User talk:Chaos5023/Archive 1

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VegaDark (talk) 19:40, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Nabokov, Zelazny and Mérimée

Thank you for your appendix to the article on Zelazny's "Courts of Chaos"--I'd never connected Corwin's "Carmen, voulez-vous..." dialogue to anything besides Bizet's volatile Carmen (with a vague awareness of Mérimée). For some reason, I've found that bit one of the most memorable amongst all the memorable things in that novel (the ravens of Odin and the mention of Paris's belle epoque whilst inscribing the second pattern also spring to mind). Thanks for reinforcing my appreciation of Zelazny. His premature passing was truly a tragedy, and it's good to know he is well-remembered. Traumerei (talk) 07:24, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Consequences

At the very worst for normal stuff, the only consequence here in WP is that we can't edit.

In this case, the only thing that would might happen would be that an admin would tell me I am being a horse's ass, and tell you not make wp:PA, even when the other editor is being a horse's ass. And most likely, no one would care. I am an annoying editor. People snarl at me.- Sinneed 06:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

That's sad. I know you mean well. Me, I don't really want to be the angry editor who snarls at people, but I kinda am. I need to get over it. WP:CIVIL is hard. I envy the people who make it look easy. —chaos5023 (talk) 06:29, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

As do I, envy them.- Sinneed 06:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Cheeseplant's house

Really delighted to see the Cheeseplant's house article--well-sourced and clear! I'm confused because I don't see the history of the prior incarnation of this page. Do you know if there's a way to make that visible in the history? (I'll watch here for a response.) Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 19:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

No idea. That's recovery of deleted information stuff, which is administrator territory I'm unfamiliar with. The history was under the names "Cheesehouse" and "Cheesehouse (talker)", also, which would make it more difficult. Wikibin has a version of it, though: [1]. Glad seeing the article brightened your day! —chaos5023 (talk) 19:22, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Mythic Entertainment

Thank you for your diligent editing on the Mythic Entertainment page :) /Skurmedel (talk) 13:33, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

You are entirely welcome. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 13:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Cat reversions on MUCKs

Seriously, in 2010 we're still doing the TinyParochialism where we don't want to be MUDs because MUDs are stupid kill-the-monster games? Come on. That isn't helping anybody, not with the way the community has evaporated. We have enough problems on Wikipedia without insisting on fragmenting ourselves for archaic reasons. If it helps, I can also produce reliable source citations spelling out that MUD is a generic, not anything implying combat or any other particular sort of game, and in fact encompasses "MU*" (counterintuitively, obviously). —chaos5023 (talk) 14:28, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Then you should recategorize Category:MU* games under Category:MUD games rather than adding all members of that category to Category:MUD games. GreenReaper (talk) 17:43, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, that seems pretty sensible. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Elendor

Hello. I found that you tagged this one for needing additional refs. What made me wonder though was your edit summary stating that there was only one reliable source given. In the MU* task force listing, a "game of the month" at mudmagic and a ranking on mudconnector seem to be regarded as reliable sources to establish notability (cf. The Two Towers, etc.). Elendor was game of the month in 10/2006 and is currently ranked #167 out of 1089 on mudconnector. The yahoo IL and wired magazine references should be ok too.

That aside, we still do need references saying that Elendor is in fact the oldest Tolkien MUSH and something to proof the statistics for 2000+ players (as a player on there I can actually witness that, but that's no use here). De728631 (talk) 21:26, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The Wired reference is the only source I'm certain would stand up to any challenge, though I guess the Yahoo IL item is pretty solid too. Mudmagic and Mudconnector I could make non-trivial arguments against treating as reliable, though I personally would not want to do so. :) I'm not saying the article is horrible or anything, just that it could use better sourcing. Also not saying the Mudmagic and Mudconnector references should be removed, just that they possibly shouldn't be leaned on too heavily. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:32, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you're concerned that I may be a Wikipedia deletionist hunting for articles to take down, nothing could be further from the case. I want to improve the referencing of MUD-related articles (and have been adding such referencing like mad) because I am a partisan for the notability of MUDs, and I want to ensure that nothing like this goddamned fiasco ever happens again. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Ouch, that mass AfD looks indeed like a goddamned trauma, only good that it didn't work after all. Sourcing though remains difficult, as you well know, so I'll keep searching for more or less reliable bits and pieces. De728631 (talk) 19:45, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Just saw the "Net Games" quote you added. Nice one! :) I wasn't aware that Elendor was worthy of being listed in a book, and already in 1994. I like. De728631 (talk) 22:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

See, told you I was all about the sourcing build-out. ;) There's a lot more out there in print about MUDs than mudders think. It's a little mind-blowing to come across a glowing review in print of work you were doing 15 years ago, too. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

please use the new section

Dont edit my talk page use the new section. Every Bodys Starry eyed :) (talk) 23:02, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Materia Magica

Hey Chaos, thanks for your work on this article. Regarding the sources: I think MudConnector still needs a good discussion at WP:VG/RS, so perhaps this is fine. However, Google Groups and WG Friends can't be considered to qualify as WP:RS (forums and self-published sites). Thanks, Marasmusine (talk) 21:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and duly noted. I'm pretty sure TMC official reviews / MotMs / articles are reliable; I imagine I'll see about getting it addressed by WP:VG/RS when I have the energy. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:51, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

MUDs and use of the term

While MUSH and MUCKs are still of the MUD family no-one tends to identify them by that name any longer - from when I was active on them MU* was far more common in usage in referring to social/roleplaying worlds; the split between "hack and slash" MUDs and the rest is so great that to most text-based gamers the original term is no longer used for the latter. It's like calling a pie a pastry - while technically it -is- one an apple pie is rarely called an apple pastry. I'd just like to know your reasoning behind this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caliah (talk • contribs) 10:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

As you say, they are of the MUD family. The reasoning, with sources, is pretty much all in the MU* article. MUD is a generic that has no particular implication of a hack-and-slash game except when the whole political statement inherent in the MU* thing is being used. I'm not inclined to indulge those politics any further than is unavoidable. The idea of changing "educational MUD" to "educational MU*" is particularly obnoxious, since there's at least one non-MU* educational MUD on WP, and the vast majority of educational servers are MUDs in name because they're MOOs (MOO being, of course, MUD, Object-Oriented, and its whole strain of codebase, out to CoolMUD and ColdMUD, being one that's never gone in much for the gratuitous community-splintering of the intentionally divisive and dismissive MU* term). As I'm sure you've noticed, the whole thing pisses me off. The only thing that makes me angrier than when gung-ho DikuMUD redneck-types marginalize TinyFolk, which I'm forever defending them from, is when they marginalize themselves with this noise. —chaos5023 (talk) 11:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, though I've never seen the MU* term used dismissively or in such a hostile manner as you claim - only (or so it seemed to me at least during my time on these games) to differentiate the largely non-combat oriented worlds. I'm largely unaware of any such "politics," and having played on both sides of the fence, have found "MU*" much more convenient in finding people with similar gaming backgrounds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caliah (talk • contribs) 12:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

That's cool. I'm sure that MU* is a useful term for a number of purposes, though it'd be nice if they could've picked a term that doesn't mislead people into believing it's inclusive when it's exclusive on account of having a frigging wildcard in it. What I have little patience for is the pretense that MU* is something other than MUDs rather than a type of MUD. —chaos5023 (talk) 13:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Aaaaah, so that's how you do it

Thanks for that edit on the "Everybody Draw" page! -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:26, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Glad to be of service. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 01:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:DVW_cover.png)

Thanks for uploading File:DVW_cover.png. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Melesse (talk) 23:40, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

You could give me more than 90 seconds after the upload to get it into the targeted articles. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 23:42, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Civility

" I don't know what hallucinatory version you're referring to" "Surely you jest." - These are unkind, and make reaching wp:consensus more difficult, and are generally wp:disruptive editing. Please be wp:civil, and focus on the content. It is very OK for me to disagree with you. It doesn't mean you are hallucinating. It doesn't mean your arguments are a joke. It simply means we disagree.- Sinneed 22:16, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use File:DVW_cover.png

Thanks for uploading File:DVW_cover.png. I noticed the description page specifies that the media is being used under a claim of fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first non-free content criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this media is not replaceable, please:

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As noted in the dispute template I added (and I'm finding this whole communication-solely-by-template thing fairly ridiculous), this makes no sense to me; how is it possible for a free version of a copyrighted book cover to be created? —chaos5023 (talk) 10:29, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes organizations will publish promotional images freely. Often not.- Sinneed 22:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Take a photo of you holding it? Lawrie (talk) 13:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't help; derivative work. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Historical Accuracy

If you are serious about wanting to change some of the historical accuracy of some of the Wiki MUA articles, I'll happily provide you some input. Even if I could be bothered to edit them I'd be on dodgy ground because I'd feature in too many of them so I have kind of avoided doing so. I was pondering writing a history of the early days at some point though so it could be a good starter. Not that I would ever get around to it but hey it's one of those odder ideas :) Lawrie (talk) 13:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, sure, that'd be great. If you can point me at things that need work, I can dig through my pile o' relevant books (now waist high) and see if I can find something to source it from. Thanks! —chaos5023 (talk) 14:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Most of this won't be in books - It will predate them. The only references you'd get would be on mine or Richard's web pages I would guess. His books only cover what was happening in the commercial world at the time which compared to what was happening in the academic world was pretty paltry. The histories of these times have some pretty heavy personality biases and revisionism in them which is somewhat sad. Lawrie (talk) 15:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Don't underestimate my pile of books; it is large and has plenty of academic material. :) Web pages aren't necessarily worthless either, though I do like to leverage the Wikipedia magic that ISBNs have associated with them. And yeah, the competing Ministries of Truth in online gaming history are unfortunate; as someone whose personal hobbyhorse is LPMuds, which by certain blasphemous accounts somehow "lost" to DikuMUDs, I see my share. But c'mon, stop teasing and tell me some of this stuff I should be running down. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 15:49, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Well since I have given very few interviews about the MUD days then I assume that most of the source material from that time when MUD was still at Essex and AberMUD and Lampeter started development would have been sourced from things I wrote and a lot of that isn't entirely accurate. As Mr Bartle once said: "I don't want to spoil Lawrie's fun or reputation here, but I feel duty bound to point out that you're writing to someone about an article they wrote that may be true or may be ironic, and in either case you can't be sure whether their reply is true or ironic. There are few Englishmen who, faced with questions from an earnest, truth-seeking American, would be able to resist exploiting their gullability and winding them up something rotten." - In fairness a lot of the later stuff is much more accurate but a lot of the earlier stuff was written in a very tongue-in-cheek fashion Lawrie (talk) 17:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Any example of where such tongue-in-cheek material has made its way into articles, and possibly what would be more accurate? —chaos5023 (talk) 17:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Smirk - This is of course, the problem... I don't have your books so I can't tell. One thing that tends to bug me and I have corrected a couple of bits and written some fill in stuff (actually in an article I wrote about parallels between IRC history and MUD history - http://www.ircnet.org/History/jarkko-mjl.html ) is the early AberMUD history. What I read is quite often simply not what happened, the time scales are all completely wrong and there's no proper context to put some of the development in. As far as I know AberMUD was the 1st(*) sucessful mud to ever be released into the wild as opposed to living as a closely guarded managed game on servers somewhere. It didn't happen overnight though, there were stages to it and given the historical importance of AberMud in this sense it's odd that the history often seems quite skewed. I noticed a link to a posting I made about 18 years ago being amused that 2 years of my life had been written out of the AberMUD credits but that's not why I am objecting, AberMUD was very much Alan's game but there should be people credited with quite a lot more who weren't. The little (*) alludes to the fact that AberMUD wasn't actually the first - Even MUD1 was on release for a while - I managed the Essex version and a version over in Sweden that nobody played and that wasn't actually covered by the British Telecom "stop all the others" licence. Nobody talked about it at the time, in the same way that nobody talks about the fact we still ran MUD1 at Essex because there were commercial issues we preferred to ignore but they are all so far in the past now that it really doesn't matter. There was also Lampeter's MUD which seems to be called LAMPMUD now (though it never was in the day) which was on public release back in the late 80's before Abermud. Maybe I am just too much of a perfectionist but somehow a lot of the stuff I read just doesn't seem to fit into what I saw, and I managed all of them so I'd imagine I saw more than most :) Lawrie (talk) 18:08, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, is there any conflict of interest if I edit things like MUDDL and MIST ? Lawrie (talk) 15:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You'd know better than me, but I don't necessarily see why. COI isn't necessarily damning anyway, but the main vaccination against it is providing reliable sources for verification. Obviously that's difficult with such a spottily documented subject (though Google Books can turn up some surprising things). This is just me, but I'd encourage you to be WP:BOLD. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah I am not unbold... Just lazy! Far easier when other people do it :) Lawrie (talk) 19:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Mob

Regarding this: I know that monsters and villagers are both considered mobs. But in the situation described in the quote, the ones fighting the monsters directly are the PCs (it's just a typical quest that happens to be for the villagers' benefit). It still seems to me like a clearer example is needed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, what I should have said is that the goblins and sheep are all mobs. So the goblins attacking the sheep is an example of MvM. I agree that it's not a great illustration of the concept, it's just the best I have presently. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Lost Souls Psionics

Why don't you clarify that it's "Names and some abilities were inspired/borrowed from a friend's online game in some/many instances." not the system itself. Because the way the wiki entry was implies that more than just some fluff was borrowed from LostSouls. PS, I'm not some vandal. I played LostSouls a lot from 97-99. Loved it. Great game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.58.217.50 (talk) 14:06, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

When someone takes the Lost Souls wild talent system as a starting point and designs a d20 version of it, because what he wants is LS wild talents in d20, these being exactly what Chris Bennett did and why, that is not "borrowing some fluff". When you borrow the name of one of these talents, you are also borrowing its concept, unless someone were to make a "mindshielder" talent that let you psychically dig holes in the ground or an "eyewyrd" talent that gave you the ability to eat 500 hot dogs at one sitting. Regardless, I've added circumlocuitous language to try to satisfy you. Glad you liked LS; sorry it left you with a belief that nobody could possibly ever be inspired by its content to create their own versions of it. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:40, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd never have called you a vandal, incidentally. Right or wrong, you are clearly doing good-faith editing. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:43, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the improvement on my Cthulhu Mythyos edit. Your version is much better. Hail Eris, All Hail Discordia! Eponymous (fnord) 15:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Glad you liked it. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Rollback

You have been granted with the rollback permission on the basis of your recent effort on dealing with vandalism. The rollback is a revert tool which can lessen the strains that normal javascripts such as twinkle put on the Wikipedia servers. You will find that you will revert faster through the rollback than through the normal reversion tools such as javascripts and the undo feature, because the rollback feature does not require fetching the data from the page history and then sending article data back to the Wikipedia server as the javascript requires, therefore you could save time especially when reverting very large articles such as the George W. Bush page. To use it, simply click the link which should look like [rollback] (which should appear unbolded if you have twinkle installed) on the latest diff page. The rollback link will also appear on the history page beside the edit summary of the last edit. For more information, you may refer to this page, alternatively, you may also find this tutorial on rollback helpful.

Please also warn users when you come across vandalism as well, that way they can be blocked if they carry on. Thanks. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 14:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay. I suppose I've generally only warned once I see a pattern and it seems likely the user will actually see it. I can start on it earlier. Thanks! —chaos5023 (talk) 14:37, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Arctic MUD

Hi Chaos, you may be interested in the AfD I've initiated for this article. I haven't been able to source this thing, but as with The Two Towers perhaps you'll be able to come it's rescue. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arctic MUD (2nd nomination) Thanks, Marasmusine (talk) 20:16, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Can't say I recall coming across anything about it in my MUD-book pile, but I'll give it a shot. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the bar

I originally went with "the developers at Blizzard themselves" instead of reliable source because folks would site fan-run wikis over and over. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I sympathize with the motivation. I don't think it's really the right thing to do, though. If we get some of that noise, maybe we could expand it to say "a reliable source, like a published newspaper article, professional interview with a Blizzard developer, or the like" or something. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Player versus player

Not sure if you saw this, but I was trying to find an old reference to PvP muds and realised it had been removed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Player_versus_player&action=historysubmit&diff=371875159&oldid=371874781 (cur | prev) 17:01, 5 July 2010 AzureFury (talk | contribs) (19,525 bytes) (→History: Why are we still talking about MUDs in the 2000's? WP:WEIGHT. Also delete mention of China, this article is not about China.)

It's bit worrying to see people removing mud references just because it's 2000. Do you think it's worth contesting? KaVir (talk) 15:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I do; that was a bad edit. Best to restore the MUD material with some sourcing, though. Probably Designing Virtual Worlds and Playing MUDs on the Internet will have plenty to work with. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:14, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

They stripped a good deal of the player vs player article, which I wrote the majority of. I think finding more references to re-include some key MUDs in the history section, at the very least, is called for. Donathin (talk) 19:11, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I restored the PKK bit, but my book collection is pretty small. I will keep looking, but I'm hoping Chaos5025 will come to the rescue with his library of sources. KaVir (talk) 20:21, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully that'll happen, though I don't remember seeing much about PKK. We'll see. I'm on vacation away from my books right now, so it'll be a minute. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Well the PKK bit was just a small section, and I've added a reference to Bartle's book, so hopefully that'll be enough. It would be nice to restore that section of PvP in muds though, perhaps if we can found some references to notable PK muds (sadly GW never seems to get any book mentions, but we might find something for some of the older PK muds). KaVir (talk) 20:49, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Rollback

Be careful when you use rollback and only use it against vandalism. This edit was not vandalism. Garion96 (talk) 17:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I've replaced the rollback with an explained reversion. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:25, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Mudlle

I missed the {{distinguished subcategory}} on [2], good catch. But this raises the issue: why is Category:MUD programming languages marked as a distinguished subcat? Certainly it's in a large category (Category:Domain-specific programming languages) that would benefit from diffusion, and certainly that category has many other subcategories to serve that diffusion function.

But perhaps you have more insight into this.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:13, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't honestly remember why I thought that was a good idea. I see you've removed it; I have no objection. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:22, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Low fantasy

Cool Chaos, you probably know better on the issue, I took the examples from High Fantasy article. I'm not particuarly a fantasy reader, but I'm huge fan of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I do not go much beyond that.

Lord of the Rings is not the best example of High Fantasy (its not actually set on a "secondary world") nor is it an example of Low Fantasy from the criteria both articles define. Its roughly somewhere in between. Part of this seems to be Tolkien wasn't intending to "write fantasy" per se, but was trying to create more of a contemporary mythology for England. Magic in his books is very low key... I'd compare it closer to a fantasy series like Pendragon Cycle (although Tolkien's is not histroical fantasy like that series), but both share extreme limited use of magic (magic is portrayed as being either something natural or something of 'devil' essentially).

It sounds like WOT is something similar as far as "mythical history" epoch? 137.222.231.108 (talk) 13:45, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, WoT basically won't shut up about how it's a distant future/distant past Earth. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:20, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages 2

Because you participated in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Some Person/The Real Secret Page and Secret Barnstar, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages 2. Cunard (talk) 06:26, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

No personal attacks

Ease up, please.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Taken as advised. But, well, why? I don't see that WP:NPA is relevant; I spoke strictly to the edit, and Gavin.collins has himself recently been lionized for a personal commitment to WP:SPADE. —chaos5023 (talk) 13:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage

Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Accursed Lands

Hi Chaos, good work with your recent cleanup on this article, however I'm certain that Wikia Gaming isn't usable as a source. Marasmusine (talk) 12:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks :) And yeah, you're right. You know me, I hate to yank anything (except TMS and TMC "vote" affiliate traffic rankings, ugh), but yeah, sourcing from Wikia isn't going to fly, and the truth is, being featured MU* on MU*Wiki, even when Wes Platt was still actually bothering to maintain it, still didn't reflect the feedback of more than two to five people. So yeah, skip it. —chaos5023 (talk) 12:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

FYI, if you get tag-team reverted, don't lose your cool and break 3RR... tag me, I'll revert, too. :-) Jclemens (talk) 22:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. I'm trying to chill out and encourage a little WP:BRD. We'll see how it goes. ;) —chaos5023 (talk) 22:24, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Category:Texts related to the history of the Internet

After you cast your vote I have decided that "Books relating to the history of the Internet" is better than "Texts related to the history of the Internet". Hope you agree with that change as well. Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:16, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Italics in film articles

Hello, we are working on adding italics to film articles through the infobox in each one. This way, we do not have to add the separate {{italic title}} template to every article. So please hold off on doing that! :) Erik (talk | contribs) 11:38, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The film infobox was updated with the proper coding, but it may take some time for the coding to apply to all film articles. In the meantime, there may be certain film articles with exceptions: see MOS:FILM#Article italics. For example, at (500) Days of Summer, I made this edit to force italics for the article title. Erik (talk | contribs) 15:33, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

ChaosGreg?

Do you go by the name "ChaosGreg" elsewhere at all? Cheers -Evaristé93 (talk) 15:43, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Nope, not me. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:26, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Strange edits from UWaterloo IPs

Hi. I see you've asked 129.97.247.2 (talk · contribs) about repeatedly adding an unsourced claim to Old Man's War. The same IP, along with 129.97.38.104 (talk · contribs) has been repeatedly adding a bizarre, false statement to A Fire Upon the Deep, as I've explained here. Both IPs belong to the University of Waterloo. Cheers, CWC 13:48, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Michael Lawrie

Oh dear, I just noticed a small edit war going on on that page, dare I ask what happened? I think in this case I really can't edit it to correct facts, but the register is a tabloid!? Weird. Guess somebody doesn't like me! Lawrie (talk) 07:19, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Enh, it has to go back and forth a little more before it's an edit war. :) And chances are the guy doesn't know you from a hole in the ground. It's of no great significance. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Your deletion of the See also section on the Douglas Ousterhout page

You indicated in your edit remark that because all the topics were already linked inside the text of the article that the See also section was not needed. This may be a rule or simply good guidance here on WK but I confess to ignorance and welcome helpful pointers.

To my eyes, it looks like the See also section is always deliberately duplicative of the links in the article, but by listing them in a (hopefully) more useful summary, add worthy content. I would like to add it back but, even more particularly, I'd like to listen to your thoughts first. Can you comment, please? Msnicki (talk) 20:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Sure. See WP:APPENDIX, particularly "Links already integrated into the body of the text are generally not repeated in a "See also" section". "See alsos" with duplicated links are a misuse (one that I used to do myself, because like you I saw them scattered about), and you will find me removing them elsewhere when I notice them. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:52, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Thank you. You'll probably also want to fix the Gary J. Alter page made the same mistake. Msnicki (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the heads up. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:10, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Cthulhu

Oh, don't pout. Strictly speaking, I only did two reverts. Ekwos (talk) 00:08, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

No personal attacks, please. You'll note that I also stand at two reverts. I'm not the one announcing a commitment to edit warring in order to win a content dispute, however. —chaos5023 (talk) 00:10, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indie punk (music)

Hi.Concerning the, in my opinion, precipitous closure of this debate, I thought it would be polite to let you know I have asked for some reconsideration at User talk:Ctjf83#Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indie punk (music). This is not because I want you to wade in or anything, just to keep you informed since you showed an interest. Cheers.--SabreBD (talk) 11:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

request to not delete Brandun DeShay article

more reputable sources have been added to the entertainer Brandun DeShay article. i request that the article is not deleted and importance has been established. thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yleonmgnt (talk • contribs) 07:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for advice

You seem to know your way around here much better than I do. I'm having difficulty in the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chet Ramey discussion with questions about whether I'm acting in good faith and repeated misstatements of my position. This level of conflict is very difficult for me. I've been doing my best to ignore it but there doesn't seem to be any way to get the discussion back to the criteria for notability and whether they're satisfied. I looked at stuff like dispute resolution, etc., but it doesn't seem especially helpful. I definitely don't want to confront the other editor directly on his talk page over his behavior. What would you do? Should I just walk away? Msnicki (talk) 20:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks to me like you've been holding up your end of the debate pretty well. The main error you made, I'd say, is by opening the AfD with language that frames the debate in terms of "this guy is/is not notable because he did/didn't do X", rather than in terms of sourcing and specific guidelines — WP:GNG, WP:BIO. Your interlocutor picked up on that and ran with it, running the debate down a lot of not-particularly-useful blind alleys. At the current stage, what I would do if I were you is reiterate that you're trying to use core Wikipedia standards of reliable sourcing and verifiability, not call anyone a liar, and repeat the call to AGF. I've never participated in dispute resolution, so I can't really guide you there. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, both for advice on what I did wrong in how I made the nomination and on what to do now. I didn't go about it very well this time but maybe next time I'll do better. Again, thank you. Msnicki (talk) 22:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. I think you did fine, by the way. The opening comments may have been suboptimal and wound up feeding some problems, but that doesn't mean they were actually bad. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:57, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, my. He's still not satisfied, even with an apology. At this point, I am going to walk away. He's a keep and I'm a delete and we've given our reasons (or lack thereof.) It's time for other opinions. I'm pretty convinced the real problem is that it's an ego thing; he's a maintainer of a bunch of stuff but, so far as I can tell, the original author of almost nothing. He really, really wants to believe that's just as good and should make him notable, too. Unfortunately, if things are bad now, it's pretty obvious that pointing that out is not going to help. :) Msnicki (talk) 00:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Here are some examples where you can see what's going on: 1, 2 and 3. Msnicki (talk) 01:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, jeez. The second edit is particularly concerning, eradicating a credit entirely in favor of one to the editor making the edit. Seems like a potentially enormous can of worms, but this may be WP:COIN material. —chaos5023 (talk) 01:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Only if you have a reliable source indicating otherwise. TEDickey (talk) 01:16, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way - the merge for CDK was suggested by another editor. You might consider reading the edit history to get a better picture (some is in my talk page from the corresponding time period). TEDickey (talk) 01:18, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

For lynx - see for example http://lynx.isc.org/release/ TEDickey (talk) 01:22, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

More particularly ftp://lynx.isc.org/lynx2.8.7/lynx2-8-7/docs/README.metrics and ftp://lynx.isc.org/lynx2.8.7/lynx2-8-7/COPYHEADER TEDickey (talk) 01:31, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

For dialog - what exactly is the complaint? See http://invisible-island.net/dialog/CHANGES TEDickey (talk) 01:22, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand, Mcnicki's comments appear rather hostile, and had they been addressed to me, I would have pointed out that they're WP:Uncivil. TEDickey (talk) 01:25, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, of course inaccurate, which can be sourced (I'm the original author of about 1/3 or so of the ones on my website). See http://invisible-island.net/personal/changelogs.html for some numbers down at the bottom TEDickey (talk) 01:37, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Your user page

I just now read your user page. I enjoyed those little boxes describing your editing style. They're funny and I liked them. You're right about two spaces after a period (that's certainly the way I was taught) and that criteria is plural. I'm not okay with a preposition at the end of sentence unless I really, really can't think of anything better to end it with. But you're wrong about where to put quotes because that's not about logic, it's about typography. No less an expert on both than Don Knuth always put his periods and commas inside his quotes, too, and I expect it was probably just because he also thought it looked better. Cheers! Msnicki (talk) 05:52, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Heh. I suppose whether one considers it to be about logic or typography has a lot to do with what practice one supports. I expect I shall be struck down by lightning for saying this, but Knuth ain't the boss of me. —chaos5023 (talk) 08:10, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Infidel!

Uhm, I mean, yes, it's just typography, and Knuth is simply sticking to the American version. I've seen British texts where the periods and commas are placed, more logically, outside the quotes. And this habit seems to be common among computer programmers, even when they're not British, likely because that's the style required by programming languages.

It's a bit like the two spaces after a period thing; I was taught that many years ago, on a manual typewriter. However, it's been drilled out of me quite thoroughly by decades of business writing, to the point where it now seems strange and ugly to me. There are some good reason to avoid the double-space, in terms of creating rivers of white, but what really ruined it was the web, where whitespace gets collapsed.

Anyhow, I'll shut up now and slink away. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 13:38, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I definitely feel like logical punctuation is a coder thing. Not necessarily because of style required by programming languages, but because what we do trains us to think of language in terms of a nested hierarchy of logical entities, and internal punctuation then jumps out as a giant sideways hole being punched in an otherwise orderly structure.

With two spaces after a full stop, my favorite was when people tried to tell me that modern typography's outmoding of it meant that it should not be used in a text-based game that uses a monospaced font. They are all dead now. It really works out perfectly on Wikipedia, though; the two spaces show up in the edit view, which is typically displayed monospaced, thereby improving readability as you edit, and fall out in rendered view. Everybody wins. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:58, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

That does make sense, based on my experiences with serious coders. They are systematic thinkers who value logical self-consistency above convention.

The whole double-space idea was made for monospaced fonts, since that's all that mechanical typewriters were capable of. With proportional fonts, justification and kerning make the notion of double-spacing ill-defined. After all, is it really a double if the software decides to put just as much space between two words in the next sentence?

Now that you point it out, I can see the double-spacing between your sentences. As you said, HTML hides that away outside of edit view, so it's perfectly harmless and possibly useful.

You know, this conversation makes me feel old. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 01:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)