User talk:DGG/Archive 50 Mar. 2011

Latest comment: 12 years ago by DGG in topic Emilia Carr

ARCHIVES

Reminders
Topical Archives:
BLP (Biographies of Living People)
Deletion reform, Speedies, Notability , Sourcing,
In Popular Culture, Fiction, Bilateral relations.
Academic things & people, Journals, Books & other publications,
General Archives:
2006: Sept-Dec
2007: Jan-Feb, Mar-Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec 
2008: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2009: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2010: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr , May , Jun , Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2011: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr , May , Jun , Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec


Marty Burke edit

You wrote, "If I had seen this, I would speedy delete for blatant spam" in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marty Burke (Politician).

I think that is invalid.

Please explain why you consider this to be "exclusively promotional"..

Thanks,  Chzz  ►  03:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was over-influenced by the photographs in the earlier version. Obviously they could be removed , as has been done, leaving the text. I do not consider the current version as overly promotional, DGG ( talk ) 19:54, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. I'm not sure if it can be made 'notable' - I'm struggling to find references. But yes; I didn't think it was 'speedy'. Cheers,  Chzz  ►  22:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


IRC invitation edit

Because I have noticed you commenting at the current RfC regarding Pending Changes, I wanted to invite you to the IRC channel for pending changes. If you are not customarily logged into the IRC, use this link. This under used resource can allow real time discussion at this particularly timely venture of the trial known as Pending Changes. Even if nothing can come from debating points there, at least this invitation is delivered with the best of intentions and good faith expectations. Kind regards. My76Strat 08:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Check Your Area of Study edit

Hello, I have updated the Project Page you are mentoring on with usernames for all the students in your Area of Study. Please send them a message introducing yourself and let them know you are there to help.

As always, please let me know if I can be of assistance. Take Care...NeutralhomerTalk • 10:15, 3 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Talkpage archiving edit

Your temporary talkpage archiving has been formatted in such a fashion that most of the page history has been lost. You might want to fix that. Ironholds (talk) 19:24, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I tend to make mistakes in merging page histories, and therefore no longer attempt to do them. If you like, do it for me. DGG ( talk ) 19:49, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Now fixed, but in future if you're not capable of reverting an action that hides diffs and edits in an obscure location, you might want to avoid making it. Ironholds (talk) 20:42, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
As I recall, you asked me rather insistently to do it; yes, I should have asked you to help in the first place. DGG ( talk ) 20:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
  • No, I asked you to archive the content. That's slightly distinct from moving the page history. Ironholds (talk) 20:47, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Actually, your help seems to have made the situation somewhat worse. The content I moved has been deleted! That's the sort of error I've made in the past, and why I don't like to do these moves. Looking at WP:MOVE, there are some more steps to be carried out. If you are confident you can do it right, please do them, or I shall revert back to the original page and start over. I apologize for being in a position where I needed your assistance. DGG ( talk ) 20:51, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Any help to prevent a recurrence of the past at Lynn Conway would be appreciated. edit

Hi, DGG. Without unearthing unpleasant history, I have asked user:Dicklyon on his talkpage not to slip on his and my now long-standing agreement not to edit Lynn Conway, even for minor or uncontroversial edits (namely, this). I'm sure none of us wants to change what has so far been a successful peace, but the history suggests that anything else I say would lead to more rather than less conflict. Any contribution you could make to maintaining the peace would be appreciated.
— James Cantor (talk) 01:38, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply



NPP edit

FYI: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Newpages 1-26 February 2011 marked as patrolled. --Kudpung (talk) 04:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Inquiry edit

I thought this might of interest to you: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Incunabula Short Title Catalogue Gun Powder Ma (talk) 14:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Online Ambassador Program edit

Please take a look at this project page and see if you can be a mentor to one of the many Areas of Study. If you can, please put your name in the "Online Mentor" area of the Area of Study of your choice and then contact the students you will be working with. As the Coordinating Online Ambassador for this project, please let me know if I can be of assistance. Take Care...NeutralhomerTalk • 04:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

BLP prod edit

Who was that? Corvus cornixtalk 06:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've never thought of run-of-the-mill state legislators as notable, but YMMV. Corvus cornixtalk 18:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Emilia Carr edit

Some opinions for Delete has been raised. Perhaps if you feel like it you could specify why you voted Keep on the articles Afd. Or give an argument for why it should be kept in discussion.--BabbaQ (talk) 17:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

done

Apologies edit

I would just like to apologise to you for the incident before I retired from Wikipedia. To give you some background, my wife had just been diagnosed with a serious illness and I was, to paraphrase it in the way that a counsellor would, "not in the best place". Whilst I obviously disagreed with you (and probably still do, I'm not going to go back and look at it) that was clearly not appropriate. I may be back on Wikipedia at some point; however as you will appreciate with three young children I have more pressing issues at the moment. Yours, Black Kite (t) (c) 01:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

School AfDs edit

Hi DGG. I'm not canvassing or suggesting for a moment that you should chime in on this. It just showed up on my watch list. In the light of recent discussions, I won't be participating in it, but it will be interesting to observe. --Kudpung (talk) 02:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

perfectly reasonable to let me know--as you realize, it's not all that easy to predict what I shall say DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 5 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


List of laboratory information management system edit

I have spent a few hours trying to find articles for most of the software packages mentioned (of for the companies that produce them), but most are only mentioned on WP in this list. I have decided to take it to AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of laboratory information management system), as I don't think enough of these packages (if any) are notable to justify having a list. --Crusio (talk) 13:16, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think we could have articles on many of them, it is a fairly large industry. However, I am not at the moment about to write them, DGG ( talk ) 17:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Touching bases edit

Hi, DGG:

I read your feedback on the deletion review page regarding the article I'm working on, and wanted you to know it's coming. I've tried to address fears that some had regarding the previous article's being a "synthesis," a "social contruct," or somehow racist. The userfied entry is under a working title, and I hope the article can be named "Argentine people of European descent." If you'd like to, you can look over my draft here. It will be centered around the history, the stats, and the studies, just all similar articles should be (but are often not).

I should mention that in the deletion review debate, a particular editor has been trying to put words in my mouth to provoke me and thereby sabotage the article, and has called me (and others) a racist on repeated occassions. Argentines of European descent are notable mainly in that they are (around) 30 of the country's 40 million people, just as Afro Argentines, Asian Argentines, and Indigenous peoples in Argentina are, and I think each deserves an article.

Thanks again for your input, DGG. Have a good week ahead.

All the best, Sherlock4000 (talk) 06:20, 7 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Jorge S. del Villar G. edit

Oops! I just declined your CSD. Was there something I missed? Please let me know. --Kudpung (talk) 07:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I considered it obvious that the person (as distinct from others in his family) had no bona fide claims to notability; but, since I know I can (and do) make mistakes in that, I do not normally delete an article on my own, single-handed. It is possible that I was overinfluenced by so much of the article being about his ancestors. So see below: DGG ( talk ) 19:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hello, I am a professional editor and that is how I get to know about notable people who haven’t yet gotten a Nobel Prize. That is what I like of Wikipedia, (and the reason why I am working with it, charge free), unlike other encyclopedias, which limit knowledge by waiting to publish things until after they are laureated. This attitude harms society, which can only be exposed to free ideas, until after someone else, usually an elite, has considered it “good enough”. In paper encyclopedias, there is a real space constraint issue, which is not the case for Wikipedia. I think that as long as we follow Wikipedias criteria of neutrality, external sources, etc., the material should be published. In relation to my piece, I think that the author I wrote about, and which I am personally following, for the relevance of the book he wrote, considering that the world economy is a total mess, and no one can explain the reason why; should be kept on main space. If the book was approved by Wikipedia’s editors, then the author is notable, not the book itself. What is notable are the ideas thought by the author, not the ensembled printed pages. I could write a list of much less notable people that appear on Wikipedia’s main space, specially in the Spanish version of the encyclopedia. Still, I will try to find more external sources about this new author, so that his notability is better supported but I definitely don’t think his name should be taken out. Thanks and take care.

FC 15:21, 7 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fabian Colinas (talkcontribs)

1 You misunderstand the purpose of this site: it is fundamentally an encyclopedia, a convenient first source of information for things that the general public will want information about. It is not a web directory; it is not a opportunity for promotion. I do not object to such information resources, I think they're wonderfully useful (and in fact I work also on one such, the proposed NYC wiki.) But their role is not really compatible: people go to an encyclopedia because it is selective; because what it contains is in some way already important, and that they can therefore have confidence it is not serving for the promotion of things that have only a hoped-for importance.
2 It is different from conventional print encyclopedia in several ways--particularly, it can cover a much wider range of topics, because it is written by a much wider group of people with wider interests and is not constrained by the necessity of having a finite size. We do use the unlimited size and the range of contributors to cover a much wider range of importance than any prior encyclopedia. The question is how far to take it; opinions here vary, both in general terms and on specific topics. The basic principle is however accepted, that the topics must already be important, not merely hope to be, or have a possibility of being. In general, more than many people here, I am eager to be very flexible and inclusive, but I very much honor the basic principal: that this is a resource for people to find about about things they have heard of. This applies not only to people and concrete things, but ideas. I just yesterday gave the opinion that an extremely interesting academic theory was not yet important, because nobody had yet written about it beyond the group that proposed it. And that's basically what all of us here mean by notability: outside recognition. Of course,this is only a general principle--it's application to any one specific subject needs to be considered.
3 The truly revolutionary aspect of Wikipedia is not what it covers, but the way in which it is written, and the way content is decided: not by professional writers working under the direction of an editorial board, but by anyone who cares to contribute, working under the direction of the entire community of contributors in a near-anarchic form of organization. None of us therefore makes a final decision individually on anything. the community decides, and I will send the article to our Articles for Deletion process. Your argument there should be not that the author's ideas deserve to be important, which is irrelevant, but that they are indeed thought to be, and that there are third party public sources to prove it. DGG ( talk ) 19:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC) .Reply

FYI: Non-English sources policy change proposal edit

This change has been proposed, not unlike having to provide paywalled text, except the barrier in this case is a different language. Tijfo098 (talk) 08:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Removal of BLP Prod at Adam Buenz edit

With this edit you removed the BLP PROD based on the fact that the article has references. The BLP PROD policy states that the provided references need to verify at least one fact in the article. The references provided in that article do not verify the facts. This was all clearly stated on the talk page. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 10:47, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

The sources don't have to be third party for this. His professional web page shows he worked on the projects he specifies. I agree better will have to be found to show notability. DGG ( talk ) 10:51, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Nomination of William John Peacock for deletion edit

 

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

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article.--Pontificalibus (talk) 10:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Today is Friday, April 26, 2024; it is now 07:11 (UTC/GMT )


Please post messages at the bottom of the page--I will reply on this page, so make sure you watch for it.

If you wish to tell me about an ongoing AfD or other discussion, please feel free to do so, but do not assume what I shall say regarding the issue. It is better to do so here than by e-mail, for others are likely to see it who may be interested also. Therefore, I consider nothing said to me here as canvassing, but be aware that some take a more restrictive view of this than I. If there are strong feelings involved, Wikipedia is the sort of place where any opponents may well use anything you say against you. My recommendation is to be Bold but not Reckless in asking me for advice, and I will do what I can to help if you are challenged for it.

If you choose to e-mail me, I shall keep all such e-mails in confidence, unless disclosing it is essential. But how I act on the issue will, as always, be at my own judgment. We must all support and protect free communication, both in public and in private.

temparchive edit

current material not yet acrhived is temporarily at User talk:DGG/temparchive

Wikipedia:Ethnicity is important edit

To be clear, my original essay was called WP:EIN (Ethnicity in notable) because it was meant as an addition to Wikipedia:Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions. Your "response" to it makes it seem like the essay is purporting all mentions of ethnicity should be scrubbed from wikipedia, which - if you read the essay - is not what I'm trying to get across. Bulldog123 17:25, 14 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

I understand the parallels in the name, and it may have made sense at the time, but now it's confusing. I recognize you do not want to eliminate all mention, but what you've been advocating is hiding the information in the articles, instead of using it for lists and categories. I continue to find that I am arguing for the exact opposite of your position in most situation. Perhaps we can come to some understanding about the names of the two essays, and their abbreviations. DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

Laurence Ogilvie edit

Thanks for spelling out why the Nature review I found establishes notability. I could hardly believe it when I read it—one could scarcely ask for a clearer statement that he was considered a leading expert in his field, or a more reliable source than Nature. I spent far too long on fruitless web searches, and drew a blank when I looked for reviews of his book in a Google Scholar search for "diseases of vegetables" Ogilvie then as a last resort tried converting it to a Google Web search, which struck gold at the 10th item. Why it shows up on Google Web but not Google Scholar is a mystery to me. Do you have any idea? Maybe I should inform Google! Qwfp (talk) 06:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever succeeded in getting a statement from Google on what it includes in the various databases, nor do they make any notification at all when their practices change. I can well understand why they need to keep some aspect of the Google ranking confidential, in the hope of decreasing the illegitimate use of it by black hat spammers. I fail to see any conceivable motivation for doing likewise with G Scholar . (Many aspects of the coverage of G books are known, because of the legal agreements with respect to antitrust law and copyright). The best we can do is observe. I routinely check all 4: G , GS, GBooks, and G NewsArchive. DGG ( talk ) 09:37, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm used to the ordering of search results differing, and the ordering being hard to comprehend at times, but I didn't expect Google Web to find an article in Nature that Google Scholar fails to find at all. Qwfp (talk) 10:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
OK, I did some checking to see if it was an error or a pattern. It's a pattern, Google Scholar does not index the book reviews in Nature. What is even more surprising, is that it does not index the Scientific News or even the obituaries. It does not index book reviews generally, as far as I can tell. Some will get indexed in G Scholar when other articles there cite them, but book reviews are not cited very often. By experiment, I've found adding the keyword "review" is usually helpful, e.g. . [1] Since obits are a prime source for biography, it means G must be checked patiently every time for that also. The key word obit generally helps. DGG ( talk ) 20:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply


check in as able... edit

Geting closer... User:MichaelQSchmidt/Newcomer's guide to guidelines Advice always appreciate. Also, am considering title change to "Newcomer's guide to guidelines and article creation" WP:NGGAC WP:NewbiGuide Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 22:35, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

"Guide to Guidelines" is a perfect phrase--don't ever change that part. DGG ( talk ) 22:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
It does kind sing, doesn't it. :) And even though the essay does deal with article creation, a newcomer's having an basic understanding of guideline and policy is the best first step to any editing... and for them, I wanted to have the bare basics in one easy to use page. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 22:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)Reply


On the h-index and g-index of Lorenzo Iorio edit

...Now Jay says that computing the h-index and the g-index is not elementary....Michoball (talk) 22:23, 20 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

What can I do, now edit

Hi, DGG. You see the situation...What should I do with this guy? Is there some form of higher level of appeal? How is it possible that a purely personal and highly questionable interpretation by an admin abusing his power can have an impact? Please, help, advice or act. Michoball (talk) 22:23, 20 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

what you do now is wait for the deletion review to be concluded. Quite apart from Jayjg's failure to understand that arithmetic is not OR, the notability is borderline. The most likely positive outcome is a new AfD, and nobody can actually predict what will happen there. I will support the article to some extent, but I will be more interested if Jayjg makes the same sort of oppose, because I feel that such a view must be soundly refuted. If the article does not succeed, the way of proceeding is to await substantially more recognition of the work and then try again, but it would have to be really substantial. There is no appeal beyond the community, because there is no other authority. The community makes the decisions, and it sometimes makes them wrong. DGG ( talk ) 04:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)Reply


Thank you! edit

Dear DGG,

I wanted to thank you for all of your help with my situation today. It meant and means so much to have come across so many kind individuals and I look forward to learning more about opportunities on this site and developing my wiki skills to the fullest!

Best Wishes and Thanks again!

Comedybiographer (talk) 07:38, 25 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

Question about use of {{BLP unsourced}} edit

If a BLP is sourced solely by the subject's website, does it still count as being sourced for purposes of deciding whether or not to tag the article with {{BLP unsourced}}? I can't seem to find any firm guidelines on this. Some discussions I've seen say it must have a reliable source. Others say that it must simply have "a source" for the content. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

It depends. The purpose of BLP Unsourced is verification, not notability. If the website is one which would provide verification--for example, an official faculty or organization website, I would mark it or refimproveBLP and primary sources, but not BLP Unsourced. If the website is a personal one on facebook or the equivalent, then I would use BLP Unsourced. If the only source were a personal website of any sort at all, Id consider marking for notability, unless notability was obvious. DGG ( talk ) 16:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Well, in this case, it was the subject's official website, but not Facebook. Is there a difference in terms of verifiability? There seem to be several views on this. I had tagged it for primary sources and notability and then after a search Prodded it. However, with this similar case, I did a search, saw she was notable, so just tagged it with primary sources. This probably needs to be made clearer in the guidelines for using {{BLP unsourced}} and for BLPPROD. Voceditenore (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
It may need to be made clear, but I'm not sure we could get consensus on any one interpretation. But in any case, what you did was right from any perspective: you looked for references. That's the way to resolve most BLP PRODS, rather than arguing about whether or not one should be placed--in my experience, half can be easily referenced, one-quarter if one really works at it, and the other quarter could be deleted very easily as no evidence to support notability by an ordinary prod, or the even stronger reason: cannot verify. When I delete expired BLP Prods, I give both reasons. DGG ( talk )
An editor has added some sources and removed the prod on Claudia Pop, saying it should go to AfD if concerns still aren't met, which is probably right at this point. I'd seen those sources in my search but they didn't add up to passing either WP:MUSICBIO or WP:PROF. I'll wait a few days to see if anything else turns up to improve matters before taking to AfD. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 18:19, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I would have added them nonetheless, rather than make others repeat the search. It could then still have been prodded as "references do not show notability", & if it's removed. of course AfD decides. But any case for non-notability is made much stronger if one makes a good faith effort to source, and adds what is found. DGG ( talk ) 18:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Normally I do add them, and I always search again and add before going to an AfD, e.g. [2]. But today I was pressed for time, and mea culpa, I'm getting mighty sick of non-notable opera singers/conductors/companies/etc. spamming their CVs to Wikipedia to "raise their profile", contributing nothing else the project, and then expecting other editors to save their article. It's a colossal waste of everybody's time at WikiProject Opera dealing with them, when they clearly won't pass the criteria and we have literally hundreds of red links for people with music encyclopedia entries. Sigh. Voceditenore (talk) 19:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm pretty tired of it too, and ditto for visual artists, and authors, and entertainers in all sorts of media, not to mention businessmen and politicians and sportspeople and academics and so on. All of these (except some popular genres of entertainers) are also areas where we are sadly deficient in articles fort he notable people. At the beginning of BLP prod I searched every one of them and added what sources I found. Now I do not if I'm convinced they aren't worth the effort, in order to able to work on other things also, but I let other admins do the deletion because I personally will not delete without checking. But we also have to content with people who speedy or prod people in the more serious fields of human endeavor who are notable, presumably because they do not consider it likely that any such will be notable unless actually famous, and I am resolved not to let such a deletion pass without challenge. And before you ask, yes, I certainly trust your judgment in distinguishing. DGG ( talk ) 19:19, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Ah yes, that too. But at least time spent fixing victims of philistines is rewarding. I am dismayed at the hoops professors have to jump through, for example, when the criteria for other "professions" are so lax, or the mere presence of a couple of tabloid mentions means that they don't ever get a prod. Nevermind, onwards and upwards. ;-)Voceditenore (talk) 19:37, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
The compromise I reached with myself is that I would support even borderline people in fields I did not think important if I could get others to support people in fields I do think important DGG ( talk ) 21:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Excuse me for butting in, Voceditenore, that sounds like something I wrote (Policy #17) six months ago. And that's why I believe BLPPROD in its present form is still too flawed, and is now ready for review - the 'Operissimo' syndrome. Kudpung (talk) 21:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
The thought has occurred to many people, and has been expressed for many years now. However, at present I think the limiting barrier is not acceptance of the articles by the consensus , but rather recruiting enough interested people to write the articles. And BLP Prod also needs either reforming or merging into the regular prod process. I do not however see the direct connection. Unsourceable articles about people will be removed, regardless of their field of work. DGG ( talk ) 22:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Come to think of it, one of my very first AfD "saves" was a prof, but there were apparently subtexts related to the article's creation. My tactic over the years has been to be quite rigorous about the notability guidelines for classical musicians, profs, etc. (even though it pains me) so that when I do argue for "keep", people tend to believe me. Re those "operissimo" articles, Kudpung, they were poorly sourced, but all of them would have passed the MUSICBIO criteria, although most of them were not people whom I'd personally prioritise for classical music/opera articles. So although annoying, they weren't really in the same league as the COI CV "editors" on my scale of annoying, and at least they increased coverage of people in an under-represented area. Voceditenore (talk) 07:40, 3 March 2011

Question edit

Per your comment on an afd:

"his most important academic work ... is in 236 libraries"

Could you tell me how to find out how many libraries are holding a book?AerobicFox (talk) 02:19, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

The basic measurement for enWP is WorldCat, [3]. This gives you a US biased count of all US college and university libraries + about 1/2 of the US public libraries and a few US school libraries. + almost all canadian college & university libraries, some of their public libraries, most UK academic libraries, and most australian/NZ academic and some large public libraries, plus a few of the other major national libraries. The best general supplement to WorldCat is the Karlsruhe Virtual catalog, [4]/],good for all European academic and to some extent public libraries. For other countries, use the union catalogs at WP:Book sources. Most countries have good coverage of the college libraries, some have good coverage of the public libraries also. Some. like India, have nothing useful at all.
In searching, watch out for alternate forms of author names--titles are often better. The ISBN system is universal--if you have an ISBN , that;s the best search term. Be aware that older childrens books and popular fiction tend to be under-represeneteed, because most public libraries discard what isn't active--the count is therefore a minimum number. Be aware of alibris and Amazon, and other dealers, which list themselves for everything they are prepared to distribute.And all of the figures have to be used in connection with what counts as important in that area--you can do a comparison with a book you know is important;. DGG ( talk ) 07:12, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thank you very much.AerobicFox (talk) 23:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Charles Butler edit

How did you find the reviews for Charles Butler (author)? I tried Google Scholar and Google News, but didn't find any. I would much rather be able to do a more exhaustive search and add appropriate references than nominate things for deletion. I know I'm part of the "dark side" as an immediatist, but only because I believe the encyclopedia is better off without unsourced, non-notable, or questionable information. I'm not deleting for deletion's sake, and will definitely add sources rather than AfD things. Thus, I would be happy to learn of some other method of finding sources than I currently use. I'm watching here Qwyrxian (talk) 14:40, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

You used the first two steps correctly. (Google Scholar, unfortunately, has the current practice of not including most book reviews unless they had been referred to by something they do index. --I hope it changes)The third step is Worldcat. It includes book reviews that are published in the academic journals covered by JStor. Though you cannot read the full reviews without a Jstor subscription, you can find they are there,and often see the first page. (In this case it would not have worked). There are two actual indexes to book reviews, Book Review Digest, which is a part of Wilson Web and Book Review Index, part of Infotrac, with overlapping coverage. Both are available in most academic libraries, even small ones. Public library systems generally have them also, though they may be available only in the library building. There is no true free equivalent Beyond there, the specialized indexes to subjects often include reviews of books in their subject published in the journals they cover. Most libraries have a list of book review sources--I use Princeton's.
However, there is a free way around this, and it would have worked in this case. Amazon, in addition to its reader reviews and publisher's blurbs, neither of which are evidence of anything, also includes reviews from good 3rd party published reliable sources; they list them as Editorial Reviews In this case, for Timon's Tide, see their page. It gives the 3 most important. I would cite them as published in the source, and located in amazon. Amazon is reliable for the purpose. -- DGG ( talk ) 16:46, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the details. I live in a non-English speaking country, so local libraries aren't an option. But I'll definitely look to Amazon the next time I find an unreferenced author to see if I can get at some reviews, and at least if I look at Worldcat I can see if reviews exist, even if I can't read them (I may get JStor access in the future, but not for at least a year). Qwyrxian (talk) 06:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 March 1 edit

  The Barnstar of Integrity
"That's why Wikipedia has a reliability beyond that of any one contributor. That's why we work as a community." I wish I'd said that. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:09, 9 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Barnstar edit

  Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar
For giving solid, proactive advice to a mentee about choosing a good article to work on, I award DGG the Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar. Keep up the good work! Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Re: Moby-Dick in popular culture edit

Hi there. I was referring to the lack of notability of the subject matter. The subject of the article is trivia in nature, and the article itself is unsourced and very short. I don't know if a7 is the right criteria to use, but I do think the article is a waste of space on wikipedia. - Artoasis (talk) 03:06, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

there is no applicable speedy criterion. Please read WP:CSD before doing speedy tagging. A7 applies only to people, group of people, individual animals, clubs, companies, and web content. Attempts to have a speedy criteria for clearly non-notable material of other types have all failed of consensus (except for A9. musical recordings ) -- see the voluminous archives at WT:CSD. There is a tag for speedy deletion for having no content, A3, but this had some content, however insignificant one might think it. Unsourced also has failed of being accepted as a speedy criterion. The speedy criteria are interpreted narrowly. In other cases, if one thinks the subject undoubtedly non-notable, the appropriate tags are WP:PROD if you think nobody would contest it or else WP:AFD. But in this particular case, it was originally a redirect to a good article. The course would have been to revert it back to the redirect. But if you do that,anyone can--purely as an editor , revert you. And in this particular case, I intend to work on the article, for I think it can be properly expanded and sourced, and have so indicated,. That does not prevent you changing it to the redirect, according to WP:BRD, and I could not blame you for it, but I would probably revert you--as an editor, not an administrator-- after which there would need to be a discussion.
there is certainly an enormous amount of material here that needs deletion--I delete a dozen or so each day myself. Tagging hopeless articles for deletion is a very helpful thing to do, if you keep in mind WP:Deletion policy, including WP:BEFORE,about alternatives to deletion. Even better, of course, is fixing them so they don't need deletion, but not everything can be fixed or is worth fixing. DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
It's the first time I tagged some article for deletion, so I'm not sure about which criterion I should use. Sorry if I cited the wrong criterion. I just don't think the subject matter is worthy enough, that's all. I understand if you think it's better to keep the article for further expansion. - Artoasis (talk) 09:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
.the proper use of the deletion criteria is tricky--the rules are carefully adjusted to minimize errors, but that makes them quite complicated. Though this is one of the main things I do, I re-read the policy and guidelines every few months to make sure I do not drift from them. As for my view about this sort of article in general, see the next section, just below. DGG ( talk ) 15:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Moby-Dick in popular culture, part II. edit

In response to your post on my talk page, I was not familiar with the page's history; I'm just a fan of the novel. Although I personally find a list of "notable" popular references insightful to the impact, legacy, and interpretation of a work such as Moby-Dick, I had not considered the appropriateness of an indiscriminate collection of information in an encyclopedic reference. I found the discussion at WP:Articles for deletion/Moby-Dick in popular culture very interesting and it has changed my view on what Wikipedia is supposed to be—something I hadn't really considered. So, thanks for both the post and the links. Jon Lighthall (talk) 14:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Opinions about this type of material vary, and the decisions at AfD show little real consensus. My own opinion is that when notable cultural artifacts, are used as significant elements in notable fiction and other notable cultural phenomena, then a discussion of their use is encyclopedic. I will therefore support almost every one of such articles as a matter of principle as core content for an encyclopedia with especially good coverage of popular culture, . There is an abundance of good print sources & some good web sources dealing with almost everything conceived of in Wikipedia, including popular culture. This should not be surprising: popular culture is a subject of academic study, and papers on the influence of X on y are the mainstay of academic writing in the humanities. All that is necessary is to show that the activity or artifact is used in a significant way, and this can be appropriately referenced to the work directly. Such a list is not indiscriminate, for it discriminates in 3 ways: the artifact, the notable work, and the significant use. Indiscriminate would be including every appearance whatsoever in any fictional work, however non-notable the work. But that is not the case with material such as this. There is no problem with WP:V, for the items are attributable--if it is challenged in good faith that the artifact is not in the work mentioned, that does have to be demonstrated. There is no problem with LIST, because more than the bare facts are given.
To see the variety of uses, look at earlier versions of the article. Most are relevant, and they should be added. They are the material out of which our civilization is built. That some particularly notable elements of high art are of such great importance that even the art forms normally considered of widest popular appeal freely refer to them as familiar, and as lending depth to their own contemporary work, indicates our intellectual and artistic heritage.
I'm not saying the original article was good. There's more that should be said on all of it; the subject is capable of great expansion. DGG ( talk ) 02:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Emilia Carr edit

The Afd on Emilia Carr is in its final stages. Perhaps if youf eel like it you can just as me leave a message to the closing admin on why it should be kept on the Afd page.--BabbaQ (talk) 09:38, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have alread said what I have to say, and repeating it does not make it stronger. DGG ( talk ) 15:54, 10 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Hi DGG. I have reviewed the arguments and opined there. Obviously, we disagree. I would be interested if you would care to explain why you disagree with my conclusion, which, briefly is as follows: There are facts about her case that are notable, but that does not give rise to the notability of biographical details, which are the focus of an article about a person. Bongomatic 02:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Articles about a person do not and should not focus around biographical details--that's tabloid writing, regardless of the nature of the person's notability They should focus on what the person is notable for--in this case, the crime and the ensuing legal and moral issues. Since I apparently didn't make that clear to you the first two times I commented, it may not be clear to others, so I'll say it again. DGG ( talk ) 02:33, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that. I think there's still a gap in my understanding. People are arguing (possibly correctly) that the relative frequency / infrequency of women in Florida being sentenced to death and/or executed is notable. Nobody has argued that the specific facts of her case are relevant to the sociological or moral issues surrounding capital punishment or to whom it is assigned—nor do the sources support any conclusions along those lines being teased out of an article on her. My claim, then, is that the facts of her crime are related only tangentially to the notable issues that may surround her punishment—so the facts enumerated are not relevant to the ensuing moral / legal issues. Bongomatic 02:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I've never really seen the point of debating about an ongoing AfD on a user talk page, when it's more helpful at the AfD DGG ( talk ) 04:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm not really interested in the outcome of the AfD in this discussion. I'm interested in understanding your views and prefer not to stir the pot over there, where I've said my peace. Bongo
see the section on notability of murderers on my main talk p. DGG ( talk ) 18:34, 28 July 2011 (UTC)Reply

This comment edit

is well put. You should sign it! ;) Eusebeus (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

thanks. Somebody got there & did it. DGG ( talk ) 22:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Emilia Carr edit

I have to tell you that the Afd has been closed as No Consensus. I feel it is a "victory" for the "Keepers".. It feels particularly good this time as the Afd discussion was at best really nasty. Cheers.--BabbaQ (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

There is no way I can regard this AfD as a victory for anybody. The discussion was indeed nasty, to an extent that is rarely seen on AfD discussions in this subject area. I regret to say that people on each side of the issue contributed to this, yourself included. It is very unproductive to get into an extended dialog with someone who is being unpleasant; the only satisfactory course is to ignore them and concentrate on the issues--and having given and explained one's position, stop and let other continue the argument. True, the concerns in the article are upsetting, however, it is not Wikipedia but the appellate courts that will determine the fate of this woman—and the presence or absence of an article here is unlikely to affect their decision.
As for the presence of an article here, expect the article to be challenged again. The way to deal with it is to improve it in the ways suggested during the discussion. If improved enough, perhaps another AfD will not be initiated, and even if it is, the improved article will be easier to defend. And, should another AfD occur, I strongly advise you along with everyone to be more careful about what we all say to each other. It does not matter if others are unconstructive: all one can do is behave properly oneself.
In all emotional debates in the world where it is not a question of physical force, the best policy is to let your opponents show themselves in their true colors, without your interference. DGG ( talk ) 21:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Game designers edit

Do you have any sources that can improve the articles for Marcelo Del Debbio, Paul Drye, Marco Donadoni, Ann Dupuis, Pete Fenlon, Joseph Goodman, Geoffrey C. Grabowski, Andrew Greenberg, Rob Heinsoo, Steve Henderson (game designer), Shane Lacy Hensley, Gary Holian, ‎Paul Hume (game designer), Jeff Koke, Christopher Kubasik, Lenard Lakofka, Scott Leaton, Chris Wiese, Ken Lightner, Clinton R. Nixon, ‎Mark Rein•Hagen, or ‎Marcus Rowland (author)? 129.33.19.254 (talk) 18:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Some of the PRODs were removed, some articles were sent to AFD. Any help you can give with sourcing would be appreciated! Thanks. 129.33.19.254 (talk) 15:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Recently restored article edit

Hello, DGG:

The article Argentine people of European descent was recently restored by someone, probably by an administrator. While I agree with the move, it was done in such a way that it omits the previous editing history, particularly that of Pablozeta. I don't doubt that grumpy Andy will continue to try to have it deleted on grounds that "it's not an ethnicity" (hypocritically, since he doesn't have a problem with other articles about similar communities in the region, including many which call such people "white"). The article, however, has been substantially rewritten, and shows causality between the six million European immigrants and the present community, including a detailed, sourced history, as well as other influences. Detractors had over a week to contribute to this, and, aside from a couple of snide remarks in the talk page, did not do so. Could you please move User:Sherlock4000/White Argentine to an article with the title above, so that all past contributions are acknowledged?

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you, DGG.

Sherlock4000 (talk) 19:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC) ‎Reply

It looks to me as if this has been done already. DGG ( talk ) 00:20, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


VRA page questions edit

Hello, I noticed you have re-written/edited/rearranged the Visual Resources Association page on Wikipedia. Please review your work on the third paragraph of the section called "History" as the text has been garbled and I'm not sure what was intended. The article was previously criticized for not having internal references and some of those have now disappeared during your editing. If you could include some references or replace the ones that were there, it would be helpful. Hseneff (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I will take a look at the article talk page. Please correct what you think you need to correct, but do not add excessive detail. DGG ( talk ) 00:17, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

This is the paragraph I'm struggling with:

"In 1972, visual resources curators within the MACAA group, led by Nancy DeLaurier of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, began to hold independent sessions during MACAA’s annual conferences along with workshops on aspects of visual resources maintenance. For the workshops, members developed several kit, a including information on slide room management, standards, and other practical concerns. profession."

I will try to find time to look back at the original author's writing to see if the error was from back then (though I'm sure I would have found it when I was first asked to look at the page) but I am stumped. Can you retrace your steps there and recreate the original passage if it was not wrong? This is an unexpected editing priority since our annual conference is next week and I hate to have the page so messed up.

Thanks! Hseneff (talk) 14:25, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Never mind-- I fixed it myself just now by replacing an older version of that paragraph. Also cleaned up some stray stuff. Not too much detail, just cleanup.

Hseneff (talk) 16:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Right. I was about to remind you to look there. DGG ( talk ) 16:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

User:Dcmpuri/Swami Nigamananda edit

A month ago you gave good advice, which was not taken, at User talk:Nilanchalswara about this article on a Swami. It has been in and out under different names, and ended up at WP:Articles for deletion/Swami Nigamananda, which I closed as delete. The author, now editing as Dcmpuri (talk · contribs) reposted it under a different name, pasted it to his user page, went to WP:REFUND and then to me. I have told him that he will have to go to DRV, have userfied the article for him, and told him I will try to find him some advice on improving it. Please would you look at it and see whether you can give him some more? I think it is actually possible that the subject is notable, and that an acceptable article could be written. I doubt whether this author is able to do it, I think the view expressed at the DRV that one wouldn't start from here is probably right, and I have neither ability nor time, but I would like to help him as far as possible. I looked to see if I could find a model for him; I didn't find any Swami article I liked much, but I have pointed him to the only GA, Swaminarayan, as an example of neutral tone. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

your advice was the same as I would give. This is not going to be restored at DRV in its present form. All I could do was repeat it to him in the hope he would listen, so I have done that. It is possible that the subject is notable, but it is also probable that the editor will never be able to write an acceptable article,. It would be an interesting challenge to see what I could do with it, but the work would be disproportionate to my interest on the subject, and there are sufficient equally difficult challenges. DGG ( talk ) 00:43, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. I also posted at WikiProject India, and MatthewVanitas (talk) has offered to help produce an article, which he warns Dcmpuri will be a near total rewrite. JohnCD (talk) 11:50, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 edit

Hi David, I just wanted to say I am looking forward to having you help us work on our Wikipedia assignment. If there are any hints or advice you have, feel free to let me know. I will ask questions along the way too. I apologize for getting back to you now and have started to discuss on the article talk page.

Mike32389 (talk) 02:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Marking articles students are working on edit

Howdy, Online Ambassador!

This is a quick message to all the ambassadors about marking and tracking which articles students are working on. For the classes working with the ambassador program, please look over any articles being worked on by students (in particular, any ones you are mentoring, but others who don't have mentors as well) and do these things:

  1. Add {{WAP assignment | term = Spring 2011 }} to the articles' talk pages. (The other parameters of the {{WAP assignment}} template are helpful, so please add them as well, but the term = Spring 2011 one is most important.)
  2. If the article is related to United States public policy, make sure the article the WikiProject banner is on the talk page: {{WikiProject United States Public Policy}}
  3. Add Category:Article Feedback Pilot (a hidden category) to the article itself. The second phase of the Article Feedback Tool project has started, and this time we're trying to include all of the articles students are working on. Please test out the Article Feedback Tool, as well. The new version just deployed, so any bug reports or feedback will be appreciated by the tech team working on it.

And of course, don't forget to check in on the students, give them constructive feedback, praise them for positive contributions, award them {{The WikiPen}} if they are doing excellent work, and so on. And if you haven't done so, make sure any students you are mentoring are listed on your mentor profile.

Thanks! --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:11, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


NN-warn edit

Hello, DGG. Could you please have another look at {{nn-warn}}? It seems your recent edit disconnected the signature string from the main block, see the result of this edit. Regards, De728631 (talk) 21:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

fixed for the moment, I'll try again, and test before I leave it. DGG ( talk ) 22:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. De728631 (talk) 20:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Of interest... edit

Hi DGG...

This one is back. I reverted it under NPOV and BLP, but thought you'd want to know. - Philippe 02:39, 16 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I hope it's under control now, but I will check to see. DGG ( talk ) 19:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Buildings edit

Hi. List of buildings and structures in Guinea is up for AFD. It originally began as a list of hotels but I think its more encyclopedic as a general list. Can you provide some input as to whether or not such lists are acceptable? I personally think the buildings which have coverage in multiple reliable publications meet requirements and the list now also meets requirements.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

thanks! I commented there DGG ( talk ) 02:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

User changed your keep !vote to redirect in an AfD edit

In a recent deletion discussion I noticed that Aaaccc changed my keep !vote to a redirect.[5]

I informed the user of this on their talk page and then looked back as far as February 1 to see others. In addition to some non substantive typo and formatting changes, he/she also did the same thing to you here in another discussion. There may be others if one goes back further. Because that discussion resulted in a deletion, and your opinion was changed, I thought you should be aware so you can take it to Deletion Review, or whatever else you deem appropriate. Shadowjams (talk) 00:16, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

To update the above, Aaaccc has responded thoughtfully and indicated this was an oversight. I trust that answer. Shadowjams (talk) 01:37, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I guess you can see that below in any case. Shadowjams (talk) 01:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Reply edit

DGG as I have told Shadowjams I did not mean for the mistakes to happen which you may think sounds unrealistic but I handle a large amount of nominations at the same time (while also working on other items) and I am use to re-organizing the nominations to help make the information easier to access for governing admins. It turns out that I have made some small errors of this sort in 3 out of the 10 plus nominations I have done recently and I apologize. In the future I will be more careful and try to do less at one time. Aaaccc (talk), 16 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, but it seems you have been going to unnecessary trouble. We admins are pretty good at making sense out of the AfD discussions by ouselves. There's really no need for reformat them just to improve the elegance- you seem to be consistently adding a hyphen between the Keep/delete and the comment, changing, for example, Delete Fails and Delete, fails to Delete - Fails. The only thing that is really worth fixing in an xfd is inconsistent indentation, because that does affect the clarity, and making sure the !vote is in bold--not because we necessarily count votes in closing, but because it serves as a handy summary. Consistent formatting is a very good thing--I'm not saying otherwise--but the work much better used on the articles. However, if anyone want to correct my spelling or typing anywhere, I'm always grateful & there is no need to ask me. DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Inge Lynn Collins Bongo edit

thanks for the measured remarks at DR. Coren said: "Regardless of the presence of sources (which, incidentally, sucked) it still was a "Page[s] that disparage or threaten their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose. That sort of crap has no place on Wikipedia. You are welcome to write an actual biography on that person if you can source that— but if the objective is to produce a simple list of flaws to "expose" her, then you might want to contact a tabloid instead: they are interested in that sort of thing." given the fact that it was speedied from my user page, i see that no "actual biography" will be allowed. (i missed the AfD discussion which seemed to me prefunctary) i can have no confidence that any work on this subject will not be speedied. this is disturbing, what recourse is there for misuse of the speedy? i see that we can't rely on consensus, now the speedy and prod will sweep. the problem for them is that their attention spans, will not provide consistency. Slowking4 (talk) 22:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Coren gave his opinion, not a judgment. He did not do the speedy. (I think his opinion is wrong, for it would make it impossible to write an article with strong negative implications on anything even if that's what multiple excellent sources demonstrated and even if BLP did not apply.) There was good consensus that the original article was unacceptable. There is probably consensus that the committee report cannot by itself be used as a RS for negative BLP. I do not think your draft article was sufficient, that there is currently any promise for it at DRV now--it will be rejected again, and then it will be all the harder to ever do an article. Try to find 2 unquestionably good sources that comment on the committee report. If you can find them, raise the question at blpn, or rsn, but it would be prudent to first check that other people will find them satisfactory. DGG ( talk ) 00:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Teoría de Precios: Porqué está mal la Economía edit

Has Teoría de Precios: Porqué está mal la Economía been posted for Economics and Mexico? I added templates for both of those projects. --DThomsen8 (talk) 11:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

if you added templates, it should have automatically been posted--check their wikproject pages. DGG ( talk ) 17:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

FYI edit

I just wanted to leave you an fyi that -- though I did not mention your name -- I did link at an RFA to a talkpage discussion in which you (and I) commented, here.--Epeefleche (talk) 12:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Invitation edit

Perhaps you are interested in leaving a comment at the proposed guideline for Wikipedia:Further reading sections. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I left you a reply there, dunno if you've watchlisted the page. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:07, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Tyrone Cummings edit

Hi DGG, I have not the time this evening to check the other points raised in your comment but I'm afraid I know that your point about my BLPPROD on Tyrone Cummings is factually incorrect. If you examine the link to the NBA in the infobox (on this version) you will find the page does not exist, I checked it at the time.

Could you also supply me the name of the "article mistakenly marked as copyvio, when it was the outside site that copied Wikipedia" as I would appreciate a chance to check the facts there too? Thanks (talk) 22:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

you were not wrong with that one, though not optimal, and I modified my comment at the RfA accordingly. The copyvio was Tata Power. It can sometimes be quite difficult figuring out whether Wikipedia is a copy of another page, or the other p. a copy of Wikipedia. However, in this case, the facebook p. clearly says it was copied from Wikipedia [6]; I suspect nonetheless that some of our article was copied from elsewhere, so I rewrote a good deal of it—it would have needed rewriting even if original. DGG ( talk ) 05:37, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the improvements on Tata Power. I remember looking at the Facebook page and I agree I did not spend long enough reading it and focused on the description failing to take into account there was another section called "source" (probably unconsciously assuming it was an advert section), as soon as I saw the matches I just scanned it and moved on. It's a good lesson learned and I'll take more care to spot any potential attribution wording and workout the original source in similar situations where there are multiple Google matches. (talk) 09:44, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
DGG, I think it would be best for you to move the hoax article into your userspace for the remainder of the RfA. Hoaxes, even to help clarify in RfAs, should not be kept in mainspace. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:30, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
good idea. Will do. DGG ( talk ) 00:31, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hotels edit

I've begun developing List of hotels. I think we should at least have a list of the top hotels by country. Probably best to have a basic list initially of the truly notable hotels. This page gets searched for a few times a day by browsers looking for a decent list.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Speedy deletion nomination of Puppy place edit

 

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Puppy place requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a band or musician, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Zakhalesh (talk) 16:37, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Professor Obar Concerns edit

Got a message about an hour ago from Professor Obar of the Media and Telecommunication Policy project and I think it is viewed best in full:

Can you please communicate to the online mentors that I DO NOT want them moving student material into the main space for them. This is a big problem. I have noticed that this has happened with a number of the projects already, for example, in the broadband.gov article and the media cross-ownership article. We need the students to be doing this on their own, of course so they can learn how to do it, and also so that I can grade what they've done. How am I supposed to follow student submissions if the data is associated with online mentors? A BIG PROBLEM ALREADY... please help me with this. None of you responded to my post about this on the discussion page. This is about to get out of hand. Jaobar (talk) 05:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

With that, of course, please only give instructions on how to move, don't do it for them. Please only let them know what to do and let them do it themselves. If they run into problems, provide further instructions. Do not it for them. This seems to be making a mess of Prof. Obar's grading system and I would like to avoid that. Thanks. - NeutralhomerTalkCoor. Online Amb'dor • 06:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply



Benjamin I. Schwarz edit

Hallo David, I created the above stub after someone was upset when I removed an unlinked entry for him from a dab page. I'm not an expert on the minutiae of WP:PROF: do you think this chap's article can survive? Before deciding to create the stub I found a book of essays published in honour of him after his retirement after 40 years teaching at Harvard, which seemed a sort of notability, and there's a lot of biographical stuff in the intro to that book. He's published quite a few books, but does he come up to the WP:PROF standard? (It always seems absurd to me that we demand of a footballer that they spend a few minutes on the pitch, once, in a professional game, but that an academic - much more likely to be cited and of interest in 5/10/50 years' time,even if obscure - has to jump much higher barriers. But that's the rich quirkiness of Wikipedia!) The criteria seem very much geared to today's academics - how do we detect equivalent notability for someone active in the 1950s to 1980s, before reading lists were online etc? Any thoughts? PamD (talk) 09:36, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

If there's a book published in his honour, it meets the standard of being recognized as an expert in his field. There's even a quote from p.1: "he became a major force...." And given that he published books, the criteria work well enough, for there are book reviews which should be found and added--I'lll add them . Did you check for other books? As in practice we judge notability primarily by reviews and citations, the PROF standards work well enough for the 20th century also. It's much harder earlier, when people did not publish as much and there are no citation indexes. But older scientists are more apt to get into biographical encyclopedias, if only because there were fewer of them.
It's the fields of popular culture where most subjects before 2000 has a severe handicap. DGG ( talk ) 16:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
And in fact I found his other books, and some reviews--using just what anyone can see in WorldCat, not the pay-barrier professional indexes. Actually, I did not add everything there was there, if you want to go back and add the rest of the reviews and the translations. and there's a later conference on his work in China. to add also. DGG ( talk ) 17:13, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your work on this. Glad that I was right in thinking the festschrift got him through the gate: I thought so, but couldn't match it to the rules in WP:PROF. I'd spotted many other books by him, but not added them, partly in the hope that the original editor who wanted him on a dab page as an unlinked entry would contribute some effort to enhancing the stub I'd created! (See User_talk:Shanghainese.ua#Benjamin_Schwarz) PamD (talk) 19:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Only when I found the NYT obituary did I notice that I've been merrily mis-spelling him as "Schwarz" when he actually has a T in "Schwartz"! It seems surprising that he wasn't already in Wikipedia - when I found I'd got the spelling wrong I fully expected to find we'd constructed a duplicate article, but not so. Thanks again for your help. Now I need to try and find something about Bernard Schwarz (translater) (the German WP article is unsourced), and it would be nice to establish whether Bernard Schwarz (archaeologist) is really the same as any of the others. It all started with Category: Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup! PamD (talk) 19:59, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Deletion debate query edit

So far, you're the only one other than the article's creator to !vote keep at this AFD. It's clear the consensus is strongly in favor of deletion and I don't see that changing. That, and the fact that the longer this is open, the more it's just providing an opportunity for the creator to flood the discussion, rearrange others' comments, spam completely unrelated Wikiprojects... So I'm considering a snow close as delete. Thoughts? postdlf (talk) 15:17, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I continue my opinion that it should be kept. You can't do a snow close in this situation. If you do, it only means a continuation at DRV, which has the opposite effect of letting the deletion finish. And as you seem to have formed an opinion before the discussion has ended. , it shouldn't be you who does the close. Possibly a neutral person will think my argument the stronger. DGG ( talk ) 16:04, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I wasn't asking you to change your !vote; I was seeing if you could recognize, even wanting this kept, that there was objectively no way that this would result in a keep result. Guess not. I actually don't have a !vote opinion either way myself, and so in that sense consider myself neutral about the article, but I do have an opinion as to how the AFD is going and how it is going to continue. postdlf (talk) 16:32, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
That it is likely to close as delete/keep is not enough reason for a snow close when there are arguments form an established ed. otherwise. The comments from the other supporter are not quite disruptive enough to be worth doing that , either., especially as I made a comment which should get him to stop. How can you know who might be puzzled by my curious continuing support and , however, decide to agree with it? DGG ( talk ) 16:36, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Individual action on climate change edit

Did you read the article? It's a verbatim copy of the article I linked. Not a single new word has been added. Please leave me a TB when you respond. OlYellerTalktome 21:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

The material is not in the present version of the parent article. [7] What it is, therefore, is an improperly done split. I am now fixing the split to show the attribution and restore the references. The merit of the split is another matter, and is for discussion on the article talk page. First let me fix it, and then you can debate as you please about restoring the earlier unsplit version. I have no particular opinion DGG ( talk ) 21:37, 21 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I don't care if it's split or not, personally. I cared that you would leave the article in the state that it was in with only a new editor to do the work in mainspace which is why I suggested userfying the article for the new user and letting me help them work on it. I'm glad that you're going back to do the work, though. Thank you. OlYellerTalktome
In any event a10 did not apply, whether to splits done properly or improperly, and I see no reason to userify material that had been in the parent article for quite some time now. The alternate course would have been to revert the split, & that might have been a better step in the first place than nominating it for deletion. I have now done the basic fix, and will go to the main article to put in the appropriate link to the removed section., and then do something with the external links, categories, etc. I also intend to give the new ed. some advice about less troublesome ways to get started here, but it takes a few minutes to do all this, & step 1 as I see it is to keep the article from being deleted while it's being worked on. DGG ( talk ) 22:12, 21 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 21 March 2011 edit

 




This is the third issue of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter, with details about what's going on right now and where help is needed.



Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 22:22, 21 March 2011 (UTC) Reply


Speedy deletion of article edit

Hi, my article Homo sapiens morlandius has been deleted by you. I commend your quick detection that this is a bad article. However I am a science teacher and have been having difficulty getting my year 10 class to understand how to use the internet to do research. They frequently print of articles they have not read, or use articles with only slightly relevant and over-technical language. I wrote this article to set them a homework in order to catch them out, effectively to show them up i.e. as a joke. I would like the article restored for 24 hours, and I hope they learn from it. Billiehenton (talk) 11:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

(talk page stalker)This is actually a great way to show them that Wikipedia, can, in fact, be used as a serious reference source, so long as they check the sources used in articles. A good approach would be, rather than just showing them "Stuff on the internet can be wrong," show them how to differentiate between what is good and what is bad on the internet (or specifically on Wikipedia). If you're interested in setting up a project, we actually have a group of editors who help coordinate with classroom teachers in reading, understanding, and even editing Wikipedia with their students. You can see information general information about currently running programs at Wikipedia:School and university projects. There's a list of people willing to help coordinate projects at Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination, and, if you have questions, you can post them on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination. Qwyrxian (talk) 12:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry, but I can not restore it as an article. Wikipedia is a source of information used by many millions of people over the world. The possibilities of confusion are simply too great. And even before I deleted it, it had a tag suggesting deletion, because another editor had spotted it as a problem in 1h 29m after it had been submitted; I deleted it 5h later in checking the list of articles proposed for deletion. As Qwyrxian suggests, perhaps you can use this story to show them that, although Wikipedia may contain bad material for a while, and can therefore not be absolutely trusted, it is better than the wild internet, because the worst material does usually get removed quickly. At least it gets removed quickly if it sounds implausible -- we have been known to have trouble spotting plausible fake articles which have apparently good but obscure references that do not show what they are supposed to. (Looking at the last paragraph of the article, this one seemed to me like the common schoolboy game of putting in something ridiculous about one's school or one's town--we watch out for these quite carefully). In order that you have something concrete to show them, I've moved the material into your user space as User:Billiehenton/Homo sapiens morlandius; I shall delete it at the end of the week. DGG ( talk ) 15:54, 22 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Beautisol edit

Hello, You deleted the article I was writing for "Beautisol" based on G11 and A7. Can you please advise me which part was considered advertising so that I can remove/alter it? The later part I added indicated the significance of the article, however the article was deleted before that part was published. Thank you,Mac [User:SFBeautyGal|SFBeautyGal]] (talkcontribs) 20:12, 23 March 2011

I have undeleted it and sent to it AfD, and it will be decided there,-- see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beautisol. DGG ( talk ) 07:15, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

my view on the notability of murders and murderers edit

"murder is a mighty strong fact" — Samuel Johnson, 1768.

Despite what my favourite author says, murder/murderers these days are not necessarily considered sufficiently important to be notable at Wikipedia. Murders/murderers of multiple people are--when I came here 4 years ago, it was often successfully argued that ≥2 victims made them notable (I think that's about 10% of the total) --our standard seems to have risen, so I'd say it's now ≥3. Murdering in special conditions that excite human interest makes for notability-- murder in schools, or accompanied by torture, or committed in exceptional manners, or greatly disputed cases, or of (or by) those who are famous, and so on. (none of these apply here. )
Murderers who are executed are always notable, as I see it. That very few people actually are executed, even among murderers, makes the cases of particular interest & notability, and almost all the world considers such executions notable instances of barbarity. This is my fundamental position, but I no longer argue it , as the argument is very rarely accepted here. Executions under any special circumstances are however notable, even here, and the argument is accepted often enough that I will argue it.
This particular case does not quite fall into that category, as she has not yet been executed. But that she should even be sentenced to death is exceptional because of her status in one of the protected classes, and legally interesting, as there seem to be so few of the usually aggravating circumstances that the sentence appears a matter of particularly outrageous injustice, even as a sentence. A jury verdict like this with respect to an adult male in Florida and some other US states would not really be notable to the same extent, as it is relatively common. But a woman is normally given the benefit of the doubt , and here it seems she was rather the object of local prejudice. In southern states, local prejudice has a particularly ominous implication, as a continuation of lynching, that affects the way people look on it. (I'll put off for the moment the question of whether the articles should generally be on the murder or the murderers) DGG ( talk ) 02:03, 13 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for that DGG. I think we have fundamentally differing views as to the notable elements relating to this and similar cases.
  • "that she should even be sentenced to death is exceptional because of her status in one of the protected classes". This is a factual inaccuracy, I believe. She wasn't pregnant when sentenced to death (nor was she even pregnant when charged—the chronology is pretty clear that she gave birth in March and was arraigned in April).
  • "murderers who are executed are always notable". Why should there be de facto notability for this class of individuals rather than letting the guidelines apply?
  • "she should ... be sentenced to death is ... legally interesting". This leads to the conclusion that it ought to be covered, not that she ought to be covered, or even that the case be covered. The case is not legally interesting (it provides no legal authority on any proposition of law). As you point out, the jury verdict is interesting, but it is an interesting fact about the Florida criminal justice system or jury process generally, but not about the specifics of the case or individual.
You have gone to lengths to explain that you don't think that tabloid-style coverage of the subject is appropriate, but what else can there be in an article focused on her or the case, rather than putting the verdict in the context of capital punishment in Florida (or generally)? Bongomatic 01:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
For the Carr article, I think I suggested rewriting to change the emphasis at the AfD. We may not be that far apart on this particular article. That can often be the case in coming from different directions.
More generally, I just above argued why women should be considered a protected class for this purpose
I also explained why I think each executed criminal (at least in the 21st century) is notable. I recognize there may be an element of more judgment involved., but it's the moral judgment of most of the world, & whether it's my own is irrelevant. We can continue this on the talk p. of the essay i propose to write based on the above. DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 14 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Just passing by to say hello edit

Hi David. It's been some time so I just wanted to pop in and say hello. Hope all is going well with you. Still not active, but I like to check in with friends. StarM 02:21, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

so come to a meeting. There are lots of new NYC people you'd be interested in knowing. DGG ( talk ) 02:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm going to try. Work is a little less insane. Missed the last one Pharos told me about but I plan to make the next one. Should get notificaitons. Wiped no bots off my user talk so we'll see. Was tired of cleaning up after Suggest a Bot StarM 03:02, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Elvis edit

Hi, I need you to check out something for me. Can you verify the original writer of Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby, that' I'm correct and that it was indeed a single and also that Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby (Jimmy Reed song) also released in 1956 isn't the same song. It seems odd two songs the same name but I looked on youtube and the lyrics and they seem to be completely difference. Its easy to cock up things like this. Can you check for me to to assure me? Also the dates...♦ Dr. Blofeld 23:12, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't have the vaguest idea how to work in this area. DGG ( talk ) 00:26, 20 March 2011 (UTC) .Reply
The term "alley cat" is used in the version played by Elvis Presley, Glenn Campbell and Wanda Jackson & the Seatsniffers, while the term "you don't even know my name" was used in the version by Jimmy Reed, Eric Clapton, The Everly Brothers and Link Wray ([8]). It is not entirely clear which school the version by Miss Ruby Ann & the Round-Up Boys belongs to, since they do not use either phrase, but they seem to be closest to the Elvis school. This important subject needs further research. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

What I love about wikipedia is that you fill in a red link like Napua Stevens from the song Beyond The Reef accessed through Elvis and suddenly you have a new article which in turn identifies many notable potential articles related to Hawaiian hula! Its the chain thing which is the best way to build wikipedia I think.. Like Steven's husband Bill Ali'iloa Lincoln is turn red links Hawai'i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award and Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame and in researching identified some notable Hawaiian clubs such as La Hula Rhumba and Lau Yee Chai! All from an Elvis song!♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

You'd think Adam and Evil notable enough as a song performed by Elvis Presley.... Perhaps best to merge into an article about the film.. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Your RFAR evidence submission edit

Hi, at [9] you wrote "Yes, it does seem that Dreadstar is not an uninvolved editor with respect to pseudoscience, and he should not be using admin powers in this broad area. Sandstein ditto." May I ask on which basis you believe that I am an involved administrator in the pseudoscience topic area? I do not remember engaging in any disputes in that context. Thanks,  Sandstein  06:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

my error. Refactored. DGG ( talk ) 04:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thanks!  Sandstein  05:50, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

FYI edit

Hi. I don't know if you will have a view on this, and if so what it will be, but as I know that you spend time focusing on schools and academics, I thought that you might at least be interested in following the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avraham Friedman. I've indicated a view, but I know it won't impact yours, and as you can see I'm open to being convinced that mine is wrong-headed.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:01, 23 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

thanks. checked it out. DGG ( talk ) 01:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Another expert who finds us unwelcoming edit

I wonder if you can help with another case of a subject-matter expert who has come to give us the benefit of his knowledge but collided with Wikipedia's standards and processes and is finding us unwelcoming. User MaxWyss (talk · contribs) is an extremely experienced and well-qualified seismologist - see his user page. He has written a paper at User:MaxWyss/Loss estimates in real time for earthquakes worldwide which was (rather prematurely) nominated at MfD as an "essay". In reaction to that he went to WP:REFUND ("I'm sorry that I am one of the leading experts worldwide.") His paper looks good stuff, well worth publishing somewhere, but unfortunately is not an encyclopedia article - a classic example of WP:SYNTH and also rather against WP:NOTHOWTO. I have left a note on his talk page explaining this, and have sorted out some minor problems caused by a username change and an all-caps title; but it all still seems rather negative and I am at a loss for anything more positive to say about how to proceed with his draft. Maybe you can do better: even some words of welcome and sympathy from you would help. It would be a pity to lose him. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 15:04, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have repeatedly gone out of my way to emphasize to him that we welcome subject-matter experts here, and that he has nothing to apologize for in being an expert, although they are required to observe our other rules (specifically, in his case, WP:OR). --Orange Mike | Talk 15:34, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
I was not getting at you, Mike, more at myself - having given my best advice on his talk page, it seemed to me that it was still negative, I cast about to think of a more positive angle, failed, and hoped DGG might be able to. JohnCD (talk) 15:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
This is a little different from than the usual. The article is not OR, but a summary that could easily become / encyclopedic with a little sourcing, instead of being written entirely out of his own knowledge. i do not consider it SYNTH, I doubt very much he goes beyond the published literature; I just consider it insufficiently sourced. DGG ( talk ) 23:03, 25 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Your question about Genetic Alliance edit

Hello, not sure where to answer your question - so am putting it here.

You asked about Genetic Alliance relationship to Genetic Alliance UK. There is no relationship. Genetic Alliance is 25 years old October 30, 2011, and has used the name for 25 years. Genetic Alliance UK informed us in 2010 that they were going to use the name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sfterry (talkcontribs) 19:30, 26 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


sock puppeting edit

Hi, I realise you are an admin and concerned with inappropriate book promotions on Wikipedia. I am not sure if I submitted this sock puppet report correctly: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/FuturisticCyberSpace and I would appreciate your involvement, if you have the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crasshopper (talkcontribs) 21:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

as was mentioned by HelloAnnyong at [Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/FuturisticCyberSpace/Archive] the material there is too old to work with. It is only practical to investigate recent actions, and it you can find any that continuw this, you should list them making reference to these earlier ones. But I think we caught all of the bad edits and changed them appropriately. DGG ( talk ) 20:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Angela Ardolino deleted for copywright - proof! edit

Hello - I sent an email to permissions-enwikimedia.org to verify that the information is not a copyright infringement as you have edited my article for deletion. 07:41, 8 March 2011 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted "Angela Ardolino" ‎ (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion: G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement of http://dancingforcharity.com/angela_ardolino.html)

I haven't heard back so I read that wiki suggests to contact the editor directly to try and resolve the problem and undelete the page. The copy was written by Parenting with Angela and is owned by Angela Ardolino herself as is the image of her. DancingForCharity.com got the information from her not the other way around as you suggest. Please let me know the status of the article. thanks!

Please see the below letter for verification: From: melissa@handsacrossthebay.com [10] Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 11:10 AM To: NV Subject: RE: URGENT ~ Dancing For Charity

To Whom It May Concern:

On behalf of Dancing for Charity and Hands Across the Bay, I'd like to confirm that the biography copy that is featured on: http://dancingforcharity.com/angela_ardolino.html is the property of Ms. Angela Ardolino, and was provided to us from Ms. Ardolino. For additional questions, please e-mail: melissa@handsacrossthebay.com or call 727.572.9911 x 305.

Thank you. Melissa Johnson
Julie Weintraub's Hands Across the Bay
3800 Ulmerton RoadClearwater, FL 33762
727.572.9911 x 305

"WBHDW (talk) 13:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)"Reply

  • This was deleted for two independent reasons. That it was copyvio was one of them. The other was thatt the article was entirely promotional, as in fct in generally the case when one copies from a web site. It is possible that an article could be written about her, as the founder of the Miami Childrens Theater (if there are references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. DGG ( talk ) 23:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Third opinion edit

Hi DGG. Would you provide a third opinion at User talk:Postdlf#Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/François Asselineau (2nd nomination) and capitalization in your closes? I have asked Postdlf (talk · contribs) to add rationales to contentious discussions and not use jarring capitalization to highlight the AfD results (e.g. DELETE), but he has ignored my comments. Perhaps you can get through to him? Cunard (talk) 03:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Provident Personal Credit redirect edit

Hello DGG. You recently redirected the Provident Personal Credit (PPC) page to the Provident Financial (PF) page. I have looked into your comments and I completely understand the reasons why you did this. I have taken your comments on board regarding the need for references from 3rd party independent published reliable sources in the article and I have found numerous ones, including an article from Joseph Rowntree, that I am going to add into the content. You mentioned in your comments that PPC is a reasonable search term and I completely agree, is some respects it is probably a more popular search term than PF as PPC is the name that PF trade under and therefore the name that people associate with the service. If I included a number of 3rd party references and I undid the redirect would the article be OK or would it still be at risk of deletion? I would appreciate your feedback. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarahjoanne123 (talkcontribs) 12:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

TC)

Party Center Software edit

Thanks for adding the PROD to the article. The A7 CSD tag was placed, because "Party Center Software" is actually the name of the company, as indicated on the talk page. Just to let you know that I'm not "totally" all dense. (Just a little bit, SHH!) Cind.amuse 19:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

right. Sometimes it is hard to tell. I gave the author some advice for how to improve the article to focus on one or the other, and placed a PROD tag. DGG ( talk ) 19:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether I'm a little bit dense or totally all dense? Oh my! j/k ;) Thanks for the followup. Cind.amuse 19:33, 29 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
sometimes it's hard to write concisely and unambiguously. Sorry. DGG ( talk ) 19:40, 29 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Your question about Genetic Alliance edit

Hello, not sure where to answer your question - so am putting it here.

You asked about Genetic Alliance relationship to Genetic Alliance UK. There is no relationship. Genetic Alliance is 25 years old October 30, 2011, and has used the name for 25 years. Genetic Alliance UK informed us in 2010 that they were going to use the name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sfterry (talkcontribs) 19:30, 26 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Provident Personal Credit redirect edit

Hello DGG. You recently redirected the Provident Personal Credit (PPC) page to the Provident Financial (PF) page. I have looked into your comments and I completely understand the reasons why you did this. I have taken your comments on board regarding the need for references from 3rd party independent published reliable sources in the article and I have found numerous ones, including an article from Joseph Rowntree, that I am going to add into the content. You mentioned in your comments that PPC is a reasonable search term and I completely agree, is some respects it is probably a more popular search term than PF as PPC is the name that PF trade under and therefore the name that people associate with the service. If I included a number of 3rd party references and I undid the redirect would the article be OK or would it still be at risk of deletion? I would appreciate your feedback. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarahjoanne123 (talkcontribs) 12:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

CardHub.com edit

Hi David - A couple of weeks ago you moved CardHub.com to my userspace >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sarabas/CardHub.com so that I can work on it, improve it and hopefully restore it. I have worked hard on it and identified many respectable sources and references. Can you please take a look at it and let me know if you have any suggestions for further improvement. Furthermore, someone tagged the logo for deletion so I would appreciate if you could ensure that this does not happen >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Card_Hub_logo2.png -- Thanks a lot for your help! Sarabas (talk) 22:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

With respect to the image, you must follow exactly the requirements stated on that page. There is no other way to do it.
With respect to the article, it is only the references in item 29 and 37 that go towards proving notability. But you cannot cite "numerous news stories" just by giving a like to a gnews search; you need to find specific ones with substantial coverage and that are not derived from press releases. DGG ( talk ) 02:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
    • Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Why would you say for example that references 24,25,26 do not go towards notability when they prove that the companies studies are extensively been covered by the press? Can you please help me by making some specific edits? Thanks again! Sarabas (talk) 03:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
      • Being used as a source by a newspaper does not necessarily make you notable. Ref 26 should be sourced to the original NYT article, which is a much stronger source than the regional paper who copied it, but I notice they cited it as only one source among many. That the other two basedt heir article on him exclusively shows that either they recognize him as the expert, or that their articles were PR. If you can find a article using him as a source from the WSJ, it would help. Refs from BuysinessWire, ReuterPR, PRWeb, etc. are essentially worthless. DGG ( talk ) 04:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
    • So I updated the reference to the original NYT article and I also added a reference to Reuters that I found. Do you think that the page is in good shape in order to get republished? If not, I would really appreciate your more hands on help because honestly I have spent a lot of hours on this doing research and there is no question that this is a reputable small company - just look at all the press coverage they get. As you know reporters at the AP, NYT, WSJ, etc. check their facts and they do not publish anything. So if we can not find a way to get a reputable small company at Wikipedia then we have an issue. Thanks again! Sarabas (talk) 01:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
  • I have made some revisions., primarily to remove the promotional overuse of the site name, which should be mentioned only once or twice. Next step is removing some duplications. But you must not link to a Google search, but to results of the search. Am I correct that you have already linked to the key results? There is also some confusion between the company and the site. . Does the company exist only to run the site? Are the reports products of the site, or the company? DGG ( talk ) 17:35, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
    • Thanks a lot for your help. Your changes make a lot of sense. Here are the answers to your questions:

1) I linked to the Google search results to substantiate the claim that the site has received extensive press coverage. However, I have referenced a lot of specific news results so this reference might be redundant. Shall I remove it?
2) The company runs many sites - not just CardHub.com. They seem to also run FindHub.com and WalletBlog.com
3) The studies/reports are products of the site
Do you think that we are in good shape to restore the page? Thanks again for all the help! Sarabas (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

    • Hey David - Just wanted to check-in and see if you had a chance to review my comments from March 17. Thanks a lot! Sarabas (talk) 14:47, 25 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I made a few copyedits for format, and have moved it to mainspace. Remember, this does not guarantee that anyone will like it, just that it has a chance Any editor who chooses to do so can nominate it for regular deletiion. DGG ( talk ) 21:11, 26 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

    • Thanks a lot! I really appreciate all your help in improving the page Sarabas (talk) 17:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Re: feedback on Allan Wicker article edit

Many thanks for the thoughtful suggestions. I am revising an article incorporating them and will submit it shortly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Profallan (talkcontribs) 17:14, 29 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

John Donaldson edit

Hey David,

Saw your removal of the speedy deletion for John Donaldson, and thought we might talk about that. Other than having fathered a daughter who married well, Donaldson appears to be one of literally thousands of ordinary college professors. Even the Danish Wind position was one that he awarded himself. What might be your guidance on this? Thanks!

In this case I doubt the consensus will be to accept the notability as the father of Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, but whether he meets WP:PROF requires some more investigation DGG ( talk ) 18:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Request to mentor a small group of students edit

Hi David! I'm trying to find mentors for each of the groups in the Energy Economics and Policy course. Would you be willing to mentor this group? If so, please sign up on the course page and introduce yourself to the students in the group. If not, let me know so I can find someone else. Thanks!--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

yes, I signed up. DGG ( talk ) 01:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)Reply


Beautiful Sins (A novel) edit

Hi DGG - I came across this article and noticed it had already been nominated and declined for speedy deletion. It seems to be a self-published book, and I'm not sure it will stand up on it's own, so it may be best merged into another article; I was wondering which one you had in mind?--Kateshortforbob talk 14:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was under the mistaken impression the author had an article. I've prodded it, which I should have done yesterday. DGG ( talk ) 16:16, 31 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Oh, great - thanks! I had a bit of a dig, but I couldn't find any decent related articles. --Kateshortforbob talk 19:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)Reply