User talk:Bill Thayer/archive1

Welcome

(The standard welcome; signed by User:Meelar).

A more personalized kind welcome appeared very quickly after, thanks:

Sir, it’s an honor that you are contributing to wiki as I’ve found your great website far above and beyond enlightening on many occasions. It’s really a priceless research-tool. GeneralPatton 16:54, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

LacusCurtius

BTW, there are dozens of copies of WP content, with varying degrees of GFDL compliance - we have a list of them somewhere in the "Wikipedia:" pages, but I can't find it right now. Anyway, we just maintain the list of them, no need to note in articles that they've been mirrored all over the place (it's a feature, not a bug :-) ). Stan 02:32, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Library editing

Dear Bill, Please note that i have now spent many, many hours compiling a selection of books in Sir T.B.'s library using the facsimile of 1986 E.J.Brill publications edited by J.S Finch. If there are any incorrect titles it is from those who listed the library contents in 1711 for auction. Also i really am not sure whether the usage of speech-marks to highlight titles makes the page actually look any better just simply more cluttered. Yes by all means be bold in editing pages but also please be aware that some pages have taken other wikis many many hours to compile! Also it is with some irratation i have noted that you have now made titles of Latin books indistinguishable from those written in English through your editing i shall revert this . Please consult me before any more 'helpful' editing . Regards Norwikian 10:32, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

On the Library, no question you've done a stellar job digging up the actual information.

First item, I caught it before I read you, and have now reverted it, sorry: you're absolutely right, I didn't understand Wiki style conventions, and should not have changed double-apostrophes to single-quotes!

I am, as you realize, no Browne scholar (although I've at least read him all, some of him repeatedly, probably my favorite English book is Garden of Cyrus/Hydriotaphia). I come at this page as someone with an interest parallel to Browne's, in many of the same texts: I've input online -- hand-typed, not scanned -- 6 of the ancient texts mentioned; and others not mentioned but which he must certainly have had, like Plutarch, Aelian, Cato, Frontinus, Vitruvius.

As for the actual content of this page, I didn't realize the typos and manifest errors were copied verbatim, but the reproduction of uncorrected errors is germane not to "Library of Sir TB" but to "1711 Catalogue etc." If the article were the latter, we would have to revert them right away and I'd feel very stupid for having edited them. But our concern here is with elucidating what Sir Thomas read, so there can be no harm in correcting accidental nonsense words due either to reading errors -- e.g., "Differtatio" (clearly long esses); or to uncorrected scanning -- e.g., "Sidereus Nuricius"; or to typos of unknown origin -- e.g., "Umbrare". Disabbreviating some of these titles would probably be useful for the audience this page is likely to reach, but there, I've been very cautious

There are still a pile of minor errors, and I've snagged a few more that I could clear up without reference to the original. But for example I've passed on the flexible spellings of 16c-17c French which might allow certain items, then maybe not; for example, most French words that would have an accent today, I've left unaccented, because accents were newish then and the actual books very likely had unaccented titles, although again maybe not. Despite being half-French, French-educated, and with many years experience as a French translator, I still haven't managed to figure out "naises traits" -- the closest reasonable emendation I can come up with "autres traits" but have failed to convince myself. Other cruxlets, in the matter of which I've been very cautious and changed nothing of course, include:

• "de Cive", which is not Latin nor any reasonable abbreviation;
• "Serpent and Draconum historica", where "Serpent(ium) & Draconum historia" looks probable;

Much more probable, but I've also been cautious and done nothing:

• "Questions in Genesis"; the work was published in 1623 alright, as "Quaestiones in Genesim"; was there an English translation that fast with our title? It seems very unlikely to me. (In general, if we want to get to the actual titles of the books -- fair nuff -- quite a few others ought to be changed: Plautus' Comedies, Martin Luther, etc. Right now at any rate we have an inconsistent list, opting partly for the original titles, partly for modern English translations.)

I removed the link to Philology by the way because in the work by Martianus Capella the allegory of Philologia has very little to do with what we now call philology.

Thanks

Many thanks Bill for reverting your edit. It looks as if you have the knowledge to contribute a great deal here. You have certaintly made some good points about titles, on the whole i am simply checking whether the title existed or not before placing it. I shall consider carefully your other points. Yes translations from Latin to English to Latin were extremely quick in 17th c. As Sir T.b. wittily remarks in the intro to Pseudodoxia And indeed , if elegancy still proceedeth, and English Pens maintain that stream we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall within few years be fain to learn Latine to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either . I shall come to your other points about the page when less tired but in the meantime thanks, sorry if i was a bit abrupt, people round here can be sometimes, but also jolly helpful too!! Norwikian 21:49, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In Vergilii carmina commentarii

Hi, Bill, I'm sure you know a lot more Latin than I do, so I'm delighted that you took a look at my Lucus a non lucendo, thanks very much. The comentarii spelling is from the German edition that I refer to. I wonder a little about them getting it wrong in the title. Could it be an acceptable alternative spelling? What do you think, mm or m? (I definitely want to avoid the pedantry of putting m and [sic].) --Bishonen 16:41, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Got a kick out of your Bishonen/Lucus a non lucendo connection...! The correct Latin is 2 M's, no doubt about it (as in Koptev's page, the line above the quoted title). But if the title page of the actual edition has one M, then, for the purposes of referring to that edition, my edit would have to be reverted. Alex Koptev is approachable, speaks English and answers his e-mail, write him! I do suspect a typo of his, though, rather than a curious spelling of the print edition. Bill 22:50, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• • Hey, thanks for noticing about Bishonen. Frankly that was what I created the Lucus a non lucendo entry for, to have it to refer to about my username. :-) Mmmm... about the number of m's, I guess writing e-mails about it may be a little excessive. I'll just leave your correct version. Thanks for your help! It's good to know there are real Latinists on the site (I'm not even a fake Latinist myself). --Bishonen 23:15, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Italian provinces

I put a list of what I think are the recommended names and synonyms at Talk:Provinces of Italy, but Italian spellings, where different, are handy redirs to have too. I do think we should favor "Province of Florence" rather than "Province of Firenze" for article titles, for consistency with the Anglicized city names and so as not to mix English and Italian within a single term. As for the statistical data, I've been pretty minimal so far, because what I would really like to do is to steal the nice tables from Italian and German WPs - a little automated translation and voila, the most detailed info available in English anywhere. :-) Stan 03:05, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Lacus Curtius

Your website has often come in handy for my amateurish edits here. You're a natural Wikipedian, and it's good to notice your name among "Recent Edits." Wetman 16:20, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Your Vfd listings

Wow, that's a lot of articles you've found! Thanks for helping clean up Wikipedia. It's an often thankless task, but we all appreciate it. --Slowking Man 21:04, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, agreed. Please take my comments there as intended... they're intended to help Wikipedia run more smoothly. And I'm not always right! You have got the hang of VfD very quickly, and your efforts are much appreciated. Andrewa 12:34, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: Vfd editing

Hi, Bill. I'm glad to hear that I didn't insult you at all, I guess you're just a good-natured person at heart. The Internet, though marvelous, is somewhat lacking in the respect that it cannot convey aspects of communication that we often take for granted: mood, tone, or body language, etc. I've found that because of this lack of entire layers of "normal" communication, people sometimes fill in the blanks in ways that are unintended. When I re-read what I had written, I cringed at how some people may have read it. Again, I'm glad you didn't.

Best regards, ClockworkTroll 18:24, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Noj as redirect to Oxenfez -- why?

I speedy-deleted Noj, whose content was simply ""See Italic text'Oxenfez'". You re-created it as a redirect to Oxenfez. Although that would seem to have been the original author's intent, "Noj" isn't a word and only appears by accident in the Oxenfez article. Why did you re-create the deleted page? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:54, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Because the Oxenfez article specifically says that Noj is another name for Oxenfez, and the original author's intent in his Noj page was to redirect to Oxenfez (in an unWeblike way, the way one does in a print work). It's exactly similar to redirecting Scriptores Historiae Augustae to Historia Augusta. So if Oxenfez is a valid name — which I still doubt, and see the Lincolnshire residents who weighed in on it — maybe Noj is too. Well-intended and logical on my part, at any rate. Best, Bill 10:51, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're right. I was trigger-happy. I didn't read the Oxenfez article carefully enough. Sorry. I shouldn't have deleted your redirect. If Oxenfez does survive I'll try to remember to put it back. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 14:28, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Biopoiesis

I recently created a candidate for the encyclopedia named biopoiesis. Before having time to update the page, you nominated the entry as a candidate for Wiktionary. Is there any reason you did this? It is much more than a dictionary definition and represents a good biological theory for the origin of life. For a brief encyclopedic article on the subject, go here. And for information on the differences between the old theory of abiogenesis, go here. The entry for biopoiesis effectively solves the ambiguity of abiogenesis, and I'm confused as to why anyone would oppose the need for clarity and accuracy. --Viriditas 01:34, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well now you've fleshed it out, couldn't agree more. What I've seen people do to forestall the zealous to mark it "(a start)" in the Edit summary; or else of course wait to post the entry until they have a bit more. Best, Bill 10:54, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe I should try that? Thanks for the helpful tip. --Viriditas 06:15, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Julia Venissa

Can you help with this entry? Wetman 09:14, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not much, as you can see. Never heard of her, but that just means she's not attested in classical sources, which you knew. I know next to nothing about post-Roman and Roman-period tribal Britain. The article, a first contribution, looks like the beginning of an Arthurian genealogy and has an air of POV about it, which, along with simplicity, seemed to me a good enough reason to retitle it. Sorry to disappoint.... Bill 09:38, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Categorization

I see you're making "sharper cats" for a lot of things, however it's not so helpful to create those tiny little one-member categories - it reduces the usefulness of categories for grouping similar articles. Also, some people have a habit of emptying and deleting very small categories, so you're risking having somebody else come along and undo your work. Creating a category because you think it might become large eventually doesn't work, because it might be years before it picks up sufficient articles. My general rule is to leave articles in bigger categories until there are at least 10 or so articles to be the "seed" for the new category. Stan 15:26, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Was wondering who'd be the first to comment.... Depthwise vs. breadthwise, the old question! Seriously, I find the large categories drowning in loosely categorized articles (Category:Italian people is my focus), and very, very many people and places either uncategorized or populating "X-ian people"/"Country X". I do agree to some extent that some few categories I made are not the most useful in the sense of having only 1 or 2 members right this minute; the source of it is that I create or navigate to a Category, say Category:Italian painters, and find Category:Painters has either no subcats or lots and lots of national subcats — because they're easy to mark — and few on such things as by style/period, by medium, etc. What I feel I'm doing is clearing out the brush. The eventual aim for Categories, I expect the computer whizzes behind the architecture here will wind up doing it, is smooth Java crumbs, where, from a main Category, instead of navigating thru layers of cat pages, you'll run your cursor over the category, a silent menu will drop down, with submenus, etc., and in one operation you'll navigate to 20c Provençal painters or whatever.

The competition is Lists, which I view as worthless.... Why list items with no articles? So I'm starting from the bottom and tying it all together; mindful of the nonsense of having single-article or single-subcat categories, I'm scouring for the nearest item that comes to mind that will make the 2d or 3d (and if on my way I see that a page of a dozen items can be reduced to 1 or 2, so much the better, even if it means I get distracted); then back to Italy. — Bill 15:55, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that there's no way to know when this future software will be written; none of the developers I know of is working on anything like that. I'm sure you've seen half-constructed and abandoned infrastructure all over WP; small categories, or categories constructed for orthogonality, are kind of like that, where you're hoping that something will happen, but without any assurance. It's so unpredictable as to what will get attention from one day to the next, I tend to prefer doing things in a way that looks right today. Now lists are a bit of an anticipation; for instance list of battleships of the United States Navy listed all such ships when it was created, but there were many red links, and we painstakingly filled them all in. Another thing that I've done with lists is to find orphans; list of garden plants found a bunch of forgotten articles for instance, plus it's also 100% or nearly so, so you can see how much is done and how much remains. Similarly, list of ancient Romans is everything in OCD; when they're all filled in, we'll be ready to challenge P-W next... 1/2 :-) Stan 13:29, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You got my chuckle with P‑W.... (although if Wikipedia has gone this far in barely 4 years, can P‑W really be that far off??) But let me be sensible about Cats then: I'll continue to create tighter cats for European and North American places and people, and even then not all of them (Places in particular are more problematic, since they don't stay put, so to speak! especially in Mitteleuropa; and then yer right, "Ethnologists of Liechtenstein" prolly not useful). But there can be no doubt after all that clearing the brush from "England", "English people", etc. will then allow useful subcats like Category:English people by counties, Category:English painters of the 17th century, and all those harder-to-categorize things like Tribes and Ethnology and Dialects, Currency. I guess I'll drop the Brazilian places, I'm just getting swallowed up in Pumpie‑ism anyhoo.... — Best, Bill 13:45, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, you explained me about categories for cities and counties, specifically for Hungary. I haven't really thought much about optimal categories, your suggestion about the counties of the Kingdom of Hungary is good. I think a category Category:Cities in Hungary over 100.000 would be pretty small (there's only 9). The present category Cities in Hungary contains all municipalities I think (Hungary isn't so big), which leaves Category:Towns in Hungary obsolete. I suggest we leave it like that, and remove Towns in Hungary. Markussep 10:29, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good morning (or I think, afternoon?) — I admit immediately that I am no expert on Hungary, but it looks like we have 3 different things going on here: (1) Cities; (2) the comitatus and/or municipalities (which look to me like a form of commune??); (3) small towns and villages. From looking at your work, I get the impression that my "towns" corresponds, or ought to correspond, to places that are not municipalities, i.e., that are within them; of which there must surely be hundreds and hundreds. Granted right now they're not onsite in such vast numbers, but they will inevitably creep on: Wikipedia is not 4 years old yet! || Also, a second concern: in other countries, the distinction is being made between the land units (provinces, counties) and the towns by the same name. It would be nice if, to the extent reasonable, the geographical units tree could be homogenized.

To sum up, I agree with you that Cities could be narrowed down to the 9 biggies; I think there should be a Category:Comitatus of Hungary, which should probably include districts no longer in modern Hungary; that Sopron, yes, should be removed to Category:Comitatus of Hungary; and that villages and towns not seats of a comitatus should be filed under Category:Towns of Sopron, a subcat of Comitatus.   ??? — Bill 12:05, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good afternoon. As you may have noticed I created a category Category:Counties in the Kingdom of Hungary, which contains all the counties/comitatuses of the former Kingdom of Hungary. A comitatus is a county, which is like a province, département or canton. Sopron is Sopron-city, Sopron (county) is the former county. The 216 cities (or communes) that are listed at List of cities in Hungary may be actual cities or villages, but since there's only 43 with an entry right now, I think that's a problem for the future. I suggest removing Towns... altogether. The difference between city and village is usually arbitrary and historical, for instance in the Netherlands the smallest city has about 400 inhabitants, and the largest village over 100.000. Would you suggest making categories for the cities/villages in every separate county? Maybe nice in the future. Markussep 10:34, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're right. After looking carefully, I do agree. And as you point out, even when the time comes — as you say, not yet — there is one problem: the difference between a "City"/"Village" historically/officially, and a neutral Wiki-geographical categorization by just plain size. In Italy, which is what I know about and work on mostly, fortunately they don't use the words "city", "village", etc., but "municipality" (comune), so it doesn't matter what we call a town/city, there is no confusion. Many comuni though are 400 people, some non-comuni are 20,000.... Metadata is not easy stuff. — Bill 13:40, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just to say hi

Dear Bill, nice to see your name pop up here. You are just the sort of person this project needs. You may recall I have sent you a few emails some months ago about your site. I wonder if anyone will run with that fascinating realization about the consistent error in the latitudes of the Roman cities. There is a good paper in that. Anyway, welcome. --CloudSurfer 19:19, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Polish heraldry

Thanks for the thumbsup, the project is really worth the effort. As you probably know it's going to be huge since the Polish (and Lithuanian for that matter) heraldic system is fairly complicated and at times up to 12% of people had their CoA here in Poland, so there's really lot of separate coats of arms (as opposed to Western Europe that bases its heraldic system mostly on joining several coats of arms into one or variations of the same CoA). Anyway, I'm starting right away. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 04:32, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections at Łabędź Coat of Arms. As you might know the Polish heraldic traditions are quite different and I'm still learning the Western blazon system. In Poland and Lithuania usually the name of the coat of arms (or the battle cry) is usually enough since the emblems were rarely divided and by "Łabędź" everyone understood that the bird is Argent, the beckground Gules and so on. Thanks again. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 20:00, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

Łabędź is interesting heraldically as a pure example of a class of arms that in England at least are called "punning arms", since Łabędź means "swan" , doesn't it? (I speak no Polish, but some Russian, and the word in Russian is лебедь.) Anyway, there is no article punning arms, but I'm collecting examples.... By the way in French heraldry, the more famous arms are occasionally referred to in other blazons by a similar shorthand: one speaks for example of "semé de France" to mean a blue field with a fleurs-de-lys pattern, etc. — Bill 21:50, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Frye

Hey, thanks for the bio-stub on Walter Frye! It's funny when two people grab a dumb stublet and try to expand it simultaneously. I incorporated yours into mine. Happy editing! Antandrus 20:19, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Kind of you; you obviously know a good deal more about him, but I figured the dumb comment would consign the page to Speedy-meat unless I did something! — Best, B.

Bonnie Bernstein

Dear Bill: Hi! Thank you for reading the article I originated about Bonnie Bernstein. Although I dont neccesarily think that "famed" is a point of view word, your help is greatly appreciated. I probably wrote some points of views without meaning to or realizing they were point of views.

Since you dedicated yourself to that, I would also like you to help me in paying attention to the Lauren Jackson page. I keep making it NPOV, but the original writer keeps reverting it, to the version where he says that she is Australia's best basketball player of all time, blah blah blah. I love the WNBA and have seen the girl play, she's got mad skills, but to say shes the best Australian player of all time? Thats stretching it..lol.

Thanks for everything, and God bless you!

Sincerely yours, "Antonio Love is a wonderful wonderful thing! Martin"

Shannon Gilligan

You listed this as a Speedy Delete. I would have just taken out the exurberance and left it as a sub-stub. I verified and expanded it instead; you might like to take a look. Rmhermen 15:27, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

• Oh thass much better; the perils of inserting a minimal stub, ya got a bunch of guys doing New Pages patrol only too eager to toss stuff.... Best, Bill 15:30, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Category:Toponymy

Other than category:Roman toponymy do you think this category will ever end up with more articles (or subcategories)? I'm trying to resolve category:orphaned categories by connecting them to "parent" categories. This one strikes me as a "why bother" (currently it has no parent and only the one member) but didn't want to summarily remove the reference (effectively deleting the category) without checking. What do you think? -- Rick Block 01:27, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)