User talk:Gene Nygaard/2006Feb

User talk:Gene Nygaard

Weather reports

Get over yourself and your ridiculous nitpicking complaints against US METARS. They're done for a reason (preference for Fahrenheit over Celsius, but pressure to report in metric units whenever possible over Imperial units), and if you don't like it, too bad. The explanation that I have in there currently is more than adequate. You're introducing POV into the article. STOP IT! Famartin 05:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Your thoughts welcomed about temperature pages

There is a discussion about page naming at Talk:Units of measurement. You contributed to a discussion of such names before. I would welcome your input again. bobblewik 10:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Roman eating and drinking

Hey there, just out of curiosity, why did you revert my recent edit to that article? I personally think that stating that the Romans did not have access to American food is just plain silly and does not need to be mentioned; you're free to disagree, but some sort of explanation in the edit summary would have been nice...the way you reverted my change makes it look like you thought i was vandalizing, and that was definitely not the case. Cheers, Ferkelparade π 16:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I do sometimes forget to explain things. But it wasn't a silly statement; there was more to it than the fact that they didn't have access to American foods, including the identification of several of them. I suspect there are many people who don't have a conscious notion that potatoes and tomatoes were not available in Europe in those days, for example. Even those of us who know that they originated in the Americas often don't make a conscious connection to the unavailability in other places before trading contact was established. Most of all, the comparison to McDonald's was just plain silly. Gene Nygaard 19:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes...that was intentionally silly and over the top (as in those "joke" things people sometimes laugh about). Anyway, I still think the paragraph is akin to saying the sky is blue, but if you think it's necessary to keep it in, I won't insist on removing it -- Ferkelparade π 07:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Cricket names

Hi, your edits go against existing WikiProject Cricket precedence regarding categorization of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and UAE cricketers. The last thing I want is an edit war but there is consensus on the talk page to maintain the current practice. Please build consensus for the change there if you want to overturn the current practice. --Muchness 04:48, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

And not only against Wikipedia convention, but well ensconced cricketing parlance - e.g. Asif Iqbal has always appeared in the 'A' list, not the I list. --Paul 09:25, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wake up, people! I'm sometimes known as "Gene" and sometimes known as "Nygaard". In a list indexed by given name, "Gene Nygaard" will be under "G", and in a list indexed by last name it will be under "N".

But most importantly, it makes no sense whatsoever to have a crazy hodgepodge in some list of people, with some people indexed by given name and some indexed by last name, and you have to guess not only the basis on which it is made but also whether or not any particular person fits into whatever criteria apply in making that choice.

You are the ones who need to establish consensus for a category to be indexed by first name, and there has been no discussion whatsoever of this on any of the category pages or their talk pages. Furthermore, there has only been five days of tossing this idea about on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket page.

If and when you ever get consensus on indexing them by first names in certain categories and post that on the category pages, then I will follow that rule in that category if I know about it, or you can change it back if I haven't done so. If that is done, it might help to add an editorial comment to that fact to the article's category listing. I'll not likely be looking in Category:Pakistani bowlers anyway, so I don't particularly care how that is indexed. Just don't screw around with last name indexed categories such as Category:Living people and Category:1975 births] and any other category not dealing with cricket, and you might not have much of a problem. Gene Nygaard 09:59, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Vergée

Hello. Sorry, I couldn't quite follow what you meant by "would only be "exactly" if a current unit" in your edit summary of Vergée. Could you explain, please? Thanks. Man vyi 09:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

These are not currently legal units. The Channel Islands are part of the U.K., and the only legal nonmetric units are the troy ounce, the pint for beer and cider, the mile for highway signs, etc.

The yard in the U.K. never bore the exact relationship of 0.9144 meter before 1959 at least (it wasn't officially adopted by statute until 1963). It was rather defined by an independent standard, and their relationship was not an exact one but a measured quantity, subject to uncertainty. So for a unit used in some old surveys, that relationship wasn't "exact". Gene Nygaard 10:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

No, the Channel Islands are not part of the UK. Vergées are a legal measure of land. Whether, for encyclopaedic purposes, conversions have to be given to umpteen decimal places is another matter, but vergées are certainly current in the CI in the sense of being current legal measurements. For info see current weights and measures legislation in force in Jersey. Hope this helps. Man vyi 14:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Page name for temperature articles

To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 22:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I want to learn. More explanation, please.

Gene, you just did a quite thorough job of editing the article that I authored at Dispersion modeling of air pollutants and I thank you for it. However, I am very new to Wiki (about two weeks) and I want to learn more about some of your editing.

1. You italicized the book titles in the "Further Reading" section but did not italicize the book titles in the "Reference Section". Is that Wikipedia's style? Or should I also italicize the titles in the "Reference" section?
2. You boxed the dimesnsional units in the last 7 or so lines of the equations I had written. Again, is that Wikipedia's style to box all of the dimensional units so as to differentiate them from the rest of the equations?
3. It is my opinion that the spacing between paragraphs that is automatically provided by the Wiki markup language really needs to be increased. More spacing between paragraphs makes the article much easier to read and that is why I used <br><br> to space my text paragraphs, and to space my equations from the text paragraphs above and below them. You removed all of those <br><br> markups. Were they not in compliance with the Wiki style or is it just a personal preference of yours to provide less spacing between paragraphs?

In general, what was your overall opinion of the article?

Thanks again, and I await your reponses to my questions because I really do want to learn.
mbeychok 22:18, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I changed the book titles, because I am sure of the standard for them. I didn't change the papers, because there may be more than one standard, though most Wikipedia articles probably italicize the journals, some use quotation marks for the article title and some do not.

I "boxed" the unit symbols because unit symbols should never be italicized (that's one way that variables are distinguished from them). See, e.g., NIST Special Publication 811, section 6.1.1.

I figured the br were an artifact from copying from somewhere else. The two returns put a space between lines. Even if your goal was the extra spacing, it is not generally done that way in Wikipedia; the spacing we have now seems sufficient to me, but you can try to tweak it if you like. Gene Nygaard 00:43, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Gene, for your explanations and I think that I will tweak the spacing. mbeychok 03:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

ndashes

Hi Gene - any chance you could use unicode symbols (–) for adding these, rather than spelling them out? When spelled out they are an absolute pain for future editors as when highlighting text for changes, the ampersand and semi-colon tend to stick to the surrounding figures, rather than to the 'ndash' part of the thing, resulting in ampersands and semi-colons being orphaned or lost unless one takes exceptional care in editing (e.g. changing '19' to '21' in '19–25' can very easily result in '21ndash;25'). The unicode symbol is available in that box of javascript inserts below the save page button - thanks, MPF 23:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Orthovoltage: kV not keV

Strictly speaking KeV is the correct unit. However, in radiation oncology, kV and mV are conventionally used in order to distinguish photons from electrons, which are described in units of MeV. Jellytussle 00:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Spaces

You seem to be engaged in adding spaces between parts of names in piped categories (e.g., [1]); why? It makes no difference to the pipe, and seems simply to add (albeit infinitesimally) to the length of the article and the server load). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:09, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

It does make a difference, or I wouldn't have noticed them. The space character is indexed. It might be better if it were not, but for now it is easier to add it to the few which don't have it than to subtract it from the many which do. For example, see Trinity James, indexed after Wendy James in Category:Living people. Gene Nygaard 16:37, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

My apologies; I'd never noticed that. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Why did you change KHz to kHz?

In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGNU you changed KHz to kHz.

It is my understanding that in science and technology, multiplier letters greater than unity are capitalized, and less than unity are lower case. Hence T - Tera G - Giga M - Mega K - Kilo - m - milli u - micro n - nano p - pico f - fempto

Therefore, I believe it's KHz, not kHz. Before I revert your change, I'd like to hear your take on this. Thanks Davide Andrea 23:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

No. See kilo and SI prefix; its symbol is a lowercase k. Or see the SI brochure of the BIPM at http://www.bipm.org or NIST Special Publication 811. Also, hecto- is "h" and deka- (or deca-) is "da". Gene Nygaard 00:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Pleides

Dear Gene: Gee, I went back and looked at my note and it came out sounding so bad-tempered--and I want to apologize for that. I just wrote it quickly. I don't mind fixing notes and stuff. Especially on the Pleiades article, which I think is one of the very best articles I've read in Wiki. I think you should pat yourself on the back. How kind of you to write. NaySay 20:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)