User talk:Macdonald-ross/Archive 8

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Dates

Please notice the first sentence of Emperor Kameyama.

Emperor Kameyama (亀山天皇, Kameyama-tennō, July 9, 1249 – October 4, 1305), was the 90th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.

No dates are linked. This is consistent with your analysis here.

However, I see that "what links here" shows linked dates which we may want to change? These include July 9 + 1249 + October 4, but not 1305. My guess is that it makes sense to remove these links. Yes? I might start cleaning up similar links to other articles about Japanese emperors before the Meiji period. What do you think? --Ansei (talk) 20:06, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it may be right to remove those links. I'm really not sure what use is made of those dates pages. I notice you've been using the American date system rather than the international system. You may have a reason for this, or it may be accidental. Wikipedia was so Americanised at the start that when we copy an article from English wiki, the chances are it was started by an American! I always change European topics and biogs to international dates, but what you do depends on how you want to spend your time. Macdonald-ross (talk) 19:56, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Do you mean something like this?

Emperor Kameyama (亀山天皇, Kameyama-tennō, 9 July 1249 – 4 October 1305)

If so, good -- I will adopt the format you suggest. If I have misunderstood, please clarify. If questions come up in the future, this thread can serve as a useful starting point and context for further discussion. --Ansei (talk) 22:24, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's the international date format in Wikipedia. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:28, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your good suggestion. See also Talk:Emperor Kameyama#International date format. --Ansei (talk) 00:53, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

references

Hello. I corrected my references. Are my corrections an improvement or not? --RJR3333 (talk) 01:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, that's much better now. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:11, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

My AN comment

And yes, I do understand you were dealing with a user with a disruptive past on En (and thus questionable motives here) in a less that pleasant situation. This is just more reason to make certain you cross every T and dot every i. Make certain to follow every policy and guideline you can find so as to not give them fuel to attack with. It only takes the tiniest of slips to let someone turn it around and use it against you. Everyone slips up occasionally (the number of Admins we have that constantly violate our QD policy is more than evidence of this - A4 gets used way to often on articles it cannot apply to..), we just need to try and limit the occasions. --Creol(talk) 03:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Macdonald-ross, you continue to have my respect and full support. Creol has said it better than I could.--Peterdownunder (talk) 09:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:38, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Yup Creol sums it up better than I ever could. -DJSasso (talk) 13:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Use of rollback

In light of recent issues on this wiki, I would just like to remind you that the use of rollback (or its JavaScript variants) should be used only in clear cases of vandalism, and not in content disputes. While I understand that you were dealing with not so pleasant circumstances (as Creol detailed), this remains a violation of the rules. Please use the undo function for such cases in future. Chenzw  Talk  15:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Succession boxes

Macdonald-ross, thank you for your comment at WIkipedia:Simple talk#Succession boxes. I am responding here because the thread is already too long. My guess is that others are likely to be discouraged if I add more.

Do these alternate examples help to sharpen the focus of discussion about the "sequence boxes" (ordinal conversion tables)?

Keichō	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th	15th	16th	17th	18th	19th	20th
Gregorian	1596	1597	1598	1599	1600	1601	1602	1603	1604	1605	1606	1607	1608	1609	1610	1611	1612	1613	1614	1615

Keichō	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th	15th	16th	17th	18th	19th	20th
Gregorian	1596	1597	1598	1599	1600	1601	1602	1603	1604	1605	1606	1607	1608	1609	1610	1611	1612	1613	1614	1615

At Keichō here with dark ordinal bar? ... and without "&nb sp;" added in date cells?

{| border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 |- style="font-weight:bold;background-color:#CCCCCC;color:#000000;text-align:right" |Keichō||1st||2nd||3rd||4th||5th||6th||7th||8th||9th||10th||11th||12th||13th||14th||15th||16th||17th||18th||19th||20th |- style="background-color:#FFFFFF;" |[[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]]||1596||1597||1598||1599||1600||1601||1602||1603||1604||1605||1606||1607||1608||1609||1610||1611||1612||1613||1614||1615 |}

At Keichō here with clear ordinal bar?

{| border=1 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=1| |- style="font-weight:bold;background-color:#CCCCCC;color:#000000;text-align:right" |- |Keichō||1st||2nd||3rd||4th||5th||6th||7th||8th||9th||10th||11th||12th||13th||14th||15th||16th||17th||18th||19th||20th |- style="background-color:#FFFFFF;" |- |[[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]]||1596||1597||1598||1599||1600||1601||1602||1603||1604||1605||1606||1607||1608||1609||1610||1611||1612||1613||1614||1615 |}

If no one cares one way or the other, fine. If there are ways to do this better, why not? --Ansei (talk) 17:57, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Please see variant of "sequence box" in use at Keichō? --Ansei (talk) 20:14, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

NRM

In the Raelism article you replaced the category "new religious movements" with "cults". May i ask why you did that? PassaMethod (talk) 18:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

There's no evidence that it is a religion, as that term is generally used. On the En wiki page the independent references suggest the whole thing is some kind of con: "Rael is a prophet for profit". It's not a religion just because the organisers say it is! I think "cult" expresses better what the references say. The dependence of the cult on one or two charismatic leaders is absolutely typical of cults ("The initiation rites include declaring an oath or making a contract in which one agrees to become defender of the Raëlian ideology and its founder Raël"). Macdonald-ross (talk) 19:59, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

The usage of the term "cult" in academia is starting to wane off because what is one mans cult is another persons religion. The first line in freedictionary.com describes a cult as "extremist or false". Raelism holds no paticularly extreme positions, and whether a religion is true or false is in the eye of the beholder. Besides the consesus at en.wiki was to avoi such unilateral categorization. Im going to revert you. PassaMethod (talk) 22:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

This is a separate wiki, and we make our own decisions. This applies especially to categories, where we have a much simpler structure. In any event, discussion of issues about a page should be made on the relevant talk page, not on user's talk pages. Macdonald-ross (talk) 05:50, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

We should bear in mind that the term cult and its equivalent in other laguages has been used to persecute minority religions. For instance some Islamist organisatios describe any non-Abrahamic religion as a cult, and as a consequence are intolerant of non-Abrahamic religions. PassaMethod (talk) 08:39, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Please stop posting messages on my talk page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:53, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

True fox

Hi Macdonald-ross --

Just a question about why you moved the content of true fox (genus Vulpes) into fox (trube Vulpini). While it is true that all true foxes are foxes, not all foxes are true foxes. There are 37 species of fox, but only 12 are "true foxes". The en-wiki article is more clear on this. I believe it is roughly the equivalent of moving an article about tunas (en) into an article about the mackerel family (en).

Cheers. –Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 12:31, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

No, it is not the same as mackerel. The Scombridae is a much larger and more varied family, and mackerel is a genuinely common word. Vulpes is overwhelmingly the most common fox genus in the Vulpini, and "True foxes" is a term rarely used by English speakers. It is virtually a wiki invention. The ordinary person just thinks "fox". People will type "fox" in the box. It is anyway better to have one page cover the concept than two, because the content would be so similar. Almost everthing you might say about the Vulpini, you could say about Vulpes (I tried to say that in the edit box).

Newcomers to Simple always need to readjust to our situation. Saying "it's like that on En wiki" is not always a good argument. We are never going to get near to having every genus with a separate page on our wiki (let alone every species). In order to give broader coverage, some doubling-up of topics which are on En wiki is good and necessary. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:35, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Later, I read the discussion on Osiris' talk page. I would have gone into discussion mode first had I known. I think editors might remember that the correct place to discuss a page is on its talk page. That way other interested persons can see what is happening. I watch 2000 pages, but none of them are other users' talk pages. Macdonald-ross (talk) 20:07, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Chomsky cat

Hello, I noticed you reverted an edit I just made, with no explanation. I had previously added the IWW category to the page because Noam Chomsky is an IWW member. Djr13 (talk) 14:45, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I know you did. A category supposes the page contains some relevant evidence. The is no evidence that Chomsky was an "Industrial worker of the world", within the meaning of that term. I checked the page on English wiki as well as our own. Macdonald-ross (talk)

Alright, thanks. I'll add the relevant information about his membership in that organization. djr13 (talk) 01:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

That will be good. It would need the support of a reference. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Bruce Beutler

Saw your change -- how is there a reference when the religion isn't even mentioned in the text (it was just a category)? --Auntof6 (talk) 07:34, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Read reference #1. Several more refs are in English wiki's list of Jewish scientists. I don't always make a thing of it in the main text, because it is (for the general reader) tangential. But I would never knowingly add a category without evidence. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:53, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Remipedia

Hi Mac, good work on simplifying that one - I hate leaving tags and not doing anything. Best wishes for the festive season too :)Peterdownunder (talk) 12:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, it was in a poor state. I don't normally leave them in that condition, but sometimes I have to leave the computer do do something else! Happy New Year to you. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:34, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Taxobox

What do you mean by too much details? Marcus20 (talk) 03:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

You introduced details into the infoboxes which was not needed for the comprehension of the page. When I bring over infoboxes (which may be very complex) I think about what is needed for our readers to know about that particular group. Ostracod was one of those pages. Obviously, anyone could put in more details but, really, nothing is gained by making our pages more complicated. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:18, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay,thanks for telling me. Marcus20 (talk) 04:06, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Courteousness

This is from Merriam-Webster; courteous: marked by respect for and consideration of others. Is it courteous to change the name of an article that someone else has created almost immediately after it was created? Or, is it discourteous?: rude or impolite : not showing good manners.[1] I may be incorrect but I find it to be discourteous. I am not a child and you are not correcting my schoolwork, what you are doing is making it difficult for me to create content. I do not have a problem in engaging in courteous intellectual discourse. May I politely suggest you try it? In case you were not aware my name is Mike. Thank you.7mike5000 (talk) 22:48, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I thought the move to another title was an improvement, but you do not [2]. That's not discourtesy, just a difference of opinion. I'm sorry it caused offence. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:14, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I agree with Mac, and I was thinking of renaming it myself. "Factor" is a general term. "Risk factor" is more the medical term. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:46, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Olympia (painting)

I've reworked the entire article. Take a look. Hope it meets with your approval! Oregonian2012 (talk) 17:24, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's much better. Thank you. Macdonald-ross (talk) 21:01, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Confucian reasoning

Your work on Explanation and Argument helped me to recognize a wider perspective: As I think about the process of collaborative work and our SEWP project, I am reminded of Confucian reasoning

One day, a disciple asked Confucius: “If a king were to entrust you with a territory which you could govern according to your ideas, what would you do first?”
Confucius replied: “My first task would certainly be to rectify the names.”
The puzzled disciple asked: “Rectify the names?…Is this a joke?”
Confucius replied: “If the names are not correct, if they do not match realities, language has no object. If language is without an object, action becomes impossible - and therefore all human affairs disintegrate and their management becomes pointless and impossible. Hence, the very first task of a true statesman is to rectify the names.”

Just confirming your good judgment with a story .... --Ansei (talk) 17:57, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

DNA

Cool ツ The light dawneth. Thank you for the teaching moment in the edit summary. Over with the big cats, I would have received a chiding talk page slap.

While I'm at it though, may I inquire for clarification of your edit summary when you reverted the simplify flag I placed at Common misconceptions: flag should be applied selectively ? I've mulled over that one, because I do so want to do things correctly here. I still find your wording a bit opaque. I realize that I had placed one not long before on an even denser article, so perhaps you thought I might be tag-bombing...since you don't yet have my history here. Mostly, I'm a fixer instead of a tagger. Unilaterally, I just decided to watchlist some I found challenging, instead of placing any further flags, and tinker merrily along when I had time. Is that correct? Thanks again... Fylbecatulous talk 18:04, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

It is a long, complex page with many authors on many topics. Some sections are quite clear, others are obscure. Put the tag on a section you find is complex, not on the article as a whole. No-one will ever try to revise this page as a whole: it would be too long a job. Therefore, to tag the whole article is pointless, whereas a tag to one or two sections has a chance of attracting an editor to work on it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I understand. That's one of the nuances of understanding what works from experience ツ Happy I asked. Fylbecatulous talk 21:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Naturalism

Hi. I replied on my talk page. :) Osiris (talk) 09:23, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Duodecahedron

Hello Macdonald-ross, I have deleted the page, and created a redirect to the already existing Dodecahedron... -17:28, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Quick deletion of Category:Brachiopods

The page you wrote, Category:Brachiopods, has been selected for quick deletion. If you think this page should be kept, please add {{wait}} below the line {{QD}} and say why on the talk page. If the page is already gone, but you think this was an error, you can ask for it to be undeleted. You can find more information about the reason here. Auntof6 (talk) 02:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)