User talk:WillowW/Archive16

Joseph Priestley

As JP is appearing on the main page on the first of March, I feel like we should go back and finish hashing out those sentences. Awadewit | talk 02:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, let's do! I'll go there straight away and see what I can do; please amend whatever you think is appropriate. I'll try to be as accurate and text-faithful as possible. :) 14:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Dearest Willow: Very, very belated thanks and congratulations for your careful editing of Joseph Priestley just before its appearance on the Main Page. You are a gifted writer and editor. In addition to fixing rough spots, your many small edits improved to the article's style overall and added grace. The overall result was glorious. I meant to tell you this at the time, but I got involved in vandalism watch, and then other things. Seeing O
₂ on the Main Page reminded me of Priestley, which reminded me of my unpaid debt of gratitude to you. Finell (Talk) 06:28, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear, dear Finell,

Thank you so much! I'm very touched by your kindness and warm words; the word "grace" has a lot of meaning for me. :) I feel as though I'm standing under one of those lamps outside the shower. ;) But I'll confess to being a little surprised and confused, too; you don't owe me any real debt, do you? For one thing, the lioness' share of grace at Joseph Priestley came from Awadewit and other authors; my own contribution was infinitesimal and rather Johanna-come-lately. But even more importantly, we wiki-friends are never really in debt to one another, are we? We're merely exchanging little gifts, pretty baubles of light to delight one another, sharing sea-shells with other children on the beach. I'll look forward to reading your next work. :) Willow (talk) 14:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I have repeatedly credited Awadewit — on her Talk page, at the WP:FA review, on the article's Talk page — as the article's major author whose own work was FA quality all by itself. My recent message exclusively addressed your copy editing immediately before the Front Page appearance (although you have made other significant contributions to the article before that), any my praise of that work was very well deserved. I do think you are correct about not owing debts to one another. But giving thanks and recognizing others' good work is something else. So thanks, again. Finell (Talk) 01:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you hadn't been good to Awadewit! I was only trying to creep into my shell, as I often do when people say nice things to me. Praise makes me feel awkward and self-conscious and sure to say something stupid, so you'll have to stop that right away! :) I keep trying to learn to accept compliments gracefully, but it's much easier to gush than to be gushed over. ;) Let me try again, won't you? Thank you, sweet-voiced Finell! I'm very pleased that you think well of me and my work on Joseph Priestley; I think likewise of you, and I hope that we'll be delighting each other for a long time. :) Willow (talk) 13:55, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Please don't apologize. The last thing in the world I intended to give you was distress. I have noticed from your Talk page (I tend to scan someone's Talk page when I visit to post or read a message) that you have a lot of experience receiving well deserved accolades and that you are held in high esteem by many Wikipedians. Since you are so very good at so very many things, why have you not yet learned to expect and to accept praise? Yes, that question is purely rhetorical. Also, shame on you for violating the guideline about being bold!

What kind of dancing do you enjoy doing? My wife and I do ballroom and Latin dancing when we get the chance. We met, 10 years ago, at a West Coast Swing practice. Finell (Talk) 21:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I have to run, but I started with ballet. I didn't stick with it as I got older, partly for physical reasons beyond my control, but I had a lot of fun performing on the stage. :) Nowadays I love almost all types of dancing, from Swedish folk-dances to waltzing to East Coast swing to Argentine tango. But I rarely find an opportunity or a partner who's willing to go with me, and I'm busy working many evenings, so I usually devote myself to other pursuits. :( Someday... Willow (talk) 19:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ballet is the best foundation for any kind of dance. Argentine tango is a wonderful dance, although extraordinarily difficult; I'm not read to attempt that one. There are plenty of social dance partners around almost everywhere, and especially at dance classes and at social and practice dances held at dance schools. So you really should get out more! Finell (Talk) 05:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Enzyme ideas

I think enzyme activity might fit best with enzyme catalysis, since it can be argued that since this is what enzymes "do" - this is their "activity". However, some might perfer directing it to enzyme assay, since enzyme activity is also a unit of measurement. In discussing the substrate, you have to remember that methylglyoxal is not the substrate of GLO1, whatever the databases say! The hemithioacetal is what the enzyme binds, and here C1 is linked to the sulphur. I'd follow Thornalley here his review is pretty good. All the best, Tim Vickers (talk) 21:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

"Lack of metal specificity" is how I'd word it. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:02, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

You might recognise a new addition to the main Enzyme article. :) Tim Vickers (talk) 23:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I am so grinning. :D Thank you, Tim! I have to dash off soon, but you should feel free to fix whatever sloppiness and silliness I put into Lactoylglutathione lyase. I'll try to make a few images that we could put into the article, but since I'm leaving soon, I might not get to it. You have such a fascinating enzyme; my brain is brimming! :) Willow (talk) 23:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello – Nothing More

I've come to request no favors and solicit no assistance. I just wanted to drop by and say hello. When so many days go by without contact from other editors, I can feel distant footsteps echo in the darkness; it's a creepy feeling. (Looks like things have been idle around this talk page for a while too.) So consider this a reaching out between humans. Cheers. – Scartol • Tok 03:15, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

...and a hello you shall have in return, dear Scartol, and more besides. :) Empty and desolate the corridors of Wikipedia may seem now, but if you could only see how they're haunted with happy and friendly ghosts, the memories of our fun together, methinks you would find it a cheery place. :) Please forgive me that I can't come back right away — my sister needs my help with preparing her wedding, and I like to be with my family when I visit them — but I hope to be back by next week sometime, and then the fun will start afresh. :) Although be forewarned: I rashly gave my word to improve action potential at its FAR, and I may need your utmost help. :P Till then, though, let our minds be more agreeably engaged, with warm thoughts of each other's friendship. Willow (talk) 08:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Joyous wishes to you and your sister during the nuptial season. – Scartol • Tok 16:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Archaea stubs

Just a note of thanks, I'm currently re-writing the archaea page, as a brother article for bacteria, and have found it astoundingly useful to be able to link any of the archaeal genera and have a bluelink appear. Thank you. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course, Tim! Thanks so much for your kindness yet again, and, more importantly, thank you for breathing life into the archaea. Making them meant a lot to me, although I don't understand why? It was certainly fun; for once in my life, I was the Queen of my own domain. ;) Willow (talk) 08:25, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Recycling peer review

Hi Willow. Per peer review/volunteers I was wondering if you'd be able to take a look at the Recycling article. I've expanded it considerably over the pass month or so, but am so close to the subject now that I'm really hoping to get a fresh perspective, ya know? Particularly, I'm looking for feedback on the POV balance, as it can be a controversial subject. Cheers! --jwanders^Talk 16:14, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories

I noticed you made a large number of articles with categories like Category:EC_1.19.6 that don't have description pages. When making a new category, please remember to actually create the category page. —Random832 16:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Textile arts newsletter

Hi, the textile arts project had an exciting month in February: 7 featured pictures, 2 good articles, and 4 Did you know? entries. There's still time to join our featured portal drive. Our March newsletter has all the developments. Regards, Durova^Charge! 00:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Requesting peer review of Facebook

I noticed that you listed yourself as a volunteer for general copyediting for peer review. I am requesting a peer review from you for Wikipedia:Peer review/Facebook/archive2, if you have the time. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 18:37, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Techie help

Willow, perchance do you know how to fix a little problem Qp10qp and I are having? If you check out Jane Austen and William Shakespeare, you will notice that they both have "substantive notes" and "reference notes". This is very handy for articles that have lots of details in the notes (we scholarly types!). Anyway, the substantive notes are all made individually, which means that when we add one, the "letters" don't advance in the article, if you see what I mean. One (meaning me in the Austen article, for example), would have to "re-letter") all of the notes following the newly-inserted note to make sure that the notes match up (I hope you can follow this explanation). Anyway, Qp and I want to use this system at Mary Shelley, but we are loathe to introduce it on yet another page that require such high maintenance. Do you think you could figure out how to solve this? I would be ever so grateful. Awadewit | talk 20:28, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi A!

It seems like a pretty hard problem to me, but that's probably because I don't know enough? At least, I can't think of a good solution off the top of my head. You can get automatic letter ordering in the footnotes section using the HTML tag

<ol type=a>

as in

1. When to sessions of
2. sweet silent thought...
3. ...and all is mended.

We could write a template that cloaked the HTML tag, if that'd be preferable. You needn't specify the letters as "reference names" (1st argument) in the {{note label}} template; you could use something like "sonnet_XXX_first_line_note" instead. The internal wikilinks will be fine, as long as you use the same reference name in its {{ref label}} counterpart. NB! this solution sorts the footnotes by the order of their appearance in the "Footnotes" section, not by the order of their appearance within the main text. But how do we transmit the automatically generated letters back to the footnotes in the main text so that they can be rendered in the superscript? I don't see how to do that; it seems we would need a global variable for the HTML page that we could increment with each new footnote? If you use the present solution, you would still need to use a generic reference label in the {{ref label}} or else re-letter the superscripts (the second "label" argument) by hand.

You could also use {{explain}}, as in knit up the ravelled sleeve of care, which is pretty cool but likely to be unfamiliar to most readers. I don't know whether there are any size limitations or restrictions on what you can put in the text field. It's kind of nice to have a special Footnotes section, too, so I see this "explain" solution as imperfect.

Hoping your pastry turned out well; there've been a few setbacks here, but nothing too bad, Willow (talk) 11:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I also think the {{explain}} info would appear as a single long line (which would be headachey for extended notes). Would that I could offer a more helpful comment! I'm surprised this hasn't come up before – have you asked at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)? – Scartol • Tok 15:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Alas, I think Qp and I are a little behind the curve on learning this stuff. Would you mind explaining the whole thing again, step-by-step? I keep reading it, thinking I'm going to understand, but I don't. Sorry! I feel really dumb. (The pastry is beautiful. Some grad student friends helped "dress" it and they thought you did a wonderful job.) Awadewit (talk) 16:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Peer review idea

Hi, I have made a proposal that no peer review request be archived without some response. To aid in this, there is a new list of PR requests at least one week old that have had no repsonses beyond a semi-automated peer review. This list is at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog.

There are just over 100 names on the PR volunteers page, so I figure if each of these volunteers reviewed just one or two PR requests without a response from the list each month, it would easily take care of the "no response" backlog (as there have been 2 or 3 such unanswered requests a day on average).

If you would be able to help out with a review or two a month from the "no responses" backlog list that would be great (and much appreciated). Please discuss questions, comments, or ideas at the PR talk page and thanks in advance for your help, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Requesting peer review of PHP

I noticed that you listed yourself as a volunteer for general copyediting for peer review. I am requesting a peer review from you for Wikipedia:Peer review/PHP/archive2, if you have the time. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 21:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

my dull brain was wrought / With things forgotten

Sorry, we're finishing up The Scottish Play in the 10th grade class, and it's all I can think about. (It even showed up on The Simpsons last night!) But now, since visiting your talk page, all I can think about is the question of lettered notes. Thanks a lot, Awadewit! =)

I saw the previews for Penelope, but I dunno – like you say, I suppose it's just not my cup of tea. We went to see Cloverfield this weekend, and I enjoyed it. Not the best movie in the world, but it does well what it does. ("I dare do all that may become a movie...") We also watched the South Park Imaginationland DVD. Funny, and juvenile. As one should expect from the creators.

I've been working on Emmy Noether (on my drawing board), and I realized I will have made two FAs out of important women whose names start with Emm-. So the question is: Who will be the third for my hat trick? I must admit I'm unable to think of another. Any ideas? Cheers! – Scartol • Tok 15:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I can just see you addressing a cocky student, "Is this a swagger I see before me, dandy to my eyes?" ;)

I think you're pulling my leg a little about not being able to think of an "M" article to work on. ;) But I'll bite, for the fun of the game. :) If you'd like a literary woman, Emma Woodhouse and Emma Bovary would be nice and I'm sure you'll have plenty of help. :) There's also Emma Peel, whom I was championing lately, but who might be, ummm, less exalted. ;) If you'd like to focus on real women from roughly the same time (turn of the 20th century), how about Marie Curie or Maria Montessori? Less famous but also nice would be Margaret Mead, Queen Emma of Hawaii, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Maud Menten, María Izquierdo, Manuela Sáenz, and Emma Stebbins, the sculptor of Bethesda, one of my favourite sculptures. I'm sure that there are, oh, roughly a bazillion more, if I only had more time to think of them. ;)

Darting away for a little longer, sorry I have to run, Willow (talk) 19:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Emma B appeals to me, but I feel like it will be cheating. (And no, I wasn't kidding. I really couldn't think of any.) After Emma Goldman and Emmy Noether, I feel like the third needs to be one that also starts E-M-M. Stebbins really catches my fancy, but the University of Wisconsin library doesn't seem to have any books on her. (I worry that I may not be able to find much on her.) I'll keep digging (and I really should finish the Noether article before I start worrying about who to tackle next).

I don't talk about swagger, but – insofar as they're verboten in our hallways – I have demanded of students: "Is this a cell phone I see before me?" =D Cheers. – Scartol • Tok 12:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Or drinking with fellow friends of the Bard, you might say, "Is this a flagon I see before me, handle to my grasp? Come, let me clutch thee." ;) But I'd better stop, before I say something truly ridiculous. ;) ("Is this a wagon I see before me? Come, let me fall off thee." ;)

If she must be E-M-M, then you have your choice of the centuries. Of course, there's Stebbins (I'm glad that you found her interesting, and hope that you end up doing her!) and Queen Emma of Hawaii. After I wrote, I remembered an 18th century Emma, Lady Hamilton, whom I got to know through Awadewit's recommendation of Thursday Next. :) Emma Crewe is another, but less well-known, tie-in to A's work; I believe that Emma did the copperplates for Erasmus Darwin's Love of Plants, which is part of The Botanic Garden, which A brought to GA a little while ago? She's not mentioned there, though, so I might be mistaken. If you like a pioneer in women's education, there's Emma Willard, too. (I don't believe that she's related to Frances Willard, another woman you might consider profiling in the future.)

The 19th century had several artistic women named Emm*, such as Emma Livry, Emma Calvé, Emma Albani, Emmie Owen, Emma Maria MacFarren (redlink, NB!), and Emma Orczy, author of the Scarlet Pimpernel — not my cup of tea, but fantastically popular in its time.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were several women working for women's rights named Emmeline, including Emmeline Pankhurst (perhaps the most notable?), Emmeline B. Wells, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. The artist Emma Fordyce MacRae has some intriguing paintings that I like. In the modern era, there are many good choices, such as Emma Thompson, Emma Kirkby, Emma Donoghue, and Emmie Chanika, all of them interesting and amazing women in their own ways.

I'm super-impressed that you're tackling Emmy Noether. She's amazing, but how did she come to fascinate you over all the other Emm's? Probably there's no reason; my own enthusiasms are really random, too. Anyway, if you wanted a sounding board or something, I'd be happy to do whatever you'd find helpful. :) I'm sure that several people at WP:WPM would be willing to help as well, if you'd like it; in particular, G-guy has always been very nice and helpful to me. With emm-pathy, Willow (talk) 15:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I like the Emmelines, since it would be best to have three different Emm*-names. I'll probably choose one of them. Thanks so much for the suggestions! As for Noether, I originally went looking for someone from the Arab world involved with mathematics – but the people I found a little info about appear to have no book-length biographies. I looked at the list of 1000, but for the bios which really interested me (like Cai Lun), I could find no books. How weird is that? (There doesn't even appear to be a book-length bio on Sun Tzu!) So I looked in a book about "Women in Mathematics", read a little about Emmy, found some books, and set off. (Cue "Wild Blue Yonder" music)

I Will definitely take you up on the offer to review the article once I have something decent laid out. I've actually contacted the WPMath people, and gotten some good suggestions and offers of help. It's going to be interesting, since my understanding of math goes no further than how to spell it. =) Cheers. I appreciate your emm-phatic assistance. – Scartol • Tok 12:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of any women Arab mathematicians, either, but perhaps you might consider the Persian Omar Khayyám, a titan of mathematics who has a nice literary tie-in, his famous and warm Rubaiyat? He invented a calendar better than our present calendar, and generally lived a pretty cool life. :) I also like Ibn Hazm, author of The Turtledove's Neckring, but he was no mathematician and, umm, not everyone's cup of tea. ;) Willow (talk) 13:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

PS. I almost forgot! Check out user:sanbeg/ref test; someone has gotten a footnote system working — with more improvements to follow, I daresay. I suspect that warm thank-you's and any advice we could give him would be well-received. :) Willow (talk) 13:26, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The General in His Labyrinth

WilowW, the FA-Team have been so magnificent and helpful and generous with your time regarding the WP:MMM. Thank you so much! I feel I shouldn't even think of imposing you any more. But I just thought I'd make you aware that the editors of The General in His Labyrinth are feeling a little overwhelmed. They've made some great progress, and the article is now one of our better ones. But I suspect that a fresh eye and a bit of encouragement would go down very well, if it were at all possible for you to provide them. But please don't feel pressured at all! Thanks again. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 23:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll be happy to, but I'll need a day more before I return home at last. Please be patient with me! :) Willow (talk) 15:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Kannada literature

Hi. I was forwarded to you by user Awadewit. This article of mine is currently in FAC. Some reviewers feel the article needs more prose work. Please let me know if you have the time for this. If you dont, please forward me to someone who is good at this and your help will be greatly appreciated.thanks, Dineshkannambadi (talk) 16:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

re footnote

It's hard for me to predict when these things will go live. I already fixed the things that got my commit from last night reverted, so hopefully what I've done so far will go in the next update. I guess they update every week or two.

But I haven't implemented a note tag yet. I was thinking it might be nice if note and ref could be independent of each other, i.e. support the same options and everything, but numbered differently. We could use some of what you did, with whatever CSS is necessary so the notes list would be numbered the same way, and have some internal prefix to keep the two separate. Or I guess I could just implement note the way I originally planned, and just change the rendering later. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 15:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Steve and welcome to my Talk page! :)

I think you're right; at least I get the impression that the different numbering (alphabetical and numerical for footnotes and references, respectively) would be helpful for the reader to discern them. My suggestion would be to implement something in <ref> like <ol> does, with optional type and start parameters for each group; the types may be numerical (type=1, default), lower-case (type=a), upper-case (type=A), lower-case Roman (type=i) and upper-case Roman (type=I). To set that would be relatively easy in <references group=notes /> because you could extend 'cite_references_prefix' => '<ol class="references">' in the internationalization file into 'cite_references_prefix' => '<ol class="references" type="$1">', couldn't you? Then we could implement a footnote with <ref group=notes type=a>, which could be aliased into <note>, maybe using a parserhook?

It seems like greater difficulties come in formatting the reference in the main text and also in deciding on a format for many links to the same reference? For the former, I would suggest generalizing the ++$this->mOutCnt in line 508 of Cite.php into some function $this->refCounterString(++$this->mOutCnt, $type), which would return the value of one of the five basic types, you know, return "4/d/D/iv/IV" for input "4" depending on the type? Maybe such a function exists already? I know hardly anything about PHP (just what I picked up from Cite.php) and I couldn't even find where wgContLang was defined. :( For the latter problem, the present solution with cite_references_link_many_format_backlink_labels seems rather kludgy, don't you think? I think it'd be better to define some generic function that could be internationalized, but which might provide an built-in complementary counter for a given type, e.g., $this->referencesComplementaryCounterForMultipleLinks( $val['number'], $i, $val['count'], $type ) in line 387 of Cite.php. Or you could re-use the counter function refCounterString above but introduce a second type ($multireference_type) for multiple links to a single reference; that might be more elegant.

I hope you don't mind me thinking about these problems? I don't want to get in your way, or be a bother to you. I'm pretty self-conscious about being a newbie, but it's fun for me to learn about this stuff, and it would be really helpful for my friends if we could get a solution working quickly. Thank you very much for all your work and good ideas! :) Willow (talk) 19:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

No problem, it's nice to have some other opinions, so I know I'm not doing something too off. At least, after one initial glitch, what I've done so far seems to be working; I have a short example at user:sanbeg/ref test. The main reason I like having ref and note as independent tags, is that nobody would think that could have references in the same group with different numbering, or add another ref and mess up the numbering of all the existing ones. Oh, and <references> actually generates an <ol>, so we'd need to use CSS to restyle that, and change the superscript labels to match. I'll put some more thought into that when I have time; feel free to leave a note on one if my talk pages if you have an idea. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 23:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Aang

I saw your name on the PR volunteer list, so I decided to come to you. The Aang article was kept from FA status mainly for one reason: prose. I would really appreciate it if you could look over the article and provide some comments on the prose or maybe even copyedit it yourself. Thanks. — Parent5446 ^{(t n c e m l)} 21:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

You're back!

Happy! Happy! Happy! :) Tim Vickers (talk) 04:26, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

WOW — what a nice welcome back! :) I shouldn't have been surprised by your note, but I was, and awfully happy as well. :) I've been gradually oozing back here, while I try to take care of everything that went awry while I was away. ;) My sis and I had fun together, and I was glad to help out, but it's nice to come home to my kitties, whom I missed terribly. I'm sure you can sympathize. :) I've seen my first spring flowers, although most of them are slow waking up this year. ;) A new baby boy has arrived in my favourite cousin's house, so I'm going to knit a red&gold sweater for him, as she asked. :) I'm a little out of practice with baby-boy-sweaters — we've had a run of girls — but maybe I'll make something nice with cables? Ta ta, hi to Loki, and it's good to be back with you, too Willow (talk) 04:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Happy Happy Joy Joy for Willow Part II: The Return. As for your request, I daresay I probably owe you several oodles worth of dealies, so I am – how you say – at your service. At my earliest convenience, probably later today. – Scartol • Tok 23:28, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've copyedited the lead, and made some comments in my sandbox. Aside from being very confused since I know nothing about science, I worry that I may have pruned too much. Please restore whatever shouldn't have been removed. (I'm totally at your command here; please don't feel the need to have me approve anything.) – Scartol • Tok 00:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Now it's my turn for Happy Happy Joy Joy! ;) Thank you so very much; I really appreciate your coming to help me; "not sweeter is the rain of heaven to cornland, when the green sheath teems with grain." (although you should overlook the context of that quote. ;) I really hope that you won't find the article confusing once we're done with it. :) I'm not sure why the article means so much to me; but having taken it under my wing, I'm goin to foster it. It's a little foolish, but sometimes you have to let yourself free-fall before you can learn to fly. ;) Away we go! :) Willow (talk) 03:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

“ Nothing can substitute for someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true. ” — Charles Dickens (umm, sort of)

Aww geez, you're going to make me admit that I've never read Aeschylus? Groan. My wife is a biochemistry PhD, so she's also helping explain action painting to me. Alas, I'm enslaved by that programming language guy: "You always admire what you really don't understand." How true. Ooo, and look at which Scottish play keeps popping up! "Confusion now hath made his masterpiece." (Act II, Scene 3) Any thoughts on the stuff in my sandbox? – Scartol • Tok 12:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts? I think you're very lucky to have such an excellent wife, and I think I'm doubly lucky to have both of you helping with the article. ;) I really liked your comments there, especially because they were easily fixed. ;) I'm afraid that the confusion may get worse before it gets better, but by hallowed Hecate, great business will be wrought ere noon — next Friday. ;) Willow (talk) 14:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Ling.Nut/Funerary art‎

A death portrait from Er-Rubayat in the Faiyum; see the Fayum mummy portraits article.

Hi Willow,

Dunno if you rec'd my email, but if you know anyone reliable who could help with User:Ling.Nut/Funerary art‎, I'd be deeply in your debt... thanks! Ling.Nut (talk) 02:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Ling,

I'm sorry for not getting back to you right away, but I have someone in mind who might be able to help you, Moni3. She's an professional artist and a wonderful Wikipedian; you might've noticed some her previous FA's. Although she's not familiar with funerary art, I have the impression that she's game to help out. You should wait a bit, though, because she's devoting amazing effort to bringing To Kill a Mockingbird to Featured Article level and I think she'll want to see it through to completion. I'll try to help you out, too, but as you can see, I'm rather swamped at the moment. :P For now, I can suggest the Fayum death portraits and also some of the death-mask portraits of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Oh, there's also many more vaguely related topics, but I sense that you wouldn't want to include them, e.g., Danse Macabre, Catrina (she's cute! :), and those photographs that people put on graves or where ashes are kept? I'm also not sure if there's art associated with , umm, less localized burials (such as burial at sea, cremation and sky burial), but it'd be nice to refer to those somehow. On a personal note, it'd be nice to include something about modern hand-made and hand-painted coffins, maybe with a tie-in to the elaborate Egyptian sarcophagi (in Greek, literally, the flesh-eaters); art can be healing. :) Willow (talk) 03:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

PS. I almost forgot one of my favourite paintings, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz by one of my favourite painters, El Greco. I'm not sure if it counts for your article, though? Willow (talk) 03:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

HI Willow and thanks for the good words, as usual. :-) I put a message on Moni3's talk so I wouldn't forget, but I stressed that other projects were more important. Thanks for all the thoughts/ideas you mentioned... I'll try to fit them in! And, if you ever feel like taking a stroll through the graveyard... the article in my sandbox would profit immensely from your magic touch. later! Ling.Nut (talk) 03:54, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiEd

I just tried this, it is quite good. Try going to your preferences link, switching to the gadgets tab and ticking the WikiEd box. Then turn it on when you're editing an article with the button that will appear at the top, right, of your browser window. The shading around a reference is great, it makes the text much easier to read. Tim Vickers (talk) 05:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool — you're all in colors now! :) Thanks for the tip; I'd heard of WikiEd before, but I'm sometimes a little scared of trying new things (believe it or not), so I need a friendly push. I hope that it will let me do pattern-matched replacements; I sometimes want to do that, and usually download the whole file to my computer and edit it with my local editor. Back to the salt mines ;) Willow (talk) 05:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

---

hi

Sudar 4edi (talk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thank you, Sudar! Your wiki-smile couldn't come at a better time. :) Willow (talk) 14:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

...this might interest you...

• http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Action%20potential
• Ling.Nut (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes it's better not to know. ;) I feel the same way about the Universe, which I've been neglecting to reference for, lo! these past four months. :P Distracted to distraction, Willow (talk) 14:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Das interessiert dich vielleicht auch: hier [1] findest du einiges über Ray Wu, den Sohn, dessen Vater du schon porträtiert hast. Gruß aus Frankfurt: --De.Gerbil (talk) 11:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Na, herzlichen Dank, German Gerbil! :) Ich bin momentan total erledigt mit jenem Aktionspotential aber ich werde mich nachher bemühn, den englischen Gegenartikel für Ray Wu anzufangen. Wie der Vater, scheint er mir ganz nett und interessant gewesen zu sein! :) Wir seh'n's, ge?  ;) Willow (talk) 05:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

For you

For Willow, with many thanks

I wish this were a barnstar, but it serves the same purpose. Thank you for all of your support and assistance for To Kill a Mockingbird. It would not be where it is in without your help and guidance. Don't tell Harper Lee. She wouldn't like it. --Moni3 (talk) 22:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Moni, he's beautiful! :) I wish Wikipedia had recordings of mockingbird songs, or I had some other magic hat from which I could draw something beautiful to leave on your doorstep. But maybe this will do? I know you'll read it aright. :) Willow (talk) 06:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Catullus

As to Catullus 10, the version as it was made no sense, and was too far gone to be fixed. It wasn't your fault; it was anonymous users, and with some of them making word-for-word translations and worse, it's hard to tell whether their edits were in good faith or not.

Anyway, remember that not all of Catullus' poems are WP:NOTABLE. I'd say there are only a dozen or so that are (see below). We should stick to improving those pages (remember there's no point in having the article if the poem's not discussed - this is Wikipedia, not WikiSource), and abandon or delete the rest.

Catullus 2 is Catullus' most famous poem, and as such there are tons of sources on it (I'll find some when I have time), and its Wikipedia article is the most extensive. I can find more sources for it, but if we want it to ever be a good article, we need to clean it up, unclog it and remove irrelevant material. Your biography of Catullus was well written, but it really belongs on the Catullus page, not here. Also, there were two different sections on "manuscript tradition", which basically both said the same thing but with different words, so I merged them into one section (a little bit messy; I'll clean it up later). And another thing - I'll look for textual criticism sources (ie. suggested textual emendations), as it's wrong to give the impression that the text of the poem is certain.

List of poems by Catullus is good (I especially like your summary of the themes), but since Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED, the "obscenities" section (PG13, etc.) is unnecessary, and makes the article seem a little prudish. Do you mind if I delete that?--Yolgnu (talk) 09:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Notable Catullus poems in my opinion: 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,13,16,29,43,45,49,50,51,62,70,84,85,86,93,101.

All of those have already been made into articles except 62 (quite long, but worth it), 93 (historically important as it is about Catullus' relations with Caesar, and also includes the much discussed "I don't care if you are white or black" line). If there's nothing to say about a poem (which is the case for a lot of the very short ones), it shouldn't be here. If it's not significant in some way or another, we should consider deleting it.--Yolgnu (talk) 13:20, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Yolgnu,

It is so nice to find someone who actually cares about Catullus. I also agree with you about my own work at Catullus 2; the division of the poem-unity discussion had long bothered me, but I'd been loath to change the article too boldly lest the original authors come back and, ummm, treat me Kindly. ;) The reason I'd added the Catulline biography and the history of the manuscript transmission was that, well, (a) it seemed cool (to me); but more importantly, (b) I thought it necessary to give some historical context if the article was ever to make Good Article. I agree that it would be silly if those parts were repeated for every Catullus poem — even the notable ones — but I think we can't assume that the reader is going to be willing to read the whole Catullus biography article just for the tidbits that are relevant here. Some kind of summary style seems called for, don't you think?

Also, as you can see from the article history, someone nominated the article prematurely for GA, and I worked like crazy to bring it up, but all in vain. :( To this day, I've never managed to get even one Good Article, although I've managed to make five FA's. So my assumption has been that my articles only have a chance of becoming GA's if I think they're worthy to be FA's; they always seem to have some failing that I've overlooked. :(

I guess I have a more inclusive idea of notability. I considered a Catullus poem notable if I could find a least one scholarly article about it in the literature; you'll find a good subset of those ref's already up on their respective Wikipedia article? I agree with you that your list is like the "greatest hits" of Catullus, and we should work on those articles first — perhaps especially Catullus 5, or Catullus 3 to match Catullus 2? — but I would mourn the loss of poems like Catullus 12, Catullus 96 and Catullus 109, not to mention the famous ode to Sirmio. Anyway, we have time to think all that through; good that you're here! :) Willow (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I've just translated Catullus 10 (although I was a bit confused over lines 11-13) and fixed up List of poems by Catullus (as I said, the obscenities section isn't needed, and since many people know of the poems by their first Latin line rather than their number, I thought it was a good idea to add that), although it'd be nice if you could complete the themes section when you have time (I know you're very busy trying to stop various articles from losing Featured status).

We should think on what to do with not so notable poems like Catullus 14b, 27, 40, 52, 58b, 60, 69, 102 and 116. If we can't find anything notable about them (don't let me rush you - Catullus' poems aren't exactly top priority) - well, as much as I hate to say it, we don't want to clutter Wikipedia with minor Catullus poems. --Yolgnu (talk) 03:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should continue our discussion at Talk:Poetry of Catullus, so other people who may have an interest in it can also see/discuss it.--Yolgnu (talk) 04:19, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay! I moved the discussion and replied over there. Catullus 10 is a charming poem, don't you think? It captures its time really well. I might try my hand at a loose, modern translation next week, even if we don't use it, e.g., "she seemed a little tramp, but cute and lively in her own way." ;) Willow (talk) 17:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

British English?

Hi Willow -- Awadewit mentioned you as someone who might be able to do a "British English" pass on an article. If you have time, could you take a look at Augustine of Canterbury? The FAC for it had a comment that it should really be in British English, and I am not very good at this conversion myself (I didn't nominate the article but I've done a review on it so I'm just trying to help the nominator). If you don't have time, no worries. Thanks. -- Mike Christie (talk) 17:51, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll give it the quick once-over, but I really need to get back to action potential — I don't have much free time today! :( Willow (talk) 17:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Whatever time you can spare is much appreciated. Thanks! Mike Christie (talk) 18:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Mike!

I found only the one "ize" to "ise"; everything else seemed proper Queen's English. :) I fixed a minor typo in one of your references, and touched up a few sentences in the lead. The article was fun to read and interesting, and brought back good memories; one of my childhood friends had told me the Angles/Angels story as earnest fact. :) If you'll take my advice, though, you might want to work on making the writing smoother and more compelling before submitting the article to FAC? Hoping that this helps, Willow (talk) 18:55, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's mostly the work of Ealdgyth; it's actually at FAC currently and looks like it may pass. Improving prose is always worthwhile, though, before and after FAC. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 18:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Request

Hi! I was wondering if you could copyedit Phan Đình Phùng? The article seems like it's ready for FAC, but there are 1a issues that need to be resolved. Any help would be great. By the way, excellent work at Action potential! You and Tim have done a 3x expansion in about 10 days! I'll be sure to drop by and see if I can help at all with the referencing. Thanks, Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not love)} 23:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey Nishkid64,

I looked it over and it seems good! The reply to the brother-letter was well-told; it really threw his character into focus. I'll give the article more careful attention tomorrow, is that okay? Right now, I have to play Scheherazade at action potential. ;) Thanks for being patient with me, Willow (talk) 20:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Good person for a difficult job

I see you're working on an article on Action potential (much better you than me, so good luck on that). Outside of the talk page of the article I'm working on, I've not asked anyone to look at this yet. Sheepishly, I have to admit I saw Mulholland Drive two weeks ago, and just flipped out, becoming completely consumed with it. However, instead of stalking David Lynch and taking an opportunity to, say, throw curdled chocolate milk on him as would be fitting for someone who apparently likes randomness, I instead went nuts on the article. What it looked like before I got my claws in it on March 31, and of course, you can see what it is today. I more than doubled it in a week. In the afterglow of my frenzy, I'm trying to figure out here what I need to do to make the article try to make sense, a particular issue since the topic is so confusing. This is the first film article I've worked on to such a degree. Right now I'm particularly concerned with arrangement of sections in the article, details that are integral to the film's interpretation and style (as opposed to just interesting or weird stuff), and expanding details that are unclear. Any tips you can give would be appreciated. Perhaps when this is done I should write an essay here on "Passion, obsession, and dedication to an article". Or just take a nap. --Moni3 (talk) 01:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It's always great to hear from you, Moni3! :) (beamy smile) My first thought was, "Would chocolate milk actually curdle?" but my second thought was, "I bet I could make yoghurt from chocolate milk!" (yum!) Another really strange coincidence is that, not that long ago, I was walking down the street and someone randomly threw a bottle of chocolate milk at me from a moving car and hit me on the arm. None of my clothes were spoiled and it wasn't quite the weirdest thing ever to happen to me (I'm a magnet for strangeness), but it was definitely odd.

I totally empathize with the mad obsession overtaking you, and throwing yourself at articles just because. :) Life would be just too dull if we didn't greet it with joy and enthusiasm, don't you think? I'll look over Mulholland Drive with goodly gree, and brood over it. I like strangely resonant, haunting, dreamlike stories; I'm more sunny and happy-go-lucky in real life, but there are a few dark swirls amid the vanilla, too. ;)

I've been thinking about what you asked about Harper Lee. I think she would care, and be happy, at the sincere tribute to her novel. If you wanted to, I think you could write her, especially after it's been on the Main Page, and tell her things she might be happy to learn about, e.g., how many visitors have come to read about her novel, or even send her a little drawing. I'd be careful about asking her for anything, though, even her suggestions or corrections for the article; from your description, I'm guessing she's grown hyper-allergic to people who'd like to use the novel's fame for their own ends, and you wouldn't want her to think that of you. Maybe I'm being too much of a worry-wart, though. :(

Ta-ta and see you on MHD, Willow (talk) 18:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I don't know if Harper Lee would like the article since I had to include criticism of the novel. However, I think if I did send it, I would have to explain that even-handed point of view was required, of all the damnable things, and perhaps send along a print of the hit counter for the article, and some of the discussions about what should be included and taken out. I'd ask her for nothing, just send it as an FYI. Thanks so much for looking at MD for me. --Moni3 (talk) 19:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I have got to see this film; I'm completely engrossed already. My own interpretation is...well, I should wait until I actually see the film. ;) But my reaction is also a pretty good sign for the article itself. :) Give me a little while longer to Mull it over.

I tend to think Harper Lee wouldn't react badly the criticism; my own mental picture of her is of someone with large reserves of inward grace? By her age, she knows her own worth and that of the novel, and I suspect she'd be a big enough person to allow the validity of the critics' points of view. No novel can ever be perfect, but that doesn't stop novels from being great. :) Willow (talk) 19:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I definitely need more time to brood over it. :) The only thing I can suggest right away is to move the "Production history" section to near the end, just before the "Release and reaction" section. That would help the flow, I think: the reader moves from the dreamlike to the pragmatic continuously, from the Plot to its interpretations to its characters to its style and finally to the production, etc. It'd be like waking up deep in the ocean and swimming to the surface. :) Willow (talk) 19:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok yes, you need to see the film. And let me know what your interpretation is after you've watched it a couple (dozen) times. My interpretation so far hasn't been printed in a reliable secondary source, so I can't include it. Too bad. But I think the widely accepted interpretation is way off the mark. Don't read the article talk page, because I disclose it there.

Brood a lot. I have - no lie - watched this movie, or parts of it, every day for more than 2 weeks. I can take comfort in the fact that really crazy people don't know they're crazy. I, however, know I am quite nuts. My concerns as I may hopefully inch toward a potential FAC, is the Style section (I've not written about cinematic effect before), that the Characters section is long for a film (but characters are essential to this article), issues about identity are nebulous - because they are in the film, that I made a clear point in "Romantic content", and some other loose ends that are vaguely bothering me. If there are sentences that seem to go nowhere for you or just completely baffle you, please let me know. Thanks again, very much, for reading it. Let me know when you see it. --Moni3 (talk) 21:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I know just what you mean about knowing your own craziness! :) I sigh over myself all the time. There's a little voice that's always saying, "Ahem — now why are you doing that? You're just making yourself more trouble.", to which I have to answer, "Umm, because I want to? It seems so beautiful."

Your letter makes a happy stopping point for me to lay down my pen today. I'll definitely give your concerns some thought, although I didn't stumble over any glitches, or find the Character section too long. Actually, I think the article is really coherent and well-written, amazingly so given that you wrote it in a week; I'm afraid that my own week of manic work is still just shards of an article. :P I'll confess that I don't know much about cinematic styles, but that section seemed OK, too. The Romantic section was the best part of the whole article for me — it breathed with life — and I can imagine that others won't, umm, feel the need to make major revisions. :) Of course, I've been surprised before, and I'm generally not very good at finding things to improve. Somehow serene, Willow (talk) 22:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Dressing up for the occasion

Hi Willow! I've been too busy to improve Lie sphere geometry much recently, but have spruced it up with a few images for this auspicious occasion (assuming I have got my dates right)! Good luck with action potential and have a great wiki-day! Geometry guy 18:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much, G-guy! It's always nice to hear from you, any day of the year. I'm actually kind of glad that you haven't been working on those golden apples, becuase it's hard enough to keep up my concentration on action potential. I think I might be in the home stretch, however; I just have to finish re-writing the Phases and then reference a few more things. After that, I have about a bazillion animations I'd like to do for the article, but I need to learn more about how to make those so that they don't take up so much space. Cleonis sent me some good advice on that, but I haven't had a breather to really study it.

Thank you for the pictures, too! I never knew that Sophus Lie had such bushy whiskers; I guess it was a 19th-century thing? I'm intending to improve our Dupin cyclide image using Blender, because I'll need it for Soddy's hexlet (an FA someday, perhaps?) and, well, that Mathematica image seems a little, umm, too faceted. Can I check with you before I do that, though? Is the basic idea that you're pushing a circle around on an ellipse and changing its size as you go so that its inner edge forms a circle? I'm basing that on what I think the envelope of Soddy's hexlets should be; they need to be tangent to the inner sphere and the center needs to move on an ellipse. H.b.2.m. and thank you again for the cheery wishes, Willow (talk) 19:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Happy wiki-birthday Willow (for a few more hours in your timezone)! We'll sort out the Lie, Dupin and Apollonius stuff in due course... I'm sure you are on the right track, but you can check in with my viewpoint any time you like. Geometry guy 23:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, after a little more thought, your question has sensitised me to an error in the cyclides articles, which was discussed on the talk page but not fixed: Dupin cyclides are a special case of the cyclides defined by that quartic equation. There are no ellipses in the world of Dupin cyclides: inner edge, outer edge and focal curve are all circles. In particular, ellipsoids are not degenerations of Dupin cyclides (unless they are spherical), although they are (degenerations of) cyclides. I've fixed up the Dupin cyclide, but still need to fix the Lie sphere geometry article... Geometry guy 17:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm confused! I thought that the centers of the spheres of Soddy's hexlet lie on an ellipse; is that wrong? If they do, then the Dupin cyclide should maybe be the envelope of a set of spheres whose centers lie on that ellipse, and which grow/shrink to keep the cyclide's inner and outer circumferences circular? I'll need to draw it out for myself once I finish this sock.... Willow (talk) 22:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

According to the solution by inversion, the centers lie on a circle (and the inversion of a circle is famously a circle). Geometry guy 22:31, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, G-guy! Such a charming and simple way to see that it's true; brevity is the very soul of wit. :) The focal circle will also make it easier to create the three-dimensional image (I hope). Now I only have to figure how I led myself astray; very odd, since I'm not known for being, umm, elliptical, and I'm infamous for my circular reasoning... ;) Willow (talk) 23:12, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

:-) A possible explanation is that the concept of a focal surface may not be Mobius-invariant. But anyway, I'm fairly sure that without loss of generality you can rotate your circles around a circle, which should make for happy blender play. Geometry guy 23:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

You know, I just had a random vision of why the centers of the Soddy's hexlet spheres lie on an ellipse. They all lie in a plane, right? Take the intersection of that plane with the hexlet sphere envelope, the Dupin cyclide; you'll get two non-concentric circles, A and B, the inner edge and the outer edge of the cyclide. I haven't proven it, but I can somehow see that it's true. Again taking the cross-section with the plane, a sphere of Soddy's hexlet becomes a circle C that is externally tangent to A (the inner edge) and internally tangent to B, the outer edge. Let the centers of the three circles be denoted as O_A-C; then the sum of the center-center distances is a constant

${\overline {\mathbf {O} _{A}\mathbf {O} _{C}}}+{\overline {\mathbf {O} _{B}\mathbf {O} _{C}}}=r_{A}+r_{C}+r_{B}-r_{C}=r_{A}+r_{B}$

which is an ellipse with foci at O_A and O_B. It works just like Adriaan van Roomen's solution to the problem of Apollonius! :) I think where I was getting confused before was that the center of a circle doesn't map under inversion onto the center of the image circle. Maybe that's what you were trying to tell me with the Möbius-invariant-thingie? Anyway, I haven't had time to try making a Blender cyclide yet, but now I feel like I'm beginning to grasp how to do it — yeay! :) Willow (talk) 18:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

That sounds right to me, yay! The center of a circle is certainly not Mobius-invariant (i.e., inversion does not map centers to centers in general), which explains why the centers lie on ellipses. So if you need the centers to work blender, you need ellipses. If you can manage with outer and inner edges, circles suffice. Sorry for misleading you with my wrong analysis: I am unable to think non-invariant thoughts :-) Geometry guy 21:23, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

:-)

Thank you for your message! I love the artwork on your user page, and I am looking or some of my own. Tim Vickers IS a very nice user, and he is very helpful. I'll be sure to ask anything! Thanks!--Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 19:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to my Talk page, your Serene Majesty! :)

I like lots of different art myself, although I find myself using a lot of art from Bouguereau here at Wikipedia; for one thing, he's one of the few people to paint knitters. :) But explore the Commons; there are thousands of wonderful paintings and drawings there, and you can add any new painting you want as long as it was published before 1923, I believe, or the painter has been dead at least 70 years. Somehow people have also uploaded lots of photographs from after 1923, too, but I don't know how that works; Durova is the one to ask about that. :) Have fun hunting for Art and see you around, Willow (talk) 20:21, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

AcPot

Just a note to let you know I'm still here for copyediting when you need me. I'm not really able to keep track of what's been done content-wise, so if you wanna just give me a section or five when they're ready, please do. Cheers! – Scartol • Tok 18:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

It is so good to hear from you, Scartol! :) Maybe you could look over the "Context" section? It may or may not be clear, but if you could keep track of where and how you're going astray, then I could try to fix up those parts, to make them more intelligible? Maybe a figure or two more would help? If she'd be willing, maybe you could ask your sweetie for her opinion? Between the two of you, I'm sure you'll have some good ideas for how to spruce up that section. It's maybe the most important section of the whole article, since everything else builds on it. Thanks so much! When I get discouraged, I take heart from friendly thoughts and help; we shall mount up like eagles, edit and not grow tired, revise and not grow weary, and all that. ;) Back to knitting for tranquility — well, and I'm terribly overdue on something! Willow (talk) 22:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I'll start doing this tomorrow. It goes without saying that we're all very impressed by the fanatical devotion you've shown this lil' article here. I hope my comments/repairs will be useful. (I can do the abc-123 notes conversion Sandy mentioned, too, if you like.) – Scartol • Tok 00:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Scartol! I really appreciate your help. :) I think we can hold off on the abc-123 thing — isn't there a song about that? ;) — for now; I wouldn't wish Sisyphus-work on you and, inshallah, Steve can fix it all with a few keystrokes.

Can I just say how touched I am by your help? Do you promise not to be embarrassed? ;) I mean, you said you would be my best friend ages ago, but I confess, I thought you were only being light-hearted and funny. Even if you feel you can't do anything, it means a lot to me that you're willing to try. Honestly, I don't know why this li'l article means anything to me — she's not my child nor what I wished for. :P It was just that no one else wanted her, so I oh-so-foolishly took her in, like Grusha; and then I couldn't deny her. I won't forget your wish to help her, and I'll find a way to repay you in kind. :) Willow (talk) 15:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm being unfair to the li'l article. I took her in because she reminded me of someone I was close to, and even if she makes me tired, I'll still cherish her. Tomorrow, I'll be better-rested and better-spirited. :) Willow (talk) 22:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Sleep, dear reason

Yeah, I'm pretty out of it today too. I worked on the first part, Ions and the forces driving their motion, but that's about all I can do just now. More tomorrow. Let's us both get some rest, eh? Enjoy some of that which "knits up the raveled sleave of care".. (Hey, look – a confluence of knitting and Shakespeare – how cool is that?) – Scartol • Tok 02:01, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

All done with the context. Notes are in my sandbox. I'll point out that the writing is very smooth and accessible. I feel like I'm actually getting a basic understanding of the concepts. (The lack of advanced understanding is, of course, due to my thick skull, not any deficiency in the article.) – Scartol • Tok 17:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Atomic coordinates pictured by WillowW^TM

		The DNA Barnstar
		For for the contribution to wikiimaging. I, Redeemer079, award You this DNA Barnstar.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and I'll be very happy to satisfy him in a few short hours. Thanks so much for the beautiful barnstar! I'll try to make the images for you just as pretty. :) Willow (talk) 13:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

From now the wondrous gifs only will satisfyth the remeeder :-) 15:18, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey Redeemer, thank you, thank you, thank you for the three barnstars! :D

I was a little confused, though, about which protein pictures you wanted? I went to the page you wikilinked, and it looked as though Splette had done them all. Was there another protein image you wanted to have done, or perhaps a rotating GIF animation? I'm game! I should be working on action potential, but I'm taking a little holiday. :) Willow (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Award for contribution to the X-ray crystallography

		The DNA Barnstar
		As it is stated why I, Redeemer079, linked the picture to this talk page twice. 16 April 2008

Award

		Concordia Star
		For Your [2] from start till end in the pulp fiction with KP Botany starring in. Redeemer079 16 April 2008

My RfA...

Thank you...

...for your participation in my RFA, which closed with 85 supports, 2 neutrals and 1 oppose. I'm extremely grateful for all the the kind comments from so many brilliant Wikipedians I've come to respect and admire, as well as many others I've not yet had the pleasure of working with, and I'll do my best to put my shiny new mop and bucket to good use! Once again, thank you ;)
EyeSerene^talk 17:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeay — congratulations, Eye! Willow (talk) 17:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Note

Sure, I'll have another look-over. However, my boss is jumping up and down about a paper I should be writing and some of my experiments have finally started working, so my free time is suddenly somewhat limited! Tim Vickers (talk) 20:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Weel are ye wordy o' a grace.  ;) I really appreciate it. I don't want to bother you at work, I know you're busy doing important things, and you should put us all second to them. But I'm getting a little despondent editing all by myself; a feeling of fellowship, now and then, is just the right medicine for that. :) Thank you, Willow (talk) 20:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

PS. I still need to finish off the Initiation section, so don't look them over just yet. You'll can't miss them, they're only a sentence or two long. Thanks again, Willow (talk) 20:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

For my guardian angel

Thank you.

Less than two hours after I posted the reconstructed Emmy Noether article, she had – without my asking – made eleven edits adding important mathematical and scientific information about topics I could never hope to understand. I feel like there's someone up there watching out for me, bringing me exactly what I need. What else do you call someone like that? – Scartol • Tok 17:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What else do you call someone like that? Ummm, your friend? I'm tickled that you liked my little additions. I can't claim that I understand it, either, but as always I do well at imitating people who understand it. ;) Can angels be mockingbirds, too? It was fun for me, a little holiday from action potential and my own poor tribute to Emmy, a fellow dancer. :)

Your own gift is beautiful and I'll cherish it. I can't imagine anyone ever saying anything nicer to me.

I had the strangest dream last night, but which left me in a much happier mood than yesterday; maybe it was my own guardian angel? It was winter again, but I was working in my garden, which was strange because the earth was frozen hard. A little red fox trotted out of the woods and her red fur was beautiful against the white snow. She started coming towards my garden, and I thought, "I wonder what she's hunting?" She came right up to me, and I didn't move because I didn't want to startle her, so we stood staring at each other for a long time. Then she said in a kindly way, "You're doing that all wrong, you know." and I woke up. I love dreams like that. :) Willow (talk) 17:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

So the question is: Would you want her to show you the right way, or let you figure it out for yourself? Someday I'll let you read the story I wrote out of a dream, "The Birdhouse". – Scartol • Tok 17:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you vera much for the hello. It's been so nice to have folks dropping by today – I think that's my favorite part of the TFA process. I like the dinocomic; it reminds me somewhat of OverCompensating. As for music, I do indeed love Portishead, but I'd have to say my "play it over and over while editing Wikipedia" choice has to be Incunabula, by Autechre – who was so much better before they descended into abstract atonalism. You can check out a pretty cool video here. – Scartol • Tok 00:43, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I love the video — it's SO GOOD! ;) Or maybe radacious bodadical razzberry blue. I especially like the jumping tick creature; so nice that the animators gave her the proper eight legs of an arachnid, like Sleipnir. ;) Speaking of catachresis, Autechre sounds pretty good, and I'm terribly susceptible to their Latin charms. As for action potential, I keep glaring at it and saying, "Give me a reason to love you..." ;) Willow (talk) 01:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Next assignment?

Please let me know what you want me to copy edit next on Action potential! Also, thanks for dropping by the Force FAC. So far, we've mostly had people like me saying "I can't read it". You'll see my long list of "ways to improve the prose for the layperson" on the article's talk page. Awadewit (talk) 15:36, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

If you're feeling brave, how about the Propagation subsection, or indeed the whole "Initiation, propagation and termination" section? I'm afraid it's the worst-written section of the whole article. :( Thanks very much, and I'm looking forward to reading your forceful Talk page suggestions; it's really nice to hear from you. :) Willow (talk) 15:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Done! :) Awadewit (talk) 23:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

footnotes derived class?

Since you're the most familiar with what you did, how difficult do you think it would be to refactor your changes into a derived class, instead of modifying the base class? It seems that if we had that, we could just instantiate one of each, to support numbered and lettered notes. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 15:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Steve,

I really appreciate you looking into that! :) I'll see what can be done on my end once I've downloaded your version of the code. Your approach seems good; as we were saying earlier, it'd be nice and probably easier for most Wikipedians just to type something like < ref group=note type=A > or < ref group=noteA > or < note type=A > to get the footnotes.

I can't delve into it today, though, because I'm rather busy? I've been trying to save action potential at its FA review, and there seems to be some disagreement about the overall approach, which needs sorting out. Can you wait just a day or two?

Talk to you soon, and thank you again, Willow (talk) 16:47, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

No rush, I wouldn't be around this weekend anyway, so whenever you have time. My concern with adding a type argument is dealing with all the weirdness of footnotes in the same group with different formats; adding into the group name, at least on the back end, would alleviate that, but may complicate the data structures a bit more. If we have two separate data structures, with separate tags to access them, then it all becomes simpler; ref would be numbered, note would use letters, and they'd be stored independently, so no confusion that <ref group=note> & <note group=note> are separate groups. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for peer review

Hi there, User:Scartol suggested that I ask you for a peer review because they are too busy unfortunately. I would most appreciate it if you could provide feedback for this article: Wikipedia:Peer review/Paul Rand/archive1. Thanks! — Wackymacs (talk) 17:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Wackymacs and welcome to my Talk page! :)

I'm not sure, but I think you want to move your peer review page to Wikipedia:Peer review/Paul Rand? I think the archive is where it goes once it's done, and you're ready for a second peer review. Ask Scartol or Geometry guy; they know more than me!

From my initial glance, the writing seems excellent! But the article left me hungry for more — is that really all that's known about Paul Rand? For such a visual person, too, I would show more of his logos and design work, if that's allowed under copyright laws, and maybe set his work into context, discuss Modernism more, that sort of thing. You also might talk about his later life and death, so that his early and later life might serve as bookends to the article, a fitting formal symmetry.

I'll look more once I get a breather; it's been a busy day! :P Willow (talk) 17:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

/archive1 is where the system automatically placed it. *shrug* I agree, it is quite a short article - I do have a book on Rand. Unfortunately all his work is still Copyrighted, making it difficult to showcase most of it in the article. — Wackymacs (talk) 18:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Update

Hi there! I'm just messaging you because you seemed interested in the topic at the time and gave me some good advice. Recently, I've started to rewrite the S Club article to take into consideration your comments as well as comments I received on FAC recently (the "make broad strokes before discussing in detail" comment still sticks in my head) and I was wondering if you could take a look at the Hollywood 7 and Viva S Club paragraphs and let me know if this is in the right direction. You don't have to leave comments, just let me know how I'm doing. :) - ǀ Mikay ǀ 11:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Just read you were busy working on the Action potential article. Looks like you're doing a great job. :) If you don't get time to take a look at the S Club article, don't worry. It looks like your plate is full at the moment. Good luck with it!! :D - ǀ Mikay ǀ 11:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind...

I suggested Action potential as a project for the FA-Team here. I hope I'm not stepping on any Willow toes. Awadewit (talk) 19:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

What a coincidence that I looked in just as you wrote! :) I don't mind at all; thank you! I keep thinking that I'm going to lay down my pen and walk away from it — but I can't, as I'm sure you understand. When you wrote that I was "heroically" trying to save it, I laughed and said, "yes, I'm about to throw myself into the Hellespont." ;) Cheerily wishing you every luck with your new Prometheus, Willow (talk) 19:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

PS. Hey, I just got your pastry! :D Thank you, thank you, thank you — I'm beaming. :) Willow (talk) 19:36, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I hoped it would brighten your day. Doesn't it look fabulous? Awadewit (talk) 19:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of spring blueberries, the wood on my bushes is just greening up and a few leaves have appeared; Spring is here indeed! The other berries are much further ahead, but everything will ripen in its own time, which I suppose is true of action potential as well. I ate my first plate of asparagus last night — yum! :) It's amazing how much my garden can change in a week. Willow (talk) 18:07, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I wish I could find a way to effectively help, Willow, and I feel incredibly frustrated that my help has all apparently been in the wrong direction or not needed, along with my perennial frustration that the Med Project doesn't engage with FACs and FARs. I can't cite the article; I wish I could. All the best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I have a letter

So I wrote a letter, relatively short (1 1/2 pages), to Ms. Lee. I briefly explained the nature of Wikipedia and the process of a featured article. I haven't sent it because I'm a coward. I keep reading it and thinking it's some of the dumbest English ever produced. If you're curious and would like to see it, drop me an email and I'll send it to you. --Moni3 (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I know how brave it was of you to write it, and of course I'd be happy to see it. :) You can send it to me right away using the handy "E-mail this user" link at the right! :)

I hope everything's going well for you at Mulholland Drive? Your note really cheered me up and reminded me of the wide wonderful world outside of action potential. Someday I'll go back there and stand blinking in the sunlight like a little mole who has just emerged from her winter nap. But for now there's no rest for the wicked, the devoted, and the devotedly wicked. ;) I have a a letter, too, but I can't send it away. Willow (talk) 18:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Editing help

Hi there WillowW!

A university class I've been trying to convince to get involved in using WP in their class has today agreed to do so. In the class they rewrote the text of Religious Nationalism. I was wondering if you could have a look at it and edit it mercilessly (as the saying goes). Perhaps if you could convince others to get in on the act too that would be great.

Here is the diff of the edit they made [3].

Thanks for your help,

Witty Lama 10:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I made a few edits, but I'm not good at such broad topics; it's hard to say anything that's generally true and also conjures up a clear conception or picture in the reader's mind. Your students might enjoy reading George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" (1949, maybe?), which completely revolutionized my own writing. Not so much for what it said exactly, but for the sparks and fires it lit in my brain. It's also a good antidote to vague, tohu vavohu^‡ writing. ;) Willow (talk) 22:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

^‡"And the Earth was tohu vavohu, formless and void..." Tohu vavohu is a really useful Hebrew term for the primeval chaos, the apeiron from which everything was created, and coincidentally the province of Her Majesty Tiamat. Forgive the little scholarly aside; I wish your students fun and good luck! :) Willow (talk) 22:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Please note that the section Religious Nationalism has now been separated from the main article Nationalism into its own article Religious nationalism. Please join in and help bring this newly formed article up to standard. Especially important is avoiding a Systemic Bias and adding Citations.

All the best, Witty Lama 04:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

thank spam

Thank you for voting in my RfA, which passed with 194 supporting, 9 opposing, and 4 neutral. Your kindness and constructive criticism is very much appreciated. I look forward to using the tools you have granted me to aid the project. I would like to give special thanks to Tim Vickers, Anthony and Acalamari for their nominations. Thank you again, VanTucky

re: Saving the universe?

I've done the move for you but don't, I'm afraid, have the time (or available concentration) for the second. On top of various online pressures, I currently have the builders in and they are creating their very special own brand of havoc. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:29, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much, ROGER! I forgot to mention that the vandal also moved a MILHIST topic, Manhattan Project, which was reverted by Orlady. There's absolutely no rush on the second; action potential has passed its FAR. If you could review sometime before August, that'd be great. :) Thank you, and good luck with the builders! :) Willow (talk) 17:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Amazing Productivity

		The E=mc² Barnstar
		For your Alarming Perfectionism in the Analytical Passion devoted to Assiduously Preserving the Article Placed at Action Potential, I Ardently Propose that you, WillowW, Are Proclaimed the Absolute Pinnacle of Academic Polishing. – Scartol • Tok 18:20, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Eliding your elastic, elven and elevating eloquence — elation and elegy. I think you have much more to be proud of than me, Scartol. :) You're so faithful and so brave, launching yourself into an unknown world like that, and I wish I had words to tell you how much your support meant in the midnight hours of the past month. I'm making you a few gifts, and then I'm going to go to sleep for a little while, knitting up the raveled sleeve of care... ;) Willow (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm really sorry, Scartol, I'm too tired to type in my last gift, which was the derivation of Noether's theorem. I have it written out right beside me, but I'm just exhausted. When I was very young, I was washed out to sea and almost died there; I was alone in the freezing water and I remember feeling my strength leave me as suddenly as light flicking out; that's what it feels like now. But I managed to finish this little gift, which I hope will amuse and engage you until I finish the other. It's not complete, and may not be intelligible, but it was the best I could do in such a short time and it's kindly meant. The error-correcting code stuff is very cool and made me look at CD's and DVD's in a whole new way; I have that written out, too, but again I'm too tired for now. :( Willow (talk) 19:35, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

It's very difficult to explain the elation I have for your magnificent lessons when mixed with the painful sorrow of your goodbye note. I sure hope it's temporary; I definitely want you to rest, and restore the landscape of your mind. However, I feel that the project needs you, and so do your friends. I never expected to get so much mathematical and scientific guidance from someone who can spit Shakespeare at the drop of a hat. And humor, and advice on which Emm* biography to write next. Knit that raveled sleave, and knit it well. And then, once it's all knit' up, be here once again. I eagerly anticipate what dreams may come when you return... – Scartol • Tok 14:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Universe

I found the universe exactly where I expected it, this might just have been a blip in your frame of reference. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for looking, Tim! It stayed broken for roughly 13 hours, but by serendipity, Roger fixed it just a few minutes before you looked at it. Willow (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you also for changing your vote and the kind words at the FAR for action potential. It did indeed turn the tide, and the article has now been saved. I really appreciate your stepping in, and I'll be wishing you everything good with your new enzyme. Someday we'll have to finish methylglyoxalase as well, no? Ta-ta for now, Willow (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really writing anything....I'm just transcribing

The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon. - Edward Lear by way of Awadewit

Thank you so much

Thank you very much for your help with the textile arts project, and more generally for your excellent contributions to Wikipedia. You're appreciated and respected here, and many of us will be looking forward to your swift return. Count me among them. Best and warmest wishes, Durova^Charge! 03:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I’m disregarding your instructions

But, I'm sorry to see you leave. I empathize with you. After a nasty FA in January, I took the entire month of February as a wiki break. And, I reminded myself, if I’m not having fun, then I’m not staying. I hope you do return to Wikipedia…as long as it remains a pleasant hobby. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 05:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey, Wassup?

I really appreciate your thoughtful, caring note, and I can understand where you're coming from. But you're mistaken about me in almost every way; I'm no expert (except in knitting) nor could I be a casual hobbyist. I care about my articles, for better or worse. I have to care, else I couldn't write; if I weren't madly enthusiastic about a topic, I couldn't devote the hours to studying it and begging other people to help me understand it. Only experts have the privilege of writing (or not writing) nonchalantly. I feel very similarly to Moni below; although perhaps I over-personalize my articles. :P I feel sorry for them when they're shabby; I want to dress them up and show everyone how beautiful they are. :) Willow (talk) 05:55, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

R&R

Rest yourself up. Its sounds like you need to for your sake as well as the projects. FWIW, I had similar encounters, first during an FARC for battleship Wisconsin and then for the 2nd FAC for the battleship Illinios. Nothing is more physically or mentally exhausting then fighting tooth and nail for something you care so deeply for. We will await your return, when and if you decide to return. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've thought of something to say that won't bring tears:

Get out in that garden! qp10qp (talk) 11:52, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I salute you and your efforts!--Filll (talk) 12:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I hope to see you in full bloom later in the growing season. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Pob dymuniad da

Hoping you find serenity in all things... and drop in for a coffee when you get back. The pot's always on ;) EyeSerene^talk 20:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Rest and hope to see you again

I still look forward that, one day, we will work together on Origen or Augustine. Or maybe Erasmus? Take care and come back soon. --RelHistBuff (talk) 13:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Willow! I thought you would like to know that an article that makes me smile, Billy (pygmy hippo), recently passed as a good article. Of course I've probably tried to get you to read it before (sharing the joy of hippos is a never ending quest of mine), but this is an article that makes me smile every time. And I'm the one that wrote it! You know you're hopeless when you can't stop smiling at your own writing. --JayHenry (talk) 04:57, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

True story: One day in 1999 while driving to the bookstore in Gainesville, Florida where I worked, a sentence I had read somewhere popped into my mind. I spent several minutes wondering over how clever and well-written it was. Then I remembered that I had written it! I realized then and there that this is the reason I write. – Scartol • Tok 11:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The reason I write - and here on Wikipedia only - is that no one else has done it yet and I think it's a shame to let the topics that I find interesting languish in ignorance and bad prose. By the way, darlin' (Willow, although y'all can consider yourselves darlin' too), I think I found something to equal the scale of Action potential. Being born from the crap bag we can read at Everglades are four satellite articles (maybe five) that have to be created, researched, and spanked into FA material. Fah! --Moni3 (talk) 12:07, 30 April 2008 (UTC)