User talk:Recurring dreams/Archives/2007/April

Tony Catanzariti

You're on the wrong side of the majority on this, even though its probably too early to talk of consensus. I'm not going to break 3RR over it, but as a gesture of good faith, you should leave it as the other editors on this page have agreed and make your case on the talk page. Joestella 02:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe a majority or consensus has been reached. Nevertheless, let's continue our discussion on the talk page of the article, and see if we can get some others involved so a consensus can be reached. Thanks.Recurring dreams 02:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

John Billings

On 10 April, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article John Billings, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--howcheng {chat} 06:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo is coming to Sydney

Sorry to spam you if you aren't interested. See Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney#April 25th for more info if you are interested. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

South Australian general election campaign, 2006

Without getting into the trainwreck argument on whether this article should exist, how about giving it a once-over for POV? The work done on this article will, if nothing else, improve the article it may eventually be merged with (also a trainwreck). Joestella 16:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Lil' Elvis and the Truckstoppers

Hi, I noticed your contribution regarding this animated series. Would you please track down some references independent of the ABC and the production company regarding this article? Has it been covered in Parenting Sydney or some other parenting magazine maybe?

Also, rather than use a trivia section, maybe you could just include somethine like

Rove McMannus was a contributing animator in the ___ (first / second / whatever ) series. (and inlcude a reference - a primary reference is fine for straight facts like this)

Trivia sections are best left out - I think it is mentioned in WP:MOS, but if not it is mentioned on a link from the trivia flag I left on the article.

Nice work improving coverage of Australian television though. We need it all! Garrie 06:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

LOL i remember this show. such an awful show.

John Curtin School of Medical Research

Sorry, your ref on this page was not showing up due to a problem with the mark up language. Cheers. Recurring dreams 13:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Just needed a references tag {<references/>} in the references section. Sorry, I thought it was vandalism lol. Recurring dreams 13:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem, should've noticed that myself. Thanks for fixing it up! -Blu3d 07:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

re. rankings

Hi,

I've added a few justifications for the removal of the rankings. Honestly from a methological and statistical standpoint of view the THES and Shanghai rankings are incredibly biased and littered with flaws. From a social standpoint, they do noting but misinform the public.

Cheers. --Fredreck 09:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've put it back in for the time being (see below):

I do not know enough about the ranking procedures to make a valid assessment of their reliability myself. However, almost every page on wikipedia about universities make a reference to them, including top ones like Harvard University, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to Australian universities: University of Sydney, University of Technology, Sydney, and Macquarie University. In fact you'll be hard pressed to find too many pages that don't mention them. In that light, as the broad consensus on wikipedia has been to include them, I think we should keep the section on rankings.

Furthermore, I think as you are advocating a rather large change, I think it would be best to keep the material until we form a consensus. Cheers. Recurring dreams 09:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It's uncanny that I've provided a numerous amount of justification re. the removal of the rankings info - however the justification that you've provided to retain them is simply because other wikipedia university pages make a reference to them... Changes to entries are necessary in order to facilitate and proliferate the correct nature of it all - and in contingency, it ultimately sets the writer and university apart from the others by not endorsing such nonsense.

In addition, of course the universities you've mentioned would illustrate them in their pages simply because they came out on top. On the counter side many reputable universities such as: the California Institute of Technology, Rockefeller, Dartmouth, Brown etc. omitt the altogether.

Finally, perhaps you should set upon your inquisitive nature and find out more about the criticisms behind the rankings - I think you might be pleasantly surprised...

--Fredreck 13:40, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I apologise if I came across as being rude and direct ealier on. However please take a look at the following journal article. It's a simple read and will explain all.

http://www.geocities.com/universities06/ajueart.pdf

The Times is indeed very respectable, however it wasn't the Times that carried out the survey - it was a contracted consulting company called QS Quacquarelli Symonds. And it appears that QS simply went for a convenient sample. I understand that the purpose of Wiki is not to be juice squeezingly tight in terms of accuracy but when you do see it, it should only be fair to omit or correct it.

With re. to Blu3d's insight that the THES uses other criteria to rank the universities - well the article also explains each one in detail. In essence, it's better to have no metrics than have invalid/crap metrics. At least that way you are not misinforming.

Indeed, why can't we just follow suit in terms of Caltech whom openly disregard the rankings altogether...

--Fredreck 16:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)