User talk:Atlant/Archive 6

Some "talk" is archived

Discussions from before August, 2005 can be found at User talk:Atlant/Archive_1
Non-current stuff from before January, 2006 can be found at User talk:Atlant/Archive_2
The various old ACLU-related "discussion" can be found at User talk:Atlant/Archive_3

Meatball entry

You know perfectly well that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is an irrelevant "See also" for the meatball topic. The following topics also link to meatball, but I don't see them in the See also list: IKEA, Spaghetti, Cuisine of Turkey, Tofu, Paella, Saffron, Lutefisk, Reindeer, MRE, Smorgasbord, Reser's Fine Foods, Russian jokes, and so on. Any one of these would be more relevant to the topic. Shoehorn 19:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, no, I don't "know that perfectly well".

Atlant 23:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then would you care to justify having the link on that page? Shoehorn 01:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stainless Steel

Thanks for your edits to Stainless steel. Sorry I had to revert some of that earlier. Someone threw in a few 'tests'. Monkeyman 15:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem -- thank you for calling it to my attention! I always hate it when terms like "wanker" turn up in something that I edited and "passed" on as being okay!

Atlant 16:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Much appreciated. Tom Harrison ^Talk 16:53, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! He's now been blocked for a brief while.

Atlant 16:57, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mann Coulter?

Is it short for MaryAnn Coulter? Google isn't solving this when I looked. DyslexicEditor 13:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a commonly-used slur that refers to Ann Coulter, in much the same way that Slick Willie is used to refer to Bill Clinton or Shrub refers to George W. Bush.

Atlant 14:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, an insult! DyslexicEditor 14:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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 22:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the invitation. I'd definitely like to see us standardize all our temperatures as "n°C (m°F)" and yes, I agree that the articles describing those units ought to be "Degree Celsius" and "Degree Fahrenheit". Now, any thoughts on the Kelvin article? ;-)

Atlant 23:41, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your vote. Incidentally, your examples should really be "n °C (m °F)" if we follow the Wikipedia and ISO recommendation for a space between digit and unit symbol. As far as Kelvin is concerned, I get the joke (i.e. 'degree' does not apply), which must make me a unit nerd. But that article may become Kelvin scale if we lose the vote. bobblewik 23:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"n °C (m °F)" -- that's one where I think the style guide is wrong as the (sort-of) superscripted degree symbol pretty clearly separates the number portion from the units portion. But I'm willing to go with the flow here.

Atlant!

I regard the space as a benefit, but only a minor one. It is well down on my list of things to worry about. But is a binary choice, so you will either annoy those that want a space, or annoy those that don't. User:Freakofnurture even blocked me over it and resorted to swearing about it. See my talk page. I think it is wrong that some admins use blocking powers to get their own way. But there is nothing I can do about that. If I sound frustrated, it is because I am. Sigh. bobblewik 00:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Without taking any side on your situation, I will observe that) At least two admins have had their sysop privileges revoked for using those privileges in content battles and more have been called to task. The Wiki Powers-that-Be definitely frown upon such shenanigans. See: Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship.

Atlant 01:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Perhaps something could be done. bobblewik 22:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the welcome

Thank you for the information, I was wondering if there was an easier way to fix vandalism and hadn't gotten around to checking. Looking back though, it appears that I didn't actually revert any vandalism on Benedictine, Antandrus got there a minute before I did. I already had the edit window open and consequently I didn't realize. --Lewk_of_Serthic 00:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's how I knew the method you'd used ;-). Because your edit differed by one blank line from the non-vandalized version, I knew you'd hand-edited it. Using the method I described, your "revert" would have been identical to Antandrus's version and the Wiki software would have simply ignored your saving of the page. It's very common that more than one person attempts to revert vandalism. If you're interested, after a revert, you can see if you "won" the revert race by looking at the article's history; you'll see who actually accomplished the revert first.

A lot of us spend a lot of time dealing with vandalism, both by maintaining watch lists of articles we're especially interested in (Benedictine is on mine) and by watching the "Recent changes" feature shown in the left-hand "navigation" area. It's amazing how many (apparent) kids have time to insert junk into articles! :-(

Atlant 12:43, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Human rights portal

Template:Hr portal

--Lucinor 20:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you!

Atlant 21:43, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Garnish

Why did you consider my edit "SPAM"? It is not - it was a factual statement and should be considered an edit. Also, why would you be watching "garnish" anyways? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by [email protected] (talk • contribs) .

I deleted your edits because you posted pointers to two non-notable businesses that you yourself appear to own, and that's pretty much against Wiki policy. Please read Wikipedia:Spam.

And plenty of us watch the Recent changes.

By the way, you can sign your "talk" posts by including four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your post. When you press "Save changes", they will be replaced by your username in a handy Wikilinked format. A timestamp for your post will also be included.

Atlant 17:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I reccomend you rename it (Move) to something like {{LightSources}}, since I think I misspelled "Artificial" and the template now includes non "Artificial" sources. 68.39.174.238 23:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Someone (not me) has now done this. Thanks for your good suggestion!

Atlant 14:59, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Link in Mainframe computer

Hi! You asked in an edit summary about the link in Mainframe computer. I removed it because it was in the intro where it doesn't belong. Seems like you were moving the link to a better place at the same time. Wikipedia is supposed to show an "edit conflict" page when two edits happen simultaneously but I'm starting to suspect the conflict detection and the popups tool don't work well together. The link indeed does have good info; of course it would be better to have any pertinent information in Wikipedia itself and not use Wikipedia as a link collection. Weregerbil 14:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation! And I think I agree with you that certain edits don't get the "conflict" warning; the other example I can think of was also a place where a manual edit conflicted with a reversion, but I don't know if "popups" was involved; if I get a chance and can remember, I'll go take a look.

FYI -- The reason I liked the link was the pretty-good collection of pictures on it; I'm not quite as sanguine about the guy's facts; some looked a bit dubious on casual inspection, but it seemed more wheat than chaff ;-).

Thanks again for writing.

Atlant 15:06, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it appears that the reversion was done by some sort of automation, although not "popups":

The edit history where Antandrus and Sir Lewk recently collided.

So maybe there is some problem with the automation.

Atlant 16:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

French

Bonjour Atlant! I've just come across your message (from late 2005 I think) saying that you are learning French. If you need any help or have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I am very familiar with the problems of anglophones and their lexicon in the apprehension of French, that is to say, I can probably tell you how/why something is said in a particular fashion. Hope to hear from you! I am glad to see that you are not taking the Bill O'Reilly approach of hating the French. If you ask me, I think he has an inferiority complex (he has no culture). --Aquarelle 13:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My principal problem is that I'm still somewhat afraid to actually speak French, although last fall I spent some time with a private tutor who helped me a great deal with both pronunciation and grammar. The key for me will be when I finally believe that I have enough of a critical mass of the language to not fall flat on my face as a fool. I'm getting close; among other small victories, I'm registered and have actually made one or two sensible edits in the .fr Wikipedia.

I am glad to see that you are not taking the Bill O'Reilly approach of hating the French. If you ask me, I think he has an inferiority complex (he has no culture).

An unfortunately large number of Americans seem to be "ignorant and proud of it", willfully maintaining that ignorance of the fact that there's a whole world out there and things to experience besides what they see on their TV sitcoms each night. Sadly, right now, they seem to hold sway in this country, much to our (and the world's?) long-term detriment. Speaking for myself though, I've enjoyed all of my travels around the world including my three trips to France, and my wife and I would be very happy to go there again; she's been showing me a lot of Internet travel sites in a sort of "nudge-nudge" fashion and I hope to accommodate her soon. This time, she wants to stay down nearer the Seine this time; last time we stayed up on Montmartre. (One of the photos in the Montmartre article is mine as are all of the photos in the .en version of Canal Saint-Martin.) We'll probably get back to Montreal before that though; it's a little close to New Hampshire than is Paris.

Thank you for writing! I've noticed your name around Wiki, so I'll keep you in mind if I ever get brave enough. ;-)

Atlant 14:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reply from 213.235.241.220

Hi there. I just read your message,

Please refrain from adding nonsense to Wikipedia, as you did to Executive (government).

I did in fact do a little edit there, however I only did what I said in the edit summary. I only removed two characters so I didn't care to log in. The nonsense was added by the user appearing after me in the edit history. Please be careful, when looking at diffs, which side shows the old and which side shows the new version. You might want to direct your message at the real editor.

You are correct and I apologize for falsely accusing you. I can't say for sure but I suppose that I clicked on the wrong entry in the article's history table after doing my revert. I've now put the warning in the correct place (and I see that you removed it from your "talk" page).

Thank you for calling this to my attention!

Atlant 14:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Electrical Symbols

Atlant, thanks again for the pointers. I'm thinking of updating some of the electronics articles with symbols (both American and European where they differ). I was reading the graphics tutorial and it said .png is preferred. Ideally I'd want a vector format, but the only way I know to do that is with Visio, and I know that's not an open format. The other question is whether filled-in or outlined diode triangles are preferred. Maybe I should just show both representations. -W0lfie 16:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think Wiki likes .PNG for "political" reason; it's an open software standard and isn't likely to be subject to any licensing hassles as time goes by (whereas .GIF and .JPEG have been, at least for the software that creates them although not yet for the software (such as Wiki) that stores them). Also, .PNG is pretty good at seamlessly bridging the world of realistic photographic images that .JPEG does so well and the artificial images that .GIF does well, and a lot of people (though not all) have now installed browsers that support .PNG .

Meanwhile, Visio vector objects (or Adobe Illustrator vector objects, etc.) are fine for the creation of the objects, but they won't display in most browsers, so you need to render them out as something else that's more-commonly supported like .PNG or .GIF .

With regard to open or closed diode bodies, I've seen both in schematics so I guess that argues for putting both in your drawings along with a caption that says that they're equivalent.

And "Thanks!" for anything you can do to improve the articles (and for your kind words here).

Atlant 12:35, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After doing a little more research, the guidelines at the Wikimedia Commons say that I should use SVG format for schematics. This appears to be the best of both worlds: vector format and open source. Apparently not all layout engines support it, though, so I'm not sure why it's preferred. Any thoughts?

Lego

Hi, I notice you revert my edit 'revert odd edit'. If you look at the page there are some problems. For example in the section of (design and manufanture) the 'pic' of the 3 minifigures hides or covers some of the words in the paragraph. Also in the ' Triva' section the number chart or 'Blocks/Configurations' overlaps the line of 'See also'. It doesn't matter if I use 3 different web browers or adjust the brower to fit. In other words it doesn't look very good. I hope you can see and understand what I am talking about. So if you know how to fix or clean the page. It would be great. Thanks.

Highland games

Have you any interest in working on the Highland games article in an attempt to raise it to Wikipedia good article status? Right now, there are a bit too many red links, the article needs references and footnotes, an expansion of the music section (coming soon). Also, the intro paragraph is not so good and there are some questionable statements early on in the history section. The photos are good (and good licenses) with a couple more coming (music and clan parade). What do you think?

JFPerry 19:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be happy to do what I can (fixing redlinks and such) but I'm certainly not a "subject matter expert" in this area, just a satisfied spectator at the New Hampshire games.

Atlant 20:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! Even if all you can do is read over the article with a critical eye to catch areas that need further elucidation or support, that would be great. JFPerry 23:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Transil & Trisil

Hi Atlant. I see that you have downcased my upcased 'Trisil'. My reason for capitalising it was that it, like Transil, is a registered trademark. I found it in the European, UK and US patent office databases. ST capitalises it in the PDF app note that I referred to in the articles, and in every other app note I can find. Are you convinced by this? Regards, --Heron 10:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, you telling me that it's a registered trademark is sufficient, no worries ;-) ! The only thing I'll mention (and you may have already done this) is that if it is a trademark, make sure it's used like an adjective so that it modifies a noun. That is, use it similar to the following: "Transil diode".

Atlant 23:31, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of web sites nagging us to use trademarks as adjectives, but even the owners of the trademarks don't follow their own advice. See the above-mentioned app note for starters. I stumbled on this rant against the "noun modifier" rule, and it makes some good points. There is something fishy about the uniformity of all those nagging web pages, and I suspect that the rule was just made up by lawyers to keep themselves busy. Now it has become an internet meme. I prefer to ignore prescriptivism and write according to common usage, although I will respectfully bear your advice in mind. --Heron 19:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IANAL, and I'm certainly not going to revert anyone's edits that break this rule, but I know this is the way that the two big companies that I've worked for have always asked me to use their trademarks so when I'm writing tech docs, sales collateral, and the like, I always try to follow the rule. It can usually be done without making the writing sound too weird. But I'll try to remember to read the link you've provided -- thanks!

Atlant 19:58, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Programmable logic device

(This is a comment I made to Lindosland on his talk page which he then copied here.)

Hi! I reverted the change you recently made to Programmable logic device. I did this because you apparently had more in your paste buffer than you thought: the contents of the Digital circuits article (or some such) became melded with the PLD article.

Please note that I have nothing against your template; from what I've seen, it looks like a good idea, so as far as I'm concerned you can re-apply your edit to PLD (with a bit less stuff in your paste buffer ;-) ).

Atlant 13:55, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear! Very sorry about that, and thanks for realising what I'd done. I should have been pasting just one word, but it was the early hours of the morning. --Lindosland 15:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem! But I was the one who made the last edit to PLD, and my audit-trail comment was "Revert vandal", so when I saw your version had a lot more text, I had a rush of that old "Oh no, I reverted to a vandalized version!" fear, and it took me a few moments to figure out what had actually happened. ;-)

Atlant 15:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anti-Christian Prejudice Page

Thank you for noting the POV statements made by Pollinator. I am not sure if you are speaking of the end of the section or the entire section itself, but I have tried my best to make the section a bit less biased and expand it a bit, but he keeps adding biased material to it and as a result it's actually -more- biased than when I first edited it. If you could maybe give me some advice or voice your concerns on the talk page, that would be great. Thank you for pointing out that some of the statements are POV, also.

Mister Mister 15:47, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your kind words. I was speaking specifically of just the part I removed (paraphrase: "...whereas all those other religions and the godless atheists get to do whatever they want whenever they want, unlike we poor set-upon Christians"), but as you can probably tell, I'm rather jaundiced about the whole "Oh woe is us majority Christians" thing. It seems that when I look dispassionately at American society, the dominant religion (that would be them) seems to run pretty much roughshod over everybody else these days and is certainly waxing, not waning, in power.

So I try not to edit that article much, but that last bit of that most-recent edit just went way over my limit. ;-)

Atlant 20:04, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Such a relief!

Atlant, it's a relief to see there are some sane people in the United States. All we usually see in this country, day after day, are endless examples of the kind of brain-dead cavemen who graffitti your page or applaud that microbe currently sitting in the White House. It's truly heartening to see that there are some sensible Americans out there! Keep up the good work and all the best :-) Rusty2005 15:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your kind words -- they're always appreciated!

Atlant 17:27, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Electric motor article

Atlant,

I was a little offended when you characterized my linking to "deconstructing a traction motor" on the electric motor article as "link-spam". While I am not about to revert to an earlier version of the site, I’d like to state for the record that I felt you were unfair. While, granted, I was linking to a commercial website, and I did have a commercial interest in people visiting that website, it was indisputably pertinent, well-produced content that a person researching electric motors would find useful, Regards, Peter Geoghegan [email protected]

Be offended no more, and please accept my apologies! I missed! I meant to zorch the adjacent line ("Stepper Motor Tutorial", a spam link that many folks have reverted many times) and inadvertantly got yours instead.

I liked your disassembly tutorial when I first saw it on the traction motor article.

Thank you for calling this to my attention and again, please accept my apology; I've now corrected my error!

Atlant 17:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Locking LocalTalk

Nice edit on LocalTalk. But are you sure the Apple ones were locking? All the Apple connectors I saw used a miniDIN. While they didn't exactly jump out of sockets, they didn't "lock" either. Maybe it would be better to say the PhoneNET ones offered more resistence? --Steven Fisher 01:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But are you sure the Apple ones were locking?

Pretty sure. The Mini-DIN-3 connector wasn't exactly standard. IIRC, it had a little latching tab that was automatically depressed when you pulled back on the body of the connector. I still have Apple LocalTalk boxes and cables, Farallon PhoneNet boxes, and some Belkin PhoneNet knock-offs; if I can remember, I'll shoot some pictures and add them to the article.

Atlant 12:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty sure is good enough for me! --Steven Fisher 21:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Howard Dean

I noticed your revision of my "messages and themes" section on Howard Dean and I didn't want to just revert your change without conversation. I wasn't implying that all of Dean's supporters are far-left, just that it was those supporters who were more radical (combined with his tenor) that led to centrists considering Dean to be a radical himself. I agree that my original phrasing made that unnecessarily vague, but your change removes the point I was trying to make (one which I think summarizes Dean's plight well). Can you think of phrasing that restores the point without the ambiguity of my language?

Wellspring 00:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps something like "the more left-leaning of Dr. Dean's supporters"?

Atlant 00:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK I'll start with that...

Wellspring 13:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your new edit to the article looks fine to me -- thanks for taking the time!

Atlant 14:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please check out VAXcluster, now rewritten

Hi. I've just rewritten the VAXcluster article. You seem to know a lot about OpenVMS and VAXclusters; if you have time, could you please check out my work and boldly improve it? Thanks. —Chris Chittleborough 17:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Thanks for the work you did and pointing this out!

Atlant 19:07, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And done well, too. Good stuff. Thank you. Chris Chittleborough 23:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the time I realised I could use Special:Whatlinkshere/VAXcluster to eliminate redirects, you'd already done them all! Great stuff. I'm very happy with VMScluster and associated redirects now. Thank you.

(FYI, I'm also working on distributed lock manager and a WP:MOVE of Micro-VAX.)

—Chris Chittleborough 08:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're entirely welcome.

Atlant 20:45, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Language reform and metrication

I'd removed the link to Language reform from the Metrication article. You've added it back. I'm not convinced. Please see Talk:Metrication#Language reform. Jimp 07:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And the presence of the link hurts the article how?

(More discussion at talk:Metrication.)

Atlant 12:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good point ... but ... continued over there ... Jimp 17:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cow_tipping&diff=46008685&oldid=45979747 DyslexicEditor 16:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Humo[u]r, in order to be funny, requires a certain subtle set-up. Cow #1 has it. The picture is simple and pastoral (it is, after all, a pasture) and the cow is placidly looking at the camera while impeding doom descends on it from parts unknown. Picture #2 introduces too many confusing elements: too many cows (or cattle) and the user will spend too much time pondering what cow defecation has to do with cow tipping.

Trust me, picture #2 doesn't add to the quiet humor. And there are enough people who come along and try entirely edit-out the gag as it is; we don't need to assist them with a bunch of cow poop (whether real or just inferred).

Atlant 16:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I basically dislike the cow looking at the camera because it makes it look like the cow is expecting tipping to happen. DyslexicEditor 00:26, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Static inverter plant

Is this the same thing as a back-to-back DC link/tie/intertie common between grids? I noticed this article on the request for photos and I was trying to figure out exactly what it is. I'm an EE, but i've only been on the generation side of things, so substations and DC links are a bit foreign to me. I should be able to find one of the ERCOT interties to take a picture of, if it is the same thing. --W0lfie 17:04, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lamps and Lighting

Hello, Atlant, Wondering if you would be interested in clarifying some issues regarding classification of Arc lamps, all the groups in the {{Template:ArtificialLightSources}}, and the strange, but perhaps true article regarding Overdriven fluorescent light. P.S. Thanks for your part in developing the PDP and VAX systems. The graphics system installed at Penn State in the 80s kept me busy for (literally) days and nights on end. — Dogears (talk) 19:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cumberland Head, New York revert

I reverted the link addition because the person who added the links was from the chamber of commerce and was indescriminately adding links to their sites (4 or 5 of them) to every locality inside the county. They also added a whole bunch of WP:POV and WP:NOR that read like advertising text to other articles. --waffle iron 19:45, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks! It sounds like you did the right thing then.

Atlant 18:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Big Woo

No problem and sorry about marking it for speedy deletion. If it's any comfort it took about 2 seconds of checking out your previous contributions to realise that you're not the kind of user to go around creating nonsense orphan pages that redirect to themselves. --Spondoolicks 20:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

you're not the kind of user to go around creating nonsense orphan pages that redirect to themselves.

Well, not normally, but obviously at least occasionally ;-). Again, thanks for making it right!

Atlant 18:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Meatpuppetry

Please don't go on other websites asking people to vote keep on afd's as you did here. It is considered highly inappropriate Sockpuppet#Advertising and soliciting meatpuppets. Thank you.--Jersey Devil 02:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Highly inappropriate" that they should know what Wiki is doing in their regard? Odd. Or maybe others just know that this should be done covertly. Surely you don't think all those "Delete" votes just happened to show up on their own, do you?

Atlant 17:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Bullies get their way

PI article is down, and probably the PFC article will suffer the same fate, maybe the notability guidline must be discussed. Amfortas 03:39, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're not really surprised are you? The question, of course, is what to do going forward. Me, given the fact that Wiki has, essentially, an infinite capacity for articles, I tend to oppose most calls for deletion of articles, whether about about minor websites or anything else, so it certainly doesn't seem to me like an AfD blitz is in order. To me, it would be far better to simply have our ducks in a row the next time someone puts up a lefty article beause the Wiki brownshirts will certainly only be emboldened by this episode.

On the other hand, I think the whole "meatpuppets" thing is a stinking crock of shit. The idea that Wiki should run like some kind of star chamber where the affected people have no right to come and voice their opinions is just wildly bogus to me, as is the idea that people can go around calling other people "meatpuppets" without immediately being considered to be in violation of WP:DBN, WP:CIV, and WP:NPA but that's brownshirts for you: they love to cite the rules at you but they're not so keen on obeying the rules themselves. I'm trying to psych myself up enough to go after that ~~policy~~, err, guideline, but life in the real world is keeping me too busy these days to pay sustained attention to anything in cyberspace.

Thanks for writing!

Atlant 15:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Upper case in German

Regarding your change to pepper, isn't it the case that nouns in German are *always* capitalized? It's a matter of grammar. Mark Nesbitt 13:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, but is the article (or even this small piece of the article) written in German or English? (I'm not yanking your chain; this is a subtle point and I honestly don't know what the WP:MOS suggests or whether it even speaks to this question.) If the word were, say, Cantonese, we'd probably include the original word and the transliteration; maybe pfeiffer is just the transliteration of the German word?

Atlant 14:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for indenting

Thank you for indenting my contribution to the Oryx and Crake discussion. It makes sense. --Jottce 09:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're entirely welcome!

That successively-indented style is just the standard format for discussions on Wiki and I'm just one of a large bunch of folks who pitch in as "WikiJanitors", doing their part to try to keep things neat, clean, and shiny. ;-)

Atlant 12:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

parallel computing

Yeah, parallel computing is usually done with many more than two. At least on a server level. So, the definition and page is a bit weak ... But; as I am quoting from memory, it would be a good idea to hunt for a whitepaper on it and add a reference. Are you up for it?

a few sites that popped in google;

www.llnl.gov/computing/tutorials/parallel_comp/
www.computer.org/parascope/
www.cs.cmu.edu/~scandal/research-groups.html

-- ∞Dbroadwell 16:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But isn't the article Distributed computing rather than Parallel computing? In that approach, we're often not looking for the ultimate in throughput, just looking for an elegant distribution of the computational responsibilites. For example, for my work life, I maintain a system that may contain between two and forty (or so) nodes and I certainly describe that as a "distributed system", even when it's configured in its measly two-node minimal configuration. The system was designed the way it was in order to achieve good real-time responsiveness, not to create high overall throughput.

Atlant 16:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. You are right, I had both in my watchlist, and in my editing haste, I completely forgot which I was commenting on where. Glad i was discussing instead of changing! -- ∞Dbroadwell 16:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! Thanks for writing!

Atlant 17:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]