User talk:Stan Shebs/archive 8

Naval Whistle Signal

Stan, it occured to me that you might have some info to get me started. I am interested in finding out the meanings of the various whistles that marked events on, for instance, a British naval vessel. My understanding is that there are signals for such as a call to arms, chnage of watch, and perhaps others? I cannot seem to find anything to give me a hook to find something. Any suggestions you might have would be appreciated. RayKiddy 02:14, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Philately

Hello, I'm from the French Wikipedia and has written articles about philatelic topics. Do you know if there is on en:wiki an "opening gate" into wikipedian articles on philately (such as on fr:) ? It will help me see what's new here and how to use it on fr:. Have a nice sunday. Sebjarod 08:52, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank for the answer. I will be attentive on the 3 pages you name. Sebjarod 12:51, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Note that someone created this portal Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Philately this morning. Sebjarod 08:17, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ancient history

Hey. This is User:Lectiodifficilior. I run the site www.isidore-of-seville.com and www.ancientlibrary. I saw your edit to Arrian, and your interest in ancient history generally. You look like a Wikipedia dynamo.

Do you have any interest in working on a "Wiki Classical Dictionary"? I'm about to bring such a site live, and am looking for people who might want to be editors. The site would eventually cover anything classical, but would branch out from Alexander and Hellenistic history. The difference between Wikipedia and a Wiki Classical Dictionary would be similar to the difference between the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford Classical Dictionary, eg.,

• Emphasis on "norms of good scholarship," going beyond NPOV to citation, "writing to your level," etc.
• Authors would have standardized headings for editions, translations and commentaries.
• Deeper, focused coverage of the classical world.

What do you think? No commitment necessary. I want to gauge interest and sollicit ideas. Hit my talk page or email editor@isidore-of-seville.com.

Middle Earth

Hi there! Thanks for your contributions to the 'deletion policy/middle earth items' discussion, but I'd have to inform you that the discussion had already drawn to conclusions (WP:FICT) which do seem to correspond mostly to what you suggest. Radiant_* 10:17, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki Bot

I don't know what the hell is going on, but you need to make your bot pay more attention to talk pages. I objected to a transwiki for letter carrier several months ago, being nice on the talk page and not just summarily reverting everybody in sight, but my reward has been to have another bot attempt to delete it, and only fail because of compression. It really pisses me off that we have irresponsible people running bots to delete stuff, not even taking the trouble to notice if something had been posted on the talk page. I guess the next time I'm just going to revert, since the talk page is apparently no longer used. Stan 17:45, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stan, the transwikifier is a program I wrote, but it is not an automated bot. I put eyes on each of the pages that were transwikied, and no I didn't look at the talk pages of the 1000 articles or so that I've transwikied. Furthermore, I am not an administrator, so I did not delete the article (I did mark it for deletion, but in retrospect that article deserves to be in Wikipedia). I'll admit that I made a mistake marking the article for deletion. I'll contact the administrator that has protected the page and ask him to unprotect it and remove the pending deletion tag. I'm sorry if this caused your blood pressure to go up. Finally, you need to know that transwikifying an article does not mean that it will be deleted, it only means that it gets an entry in the transwiki namespace at wiktionary. Kevin Rector 23:13, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Stan, Letter carrier has been unprotected and removed from the pending deletions. Kevin Rector 03:23, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Trashed categories

"Are you aware that by changing category "American botanists" to "botanists", you simply destroyed the nationality info that hundreds of editors have been trying to develop and maintain across all of WP, not just the botany section? At the very least you should have added "American people" etc. I didn't notice this before now because the software broke my watchlist until today, now you've created a huge mess to clean up after. Stan 02:47, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)"

I disagree. I merely restored Category:botanists to how it used to be before 19 March, when it was broken up, almost entirely by one person (the anonymous user 82.35.37.118). I did not remove any other nationality categorisation. - MPF 17:39, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/botanists by nationality lists a 4-4 vote, which is hardly a consensus to make the changes you did. Some of the categories you emptied have been around for six months at least, such as British botanists, so it wasn't just an anon (who was most likely User:Pcpcpc logged out, as the software is wont to do). Although I understand that you personally think nationality is unimportant, that is just your POV; for a high-school teacher in New Zealand or Brazil looking up homegrown botanists for the class to write about, that is quite relevant, and nearly impossible to find out without the subcategories. In any case, you're setting yourself against the hundreds of editors who have built Category:Nationalities by occupation and Category:People by nationality and their thousands of subcategories. Either botanists are fundamentally different from other kinds of people (which could be argued I suppose :-) ), or all these other editors are mistaken, in which case you should convince them of their wrongness first before unilaterally emptying out the category. But given that Category:American actors alone has some 3,000 names, I don't think you're going to get much of a favorable hearing! If you want to argue that the botanists is still too small to be subdivided, that's plausible, but your argument seems to be that the category shouldn't be subdivided no matter how large it gets. Just as you expect other people to defer to your knowledge in matters arboreal, you should respect those who are more knowledgeable about information organization. Stan 18:29, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)"

Hi Stan - several points; first, neither was there any consensus for Pcpcpc's (if they were his) changes in the first place; I was restoring the original status quo, not making a change. And no request for comment had been made at either WP:TOL talk or from regular botanical contributors, as should have been done, before making that change. Second, botanists are fundamentally different from (almost) all other kinds of people when it comes to nationality; e.g. uniquely only botanists and ornithologists working in Britain and Germany among all people maintained friendly communication and exchange of scientific information throughout the second world war. Third, yes, botanists are too small to subdivide; all but 4 or 5 of the new subcategories created had less than five entries, which is pretty ridiculous; it is not comparable to actors at all. Fourth, and most important of all, is the need to have all the botanists at a single source for reference. There are thousands of plant articles that are being written or having their taxoboxes updated; both involve adding the line {{Taxobox_section_binomial_botany | color = lightgreen| binomial_name = | author = }} ; one takes a species, and looks up the botanical name and author citation to enter there, e.g. {{Taxobox_section_binomial_botany | color = lightgreen| binomial_name = Pinus ayacahuite| author = Ehrenb. ex Schltdl.}}; this gives you two authors to link in, with no information on their nationality. One can then get their full names from the IPNI author query page, but that still leaves the article writer with the task of finding the botanist's wiki page - does the botanist Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal have a page at all? Is it at Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal, or Diederich Franz von Schlechtendal, or Diederich Leonhard von Schlechtendal, or Diederich von Schlechtendal, or Diederich F. L. von Schlechtendal, or Diederich F. von Schlechtendal? The simple way to do this is to look up in Category:botanists. If you have to search through 30-odd subcategories and sub-subcategories - it takes an hour to do something that should take 2 minutes. So you don't, you give up in disgust. Or else start a new duplicate page about the botanist. It is quite clear from both 82.35.37.118's and Pcpcpc's contributions lists, that they've not had any experience at all of writing plant articles, and I think they should listen to those who do. They didn't even ask. - MPF 20:22, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories

Hey, I actually was the person who created and filled Category:Nationalities by occupation! I wondered if anybody would ever look at it - but apparently you've noticed it, so thanks! It's nice to know my efforts are not unappreciated :)

Have a look at User talk:MPF. I've put a suggestion there you might want to have a look at that might solve all this trouble with Category:Botanists and Category:Botanists by nationality. I'd really like some feedback!

Also there are some very interesting goings-on at WP:CFD. I put a few suggestions that I thought were largely housekeeping up and in fact they've turned out to be very controversial. I suggested a few things (mainly like Category:Luxembourg going to Category:Luxembourgeois people in line with the overwhelming majority of Category:People by nationality, although there were a few more controversial ones, e.g. finding an adjective for people from Bosnia-Herzegovina - standard English is "Bosnian" but that seems to discriminate against Herzegovinans). The general consensus now seems to be everything that I had it the wrong way round: "Fooian people" ought to be changed to "People from Fooland" (so presumably all the thousands of "Swedish entrepreurs", "Japanese inventors", "Russian scientists" and goodness knows what else should all be moved to their equivalents). Have I, and the people who have made all these hundreds of categories, been rather silly? (Which is possible - groupthink and all that) Or is there a reason for the apparently massive prior consensus? You seem to have an interest in categorisation so your input would be valued and appreciated. VivaEmilyDavies 19:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Classsical wikis

Thanks for your reply comment. Actually, I have a text-plus-wiki-commentary engine coming soon. I built it, but now I'm thinking I'll rewrite the PHP to work with Wiki markup, not HTML. Against your advice, I did start my Wiki Classical Dictionary. Not sure if it'll work. Thanks and best Lectiodifficilior 06:30, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Zambia map

Ow ow ow, eh? Yes, the general consensus seems to be that the bright colours are annoying. I think you probably saw the old version of the map. Have a look at the new one and see what you think. Kelisi 23:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

USS Constitution photograph

The [1] photograph you submitted has, as part of the caption, "Constitution was en route to deliver livestock to Russia during the emergency shortage of November 1987". You can't be serious. Please edit the caption to something realistic? --Durin 02:31, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, right you are (prank on image). Sorry, brain dead moment on my part and didn't think to check. --Durin 02:53, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Palla/Impala

What is the importance of the redirect of "palla" to impala that you created? I ask because I made an article called pallaventuno, that (after doing a little more research) is probably better titled "palla," Italian for "ball." I would like to usurp the palla article for this purpose. --Eoghanacht 00:13, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

(US) vs (U.S.) vs (United States) title disambiguator

Hi, Stan. I remember 2 years ago, you had a strong opinion that the article Sierra Nevada (US) should not be titled Sierra Nevada (U.S.). This issue has come up again. If you'd like to participate in the new discussion, feel free to contribute at Wikipedia Talk:Naming conventions (acronyms)#Rethinking this decision. Thanks! -- hike395 05:45, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Dab style

I've created a draft project at Wikipedia:Disambiguation/Style for comment. I'll announce it on Village Pump, but I'm directly notifying people who have commented lately. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:24, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Postage stamps and postal history of Afghanistan

an image of one of your stamps is not loading correctly in Postage stamps and postal history of Afghanistan...maybe it is just my machine...i tried to fix it, but couldn't. the image is Image:Stamp Afghan 1892-600px.jpg. Kingturtle 04:47, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

1911 Britannica

Hello, Stan. I have a query about Omaguas. Do you have any current information on them? The article contains statements like "The Omaguas are still numerous and powerful around the head waters of the Japura and Uaups." This may have been true in 1911, but for all the average reader knows they've been entirely wiped out or assimilated since that time. The 1911 EB appears to contain a lot of ethnographic information that is either grossly over-simplified, tinged with racial prejudice of some kind, or just plain wrong (the same goes for plenty of Western literature of that period), so I can't help but question the value of importing a straight copy of an article about a tribal group from it. As far as I can tell they do still exist in some form, but like many such groups there's a dearth of information on them to be found on the Internet. I just wonder if the 1911 EB is the best source to use here in the absence of much else, especially when copied verbatim. Cheers. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:36, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't have any more info on the Omaguas; one would have to visit a well-stocked university library (I'm always surprised at how much more info is still in books instead of on the net). The 1911EB article is certainly borderline, but what tipped it for me is the references to early explorers, which will be valid no matter what is changed or added about the tribe itself. I view 1911EB lifts as staking out ground, so to speak, letting later editors know the topic exists and should be updated, making links from other topics work, etc. I expect that sooner or later we'll ditch all the 1911EB content in favor of modern rewrites of the topics - in the meantime it's better than nothing at all. Stan 05:00, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Roman Africa

I've posted a request for a page move at North Africa during the Classical Period. User:Adam Bishop said you'd be a good person to talk to. Alan 20:13, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

More on Russian Navy

Hi Stan! I remember you once asked me if I had more info on the history of the Russian Navy. Well, I've just recently wrote an article on Imperial Russian Navy and added some info to the Russian Navy article on its earlier history. Please, let me know what you think. Cheers! KNewman 16:50, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Cultivar infoboxes

I would be grateful if you could comment on my proposal for cultivar infoboxes. The proposal is outlined at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Cultivar infobox and there's comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Cultivars. Gdr 10:30, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

Italian Provinces

Hi Stan, would you care to pass a comment here [2]. Regards Giano | talk 13:04, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

USS Missouri

Don't no wheather you care or not, but the USS Missouri (BB-63) is up for featured article status. Thought you might like to know. TomStar81 02:28, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Crusades

Hey Stan, a few months ago we were talking about reorganizing the category - well if you're still interested, I finally made some suggestions on the talk page, I don't know if you've seen it yet. Adam Bishop 06:22, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Royal consorts and monarchs

hi there. i´m trying to get a discussion going to change the rules on naming consorts, monarchs, etc.. it´s a bit of mess at the moment. maybe you wanna join in and give your opinion? feel free [3] cheers Antares911 23:38, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

List of British reptiles

LOL - for some reason, this article didn't take as long as List of British birds, jimfbleak 28 June 2005 05:16 (UTC)

I think your yard doesn't have the same climate as England - my garden reptile list is 0, although we have recorded two amphibians. jimfbleak 30 June 2005 16:15 (UTC)

Surprise stamps

I noticed your interest in stamps, so I'm asking if you'll take a look at British Columbia and Vancouver Island. You might be surprised that the article is about stamps, rather than being about British Columbia and Vancouver Island. Can you think of a better title for the article, so it could be moved? Joyous June 30, 2005 04:57 (UTC)

• Well, so much for surprise, then. I had no idea that was a standard naming convention. I learn things all the time here. Certainly, we don't want to be graceless. Joyous June 30, 2005 13:02 (UTC)

Interested in an L.A.-area Wiki meetup?

It's official! The first-ever L.A. Wiki Meetup will be occuring on July 25th, 2005. Are you coming? Would you like to help host? More details on the Meetup page. Be sure to check back regularly for updates! - Eric 3 July 2005 11:04 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for moving the Jean-Baptiste Vivien de Châtaeubrun article and changing the wording a little bit. I was going to come back to it but I had to step out for a moment. Dbraceyrules 19:15, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Glacier proposal

I understand your concern regarding our translation method at Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week. I have written up a proposal here. I would appreciate your input in creating a viable solution. — J3ff 01:35, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Bomb ketch vs Bomb vessel

Hey there! I've been working on category:bomb vessels lately, and started to get suspicious when all the pictures I could find show Erebus, Terror, Fury, and Hecla with 3 masts. Sure enough, Brian Lavery's book says that by the 1790's bomb vessels were ship-rigged because the older ketch-rigged ones had such poor sailing qualities. OK with you to rename the main bomb ketch article to bomb vessel? Ribbit. Dr.frog 01:05, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Philatelic categorization

Hello. Can you please bear with me re the categories as I have a massive amount of data to input. Unfortunately, I do not have very much time to spend on the project and all my data has to be reformatted to meet Wikipedia’s tagging standard.

I have amended the categories because they lacked structure and there is need for a systematic approach. A friend, who is a postal expert but only an occasional computer user, told me he was going round in circles trying to tie up relevant articles. I am an IT professional and even I struggled to make any sense of the category structure.

There should be a single root category and in this case philately is the obvious choice since that is the umbrella term for the entire pursuit. Philately itself is a hobby or pastime or subject or whatever so it is entirely reasonable that it should also be a sub-category of those wider categories. I found that philately had such as postage stamps, postal markings and postal history as sub-categories but philately was also a sub-category of each of those, which is nonsense and does not help new users. Equally, similar articles such as the postage stamps of a particular country were categorised across the board instead of being allocated to a single category within a hierarchical or relative structure which non-IT people like my friend can easily navigate.

After I made a few amendments to the philatelic/postal categories, I asked my friend to try again and he found what he was looking for immediately. This is the benefit of a structured, systematic approach.

Whereas philately is the root, it splits into two main sub-categories. One of these is philately ‘’per se’’ which could be defined as the study of the physical aspects of stamps (e.g., watermarks, types of paper, gums, etc.). The other aspect is the actual issue of the stamps for postal purposes and this is all done at the behest of a postal authority (on the chicken before egg principle). Anything to do with issuing stamps and organising collection, sorting and delivery of mail is done by a postal authority which is why we believe it must rank as a main sub-category along with “physical” philately. The term “postal authority” is a catchall for any organisation that has issued stamps and processed mail: national government, army of occupation, foreign postal agency, etc.

Having said all that, I agree that it is a good idea to categorise types of stamp independently of a country’s issues and, on that basis, “postage stamps” should be a sub-category of “philately”. There is a clear difference between the two disciplines. I will endeavour to make use of that difference, especially as our inputs will fall into both of those categories.

As I say, please bear with us as we have a massive input to make and it will take some time to accomplish.

--John 09:45, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Missing image license

Quote from Stan Shebs: "Hi, some nice pictures of Utah (I went to grad school there)! Could you please tag Image:Red Butte Garden.jpg with license? It looks like an oversight, but only you can actually add the tag!"

Yes, an oversight. I'm new at this and still stumbling a bit. Please delete the entry — I subsequently added the photo again under a different name, this time with the license. By the way, I too went to grad school in Utah, but contrary to original plans, got married and never managed to leave. ;-) Maylett 17:35, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Editing of Discussion

Hello. Thanks for your advice re deletion and I'll bear it in mind.

However, I think you should be aware that Encyclopaedia Britannica's decision to publish its information in both micro and macro formats was not lightly taken and was certainly not because of any desperation re printing costs or anything else. They were instead pursuing a customer service policy re presentation of information. They realised that many subjects can be covered in a few words or a concise summary whereas others have considerably wider scope and need to be addressed by means of comprehensive articles.

You could almost argue that Wikipedia has adopted the same approach when you see how many "stubs" there are, especially as many of them are to all intents and purposes already complete.

The reason why I originally removed the discussion item you mentioned is that your comment re Encyclopaedia Britannica is incorrect and may even be considered defamatory, especially as it has been seen by someone who works in the publishing industry, has links with Britannica and gave me the information above.

Since you have seen fit to restore the comment in its original form, may I suggest you now edit it? --Jack 09:47, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Mr McHenry's point of view is fair comment. I've seen plenty of stuff on Wikipedia over the last few years that I've declined to use. Having said that, now that I've decided to make my own contributions, I hope I don't add stuff that other readers "decline to use"!! I'm sorry we have had a few differences though I have taken on board quite a few of your suggestions and put them into practice. No hard feelings and I wish you well. We need more stamp people on here and I'll certainly try to persuade some that I know. --Jack 21:02, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

New Wikiproject Las Vegas

I have noted your interest in Las Vegas, Nevada and surrounding area. I extend the offer to join us on the Wikiproject Las Vegas. …Guy M… ^(soapbox) 13:53, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Inactive Project Template

Hello, Stan. I was wondering if I could remove that banner but I decided it might be some system controlled thing that would cause the project to implode if I touched it! Thanks for getting rid of it. The project is anything but inactive as the philately pages are being updated every day. I suppose what we need is to persuade extra people to sign up to the actual Wikiproject. All the best. --Jack 08:41, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Vasco da Gama

An article that you've edited before (Vasco da Gama) is nominated for Article Improvement Drive. If you want go there and vote. Thanks. Gameiro 02:58, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard

Mark, I have created a new project page at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard, and Secretondon suggested that I tell my fellow bureaucrats about it. It's designed as a forum where users with bureaucrat rights can discuss difficult situations, either beforehand (for advice about what to do) or after taking action (for review and feedback). It's similar to another page I created, which is starting to catch on (e.g., Jimbo used it this month): Wikipedia:account suspensions, which is not for 3RR or simple vandalism but for close calls and disputed blocks.

Please take a look at these new project pages and give some feedback. Good idea? Bad? Needs improvement? --Uncle Ed 12:05, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Joe Scarborough

Thanks for catching that, I didn't even notice I had done that. Gamaliel 21:08, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Cactus pictures

I didnt mean to delete any pictures, I used a program called wikimedia commonplace, it didn't give me any warning that it was errasing another picture, i wont use it from now, thanks for the warning. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 13:29, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Stan!, I think i'll just not use that software anymore, it has a few other bugs anyway. btw I checked that i hadn't over written any others. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 20:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

new template for philately members

Stan, I'd like to get a list of all wiki members who contribute to philately and try to get them to sign up to the project and display this banner.

All the best. --Jack 21:23, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

User categorization

Greetings! Your user page hasn't been vandalized :-) --it was updated to use the new User Categorization scheme. Although I know that some people don't like to be "categorized" I have categorized your User Page as a Wikipedian in Nevada (Category:Wikipedians in Nevada) since your name was listed on the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Nevada page and I didn't want to lose sight of that. The Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Nevada page is scheduled for deletion. Thanks! Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 03:42, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

FishBase

Hi, I've contacted FishBase to cooperate with Wikipedia. They are willing to cooperate, maybe a bit unexpectedly. Do you want to help with this cooperation? Ucucha|... 13:33, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Macau philately

Stan, Please see my reply to your query on my talk page. --Daveb 07:54, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Ceres series and Ceres series (Portugal)

Hello, sorry to disturb you once more with my creations. Can you let on these two articles' talk pages what need to be done to fit in the en.wiki habits, please ? Have a nice week-end. Sebjarod 10:18, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

When the references are good, the article is good : Afinsa Portuguese stamp catalog is very good and complete, like the Dallay for French stamps with authors' name, dates, details, etc. Thanks for the text polishing. Have a nice day. Sebjarod 15:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

New Republic (South Africa)

On my travels with link repair I de-linked a wikilink to New Republic, when I should have linked to New Republic (South Africa). I was watched the page to see what would happen to my change, and thank you for fixing it up for me. Also, just thought I'd let you know that on disambiguation pages there is generally no need to use piping, which I've fixed up on New Republic. --Commander Keane 16:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

"Flourished"

Really? Well, live and learn. Thanks. Bunchofgrapes 19:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)