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Dark Shadows video transfer

I've been viewing the original episodes of "Dark Shadows" on Amazon Prime, and I see that you have been a major contributor to our article on that program. Do you have any details on how the original 2" quadruplex videotapes of the episodes were transferred and reformatted for the DVD release? I assume the MPI DVDs are the source materials for the current episodes available for streaming on Amazon Prime. I have two specific questions: Why and how was the video re-scanned or cropped to remove some of the image on the sides and top of the original frame? It is quite obvious during the closing credits (beginning with episode 16) that some of the type has been cut off on one side or the other and this varies by episode. Many shots cut off the top of the actor's heads, which I'm sure was not the original composition of the shots. My second question is related to the first: Were some scenes re-framed to avoid overshooting the set and seeing production crew or lights on the edges of the frame that has been mentioned as being spotted by viewers previously?

I'm sorry to say that I do not know any of the technical details you ask about. But I doubt very much that they went to the trouble of re-framing scenes. They had to shoot five episodes a week, so they were on a very tight schedule, not to mention a very tight budget. Rick Norwood (talk) 22:45, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Rick, thanks for your reply. My question was if MPI re-framed the video when it was transferred for home media, DVDs, and later, streaming. The technology to do that did not exist at the time of the original production.--Thomprod (talk) 19:49, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I've watched all the Dark Shadows DVDs, and if they did do touch up work, they still left a lot of hanging cameras in the tops of frames. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:47, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

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Why revert order of operations?

1. Per WP:BETTER, any paragraphs of a lead after the first "should provide an overview of the main points the article will make, summarizing the primary reasons the subject matter is interesting or notable." And in my view, the example of 2 + 3 × 4 is perfectly adequate to illustrate what order of operations is all about.

2. Furthermore, the article is about order of operations, so a discussion of the history of exponents and of their associated notation is scarcely appropriate anywhere within it, let alone in its lead. As MOS:LEAD puts it, "Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article."

Those were my reasons for the mod. What were your reasons for the revert?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 14:10, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

As I said. The paragraph you moved down was about the fact that, just as multiplication takes precedence over addition and subtraction, exponents take precedence over multiplication and division. You moved that statement below the example that illustrated the statement. Rick Norwood (talk) 10:58, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Cool. So I've reinstated the subsection and deleted the example from the lead.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 16:08, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Why on earth did you do that? This is an article about order of operations. Exponentiation is an operation. It has an order, before multiplication and division. I'm at a lost to understand why you want to make this change.Rick Norwood (talk) 22:27, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I 'm sorry. I guess that my enumerating my reasons for the mod above was unclear, so I'll explain a bit further. This is an article about order of operations. Not about the history of one particular operation or about that one operation's associated notation. And as I wrote above, quoting MOS:LEAD, "Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." Well, neither exponentiation's history nor its notation is covered in the remainder of the article—unless, of course, we move this material out of the lead and put it elsewhere in the article.

And to turn your question the other way around, why on earth do you insist on keeping this stuff in the lead? I never deleted it from the article, but merely pulled it out of the lead. As I wrote above, "in my view, the example of 2 + 3 × 4 is perfectly adequate to illustrate what order of operations is all about," and that's all that a lead is for. Furthermore, it's not as though the primacy of exponentiation doesn't receive adequate coverage: it is laid out in the very next sentence after the lead.

Now, rather than continuing to undo one another's edits, how about we discuss this and figure out a solution that satisfies us both?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 14:42, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm certainly willing to discuss it, but I think a better place to carry on that discussion is the article's "talk" page rather than here. Rick Norwood (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Mkucr deletion

Rick Norwood, are you still in favor of deletion for Mass killings under communist regimes? I thought I had satisfactorily addressed each of your rationale's back in the 2010 AFD because you didn't respond to my last post to you. Was I wrong to assume that or have you changed your mind since then? If so, what changed? AmateurEditor (talk) 01:04, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I have always been opposed to any article with a title that is unencyclopedic. All encyclopedias have an article on communism. All of them mention the horrors under Stalin. Some encyclopedias have an article on mass killings. They all mention Stalin, too. But to single out communism, a large though dying movement, is to suggest that this is an area of study. That serious scholars think that there is a casual connection between communism and mass killings. They don't. There isn't.
I gave up last time because I was beaten. I doubt that I'll spend much time on it this time because I expect to be beaten again. Rick Norwood (talk) 10:51, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for responding. I know this is best left to the article talk page, but I have to say that the English wikipedia has over 6 million articles right now, so it has many millions of article titles that no other encyclopedia has ever had (like History of slavery in Indiana, Polish culture during World War II, George S. Patton slapping incidents, or Digital media use and mental health). The title in this case, because of the diversity of terms (an issue acknowledged by the sources themselves), uses an attempt at a "Non-judgmental descriptive title", per WP:NDESC. I don't think you have to accept a "causal connection" between communism and mass killings to acknowledge that there are indeed serious scholars who have published about the topic of communist mass killing. You can simply acknowledge that there is scholarship on the intersection of the two subjects of communism and mass killings and it is a distinct topic found in reliable sources. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:03, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the polite reply.Rick Norwood (talk) 11:00, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

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Left-right political spectrum

Well done. I especially liked the Appeal to Ego ("two highly respected editors"). I'm susceptible to that any time!! Best, Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:12, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Theseus

Hey Rick, it's good to see you've turned your attention away (for the moment at least) from silly topics like Mathematics (as have I), to a topic in my chosen field of self-taught ignorance Greek mythology ;-). Paul August 16:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

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Order of Operations by emphasizing concepts (rather than a confusing acronym)

Hi Rick,

I saw that the new section I added to "Order of Operations" was deleted by you for being "poorly written."

Could you be more specific - perhaps suggest some changes?

The section added a whole new way of figuring out Order of Operations. It teaches by concept rather than a confusing acronym.

This new method simplified the choices and addressed the common problems students have with PEMDAS/BODMAS.

Greg GregWelch8 (talk) 15:57, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the various acronyms are confusing and useless, but the actual rule is simple: do exponents and roots first, then multiplication and division, do addition and subtraction last. You can show this on a chart with the hat and root sign at the top, the multiplication and division sign in the middle, and the plus and minus on the bottom>
I'll point out some problems with your approach on the "Order of Operations" talk page. Rick Norwood (talk) 10:52, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

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Left wing politics

Neither Augustine nor More are mentioned in source 65 "Does God Want You To Be Rich?" which is cited for the sentence "Other common leftist concerns such as pacifism, social justice, racial equality, human rights and the rejection of capitalism and excessive wealth can be found in the Holy Bible." Not the previous sentence about Augustine and More which is unsourced. Rote1234 (talk) 13:15, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

You cite no sources

You cite no reliable sources that identify "reactionism" as one of the main themes in conservatism. In fact, the most authoritative scholars on the topic state that "reactionism" is non-conservative and even anti-conservative.

  • Andrew Sullivan in The Reactionary Temptation (2017): "Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism."
  • Mark Lilla in The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction (2016): "The reactionary is anything but a conservative."

Your edit is brutally refuted by the experts. Also—it is clear by the post from @Rote1234 earlier today that this problem of yours is recurrent. Please try to be professional here. You need to support your edits with reliable sources. Trakking (talk) 15:35, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

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