User talk:AllyUnion

I'm not bothering to keep an archive. If you like to see an archive of the page, please visit the History page.

Last deletion: 04:15, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Archive List:

Congratulations!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 16:58, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Congrats! But leave the hummingbirds alone in future, ok? :-) &#0xfeff; --fvw * 10:25, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)

Congrats, AU, on your deserved adminship! JOHN COLLISON [ L u d r a m an] 12:02, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you all. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:44, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup

Dear AllyUnion

Thanks for your rapid feedback. You noted on Tom Sotis that "This article needs cleanup". Please elaborate with pointers as you see fit.

Keep well

User:Mudthang 19 Dec 12.20 (GMT+2)

Blocked in error???

My IP address is 64.12.117.8. You have blocked me from editing entries due to "vandalism, pov edits," which I believe is in error, since I am very new here and haven't contributed much so far. Any enhancements or new entries I've made haven't been challenged or changed by anyone, so it seems this block is a mistake. Could you please rectify this situation ASAP? Thank you! The FinalWord 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Further discussed at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(assistance)#Incorrect_blocking. You might chime in there when you sort this out. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:36, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Chemical warfare

You've done some work on chemical warfare, so I thought you might be interested to know that I've nominated it to Featured article candidates. I was hoping you would take a look at what we've done, and maybe help me perfect the article into something that we can all be truly proud of. -- Clockwork Soul 02:13, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week

League of Nations is the new Collaboration of the Week. Please join in helping make it a feature article.

Kraftwerk and Nico Demonte action

Hello. Seems like our little Kraftwerk/Demonte enthusiast is back on track. He edited those two articles again, though I'm not sure if the things he put there are necessarily bad or not. For Kraftwerk, it's just a covers external link. Seems harmless to be. Not much of vanity or anything. For Nico Demonte, however, he added a lot of his stuff there, without Wiki formatting or anything, just like we saw already. I thought that, the way it looks like it could even be copyright violation, and well, looks like it really is. That text comes straight from this page, and as you can see in the bottom, the content is indeed copyrighted. Now unless he is Bernard F. Lopez himself, it is a violation.

Based on the date, the poster on discomusic.com copied Wikipedia, not the other way round. --Michael Snow 02:10, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I know this could be just a confused user, but the way he insists with his edits without paying attention to what we say, he's probably just being annoying and vandalizing. I've just been granted sysop powers (five days after you, it seems), so I'm still trying to learn how to deal with certain things. I noticed you protected those pages before, but looks like the standard proceeding regarding repeated vandalism by a single user to a group of articles is to deal with the user, not the pages, since protection of pages is nocive to Wikipedia and should usually be avoided. But that's alright, don't worry.

About the user, I'd do something right now, but I'm not very sure, and since you're aware of what he's being doing, perhaps I could ask your opinion. What do you think?

Thanks for your attention.--Kaonashi 17:35, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See Kaonashi's talk page for my reply. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:13, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I decided to block him for three days, after thinking about what you said. Sounds more appropriate to me. I didn't warn him again, since it looks like he had plenty of warnings. I did however do as you said, and reported at Wikipedia:Vandalism in Progress. Feel free to keep contact with me if you wish to discuss more about this, or even other things.

Carry on.--Kaonashi 04:22, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bug

Hmm... ignore. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:30, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Signature

I think that I have it fixed now. I rarely visit the Village Pump, so I didn't find out right away about the change of software and its effect upon users who put their talk page in their signature. gK ¿? 07:21, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stub sorting policy

Aloha. Thanks for inviting me to the policy page. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get into the site at all today due to some problems with the Wikipedia servers. I'll try again asap. --Viriditas | Talk 10:44, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ship shape grammar

Hi AllyUnion,

I spotted your comments on the Village pump with regards to Wikipedia:WikiProject Grammar. This morning I came across a mildly interesting grammar question at ' Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships#"The" before the ship's name ', which might interest you. -- Solipsist 20:55, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(Pun intended). It seems to me that the proper way to address the problem is simply, as discussed, include 'the' when you do not have the ship's full name, i.e. USN Lexington. For some famous ships, it might not be necessarily included. I recommend to include it for readibility and to make it clear that you are speaking of a noun which is mostly likely an object, rather than a person. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:54, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree, but many on the WikiProject Ships seem to have decided the opposite and are now systematically removing 'the's from articles on ships. One of the worst examples I have found so far is the article on the Mary Rose - in the past couple of months that article has expanded a fair bit, but all references to the Mary Rose have had the 'the' removed. To me, it now reads very poorly. Elsewhere, the Mary Rose nearly always includes the definite article. -- Solipsist 06:27, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I said the key is natural readability. How many people refer "Mary Rose" as a person without the and how many refer "Mary Rose" as a person without the as a ship? -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:05, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I can't answer that question directly. However, I was first alerted to the issue when the Goya (ship) article was changed a couple of days ago. According to User:gdr's figures on the talk page there, the ratio of common usage for 'The Mary Rose' vs. 'Mary Rose' is 12:1. On the other hand I don't know what Google searches he was trying - I would have thought they were quite a difficult searches to construct accurately. -- Solipsist 07:25, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If we take a look at the dictionary (www.dictionary.com) definition for "the":

1. Used before singular or plural nouns and noun phrases that denote particular, specified persons or things: the baby; the dress I wore.
2. Used before a noun, and generally stressed, to emphasize one of a group or type as the most outstanding or prominent: considered Lake Shore Drive to be the neighborhood to live in these days.
3. Used to indicate uniqueness: the Prince of Wales; the moon.
4. Used before nouns that designate natural phenomena or points of the compass: the weather; a wind from the south.
5. Used as the equivalent of a possessive adjective before names of some parts of the body: grab him by the neck; an infection of the hand.
6. Used before a noun specifying a field of endeavor: the law; the film industry; the stage.
7. Used before a proper name, as of a monument or ship: the Alamo; the Titanic.
8. Used before the plural form of a numeral denoting a specific decade of a century or of a life span: rural life in the Thirties.
Used before a singular noun indicating that the noun is generic: The wolf is an endangered species.
1. Used before an adjective extending it to signify a class and giving it the function of a noun: the rich; the dead; the homeless.
2. Used before an absolute adjective: the best we can offer.
Used before a present participle, signifying the action in the abstract: the weaving of rugs.
Used before a noun with the force of per: cherries at $1.50 the box.

-- AllyUnion (talk) 07:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) (Cross posted at the project page.)

I noticed. That more or less corresponds to the last comment there from User:Stan_Shebs. However, it is perhaps too prescriptive the opposite way. It certainly seems acceptable to loose the 'the' when personifying a ship, and in particular when describing a blow by blow account of naval battles. Also with quotes like this, it is a good idea to mention which dictionary you are trusting as there is no single 'the dictionary'. -- Solipsist 08:01, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

VFD/Today

Hey, here's something neat: WP:VFD/Today. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:10, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cute, but not useful for my purposes, as it merely transcludes the actual VfD page, so it isn't the page I'd want to edit. But don't worry, despite the drawbacks I think the new VfD system is a significant improvement. Happy (UTC) new year! --fvw * 03:53, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Same -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:48, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ustub is NOT the same as metastub.

I am very angry that you listed a template for deletion simply because you don't understand the function of the template. I have posted an extensive explanation of the template on its talk page. Look carefully at the two templates and you will see the differences in function. Norman Rogers\^talk 01:47, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fvw's RfA

Hello; could you take a second look at Fvw's RfA? I don't think your wote will affect the outcome, but I like for things to be nicely resolved. —Ben Brockert (42) 04:32, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

VfD mechanics

Yes, /Log is certainly a better plan than shifting in midstream to VfD/debate/Jow Bloe. And probably -- despite my impulse to say "gee, it's a shame we didn't start out doing VfD/debate/..." -- the best solution that could be hoped for without a top-heavy software-design plan.

I still don't have a sense of having gotten the viewpoint of the comments right, but i'm getting closer; as i get more used to the implications of the doubly nested structure (hey, was i the first to suggest that?), i should be able to get to a point where i grasp what the current mistakes are, that get users into the bind of editing VfD on one hand or the day on the other when they want to nominate a page for VfD or add a point to the debate. At the moment, i'm still "planning to win the previous war".

Thanks! --Jerzy (t) 14:49, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

Altitude tent/substubs/multiple articles

Since you seem to know lots about the inner workings of stubs, etc., I noticed today at Category:Substubs that it shows two Altitude tent articles. I thought that Wikipedia:Duplicate articles would explain what to do, but that article should have been titled Wikipedia:Articles to be merged. How does one get rid of the second article with the same name? gK ¿? 07:04, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just mark with the {{merge}} and {{mergewith}} and leave them alone. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:42, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ustub

It could have been a useful idea if it had been implemented when the topic stubs were first created. I think that it could still possibly be a useful way of doing thing in the future if someone would spend the time with a Wiki-bot to "fix" the stub name/category name disconnect (I assume there must have been some reason for that disconnect, but I can't figure out the reason, and I haven't seen any discussions in the archives on why things were done the way they were). I probably wouldn't have laid into the proposal so hard in the TfD discussion if he hadn't YELLED and then SHOUTED at everyone. gK ¿? 03:41, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The history of stub sorting went as follows... ssd created the bio-stub back in 25 Jul 2004. Since then, I added geo-stub, then other people added more stubs, and it just kept growing. So the set precident was multiple stubs. What Norman was suggesting did radically change the entire structure of stub sorting, but his suggestion comes far too late. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:52, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

re:"use full names for stubs, perhaps?" You mean biography-stub instead of bio-stub? Would that be fairly easy to fix with one of the Wikibots? And what about trying to make the stub names match category names? (And even regularizing a few of the non-"standard" stub names like mathbiostub and Ireland-place-stub instead of Ireland-geo-stub?) gK ¿? 08:02, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Importantstub

Do you know any of the history of Template:Importantstub. There apparently was a TfD that it survived, but there is no copy of the discussion in the archives. I recently looked in on Category:Important stub and found that some newbies had placed the template on some rather dubvious choices, such as JanSport (which probably doesn't even deserve a "needs attention" notice). I can't see the template being of any use at all unless there is a WikiProject or Collaboration of the Week that is going to "own" it, but the most likely choice, Wikipedia:CSB Collaboration of the Week, seems to be moribund. This is another stub, like the Template:pub-stub, that probably should be deleted, but like I suggested before, we should probably gather a whole group of them before we start the TfD process. (I finally found the discussion. It was up for only a week, where the vote was 3-3 and then User:Eloquence deleted everything without anything going into the "official" archives. Before: [1]. and after: [2]) gK ¿? 03:41, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No sorry, other than the fact I voted on it... I think. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:34, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

More TfD and other nonsense

Although I've tried, for the most part, to stay away from some of the more contentious areas of the Wikipedia, such as certain articles, and most of the Votes for Deletion areas, this last week I've nominated one article for deletion Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of male sopranos and one template Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:NPOV-patch. I'm even in the middle of composing a submission for the Evidence section of a Request for arbitration (involving others--not me). Am I becoming a Wikipediaholic? gK ¿? 08:02, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Pu'u O'o

Can you explain what's wrong with the quality featured picture suggestion? Sure, the picture isn't 1024x2048 pixels, but I don't think it needs to be. Mgm|^(talk) 10:01, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

It's just not sharp enough. Nor do I find it brilliant or stunning to be a FPC. -- AllyUnion (talk) 21:06, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

America

Actually, I was trying to disam "America", which at last count, was pointed to by over 300 pages. That's all I was trying to do. I was not trying to vandalize anything. I was actually trying to help Wikipedia. --Woohookitty 18:39, 14 Jan 2005 (UT)

1st time reporting

Ally, I really messed up trying to report User:205.215.134.20, today. You should see what I did to the talk page...newbie at work. oops. Sorry to have created more work in effort to stop this person. Trying to get the {{ down right... Best regards, --allie 23:25, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

VfD: Joshua Claybourn

I think you should reconsider your vote on the Joshua Claybourn entry here: [3]. From from being a blog ad, Claybourn is one of the most notable writers in the Christian community. He's been published in nearly every major Christian magazine and is frequently published in newspapers. He also happens to run a popular weblog. You should change your vote to "Keep"

Note, from anonymous unsigned user: 68.20.131.2 -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:29, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

He did?

It definitely doesn't look like RK left to me...he didn't blank his talk page, and I see no such message on his user page. Am I missing something? -Frazzydee|✍ 00:11, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Er... I made a mistake. User:gK left. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:36, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Chernobyl

As an administrator, before jumping to conclusions I'd suggest you to look into the issue first, even if there is no special policy for this. It my last edit I incorporated the text the anon insisted, namely, the mentioning of "common wormwood". Also, protecting the page without reason is hardly among the policies. Mikkalai 20:31, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe the blocking policy requires an attempt to talk to the parties suspected in the edit war first. You cannot go and block pages at first requests of anonymous users. Just imagine how quickly the vandals will get an idea how to disrupt the normal work. There have already been vandal's requests for deletion of normal pages. And unfortunately we had to go thru all normal procedure. Fortunately, for the vfd case the only harm was this vfd notice hanging for a week on a good article. Mikkalai 17:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Charles Darwin & 3RR

I am aware of the 3RR and please note that I kept to it except for once where I miscalculated by 50 minutes (20 Jan). And even in that case, I had kept to 3RR in what I call a day (9:00 AM to 21:00 PM).

Now since the 21, I have made more than three edits a day, but please examine the edits. You'll find that only two a day were reinsertions of the AL/CD b'day factoid. If you ban someone for violating the 3RR, then you do owe it to that person to examine the actual edits. Vincent 00:12, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BTW, if you do choose to remain as mediator, then I'd like to remind you of your responsibilites. You should not take sides, and you should not take for granted that I am wrong. Before taking action, you should read the whole story and review the evidence. For example, do you realize that the factoid was added by someone else four months beforethe war started? Do you realize that there is no similar controversy about having the factoid on the Abraham Lincoln article? I realize that this is a lot of work. If on the other hand you do want to take sides and go with the opposition, then you should unblock the page and let someone else mediate, otherwise, it's willful abuse of admin privileges. Cheers, Vincent 00:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just for information Vincent, I don't think that AllyUnion has stepped in as a mediator in this dispute, nor is taking sides, but just as an admin responding to the request at Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection. -- Solipsist 08:25, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

AllyUnion, Thanks for the message on my Talk page. Vincent 09:29, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just for information Vincent, 3RR is enforced over 24 hours and the word "day" is not mentioned once on Wikipedia:Three_revert_rule. I would recommend you read the policy page to avoid confusion and further blocks. And to avoid further confusion, this is why you were blocked. --Mrfixter 16:01, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your recent comments on the WP:RFPP regarding the protection of a couple of articles. May I ask you to elaborate on your comment, "Besides, if we did let you edit or continue your edit war, one of you, or both of you will likely be blocked for violation of WP:3RR." Do you feel it is appropriate to protect pages as a preemptive strike against possible future violations? Is there a precedent set for such preemptive protective measures, and if so, can you point me to documentation of such precedents? It just seems a little off to me, regardless of how likely future transgressions might seem based on historical record. -Rob