User talk:Orthogonal/archive 11 Nov 2003 - 27 Nov 2003

Welcome message (jimfbleak)

Hi, orthogonal, welcome to Wikipedia, let me know if you need any help, jimfbleak 19:58, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Celebs with history of illicit drug use (216.244.12.252)

Re: list of celebrities with illicit drug history": Clinton's illicit drug use is only a matter of rumor. And why did this user remove Joseph McCarthy, a known cocaine user, off the list?

Um, this user (orthogonal) did not. This user (orthogonal) added Dean, Edwards, and Kerry. In the future, would you mind signing your question, so I can more easily respond? Thanks! orthogonal 22:16, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, now this user (orthogonal) did remove GW Bush, A Hitler, J McCarthy. orthogonal 22:28, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Vandalism? (Cyan)

Hi orthogonal, in reference to your recent post on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress, I believe it's important that off-topic comments (i.e., "erotic actress" vs. "porn star") be made in a place where they are on-topic. The reason for this is that if the comment is ignored as irrelevant, it leaves the commenter high and dry, whereas if the comment is gathers responses, it bloats the page with extraneous commentary which someone will just have to move eventually anyway. In this specific case, the comment should probably go to Talk:Erotic actor. It's just a little thing, I know. Cheers, Cyan 22:29, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Fair point. orthogonal 22:58, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

KingPr0n and Porn Stars (vudujava)

In his KingPr0n's defense, the alterations on the porn star pages were genuine additions of genuine information, albeit concerned exclusively with anal sex. Of course, that subject's not wildly surprising on a page about a porn star. (Whether it belong in wikipedia is another story.) But it can't objectively be called vandalism, I don't think. By the way, both starlet pages use the euphemism "erotic actress" rather than the more stright-forward and obvious "porn star". Why the weasel words?

Weasel words are not mine, just following the style in use. As far as User:Kingpr0n goes, the only edits he's made were references to anal sex (maybe not vandalism, but certainly beyond the bounds of good taste) and an announcement on current events that he had joined the 'pedia. Even his comments about anal sex are mere speculation and add no value. Vandal? Time will tell. vudu 00:15, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Are you sure his comments on anal sex are speculative? He claimed the first actress had never done anal scenes, and perhaps he's familiar with her, uh, oeuvre, or reviews of it. As to the second,um, entertaining three men simultaneously, again, perhaps he has a copy of that video. My point is, it's not vandalism. Now, as a matter of taste, I don't know that we need a full catalog of every porn actress's versatility, but I won't a priori rule it out (although apparently iadb.com provides something similar, acoording to a link from wikipedia). orthogonal 01:35, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The speculation I am referring to is claiming that Tera Patrick is doing this in preperation for a high dollar comeback in porn. There's no proof and therefore the claim is baseless and inappropriate. And if he has a copy of Sylvia Saint taking three men simultaniously, I'd like to see it. As an aside, both Tera Patrick and Sylvia Saint are considered "retired" from the business. Both are supposed to have love interests who don't want them in the biz anymore. Rumor also has it that Saint gave birth to a child about a year ago. But I digress. I'd like some proof of the practice as it concerns both individuals. vudu 02:45, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Point taken; you'd like to, ahem, see the evidence. I bow to your superior knowledge of careers of these actresses. orthogonal 05:30, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Superior knowledge of careers of these actresses? I'm blushing. Hmmm... maybe I should get a life, eh. =) vudu 12:57, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Deletion of Daisy Girl (Secretlondon)

'daisy commercial from johnson compaign' - I don't think that even counts as a stub - would you like it undeleted? Secretlondon 23:29, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

Deeleting crap doesn't mean that the subject itself isn't worth writing about - I'm sure it is. Why don't you write a better stub yourself? Secretlondon

My thought was that perhaps that the original creator meant to come back and fill it out later -- I wanted to not discourage this person if that was the case, and thought it possible, given the cryptic brevity of the existing page, you thought it mere vandalism. orthogonal 00:01, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Easter Bradford, Bradfordism, and VfD page organization (Bmills)

Just to say I share your dismay re Easter Bradford. I did your experiment with my name on Google and I passed the google test but I'm damned certain I do net merit a Wikipedia page dedicated to me! Bmills 14:30, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What is the passing score anyway? It's ridiculous that we have an article on a club DJ. orthogonal 15:07, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This from Wikipedia:Deletion policy At the end of five days, if 2/3 majority vote to delete, the page will be removed. Otherwise the page remains. The page will also remain if it has been improved enough since the initial listing that the reason for listing no longer applies anymore. This requires that a reason be given initially.

I meant, what's the score to pass the "Google test", which I assume is calibrated in number of hits returned by Google. orthogonal 16:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that VfD tends to contain more arguments than actual votes. I looked back at the archive of this discussion and found it quite difficult to unearth a breakdown, Maybe the process should be changed so that at the end of the 5 days, people review all the points raised and there is a simple Yes/No vote? Having said all that, some people were actually in favour of keeping this vanity stuff anyway. Bmills 15:45, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Or separate a VfD entry into two parts, argument and vote, e.g.:

see my edit just now on Wikipedia:Village pump. Bmills 16:55, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

By pure chance, I just finished a short article that clearly fails the gogle test by any standard, but which I feel merits inclusion. I'll be interested to see if putting it on Wikipedia:Village pump just now opens up a debate on the whole question. Bmills 17:13, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Foo Bar Baz.
- Discussion: This is page is a vanity page authored by Mr. Baz. orthogonal 16:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  - I disagree, Mr. Baz is world famous in Japan! !orthogonal 16:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Votes:
  - Delete. orthogonal 16:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  - Keep. !orthogonal 16:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
    - Clearly none of these orthogonals know anything about this subject. Their POV comments show them up as being right-wing anarchist friends and/or enemies of Mr Baz. I vote for prolonging this discussion for as long as possible. Meanwhile, maybe someone can go and rewrite the page so we end up with no clue what we were voting on to begin with? Bmills 09:10, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
      - Mod parent up! +5 funny! orthogonal 09:14, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Seriously, this is a good idea and you should propose it formally (is there a way to do such a thing?). Bmills 09:55, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

- Thanks! It is (or was) on Village Pump, I think. Nobody bit at it. I may do it unilaterally for VfD entries that get out of hand. orthogonal 10:01, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Dolphin Brain/Dolphin intelligence (ChrisG)

The article is a redirect from Dolphin intelligence. So it is therefore about both. I would be fine about moving it all to a dolphin intelligence page of its own, and restoring the shell you created about dolphin brain, i.e. splitting the pages. It is not about dolphin, cognition, behaviour and training, if people are looking for a page on dolphins they will mostly likely either type in Dolphin or Dolphin intelligence. :ChrisG

Look, how about a well researched page on non-human cognition? orthogonal 18:51, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't want to do a page on non-human cognition, I want to do a page on the narrow issue of Dolphin intelligence. Personally I can't see why someone wouldn't be interested in talking about the dolphin brain unless you were also talking about intelligence, so I don't see why they can't go together. However, as I said I would be quite happy to split the pages if its an issue. You get 41.200 entries if you type dolphin intelligence into google. : ChrisG 18:58, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As you will. Please do us all a favor and heavily cite all sources. orthogonal 19:03, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Would you prefer me to split the pages? That would make more sense in my opinion. : ChrisG 19:25, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

To be totally honest, no. I'd prefer to confine what I see as a problem to a single page. If your split left Dolphin brain a purely physiological account of the brain, I'd then argue for merging that with the dolphin page.

Now, why am I being so picky about this? Because the original Dolphin brain page was full of rampant New Age kookery, and I fear that any page focussing entirely on dolphin cognition will attract edits that derive more from wishful thinking and ideology than from hard science. I'd love it if it turned out that dolphins are sentient, but the evidence so far does not support that conclusion. This in no way undermines my concern for dolphin conservation, or my appreciation of the species as a unique part of the ecosystem. But liking dolphins does not make them intelligent; clever tricks do not make them intelligent; mere speculation does not make them intelligent. orthogonal 19:38, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Got to go play soccer. I'll continue this tomorrow probably. I understand your concerns, but Wikipedia shouldn't shy away from controversial and kooky subjects, it should report them with NPOV, and thus perhaps add a little bit more sense to the nonsense in the world. I think the purely dolphin brain stuff should go in the main dolphin article. : ChrisG 19:42, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(your valid point and my response below copied from my user page in case you haven't seen it. :ChrisG 11:19, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC) Chris, I appreciate your taking care to paste my signature line to each paragraph of my talk post under dolphin brain, when you interspersed your comments. But I'd appreciate it if you would indent rather than outdent your responses (if you feel that you must interrupt the continuity of my posts with your responses). Outdenting gives the impression that I am responding to you. Even better would be if you posted the entirety of your response after what you are responding to, so that whatever train of thought I was trying to express -- however poorly I may express myself compared to your profundities -- is preserved. orthogonal 07:06, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The reason I outdented my responses, was so my comments matched up with my initial points, which I seem to remember the style guide suggests. However, it doesn't work very well when you intersperse comments I agree. I understand your point about breaking up the flow of your argument; but it is difficult to respond to specific points unless you do so. : ChrisG 08:04, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wkikiproject London: A page for every Tube Station (Morwen)

Why not? They are linked to after all, and I'm already engaged with others in a project to illustrate them all.... Most of them have interesting histories, Wikiproject London wants all the articles, etc... Morwen 19:50, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

So you'll incorporate their histories and make them more than stubs? I'd assumed you were listen each on a separate page in order to have them picked up by the search function, which I would say is useful. orthogonal 19:53, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We have every intention of doing that, but are going for breadth first. No particular reason for this approach other than the perhaps the fact that people are encouraged to add stuff if there's already a stub. We've already had several of these tube stub articles added to by other people, which would have been very unlikely they'd have written them in the first place. Morwen 19:56, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

More Dolphin Brain (Jwrosenzweig)

Ortho, don't worry, no offense taken. I know only a little about dolphin intelligence (I've done a bit of reading on cognition, but mostly human), so I knew getting into it that I'd probably screw it up. I just saw a lot of changes that needed to happen at once, in my opinion, and I figured doing so would anger everyone who'd tussled over it, hence the proposed alternative. Tell me honestly (you seem to know much on this topic), should I just scrap my proposed alternative, in your opinion, or is it enough of an improvement over what we presently have to keep tweaking it? (For example, cutting that note on transmission speed...I was skeptical about what I wrote myself, and can't explain why I left it in. Me trying to nod to the New Agers, which is almost always a bad idea since I have little idea how to do so properly.) Perhaps I should avoid this particular discussion and move on to another article where I've a bit more background? Well, let me know what you think. Thanks for taking the time to comment! Jwrosenzweig 23:51, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No need to defer to me. Edit boldy, as the Wikipedia advocates. My policy on this controversial subject is to always make sure I cite any facts I write, and to stick to the facts. I won't dictate what your policy should be. Don't worry about offending me, or the New Agers. My suggestion would be to merge your treatment of the subject with the existing treatement, where you think you'll better what is currently there. orthogonal 00:07, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words regarding ChrisG's commandeering of my stuff. Part of me is shrugging it off and chuckling a little, and part of me is quite displeased. Ah well. He did have the good sense to take the best additions I made, though sadly he didn't even adapt them to the article he was adding them to. Well, I think I'll leave dolphins alone for a while, but I hope we run into each other again: it was a pleasure working with you. Jwrosenzweig 00:43, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I predict it will be sooner than later. ChrisG's planning an article on dolphin intelligence. orthogonal 00:48, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sociobiology (Peregrine981)

Thanks for you comment. I have read "Defenders of the Truth." I have been consulting it for my update on that page, although I fear I still haven't done the controversy full justice. Its an improvement, but there's still work to be done. Especially in clarifying the scientific objections. PS, what's the etiquette on posting these discussions? Do I post on my discussion page in response to your question, or on your page? Peregrine981 00:56, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Dune (RickK)

Thanks. It still needs editing, there are a lot of misspellings and things. RickK 04:31, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

VfD (Angela)

Please do not make large changes on a page like VfD without discussing it first. This idea had already been rejected. See the talk page archives. Such unilateral changes have led to large scale edit wars in the past. Angela 22:55, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry, as I mentioned on Talk:VfD, I didn't know it had previously been rejected, and was following the "edit boldly" maxim (does that maxim not apply to meta pages?). I think you'll agree that VfD is hard to navigate, entries are hard to find and to edit, and the chance of edit conflicts relatively high, given the size of the page. Perhaps it could be be divided into one page per day? orthogonal 23:23, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

On a page as widely used as that, it's a good idea to at least check the talk page first rather than being bold. The split-by-day thing was trialled in early September and led to an all night edit war between Jtdirl and Eloquence. Edit conflicts would still apply if you edit a section and someone else edits the whole thing. Angela 23:41, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I was suggesting seperate pages for each day; this would, on average, reduce edit conflicts by a factor seven. orthogonal 01:11, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant. 7 separate pages were created in September. This is what the fight was about. Eloquence wanted one page. Lots of other people wanted 7. You could try to get a vote going on it, but I'm doubtful it would be well received as there are already so many VfD subpages (Copyvio|Foreign|Images|Redirects|Lists|Cleanup). Perhaps it would need to replace one or more of those subpages? Anyway, you never know till you try. Follow the rules at Wikipedia:Voting guideline if you do. Angela 01:48, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Refactoring (Angela)

Thank you for your kind words on the village pump. Perhaps a Wikipedia:Refactoring page would be useful for agreeing some methods for dealing with talk pages, as opposed to dealing with personal attacks, which is already covered at Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. Angela 04:27, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Not at all; believe me, I've noticed how often you show up in Recent Changes, and how often it's for stuff that can't be fun, like carrying out deletions resulting from VfD votes. My thought -- and you'll have to pardon me, if there are "deletionists" and "inclusionists" on Wikipedia, I'm perhaps an "archivist" (or less nobly, a "packrat") -- would be simply to archive old talk pages, or contiguous portions thereof.

That's fine for now for most topics where we only have a couple of archives, if that, but what about in 2 or 5 or 10 years time when there are dozens if not hundreds of such archives. Have we already have seven for creationism and 12 for Talk:New Imperialism. Ideally, people new to page would read those, but I can't see anyone wanting to wade through that many. Ideally, there would be a one page summary for newbies to the page.

I guess that's motivated by my awareness of my own fallibility: I might summarize a page, but I might miss some subtle argument, especially if it alluded to some previous discussion I was unfamiliar with. I'd be chagrined to later be told by some user that my summary had missed his best point.

Yes, that is a danger and misinterpretations happen. Martin is someone who regularly refactors and I have had to twice change what he's done- one time because he had misunderstood what I said and once because after the refactoring my comment made no sense, so I removed it. However, I didn't think this was something he ought to be blamed for. It's a wiki. I have the right to edit it, so I just changed it. In my opinion, having some misrepresentation of what I've said on a page is way better than having a personal attack against me left on a page.

Of course, I suppose that even then it would be recoverable in the past revisions of the talk page, so perhaps I'm worrying too much. On the other hand, sometimes that stuff gets buried very deeply in a bunch of minor edits, and even with the visual diffs is hard to follow.

The best thing to do if making a summary is provide a dif link to the exact version you were summarising. This saves having to root back through the history should someone want the original. When page histories get too large, going back through the history is practically impossible anyway- try finding out what was said on VfD in August for example. It's about 7000 edits, and even if you can figure that out and set the url to "offset=7000", there's a large chance the operation will time out. Believe me- I've tried it!

Now given that the original text were easily recoverable, I'd find a summary to be a real service; I've had to dig through several interminable Talk archives trying to find out where and why something happened. I suppose that what might work would be a summary of the relevant positions (not arguments, just positions) with a list of each position's supporters, resolution or consensus reached (if any), then the main points of the arguments for each, with a link to the archived or earlier revision containing the full text. I'd be happiest if the summarizer was someone not involved in the disagreement being summarized, but on the other hand, I'm not certain many persons would want to summarize something they cared so little about as to not have contributed to the argument in the first place. (Perhaps newbies could be recruited? They could learn about past arguments so as not to repeat them, and aid the community at the same time.)

Unless you find someone who just likes summarizing for the fun of it, then I doubt it. It is an incredibly time consuming job. Most people would far rather spend 30 seconds archiving the page than two hours writing a summary. I do it for pages I am particularly involved with, like Talk:Votes for deletion and Talk:Deletion policy, but the fact I am aware of the issues makes the job easier. I think it would be far harder for someone not involved to do it. Also, being involved gives you more of a motivation to do it; it gives you a chance to remind yourself of the issues, and get a clearer understanding of them by coming back to them some weeks or months later in order to make a summary. Often with a much-talked about page, you can gloss over certain things at the time, which you only notice when re-reading later once other more contentious issues have been resolved.

Clearly, one would want a strong proponent of each position to review the treatment of his position and its supporting arguments; alternately, one could ask for one proponent of each position to produce his "side's" summary, with a limit on length. Then I'd want all (major) participants to review the summary for accuracy.

I always expected that people that involved in page would notice the summary anyway, and I would expect them to check it and edit if anything they'd said had been missummarised.

This, of course, has the chance of making the disagreement flare-up anew; on the other hand, if all participating agreed to disagree, it might also serve to bring them together again: "I still don't think you're right, Stan, but I see that you understand what my objections are, even if you don't agree with them." In any case, one would want a basic agreement that the summary was fair, NPOV, and more-or-less balanced.

A fair summary should be the aim. Can someone with a very strong point of view make it fair? Possibly not. But that's why you provide a link to the full version so people can judge for themselves.

God, I'm making this complicated. Sorry. I suppose the take-home point is this: no one should feel that the summary takes sides or misrepresents his arguments. I think it was that fear of being misrepresented (however unintentionally) that brought about the vehemence of some of the reactions to you on Village Pump. Circulating a draft summary for reactions probably will prevent most such problems, though at the cost of making summarizations rather cumbersome. orthogonal 05:05, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think a draft is necessary. Just put a disclaimer at the top saying "this summary was made by ~~~ and should reflect the general content of what was said. If you feel you have been misinterpreted, please edit the summary. The full version can be found at [… this page]. Perhaps it isn't worth worrying too much about as so few people seem interested in making talk pages more useful by doing this anyway.

Oh, and by the way, the summary of my talk page is the exception to this – that's supposed to biased and no true reflection of what people really said, in case you were going to base your assessment of my summarising skills on that! :)

Angela 07:12, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Bradfordistic (Maximus Rex)

Do you think you could refrain from using "Bradfordistic" to describe things? I think that it gives 'you know who' too much significance by acknowledging his existence. I'm hoping that now that the EB page redirects to his user page, it will eventually fade into it's rightful obscurity. Of course, you can do whatever you want, that's just my opinion on the matter. Maximus Rex 05:11, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've been using "Bradfordistic" an adjective for two reasons:

one, because there are still Bradford created pages PR pages on Wikipedia (I've listed most of them on VfD, and of those, I think there's consensus to delete many).

two, because I want to send a message to would-be Bradfords: Bradford tried to use his page to deceptively change his reputation ("musician, human-rights activist"), but the reputation he actually gets is his named used as a pejorative.

But I understand your desire not to give him any publicity, favorable or not; I'll stop using "Bradfordistic" once Bradford's deceptive contributions are eradicated from the Wiki.

And thank you very much for redirecting Bradford to user namespace. orthogonal 05:48, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

C programming language (Lirath Q. Pynnor)

Re:C -- I have edited it. If commenting on one of my edits, leave the message on my talk page to be sure I read it. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Actually, it's still up in the air, because I guess the debate is over what the languages were used for. Amateur end users probably did use BASIC, and probably still don't use C. Applications, however, were probably written in C or assembly; BASIC is simply too inefficient for writing computationally intensive programs. In the future I'll cross-post to your talk page if it was your edit. orthogonal 04:31, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Looked at your comments about the Gettysburg Address & posted a small reply on its Talk:Gettysburg Address page. Do not argue. But I am gone until Sunday -- user:dino.

Changed text of above a bit & improved -- user:dino

LOL. Getting them hooked early, are we? I'm always a bit reluctant to revert changes by anons to other users pages because quite often users change their pages when not logged in. Oh well. --snoyes 19:28, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, I appreciate your vigilance, and "BORING!" certainly looked like vandalism. I told my sister that she couldn't add "She is cool" to the Michelle Branch page, only NPOV facts, but that on my user page she could indulge in POV. ;) Still, I don't think I sold her on Wikipedia. orthogonal 19:38, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)