User talk:Mav

User Talk for maveric149

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...

Older messages are in talk archive 1, talk archive 2 and talk archive 3, talk archive 4, talk archive 5, talk archive 6, talk archive 7, talk archive 8

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.

Hi, Mav! Thanks for your welcome on my talk page.

You corrected one of my entries, saying: "Write full sentences, please." While, of course, I understand that an encyclopedia should be all neat and refined, my first impression of wikipedia was - and this is really exciting - that it gives me more freedom because it is both (a) wiki and (b) self-healing.

(This is exciting because until yesterday I was convinced that it is just a law of nature that something that takes many people many years can be destroyed within a minute by one or a few weirdos. Now when I saw you reconvert penis to Iraq I thought: There exists a superman after all ;-) - Back to my question:

I thought that wiki authors and editors are a wide variety of people who miraculously complement each other. I, for one, am not a native speaker, so I sometimes just write incomplete sentences and try to keep the meaning unambiguous. Someone else, who is a good writer, could then pick it up and turn it into a nice article. Is this not more efficient? Please don't pop my bubble!

Sebastian 06:50 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

PS: Will I get e-mail if you reply or will I have to return periodically to this page?

You won't get e-mail, but to know when a page changes you can put it in your "watchlist". Check the "watch this article" box when editing it or click the "watch this page" link on the left of the page. The "My watchlist" link lets you monitor all the pages you are interested in from one location. -- Arvindn 07:08 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

For a non-native speaker your prose above is just fine - better than many native speakers as a matter of fact. We still ask that contributors write in full sentences since writing short articles in incomplete sentences looks like dictionary entries and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. So taking the extra time to write in complete sentences will be greatly appreciated. BTW, don't forget to have fun! --mav

Thanks for the compliment. <blush/> Actually, it is more fun for me to write sentence fragments. :-p

Seriously, though. I think we need to make a decision here: It is different if someone writes a nascent article (which may fall somewhere between a stub and a full fledged article) or if someone intends to write a dictionary entry. I (grudgingly) respect the distinction between wikipedia and wictionary, so my intention is not to smuggle dictionary terms into wikipedia. But I want to provide as much information as I can in as little time as I have.

Another reason why I think we should encourage such nascent articles, however raw they may be, is in scenarios like the following: Sebastian admires 蘇東坡. He sees that he's not included in the List of famous Chinese people. He enters the wiki. Now (assume) Maveric150, who has no reason to trust Sebastian, wonders if he should delete it. Wouldn't it be helpful for Maveric150 if he could see some justification for why Sebastian entered 蘇東坡? It seems to me, a nascent article that just contains "11c famous Chinese poet and politician" is the most organic way to do it and encourage further growth.

How about if Sebastian added something to that effect into the article? Maybe a link to one common page, so that users then could find all nascent articles thru "What links here"?

BTW: Should we move this discussion to some other forum? It's getting so crowded here. :-{

Sebastian 17:33 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia has too many very short articles as it is. I will not, nor will most of the other long timers, encourage more by not being a tad bit rude to people who create them. We are trying to build a useful encyclopedia here - I for one do not find it fun to clean up sloppy work from others when I still have subjects that I want to cover. Please write in complete sentences and follow our style guide - otherwise you are sapping the energy of other people and are therefore not helping the project much, if at all. Especially now that we have over 100,000 articles, we need to concentrate on quality not quantity. You have already proven that you can write in complete sentences and can write well. --mav

Good point! Having reached 100,000 maybe its time to self-consciously start focussing more on quality? I have a few suggestions:

Collecting and monitoring statistics. Is it possible to collect stats like: 1) distribution of number of articles as a function of length of the article 2) Average number of edits per page.
Spell checking feature in the software
Everyone should write in complete sentences and try to check their spelling, grammar and punctuation before saving.
We should try to integrate short stubs into existing articles when it makes sense. For instance, I think operand, arity and unary operator should all be a part of the operator article rather than the stubs that they are. If at some point someone wants to write at length about one of them then they can be branched into a separate article.
To use a cliche, wikipedia the product is becoming as important as wikipedia the process :) Any thoughts on this? -- Arvindn 06:27 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Statistics and Special:Statistics
This has been discussed several times but this would be difficult to do in practice due the fact that we allow both American, British and other valid English spellings.
Of course they should. :) But for ultra green newbies there should be some tolerance for this - otherwise we scare people away. But after say 10 edits our expectations of quality comming form a newbie should increase.
This is a very good idea. It is usually best to start a more or less general article on a topic and then when that article gets long enough, then start to summarize sub-topics and move the more detailed material to daughter articles.
I agree. The usefullness of this resource is increasing all the time and is starting to get some serious attention from academics. Before we were laughed at because all we had was an oddball process that, on the face of it, appeared to be destined to collect the worst of the Internet in terms of contributors and quality. But now we seem to be doing the exact opposite and we have a product that is already a good recourse, so the number and severity of attacks has decreased markably. As a matter of fact, I was shocked at how well the Slashdot crowd received Wikipedia during the last Slashdotting; there were only a relative handful of negative comments and each of those were thoroughly refuted by both Wikipedians and by other Slashdot folk. I was also surprised by the average quality of contributions that have happened as a result of the slashdotting; All but a literal few of the hundreds of new contributions I saw submitted by anons and new users were good to excellent. Before the Slashdotting we expected that up to half of these contributions would be either dross or vandalism (as was the case during the first Slashdotting). It seems that people are taking us serious now. --mav

Dear Mav: Hey! Thanks for anwering my question so fast. I have to admit, I like your style. Youre a good writer, a better writing teacher, and a fast answerer.

The website I had in mind is ProjectVoyeur.com. I dont know how famous it is, thru.

Well thanks for answering, and God bless!!

Sincerely yours, AntonioMartin

Hm. I've never heard of it - but then I'm not into heterosexual porn either. It does get about 64,000 hits on Google with many other websites saying just how great the project is. But that may just be advertising related. I'll probably get yelled at for this, but I say go ahead and try to make a good article on the subject. The worst that would happen is that the article would be moved to meta. IMO another boxer biography or airport article would be better though. Thanks for the compliments BTW. :-) PS. What do you think about the table I added over at Los Angeles International Airport? --mav

As the expert on naming conventions, can you add your feedback on Talk:President of the United States of America? --Eloquence 13:56 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Been there. The "of America" isn't needed. --mav

mav, could you take a look at the years in KROQ pages (e.g. 1995 in KROQ and voice an opinion? Thanks, Koyaanis Qatsi

Been there. They need to go. --mav

---

Hi mav,

I just realized that you were the one who moved NSDAP to Nazi Party. I proposed to move it back on the talk page, and I had several replies, but so far no one objected. Could you pls take a look? Sebastian 07:35 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)~

This is a very bad idea. See the talk page. --mav

Thanks for your kind words about the Manual of Style and Guide to Layout on the DW biographical follies talk page. It makes me feel good to think I have expressed the rules (derived from the practice of many careful contributors) so well that people can follow them without even reading them. Seriously, I feel very complimented. Ortolan88

You're welcome! I just call things as I see them, and your style suggestions are the most natural. --mav

Exhausted, frustrated, stressed (both professionally and personally). I've got a rough cut of a film due in mid-February, but first I have an 11-day trip to L.A. and San Francisco to take to get more interviews & b-roll, and then I have 2 days to edit the rough cut, and after that I will have time for wikipedia. I feel like Sisyphus already, and repeatedly deleting 1998 in KROQ articles and hanging out with boors (not many, mind you, but one or two is but enough) isn't helping. I'll be back in three weeks or so, provided I'm not detained indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" for having a tan and a beard in an airport. I still very much believe in wikipedia. Thanks for your concern. :-) Best, Koyaanis Qatsi 18:15 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that you are only going to be gone for a little while. I'll miss your comapany nonetheless. :-) --mav

Sorry for the mixup on main page mav. But WWIII dones't have a date on it till a page down, and then it's January 25. Jan 26 mentions arrival of US troops in europe in wwII... -- Tarquin 20:36 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

No biggie. --mav

I added my 2 cents to Talk:Kosovo_War as requested. --Uncle Ed

Thank you! --mav

something i want you to look at, not an orginal idea but what do you think about this periodic table: User:Fonzy/sandbox - fonzy

Hi mav, I know you do a lot of "fire fighting" around here. Have you noticed GrandVoivodOfErdely? Have a look at the public opinion article or civil society. I don't know how to even begin to work on these articles.

Also, what's the right thing for me to do if I notice something like this? Is there a page I should make a note on? Or should I shut-up and ignore it? (I've listed a couple of pages on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion when that has seemed appropriate.)

Thanks for any advice to a newbie :) - sannse 20:02 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

Other Admins and old hands seem to be aware. But if a user is annoying you list there user name and why they are annoying on Wikipedia:Annoying users. Of course if what they are doing is vandalism then go to Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. --mav

Thanks mav, I've noted those pages. It seems these things are noticed amazingly fast anyway. - sannse 20:29 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

I think this is how I'm supposed to use the talk function, but not sure (the help page for how to use much of the system is quite useless).

U sent a message to me when i was IP: 172.182.93.235

Anyhow: Why i deleted that line from 22nd Jan: 2 reasons: 1) It was in the wrong place for the chronological listings, i was moving it. 2) The place it was supposed to go (73 if i recall correctly) already had it in. Therefore it went bye-bye... :)

Now a question of my own: What is the consensus as to capital letters for article titles? Big_bang points to Big_Bang, however the Nuclear Utilization Target Selection points to nuclear utilization target selection. Clearly it being an acronym the capitals one should be kept. I think i may create an account here... Artificial intelligence has a small i starting it... Shouldn't it be a Capital one?

Yikes! I'm so sorry for being such a dick about that! You were 100% right and I was 100% wrong. I'm sorry. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) for more info on the capitalization thing. In short, just because something was an acronym doesn't necessarily mean that it should be capitalized - only proper nouns should be capitalized. Big Bang is a tough one though.... --mav

Mav,

You're the only big dog I know here so I'll point this out to you. The golf page needs to get backed up to an earlier version, and I'm not sure of the proper way to do this. Jack

Somebody beat me to it. Check out Wikipedia:How to revert a page for more info. --mav

Year vs year in music thread moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music standards

I've noticed that 198.169.5.96 is right at this moment creating new articles with only one line in them, which seem to be just the title of the article. They started at 11:35 EST with a page called How to edit a page for experts, and are still going. You might want to check this out. -- Pandora

BTW, I don't know how to end this message with the current (UTC) date & time like some people have above. FWIW, it's 12:40 p.m. EST on Jan. 30. Thanks.

It looks like somebody else took care of it. Just type ~ four times to get the date stamp. --mav

Theres only 1 thing taht bugs me about the current periodic table, thats the fact that not all the collums are the same with. -fonzy

we need to update the image for the new layout i also thought i think we shoudl add 119 and 120(to the image) as we defenttly know where they will go :-).

I'm working on a brand new image right now. It is only a mock-up but it is half the height and uses the wide periodic table as the image base. Hopefully I will be able to have something worth uploading by the weekend. --mav

It has been a whole twenty-four hours since anyone has thrown an insult at me. Things could get mighty quiet without DW. I'm gonna miss him (only JOKING!). Thanks for the support. JTD 01:53 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome. :-) Now it is time to get back to business - without distractions this time. --mav

I haven't left yet, actually. I'm finishing up a paper and packing as I spea--er, type. I'm leaving early Sunday morning (too early) after a series of errands tomorrow (too many). I'll be back around Feb. 20. Thanks, though. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi 21:09 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

I wish to apoligize for my exuberant reaction to your reversion of my modifications to Earth. As I would like to add some information on Salim I al Sabah, Kabbar, Abdul Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Saud, Najd, Faisal I, Political Titles of the Ottoman Empire, Warba, Abdulla II al Sabah, the First Kuwaiti Crisis, Abdullah ibn Hussein, Mashian, Failakah, Auhah, al Khalifa, al Jalahima, al Sabah, Abdul Karim Qasim, Jaber III al Ahmad al Sabah, Muhammad I al Sabah, the Second Kuwaiti Crisis, Zaki Arsuzi, Salah al Din Bitar, Ghazi ibn Faisal, Bakr Sidqi, Abdullah II al Sabah, Ahmad al Sabah, Abdul Ilah, and Percy Cox, as well as (obviously) the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of October 1922, the Turkish Petroleum Company, the Basra-Baghdad Highway, the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad, and the Abudllah Khor Waterway, Nuri al Said, Abdulla III al Sabah, Aramco, the Kuwait Oil Company, and the Anglo-Kuwaiti Treaty of 1899; I would like to inquire as to what objections you might have to my doing so? Vera Cruz