User talk:Bastin/Archive 3

This page is an archive of my talk page between 11th August 2006 and 2nd December 2006. If you wish to trawl something up from these discussions, please copy the relevant part and post it in the current talk page. Bastin

Jan Smuts' Youth

I thought that you might be interested in the current state of the above article. I've thrown in a few pictures, verified facts, and added references from the standard works. I think that its now essentially complete, although, as I note on the talk page, I might add a bit more about his emerging political views. I've put it up for peer review to get some wider input. Any thoughts about coming back to work on the series? I've ground to a bit of a halt recently with 'real world' issues intruding. I hope to get back to work towards the end of Aug.

Best wishes, Xdamr^talk 19:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the timing isn't great; I won't be around much until the end of August. If it's still undergoing PR when I become available, or if I get a few minutes to look through it, I'll chip in, helping to remedy any flaws if I can. Just looking over it briefly, I'd identify references and number of pictures as the major stumbling blocks. Pictures should be easy to remedy (given that they'll almost all be PD; South Africa's copyrights expire fifty years after death of the author), references are notoriously hard to add after the event; their paucity is mostly my fault, so I apologise, and I'll do my best to rectify that. Bastin 10:31, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, you've done excellent work so far and I'll happily follow along and reference things (I have a good stock of books in my personal library). The Youth article now has two pictures and 19 references, more than enough to be going on with. Anyway, the PR has been up for about a fortnight now; the article was given some useful feedback, most of which has been acted upon. I'm now thinking that we could go straight on and see if we can get FA status.

Xdamr^talk 12:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I've nominated the article for FA status (see here). We'll see how things go. I think that the article is pretty much ready to be signed off on, it's as comprehensive as I can make it at any rate. Hopefully it's good enough for FA. Your views, whether in support or not, welcome as ever.

Best wishes, Xdamr^talk 23:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcoming

Don't worry about not saying anything right away. I know most of us do not live on wikipedia :-) I decided that my first contribution could working over the english version of the artikel about Lux. in WW II taking mostly everything from my german text. I also plan to write something about the forteress of Luxembourg but that can still take some time till ist's done, I only started research on the subject right now. Cheers Spanish Inquisition 16:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Victor Thorn

You are right, thanks.--Striver 20:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Luxembourg in WWI - again

Can you see any reason not to take it to FAC? If not, then I will do it asap. Batmanand | Talk 16:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

As stated at the PR, the only two flaws are images and categories. Both are an irritating absences, rather than necessary inclusions (neither is a criterion, according to WP:WIAFA). I can't imagine it failing at FAC, so it's a good idea to push it forward. Bastin 17:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

FYI, it is done. Batmanand | Talk 08:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed. Thanks for the support! Bastin 08:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations! The article made it through the rigours of FAC relatively unscathed, and is now a bona fide Featured Article! The effort was pretty much all yours, so a particularly hearty pat on the back. Now maybe you can return to Gen. Smuts? Batmanand | Talk 11:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the credit, and kudos for nominating it. Jannie may have to wait a bit longer, though; until WikiProject Luxembourg gets a few more members, it can't sustain itself, so that's the primary aim at the moment. Bastin 11:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi!

Good work on the German occupation of Luxembourg in World War I. Keep it up. Phils 03:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! If you're interested in improving articles on Luxembourg, you could join WikiProject Luxembourg. As a Luxembourger yourself, we could really use your local knowledge, even if it only means writing a couple of short articles about your home town and area. Bastin 12:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Hollerich

I notice that you added to the Hollerich article that it was a city. I am not aware of it having been made one, as the three laws that I know that granted communes city status (1843, 1906, 1907) did not confer any title upon Hollerich. Was there another law that I haven't noticed? Bastin 15:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

It was indeed after 1900 and before 1920, I will have to check to find the exact date. It had a particular statute (Hollerich and what is now the Gare quarter had city status, Gasperich and Cessange (my village/quarter) did not, so essentially the city status extended only to the urban part of the Hollerich commune. Or maybe if I can find my old school history books.--Caranorn 15:53, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it. Until recently, there was a big gap in the online archives of Mémorial; there were no versions between about 1900 and 1935 when I first came across them. Fortunately, they're now being filled in (up to 1908 now), so one will be able to access all legislation in that era online. Bastin 12:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I only checked on the internet yesterday and found nothing so far. The magazine (Ons Stad, edited by the city of Luxembourg) had an article about Hollerich a few years ago and I'm trying to track that down now, I've also been told there might be a book on that topic in my mother's collection... The national library also has one or two that seem promising. I've never used the Memorial much, I recall when I last tried to search for laws in it it seemed a mess. Anyhow, I still haven't found a date, but I am 99% certain (I was 100% certain yesterday, the fact that I haven't found anything yet makes me doubt) that Hollerich was a city (with the modern quarters of Hollerich, Bonnevoie and Gare, while Cessange, Gasperich and Merl retained their rural status).--Caranorn 12:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Great job Bastin. I'd thought this happened before 1914, so I'd never have found it myself. And I don't think the area could be a city anymore, though one never knows (the oddest laws sometimes survive).--Caranorn 23:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

help from a native speaker

I just extended the article on Luxembourg during WWII. However, some native speaker should have a look at it. Cheers Spanish Inquisition 23:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

No problem. You've done a really good job on that article, in both German and English. Bastin 00:10, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

"in" or "during"?

What is your opinion on this grammatical puzzler: should the two "German Occupation of Luxembourg" articles say "... of Luxembourg in World War I/II" or "... of Luxembourg during World War I/II"? I have been thinking over it for a good few minutes, but cannot come to an answer. It seems natural to ask either "what did you do in the war?" or "what did you do during the war?"; although I suppose the former suggests that you were in the war itself, whilst the second is perhaps concerned with the time period the war was in. I suppose in that case maybe we should come to a decision on whether the military occupations were part of the wars, or happened contemporaneously? Batmanand | Talk 00:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

There is certainly a difference between the two adjectives (in this sense, specifically), and, originally, I believed that the articles should be moved to 'during', to reflect just that distinction. However, I have since changed my mind on the grounds that the German occupation was an intrinsic part of the war. This was certainly the case in the Second World War, and to quite a degree in the first (German high command was in Luxembourg City, Clausen was bombed by the RAF, Luxembourg's evacuation was a term of the Armistice, thousands of Luxembourgers did fight, etc).

Another question is that of the general case. The reason that they were titled as such in the first place was that they were being standardised with other occupations in the Second World War. Although (IMO) Luxembourg was a part of the World Wars, other countries might not be classified as having been, yet would still be burdened by the incorrect adjective ('in') for the purposes of standardisation. 'During' is applicable whether one is part of the war or apart, so would probably be preferable for the entire article series, such that it might then embrace those countries that weren't actively engaged. Bastin 00:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I suppose one way around it might be to name the article "German occupation of Luxembourg (World War I)" (or II depending). To be honest, it is a minor point, and moving the page would create a lot of hassle, so I say we just forget the whole thing. Batmanand | Talk 11:18, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Independant National Party

I just renamed/moved the article you created as National Independance Party. I've also ammended a number of other articles pointing to it (correct name and link). In one case I removed everything about this party (on the disambiguation page for National Independance Parties) as it's no longer relevant. I did not change your user page and two other pages whose use I don't understand. So maybe you could take a look at those.--Caranorn 21:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

coats of arms of communes/municipalities

Is it possible to modify the Luxembourg Town boxes to include a coat of arms? I just started work on these and I think this would be the right place to add them (above or to the left of the map preferably). I've added a first coat of arms to the Remich page, it's emplacement and size is only provisory. I will probably also add the blazonning in addition to the pictures to all other relevant pages. I plan to do the same for at least some Belgian communes/municipalities (see Durbuy and Arlon).--Caranorn 15:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a good idea; I considered doing that in the first place, but I never got around to it. It may take a few days, because I intend to make some rather sweeping changes to the template (including some more esoteric functions that will allow changes to statistics to be made more easily). Bastin 16:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed the Luxembourgish site already has a full set of coats of arms. But they seem to be indirectly copied (directly from a website, that website in turn seems to have copied them from the Armorial I planned to use, and the Armorial seems to be copyrighted). So I won't be uploading anymore Luxembourgish public coats of arms (but I will still do the Belgian ones), though I will be drawing the whole lot anyhow.--Caranorn 16:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

OK. To solve that problem, I've created a separate template for the new model, so it can be introduced on an article-by-article basis. It's at Template:Infobox Luxembourg commune, and you can see the result at Remich. As promised, the mechanism is rather esoteric, but it's straightforward if one knows just a couple of principles. The images could always be enlarged if the size of the map is a problem (that depends on screen resolution, I suppose). Bastin 22:41, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

How do I find the correct number to identify the municipality? I assume that's what | LAU2 = 08007 stands for. The rest does indeed seem straightforward.--Caranorn 22:51, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I've now created a list here. Bastin 23:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Article move: Countries which could join the Commonwealth=

I am glad that for once we are in concord. Thank you for doing this, this has strengthened Wikipedia. Rhyddfrydol 17:30, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetization/commas

Why did you "fix" the commas in the British countries but not also for Macedonia? Badagnani 11:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't edit things related to that naming dispute, whereas I do correct errors related to my own country. Bastin 11:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Early life of Jan Smuts FAC

It seems that we are rather losing the initiative on the above. Hitherto, the objections that have been made seem to be rather trivial and easily fixed (mostly to do with the lead) - the main text seems to pass muster, although it may be that people simply aren't reading it.

The main problem seems to be a certain lack of interest from voters. I've pinged a few people who have made notable edits to the Jan Smuts article, letting them know that Early life is up for FAC. Hopefully this will generate one or two more votes. I've also left notes on the talk pages of the objectors, inviting them to reconsider their votes in light of recent changes - this may or may not bear fruit, but it's worth a try. I've had a notice up on the Africa noticeboard for some time now, but I don't think that that has done much good.

If the article isn't good enough then that is fine, however I fear that the nomination may be lost more due to a lack of outside interest than any intrinsic fault.

If you come across any noticeboards, wikiprojects, potentially interested editors, etc, etc then it might be worth pointing out.

Best wishes, Xdamr^talk 15:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Your sources for German occupation of Luxembourg in WWI

I notices the footnote 18 = Letter from Eyschen to Nyssens (in French), 28 December 1882. I am spotting all documents relating to NYSSENS. can you tell me where you found that/those letters ? Kind regards O. Nyssens www.nyssens.be —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.245.135.144 (talk • contribs) 13:13, 14 October 2006.

This is Albert Nyssens, professor at the University of Leuven in the time period. I didn't find it in a collection of letters, because the only such source that I used was the Luxembourgian 'grey book' (found in the link provided in the article). I'll look for the source (although I am quite time constrained at the moment), but I can't guarantee that I'll find it. Possible sources include the other books also given. However, more likely is that it came from the Luxembourgian national biography or a Luxembourgian newspaper at the time. Either way, other than providing provenance of the exact quote in question, I can't help you in your quest to document the Nyssens family further. Bastin 18:52, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

You Sir Are an Anti-Scottish Pillock

According to you sir, Edward I

"tried to unite the crowns of England and Scotland peacefully (although failing)"

My backside he did. Thousands of Scottish women and children were butchered by this bastard and our brave Wallace nearly stopped him. Longshit even had him executed brutally for being a traitor. How in the name of hell was he a traitor if he never swore alliegence to Edward ? Still Edward`s useless son Edward II was defeated by The Bruce at Bannockburn. Hopefully the Scottish National Party will win the Holyrood elections next year, then in the independence referendum we will break this once glorious but now atrocious union. Call us back when you retake India and we`ll think about re-joining the union. Until then my stupid English friend I have a wee song fir ye.

<Yadda, yadda, yadda; we've already got the point of your anti-British diatribe>

Where do I begin to correct you?

1. Edward I tried to marry his son (the future Edward II) with the Queen of Scotland (Margaret, Maid of Norway). Had they married, and had Edward then acceded, their heirs would have held the crowns of England and Scotland in personal union. The only reason his peaceful methods failed was that she died on her way over from Norway.
2. Edward was Lord Paramount of Scotland, to whom Balliol paid homage. Consequently, Balliol breaking his oath of allegiance to Edward was treason, as were those that fought for either Balliol or Bruce.
3. Using the word 'sir' incorrectly doesn't make your diatribe any more intelligent or intelligible. Learn to use commas, and you'll go far.
4. You put a lot of time into reading much of my user page, but I guess that you missed out that userbox fifth from the bottom: the one that makes it very clear that I am of Scottish ancestry myself. Retard.

Nice chatting with you, though. Bastin 14:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting comment, guess Scotland lost another friend;-). No seriously I wouldn't turn my back on Scotland for such a stupid thing. Unfortunatelly I have no clue what attrocious thing Bastin is supposed to have said and I'm already too busy with Lotharingian medieval history to look into this one (though obviously Edward I was among the greatest if not the greatest king of England).--Caranorn 13:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Your username

Apologies... I may have asked this before but my memory is a bit dodgy so I'm not sure... an Arsenal fan called "Bastin"? Is that user name in homage to one of the Gunners' greatest players ever, or are you related to Cliff Bastin. (I see you are also a New Zealand fan, BTW... I'm in New Zealand, but know Hertfordshire well, since I was born in Barnet!) Grutness...wha? 03:44, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Sharp eye. It's homage alone. At home, I have a whole wall devoted to photographs of Cliff Bastin. And, no, you haven't asked me before. Or you have, and I forgot.

I also see that, not only were you born in Barnet, you were born in Barnet when it was part of our great county, which makes you an official Hertfordshirian! By comparison, I was born in Chelsea, so I'm just an expat. Where my New Zealand credentials are, I'll never know, but I do own a pretty little booklet that entitles me to call myself a Kiwi. Bastin 10:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Mamer page

I've more or less covered all the basics on Mamer for the time being. There are however a number of pending questions:

- Is is right to refer to Mamer as a town? It is certainly not a ville or Stadt in Luxembourg terms? Locally it is referred to as a duerf, village.

- Similarly, I think Holzem and Capellen should be villages rather than small towns.

- Anyone interested in starting pages on some of the topics in the article, e.g. Mamer Castle, Nicolas Mameranus, Koenigsbund school complex, Roman Mamer, etc.? If not, I might get around to it myself one of these days.

- It would also be great to get some local input on cultural activities, perhaps with images of paintings or historical background.

- Genealogy in Mamer might also be interesting with accounts of the best known families, emigration, US communities. And please post your reactions.

More on Luxembourg

Thanks Bastin8 for commenting on the Mamer stuff and doing a couple of edits. My main concern is that there is pretty good coverage of Mamer in Luxembourgian but little in English. (Did you delete the link to the Luxembourgish pages? If so why? They are really good. Many of those interested in Luxembourg and its communities prefer English as a source and so I decided to do something about it, starting with Mamer where I live. I've been working on web pages since 1994 but do not have much experience with Wikipedia. Am trying to master the formatting.

I'm a bit worried by some of the basic designations, such as Mamer as a town (rather than a village), E25 as a highway (rather than a motorway), municipalities rather than communes, etc. But I see these have been used right acoss the board for Luxembourg. I would rather spend my time on adding content and learn by trial and error than try to get everying kosher the first time. I'll think you'll see things pick up with time. The page on Luxembourg city could certainly benefit from content revision rather than personal impressions. So expect more soon! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ipigott (talk • contribs) 20:12, 6 November 2006.

First, thanks for showing an interest in your own country. To date, there are only a few hardy souls improving the articles on Luxembourg, and the majority of articles were written by someone without any specialist knowledge of Luxembourg at all (me). It's true that the articles need more information from locals, which is what I've tried to encourage. However, one should always remember that information needs to be corroborated and sources have to be cited. You've done that by given web links, which is fine as a rough outline, but they have to be refined in due course by applying the standardised templates. I'll do that tomorrow with the Mamer article.

I deleted the link to the Luxembourgish Wikipedia because there's already one. In the left toolbar, below the 'toolbox', there are links to all the other languages, including Luxembourgish. Thus, links to the other language versions on Wikipedia should not be included in the main text, because they will be included on the right.

There are some problems with terminology that have survived from before I attempted to standardise the Luxembourgian articles. 'Municipalities' in place of 'communes' is one; the use of the word 'Luxembourgish' as an adjective (in place of the correct 'Luxembourgian') is another, and so on. However, I am responsible for labelling settlements as villages (under 100 people), small towns (100-1,000), towns (over 1,000), and cities (any commune with city status). I took the definition of 'village' from the village article, which defines a 'traditional village' as having under 30 families. I converted this to 100 inhabitants (which I thought low, but accepted nonetheless), and applied this across the board. In this specific case, I can say with all the certainty in the world that Mamer isn't a village; the grey area only really begins under 1,000.

Don't worry about getting all the formatting style correct at once. Other, more experienced, Wikipedians will gladly copy-edit your articles, provided that they provide the correct content and cite their sources. Bastin 20:30, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Population towns in Luxemburg

Hello Bastin8,

The year should be 2001 and not 2005. E.g. you have given a population of 1844 for Steinsel, 1553 for Heisdorf and 1005 for Mullendorf which gives 4402 inhabitants for the whole municipality of Steinsel. This is exactly the population measured during the census of 2001. I have checked it also for other towns. Please look at it and please correct. Best regards, Sunshineboy 15:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Great Britain at the Olympics, redux

Hello Bastin8. I am not pleased with your recent changes to the structure of the GBR Olympic pages. The problem with your changes is that "Great Britian & NI" is the default name for this team, for all years, not just since 1928. Therefore, there are going to be obviously incorrect page names. Please re-read Template talk:Country IOC alias GBR again for the last bit of discussion we had, which you seem to have ignored or misunderstood. Let me summarize again:

• The {{flagIOC}} mechanism is currently designed to use a single name for all instances of the same IOC country code. This name is used to automatically create links to the appropriate "Nation at the year Olympics" pages.
• Based on our dispute to of what {{Country IOC alias GBR}} should produce, I added a named parameter to the flagIOC template. The intent was that an editor could over-ride the default name that was displayed, to handle instances like this. For example,
  • {{flagIOC|GBR|1896 Summer|name=Great Britain and Ireland}} produces  Great Britain
  • {{flagIOC|GBR|2006 Winter|name=Great Britain and Northern Ireland}} produces  Great Britain
  • {{flagIOC|GBR|2006 Winter|name=Great Britain & NI}} produces  Great Britain, and
  • {{flagIOC|GBR|2006 Winter|name=Limeyland}} produces  Great Britain ;)
• The last step would have been to create redirect pages from "Great Britain at the xxxx Olympics" to either "Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the xxxx Olympics" or "Great Britain and Ireland at the xxxx Olympics" as appropriate.

What you have done is made "Great Britain & NI at the xxxx Olympics" as the landing page for the auto-generated wikilinks, and redirect from there. I assert that "Great Britain at the xxxx Olympics" is a MUCH better choice to derive redirects from. It completely avoids the problem of non-existant and illogical page names (if only redirects), such as "Great Britain & NI at the 1896 Summer Olympics". Do you disagree with this?

Another bad side effect of your change is the look of {{Infobox Olympics Great Britain}}. I had put some effort into clearly showing the distinction between the two names, but using the generic "Great Britain at the Olympic Games" as the infobox title, but now that has been altered. The title says "Great Britain & NI at the Olympic Games", but the infobox contents includes all the GB & I appearances too, so it is ugly and inconsistent.

I request that you change the name back, and I propose to consistently add the "name=" parameter to create the desired visual appearance for GBR as appropriate for each Games year. I can do this with AWB relatively easily. Thanks, Andrwsc 17:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply! I'm glad we're in alignment again. As for SndrAndrss' edits, well, that is somewhat of a rogue user. (Check out his/her talk page!) Nonetheless, I think the current solution, while slightly flawed, is still the best alternative. I have just finished editing over 3000 of the "Nation at the year Olympics" pages, and it turns out that GBR's situation is relatively unique, with only a couple of other nations having different "full names" at different times while maintaining the same country code. For example, Yugoslavia has been known at various times as Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In all cases, the Olympic page is named "Yugoslavia at the ..." since the same IOC code was used for all versions of the nation (namely, YUG). That seems reasonable, and hopefully the GBR solution is too! Andrwsc 16:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)