Hi G-guy!
I was delighted and surprised to see your answer to my question about conflicts of interest in reviewing Good articles! Your name was just shining on the page. :) I'm a little embarrassed to say that, although I knew that you were involved somehow with GA's, I'd never taken the time to learn how much or in what way. :( There's always too many distractions! Forgive me now why I toddle off somewhere else GA-related, but I'm very glad you came back, however briefly, and hoping that our paths will entwine more in the future, Willow 14:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
PS. Did you notice that Cronholm was mentioned, albeit obliquely, in the Wikipedia Weekly interview with Tamsin? Mine ears did boggle! :)
Geometry Guy, I just wanted to let you know I'm interested in setting up a project page along the lines outlined at the Village Pump discussion, but I'm going to spend some time first talking to Marskell and see if there's some way to proceed using the page he's set up. I'll drop you a note if I do create a page, to see if you're interested in participating. Mike Christie (talk) 00:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
You mentioned technical reasons for making persondata a subpage in the article's talk namespace. Looking at the templates, it wasn't obvious to me what technical obstacle was being addressed. Could you elaborate? I am using your idea on Genealogy wikia (crediting your page of course), and the tests looks very promising so far. Regards, - Mak 10:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I saw you've been using the "ref" system for citations in homotopy groups of spheres. I recently discovered the Harvard citation system which is easier to use: you only have to click once instead of twice to see the reference. See von Neumann algebra for an example of how this system works. R.e.b. 01:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
A minor suggestion is to use the "citation" rather than the "cite book" etc. templates in the homotopy groups of spheres article: the only essential difference between these is that with the "citation" templates you can use the harvard citation templates in the "notes" section to link to the "references" section. For some strange reason you cannot do this with the "cite" templates. I'm not going to do this myself while you are working on the article unless you think it's a good idea. Good luck with getting it to FA status. R.e.b. 21:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
In the Homeopathy GA reassessment you stated that the Lead does not summarize the article. Could you offer some specifics here, on the articles talk page, or on my talk page so that I can improve it? Thanks. Wikidudeman (talk) 02:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Try starting a new section or moving it to here. Otherwise it will be overlooked. Wikidudeman (talk) 01:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes articles that I am working on also get protected for long periods of time due to edit warring. See the Race of Ancient Egyptians article for an example. It was protected due to edit warring (which I was uninvolved with btw) and now most improvments have gone to a stand still and the editors seem reluctant to agree to rules to avoid edit wars to get it unprotected. Wikidudeman (talk) 17:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
For spaces with non trivial fundamental group, you cannot define the homotopy groups as the group of homotopy classes of maps from a sphere to the space. You really do need to choose base points to make things work. The problem is that to compose two maps you need to choose a path connecting points in the images of the spheres, and the composition of two maps may depend on which path you choose if the space is not simply connected. So without a choice of base point the composition is not well defined. And π0 is correctly defined as the set of homotopy classes of base point preserving maps from the 0-sphere, which is indeed the set of path components. In particular the higher homotopy groups of the 0-sphere are indeed the trivial group. (The zeroth homotopy space of the 0-sphere is not a group, but a set with 2 elements.) R.e.b. 19:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
No, this problem does not arise for spheres of dimension at least one. In general the set of homotopy classes of maps from S^n to a pathwise connected space X can be identified with the orbits of pi_1(X) on pi_n(X). For spheres the actions of pi_1(X) on pi_n(X) happen to be trivial, so in this case the homotopy groups can be identified with the homotopy classes of maps from S^n to X and you can get away without using base points. (For homotopy groups of S^0 you do need to use base points to get the right answer.) R.e.b. 20:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Anything correct is OK by me. Homotopy group makes the same error in the introduction. R.e.b. 20:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Is there any reason you don't have a userpage? Would you like one? Lara ❤ Love 05:00, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi -- I agree we need to archive, but do you have any idea where MiszaBot actually wrote the archive? I can't see it anywhere. Mike Christie (talk) 11:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I thought that the archive had not yet been created so I reverted the removal of info. I did the archive myself, but it is odd. The bot contribs shows it wrote it to the archive page, however, there is no link. Is there a code missing from the archive page, perhaps? Lara ❤ Love 18:05, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's what I meant, really. The edit summary listed the archive page, but it wasn't a link. I'm thinking there might be code missing. It doesn't make sense. And it's probably something obvious. The page exists, so why is it not a link in the bot contribs? Lara ❤ Love 18:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I assume you saw this little poll. Did you want to vote? I think we can begin digging into a single topic soon enough. Marskell 13:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi G-Guy, Seems like you don't store up barnstars, don't keep a userpage going, etc. That's cool. If you ever do decide to do the above, you can put this on it. You know I don't really keep close track of what's going on these days, but I seem to have seen your sig below a nontrivial amount of the GA grunt work, and of course you're prominent in all the relevant discussions. Just wanted to let you know your efforts are appreciated. -- Ling.Nut 03:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
![]() |
The Good Article Medal of Merit | |
For sterling contributions above and beyond the call of duty in creating a GA system that provides the best possible service, I award you this GAMedal. Ling.Nut 03:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC) |
The set of homotopy classes of mappings from the 1-sphere to a path connected X is (essentially) the set of conjugacy classes, not elements, of the fundamental group. Did you really mean to imply that conjugacy classes of a group are essentially the same is its elements? R.e.b. 19:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I meant the first sentence of the paragraph ("The i-th homotopy group of a topological space X is essentially the set of homotopy classes of mappings from the i-sphere Si to X.") The word "essentially" may be a little misleading; perhaps it could be replaced by "related to". R.e.b. 19:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
On the left side of very page there's a link called "What links here". That's what I was talking about. But I understand that you want the info on a PR page, & with a date. OK, good. :-) -- Ling.Nut 05:39, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Apologies for the delay in reply; real life is keeping me busy lately, and I am not contributing much to Wikipedia. While I did not find point of view bias as troubling as some, last July, I was concerned about article stability, which is a disservice to readers and which disrupts whatever viewpoint a piece of writing hopes to achive. I suggested at the the time that regularly contributing editors should write drafts in sandboxes, work out differences there, and bring the results to the article. The article should be considered a 'stable release'; the sandboxes unstable development versions. I don't think this practice was undertaken, and, judging from the history, the article has remained volatile. On that basis, I find no discomfort with your delisting decision and support it. I think the regular editors do not deliberately push point of view, but do get mired in points of view. The delicate trick is establishing a 'separation of concerns' which is distinctly different from 'indifference' but which does avoid advocacy — not by being disengaged (a quality of indiffernce) but by choosing how to be engaged. The manner of engagement that I thinks works best is that of a 'range of opinion collector' a fictional viewpoint character who cannot rest until every facet of a topic has been sucessfully netted and is properly displayed in the collection case, a metaphor for the Wikipedia article.
Editors who figure out 'the neutral viewpoint' are rare and invaluable to Wikipedia. For my own account, when I undertake a piece of writing, I spend no small amount of time considering the 'voice' of the writer, to wit: his or her world view, the backstory giving rise to that world view, and how that world view influences choice of words (at a small scale), and the arc of narrative (at a large scale). One can observe that it is 'just me' choosing the words and constructing the arc of narrative, and I do not dispute that. At the lowest level of execution, it is just my fingers on the keyboard. But at a higher planning level, when I am considering how a piece of writing will go, I really do strive to construct a fictional viewpoint character with a distinct personality and world view that I do not (and would not) commingle with my own. The purpose of this exercise is to separate my ego from my writing — so that it becomes the writing. In doing so, (I think) I can obtain a wider range of style and point of view than if I did not consider constructing a view point character at all. In other words, if I only wrote with my own 'voice.'
When I write for Wikipedia, I strive for a viewpoint character who is interested in everything but ventures opinions on nothing — a kind of character I would love to have at parties. No matter what the topic may be, the character is able to converse about it, but, in not venturing opinions, the character does not offend anyone. To make this example concrete, the character strives to be informed on every possible meme that attaches to the symbol 'Veganism' —— memes issuing from advocates, memes issuing from detractors, and memes from commentators on the sidelines. This character is obsessed with being informed on every possible facet of Veganism, but reluctant to champion any one facet of the discussion, for to do so would close the character off from 'the discussions on the other side.' and the character loathes to have his or her range of inquiry limited in that way. The character is a collector of viewpoints and wants accurate and complete specimens of all the memes in his or her collection cases — the wikipedia articles.
It's a bit of a mental trick to set up a construct in your head who may not quite hold your world view or be motivated to write in ways other than how you would write — it's a 'Let's pretend I'm somebody else.' kind of game that some people might find as being untrue to one self, self-deceptive, or perhaps mentally unhealthy. All that notwithstanding, the separation of ego from article is a necessary skill for Wikipedians, and fostering a construct viewpoint character is the avenue that works well for me. By supposing that the character writing the Wikipedia article is (unlike myself) intent on collecting every viewpoint of a topic and (unlike myself) is unwilling to venture any opinion on the article, establishes a separation of concern that disinvests ego. So I happen to think that Veganism is a questionable lifestyle. The construct writing the article is disinterested in my opinion and simply wants to collect whatever notion that may have been attached to the 'Veganism' symbol. I suppose I am not surprised by the notion that good writers suffer from mental illnesses or alcoholism citation needed; they have all of those characters in their heads that they've spent years constructing, yelling at each other, having sexual liasons, lying about them, and cheating on one another. I suppose I should be thankful that it has taken me years to work this trick in just a limited fashion, and can still sleep peacefully. Take care, and thanks for conducting the Good Article review. Gosgood 16:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Geometry Guy, just wanted to post here because I don't want to clog up the workshop talk page with more questions. As I recall the earlier discussions, the goal was to have the conversation on article talk, as being a location more likely to encourage collaboration. It's a separate goal to have the PR archivable. The two goals are not easily reconcilable, though some work with bots might do it. Also, if we don't put the discussion on article talk, but on a page, I don't see that we care where it is. I don't think it was ever a goal of the workshop to fix the way archived PR was stored; we just wanted the discussion on article talk.
I know it's a little frustrating to have Sandy come in and make us revisit a point, but she's quite right that we had not considered ArticleHistory fully, and it does need a resolution. I think Sandy's opinion on not wanting to do PRs on article talk pages or subpages is probably a minority one, but her comments about not seeing a reason to change PR page naming seem reasonable, if we accept the need for an archivable page.
I'd like to get your current take on these points. It also strikes me that we're seeing a little fatigue in the participants. I have some ideas on how to help ameliorate that problem which I'd like to talk to you about at some point too. Mike Christie (talk) 12:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Hey G'Guy. I've started a thread on PR regarding the categories: Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Categorizing_PR. Least problematic and easiest to implement. Cheers, Marskell 08:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Today, the vast majority of mathematicians who are neither constructivists nor finitists accept Cantor's work on transfinite sets and arithmetic, recognizing it as a major paradigm shift.
Hi,
I'm really needing a second opinion on this edit. It's a bit important, I'm afraid.If you could see your way 'round to looking at it, I'd be in your debt. Later! -- Ling.Nut 13:30, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Can you please drop a reply to Pedro in the neutral section, letting him know how you came across my RfA before it was transcluded? Lara ❤ Love 17:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Perspicacite delisted a Good Article improperly, and I fixed the errors made with the oldid and the article history. The delisting discussion is here and our exchange was deleted by Perspicacite [1] with the edit summary "na na na is not the response I'm looking for". This is a depressing moment in my Wikipedia experience, and demonstrates an arrogance I have not previously encountered, so I am recording it here as a benchmark. Geometry guy 01:39, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Just to let you know I read the exchanges with Perspicacite; yes, seems pretty darn uncivil to me. Don't know if you noticed this thread: he's been uncivil to others too. This stuff happens, as I know you know. Don't let it annoy you. Mike Christie (talk) 01:56, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I have to record a contrasting experience at Battlefield 2142, where I deleted a copyright violation, and did not mince my words. The "Good point, lets fix it" response from EpicWizard impressed me greatly. Geometry guy 20:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for speaking up for the (deleted) Erdos number category. I appreciate your frustration. I'd urge you to stop in from time to time, just to pitch in a vote; the ...gosh, I don't know how to categorize them. The Voters-for-Deletion may get bored. But I'm not doing a great job of keeping my temper, myself. Probably we'll deal with this programmatically (e.g. a mathematician infobox) and everyone will declare victory. Pete St.John 19:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi there, do you think you would find the admin tools at all useful? I'd be happy to nominate you if you did and I'm sure you'd have no trouble in passing since you're very well-qualified. Tim Vickers 17:46, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that all users who can be trusted with the tools should have the tools, even if they think they will only make occasional use of them. In addition, I'm trying to get a few more experienced admins, particularly expert contributors, at the moment and you seen an extremely well-qualified candidate. Since your application would certainly pass quite easily, it really would be no trouble for me to nominate you. Tim Vickers 22:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I've blanked out the auto-fill expiry date from the template and added an in-line note discouraging pre-transclusion voting. That should avoid any problems. Tim Vickers 23:11, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
It's going great... just as I knew it would. And I think this is the longest you've ever let your talk page get. :P Lara ❤ Love 14:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm gonna link Trovatore to this, too:
“ | "Even if we were descended from Jews ten times over, and even though I may be, in principle, completely in favour of equal rights for Hebrews, in social life I prefer Christians..."<ref name="pi87">Purkert and Ilgauds 1987, p. 15.</ref> | ” |
.. I have no access to Purkert and Ilgauds. Do either of you wanna track this down and verify it's correct? Thanks! -- Ling.Nut 06:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Peer review/volunteers. Marskell 12:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
You have one. :) Lara ❤ Love 20:52, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. Your nominator said that my discussion was inappropriate, so I figured it wasn't helping. You do whatever you think will help you. -- Jayron32| talk| contribs 05:31, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Dearest G'guy,
Thank you for your participation in
my RFA, which closed successfully with 137 supports, 22 opposes, and 5 neutrals. Your kind words of support and willingness to zealously defend me are very much appreciated. You have been an inspiration to me and I look forward to making you proud. I also wish you luck in your RFA, although I don't think you will need it. I would like to give special thanks to
The_undertow and
Phoenix-wiki for their co-nominations. Thank you again and best regards.
Nothing to do with Wikipedia - but someone suggested I put this idea to you.
If I have data for a finite region of the Euclidean plane, expressed as a bitmap, I can easily get a browser to render it. But suppose what I want rendered is data for some other kind of 2-space? A torus, say, or the hyperbolic plane? What I would like to be able to use is a java applet, such that I give it an image file in some standard format for the hyperbolic plane, and it renders it in a browser as a Poincaré disk. I have found http://www.inxight.com/VizServerDemos/demo/orgchart.html which shows the kind of effect that I want. But I can't find any such applet available for me to use.
If you know of the existence of such an applet, I will be grateful if you tell me. If you don't, maybe you might persuade someone to write one? Maproom 13:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
...thank you for your participation. I withdrew with 83 supports, 42 opposes, and 8 neutrals. Your kind words and constructive criticism are very much appreciated. I look forward to using the knowledge I have accrued through the process to better the project. I would like to give special thanks to Tim Vickers and Wikidudeman for their co-nominations.
Now links like this work: [2] THe format name is passed to the toolserver script as a parameter. Also, the code works for all wikimedia projects, and it uses more user-friendly output by default ( try it). It's not completely done yet, but it should be good enough now to be of some use. Which category lists did you want VeblenBot to update on the wiki? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The PR page would be the most accessible to automate. GA and GAN would be possible, but it would take quite a bit of work to integrate a bot with their current layouts, and I don't think I will have time to do it anytime soon. My coding time for the immediate future will be occupied with Wikipedia 1.0. But PR shouldn't be too hard, since it is just a list of transcluded pages,and I would be glad to share my code if you could find another person to who knows Perl.
What about the template name {{ Peer review entry}} for an article's entry on WP:PR? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Can you please check that my edit to Area is correct? Thanks! Argyriou (talk) 22:09, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi G-guy!
I was delighted and surprised to see your answer to my question about conflicts of interest in reviewing Good articles! Your name was just shining on the page. :) I'm a little embarrassed to say that, although I knew that you were involved somehow with GA's, I'd never taken the time to learn how much or in what way. :( There's always too many distractions! Forgive me now why I toddle off somewhere else GA-related, but I'm very glad you came back, however briefly, and hoping that our paths will entwine more in the future, Willow 14:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
PS. Did you notice that Cronholm was mentioned, albeit obliquely, in the Wikipedia Weekly interview with Tamsin? Mine ears did boggle! :)
Geometry Guy, I just wanted to let you know I'm interested in setting up a project page along the lines outlined at the Village Pump discussion, but I'm going to spend some time first talking to Marskell and see if there's some way to proceed using the page he's set up. I'll drop you a note if I do create a page, to see if you're interested in participating. Mike Christie (talk) 00:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
You mentioned technical reasons for making persondata a subpage in the article's talk namespace. Looking at the templates, it wasn't obvious to me what technical obstacle was being addressed. Could you elaborate? I am using your idea on Genealogy wikia (crediting your page of course), and the tests looks very promising so far. Regards, - Mak 10:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I saw you've been using the "ref" system for citations in homotopy groups of spheres. I recently discovered the Harvard citation system which is easier to use: you only have to click once instead of twice to see the reference. See von Neumann algebra for an example of how this system works. R.e.b. 01:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
A minor suggestion is to use the "citation" rather than the "cite book" etc. templates in the homotopy groups of spheres article: the only essential difference between these is that with the "citation" templates you can use the harvard citation templates in the "notes" section to link to the "references" section. For some strange reason you cannot do this with the "cite" templates. I'm not going to do this myself while you are working on the article unless you think it's a good idea. Good luck with getting it to FA status. R.e.b. 21:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
In the Homeopathy GA reassessment you stated that the Lead does not summarize the article. Could you offer some specifics here, on the articles talk page, or on my talk page so that I can improve it? Thanks. Wikidudeman (talk) 02:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Try starting a new section or moving it to here. Otherwise it will be overlooked. Wikidudeman (talk) 01:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes articles that I am working on also get protected for long periods of time due to edit warring. See the Race of Ancient Egyptians article for an example. It was protected due to edit warring (which I was uninvolved with btw) and now most improvments have gone to a stand still and the editors seem reluctant to agree to rules to avoid edit wars to get it unprotected. Wikidudeman (talk) 17:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
For spaces with non trivial fundamental group, you cannot define the homotopy groups as the group of homotopy classes of maps from a sphere to the space. You really do need to choose base points to make things work. The problem is that to compose two maps you need to choose a path connecting points in the images of the spheres, and the composition of two maps may depend on which path you choose if the space is not simply connected. So without a choice of base point the composition is not well defined. And π0 is correctly defined as the set of homotopy classes of base point preserving maps from the 0-sphere, which is indeed the set of path components. In particular the higher homotopy groups of the 0-sphere are indeed the trivial group. (The zeroth homotopy space of the 0-sphere is not a group, but a set with 2 elements.) R.e.b. 19:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
No, this problem does not arise for spheres of dimension at least one. In general the set of homotopy classes of maps from S^n to a pathwise connected space X can be identified with the orbits of pi_1(X) on pi_n(X). For spheres the actions of pi_1(X) on pi_n(X) happen to be trivial, so in this case the homotopy groups can be identified with the homotopy classes of maps from S^n to X and you can get away without using base points. (For homotopy groups of S^0 you do need to use base points to get the right answer.) R.e.b. 20:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Anything correct is OK by me. Homotopy group makes the same error in the introduction. R.e.b. 20:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Is there any reason you don't have a userpage? Would you like one? Lara ❤ Love 05:00, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi -- I agree we need to archive, but do you have any idea where MiszaBot actually wrote the archive? I can't see it anywhere. Mike Christie (talk) 11:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I thought that the archive had not yet been created so I reverted the removal of info. I did the archive myself, but it is odd. The bot contribs shows it wrote it to the archive page, however, there is no link. Is there a code missing from the archive page, perhaps? Lara ❤ Love 18:05, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's what I meant, really. The edit summary listed the archive page, but it wasn't a link. I'm thinking there might be code missing. It doesn't make sense. And it's probably something obvious. The page exists, so why is it not a link in the bot contribs? Lara ❤ Love 18:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I assume you saw this little poll. Did you want to vote? I think we can begin digging into a single topic soon enough. Marskell 13:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi G-Guy, Seems like you don't store up barnstars, don't keep a userpage going, etc. That's cool. If you ever do decide to do the above, you can put this on it. You know I don't really keep close track of what's going on these days, but I seem to have seen your sig below a nontrivial amount of the GA grunt work, and of course you're prominent in all the relevant discussions. Just wanted to let you know your efforts are appreciated. -- Ling.Nut 03:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
![]() |
The Good Article Medal of Merit | |
For sterling contributions above and beyond the call of duty in creating a GA system that provides the best possible service, I award you this GAMedal. Ling.Nut 03:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC) |
The set of homotopy classes of mappings from the 1-sphere to a path connected X is (essentially) the set of conjugacy classes, not elements, of the fundamental group. Did you really mean to imply that conjugacy classes of a group are essentially the same is its elements? R.e.b. 19:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I meant the first sentence of the paragraph ("The i-th homotopy group of a topological space X is essentially the set of homotopy classes of mappings from the i-sphere Si to X.") The word "essentially" may be a little misleading; perhaps it could be replaced by "related to". R.e.b. 19:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
On the left side of very page there's a link called "What links here". That's what I was talking about. But I understand that you want the info on a PR page, & with a date. OK, good. :-) -- Ling.Nut 05:39, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Apologies for the delay in reply; real life is keeping me busy lately, and I am not contributing much to Wikipedia. While I did not find point of view bias as troubling as some, last July, I was concerned about article stability, which is a disservice to readers and which disrupts whatever viewpoint a piece of writing hopes to achive. I suggested at the the time that regularly contributing editors should write drafts in sandboxes, work out differences there, and bring the results to the article. The article should be considered a 'stable release'; the sandboxes unstable development versions. I don't think this practice was undertaken, and, judging from the history, the article has remained volatile. On that basis, I find no discomfort with your delisting decision and support it. I think the regular editors do not deliberately push point of view, but do get mired in points of view. The delicate trick is establishing a 'separation of concerns' which is distinctly different from 'indifference' but which does avoid advocacy — not by being disengaged (a quality of indiffernce) but by choosing how to be engaged. The manner of engagement that I thinks works best is that of a 'range of opinion collector' a fictional viewpoint character who cannot rest until every facet of a topic has been sucessfully netted and is properly displayed in the collection case, a metaphor for the Wikipedia article.
Editors who figure out 'the neutral viewpoint' are rare and invaluable to Wikipedia. For my own account, when I undertake a piece of writing, I spend no small amount of time considering the 'voice' of the writer, to wit: his or her world view, the backstory giving rise to that world view, and how that world view influences choice of words (at a small scale), and the arc of narrative (at a large scale). One can observe that it is 'just me' choosing the words and constructing the arc of narrative, and I do not dispute that. At the lowest level of execution, it is just my fingers on the keyboard. But at a higher planning level, when I am considering how a piece of writing will go, I really do strive to construct a fictional viewpoint character with a distinct personality and world view that I do not (and would not) commingle with my own. The purpose of this exercise is to separate my ego from my writing — so that it becomes the writing. In doing so, (I think) I can obtain a wider range of style and point of view than if I did not consider constructing a view point character at all. In other words, if I only wrote with my own 'voice.'
When I write for Wikipedia, I strive for a viewpoint character who is interested in everything but ventures opinions on nothing — a kind of character I would love to have at parties. No matter what the topic may be, the character is able to converse about it, but, in not venturing opinions, the character does not offend anyone. To make this example concrete, the character strives to be informed on every possible meme that attaches to the symbol 'Veganism' —— memes issuing from advocates, memes issuing from detractors, and memes from commentators on the sidelines. This character is obsessed with being informed on every possible facet of Veganism, but reluctant to champion any one facet of the discussion, for to do so would close the character off from 'the discussions on the other side.' and the character loathes to have his or her range of inquiry limited in that way. The character is a collector of viewpoints and wants accurate and complete specimens of all the memes in his or her collection cases — the wikipedia articles.
It's a bit of a mental trick to set up a construct in your head who may not quite hold your world view or be motivated to write in ways other than how you would write — it's a 'Let's pretend I'm somebody else.' kind of game that some people might find as being untrue to one self, self-deceptive, or perhaps mentally unhealthy. All that notwithstanding, the separation of ego from article is a necessary skill for Wikipedians, and fostering a construct viewpoint character is the avenue that works well for me. By supposing that the character writing the Wikipedia article is (unlike myself) intent on collecting every viewpoint of a topic and (unlike myself) is unwilling to venture any opinion on the article, establishes a separation of concern that disinvests ego. So I happen to think that Veganism is a questionable lifestyle. The construct writing the article is disinterested in my opinion and simply wants to collect whatever notion that may have been attached to the 'Veganism' symbol. I suppose I am not surprised by the notion that good writers suffer from mental illnesses or alcoholism citation needed; they have all of those characters in their heads that they've spent years constructing, yelling at each other, having sexual liasons, lying about them, and cheating on one another. I suppose I should be thankful that it has taken me years to work this trick in just a limited fashion, and can still sleep peacefully. Take care, and thanks for conducting the Good Article review. Gosgood 16:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Geometry Guy, just wanted to post here because I don't want to clog up the workshop talk page with more questions. As I recall the earlier discussions, the goal was to have the conversation on article talk, as being a location more likely to encourage collaboration. It's a separate goal to have the PR archivable. The two goals are not easily reconcilable, though some work with bots might do it. Also, if we don't put the discussion on article talk, but on a page, I don't see that we care where it is. I don't think it was ever a goal of the workshop to fix the way archived PR was stored; we just wanted the discussion on article talk.
I know it's a little frustrating to have Sandy come in and make us revisit a point, but she's quite right that we had not considered ArticleHistory fully, and it does need a resolution. I think Sandy's opinion on not wanting to do PRs on article talk pages or subpages is probably a minority one, but her comments about not seeing a reason to change PR page naming seem reasonable, if we accept the need for an archivable page.
I'd like to get your current take on these points. It also strikes me that we're seeing a little fatigue in the participants. I have some ideas on how to help ameliorate that problem which I'd like to talk to you about at some point too. Mike Christie (talk) 12:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Hey G'Guy. I've started a thread on PR regarding the categories: Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Categorizing_PR. Least problematic and easiest to implement. Cheers, Marskell 08:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Today, the vast majority of mathematicians who are neither constructivists nor finitists accept Cantor's work on transfinite sets and arithmetic, recognizing it as a major paradigm shift.
Hi,
I'm really needing a second opinion on this edit. It's a bit important, I'm afraid.If you could see your way 'round to looking at it, I'd be in your debt. Later! -- Ling.Nut 13:30, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Can you please drop a reply to Pedro in the neutral section, letting him know how you came across my RfA before it was transcluded? Lara ❤ Love 17:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Perspicacite delisted a Good Article improperly, and I fixed the errors made with the oldid and the article history. The delisting discussion is here and our exchange was deleted by Perspicacite [1] with the edit summary "na na na is not the response I'm looking for". This is a depressing moment in my Wikipedia experience, and demonstrates an arrogance I have not previously encountered, so I am recording it here as a benchmark. Geometry guy 01:39, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Just to let you know I read the exchanges with Perspicacite; yes, seems pretty darn uncivil to me. Don't know if you noticed this thread: he's been uncivil to others too. This stuff happens, as I know you know. Don't let it annoy you. Mike Christie (talk) 01:56, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I have to record a contrasting experience at Battlefield 2142, where I deleted a copyright violation, and did not mince my words. The "Good point, lets fix it" response from EpicWizard impressed me greatly. Geometry guy 20:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for speaking up for the (deleted) Erdos number category. I appreciate your frustration. I'd urge you to stop in from time to time, just to pitch in a vote; the ...gosh, I don't know how to categorize them. The Voters-for-Deletion may get bored. But I'm not doing a great job of keeping my temper, myself. Probably we'll deal with this programmatically (e.g. a mathematician infobox) and everyone will declare victory. Pete St.John 19:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi there, do you think you would find the admin tools at all useful? I'd be happy to nominate you if you did and I'm sure you'd have no trouble in passing since you're very well-qualified. Tim Vickers 17:46, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that all users who can be trusted with the tools should have the tools, even if they think they will only make occasional use of them. In addition, I'm trying to get a few more experienced admins, particularly expert contributors, at the moment and you seen an extremely well-qualified candidate. Since your application would certainly pass quite easily, it really would be no trouble for me to nominate you. Tim Vickers 22:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I've blanked out the auto-fill expiry date from the template and added an in-line note discouraging pre-transclusion voting. That should avoid any problems. Tim Vickers 23:11, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
It's going great... just as I knew it would. And I think this is the longest you've ever let your talk page get. :P Lara ❤ Love 14:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm gonna link Trovatore to this, too:
“ | "Even if we were descended from Jews ten times over, and even though I may be, in principle, completely in favour of equal rights for Hebrews, in social life I prefer Christians..."<ref name="pi87">Purkert and Ilgauds 1987, p. 15.</ref> | ” |
.. I have no access to Purkert and Ilgauds. Do either of you wanna track this down and verify it's correct? Thanks! -- Ling.Nut 06:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Peer review/volunteers. Marskell 12:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
You have one. :) Lara ❤ Love 20:52, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. Your nominator said that my discussion was inappropriate, so I figured it wasn't helping. You do whatever you think will help you. -- Jayron32| talk| contribs 05:31, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Dearest G'guy,
Thank you for your participation in
my RFA, which closed successfully with 137 supports, 22 opposes, and 5 neutrals. Your kind words of support and willingness to zealously defend me are very much appreciated. You have been an inspiration to me and I look forward to making you proud. I also wish you luck in your RFA, although I don't think you will need it. I would like to give special thanks to
The_undertow and
Phoenix-wiki for their co-nominations. Thank you again and best regards.
Nothing to do with Wikipedia - but someone suggested I put this idea to you.
If I have data for a finite region of the Euclidean plane, expressed as a bitmap, I can easily get a browser to render it. But suppose what I want rendered is data for some other kind of 2-space? A torus, say, or the hyperbolic plane? What I would like to be able to use is a java applet, such that I give it an image file in some standard format for the hyperbolic plane, and it renders it in a browser as a Poincaré disk. I have found http://www.inxight.com/VizServerDemos/demo/orgchart.html which shows the kind of effect that I want. But I can't find any such applet available for me to use.
If you know of the existence of such an applet, I will be grateful if you tell me. If you don't, maybe you might persuade someone to write one? Maproom 13:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
...thank you for your participation. I withdrew with 83 supports, 42 opposes, and 8 neutrals. Your kind words and constructive criticism are very much appreciated. I look forward to using the knowledge I have accrued through the process to better the project. I would like to give special thanks to Tim Vickers and Wikidudeman for their co-nominations.
Now links like this work: [2] THe format name is passed to the toolserver script as a parameter. Also, the code works for all wikimedia projects, and it uses more user-friendly output by default ( try it). It's not completely done yet, but it should be good enough now to be of some use. Which category lists did you want VeblenBot to update on the wiki? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The PR page would be the most accessible to automate. GA and GAN would be possible, but it would take quite a bit of work to integrate a bot with their current layouts, and I don't think I will have time to do it anytime soon. My coding time for the immediate future will be occupied with Wikipedia 1.0. But PR shouldn't be too hard, since it is just a list of transcluded pages,and I would be glad to share my code if you could find another person to who knows Perl.
What about the template name {{ Peer review entry}} for an article's entry on WP:PR? — Carl ( CBM · talk) 22:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Can you please check that my edit to Area is correct? Thanks! Argyriou (talk) 22:09, 13 November 2007 (UTC)