User talk:Grutness

I've moved discussions prior to March 15, 2005 from this page to archive pages (as listed below). A few of the items I've simply got rid of - if I have, it's simply that it was trivial and/or stuff which has been dealt with, and is therefore no longer relevant. The deletion is not a reflection of my opinion of the writers!

My intention is to move any threads that have not been touched for four weeks to the archives. Grutness|^hello?

Archive pages

User: Grutness/archive01 - October 2004-January 2005
User: Grutness/archive02 - February 2005
User: Grutness/archive03 - March 2005

Stub Categories

The full plain-text list of stub categories (formerly at User:Grutness/Stubs) is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, complete with links to the templates.

Adminship

I decided to test my strength. Do you want to nominate me for admin? Darwinek 16:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Motorcycle stub

I'll toss items here as I find them until you've established the stub, if that's OK with you. Courtland 16:16, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

Yeah, that's fine. I noticed a whole bunch under "Yamaha" at the end of Category:Stub, (about seven of them, IIRC. Grutness|^hello?

SM_125; Bimota; BMW_F650GS

Hidden line removal

You made me curious. You fulfilled my request for a better stub category within hours, but you don't have that page on your watchlist! Did you randomly find it, or there is some secret? :) Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 05:54, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm one of the drudges who goes through Category:Stub looking for things to categorise further. Sheer chance I did this one :) Grutness|^hello?

You are doing noble work! :) I tried going through stubs several times, but could not resist for too long. Way too much stuff I care little about. Oleg Alexandrov 06:03, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

China/Taiwan geography stubs

Hey wait. It can be done by a bot. Recently there is a moved of to . It is being done by a bot at the moment, and it involves a much bigger among of articles. :-D Perhaps we can first moved all the articles from to category:Mainland China geography stubs by seeking help from a bot, and we can pick the ROC or Taiwan-related ones out manually. — Insta ntnood 07:57, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

good point. Might as well hunt for the Taiwan (sorry, RoC :) ones now, though, and go through Cat:Taiwan-related stubs. Grutness|^hello?

Right. That's more troublesome, and could hardly be done by a bot. :-D — Insta ntnood 08:43, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

As you may have noticed I have created Template:ROC-geo-stub as a redirect to Template:Taiwan-geo-stub. I am using {{ROC-geo-stub}} to tag articles such as Wuchiu, Taiping, Pratas and Lesser Quemoy. I hope this will satisfy more people, such as Mababa. And in case there's a proposal to differentiate them in the future, it will be easier. :-D — Insta ntnood 18:33, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Riiight. You're expecting over 75 stubs from those islands? Better get writing... Grutness|^hello?

Not really, probably 10 or 15 at most. But then you know well that some people may be happier to see they are differentiated from Taiwan by some means. :-D — Insta ntnood 19:42, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

And you know well that there's no point in having a stub category for a maximum of only 15 stubs. Grutness|^hello?

The reason for possible resorting in future may not be a result of the number of stub articles, but political development on both sides of the strait. And you can recall Mababa once suggested to exclude some of the islands from the scope of Taiwan-geo-stub. :-D 16:05, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Politics shmolitics. 15 stubs is not enough for a separate category, especially since the articles would no doubt be dealt with by either those editors involved in China articles or Taiwan articles (the main purpose for stub categories is for editors, remember). If there are that few, they'd either go in both categories or in neither (grouped into Asia-geo-stub - similar to where the artcles on the Spratley Islands are). Grutness|^hello? 22:39, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) PS - someone seems to have been mucking around with this page with multiple reverts. Please stop it.

Help?

Hi Grutness - I have been writing a bit about NZ architecture lately, there is a void about it on the internet and wikipedia in general. I see you live in Dunedin and wondered if you had any photos I could use here [1] At the moment I am nursing Benjamin Mountfort through Featured article, then I want to start on Francis Petre (I am just collating his life story at the moment) then I'll rewrite it and attempt to get it on the front page - problem is people do seem to want colour photos and as I've never been to NZ, and am several thousand miles away....well enough said. Regards Giano 13:54, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS Just seen you have Cargill's Castle that's brilliant

Thanks - I shall hunt through my photos. If I haven't got anything, I'll try to take some in the next week or so. Grutness|^hello?

Singapore-geo-stub and Malaysia-geo-stub

These two geostub categories were recently created. ([2], [3], [4], [5]) Should they be listed on category:Asia geography stubs? — Insta ntnood 14:14, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Definitely... and on the wikiproject stub type page. Grutness|^hello? 23:02, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New Zealand photos

From User talk:Giano Gidday, I saw your note to Grutness.

Oh you did, did you? I didn't know you made a habit of reading other people's mail :) Grutness|^hello? 23:52, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I watch the talk pages of many admins, partly to keep up on what's happening on Wikipedia, and partly so I can revert vandalism to them. I strongly suspect that several admins watch my talk page too, since the occasional vandalism here gets reverted pretty quickly. I don't mean to invade your privacy, but you should accept that your talk page is not a private place.-gadfium 01:20, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough - and thanks for doing that job! As for being a private place, I hope you noted the smiley! Grutness|^hello?

Please! Don't let me be the cause of Kiwi ill feeling :>D. That would be great if you could come up with something. Taken your advice now a redirect from F.W.Petre there is also a problem over should the article be Frank Petre of Francis Petre, it seems he was christened Francis and called Frank; I'll go with whatever the local most common name is. A private house photos would be especially good as they are not generally in the net, to even be linked to. Not sure how long to make this page yet, people criticise Ben Mountfort for being too short, and John Vanbrugh for too long. Just see what turns up I suppose. Regards Giano 11:01, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Geo-stubs

Sorry, it's just that there's so many stub variants that it's hard to keep track of them all. As for a few hours ago specifically, I was trying like mad to keep up with the furious rate of article creation surrounding the 500,000 article milestone. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough... of course! That explains why everything's been mad here in the last couple of days! Grutness|^hello? 00:45, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Squeak and Box

Squeak and Box are my dogs. --SqueakBox 05:00, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

FW Petre

Fantastic fotos - really great; hope to have an hour to spend on FWP tomorrow, the comparison between the intended cathedral and the finished reality will be good, as will the 'cottage style' house and the 'castle/gothic' style house. I think we'll use them all. Get this on the front page if it kills me. Thanks again Giano 08:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi again, I've been playing arownd with some ideas - see what you think, I want to include the priory as well - please write any information you have as well - it needs a load more yet. They are great pictures and I don't want to waste them - perhaps they need to be larger - I'm not sure Giano 16:33, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great work, its getting there, keep going. I had searched the internet for the house of Judge Chapman, so pleased to find we have it. Giano 15:47, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

page Factoradic update

Well, fools rush in where ... Just gave the Factoradic page a bit of a facelift. At least the permutation list at the bottom now really is in lexicographical order. Hope it makes some kind of sense. Just barely understand the editor to this point. Cheers, --Jwmcleod 22:59, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I only made a small addition to the page, so it's not really something I know enough to comment on. Grutness|^hello?

Am getting the hang of this a bit now. Pretty happy with Factoradic and Combinadic at this point. Even tried my hand at adding a stub for Abuse of notation. --J. W. McLeod 23:39, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Caribbean stubs

You started {{Caribbean-geo-stubs}} a couple months ago, and I was wondering if it might not be appropriate to complement it with a {{Caribbean-bio-stub}}. Just a thought - if bio-stubs are being broken up (as I see they are) might it not be a useful companion category? Thanks Guettarda 16:32, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Possibly - it would make sense if bio-stubs were broken up the same way as geo-stubs. But it largely depends on how many Caribbean bio-stubs there are. It's worth you suggesting it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria, though - that's where the stub-dividing's going on. There are people there working on bio-stubs far more than I am. Grutness|^hello?

VfD/Sar

Grutness, you like to vote at VfD, and I'd like to ask you to re-consider a vote. Personally, I think the issue is just silly. I'm referring to the pages of Sar and SAR. The wiki policy on disambiguation and abbreviations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation_and_abbreviations) is pretty clear that disambiguation pages and acronym pages should be merged to be case-insensitive. They only exist for user convenience. In this case, neither article contains any content at all. Could I ask you to go back to Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Sar and vote to merge? SchmuckyTheCat 00:26, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I disagree with the idea that Sar and SAR should have one article just because they use the same letters in their name. There should be a disambiguation link between them (as there is) for people who have typed the wrong thing, but combining the two is like having an article on cats of which half is dedicated to Computerised Axial Tomography. Grutness|^hello?

Both pages are currently disambiguation pages, there isn't any encyclopedic content on either page currently. It's not as if one page is about something (like cats). See the Au article for what I mean. And did you read the policy page I referenced that specifically said that disamiguation pages should be case insensitive? SchmuckyTheCat 00:48, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Taiwan-related stubs

Hello. I found you have made some changes to category:Taiwan-related stubs.

The islands are not "its [Taiwan's] associated islands", and category:China-related stubs now includes both stubs about China in general (e.g. history, culture, language) and specifically about mainland China. I'm afraid it is necessary to revert your edits. — Insta ntnood 06:10, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Revert is also necessary for your edit to category:China-related stubs. — Insta ntnood 06:13, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

They are islands governed from Taiwan, and you keep saying they are not in taiwan. Therefore, by definition, they are islands associated with Taiwan. No reverts are necessary from what I wrote. Grutness|^hello? 06:16, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But what was wrong with the version before your edits? The islands are not associated territories of Taiwan, rather, they're part of the ROC as Taiwan does. — Insta ntnood 06:21, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Well, firstly it was an over-reaction on my part (I'd only just discovered the mess that has been ongoing with the Taiwan-geo-stub template and was still fuming a little), and you're right about the change on China-stub. But as far as category:Taiwan-related stubs are concerned, the edit is to emphasise Taiwan firsat - hitting people with the phrase "Republic of China" straight out will make 99% opf people instantly think of the PRC rather than Taiwan. By swapping the wording around to emphasise Taiwan primarily (yet keep the name ROC there) will more instantly tell people what they're looking at. Grutness|^hello?

True. Perhaps it's because I spend more time at this side of the world, I didn't recognise that problem.

This stub category probably covers stubs of the pre-1949 ROC (1949 was the year when the communist took over). It's not quite right to say it's about Taiwan plus Taiwan's associated territories. Is there any better way to present it? — Insta ntnood 06:42, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

What about this? — Insta ntnood 06:42, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Even worse - people won't notice the brackets and will think that items about both PRC and Taiwan can go in there. Try this one on for size: [6]. Grutness|^hello?

Looks very nice, except 1948 should be 1949, since the communist government was established in October 1949. :-D — Insta ntnood 10:51, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

D'oh. forgot to double-check 1949.

Thanks Grutness. Lol. — Insta ntnood 11:09, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC) Wait.. eh.. should be 1911. :-D. Let me fix it. — Insta ntnood 11:09, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Sigh. I got the triple eleventh of WWI and the double tenth of china mixed up. 10-10-11, not 10-10-10. Grutness|^hello?

Thanks

Hi James, thank you for supporting my adminship nomination. I really appreciate it. SlimVirgin 00:03, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Flags of the world

James, does this seem familiar to you? I suspect it does. Been flagging for a while eh?!!?

The stars on the NZ flag are not a "true" cross, they fall at the relative positions of the stars Acrux, Mimosa, Gacrux and delta Crucis, and as such the "crossbar" doesn’t intersect the upright at 90 degrees.

James Dignan, 30 August 1999

I'm tidying up some Zeal categories and found what appear to be mirror sites, not quite identical, with URLs like "http://www.ace.unsw.edu.au/PEOPLE/rmjc/fotw/flags/nz.html", and wondered if my friend from Milton could shed some light after his holiday. (Incidentally, when I was a part-time professional astronomer about 50 years ago (writing in the late lamented "Evening Star", which some of your workmates will remember well), I used capital initials for Greek words such as "Delta" in that context.)

Robin Patterson 07:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've created a stub for Evening Star (newspaper). Please correct or expand as necessary.-gadfium 09:12, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Poli-sub-stub

I agree that it is better to use poli-stub. I wasn't aware that I created poli-substub. Gangulf 20:10, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you're the Wikipedian Formerly Known As Wilfried Derksen, then yes. [7] ! Grutness|^hello?

Back River

Hello James, You said: "Hi Alan - you started a stub for Back River, New Zealand which simply says that it's a locality in the North Island. I can't find it in Wise's, or in my largest NZ atlas... whereabouts is it? Do you have any more info about it at all?"

I found it in my NZ Penguin Atlas. It looks like a very small locality near Mangonui in Northland. It is probably from the LINZ database. It may be too insignificant for Wikipedia otherwise there will be another few hundred placenames that will need adding. I will also remove it from the List of rivers of New Zealand. Congrats on the Wikipedia admin role. Alan Liefting 08:05, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Manufacturing stub

Sorry about that! I didn't realize that there was a big process for that. Just when I thought I knew how the wikipedia works, I find out something new. I've been working on manufacturing related articles lately and I looked around, and didn't find anything, so I thought it would be helpful if there was a category specifically related to things like metalworking and manufacturing processes. What should be done now? I think the category as I visualized it would best fit in the technology category, but I see how it could potentially be construed to be related to corporations. Could I suggest the new category for debate? Let me know what you think; sorry to create a mess! --Spangineer ∞ 02:52, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Looking over that page you linked to, perhaps the category could be split further? Perhaps a stub category for metalworking, etc.? Or even smaller - a category for welding and one for casting, for example? Is that a possibility? --Spangineer ∞ 02:59, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

(Replied at User_talk:Spangineer#stubs)

Ok, that sounds good - I'll add the category to the stub debate. So far, I've found about 35 articles that fit in the category, and there are going to be far more. Splitting it up, however, probably wouldn't work if 50 is the absolute minimum. Also, I have a question for you related to your post regarding not having more than one stub category per page - what if the category was added manually, not with the stub template? That way, it shows up on multiple categories, but doesn't make the page look messy. Anyway, thanks for your help! --Spangineer ∞ 03:22, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Also, just to let you know, I just added a section to the category criteria page, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria#Manufacturing. If there's anything wrong with anything, let me know. Thanks! --Spangineer ∞ 03:38, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds great. I'll get to work categorizing those. Thanks for your help! --Spangineer ∞ 01:41, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

Recently created Russian-history-stub and East-Slavic-history stub

I edited your note at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#Newly-discovered_stub_categories. If necessary, you may want to edit my corrections for English grammar because they are now signed by both yours and my name :). Thank you very much for your help with sorting this out and improving the stubs I created! Irpen 04:52, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Hi again. It may have been my fault of not explaining this properly. East Slavs are only Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians. Poles and Lithuanians are not East Slavs. Poland and Lithuania related articles may get the east-slavic-history-stub note only when the article is primarily about the events related to the three East-Slavic nations territories of the time when Poland and Lithuania dominated them. regards, Irpen 20:46, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Ah sorry - misunderstood. I'll try to remember in future! Grutness|^hello? 00:10, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for you support in my request for adminship. Your trust in me will not be disappointed. Now, I'm off to put these new powers to good use! -- Scott e^iπ 02:40, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Thank You!

Hi Grutness,

I would like to thank you for your vote of support and confidence for my adminship, it has been much appreciated. If you need anything in future that requires my attention, please do not hesitate to contact me. :)

- Cheers, Mailer Diablo 18:27, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Template:Roman-stub

Hi, there. You're quite welcome. What with using the classic skin, I could barely read "XIV". Also, I tweaked the "px" size about five times just to make sure that the reader could indeed tell that it was the Colosseum. I didn't think about the irony you pointed out, but it is amusing. I'm a history buff, anyway. --Merovingian (t) (c) (w) 19:49, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Military related stubs

What would you say about WWI and WWII history stubs? Cheers, Irpen 02:08, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

They may be a good idea - there seem to be quite a lot of them. Personally I'd prefer to wait until the history category is purged of a lot of the bio-stubs that shouldn't be in there, see what is left after that. Grutness|^hello? 02:14, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am sure that there will be enough WWI and WWII related stubs after any purge of hist-stub category. Many articles there would perfectly fit into the WW category. Creating them now would allow to start placing current and newly created articles into these categories. Maybe we could create a "mil-war-stub" ("This military and warfare related article is...") of which two WW stubs would be subcategories. If "mil-war-stub" is created as a subcategory of "Historical stubs", I think it would be appropriate only for a relatively modern military history. Anything older than roughly 150 years is more appropriate for national history articles. Anyway, it's your call, guys, to decide. I just wanted to bring this up for consideration. Irpen 07:26, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Probably better to do that on the Stub sorting/Criteria page than on my user talk page, though! Personally, I think a WWII-stub is a great idea though. Grutness|^hello?

Hi, just replying to your response to my proposal at Stub sorting/Criteria page. Sure, this can wait if you think it'd better to. As for mil-war-stub, I was thinking that there was a difference between articles that would best fit into mil-stub and those best tagged with mil-war-stub. But maybe it's better to stick with mil-stub. Anyway, I will wait if necessary, and once WW stubs are created, I will help in moving there some articles from other categories. Regards, Irpen 04:06, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Hopefully I'll have completed the current pass of hist-stub by about Wednesday or Thursday - should have more of an idea what is needed by then. I have a couple of other things listed on the stub sorting page that I want to make a start on, but there's no reason not to deal with the WW stubs at about the same time. In any case we should probably leave the suggestions up on WP:WSS for about seven days before doing anything with it anyway. But I don't see anyone objecting to WWII-stub and WWI-stub as a good starting point, especially if there are items in mil-stub that would be better there. And any help in moving things over will be much appreciated! Grutness|^hello?

NZ Table Flag

I know we started talking about this on emails, but it looks like I can only catch you on here! Well, all I wish to tell you is just let me know when you get the flag. Your North Carolina flag is waiting for you, and I hear it saying your name lately :). Zscout370 01:30, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I got the flag today :). To let you know, my cousin is also in Dunedin, staying at the International House. Man, this is a small world. Zscout370 22:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Signature

Hey James, how do you get to create a signature for Wikipedia like yours? Thanks. Zscout370 17:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi Zach - the signature? I uploaded an image and put it into my signature (you can change the way your signature appears in the preferences menu. One caveat - not everyone appreciates people using images in their sigs, and it is generally not recommended. The only reason I do so is that I use the Uffington horse as a signature when I'm writing and (particularly) to sign paintings, and it felt wrong not to do so here, too. A compromise which quite a few people use is to add one of the unicode non-alphanumeric characters to their signature. Grutness|^hello?

Kia ora, to member number 48 of the Wikipedia Maori! An energetic start (just like your start here in "en" last year). I look forward to seeing that "hoiho Uwhingitana" there too. Robin Patterson 20:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your vote of confidence!

Hi Grutness, Thank you for your support. It means a lot to me and I look forward to helping out as an admin. Cheers, Banyan Tree 03:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

UK stubs

No problem, hope I find the time soon to do more, more systematically. Fortunately it's not a difficult category to do "by eye", as most of the Scottish place names ring at least a faint bell, and not a few of the Welsh ones rather leap out, too... Alai 03:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(On Welsh and Cornish.) That's true, I have my eye out for "false P-Celtic positives". (Could be the odd false Q-Celt too, or soundalike.) But I find it's reasonably easy to spot "candidates" from the main stub category page (as opposed to say the bio-stubs, which I largely stare at and think "we are these people?" until I actually go through each stub, one by one.) Alai 04:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for supporting my adminship — I vow to use my super powers for good not evil. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Annals of the Four Masters

Hello James. There is an article about the Annals of the Four Masters already, but if you like I can add more detail to it. Certainly what is there suffices but a huge amount of detail can be added.

Or indeed something about the history of the Clan O'Duigenan, their ancestry and descent. As far as I recall they only became ollamhs in the early in the second millenium A.D. (about the 12th/13th century); prior to that they were kings of a region located along the northern border of Hy-Many. I cannot presently recall their exact genealogical or racial affiliation.

In short, okay, I'll get on it. Glad you like my additions. Shame that theres so few of us working on Irish history prior to 1798. Fergananim

...Or indeed something about the history of the Clan O'Duigenan, their ancestry and descent. As far as I recall they only became ollamhs in the early in the second millenium A.D. (about the 12th/13th century); prior to that they were kings of a region located along the northern border of Hy-Many.

What information I have is that they were ollamhs for the MacDiarmuids. I know that they were centred around Kilronan, north of Lough Key in Roscommon (one of the few Irish articles I've done much about was some additions to the article on Lough Key). Sadly I can only trace my own line with certainty back to Roscommon at the time of the potato famine (although, as I said, there are family legends). I'd be very impressed by any information on them in Wikipedia!

Well, for starters you can look up Moylurg, Kings of Moylurg and Kings of Connacht to get some idea of the background of the times and people that they lived in. This link http://www.rootsweb.com/~irlkik/ihm/ire1100.htm and the ones it leads to will give you a geographical idea of where it all was. Your family background might have being Delbhna, but don't quote me on that just yet! Fergananim

Again family legend suggests even older ancestry in Ireland - FirBolg, in fact. But whether there's any truth in that is another matter. Many thanks for the possible leads! Grutness|^hello?

Peregrine O Duignan: Hi! Looks like you're doing some great work on Irish history. Just wanted to say thanks for adding a page on someone who - according to my family legend - was a relative of mine :) Grutness|hello? (i.e., James Dignan) 01:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jaz, I'm only get started yet! Am currently putting the finishing touches to Clan O Duibhgeannain. Hope you like it and its related links. Fergananim.

RfA thanks

Thank you for the vote at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Henrygb2. It has made my week. --Henrygb 01:56, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Dn

Tomahawk, Kew (you shouldn't have missed that one - you pass it often enough), Corstorphine, Concord, Bradford, Brockville, Kaikorai, Balmacewen, Wakari, Glenleith... Did you mention Macandrew Bay, Broad Bay, Portobello...? I'll give you a while. Splendid as far as it goes. Robin Patterson 04:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

for the vote for me, and for the note! I'm sure I'll have some newbie issues and appreciate the offer! Happy editing, Antandrus 05:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Frieth

Thanks for the note! I have deleted the categories from User:Hippalus/Frieth, so people won't stumble into my sandbox anymore... Hippalus 12:44, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Use of MINOR tag

I like your addition to Mana regarding political party names, but (IMHO) any addition like that should not be marked as "minor", that reserved for changes like editing correction spellings, fixing links, etc. That said, my visit to your user page got me into your art as shown on your web pages. I really like it! I assume you sell pieces. I'll explore your web page further and see what I can learn about techniques and prices. - Marshman 18:06, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're right of course - I've been working on changing stub template messages so much lately that it's become automatic for me to click the button for "minor edit". I'll have to be more careful about it.

I'm glad you like my art! Yes, I do sell work, though I haven't got any prices listed on my site - they tend to range approximately from $US 250 to 500 (plus packing/postage), depending mainly on the size of the paintings. The site needs a bit of updating too, come to think of it - quite a bit of new art and quite a few of the older pieces have sold. If you're interested in any of it, let me know! Grutness|^hello?

Integrated Ocean Drilling Program

Thanks. I tried geology-stub, but that didn't exist. :) Rick K 06:32, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

It's getting very difficult to remember what is and isn't available in stub categories! Grutness|^hello?

Bucharest... in Bulgaria?!

Hi Grutness. I'd like to know why you labelled the article over at Titan, Bucharest as a Bulgarian geography stub. Bucharest is of course the capital of Romania! I'm not trying to be arrogant here, would just really like to know why you thought that article was related to Bulgaria. Cheers, Ronline 12:00, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Buna seara Ronline - put it down to tiredness. I sorted about 4000 geostubs over the course of a month; there was bound to be the odd error. So far, two people have spotted mistakes. Still too many mistakes and no excuse, but 2 in 4000 isn't too bad! Maybe I should check to see whether there are any articles about Sofia in the Romanian-geo-stubs! :) My apologies! Grutness|^hello?

Hello again! 4000 geostubs! That really is a lot, indeed, and of course at that level errors are bound to occur. I was just curious because there really have been people who have come up to me before and confused countries like that, and were really insistent about it :) That's great work you're doing by the way, since it's wonderful to see definite categories for stubs that editors can then work on in their certain "field of expertise". Have a nice day, Ronline 12:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I see you're in New Zealand. I have just come back from visiting over there, since I'm on a one-month trip to Australia & NZ. I didn't actually go as far south as Dunedin, stopped at Christchurch, which is a great place. Loved the European feel of the city. I'm currently in Sydney, Australia, and going to return to Romania in a bit more than a week.

Thanks

Thanks for supporting my adminship nomination. Coincidently I finished my BSc at Otago, at this time of year I'm gald to be in Canberra :) --nixie 12:07, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't entirely sure about nomination etiquette, so I thought I'd thank people as they voted, if I don't get to the required number I still appreciate the vote of confidence. --nixie 12:23, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My Welcome Message

Not to sound mean or anything, but why are you editing my welcome message template that's in my user space (that is linked to from all user pages I put it on)? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:59, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mea culpa - tried to fix it as soon as I found out, but you'd beaten me to the revert button. Apologies. Grutness|^hello?

Okay...I had suspected it so, I just kind of got worked up about it...:( — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 23:24, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Re: Alexander McNair

Oops. Sorry. I do get confused about different stub categories. I normally follow Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs which isn't very helpful. I'll try to remember your advice in future. Thanks. P Ingerson 08:08, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hist-stub vs Bio-stub

per your post >>Hi Feco - I notice a couple of your stub additions (e.g., Thomas Lucy) are to put biographies into the history stub category rather than the biography stub category. Category:Historical stubs has a note in it saying NB: For biographies of historical characters, use {{bio-stub}} or one of its subcategories, instead of {{hist-stub}}. (Don't sweat it too much - any stub categorising is useful, but bio-stub's a better one to use here!).<< I'll do that in the future. From time to time, an unregistered user goes on an article-creation kick and generates several related articles in a short time frame. I try to drop those into some useful stub category to make sure they don't get totally lost as orphans. I must have not paid attention to stub rules on that day... I'll pay more attention next time. Thx for the pointer. Feco 08:22, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough - you're doing a good job. As to stub rules, all the stub categories are slowly being streamlined to try to cut their sizes down - hist-stub's being worked on at the moment, leaving only bio-stub as a big "dump" category to go. That's the next job :) Grutness|^hello?

Daibhidh O Duibhghennain

Daibhidh O Duibhghennain, if you are interested. Fergananim

Possible Template

Hey James,

I was wondering if a template like this will be useful in Wikipedia. I had a template I maded put on VfD (my choice acutally) and I do not wish to go through that process again.

	Marshals of the Soviet Union
Sergei Akhromeev \| Ivan Bagramian \| Lavrenty Beria \| Sergei Biriuzov \| Vasily Blyukher \| Leonid Brezhnev \| Semyon Budyonny \| Nikolai Bulganin \| Vasily Chuikov \| Leonid Govorov \| Andrei Grechko \| Ivan Koniev \| Grigory Kulik \| Rodion Malinovsky \| Kirill Meretskov \| Kirill Moskalenko \| Konstantin Rokossovsky \| Boris Shaposhnikov \| Vasily Sokolovsky \| Joseph Stalin \| Semyon Timoshenko \| Fyodor Tolbukhin \| Mikhail Tukhachevsky \| Dimitri Ustinov \| Aleksandr Vasilevsky \| Kliment Voroshilov \| Dmitri Timofeyevich Yazov \| Aleksandr Yegorov \| Andrei Yeremenko \| Matvei Zakharov \| Georgy Zhukov

BTW, two things: I will mail your flag once I get yours and B, I would start to archive your page if I was you. Zscout370 14:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The template looks OK to me - the other option would be to do one of those "preceded by/followed by" type boxes. It's not a subject i know much about - would someone looking up one of these people be likely to want to look up one of the others as well? If so, then I'd say go for it. As to the flag, I mailed it out today, so it should be there by next Monday (or the weekend if you're lucky!). And yes, I already have two archived pages - it is looking like time for a third...

How to spot a sockpuppet

There is something called a "sockpuppet check" that only developers can do. You might want to ask one for help. See the page on sockpuppets for details. --cesarb 17:20, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mount Edgecumbe, New Zealand

Sorry about that! I didn't realize that was the custom. You may want to make this explicit at Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Thanks! hike395 14:06, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good idea - willdo. Grutness|^hello? 23:40, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User:Starky/Stubbing

I just noticed that you protected several pages geo-stub-sorted by me and reverted by Starky, obviously especially the ones concerning Czechia; is there a problem which I could help to resolve? Lectonar 14:10, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, and I'll definitely keep it in mind. At the moment I'm waiting for a developer's investigation of whether User: Starky is a sockpuppet.

Basically (to cut a long story short), new user User:NoPuzzleStranger starts getting into edit wars to do with European geography articles (notably about the term Czechia) skirting and occasionally exceeding the three revert rule. Then a new user appeared in Wikipedia - User:Starky. His total time on Wikipedia was two hours. During this timey, he created Template:Czech-geo-stub and replaced every use of Template:Czechia-geo-stub with this new template. Finally, he listed Template:Czechia-geo-stub on tfd - to be supported by NoPuzzleStranger. During the following two days NoPuzzleStranger has several times edited and/or reverted the two templates and their associated categories, only to be reverted by one of several other users. In the end I did the only thing I could think of - I protected the original template and category.

Understandably, if (as I suspect) Starky and NoPuzzleStranger are the same person it'll put a different light on things, so I'm waiting to find out whether that's the case before going any further - but, as I said, I'll keep your offer in mind! Thanks! Grutness|^hello? 23:45, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would like to suggest that the Czechia-geo-stub be unprotected, because even if the edit war continues and escalates, it will not affect the readers looking at the articles with the stub message a great deal. The current protected message box is big and unsightly and may lead readers to think that the article itself is protected. What's even worse, the talk page link in the message box points to the article's talk page, instead of the template's talk page. I think this may confuse newcomers to Wikipedia, and for the sake of making their experience smoother, it may be best to just allow the edit war to continue. Alternatively, you could just remove the protected template, while keeping the page protected. Thanks. --Aramգուտանգ 18:32, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I belive the same. I find your massive protection ineffective and counterproductive. Czech vs. Czechia arguement is still alive and will remain so for a long time (I, for one, prefer Czech over Czechia ;-)) ), it vould probably be better to start a serious discussion on this matter right on Category_talk:Czechia_geography_stubs) and not to hide it here. --Unregistered:1OP, 13.04.2005 23:40 (UTC+2)

What the reader sees is irrelevant as far as stub templates and categorisatio are concerned. Repeated changing of stub categories requires a lot of work from stub sorters. For every edit that is being made by NoPuzzleStranger to change a stub category, 101 are currenlty required by stub sorters to revert it, since every article in the category requires a null-edit to m,ove it to the correct categorisation. Grutness|^hello? 02:50, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realise all the articles would need to be null-edited for the categorisation to update. Thanks for moving the protected notice to the template talk page, that takes care of the problem I was referring to. --Aramգուտանգ 03:02, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sock puppets

Replied to your request for sock puppet info at Village Pump (Misc.), but I see someone's already got there. :) — PMcM 16:08, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

William Dummer

Yeah, I noticed that, thanks. I had done it right after doing Dummer's War so I didn't even think to look up what stub it would be. Thanks for fixing it. Sholtar 19:48, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox Help

James, I have a favour to ask of you. There has been users just dump over 140k of stuff into the Sandbox. I am thinking just one person is doing it, yet he takes on many personas (perhaps sock puppets). Can you watch the Sandbox and see what is going on please? Zscout370 02:00, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll have a go... but to be honest this is an area of Wikipedia I know very little about. I might put a general note out to one or two of the more experienced admins who know more, see if they know what's up. Grutness|^hello?

The codes being dumped on the page recently has to deal with Fonzie from Happy Days, Homosexuality, and every so often, Wiennie Hunt Jr's. I am not trying to get the Atlas Award, but it looks like I am bound to get it someday :) Zscout370 03:15, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox Header

Dear James, here is the header I have found inside the Sandbox:

I don't know about you, but this is a call for vandalism in the Sandbox. Zscout370 16:54, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Frank Petre (again!)

Hi James, thought you might like to know your great photographs and contributions are currently here [8] I think Bishonen has taken out all my English grammatical mistakes, if you find any left, I keep tweaking it after Bishonen has finished, could you remove them for me, thanks. Giano | Talk 12:23, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

About the stub templates...

Oops - I did not know about the stub categories, or the need for popular support, and I have made a few others. I made a Uganda stub and an honor society stub as well - {{Uganda-stub}} and {{honor-stub}} . Is a stub category functionally the same as an article category? -- 8^D BDAbramson ^gab 03:28, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)

replied.

And again

James, copy edits and additions great, I had been meaning to ask you why Dunedin expanded so fast and quickly. I'm not a 100% sure about the new picture layout, bit I suppose it looks tidier (I live surrounded by pictures at various heights and mostly askew!) Someone has commented on it needing a footnote, I will have time later today to see to that. It all looks quite hopeful at the moment, I really want this one on the front page. I think the next one should be an architectural appraisal of Dunedin. looking for Petre's stuff has unearthed some other interesting buildings. People over here tend to think NZ is all sheep, bungee jumping and Lord of the Rings. Well at least the first two sound like fun!. I'll never get my toungue around English, I thought it was on an Island now it's in. I think its done to trip the rest of us up! Giano | Talk 06:26, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The gold rush was what did it - Dunedin went from 2000 people in 1860 to 20,000 in 1865. By the 1920s it was up to 75,000.
I just wasn't that happy with the text weaving in and out of it, and pictures breaking through the headings.
There are a lot of them here. I wrote the articles on the Dunedin Railway Station and 'Larnach Castle, two of the city's gems. I don't know whether it's possible to get hold of a copy of the Knight and Wales book where you are, but if you can it's well worth it if you want an overview of the city's buildings.
:) NZ's use of the words for the two islands is a bit unusual. A rough rule of thumb seems to be that if it's small enough to still feel like an island you'd use "on" - if it's big enough to feel like a country then it tends to be "in". Grutness|^hello?

I see what you mean with the pictures, just my personal taste is a bit erratic I suppose, we'll leave them as you have them as that seems to be the norm. I'll see if I can find the book here, there's some quite eclectic book shops in London, plus all the Oz. shops selling boomerangs and didgerogoos or whatever they're called.

Regarding the English I think I'll first try and master the idiosyncratic and mispronounced version spoken here, then buy a NZ phrase book.; anyway their seems to a Kiwi invasion here, so it should be quite easy to pick up!Giano | Talk 07:43, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Restructuring

Please revisit this and vote on #2C and #6 (variations on earlier proposals). Yours, Radiant_* 15:31, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Administratorship

Thanks for your comments on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Wilfried Derksen. Your comment made me aware of the necesity of filling in the Edit Summary line in case of non minor edits. It made ma also ware of careful labeling an edit as minor or non minor. I will change my way of editing pages by clearly selecting minor and non minor edits and to fill in an edit summary in the last case. With this comment I would like to ask you to reconsider your vote. Wilfried Derksen = Electionworld 16:29, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jules Henry

Thanks for editing my Jules Henry stub. I hope you can save it and develop it further or give me suggestions for doing so.

I take it you're ? All I did was change the stub template to a more precise one. That should enable people editing similar articles to find it and improve it. As to what to do to improve it, do a Google search, see if you can find something about him - dates of birth and death, when he was at Washington University, where he was born, where else he worked - that sort of stuff. General biographical background. That will add quite a bit to the article. It might also give you some ideas about who he was influenced by and who he influenced. He was involved in developmental and educational psychology - who else was working in that field at the time? Plus you should be able to add some links to other articles - at the moment the article has no links on it at all. Hope that helps. Grutness|^hello? 04:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And again!

Don't you lot ever go to bed down there? Yes, its a much improved image (better than the original) I have a software package that does it too, but I always get carried away and never know when to stop, you've obviously got the touch. Its looking good on FA isn't it, it would be great to see these buildings on the main page. We'll have to start a Kiwi campaign when it becomes Fa to get it there. I found another of his Dunedin houses today, but I suppose it would get to boring if it banged on for too long, there's only so much can be said about a house after all. I wish I could have found a picture of Dunedin's Royal Exchange for the evaluation section, there's one from a real estate company on the internet, but it would never pass the copyright test - Never mind. Giano | Talk 12:47, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's only 12.45am :) FA is looking good. Shame you didn't mention about the Royal Exchange building when i was taking photos earlier - i actually know someone who works in that building... Grutness|^hello?

I didn't know about the Roylal Exchange then unfortunatly, but it seems to be going OK without it. 12.45, I'm dead by 11 pm! Giano | Talk 13:22, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Get's better by the minute!Giano | Talk 07:16, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Australia-gov-stub & edit function

Sorry about creating a new stub without discussing it first; I hope I haven't caused any problems? In future, any stubs that I want to create I will propose on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria page for discussion first.

About the edit function on my talk page, I have no idea what's going on, it was working fine yesterday. Do you know anyone who could help fix this problem? – AxSkov (T) 14:22, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New O Duibhgeannains/Dignams

Saw you added a few more contempory members of the clan; how about writing at least short stubs on them? Ferganaim

Sadly I don't know enough about them. Don't know either whether Campbell Duignan would be big enough to warrant an article. The actors (Basil and Mark Dignam) probably should have articles - Basil anyway - he was a regular in a lot of British movies in the 1960s and 1970s - I might try to write something on him if there's nothing in Wikipedia. Katherine Duignan is already redlinked elsewhere on Wikipedia (Robert_Burns_Fellowship). Wasn't there a 19th century Irish politician involved in the home rule debates called Duignan? Grutness|^hello?

Thank you!

Thank you for your support on my RfA! I shall attempt to put the shiny new buttons to good use. Incidentally, I think I've seen your edits everywhere and then some; I admire your patience and hard work (or maybe just masochism?) with the stubs. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:46, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

China stubs

I hadn't realized what a mess I was poking my nose into in making a (in my mind) obvious and simple change when I encountered the "Mainland China" title on a stub I was looking at. IMHO it's as absurd as having separate "Alaska", "Hawaii", and "Mainland US" stubs, but I'm in no mood to be drawn into some sort of raging battle.

BTW, you wrote PLEASE do change it. Did you mean "PLEASE don't change it"? --Calton | Talk 07:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes I meant "please don't..." Personally I agree with you, but terms such as "China", "Mainland China", "Republic of China", etc can be very touchy for some, particularly those who live there. Grutness|^hello? 07:43, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria duplication

I've fixed duplication bugs like this before, and can do so without too much labor; I was about to go ahead and do it here, but noticed you'd already started. Your edit summaries look frustrated, so I'd be happy to take over, but two people trying at once is a worst-case scenario. Just give me the word. —Korath (Talk) 11:16, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

NC Flag

Around next week, I will send your flag. Yoru flag is sitting on my desk, right next to the flag of the Perm Region , Russian Federation. Zscout370 01:03, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bangladesh stub

My apologies. I am sorry I haven't read the whole of the stub creation process. Actually, many of the articles on Bangladesh I have started are getting erroneously marked as India stub. This happened 4 times to an article in last 3 days. So, I created the stub related to Bangladesh. I again am very sorry for not following proper procedure in this, and I hope not to make the same mistake in future. I also hope the newly created Bangladesh stub would be kept, as many articles related to Bangladesh are now in stub stage. Thanks again for the constant watch for the benefit of wikipedia. --Ragib 06:33, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

it's all right :) As I said, I didn't propose this one for deletion, since it does look like a useful category, and it doesn't cover ground already covered by other categories. Bangladesh does seem a big enough subject to warrant its own stub category (let's face it, with 100 million people there should be a lot of things to write about!). Grutness|^hello?

Eletro-sub

Sorry for adding the sub out of term, thanks for your message to tell me how to do it correctly. I've added it to the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria page and I won't continue to re-classify subs until I get some sort of conformation that I can. --ElectraFlarefire 10:05, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)