now. I think they realise they've been duped. Dunc|☺ 17:04, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

World championship predictions

I forgot that mack, harris and williams didn't make the team sorry i'll arrange them. User_talk:212.56.128.185

Hey no problem, I just thought it would be more fun if we play with the athletes who are entered. It will be interesting to see how close you get on these results. By the way, I don't think Brew made the team either. from memory it's Williamson, Rock and Wariner. David D. 18:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Flags to the athletics World Championships pages.

Sondre Hello there! I'm sorry but can you add flags to the pages within. 22. August 2005 that would be fine but that's allright. from Sondre (message unsigned by User talk:85.165.200.37)

Are you asking or help to add the flags? David D. (Talk) 12:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

What to do next on flag use guideline

This got deleted from village pump talk so I repeat it here. -- Sitearm | Talk 02:19, 2005 August 6 (UTC) What to do next? If you haven't already, look at Wikipedia:How_to_create_policy#How_to_propose_a_new_policy. I think you can use the summary page you've already started, but be sure to 1. Add the special "{{proposed}}" tag to the top of the article, and 2. Add summary sections including "reasons for", "reasons against", and "links to pages where this is being discussed". Continue posting short announcements with the link to the proposed guideline page and asking interested users to visit . I've added a support comment to your page but it is lost in the volume of text on the page. Section formatting in a proposal summary will go a long way. Hope this helps. Fellow change agent -- Sitearm | Talk 23:00, 2005 August 5 (UTC)

Thanks for all your input! David D. (Talk) 04:58, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Request for article citations supporting adding disclaimer more prominently

Contributers supporting adding the disclaimer more prominently on Wikipedia pages please cite articles and sign at Wikipedia:Proposed_update_of_MediaWiki:Tagline#Contributers_and_articles_that_support_adding_the_disclaimer_more_prominently. Thank you for your help! -- Sitearm | Talk 13:53, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

Hi Sitearm, I'll try and find some stuff and definitely support your (?) proposal. David D. (Talk) 15:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your help! About ten contributing so far, with Wyatts and Omegatron commenting steadily and me sorting it out in the project page :) -- Sitearm | Talk 02:44, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

The proposal has been updated:

• Leave current top-left text as is ("From WikiPedia the free encyclopedia.")
• Add new top-right text ("All articles are user-contributed in a collaborative effort.")

Interested contributors please comment here. Thank you for your help! -- Sitearm | Talk 02:14, 2005 August 12 (UTC)

WikiProject page vs WikiProject talk page

Hi, I just wanted you to know why I changed your comments in the Task section of the WikiProject Sports Results page. AFAIK the norm is to use the project page itself to display the formats we decide upon (updated as necessary), while discussions/comments on these are strictly to be put in the talk page. BTW, the new tasks were highly relevant; tnx! --Wernher 01:04, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

As I said, I am the student here. I am eager to learn. David D. (Talk) 02:08, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Hypomorphic mutation.

Hey. I saw you included the definition of 'hypomorphic mutation' directly after the 'loss-of-function mutation'. Note that I already defined 'hypomorphic mutation' a bit lower on the page. I'm somewhat opposed to your change, of the same reason that I defined 'hypomorphic mutation' together with the terms 'hypermorphic mutation' and 'neomorphic mutation'.

The reason is that hypomorphic mutations are NOT a subclass of loss-of-function mutations (the common definition of this term excludes changes in expression), and I have purposely segregated the two terms. If you notice the text right before the definitions of the mutations, the first says 'mutations that affect the gene product directly' and the other 'also include mutations that affect expression of a gene'. Hypomorphic mutations belong to the latter category, and can not be defined under the first one, unless you also remove this categorization from the article.

I removed the definition of hypomorphic mutation from the paragraph defining loss-of-function mutations, because it seems to indicate that hypomorphic mutations are a subclass of loss-of-function mutations, and because because it doesn't fit in with the strict categorization (pure gene product changes VS gene product and expression changes).

I hope you don't mind!

Sorry I'm late to respond to this. I don't mind at all, in fact, I agree with you on this issue. David D. (Talk) 21:52, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

White mulberry

Your white mulberry is a weeping form, and weeping forms are cultivated and some cultivated plants are selected for exceptional taste, Fledgeling 18:44, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Second tagline poll - please follow this link

(This is already announced on Pump and Rfc but I'm adding it here because I know you're interested.) -- Sitearm | Talk 04:53, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

Cvg "terminology" category removal

Hi! Saw your question on Talk:Flip-screen. The cvg "terminology" category is being removed per discussion here and here. I recategorized Flip-screen as Category:Computer game design. Also Scrolling and Split-screen. Glad to discuss! -- Sitearm | Talk 22:25, 2005 August 20 (UTC)