User talk:Steelpillow/Archive 2013-14

Latest comment: 9 years ago by Bzuk in topic Happy New Year!
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FRSA edit

As requested: Wikipedians who are FRSA may now use {{User:UBX/FRSA}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/delist/File:Airfield_traffic_pattern.svg edit

Hello. Please add your vote on Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/delist/File:Airfield_traffic_pattern.svg#Airfield_traffic_pattern.svg. You edited this image to correct one label. Thank you for that. Even so, the image depicts a pov that is American not worldwide. A comparison to Australia's traffic pattern shows irreconcilable differences unless all circuit entries and exits are deleted. The fact that the image needed to be edited based on the discussion to delist it should be enough reason to vote to delist. Thank you. 75.208.99.189 (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

done — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:38, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. 75.208.244.184 (talk) 21:06, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Input needed edit

Hi Guy, this subject might be worth your attention? Template_talk:Infobox_polychoron#Face Thanks! Tom Ruen (talk) 05:33, 19 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wing configurations edit

Hi, Your illustrations on this page are excellent, but I feel the high wing diagram should be amended to show an unbroken wing atop the fuselage/cockpit. It currently shows the cockpit canopy peeking above the top surface of the wing. Cheers. Arrivisto (talk) 13:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the change is needed for technical correctness, but I agree it would look better. I'll try and remember in the next few days. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:47, 27 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I would still argue this point for technical correctness as the point of a high wing is that it is above everything else. It may be that some aircraft, particularly small ones, have a transparent section in the wing above the cockpit, but it is still the wing, and not the canopy! Arrivisto (talk) 08:49, 28 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
You're welcome. I have updated the Commons source file. It should appear here soon (sometimes one has to clear one's browser cache to get rid of the old copy).
WRT high vs. shoulder, I random-sampled some entries in Jane's 1980-81. They are happily ambivalent, for example describing the Mitsubishi T-2 as a shoulder wing but the MiG-25 as a high wing. On both these aircraft the wing does not run over the upper fuselage but stops short at the shoulder, and there is also a dorsal spine between cockpit and tail. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:51, 28 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
That was quick! Well done, and thanks again. Arrivisto (talk) 18:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Barnstar of Diplomacy
Many thanks for sorting things out at Tessellation. Your comments, the move and the improved caption were just right. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:00, 19 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

If you find something to be ungrammatical then correct it don't it revert edit

Sincerely. Zedshort (talk) 20:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nomination of Bucher aircraft tractor for deletion edit

 

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Bucher aircraft tractor is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bucher aircraft tractor until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. YSSYguy (talk) 01:08, 14 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Questions about Swiss air Force Topics edit

Hello,

I have made a draft list about the Old Swiss Air Force Ground Based Air defencs systems in my Sandbox.User:FFA P-16/sandbox What do you think should i put this into the Swiss Air Force page or shold we stay at the actual more simple list on it?

About the Swiss air Force Sqadrons: I dont have found more informations about the deactivatet Sqadrons yet, i asked also Hugo freudiger from the SAF (he is the one who made the pdf with all tailnumbers) probaly just a list of the activ Sqadrons is possibel (but looks not nice with many Sqd nr missing.).

also i have to say that i Don't agree with YSSYguy, I knew that my inglish is not so well but in my eyes he deleted first too much Informations out of the page Bucher aircraft tractor (for eg, that the tractor can supplay aircrafts with electric power) also deleting the pictures out is not good some of them act as referenc (for eg the only civil user JuAir). also I think his request to delet the page Bucher aircraft tractor is not realy helpful. Would be nice if you can have a look at theRevisions of this page and say your opinien. FFA P-16 (talk) 05:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I have reworked your sandbox on the ground based systems to include content from the Swiss Air Force article and two articles on aircraft tractors. I think all this could be made a new article on Ground equipment of the Swiss Air Force. What do you think? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:22, 15 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

thank you I have now used it for the Swiss Air Force Page. I am a bit sceptic about a new article Ground equipment of the swiss Air force, because on one hand the Bucher aircrat tug page and the MOWAG-AEG are also sub pages of the MOWAG main page. On the other hand i am afraid that if the current references for the Bucher aircraft tractor are seen as not proof enough it will be also not proof enough to put this in such a page. And I don't know it might look a bit straing to have this 2 Aircrafttractors in this page but other items missing (I would like to add more informations but you see what a "fight" it is only to have the needet references for the Bucher Tractor, so i am afraid i didn't finde sufficient informations for eg. about the mobile engine startup unit). How ever I realy thank you for your effort to have informations about the Swiss Air Force /Military in the english wikipedia. FFA P-16 (talk) 00:01, 16 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Squadrons and units edit

Hello, i hope you are well. i have now made a draft about the Swiss Air Force Sqadrons (I have not writen much text about the Sqadrons because of 2 reasons 1. If i translate it it will cause some problems , and it would look straingh because from a few sqd a lot of text would be possibel and for some sqad only little and about some sqd nearly nothing). It is just a draft and needs still some clean up. But i think its better to ask you about your opinien before i spend much time. Because at the moment i am feeling like i have vastet a lot of time for the pages about the sub- versions of the Panzer 68 as YSSYguy have now all of the redirectet to the Panzer 68 page. Ithink with this some informations about for eg. the Anti aircraft version get lost on english wikipedia, but he has a differen opinien. So I ask you first, if the sqadron list i made is it worth to work on it. By FFA P-16 (talk) 16:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I think this can be created as a new article when it has been tidied up. I have made some changes, and have used the article title as the top-level heading. You can add a little text in the Notes, but if there is much to add then you can create a new article for the squadron. So some squadrons would have their own article page but others would not. This is just what we do for the Royal air force.
I will try to find time to look at the history of the Panzer 68 article, but I am very busy elsewhere. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:15, 21 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, thank you, for this hint's and help, I was also thinking if this sqadron list could be a part of the swiss Air Force History, and then if it is growing with details about single sqadrons moving it to a own page like you have suggestet (in a simelar desing like the Royal Air Force Sqadrons) because it will need time to add such informations, and i have to care to have also such informations on thegerman wikipedia. Wikipedia is a lot of work ;-) so we don't have to forget our friends, family and work i hope do you understand that it sometimes need time until i can take your help /informations into action. Thank you very much for your patience. Bye FFA P-16 (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! edit

  The Editor's Barnstar
For holding our article edits and corresponding talk page discussions on Three surface aircraft to such high standards, making editing a difficult but highly-rewarding process. Ariadacapo (talk) 05:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

He 18 edit

Hello Steelpillow. Sorry for my bad english and thanks for the answer for the ISBN. I want to ask you if you can read the "Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation" or ask some of your friend to know if, in that book, it is present He 18 or Hd 18. In it.wiki we have a discussion for it and we found than in "Jane's All the World's Aircraft Frederick Thomas Jane - 1926" there is NO He 18 but there is a Hd 18. If it is not clear the question is: "is there a he 18 in Jane's Encyclopedia? or is it a hd 18?" Can you take a look for it? Thanks in advance. And... sorry for my bad english.--Perozopeligroso (talk) 15:16, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Sorry I am late in replying, I replied elsewhere and forgot to reply to you as well. "HD" is short for "Heinkel Doppeldecker" (in English, "Heinkel Biplane") while "HE" is short for "Heinkel Eindecker" (Heinkel Monoplane). The HE 18 was a monoplane, see Flight, 26 March, 1925, Page 175. If Jane's records it as the "HD 18" then either that is a misprint or there is another Type 18 with a biplane wing, I do not know which is true. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:08, 9 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Foundations of geometry edit

Hi Steelpillow,

I reverted your last change to this page and my summary is probably baffling. This came about because I misinterpreted your summary. However, my revert still stands and the reason for it is that there is a time honored distinction between non-Euclidean geometries and geometries which are not Euclidean. The standard references are pretty clear on the matter ... for historical reasons non-Euclidean geometry refers only to hyperbolic and elliptic geometry (i.e., the geometries you get when you play around with parallelism) and other geometries should be referred to as geometries which are not Euclidean. I was maintaining this distinction in the outline. A longer version of this argument, with references, can be found on the Non-Euclidean geometry talk page. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 17:35, 16 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

Amplituhedron edit

Hi. I don't really understand the field in question, but am I right in thinking that the "planar limit" in the N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory is the subset in which only interactions with planar Feynman diagrams are taken into account, as this and this I think suggest? If so, it probably deserves its own article. Or am I talking nonsense? -- The Anome (talk) 11:36, 21 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I have replied here. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:17, 21 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that, and providing some more enlightenment. The combination of a physics degree from Way Back When sometime last century and my rusty mathematical knowledge really doesn't qualify me to write anything much about these articles except by summarizing stuff from citations, but although I know just enough of the terminology and concepts involved to be dangerous if I tried to do more than that, I just hope I have sufficient self-awareness to refrain from doing so! -- The Anome (talk) 12:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

A cookie for you! edit

  For the good work on Electromagnetic pulse! Please note that according to unreliable sources EMP may disrupt the cookie-baking capabilities over large areas.You're now provided with a cookie for use in such an emergency. Sjö (talk) 10:48, 3 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

recent edit edit

Hi Steelpillow. I have tried to make sure I understand what you are trying to say in this edit I suspect that you may have accidentally omitted the word no between do and more in the last sentence, otherwise I don't get why you have the but. Not trying to be a pain, but if this actually the case then it virtually changes your comment 180 degrees. I don't mind which way you intended the comment, but I doubt you want your post to be ambiguous. - Nick Thorne talk 14:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Well spotted, thank you. "no" now added. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:11, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

heads up edit

 
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- thewolfchild 23:57, 20 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yo Ho Ho edit

Glad Tidings and all that ... edit

  FWiW Bzuk (talk) 20:45, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Eon or EoN edit

You may have already had a look through the Flight archive, but the articles seem to use "Eon" for Elliots' aircraft and "EoN" as an abbreviation of the company name. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:44, 30 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

A cup of coffee for you! edit

  Good & strong & black to sort any New Year hangover. Just a thanks for the epic work on Early flying machines...still needs loads of work but you've whacked into a shape where it can be methodically improved TheLongTone (talk) 11:36, 1 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Aeronautics edit

Sorry, I'm juggling a lot of balls on Wikipedia and got sidetracked from the discussion. That's fine if you don't want me to respond there, though I was meaning to get around to it sometime. I think you're on the right track just working on the article. I like your recent changes. So the term aeroplane was coined to describe a glider invented by a man named Cayley in the early 1800s? Interesting. I and probably 99% of Americans assumed that the term was coined for the Wright Brothers' invention. Everyone has heard of the Wright Bros., but unfortunately the name Cayley is forgotten by most except those with a special interest in aeronautics. Best, Wbm1058 (talk) 13:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

I am hoping to start a formal move proposal, where your reply will hopefully be more effective. I think the article needs some coherence before people can easily appreciate the points I have been making, so that is another necessary prerequisite - I am glad you approve so far.
Cayley originally used the term "governable parachute" for his man-carrying gliders. Of course, what his reputation really needs is a Hollywood blockbuster.... The term "aeroplane" was later introduced for the artificial fixed wing and only slowly became adopted to mean the whole aircraft. I expect it was the usual laziness - an inventor writes of flying an "aeroplane" to which are fixed other bits, perhaps a fuselage or tail or undercarriage, but the other bits are thought trivial and not mentioned. The publisher's artist engraves an image of the whole contraption and titles it "the aeroplane" and the misunderstanding grows from there. But when did Americans change its spelling to "airplane"? I have a book with a reproduction of a Curtiss poster from 1909 which still spells it "aeroplane." — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Wrong person on Tessellations edit

Hi, you're talking to the wrong person - I made a change to make the lead easier for another editor whose edit I reverted earlier today, he'd got the wrong end of the stick; I am not in any doubt what regular means. Feel free to pass your comments on to him. The point to bear in mind is that the article, and I fear especially the lead, is all that many people read; his edit comment made that painfully clear. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

I hadn't seen you'd also reverted the edit, leaving 'regular' bluelinked twice in the same sentence, which you surely cannot have intended. I've changed one of them, leaving the *same* link targets, so it doesn't look so strange, and so it's clear (visible) what is being linked; I'd kind of done that before, but it looked different. Hope that's ok, there really isn't any need to argue over this as from the start we have agreed on what regular means (contrary, perhaps, to what you imagined). Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yet your edits have twice changed the text to give incorrect or insufficient definitions. I have now corrected that and, hopefully, resolved the issue of duplicate link legends. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:33, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
You may have, but you have broken the 3RR rule. I shan't attempt to change what's been done, but kindly comply with the rules in future. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:52, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't buy that. You made three different copyediting mistakes - you have already said that we agree on the facts. I reverted each copyedit mistake once. But I am more than willing to apologise for any appearance of warring I might have given, I had assumed you had a similar perspective on correcting each other as I did, and I guess I should have been more aware that I was "butting in" on your work. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
That's very good of you, and I'm happy to accept the apology, and to proffer one if one is needed. I recognise your good faith, as you seem to do mine; you were not butting in on anything, I was just trying to fix a problem that had misled another user. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:20, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
That's very good of you, but no apology is needed. I should have explained myself better. We are both on the same team. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Oh good. Meanwhile, I think the heading of this discussion was right: another editor is, er, being a ****. How shall we deal with the matter? Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:06, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Polite and clear correction of errors, assuming their good faith the while? Let's see what happens to my latest effort. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:54, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Rigid airship edit

I assume from your absence from the edit history that you have not come across the above. Its one of those awkward customers: a very underdeveloped article with (in my opinion) an unhelpful structure (divided by nation rather than chrono): really it should be the primary article containing much of what is at the moment more fully covered in the Airship article. Any thoughts??TheLongTone (talk) 12:30, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Yes, one thing at a time. I agree about the unhelpful structure, and anything covered more fully in the Airship article clearly needs attention. My first thought is to rebuild the article as a historical narrative, discussing any specific point where it becomes significant. I doubt there would be enough left to create sections outside that narrative, one could just crack on and see. Possibly a list of manufacturers, that sort of thing. But I am busy on other things for the time being, I got drawn into the blimp issue only because some blimp fanboy was showing excessive zeal in an article I was also editing. Wish I had steered clear now, it's as emotive as the Wrights vs. Whitehead! I'll put Rigid airship on my watchlist, at least. Let me know if you want a hand with it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:27, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I am most surprised by the vehemence with which the term is being defended. (Although I know I pitched in with a pro-blimp POV, I really think its indefensible for the British WW1 aircraft titles). As I'm sure you've noticed, I've been attempting to kick Airship into shape, but much of it would be better fully covered in this article. Which I am taking a machete to at the moment.TheLongTone (talk) 13:48, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Great stuff. After that there's always the Semi-rigid airship, grin. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:01, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
And on the subject of rods for ones own back, I've just changed the infobox forUSS Los Angeles (ZR-3) from a ship infobox to an aircraft one, all the other US rigids are similarly ship-infoboxed but I'll see how many howls of protest appear before I do the others. I don't even like LTA aviation, it all started because the R101 article was such a mess that I had to do something about it. Now I actually know a fair bit about the stupid great things!TheLongTone (talk) 18:33, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

G&T edit

Morning Steelpillow, I've not had chance to digest properly your comments on the Dunne monoplanes D.6, D.7/bis and, according to G&T the Dunne-Capper (which might be what JWD later termed the D.6). The most reliable article on these closely related aircraft is, I suspect, is the contemporary (June 1911) one in Flight, who of course use the date, not the D. labels, to i/d it. Anyway, noting you don't have access to G&T I could easily scan the few relevant pages and send them on, given an email address. Cheers,TSRL (talk) 08:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Pioneer Era edit

I'm chucking together an article on this period (User:TheLongTone/pioneer), any comments, especially on structure, would be most welcome.TheLongTone (talk) 12:05, 29 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

great icosahedron as faceting? edit

I was thinking, given the compound of two great icosahedra and retrosnub tetrahedron construction of the great icosahedron, that it should be possible to create an (irregular) great icosahedron by faceting a truncated octahedron. Is this true? (I've been trying in Stella: haven't got it yet.) Double sharp (talk) 04:58, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I think it is sort of possible depending on how you define facetting. You would only use half the vertices of the truncated octahedron, and that does not conform to the traditional idea of facetting. Also the result would not retain octahedral symmetry, another break with tradition. But as a "partial facetting", yes it should be possible. A safe approach would be to label the vertices, list the faces and then transcribe onto the chosen vertices of the cuboctahedron. I am not familiar with the more recent versions of Stella, but if you can set it to work with the correct symmetry you should find that as you go round joining the dots on each facet it will create others for you. Given the appropriate symmetry you could even end up with a compound of two such icosahedra, which would use all the vertices. HTH — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:02, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
[Update] Forgot to say, the best pattern of cuboctahedral vertices is opposing pairs on each square face, such that alternating vertices are taken round each hexagonal face. This makes each hexagon chiral, or handed, but I think that is not significant - I could be wrong. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:09, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
I found it! :-D   (BTW it's not chiral, but has full tetrahedral symmetry.) The compound of two such great icosahedra with octahedral symmetry works as well, but the coplanar faces don't render properly if I don't select it to be the new base model (which also means I can't make nice pictures like this :-(. Oh well.)
While messing around with truncated octahedron facetings I found an irregular compound of six tetrahedra as well. That has octahedral symmetry. Double sharp (talk) 14:13, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

In general, can you produce any uniform snub from its corresponding omnitruncate with this sort of partial faceting? (Even retrosnubs like this and the small inverted retrosnub icosicosidodecahedron?) Because if it is I might finish my series of images showing this!

(Also: when doing this sort of partial faceting for the great rhombicuboctahedron, I seem to have found a nonuniform version of the compound of three square antiprisms.) Double sharp (talk) 14:23, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Congratulations. I would expect that this process does work in the general case, although one might need to ensure that the omnitruncate has the correct proportions to ensure coplanar vertices before producing the desired facet. There are lots of lower-symmetry and downright irregular morphs of all these polyhedra, and it is important to remember that the names generally apply to the uniform variant and the lower-symmetry variants are seldom notable. The key thing about facetting is the arrangement of the vertices, which is dual to the key thing about stellation - the arrangement of the face planes. I often find that investigating the dual story sheds light on both processes. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:28, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
I think I'm encroaching on the really-hard-to-visualize-the-resultant-faceting stage now!
(BTW, is it spelt faceting or facetting more often? Have seen both: Stella uses the former. Which should the article be at?) Double sharp (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
It gets like that. I developed the use of facetting diagrams to help me trace things through. You must have been pretty sure how to spell it when you moved it from facetting . Coxeter and Holden used one t, Bridge used two. I followed Bridge but he later told me he hadn't thought about it and just spelled it the way it came to him. Both forms can be found in dictionaries. I don't think it matters, much like "polyhedra" vs. "polyhedrons." — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:31, 31 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
Ah, now here is a case of Double sharp forgetting information. :-) Double sharp (talk) 01:36, 1 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Looks like you can get the inverted or retrosnub forms from the same polyhedra as the snub forms – their difference is how you join up the faces with the snub triangles. Double sharp (talk) 11:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

new aviation project articles edit

I came across a new airship article, but I figured on waiting and seeing what other WP:Aviation editors make of it first. Let it have enough slack in the mooring 'rope' so as to speak rather than haul on hard and end up with friction (burns). Would you say that's a reasonable approach. GraemeLeggett (talk) 06:29, 2 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

I have seen a lot worse, goes to show that even the grumpiest old git can have something useful to say. The guy claims to be a former employee of the company which might be used to establish an unacceptable PoV, but I am prepared to let that ride. Yes, I am happy to leave the content to the wider community, though perhaps someone who has actually noticed it needs to add the usual templates and categories so as to bring it to more folks' attention. Mind you, perhaps I should patent my invention (of 30 seconds ago) on how to fill a metal-skinned airship so that all the air is removed without wasting lifting gas, it's dead easy really - one might almost say laughably easy - as the basic mechanics were employed (for a slightly different purpose, which is why I could patent it) just over a hundred years ago. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:50, 2 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
I thought at first there might be a bit of coatrack/unburdening of the soul going on. I do think that going through and applying the Wikipedia MoS (eg on the capitalization) might be counterproductive when other editors could do it. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:38, 2 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
I'd ask what is your discovery, Steelpillow, but understand there are issues with prior disclosure in patents, and I wouldn't want to stand in thre way of your making your golden fortune. Back on topic, it's not the startlingly marvellous technical analysis which the pre-release publicity had announced & certainly needs a cleanup, but as above I think if any of us three do this it would not be helpful.TheLongTone (talk) 12:33, 2 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
No sense in paying a patent fee until someone serious reckons to actually build one. But if you care to drop me an email and swear not to disclose or use in any way, shape or form, I'll be happy to let you in on the secret. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:31, 2 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
From his reply on his talk page & his recent large-scale revert, Cronkerleigh clearly wants to take this issue further: I'm not sure what the appropriate mechanism is.TheLongTone (talk) 14:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
I am drafting a notice for WP:ANI as we speak. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:49, 11 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Blink & you miss it, I was just considering my three ha'porth & he's blocked already. Half of me thinks he should have been given a chance to reply just to stop him having an excuse to feel victimised: the other half thinks it would make no difference. I'm sure he would only have dug himself a deeper hole.TheLongTone (talk) 15:56, 11 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

On Bowers style acronyms for uniform polyhedra edit

 
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Double sharp (talk) 10:49, 15 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Replied again. Double sharp (talk) 13:01, 15 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Symmetrical configurations of fcc structures comprising spheres of uniform size edit

Hi Steelpillow, I wonder if you can point me to any software, preferably free, which would enable me to construct such regular e.g. crystal configurations, starting with a tetrahedron comprising 4 spheres; the upper size limit would be a regular (or truncated) tetrahedron with a edge length of say 12 or 16 spheres. At the moment I create models using Rhinoceros 3D NURBS modelling software, reading in Rhino command files created by e.g. an Excel macro or a bespoke VRML system which cannot be brought up-to-date (because it is based on the discontinued MS Java VM). Any ideas welcome! Many thanks. --TraceyR (talk) 22:15, 26 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I am afraid this is out of my area of expertise. Google might be your best bet. If it fails you, let me know and I can try passing on your query to some old colleagues. 10:14, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks anyway. It was worth a shot! I have trawled the web at various times to no effect. At present I'm just interested in regular and truncated tetrahedra. Cheers. --TraceyR (talk) 20:02, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
OK, I'll try to ask around. Can you explain a bit more about the tetrahedra, as regular tetrahedra do not pack neatly, and certainly not as an fcc lattice? Also, are you looking just for graphics or do you need some ability to work with the 3D model? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:15, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Pictures are better than words, especially since I'm not familiar with crystal terminology:

In my words, these all exhibit tri-axial symmetry, I have many such images and their corresponding definitions (as Rhino 3D text command files). Ideally I would like to be able to create short animated sequences, initially simple rotations but later showing reconfigurations, e.g. removing the corners of a tetrahedron and placing the affected spheres elsewhere on the body (but restricted to lattice locations). I have seen that Blender probably provides all the features that I need (and many more) but there may be something which is more specific for such an application. Thanks for your help! --TraceyR (talk) 08:46, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. Still trying to understand your exact issues. Am I right in thinking that you still have access to Rhinoceros 3D, and your key problem is in generating new source files for new sphere clusters? According to Wikipedia's section on the Rhinoceros 3D File format, there is a freely-available file converter so you have a pretty wide choice of modern formats. Is that correct? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
My aim is to import existing models like those above into a system which would enable me to move individual objects (e.g. a sphere or group of spheres) to a different location within the model, ideally only to valid lattice locations, and ideally record this movement as an animation. This is almost certainly programmable within both Rhino 3D (full version - I have the free trial version) and Blender, and would no doubt be an interesting excercise! I was hoping that this sort of manipulation might be a normal requirement in fileds such as crystallography, chemistry, biology etc and that there could be existing systems which would require little or no scripting on my part. Such a system (if it exists!) would almost certainly be able to define new models. There is no funding for this work; I'm doing it in my 'spare time' to help a friend. Many thanks for your willingness to spend your 'spare time' on this! --TraceyR (talk) 19:00, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sorry to keep asking questions, but your need seems a bit unusual and I am struggling to understand precise issues that must be so obvious to yourself. So really you are after a 3D animation program with abilities to: a) import Rhino VBscript files and b) program arrays of permitted destination points. I think those are very distinct requirements. Can you export those files from Rhino in any other 3D format? If not, then Step 1 is to find another tool which can import them. On the second requirement, would hand-entering the destination point be an acceptable fallback? I'm not confident that an animation suite would have readily-available tools for defining an array of permitted locations, though I can always ask. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
You're right, of course, I'm expecting too much of any one program! A system which allows the creation of 3D crystal-type models would be fine. Pseudo-animation could be achieved by a sequence of intermediate steps, once the start and end configurations had been defined, so animation is not necessary either. Thanks again. --TraceyR (talk) 20:23, 1 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
So, would that be: Import Rhino VBscrip files, save them in a more supportable format, view and edit the new files? Would editing a raw text-based file format, such as VRML, be acceptable or do you need a mouse-based graphical user interface? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:58, 2 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Given a VRML browser to view the models, that would be great! Is that feasible? --TraceyR (talk) 20:13, 2 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Spurred on by your questions, I have just discovered a Youtube tutorial with X3D examples from X3DOM. This is a major step forward - it all looks eminently achievable, i.e. to convert my current definition files to X3D and load and display them in e.g. Chrome. Is this what you had in mind? Animation may come later, but this looks great. --TraceyR (talk) 20:38, 2 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing. X3D is the XML based replacement for VRML, so is the natural choice for web-based viewing and is supported by Blender. I often find it easier to clean up or make small changes to XML-based files using a text-based editor, so you might want to look at X3D Edit as well. The main thing I am unsure about with this setup is how to covert all those VBscript source files - will Rhino export them as something Blender can import? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
No problem there; they're not scripted, just Rhino command lines which are read in from a file, e.g. "_-Sphere 10.0,0.0,-7.0700 10"; I create the files via VBA these days anyway, so when I have sorted out the X3D syntax for the definitions and facilities we need, it'll be straightforward. I'll have a look at X3D Edit too. Many thanks. As for Blender, I have seen that one can export from Blender to X3D, so maybe the other direction is also possible. I suspect that rendering in Blender may be better, but it's early days! --TraceyR (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for SkyFly Airlines help edit

Hi Steelpillow, I just wanted to say thank you for helping to get this article removed. I was having a hard time getting it removed and I really appreciate your work. Cheers!Monopoly31121993 (talk) 13:29, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

You're welcome. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:44, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
If you have time I think I found another hoax, this time it's another Congolese airline called Stellar Airlines. I wrote some reasons on the talk page why I think it's a fake airline and I nominated it for deletion. CheersMonopoly31121993 (talk) 15:22, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

star polygon vs coptic polygon? edit

What's the difference? Double sharp (talk) 14:31, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Good question, the answer is a bit unhappy. "Coptic" is well defined: it describes a polygon or other figure which intersects itself. For example a quadrilateral twisted into two triangles joined at their apices is coptic. But the term "star polygon" is not well defined. We know what regular star polygons are, we know what "star domains" are (and they are not coptic, though they are sometimes polygons), but I am not aware of any RS that has given a general definition of a star polygon. Nevertheless, the term "Star polygon" is so common that an article on it is essential. How to write an article on a mathematical topic that has never been defined by a mathematician? [runs away giggling] — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:13, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Your submission at Articles for creation: Rotor wing has been accepted edit

 
Rotor wing, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

Anne Delong (talk) 03:57, 16 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

"can't bold when there are three related usages" edit

Why not? – Smyth\talk 09:26, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Well, either that or we should bold all three. Simply bolding one of them looks like it is giving some sort of message about their relative status, and that message is not justified in the text. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:34, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

ESD Protection during transit edit

Hello Steelpillow. Thank you for your edit and concern about possible copyright violation in relation to new material I added on ESD protection during transit. I thought citing the source would be sufficient in this case. I am worried about leaving the remaining text without citing the Telcordia GR-1421 industry requirements from which the information was taken. Should the reference to the Telcordia source remain in the References section, or should a statement such as “According to Telcordia GR-1421” be included preceding the third sentence in the paragraph? Thanks for your help. Aecannon12 (talk) 14:45, 6 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi, thanks for contacting me. My concern was that you were copying significant material direct from the source, as your prose has something of that kind of formality about it. I may have been mistaken, in which case I must apologise. Also, I felt that a lot of the detail about other requirements on packaging, such as mechanical or chemical properties or re-usability, was not really relevant to the article topic but only to the packaging, so in my rewrite I edited a lot of that out. When I followed your link I found it led to a pay-for document written by a commercial company and I was not able to verify its content. With hindsight, I am not sure whether I should have deleted it on that account, so I have restored it - at least until someone who knows the rules better cares to check it out. Hope all that makes sense. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:40, 6 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Elementary Cycles edit

Dear Steelpillow. I have replied to your comments. I explain why the link between Elementary Cycle and de Broglie periodic phenomenon is explicit in de Broglie PhD seminal thesis. It is also at the base of the Louis_de_Broglie#Conjecture_of_an_internal_clock_of_the_electron olso mentioned in wikipedia. Thank you for your help. N4tur4le (talk) 12:45, 7 June 2014 (UTC)Reply


Dear Steelpillow
I have resubmitted the article adding explicit citations in every section. If needed more citations can be added.
The link to de Broglie model is explicit in many Dolce's papers. Indeed Elementary Cycles is based on the "postulate" that "Every rest elementary particle is an intrinsically periodic phenomenon", which is nearly a exact quotation of de Broglie's hypothesis given above and in the article. See for instance http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.1140.pdf: " the formalism described in this paper is based on the fundamental assumption “of existence of a certain periodic phenomenon of a yet to be determined character, which is to be attributed to each and every isolated energy parcel [elementary particle]"" or http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.0315.pdf "In fact, by using de Broglie’s words, the formalism is based on the fundamental assumption “of existence of a certain periodic phenomenon of a yet to be determined character, which is to be attributed to each and every isolated energy parcel [elementary particle]”". Thank you. N4tur4le (talk) 15:46, 10 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Dear Steelpillow,

I am going to undo your corrections. The link with de Broglie work has been discussed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Elementary Cycles. APerson (talk! and I think this link is clear.

I have also restored the citation to R. Penrose. In his book "Cycles of Time" he explicitly says that every elementary particle is a clock, thus this his cyclic description is not only about cosmology. This Penrose's claim is also explicitly reported in Muller paper published on Science. Check yourself from the reference in Elementary Cycles. From Penrose's book "Cycles of Time", page.93:

"for there is a clear sense in which any individual (stable) [isolated] massive particle plays a role as a virtually perfect clock. [...] In other words, any stable massive particle behaves as a very precise quantum clock, which ticks away with [Compton] frequency [Compton periodicity] "

This is an explicit link to Elementary Cycles whose basic postulate is

  • Every rest elementary particle is a reference clock of Compton periodicity

N4tur4le (talk) 19:51, 12 June 2014 (UTC)Reply


Dear Steelpillow
I have eliminated the word "recurrence" and used wavelength and the term "periodicity" where possible. The point is that Lorentz transformations "mix" space and time as well as energy and momentum, this means that the relativistic transformations "mix" the temporal periodicity and the wavelength of "periodic phenomena" (e.g. relativistic waves). In analogy with the space-time four-vector and the four-momentum, this means that the time periodicity and the wavelength can be written as a four-vector which is named space-time periodicity in the article, see section "Basic formalism and space-time periodicities". Please let me know if there are other similar corrections that can be done.
The logic for the link to Penrose is this: from the introduction section of the article you see that "In Elementary Cycles every particle is described as an elementary clock", or from the section "Postulate of elementary space-time cycles" we have "This postulate defining the theory of Elementary Cycles can be equivalently expressed in different ways:
  • Every rest elementary particle is an intrinsically periodic phenomenon of Compton periodicity [1] [8] [8] [2]
  • very rest elementary particle is a reference clock of Compton periodicity [1] [8] [3] [5] [4] [2] [6]
In other words "Elementary Cycles", which is a nick name to address this interpretation of quantum mechanics, is equivalent to say "every elementary particle is a reference clock". This is the definition of the theory (Elementary Cycles = every particle is a reference clock). Now, this aspect of elementary particle, for which Elementary Cycles fully derived, has been explicitly pointed out by Penrose who says in his book "any stable massive particle behaves as a very precise quantum clock, which ticks away with [Compton] frequency [Compton periodicity].", or similarly by de Broglie with his Louis_de_Broglie#Conjecture_of_an_internal_clock_of_the_electron, and others. This aspect is mostly relevant in the description of time flow and causality, also described by Penrose in his book, see section "Time Cycles and Time Flow".
I have restore the citations to de Broglie and to Penrose because they were eliminated without checking them carefully. For instance it is now clear for the quote above that Penrose cyclic description is not only about cosmology but it concerns also elementary particles, contrarily to what you said.
In general I would really appreciate constructive comments to improve the article. From some comments in this discussion, for example "this is a dumb theory which deserves to be ignored" I see an "a priory" opposition against its validity. It could happen that one manages to get a paper published on a completely dumb theory, but in this case we have too many papers, and journals like Ann.Phys., Europhys.Lett., Found.Phys. are serious scientific journals. The idea has been presented in many important conferences, for instance ICHEP2014 (see announcement of the Higgs boson discovery) and awarded by FQXi. All the people involved in these peer-reviews, publications and conferences would have destroyed such a theory if it were really dumb. Finally, saying that an idea, certified by peer-reviews and suggested by well regarded scientists (Penrose, 't Hooft, de Broglie, etc), "deserve to be ignored" is against the basic principles of Wikipedia to disseminate informations and not to hide information.
I have objective reasons to say that this article is very interesting for wikipedia readers and it is not OR. Therefore I would like to invite you to have a positive and objective attitude about it. I am aware of the fact that it must be largely improved to be published so I would like to ask you to help me in this task. Also I think you should seriously try to figure out about the validity and novelty of the approach to quantum mechanics proposed in the article and give my feedback. Thank you N4tur4le (talk) 09:46, 13 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Dear Steelpillow (Talk)
I edited introduction the article trying to follow your advice. Could you check whether I am moving in the correct direction? Then I will continue with rest of the article. I have specified that the name Elementary Cycle is descriptive and the theory at the moment has not a specific name.
I have used your example of citation using as much as possible quotations from Dolce's papers. For the remaining part of the introduction I have rephrased Dolce's claims avoiding plagiarism but keeping the original meaning. So every single sentence is directly extrapolated from the papers.
The imposition of boundary conditions to relativistic waves as quantization condition is the central part of Dolce's proposal and it is definitively a novel aspect. It is not sufficient to introduce phasor to describe quantum particles, in ordinary quantum mechanics you need also to quantize them by imposing commutation relations (or boundary condition is semi-classical non relativistic quantum mechanics such as in the particle in a box). In Elementary Cycles the commutation relations are replaced by the condition of periodicity, from which the commutation relation can be derived (see section "commutation relation" in the article). The quantization through boundary condition is extended to relativistic quantum mechanics. Contrarily to common opinion the whole quantum mechanics can be derived from semi-classical arguments (waves + boundary conditions) and not the opposite as commonly thought (semi-classical physics is a particular approximation of quantum mechanics). Thank You. N4tur4le (talk) 13:48, 27 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi, there is no need to post copies of messages to me in two locations, both of them are on my watchlist. It is best to post on the Project talk page so that others will know about it, unless it is a personal message. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Editor's Barnstar
For making sense out of the nonsense, largely the result of sock-puppetry, at Metamodernism. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:47, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Metamodernism edit

I was thoroughly disgusted by the state of the discourse about the article at Metamodernism, but I see that you got to it before I did. It is obvious that we have two editors who do not like each other, and there appears to be a toxic history. One of them is probably a sockpuppet, but we are still waiting for final adjudication, and whose posts are too long, difficult to read. Fortunately, we haven't heard from him in the last few days. One of them is asserting ownership of the article by the WikiProject for Philosophy. (Does metamodernism really have to do with philosophy anyway, or with literary criticism? In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, philosophy as such also includes the various schools of analytic philosophy.) There is an issue that at least one of the contending editors claims to know who or what the other one is, with false claims of doxing and threats of doxing. One of the two contending editors may be a scholar with connections to metamodernism; if so, that is all right (and probably good) as long as there are no doxing violations. Thank you for restoring a temporary modicum of civility. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:02, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

If there are any further outbursts, either on the talk page or at the noticeboards, I will probably file a request for arbitration. It is calm right now, but the underlying conduct issues may be beyond the ability of "the community" to deal with. (I personally am deeply cynical about the ability of "the community" to deal with divisive issues at the noticeboards, but that is my opinion, and it is worth what you paid for it.) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:02, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I guess there is a philosophical aspect to metamodernism, but I do tend to agree that it is more in the domain of cultural philosophy, much as say the scientific method belongs to the philosophy of science. It seemed a point not worth bringing up at the time. ;-) I strongly suspect a premeditated assault on Wikipedia by certain self-promoting wannabees - the current metamodern debate seems riddled with such self-promotion and prepared intellectual vandalism. The "New Sincerity"? The new insincerity, more like!
As for the behaviour, I felt they thoroughly deserved each other and their own inability to deal with their opponent was sufficient punishment. But yes, now that things have cooled down, I'd say that enough is enough. I tend to agree about divisive issues and noticeboards, but then isn't that pretty much the definition of a divisive issue? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:43, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Alberto Santos Dumont edit

Yeah. This trying to discredit the Wright Brother's achievements bores me rigid. The 4 1903 flights were made off the flat and it was only because the winds at Huffman Priarie were very variable that they started using the catapult...they got tired of laying the track so that it was into wind only for the wind to have changed by the time that they had finished. Bottom line is that both the 1903 & 4 flyers could take off without catapult assisst: I am an admirer of Santos Dumont, but bottom line is that the 14-bis was barely capable of flight, was not truly controllable & thesse people who try to downplaay the astonishing achievements of the Wrights irritate me beyond endurance. The Brazilian chauvinists I understand, but reverting that (accurate) edit of yours was dumb & wrong, particularly from an editor with no history of editing aviation articles that I can see.TheLongTone (talk) 10:58, 4 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

To be fair to the other editor, I do think this particular mistake is an easy one to make when one is only half-into the finer details - after all, I got suckered into it before I thought to check. The interesting thing is how, when a Wright flyer appeared in Europe, everybody was awestruck. People travelled from all over to come and see it for themselves. Somebody of Santos-Dumont or Bleriot's calibre just threw up his hands and said "We have been wasting our time over here, the Wrights had it all stitched up years ago," or words to that effect. Shame that those folks' fans don't listen to them a bit more. I do think that the Wrights had to play catch-up a little later on over stability and flyability, but then they knew that and never made any bones about it - it was what allowed them to concentrate on getting the rest right.
FYI I am working on a draft provisionally titled Claims of first flight and currently in my sandbox. I'd be interested to know what you think. Lots of material is still either missing or garbled but I think I have the basic shape of it now. I suspect that the most difficult decision will be how much prominence to give - or not to give - to that Jane's editorial on Whitehead. I may need to wait until some suitable RS comments on its influence. Oh, and of course, have I missed out any historically significant claims? Gibbs-Smith mentioned claims for Watson and Ellehammer in his 1956 list, "Hops and Flights", but I am not convinced these are notable enough. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
The mistake is an easy one to make if you are only vaguely acquainted with the facts, & I don't think anybody with a poor grasp of the facts should make an edit like that. (Not in a very forgiving mood today!). The article you've started looks good...it is actually the article that was early flying machines before that got merged with another article & turned into a history of that phase of flight history by you, & is a needed article. Myself I don't believe that the Jane's article is of any real significance, and would like to know what the 2014 Jane's has to say. Imo the man who was responsible for the claims is a patent idiot...the man believes in flying cars. And Janes is nothing to do with aviation history. Its only influence seems to be that it prompted a large number of aviation historians to say it was nonsense, and make Whitehead 'supportters' get overexcited. I agree that finding a cite for any opinion may be difficult...TheLongTone (talk) 17:36, 4 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
 
Bristol Superfreighter loading a car
"The mistake is an easy one to make if you are only vaguely acquainted with the facts" :[consider this an embarrassed smiley]: Sometimes, you don't realise how vaguely you are acquainted with the subject until you get reverted by a real expert. My article is intended to be more focused on the claims and their to-and-fro-ing than on the events themselves than previous articles were, I can't see any other way to make sense of this particular snake's nest. Flying cars, eh - would you settle for a Bristol Superfreighter? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:07, 4 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
I've flown in a Bristol Superfreighter (shows how old I am) but the aircraft I lust after is a Supermarine Walrus.TheLongTone (talk) 18:15, 4 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
My dad took us all, with the car, to France in a Superfreighter one summer. The car achieved a short "hop" on its own once when he drove too fast over a humpback bridge, but the flight was not sustained. My mother certainly lost control. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 22:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

Comments edit

(Moved from User talk:Steelpillow/sandbox)

Thanks for putting this article together. I have read it over carefully and I think it needs only a bit of a copy edit and some more citations for the uncited paras and it will be ready to go "live". - Ahunt (talk) 14:42, 8 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I'm working on it. Shame your comment came too late by less than half an hour. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:46, 8 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
I think I was reading the article and writing this as you moved it! No matter, we can work on it in mainspace just as well! - Ahunt (talk) 16:07, 8 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

One-cookie universe edit

!

Note on the related Wikiprojects edit

Hello Steelpillow: It is more likely that you will receive a more complete response to your RfC on AI if you also notify the related 4 Wikiprojects as was done by RobertM for his own RfC:

03:15, 3 October 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+293)‎ . . Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion ‎ (→‎RFC in progress: new section)

03:12, 3 October 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+278)‎ . . Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science ‎ (→‎RFC in progress: new section)

03:10, 3 October 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+274)‎ . . Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy ‎ (→‎RFC in progress: new section)

03:07, 3 October 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+277)‎ . . Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing ‎ (→‎RFC in progress: new section)

By posting a short note on each of these 4 WikiProject pages it should obtain a more complete response to your RfC. FelixRosch (talk) 15:22, 31 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi Felix,
Thank you for the thought. I did post updates to RobertM's notifications on most of these pages. If anybody was interested, I think they would have noticed. Unfortunately the new voices who did appear endorsed the negative view. I think that to get the human-like side of AI discussed properly will need careful building of a rock-solid case and then careful presentation of it. As a starter, I notice in the latest (1 Nov 2014) copy of New Scientist, page 21, the subheading, "A hybrid computer will combine the best of number-crunching with human-like adaptability – so it can even invent its own programs." To quote from later in the article, "DeepMind Technologies ... is designing computers that combine the way ordinary computers work with the way the human brain works." A few more references like that, and we could draft a section on "Simulating human intelligence" or similar title. Sadly I do not work in the field and have no knowledge of where to look. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:53, 31 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Hello Steelpillow. That all sounds useful and you could add it into the article in the opening parts of Section 2 as you see best. If needed just ping me or put something on my Talk for me to support as needed. Your new discussion on the Talk page with a new editor this last week-end was also interesting, since while you were away there was an ANI here [1] where we secured a 4 editor consensus for your version of the edit. The current version of the Lead section is posted with your version of the edit as a 4-editor consensus counting yourself. FelixRosch (talk) 17:57, 3 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Post-script. Your 6 November comments on refactoring the article, and possibly to fork the article are among the stronger suggestions we have seen there in some time now. I learned in the last 24-hrs that CharlesG was the original author of the current factoring of the article way back in 2004 and it seems that he is strongly committed to keeping it that way into the indefinite future. Your other option on forking the article might be to give him a "Current history of artificial intelligence" article in order for him to preserve his 2004 perspective. That way more editors could support your refactoring suggestion for the 2014 version update. If time allows, I shall try to adapt and post two contemporary "outlines" of AI on the Talk page there (one adapted from Norvig) in order to give other editors a chance to look at some alternatives from leading scholars and offer suggestions for refactoring the old 2004 outline. Cheers. FelixRosch (talk) 17:22, 7 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Now that I have also stumbled on cognitive computers, there also seems to be a debate about whether these are part of AI research or vice versa. Certainly, to deny that they seek human-like function is absurd, as it is their very rationale. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:44, 7 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
My position remains sympathetic. Regarding your new machine ethics edits from yesterday, I'll try to add some cites from recent research during the week. Your delete/reposition of the History section on AI placed it at the top of the outline at its old full length. The current AI page is 44-pages long, and since it is linked to a peer review version of the History AI page, do we really need a bells-and-whistles version of this section in the subject article as well? Good direction with your machine ethics updates, which refactoring theme comes next. Cheers. FelixRosch (TALK) 16:51, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Hi Felix, my apologies if I messed up your History edits, I did not intend to. Another editor had restored the full version at the top and I mistakenly thought that the two versions were identical. I will try to replace it with your cut-down version as soon as I can spare a moment, though I think it is probably still better left at the top rather than moved down again. If you disagree, then we'd need to take the discussion to the article talk page. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:26, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I can't seem to find a shortened version of it in the page history log. Can you recall when you cut it down? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:32, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Hi Steelpillow; In the new Machine ethics section, I have just added the cite to the Wallach book of Moral Machines. The condensed version on History you refer to above, I had summarized as a single paragraph which I then absorbed into the new Conceptual foundations sections you had previously identified in your refactored outline. I shall post it in this edit here in quote marks before signing for easy reference. My concern was that the old version is simply getting all too long at 44 pages in total, and Wikipedia already has a GA article for History of AI. There appeared little reason to retain an artificially condensed version of the History in this article rather than linking directly to the GA article as the preferred route to the information. Either way, a more condensed version of the current History section would seem preferable, here is the text of my adapted and condensed version as it was absorbed into the new section for Conceptual foundations: "Several key moments in the history of AI have contributed to defining the major 21st-century research areas in AI. These early historical research areas from the last century, although by now well-rehearsed, are revisited occasionally with some recurrent reference to: (i) McCullock and Pitts early research in schematizing digital circuitry, (ii) Alan Turing's pioneering efforts and thought experiments; (iii) the early Dartmouth workshop in AI; (iv) Samuel's early checker player; (v) Minsky's early dissertation; and (vi) the misstep of early Perceptrons and the early neural net winter. From these followed the 4 more historical research areas currently being pursued in updated form which include: (a) means-ends problem solvers (Newell 1959), (b) Nautral language processing (Winograd 1972), (c) knowledge engineering (Lindsay 1980), and (d) early automated medical diagnosis (Shortliffe 1977). [Franklin, Cambridge Univ Press, pp16-22. The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (2014). [2]]." Which ever version you may decide to post after you make a decision one way or the other, I shall try to support. Cheers. FelixRosch (TALK) 17:41, 20 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
No problem with machine ethics. I did little more than place token content to flesh out the rearrangement a little until others could do it justice. I have been thinking of the conceptual foundations as something where we would describe the current position without reference to how we got here, while I conceive the history section as an overview of developments across the wider aspects of the field as well. I have no real axe to grind over this, but if you have other ideas about this it might be worth discussing the relationship between the two sections on the article talk page. On the history, I would think it reasonable to include a short paragraph on each of the seven main sections of the history article, which appears to be what is there at present. There is surely scope for cutting most of these paragraphs down a bit, but I have no strong feelings about that either. Probably not very useful to you, all in all. I shall keep an eye on the article and discussions for a good while, or if you have any special requests, drop me a line here. I just hope I am not disappointing you too much by being so lukewarm. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:07, 20 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Steelpillow; That's fine. My observation on Wikipedia is that readers interested in a topic will not tend to click on links if the section is long, though if they are interested in a section which is short then they are more likely to click on the links provided. In this case, since the GA is there for the History of AI, then it made sense to shorten the section to encourage more linking to the GA. As I said, I'll support your judgment call on this. The other issue of the very long citation list at the end of the article, I did comment on this on the Talk page at AI, in agreement with your "start a new page" comment. Maybe that's the key, you can simply start the new page for them. Cheers. FelixRosch (TALK) 21:32, 20 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

FYI edit

  There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Burninthruthesky (talk) 21:01, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

Links to personal pages edit

Since you do many edits to the polyhedron page, I am wondering if it is okay to put a link there to a polyhedra page I have created at wordpress.com? Please advise. ThanxUser:Bertusminimus 03:29, 28 NOvember 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Publishing links to one's own material is generally not allowed. I'd suggest that you start a new section at Talk:Polyhedron and post the url of your site there. Other editors, such as myself, can then decide whether, and if so then how, it should be mentioned. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:11, 29 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Hi and Thank you for the advice. I'll post what I have, as you suggest, in the talk section.User:Bertimunminimus 10:10, 29 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bertusminimus (talkcontribs)

Merry Merry edit

To you and yours

 

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 14:15, 22 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

Happy New Year! edit

 

Dear Steelpillow,
HAPPY NEW YEAR Hoping 2015 will be a great year for you! Thank you for your contributions!
From a fellow editor,
FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

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