User talk:Leonard G.

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Pulse Jet

Hi Leonard - I got your email about the pulse jet page. No problem - that kind of thing happens quite a bit. I've only really "parked" your text on the existing page (since it contained detail not already there) but haven't made an effort to go there and actually integrate the two pieces of writing - so you might still want to make your way over there to polish it up a bit.

I see you've described 50s and 60s US Naval aviation as an interest - you might also like to take a look at the WikiProject Aircraft page to see what some of us other wingnuts are doing. You can find a list of aircraft that already have Wikipedia coverage at list of aircraft and some suggestions of types we need coverage of (in my opinion anyway!) here.

Welcome to the 'pedia! --Rlandmann 21:40, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Stubs

Hi, could you please not create articles that are just a {{msg:stub}}? These are grounds for automatic deletion. Thanks. -- Graham :) | Talk 01:54, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

All my stubs are now "well filled", often other users immediately remove the stub status - thanks Leonard G. 02:10, 16 May 2004 (UTC))[reply]

Assasin bees

Hi Leonard. Can you cite references for your paragraph on "assassin" bees at Africanized bee? When they were first released in the Americas, this was the story that went around, but, as I recall, it was later determined to be more myth than fact. Please support this, if it is really true. Pollinator 21:36, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I heard it at our local bee club meeting, so it could be just scuttlebutt - I'll check it out. Some of our members have traveled to South Africa and have visited beekeepers - that's how I found out that the A.Sculetta in S.A can be handled just like our bees - it is only some particular Tanzanians that are ultra defensive. I'll remove the note until verified. Can you please provide any contrary information? Thanks, Leonard G. 00:22, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Follow up:

I had a long discussion with our local international bee expert - a retired engineer and beekeeper, he goes to all the big international meetings, has traveled to South Africa and Brazil and is well aquainted with both bee lore and bee facts. I have rewritten the paragraph to couch it as lore, rather than fact, and have substantiated the lore with supporting facts provided by to me by this expert. Leonard G. 03:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up - I think the paragraph is now much more substantial.

Greek numerical prefixes

Go to Greek numerical prefixes. I created it with links to the numerical prefixes you added. Please don't forget to put more links after you create more pages for Greek numerical prefixes. In addition, can you try to make a similar Latin numerical prefixes?? 66.32.251.152 01:06, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Having received my advanced education from a modern university system I am ignorant of BOTH Latin and Greek, as well as many subtlies of English, even though it is my native language. I can only create prefix pages in some specific cases. Can you recruit a genuine scholar for this?

Octothings

Hello Leonard. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If your interest is in definitions and etymology, consider moving your octopus to the Wiktionary companion project. :–)
—Herbee 19:17, 2004 May 23 (UTC)

Nice photo of Imperial roof decorations! --Menchi 04:22, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Replied at User talk:Menchi#Imperial roof decoration. --Menchi 21:49, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good job with the page orchestration. But it'd be much better to use "Move" function (it's one of the tabs at the top) to move pages next time, instead of just cut-and-paste things. It hides the history of the page. Thanks. --Menchi 09:32, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Townships as counties

You wrote: In some other jurisdictions what would be considered a county is known as a township, named for its principle municipality. Just out of curiousity, what jurisdictions are you aware of? I ask because there are counties or county-equivalents (parishes or borough) in all 50 states. Perhaps it's possible that in some places townships perform the same function as counties in other places, even though the county exists along with the township? older≠wiser 20:26, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Traveling through the Adirondacs one encounters numerous townships - these contain a principle town and numerous hamlets. But since these do not contain superior courts, etc. I will refine the reference. Leonard G. 21:56, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Now refined, remove it if you think that is better.

I started to revise it a bit and as I realized that it actually had little relevance to County Seat, I did finally remove it. If anything, it is a point to mention in the County or County (United States) article. Townships are pretty widespread (and sometimes, confusingly called "towns"), so I just couldn't see how they added or clarified anything to the County Seat article.older≠wiser 22:42, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Peterhoff and Peterhof

Great pictures in Peterhof. You might want to place them in the previously written Peterhof article which has just one picture and considerable text! AlainV 09:44, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

All merged. I beefed up its destruction in WW II as this was not collateral damage - it was totally deliberate. (I thought the name was German - thats how it got messed up.) Leonard G. 18:46, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks for the merger, Leonard. Great stuff. (The buildings were still being restored when I was last there - wonderful to see them in their full glory again.) -- Picapica 18:15, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. I've been trying to work on this page for almost a month, since before Wetman created it, but I kept failing to put those two books in the same place as my Wikipediable Internet connection.

"I did change Nazi back to German Army, as I had previously some time ago"

I understand your point, but things are a little different when you have a one-party system. I won't contest your change, though; I was just trying to avoid repetitive use of the word 'German'.

"Also, I added a Meteor Hydrofoil picture, but It could probably be better placed as it is too close to the chapel picture."

Crikey! I went through enough trouble trying to fit the seven existing pictures onto that one page, and hydrofoils aren't terribly relevant anyway. I think I'll take it out. --Smack 23:51, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I was about to put the Hydrofoil pix in the Tourist Info (where it belongs, but conflicted with your edit.

I notice you orphaned the western part of the Grand Cascade at the bottom. Perhaps this should be deleted. I have a nicer detail pix that could go below the initial overview.Leonard G. 00:02, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I orphaned an image? That was entirely unintentional. At any rate, I think I'll keep my nose out of this article for the time being, and let you accomplish whatever design you have for it. --Smack 00:11, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sampan

Nice picture, eh ! :-) -- PFHLai 19:59, 2004 Jul 17 (UTC)

Thanks! I've been looking around for articles to fit my pictures and that was a perfect fit.

Pix positions Tiananmen Square

Does not seem to work well under varying window sizes. (I use Safari). Try some resizing. T.Gate OK. Leonard G. 04:29, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about that. The original ([1]) did not look right in my browser, (I use Internet Explorer in 800x600 resolution) but if it's broken in your browser now, feel free to tinker with it some more. ☞spencer195 04:38, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Shay pictures

Good stuff -- the article really needed a few pictures, it's a lot harder to explain in text than to show. —Morven 17:09, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

(This is about Shay locomotive - Leonard G.)

pl: link

It adds a link in the "In other languages" box to this image's page at Polish Wikipedia pl:Image:GreatWallTower.jpeg. Ausir 00:10, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Image:ConcertGroupPano.jpg

Hi Leonard,

Just wanted to let you know that your picture Image:ConcertGroupPano.jpg was on the front page of the Chinese Wikipedia the last time I checked it on Sept. 10 2004. -spencer195 01:13, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thats grand!. Thanks for the info. Leonard G. 02:01, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Here's the link: http://zh.wikipedia.org. -spencer195 02:12, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Here'a a screenshot of the homepage: http://spencer195.netfirms.com/zhwiki2.png

Link to a saved HTML file: http://spencer195.netfirms.com/zhwiki.htm

ABAG

Your new Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) contained a number of inline links where you'd used "click here" as caption. IMHO, this is not the ideal style for external links. In the article body, footnotes[2] are generally to be preferred, while in the external links section, a descriptive caption of the page and site is most helpful. See also Wikipedia:Describe external links. JFW | T@lk 03:22, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Now fixed Leonard G. 03:34, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bridge

Hi Leonard -- good to see you added some new types of electronic bridges. I don't think this solves the question I posed at Talk:Serial ATA#bridge, though? Fpahl 16:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Floating galleries

I'm moving this from User:Muke so that I have a reliable place to find it and to point to. Just raw chat, but it shows some specialized gallery techniques - especially in the later sections -- Leonard G. 03:31, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Added in recent text concerning Shanghai gallery changes - Leonard G. 17:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Muke: Welcome to WP. Please note that your picture placement on Shanghai results in disappearing pictures (off right of window). The WP standard is for stuff to be viewable on 800 pix wide screens. Thats why most pictures don't exceed 250 to 300 pix wide unless they are wide and not deep and claim most of the width (again about 700 pix max). Its a real pain, I know, so mostly I stick to narrow pictures all on the right, always using the the "thumb" forrmatting rule. If the destination pix is very large I link to an intermediate (600 to 800 pix wide), in turn linking to the large pictures. I also use a larger text size on my browser, about 150pct of normal, so sometimes my formatting does not look good at smaller text sizes. So... could you fix this up with the four horizontally arranged building pictures? To check, narrow your browser window. Hang in and don't get discouraged. Thanks, User:Leonard G. 05:26, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

All right. I wasn't sure exactly how wide it should go for; I was mainly looking to keep it from strangling the text (on my screen before, there would be two or three pictures all stacked left to right, with text trying to crawl down the sides). I was at first going to scatter the images all throughout the article but then decided those four pics probably should belong under the architecture section they illustrate. I rearranged them now. They should still display in a row (on wide screens) but also wrap for narrower screens. —Muke Tever 14:10, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nice job, it now works much better. I'll prepare another "mixed historical references" that is deeper and will mix better with the others. Generally, as I put the pictures on the right, I tend to make them as short as practical so they will not gobble up vertical page space, since that will cause the pictures to run off of the bottom of the article if a small text font size is used. I was wondering how to set it up the way you did and so it is nice to have an example to work from. BTW, don't be afraid of working with text in an area that you have knowlege or interest in. Even if you want to present an underrepresented side of an opinion (held by you or not), that can be done in an NPOV manner, athough it takes skill to avoid using weasle words ("some people say..."). I think WP does not have enough pictures in many cases (or good pictures in some). Where extensive comments regarding a picture might be considered off topic, I put that text into the image page. Especially if you are the photographer it is not inappropriate to put in some text that would not be appropriate for the article but is informative and in good taste. As an example, see Wuhan, follow the image to the TV tower (first image). Similar for Cloisonne on the imperial headdress and the image in Fireboat. In each of these I inserted personal feelings about the image or circumstances realated to the image that I feel add a lot to the appreciation of the picture, similar to the way a curator in a gallery would add a statement from the artist. Leonard G. 15:15, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

-more-

By the way, another user had removed an image from the Tiananmen Square (T.S.) page because it ran off the bottom (!), so I applied your technique and added three more images to form a nice gallery. I did find out that if the thumb (with text) to the left of a row is deeper than those on the right, then the following (wrapped) thumbs can "catch" on this descent, making an awkward layout. Since this is an effect not only of image size but also of the user's font selection and the user's window width, there is not a general solution for this problem, but some heuristiscs will help:

If thumb height is uniform, order titles from short to long.

With varying thumb height, order pictures from shallow to deep. The exception to this is the last picture - it may be smaller than the others since it is either the rightmost picture against others in the row or is on a row of its own and at the extreme left (since there are no descenders to catch it) - see the Shanghai article.

By performing calculations, it is possible to select a thumb width that will deliver a desired thumb height (exclusive of text considerations), but the original image dimensions must be determined by downloading and viewing with an image processing program that displays this pixel size. It would be nice if this was shown on the image page or if the height of a thumb could be specified. I completed this the hard way and the results look good.

Also, I deleted the leading space before the thumbs on the T.S. page, as a bad thumb description would cause the text drop into blocktext mode that was mostly covered up by other thumbs.

Could you let me know what the function of the control code at the bottom of the thumbs are for? I included these on the T.S. page but do not know what they do.

Also, the Shanghai pictures were all ordered on the right margin, but I use Safari under OSX on the Mac, which has some problems in layout as sometimes an image will cover half a line of text, but it never put the images side by side. I often test using IE 5.2 just to be sure. What browser are you using?

Thanks again, Leonard G. 20:00, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. The code (I suppose you mean <br style="clear:both" />) I got from Wikipedia:Extended image syntax, and its purpose is to keep text from flowing around the sides, but instead to resume the text at a point after the included box.

The browser I am using is Opera 7.5 on WinXP. —Muke Tever 20:30, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FYI - check out Talk:Tiananmen Square for a related image layout problem. Leonard G. 20:54, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Following from discussions concerning replacement of this technique with a new wikimedia method for galleries. Leonard G. 17:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(re: Shanghai#Architecture)

While one might think that this is now a nice gallery, you have in fact reduced the images to such a tiny (literally postage stamp) size, that now to get any reasonable impression one must click on the images, upping the navigation chore. Note that the preceding gallery was a floating gallery, constructed with no small effort and thought, designed to display on a wide range of window widths, showing each in a reasonable size (not requiring further navigation) and for all screens designed to preserve a good layout. Please comment on your thoughts here. Leonard G. 03:02, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The thumbnail images are tiny, yes, but that's the point. They're still large enough that one can see what's pictured, but if you want to see them in all their glory you click on them. The current total size of the gallery thumbnails is 93054 bytes, originally they were 146895 bytes - this is a significant saving in download time for dial-up users, though the page is still very graphic-heavy and could use more trimming. Frankly, I'm not fond of having image galleries embedded in articles like this at all - I'd much rather see that real estate used by a textual description of Shanghai's architecture, with descriptions of historical trends, famous buildings and architects, etc., with the images serving to illustrate and elaborate rather than being the entire meat of the section. Just looking at these seven images doesn't really tell me much about Shanghai's architecture as a whole - certainly not as much as 93 kilobytes of text would. Finally, the gallery markup is easier to maintain as new images and new features are added in the future. With the images explicitly marked as a gallery like this, there are many things that browsers and other software could potentially do with it - customized layout, for example. The gallery markup is still a relatively new Wikipedia feature, Wikipedia talk:Gallery has some discussion on what's being done with it. Bryan 03:34, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point on the bandwidth issue - but don't dial ups disable auto image downloads in their browsers (maybe that is a bit advanced)? Perhaps I will move the old gallery code to a new article not intended for direct search (e.g. Shanghai architecture image gallery but accessible via a "view gallery" link in that part. This is not ideal of course since this would require double entry maintenance, but the gallery has only had one addition by another since I created it in mid 2004. On the other hand, rather than double maintenance it could become a much richer image source than the primary article. As far as images are concerned I think of WP as a multimedia source. The bandwidth problem in the US is ultimately a short term issue currently stemming from (rational) corporate decision making (neither cable nor telephony see an upside interest in Korean-style high speed internet as this would undercut their current business models) compounded by a lack of appropriate national policy. Leonard G. 14:54, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What about the bandwidth problem in Africa, though? Anyway, splitting off a separate "gallery" article might be a good idea, it'd satisfy me and there are other articles that have such things. But if what you're interested in is a multimedia source rather than an encyclopedia article, perhaps Wikimedia Commons would be more suited to the task? The Commons is specifically intended for that purpose, whereas the multimedia content on Wikipedia is there only to serve its goal as an encyclopedia. Bryan 15:44, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do that - I have several other articles that can use this treatment also - I'll implement your method and link to mine in these also. With regards to Africa: since they will likely be going to wireless mesh network architecture owing to a "clean slate" infrastructure it would not surprise me if their per-household bandwidth exceeded ours within the next decade. I'll put this discussion into the relevant part of my user talk for reference. Best wishes, Leonard G. 17:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Prandtl-Glauert singularity

Saw your work on Prandtl-Glauert singularity I can't tell -- do these clouds follow the plane around while Mach >=1? Or is it a phenomenon that occurs just at the moment of Mach = 1? Chrisvls 22:59, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, it should occur at speeds >= mach 1, as this should follow from the underlying principles. What would change with additional speed would be the angle of the cone, becoming more acute, and if (can we presume?) the strength of the shockwave is stronger at higher speed then so should be its diameter, and if the sweep of the wing is less than this angle then the cone should have an irregular shape in the wing area. The diameter of the cone will of course be dependent upon also the local relative humidity.

An anecdote that may be of interest. Note that the shock wave can be reflected from an underlying surface. I did not personally see this, but a fellow naval airman described a low flying supersonic overwater demonstration. He said it appeared that the aircraft was "flying inside an ice cube". -- Leonard G. 02:35, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Chun King "bi-packs"

??? In the case of Chun King, I am only aware of packages that consist of a pair of ordinary cans taped together. And I have seen them in supermarkets within the last year so that form of package is still current. Have you seen them packaged in plastic pouches? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 14:29, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry - that was Annie Chung's Meal Kit. - e.g. Black Bean - chow Mein Noodles & Garlic Balck Bean Sauce UPC (7) 65667 82392 (7).

McMansion article

Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for going through and clearing up after I'd edited the McMansion article - it took longer than I thought and I just didn't proofread properly. Cheers!

- Katherine Shaw 10:20, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

You are welcome. You might find it interesting to look at the history and talk. I know I was over the top on POV but that's my style (I TEND TO VENT!!!), so I appreciate your thoughtful clean-up. The original by User:Wetman was a cute essay, but I did not think it a proper article - he was a bit disappointed that I rather overworked his article, but with your work I am sure he will enjoy the final results. Best wishes, Leonard G. 23:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC).

Naw, I didn't like it. BUT, I do like your Diana and Pomona image. Ever think of taking a look at Filoli down the peninsula? And get Wikipedia some good architectural images of San Francisco. There are a bunch of san francisco entries calling out for photos. --Wetman 09:21, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I added a nice formal garden picture - subsequently added to groundskeeper All feel free to post image requests. Leonard G. 06:21, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

FOX News

FOX contends that it is neutral, and to say without qualification that it lies to the right of other news sources is easily open to misinterpretation. There was already a discussion on the subject, during which time a statement very similar to the one I reverted was added to the opening paragraph of the article (see Talk:FOX News/Archive three#.22relatively_right-wing.22). It was decided that it would best belong in the first paragraph of "Allegations of bias," where a slightly modified version still remains:

FOX News asserts that it is more objective and factual than other American networks, and its promotional statements include "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide." The network thus intends to provide an alternative to such news sources as CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, or CBS, for those who believe that the other networks are dominated by a liberal bias. There is a widespread perception that FOX lies to the political right of most other prominent news sources; there is much dispute, however, as to whether the channel is actually a neutral source, or carries a bias in favor of right-wing, conservative, or Republican interests.

I think that passage expresses the same idea in a more neutral fashion. (I have cross-posted my reply to Talk:FOX News.) [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 18:01, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please see my reply to your latest message at Talk:FOX News. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 18:11, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mendocino County

Thanks for the note. I re-added most of the towns you reverted here, but not the Vineyards and other stuff. I left out Vichy Springs, which is the name of a road and a resort in the county but not a town afaik. I'll try and keep an eye on this article for further bogus information... And if I've got time I might make stubs for more of the small towns that do exist. ~leif ☺ _HELO 19:17, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I removed your note to the anon user at Philo, California. If you leave a message on their talk page, they will get a "New messages" notification just like a logged in user would. Please don't leave notes for individuals on article pages! ~leif ☺ _HELO 04:01, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I was not certain that the message would get through. Do note that the message was hidden from general viewing - only an editor would see it. I deliberately removed (by commenting) those edits as a troll for this user. I will clean the message out of other articles. I do not think this user is malicious - just inexperienced and clueless. The additions of the sections were not inappropriate, just really badly done in both a technical and information sense. -- Leonard G. 15:02, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested pictures

Hi. I moved your requests from Wikipedia talk:Requested pictures to Wikipedia:Requested pictures. -- Chris 73 Talk 05:51, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Although I have lots of articles and edits, I am still a newbee in many ways. Best wishes, Leonard G. 03:22, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: Tian'anmen

Hi there: I actually grabbed those Chinese characters from the Forbidden City article and pasted them into the Tian'anmen one. Somehow, I knew that something was flaky... Thanks again. --DF08 (English) 01:32, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

We can thank 68.194.108.16 for the the first correction - the error was introduced into both articles by another editor, who has been very helpful in many ways. - Leonard G. 03:11, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

BTW - I posted the following to the editor at IP 68.194.108.16 who made the first correction:

If you are editor that caught the Tiananmen Gate signage error in Forbidden City - many thanks. I see a number of edits on your IP contributions that look like they may have come from you. Please consider this an invitation to register and join our community. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about joining. You can get lots of questions answered, help, fun interactions with other editors. There are only a few soreheads and they seem to be focused on the topics of politics, religion and sex. (Aren't those the three things you should not bring up at a party? OK, forget the one about sex, it's two things.) Best wishes, Leonard G. 23:22, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Playa

(Message to Tannin re: image in Playa article.)

Nice picture, but could you provide a higher resolution and appropriately rotated version please? If you do not have the capability, just e-mail me via my user page a version that I can fix. After all, dry lakes are always horizontal. Thanks, Leonard G. 01:12, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

WRT Image:Lake Hart.jpg, I distinctly recall rotating it. My memory of this is as clear as a bell. So where on earth did I upload the rotated version if it wasn't here? I'll hunt around for it or, failing that, recreate it. Alas, I no longer contribute higher-resolution pictures here as they always end up getting butchered by unskilled resizing. Only way to avoid that is to always upload lowish resolution, it seems. I'll hunt out that image. Tannin 08:29, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK: done. Tannin 08:36, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I find that you do not need small images anymore - the thumb and "xxxpx" options take care of that nicely. What is annoying is when someone reduces the thumb to postage stamp size and the image is 3000px wide. As this is desired (WP policy states that images should be at high resolution to allow printed material use) I put an intermediate size image for that closer look, then reference via link the higher res image. See Shay locomotive. Leonard G. 00:45, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Follow up: new automated image size staging fixes the above problems requiring intermediate size uploads - Leonard G. 22:12, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Baroque

Thanks for your message on my talk page - I'm glad you like my rewrite of your paragraph on Baroque - copyediting/refactoring is always a slightly frought thing to do, in case the author takes offence, but that is what wiki is about... -- ALoan (Talk) 09:54, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ah - you might have seen that I subsequently edited that section on Byzantine Empire too :) -- ALoan (Talk) 17:44, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rio-Antirio Bridge

Hi Leonard,

is not the Rio-Antirio bridge the longest of its kind? User:Manos.

Yes, it is the longest. [Note: This commentary concerns the bridge article, not the related cable-stayed bridge and Rio-Antirio bridge articles.] Please note that the bulk of text for a picture title was excessive, almost doubling the vertical extent of the picture thumb. The text was mostly copied from the article anyway. Note that now the picture title references both the specific bridge article (with the bridge name) and the subsection on that type (with an in–article link for the bridge type). The named bridge article is where the details of a specific bridge belong, or as a brief note in the "List of bridges" section - e.g. "The longest of the cable-stayed type"

Regarding the excessive text, it appeared that there was a lot of room for this, but note that this is when the index is shown. If the index is hidden the pictures at the right margin will stack, especially on a wide screen, displacing the pictures from their respective sections, as the automatic formatting will push down pictures as needed. When a lot of related pictures are appropriate, II place them in a floating gallery. See the chat above concerning this.

Regarding the pictures you have added, note that "Image:July04 4.jpg" is inappropriate. It should be "Rio-Antirio bridge aerial view", or something like that. I am still awaiting your addition of attribution and copyright status on that picture. If not added soon I will dereference it from the article.

Thank you for your contributions to WP, but please not that pictures should be available for any other source to use, and this includes commercial use. I publish my personal pictures under the copyright released cc-sa (share and share alike), which I think is the best, as then derived works must also be so copyright released. I have only a few that are cc-nc (noncommercial), but for good reason. Now if you took that picture while flying over in an aircraft, you could credit it in several ways, including cc-by, which will ensure that you are credited.

I also incorporated a mention of this bridge in the cable-stayed bridge section. - Leonard G.

Danville

Hey Leonard. You seem to have an interest in the Danville, California page, so you may want to weigh in on the issue I raised on its talk page. - Walkiped 06:53, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Following from the talk page: It's factually incorrect to say that Danville doesn't have any "big box" stores. Costco, one of the most well known "big box" stores has a location in Danville, at 3150 Fostoria Way. Anyone object to me re-wording the first paragraph appropriately? - Walkiped 00:51, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Go for it! (but note that this is an exception, as it is the small town character, and hugely rich demographics, that make this "town" somewhat unique in Central Contra Costa County). I only got into the article owing to a rather obnoxious set of unsatisfied links that I had to research and fill in. I don't live there (I'm in Saranap, an unicorporated area between Walnut Creek and Lafayette). Leonard G. 01:03, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I took a first stab at it, feel free to tweak. - Walkiped 02:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Marx generator (see talk page too)

Hi Leonard,

I don't think the circuit diagram is wrong, all the reading i did showed resistors in the circuit diagrams and not inductors. But I think you are right that most equipment uses inductors, since they are more efficient, which was also mentioned in most of the articles i read.

Do you think the circuit diagram would be better with inductors instead of resistors? Also, an inductor will have internal resistance which may or may not be shown on the circuit.

Duk 02:20, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject:Bridges?

Would you be interested in joining me in starting a Wikiproject for Bridges? I have found quite a bit of discrepancy between different bridge articles, and some kind of standardiztion is needed. If you have some extra time (I see you are plenty busy around here) it would be great to have your help. Thanks Cacophony 22:06, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

windturbine photo

hi Leonard,

i saw your windturbine photo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DanishWindTurbines.jpg do you have a larger version? if so, is it possible have permission to use it on my site at http://xahlee.org/Whirlwheel_dir/whirlwheel.html ?

Larger image uploaded, linked on the medium image page. Note cc-sa license (text on the image)

Thanks. Xah Lee 09:00, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started the Free the Rambot Articles Project which has the goals of getting users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to...

...all U.S. state, county, and city articles...
...all articles...

using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) version 1.0 and 2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to the GFDL (which every contribution made to Wikipedia is licensed under), but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles (See the Multi-licensing Guide for more information). Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. So far over 90% of people who have responded have done this.

Nutshell: Wikipedia articles can be shared with any other GFDL project but open/free projects using the incompatible Creative Commons Licenses (e.g. WikiTravel) can't use our stuff and we can't use theirs. It is important to us that other free projects can use our stuff. So we use their licenses too.

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template (or {{MultiLicensePD}} for public domain) into their user page, but there are other templates for other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} with {{MultiLicensePD}}. If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know at my talk page what you think. It's important to know, even if you choose to do anything so I don't keep asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 14:38, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

All photos taken by me are posted cc-sa with the exception of performance photos, which are cc-nc. I have also posted other's work (with permission) as cc-by-sa. I noticed that other commercial encyclopedia sites do not post images if the images are marked with "Wikipedia License cc-sa" or similar. It appears that they are attempting to hide the source of their materials. These sites usually look terrible as they post the large image version only, or only the thumb, with no click through. I may post some personal artwork with cc-by-sa. So am I already covering your request? Leonard G. 20:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ram-Man wants you to dual license your text edits, not only images :). Ausir 00:43, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But how can that ever work? An article is a collection of edits, and unless all editors dual license then the article is not dual licensed, right? My assumption was that all my edits became public domain anyway, under the rules of WP, for anyone to use in any way. After all, if commercial sites can (badly) mirror an article, or cherry pick parts of it, then why should wikidictionary have any problems? This needs some explanation and/or an overall WP rule change. Has WP painted itself into a corner? Leonard G. 06:01, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, your edits are by default not public domain, but GFDL. And Ram-Man is trying to get as many people as he can to dual-license their articles (especially the top editors) so that the articles can be used also under CC-BY-SA - if all edits in one article are dual-licensed, then the whole article can be, and if even some small edits aren't, one can always delete some non-dual licensed portions of the text. This way WikiTravel (a CC-BY-SA wiki independant from Wikimedia) will be able to use our contributions. Ausir 12:09, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Note that CC-BY-SA won't work for the same reason as noted above in ...how can that ever work..., so it appears to me that the following should be done in this order:

1. The overall rule should be changed - all new edits and new articles and edits would then be automatically dual licensed, and the license should be CC-SA, not CC-BY-SA. (CC-BY-SA remains appropriate for images, however, but the "BY" and license should be on the image so it does not get lost, and also watermarked. (See Sundial Bridge images, contributed for my posting by a third party professional artist.)

2. Solicit the major contributors and editors to specific articles to retroactively apply the new license to their previous contributions.

3. Review and re-edit articles on an as-needed basis - outside wikis needing material would post an appropriate notice on the page.

Question: I see my work mirrored on other web "encyclopedias", and usually rather badly as far as images and page layout. According to our GFDL article: "Materials for which commercial redistribution is prohibited generally cannot be used in a GFDL-licensed document, e.g. a Wikipedia article, because the license does not exclude commercial re-use." So why is another wiki prohibited from re-use? -- Leonard G. 17:18, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is not prohibited from re-use, it's just that they themselves don't accept any other license than CC-BY-SA, just like CC-BY-SA text wouldn't be accepted here, unless it's dual licensed. Ausir 19:45, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, then if "they themselves" means the other wikis, I'd say that their rules (against uncredited text) have created their problem, and that the problem is simply not ours to solve, given all of the difficulties that I have pointed out. I would be willing to perform step 2 above, but this should follow step 1. That matter is for the WP board to address. This still does not address the matter of multiple contributing editors, some who may be either inaccessible or uncooperative. At this point the issue appears to me to be discussed to completion at this level. I am interested in seeing what happens concerning this. Thanks for your input, and best wishes. -- Leonard G. 20:39, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(deep breath)

Ram-Man's solicitation for you to dual-license is one way people are attempting to address the matter of multiple contributing editors. Articles can only be licensed under a license common to all contributing editors. For example, I dual-license my contributions under the GFDL (all wikipedia text is GFDL) as well as into the public domain (no restrictions, most flexible). So if an article consists of solely of edits by me and however many other people who dual license under, say, CC-SA, then that whole article is now available for reuse under either the GFDL or CC-SA (the person reusing can choose!). If a non-dual-licensing editor comes along and edits it, revisions from that point on are only available under the GFDL. If someone with a CC-SA site wants to fork the last version of the article by dual-licensing wikipedians on their own site, the resulting article (off wikipedia) would be CC-SA only (since edits on the other site are not GFDL).

Basically, the more people who dual-license, the more articles will be available under multiple licenses.

I think the whole thing is kind of silly; we're writing articles for them to be read, and I doubt any of us is planning to make any money selling people extra rights to our work beyond what the GFDL allows. The GFDL is less restrictive than a simple ©, but it still relies on the © to restrict re-use of the content. Why not let your contributions be entirely free and dual-license them in the public domain? The {{MultiLicensePD}} template currently places all the people who use it in Category:Public domain license, so you can see how many others have already done this...

I hope this clears up any confusion. Good luck making your decision; nobody will hold it against you if you decide to do what the majority of wikipedians do and not multi-license at all. I happen to think putting things in the public domain is the best and easiest option, though :) ~leif ☺ _HELO 21:25, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

So the other part of the dual license is not CC-BY-SA but rather CC-SA? That is not what was said above. Leonard G. 00:49, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There is not just one dual-license. You could make up whatever terms you wanted and declare that you multi-license your contributions under it. The only requirement is that everything on wikipedia is also available under the plain GFDL. Wikipedia:Multi-licensing explains it better, and has a list of multi-licensing schemes that some other wikipedians are using. ~leif ☺ _HELO 02:50, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Goodness, I leave for a day or two and this many people respond to a question directed at me! Phew. Let's see if I can answer a few questions if they have not already been answered. The CC-SA is a version 1.0 license that is basically not used much at this point. Creative Commons has a host of licenses, but every 2.0 license has attribution (by) as the basis. The Share-Alike (sa) portion makes it copylefted. While it would be great if users released their contributions under every CC license, right now I'm only asking for CC-by-sa version 1.0 and 2.0 so that it maintains full compatibility with WikiTravel. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

You asked why we don't try to get all new edits multi-licensed, and the reason for this is two-fold. First, multi-licensing is controversial to a number of people, and rather than make people upset, we have started a totally optional process by which people can choose to do it rather than be forced to do so. But the second, more important reason is because trying to manage a multi-licensed Wikipedia would be a nightmare. It's already hard to get newbie users to try and understand the copyright and licensing issues involved and what they can and can't copy, but if some articles in Wikipedia were available under one license and other articles were available under a different license and all new edits were mandatorily released under two licenses, then there would be articles WITHIN Wikipedia that could not be shared with each other. It would be very confusing, not to mention almost impossible to track even with software help. No, Wikipedia must stick with one license, but the problem is that many people wish it was the CC-by-sa v.2.0 license. If over 90% of users multi-licensed using the CC-by-sa license, there is a very remote possibility that a Wikipedia fork could be created to eliminate our ties to the GFDL. In the end, it is way simpler to just get as many people as we can to multi-license and when we want to copy an article, figure out on a case-by-case basis whether it can be re-released under a different license based on the users who have edited it. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Adding the template {{MultiLicenseWithCC-By-All}} would allow us to use every Creative Commons license (CC-by, CC-by-sa, CC-by-nc-sa, etc.). The public domain template {{MultiLicensePD}} of course allows the use of any and every license out there. Of course without your permission to multi-license, your textual contributions will forever remain under the GFDL exclusively and will only ever be able to be used with other GFDL works, no matter how popular the Creative Commons licenses become. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 19:22, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

So if I MultiLicensePD then Wikitravel cannot use it? Leonard G. 20:24, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, public domain releases your copyright and says that anyone can do anything with your contributions and release it under any license. Derivative works become the copyright of the person making the derivation, but anyone can use your contributions without restriction. WikiTravel (and others) can then happily use it. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 20:34, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I am now {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}, I hope that works out for all concerned. Leonard G. 18:28, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Leonard G. Stop working your brain for one minute

Let me chat, and thank you. Re: Metamerism (color) I'd been working for years to get it acceptable.I owe you one! Stop and look at this list of people sucking your brain, back to March. When do you breath? [email protected] A.K.A [email protected], dkroll2 on this forum.

Well, here's how it is: I'm not young (b. 1937), and one annoying characteristic of old guys like me is that they tend to "brain dump" on subjects that they (but not the listener) are interested in (borrrr-ing). Wikipedia is so great, because it gives guys like us to share our our knowledge and interests, even if limited, of events, history, technologies, arts, etc., while acquiring even more (oh-oh, exploding head danger!). I sometimes edit articles concerning matters of which I have little or no knowledge (e.g. Metamerism (color)), only to improve the readability, being careful to not change factual matters. I find that I absorb much more of the article this way than I would by merely reading it. I know that my writing has vastly improved since I started this, and I am also starting to get a pretty good feel for the ways of the Wiki. While my spelling is normally atrocious, I have turned on automatic on the fly spell checking in my browser (Safari), and so even that is improving. Thanks, and best wishes, Leonard G. 18:17, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

hyphen for ndash

Strange, when I put in dash "-"(keyboard minus/hyphen), it gets replace by other editors with "–" (ndash, wihich does not respond to nowiki commands), now you edited Doolittle Raid the other way. So what is correct the wiki way? (I would think that hyphen would be more searchable). Any thoughts? Leonard G. 02:22, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There are three dash like symbols: hyphen -, n dash –, m dash — and minus

-

. Minus is used only in a mathematical context, and on wikipedia with <math>.

M dashes (so called because they were the width of a capital M, are used for pauses — like when inserting parathetical material — and often in pairs. M dashes are for eMotion.

N dashes are used for ranges 1–5 for example, n dashes are for iN between.

Hyphens are used to join words "Bright-helmeted Greeks" to use an Homeric example.

There is also a Japanese character ー used to indicate vowel length.

Some fonts may use the same glyph for different dashes.

Zeimusu 12:50, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

Image Tags

Hi, I've found two images that you have uploaded Image:PragueClockFace.jpg and Image:PragueTownHallClock.jpg and found that they need image tags. I'm guessing that you have probably taken them yourself so they are GFDL but wasn't sure. Evil Monkey → Talk 00:01, Dec 12, 2004 (UTC)

Noted and completed. Leonard G. 02:43, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

California#transportation

Well, I thought that picture was better!

But if you don't like it, feel free to revert it to the Harbor Freeway picture. I won't mind.

--Coolcaesar 04:22, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Workaholic...me too it's 2 AM!

Time to support your newbie pal Deb Krolls I have a man on my back rewriting everyting word I write (I wish his versions were correct, I'd be happy) They are very wrong. I've sent him references. No reply. I cannot write the article until I get rid of his page. Dkroll2

Thanks for calling upon me, but I am not a color expert. I am not qualified to contribute to this argument one way or the other, at least without further research, which you have already done. I suggest that you place your references into the article talk page. But good luck, and thanks for caring about the accuracy of WP articles. That is very important to maintain and enhance the quality of the product of our mutual efforts.

It may be that the other author is viewing the subject from a computer modeling standpoint, in which one can consider three dimensional color coordinates as forming a color "space". This can be useful in describing gamuts which cannot be displayed on the presentation medium used for discussion.

It may also be useful in support of your arguments to present your credentials in somewhat more detail. I have also found it useful to insert comments into the page text that will only be seen by an editor. This eliminated a problem that was recurring with an article concerning the speed of sound and the nature of compressible fluids, simply owing to the misconceptions of the editor. In the comment I suggested that the editor view the talk page, and this cleared up the problem. A tactful approach may also help, as opposed to confrontational.

By the way, I fixed your user link in this message. If you sign with four tildes {~}, and you are logged on, you will always get the correct user page and a time stamp.

Until later, Leonard G. 19:56, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Subtractive_color_space

--Dkroll2 08:10, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Whoa, what this 4 tilde thing?

--Dkroll2 00:12, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC) Was that not right?

--Dkroll2 02:45, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

Dkroll2

-Dkroll2

It was your first reference - you entered "User:Dkrolls2" - an unsatisfied link.

Saint Petersburg

Thanks for your support. I actually plan to rewrite some sections of this article later this week. As for postcards, I think you may want to check the articles on Peter and Paul Fortress, St Isaac's Cathedral, Fontanka, Nevsky Prospect, Stasov, Narva Triumphal Gate, and Konstantin Thon. Ghirlandajo 01:22, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

An apology and additional explanation

Okay, I will concede that I did go overboard with the use of the word "vandalism." If it helps, I apologize.

The problem with your original edit (and why I reacted so emotionally) was that it contained too many express and implicit factual assertions, some of which are definitely true, some of which are definitely POV, and some of which are too general for a California-specific article; such things really apply to the entire U.S. and should be in the Transportation in the United States article.

First, you asserted that California overfunds freeways relative to mass transit systems. That is both correct and incorrect depending upon what time period is addressed. It is quite correct as applied to the period from 1940 through 1970 (when many existing streetcar lines were shut down and converted to bus lines), and debatable with regard to the period from 1970 to the present.

Keep in mind that after 1970, the Bay Area built an entire rapid rail system from scratch with significant federal funding, and San Jose, Sacramento, San Diego, and Los Angeles built whole new light rail systems, and Los Angeles also got started on the Red Line subway. Also, keep in mind that all of those mass transit systems have been heavily subsidized then and continue to be heavily subsidized now, and both the Los Angeles and San Jose light rail systems suffer from underutilization.

And your statement failed to incorporate some recognition of clear counterarguments. If you read the San Jose Mercury News, the Sacramento Bee, or the San Diego Union-Tribune regularly, you would realize a great many suburban commuters believe that freeways have been underfunded relative to mass transit. Another counterargument is that even if freeways are still favored in funding relative to mass transit, that is because that is what the majority of California voters want. That is, they are making a decision to ignore the well-known downsides of expanding freeways (more land takings, noise, cost, pollution, the probability that the expansion will not work in the long-term, encouraging sprawl,etc.) and focusing on short-term priorities --- such as their right to live in safe, quiet residential subdivisions away from inner-city problems.

Personally, I am well-aware of New Urbanism and the movements toward high-density living and living near where one works, and I support the goals of such movements, but I do not think they will succeed until the current well-known problems of urban life have been addressed. I am referring to the problems that suburbanites have fled for more than half a century: the lack of privacy in high-density areas, noise, crime, security, homeless people, limited availability of high-quality schools and parks for children, etc. Of course, all these things can be adjusted for, but it takes money, which is why inner-cities are dominated by rich people with their bodyguards in their secure towers and poor people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

Second, you allege that the underfunding is caused by "trickle-down" deficits. While that is an interesting hypothesis, there are many other reasons for underfunding of transportation such as: the tax revolt movement (with its slogan "starve the beast" which applied to most federal government programs); the fact that as all transportation systems grow, they require more maintenance, which limits the availability of funds for more new construction; the annoying tendency of American engineers to build cheap roads which wear out within 20 years, while European roads last 40 or more; the prioritization of defense and Social Security as more important relative to transportation; the failure to index gas taxes to inflation; and so on. The point is that the reasons for underfunding of transportation in general are very complicated, and alleging that mass transit in particular is underfunded in California relative to freeways because of such deficits is a very serious and specific allegation that requires strong evidence---none of which I am aware of, although if you know of any "smoking guns," please feel free to list citations on my talk page.

I feel that the California article is an encyclopedia article which should be kept relatively general, rather than getting into a lengthly discussion of California politics or urban planning (while you or I might find it interesting, most people do not). This is even more true when many of the issues are common to the United States as a whole.

As for my own personal perspective, Americans in general tend to favor living in low-density suburban developments for the reasons I have just mentioned; as Neal Stephenson pungently explained in Snow Crash, they prefer to flee to the "culture medium for a medium culture" rather than live in the city and help to fix its problems. Although there was a great deal of racist "white flight" back in the 1960s, demographers are now noticing a preference for suburbs among middle-class African-Americans as well, who are fleeing inner-cities in Atlanta and Los Angeles and establishing their own peaceful (though de facto segregated) suburban communities. Everyone views the problem of fixing the inner-city as someone else's problem.

In turn, Americans (not just Californians), when setting transportation priorities via the polls that politicians rely on, tend to support freeways over mass transit because (1) freeways are what most of them rely on to get to and from work and play; and (2) mass transit is simply not cost-effective in the low-density areas where Americans prefer to live.

For example, the San Jose Mercury News likes to make fun of mass transit by pointing out how difficult it is to get from one side of the valley to the other on mass transit (bus or light rail) versus driving a car. Could mass transit be made competitive with cars in Santa Clara Valley? Certainly, but it would require running buses and trolleys on all lines all the time at every 5 minutes or less to ensure smooth transfers, rather than the nightmarish 30 minute delays between transfers. And then most of those buses would end up being half-empty, even if a substantial portion of the population shifted their commute habits; the population of the valley is simply too low (just over one million) to support such a busy network. Mass transit might be more viable in the valley if cities could rezone for higher densities, but many people living in Santa Clara Valley fled there from a high-density city (or visited such cities and didn't like them), which is why rezoning is politically impossible.

--Coolcaesar 21:53, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Inappropriate use of term "vandalism", and (in my opinion) inappropriate deletion

Reviewing your recent change to Aircraft, it seems to me that an addition to the reference to the movie Airplane! of the use of the word as an alternative to the band Jefferson Airplane by User:66.177.33.232 does not constitute vandalism. In the context of the paragraph, it appears to me to be an appropriate addition, owing to the redirection of Airplane to Aircraft, which should probably be changed to a disambiguation page to contain the two off (aircraft) topic references. Any objections? Best wishes, Leonard G. 06:40, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You are right. Yesterday I was busy cleaning up after an IP address inserting vandalism, so when I saw that slightly off comment on Aircraft by that very IP address, I did not think twice. Now I made a disambiguation page and linked there. I will pay more attention. Oleg Alexandrov

Thanks for the response and disambiguation addition. I had browsed edits by that IP# and it appears that it is not fixed (or perhaps in use by various family members), being used by a number of editors with various styles and interests. Leonard G. 19:08, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am aware of that. :) I did not revert automatically all edits from that IP, rather those which looked out of place. Oleg Alexandrov 19:17, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Airplane is now a disambiguation rather than a redirect. Leonard G. 06:49, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another image needing a tag

The image Image:WPGageFace.jpg also needs a copyright tag. Did you take the photo yourself? Thanks, – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)} 23:43, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

All three pressure gauge article images are now credited to myself. Leonard G. 03:49, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Picture on Commons

Moin Leonard,

since I needed your wonderful picture of the Kiel Canal for the German wikipedia, I uploaded it on Commons. Here it is. -- Zeitgeist 15:12, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Kiel Canal map

Answer given on my dicussion page. -- Zeitgeist 11:44, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

List of towers

Didn't you notice when you edited List of towers that the content had become duplicated - later it became triplicated! Almost all of the article seems to have been written by one user of Freenet Cityline GmbH, Düsseldorf. Since he is too thick to notice that he has messed up the page, I am not going to try and rescue his edits. I have simply reverted to the last good version. This has lost your pic of the Eiffel Tower. I leave you to decide whether and where to put it back. -- RHaworth 10:19, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice.

Regarding duplications - I was sometimes having this happen to my early edits and have found out how to avoid them. They occur after an edit is previewed. Rather than edit within the new edit window presented below the preview, it is possible to use the "back" button to return to the window presented before the preview. It is this action, and the completion of the edit in that preceding window, that leads to multiple copies. This should probably be handled more gracefully on the server side. Leonard G. 21:39, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Three Gorges dam pics

Dear Leonard,

I am interested in high resolution versions of your three images of the Three Gorges dam model. Can you send them via e-mail to [email protected]?

Thanks and best wishes, Jan

The entire slide show at 512 by 384 is at http://www.ccdemo.info/landabee/ChinaTripSlideShows/512x384/16SS-3GorgesDam/index.html

You may pick individual pictures from the index or click on the first and use the slide show buttons. Clicking on an image will bring up a 1024 by 768 image. If you need higher resolution I can provide the passing the the dam images at 2048 wide digitals. For the model I have scanned film and color negatives. Tell me what you need for publishing and I will release cc-sa for any digital originals or film scans, film negatives by other arrangement (are you doing high quality book publishing?) Leonard G. 20:35, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hayward Fault

Overall you've done an excellent job, but that crack about the Regents was inappropriate. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:37, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with your changing it - I always am bold with my first text and let others tone it down. I was surprised that it took this long for someone to notice! Best wishes, Leonard G. 03:33, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Riverboat

Thanks for your kind response. When I went to the article, the first thing I saw was a lot of large images at the top. I thought I was helping by arranging them smaller throughout. The way you have the gallery now is quite good. FredR 14:57, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Steam Engine

Hi Leonard, thanks for the great picture of the steam engine. Just to let you know I uploaded it to my wiki too. Greenpowered 16:48, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Airspeed merge

There's some good material on the concept of Airspeed, most of it written by you. Unfortunately, it's split between three articles Airspeed, True airspeed, and Indicated airspeed. I'd like to merge it all into one article, for ease of reference. Since most of the material (and edit history) is in Indicated airspeed, it makes sense for that to be the surviving article. I'd merge material from the other two articles, then rename it Airspeed. Indicated airspeed and True airspeed would become simple redirects. Since most of the material is yours, I'd want your blessing before I proceeded. ----Isaac R 23:31, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the courtesy - I have never seen that before on WP! Go for it. Leonard G. 01:24, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I kind of have to be nice to you, since I don't understand the material well enough to edit it without your help! Anyway, could I get you to look at two articles I've just discovered, calibrated airspeed and equivalent airspeed? How do they relate to the topics we've already discussed? Are they simply different names for the same things? (You can just reply here without going to my talk page.) ----Isaac R 03:30, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that these two articles should be merged, but this is beyond my knowledge. The calibrated airspeed article states "The definition is based on a model of the air as a compressible fluid." - I believe that this should be incompressible. I will not be able to participate in this effort further for a few weeks. I suggest that you contact the contributors to these two articles, or enquire of contributors to other aviation-related articles. I will check out your work on the merge when I can. Good luck, thanks for your efforts, and best wishes, Leonard G. 04:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the basic text of these articles is anonymous. (There's some editing by named users, but they just did copy editing, wikification, etc.) I think do the basic merge we've already discussed, then slap a merge tag on the other two articles. Presumably someone will come along with the technical background to merge the last two articles. ----Isaac R 20:57, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:10, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Global Warming

I notice you are in the process of making major changes to the GW article. Especially given the history of the article and the finely crafted compromise, it would be far better if you had discussed yoiur changes on the talk page beforehand. It's too late for that now, but please justify your alterations and cite your sources on the talk page - otherwise we'll just end up with more revert wars. Guettarda 02:02, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You guys are TOUCHY! I did not make any changes to the content, only adding a new section concerning a relevant and lesser known theory concerning potential consequences of global warming.

Yes, they are touchy. I just intended "a word to the wise". I don't care that much personally, but edits have to survive the scrutiny of the anti-GW lobby. On the plus side, this means that the stuff that gets into the article is pretty solid. Guettarda 02:12, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Seeing the changes that User:William M. Connolley made to my additions, it certainly appears that there is a "head in the sand" crew working there. It not only appears that "ice age" is somehow an incorrect term (too frightening, perhaps?), but that even a suggestion that an ice-free arctic could lead to increased (and season spanning) snow (which creates icefields), is to "hot" to handle. Leonard G. 02:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

William's the pro-GW person. But he is also a climatic scientist, and has been through a long and grueling edit war (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Climate_change_dispute/Proposed_decision) so he tends to stick to carefully verifiable facts that are well enough supported to stand up to the critics. If you think his re-write too strong you should talk to him - he's a very reasonable person. Guettarda 02:57, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I had taken a look at his user page and was surprised at the deletion of the ice-free stuff. I had heard the theory a long time ago in a radio program concerning climate. It was proposed by a scientist. According to this theory an even seasonally ice-free Arctic would put much more water into the atmosphere of the region which could increase permanent snow on adjacent land masses. The polar regions are currently desserts, although it has been recently discovered that Antarctica is becoming less so, to a degree (estimated at a buildup of 1 cm of ice/year) that accounts for the non-rising of sea levels even with the various glacial retreats. I will pose the question to him in a few days. Note: a subsequent Google search turned up an interesting essay concerning sudden ice-age intiation. The recent finding of a frozen mammoth with attached summer foliage supports the concept of a sudden ice age.Leonard G. 16:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that the problem is that the sources are, on one hand, a speculative hypothesis (speculation by a scientist is still speculation until the hypothesis is formally tested) and on the other hand, an essay. But you should really ask William directly - I'm sure he'd answer any questions you have. Guettarda 16:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Sims 2 & The Strangerhood

How do you know a lot about making The Strangerhood with The Sims 2? - 68.23.36.253 1 July 2005 03:40 (UTC)

See Wired News Article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/play.html?pg=1 for the basic info. Leonard G. 1 July 2005 06:01 (UTC)