User talk:Mav
If you've been frequenting the RecentChanges page, you might already expect that I am a Wikipediholic -- yep, I admit it (score = 82).
Problem now is, sleeping has switched from a full (i.e. normal) to part time occupation.... oh well - you only live once, there's plenty of time to rest later...
I oftentimes give quick, seemingly unkind and terse comments on talk pages and especially in edit summaries. However meanness is not at all the intent, just efficiency. This is a quirk of my rare personality type: INTJ. I do try to moderate what I say and how I say it -- mainly because my terseness sometimes leads to inefficient chit chat to resolve misunderstandings on talk pages.
One year. Congratulations! And you are you still sane? Or is that a silly question? :) Tannin
- Thanks - I'm not sure about my sanity, but I'm certainly a happier and smarter person than I was a year ago. --mav
Mav, I think there is weirdness afoot. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Talk:Main_Page gives about 5 cchanges for today, 1 for the 31st, 2 for the 30th. I wonder if Phase III is having its very own New Year Bug. I haven't access to my email here -- could you contact the list please? -- Tarquin 11:42 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
- Sure thing. --mav
Oh dear. Panic over. I'd clicked on "watch links", I think. I'm an idiot. cancel that email -- Tarquin 11:46 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
- OK - LOL. ;-) --mav
mav, why did you undisambiguate Skid Row? -- Zoe
- Look at the talk page. This is the same as red dwarf(stellar object)/Red Dwarf(scifi sitcom) and quantum leap(physics term)/Quantum Leap(scifi drama). --mav
Thanks for the tip on blanking pages. I wasn't aware you sysops did that routinely. -- Zoe
- Yep. That should save you some time. :) --mav
Hi, Mav, I was wondering about the date of January 1 for Queen Victoria assuming the title Empress of India. My impression was that Parliament passed the Royal Titles Act in 1876 permitting the change in her title, and that the change was made by Royal Proclamation on April 28, 1876. -- Someone else 05:27 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)
- I dunno - I'm just copying the events that are already listed in January 1 and checking facts whenever something doesn't seem right. --mav
- Thanks, I'll check to see if I can track it down. -- Someone else 05:47 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)
Would you please tell me how to address the file Shearin_newspic.JPG in esmrnews.htm to make the picture show up in the newspaper clipping? (It's in the 10th line, counting the blank one, and I'm playing with it at the bottom of the sandbox.) -- isis 23:40 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)
- I wish I could help but I'm as lost as you are. I only know how to hand code HTML forms and tables. Have you tried <img src={URL of image}> within the HTML document?-mav
- OK - I think I know what the problem is. In <IMG SRC="Shearin_newspic.JPG"> the exact URL of the image is not there - just the image name. Where is this image on the Internet? You can also upload it to Wikipedia and point the img tag to it. --mav
I did upload it; it's in the upload log. -- isis 00:13 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
- Change the IMG tag that Mav mentioned to <IMG SRC="http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a7/Shearin_newspic.JPG"> and it should work. --Mrwojo 00:17 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, that did it, thanks very much. I had actually tried almost that, but I was misled by my HTML how-to book into leaving off the "http://" because it was "on the same computer." -- isis 00:30 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
- Not a problem - it was a team effort. --mav
Mav:
In my defense, I’d like to send you an explanation of this phenomenon, of me getting into several edit wars, from Tannin. You’ve probably read it, but I’m not sure. In any sense, he articulated a better explanation than I.
“172, let's not get into a misunderstanding here. I would be the last person to call you a communist. Prior to your arrival, a good many of the history pages were rather shallow things, and showed little understanding of the interrelationship between history (in the traditional "kings and queens of England" sense) and the broad flow of economic change that underpins and (in general) controls the actions of statesmen, generals and inventors. You certainly do not fall into that trap! Your contributions have made significant inroads into the task of describing history as an interacting whole. Several others here have objected to what they see as a "communist bias" in your writing. In large part, these objections stem from two things:
1. Many people here have spent a lifetime steeped in a rather one-sided view of history - I'm talking about the sort of history that describes the Battle of the Bulge or Second Alamain in loving detail, but relegates Stalingrad to a footnote and doesn't even bother to mention Kursk; the sort of history that thinks Jethro Tull invented the seed drill and therefore we had an Industrial Revolution - and on reading the sort of thing that you write, they (very naturally) tend to say oh, this isn't what I'm used to seeing, therefore it must be wrong.
2. You tend to write large slabs of text which is perfectly comprehensible if one concentrates but far from easy reading, particularly as it is liberally laced with the jargon of political economy. Many people see key words or phrases like "bourgeoise", "hegemony", or "accumulation of surplus" and (a) don't really understand them, and (b) assume that because the two or three Marxist or Leninist tracts they happen to have glanced at are filled with these same words, that the present work is more of the same. "
---
Often, these edit-wars begin when a handful of people who’ve begun to question my motives because of these understandings raise some questions. Zoe, in particular, is even trying to get me banned because she suspects me of trying to inject a Marxist point of view in all these articles.
From her line of questioning, I get the impression that she is utterly unqualified to comment of neutrality of some of my contributions. For instance, she wanted to rename an article on New Imperialism, the era of imperialism between 1871 and 1914, “imperialism in the nineteenth century”.
She has also regularly accused me of being a Stalinist, and I think that these comments are causing people to jump on the bandwagon that is my lynch-mob. Her accusations and those of others are beginning to crop up in the vandalism page. So what began as a misconception got publicized on several pages, resulting in my pariah reputation. Of course a disproportionate number of people are willing to question someone’s contributions when he has such a undeserved reputation.
Thus, I make no apologies.
All right. You've irritated me. And that takes work. I can't stand you, and I've only known of you for three hours. Given what I've seen of your "personality", I don't think that you're Communist. I think you're a fascist-minded, overweening tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood, but you're certainly not a Communist. Despite what you think, my opinion has nothing to do with what Zoe thinks/says. It has a lot more to do with the fact that you come across on these boards as a complete stiff. In fact, you might already be dead, and not know it. Could you check your pulse for us? If you want people to like/tolerate you, learn to be reasonable. Or give me your IP address so I can take your computer off the face of the Earth. (Sort of like the technology Darwin Awards.)
In conclusion, please blast yourself into outer space.
Waooooooh Annie !
- Takes a bow* Thank you, thank you. Are the Russians still accepting non-astronaut passengers? I think we could raise the money... Annie
- I think the going rate is 17 million US. As each day passes that figure seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper. --mav
- Hmmmm. How much would that be from every user (excluding 172) on Wikipedia? Do you think we could get a discount for allowing them to strap him to the OUTSIDE of the rocket? Annie
- OK - that's enough. We are speaking in public here. :) --mav
Thou hast a point, mav. We retreat into silence and Pokemon now.
Mav: No need to be that terse. If anyone else made such contributions, he’d be praised, not mocked.
- I'm the first to admit that I'm terse while irritated. Also a good part of what we do here is work together. No user, no matter how good their contributions are, has the right to constantly cause trouble by being uncooperative. If you are not working with us, then you are working against us. --mav
- Taking negotiating lessions from our illustrious President, are we? ;) --Brion 05:46 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
- You caught me. :) --mav
---
mav i would appreciate your opinion on my version of New Imperialism. also, how can i communicate to people? why isn't their a chatroom and why will nobody even consider my idea? How am I supposed to go over a text with somebody if I can't communicate with them, peer-to-peer, if you will.
Also, I am being attacked for referring to my version of New Imperialism, as if I am claiming ownership or some nonsense, quite frankly, there are two versions of New Imperialism, one made by 172, and one which I edited and he keeps reverting. I don't know how else to refer to it and I don't understand how I am supposed to communicate with anybody.
Also, I am being told not to make so many minor edits, how am I supposed to know what is minor or major by anothers perceptions, it asks me to decide if an edit is minor or not, and I usually feel that, yes, it is. This is concerning because people are accusing me of some kind of underhadned attempt to "hide" my work on the Military History of the Philippines, although, nobody is actually saying what it is Im hiding, I guess, cuz I hid it so well...
Anyways, I donno, communication here needs to be upgraded. Also, is it just me or is 172s version of New Imperialism, to say the least, incredibly dry. Zoe used to be arguing with him there but now she wont even talk about the article because 172 wrote it. Meanwhile, Ortolan refuses to discuss my version simply because I made too many changes to follow Is there some kind of only 5 edits per day policy?
At the same time, they refuse to go over the article line by line, how are we even supposed to discuss an article if nobody wants to discuss it?
very much having a headache,
- See Wikipedia:IRC channel or simply use the talk page of the article. Anything which is more than a few added or changed sentences is non-minor. I've seen you add entire paragraphs to relatively short articles and mark that as minor - well it ain't. This is a tactic that might be employed by somebody trying to hide inserted POV but I haven't seen you do that. It is still very annoying. For example, inserting your above message was marked as minor and I missed it on Recent Changes. IMO the shorter version of the article in question is inferior to the longer version. But as you state the longer version isn't perfect and does need NPOVing and condensing. --mav
note where he calls Wilhelm II pigheaded...is that not POV? I don't see how I can address this except by editing, and yet I don't see how I can get anybody to except my edits when I can't communicate with them.
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=New_Imperialism&oldid=553404
- But deleting nearly all the text isn't the answer either. See Wikipedia:Most common Wikipedia faux pas #4. --mav
172 keeps talking about how I deleted all his text the only stuff I deleted was POV stuff like "The American revolution made it clear that mercantilism had failed" and "Wilhelm was pigheaded" and "The victorian age was [enter flowry descriptive word here]" Along with some obscure talk about formal empire and returns to the taxpayer-which after reading several times I felt made no sense at all-if anybody would bring it up I would like to discuss it-but so far nobody has mentioned anything at all.
I didn't delete stuff, I did move some stuff to theories of imperialism. What is wrong with the version I have produced? Vera Cruz
Scroll down and see all the headers...are those not useful? Can u easily find the Panic of 1893 on 172s version? How about the Franco-Prussian alliance or the Zollverein? Vera Cruz
- The statement "The American revolution made it clear that mercantilism had failed" is a valid POV that should be in the article. But it does need to be qualified stating "Some historians contend that the success of the American revolution was an indication that mercantilism failed." (in fact "some" may need to replaced by "many" but I'll have to re-read the mercantilism article to confirm this). "Wilhelm was pigheaded" of course should be replaced by a description of his actions. --mav
Vera Cruz doesn’t realize that the older version has been edited substantially by other users and myself.
This is the sentence regarding mercantilism:
- The collapse of the British and Spanish empires in the New World following the American Revolution and revolutions in the viceroyalties of New Spain (to become Mexico) and Peru (to become Gran Colombia) signaled the failure of mercantilism and contributed to the appeal of the classical liberalism of Adam Smith”
Note the phrase “signaled”.
The word “pigheaded” has been removed as well. I understand the bad connotation, but the word merely means “stubborn”. His headstrongness, after all, was infamous. Nevertheless, it’s gone.
Even if these changes weren’t made, it would still be little recourse to arbitrarily remove the vast majority of the article. That’s why I keep restoring the more descriptive version edited by Ortolan88 and Slrubenstein and proofread by yourself.
Thanks, by the way, for looking at the article.
- Those other sentences are much better (a copyedit for readability is in order though). --mav
The article can be salvaged without breaking it up. I’ll add some more headings for quick reference. Maybe a brief outline in the beginning would be a good idea too. Britannica does that.
- Let's keep talk about specific articles on those article's talk page shall we? My talk page gets too big too fast as it is. --mav
Mav:
I don’t see why you feel the need to summarize the article on New Imperialism. It’s only superficially long. It’s now pretty succinct and well-edited. Any more editing and shortening would a string of historical reductionisms. I noticed some in vera Cruz's shorter version.
Minor editing will do. Select deletions will do. I’ll edit and shorten it little by little. I also recommend Tannin as a good contributor.
- I've already stated why it must be shortened. Please stop acting obtuse. --mav
look, ive been editing on the thing, not deleting stuff. if something is missing its because i transferred some stuff to theories of imperialism because people were complaining about it being confusing. im just working on the page, not saying its not done, not asking you not to edit it, simply asking what it is that everyone finds so "poisonous" about it Vera Cruz
- Please take the longer version one section at at time. Summarize it and place the detailed stuff in anther article that is linked from that page. --mav