Welcome!

Hello, Old Man of Storr, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Stephen! Coming... 16:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Speedy Deletion of redirects edit

Just so you are aware, old redirects are not candidates for speedy deletion, as their deletion may cause more harm than good. For an in-depth explanation, please see WP:RFD. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a message on my talk page. Stephen! Coming... 16:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Incoherent abuse edit

please don't leave me messages as both you and the lord fauntleberry of canterroidshire are proven to be total wankers. hows that for libel guv? slob my knob. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.2.184.63 (talkcontribs) 23:34, 27 October 2009 (UTC) Reply

Could you be the only person who still believes Bramall is a BNP member? Perhaps you think his denial is all there is by way of evidence against this, not realising that the person his purported entry on the list actually referred to has been identified, and everyone who made the initial mistake has corrected themselves. Google it and see for yourself. Do you think Wikipedia should let people put demonstrably false information into articles, just because someone thinks the subject of an article is a wanker? Old Man of Storr (talk) 00:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

IPA edit

Thanks for your advice, and the time and effort needed in getting the IPA for militia right, if I may trouble you, could you check the IPA for the English Pronunciation of Clique for me, the only other time I made an IPA edit. Again thanks.KTo288 (talk) 11:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)Reply


Hi,

Great to see all the transcriptions you're adding.

I'm one of the ones "rampaging" all over WP making it "rhotic". Actually, I'm just following the IPA key prescribed by the MOS, which what created with substantial RP and Aussie input. Thus all the vowels being RP, even in US place names.

If you read intro to the IPA key, you'll see that these transcriptions do not claim that the local pronunciation is rhotic, any more than they claim that Usonians make all the vowel distinctions of RP. It is rather a diaphonic transcription, and it's expected that nearly every reader will drop some distinction or other when reading it. Place names often warrant a separate local pronunciation. However, we still need to accommodate readers who do not speak the local dialect: How should they pronounce it? Also, local pronunciations should be clearly marked as such: We don't want to give the impression that Canadians drop the ar in "York". There are a couple editors who vociferously object to transcribing English place names rhotically (even sometimes in rhotic areas), even though the /r/ is pronounced in those names by speakers with rhotic accents and ar-dropping is entirely predictable. Strangely, I've never heard anyone object to transcribing /h/ for names in aitch-dropping areas! There seems to be something about /r/ that bothers people the way /h/, schwa, and other dropped phonemes do not. We've had similarly vociferous objections to transcribing "new" with a /j/ in US place names, but that seems to be accepted now. There was a battle with /r/--and all RP vowels, actually--in Australian articles, but the Australian wikiproject debated it and concluded that diaphonic pronunciations should be used, with Australian pronunciations given as the local pronunciation. The consensus in discussing the IPA key has remained diaphonic + (optionally) local for all English-language names. I've used <ɝː> etc. in several English place-name articles, since that seems to provoke less opposition, but the general consensus at the IPA key is that we should have one transcription per diaphoneme, and therefore that we should use <ɜr> etc. everywhere. kwami (talk) 00:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Oh, about Latin names, as at dog. The consensus--again with some objections--has been that we should use the most anglicized pronunciation, as if it were a phrase in Shakespeare, as that follows the most complicated algorithm. Anyone who knows anything about Latin won't need the transcription anyway as long as we provide vowel length. I think this is also covered at the MOS, though it's been a while since I've been there. In quite a few articles, I've tacked on the phrase "or as in Latin"/"Greek", which seems to have prevented most objections.

Also, since we link to the IPA key, we should to stick to its conventions. That means re-transcribing Wells' conventions. For example, if we write </e/>, the reader has no way of knowing whether that's supposed to be the vowel of led or of layed. (I've found it as both in various articles.) Likewise with <a, o, u, i>, etc. If we actually need a phoneme not found on the key, then we either need to expand the key, or switch to the generic IPA-all template.

I agree about not having respellings for foreign names. They don't work. But they do work just fine for English names, and are helpful for many people. (Not that I'm going to bother adding them!) kwami (talk) 01:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry to be so slow to reply to you on Cogenhoe, I didn't see it until today. Oliver Low (talk) 15:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal edit

For your 2009 question see the answer here. SpeakFree (talk) 21:07, 26 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

The Brick Testament/references edit

Hello Old Man of Storr, I noticed your addition to the wikipedia page for The Brick Testament, and saw that you reference the author's own personal web page for the story about Sam's Club pulling The Brick Bible book from its stores. I noticed today that CNET is reporting this story and wonder if that would make a better reference, since it's a third party, and the journalist contacted both sides. I'm not an experienced wikipedia editor so I'm not sure if it's better to add this as an additional reference or change the one that you made, so I thought I'd just point this out to you. The CNET story is here:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57330639-52/brick-breaker-lego-bible-too-racy-for-sams-club Thanks, Lina70 (talk) 00:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for that suggestion. It looks like another user has since implemented it here. Old Man of Storr (talk) 13:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)Reply