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Tarquin's Talk page: leave comments & questions at the bottom of this page. I usually reply here.


Hi, can I ask, why you removed the link from the name Sophie on theBFG page? http://www.sophie-dahl.com/hello.htm Spt 12:58 22 May 2003 (UTC)


Could you make me an administrator? So far I've been told to wait for Ed Poor. 172

I'm not a developer, so sorry, I can't. -- Tarquin 20:53 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree, Tarquin, but you agree with what? With Cunc's qustion? Or with my response to it (on his talk page and in Talk:Communist state Tannin 09:43 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Well, my thoughts are pretty much this:

  • it's daft having two articles which seem to be on the same thing
  • I don't know enough about the subject to know whether:
  1. there should be two articles under these two names, but the content needs reworking
  2. there should only be one article
  • Fred's stuff reads like anti-commie propaganda
  • not sure why Cunc leapt in to his defense like he did
  • having two articles only feeds Fred's MPOV plan, and I don't want wikipedia to get infected with this meme
  • in short, I should probably stay away from it, as I don't have sufficient knowledge in the field.
  • we could water down Fred's stuff by saying "since there have been only n communist states so far, and most of them suffered from prior problems, the following generalizations are just that, and from a very poor sample space"

-- Tarquin 12:55 May 10, 2003 (UTC) oh and PS: I trust your judgement in this matter :-)

Yea. Sigh. It could be done in one. Maybe. But if so, only by a group of people working together with goodwill and without a political barrow to push. The trouble with Fred's stuff is that it's mostly right (barring exaggerations) but ... well, let me put it this way: I watched a football match on TV just now. My side scored 16 goals and I remember every one of them. So far as I recall, the other side scored nothing. So how come the scorebook says that we only won by 5 points? (5/6th of an Aussie rules goal) (Because I ignored all their good plays, of course, as a good Collingwood supporter should.)

It's that sort of 'truth' that he writes, and the thought of the time it would take me, you, and 17 others to balance it up by deleting exxagerations, adding qualifications, and rounding the thing into a coherent whole terrifies me. I just don't have the time for that stuff. If I thought it was just a matter of doing it once, sure. But, allowing for reversions, sabotage, and assorted kinky distractions, I'd lose at least a solid week of good editing time.

Right now I'm averaging two good, solid new fauna entries a day, and the only time they ever get modified is when I get something horribly wrong, or sometimes when I sing out for some help. What would I rather have? One article about the things that Fred hates so passionately and 14 good new fauna entries? Or no new fauna entries, and a protracted edit war over an article that would otherwise be so biased that no-one would take it seriously anyway?

I write very slowly, Tarquin, and for every word I write I read quite a few hundred, checking as I go. (My local bookseller loves me - and so he should, the amount I spend there!) I really don't have the moral courage to take on someone with opinions ten times larger than his factual knowledge. (This sticks out like dog's balls: any historian would spot it in 10 seconds flat.) Perhaps I should, but to hell with it. Besides, fauna is more important.

Best -- Tannin

I understand your position entirely. :-) Fauna is more important. -- Tarquin 17:06 May 10, 2003 (UTC)


Tarquin, look at the Cow page. There is a picture, not a diagram. JohnQ

sure. it's a lovely cow. the cow goes moooooooo!!!! your point? -- Tarquin 17:06 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Some people would have said this is a mooo point. I mean, to be neutral, the best is to think how we produce common articles. Of course we can put a warning text, and I think this is a good thing. But the photograph is the best! JohnQ

my cat's name is mittens -- Tarquin

At least, you don't loose your sense of humor. Good! I like this kind of attitude. ;-)

llort a era uoy


How old are you? (MaryMary alias JohnQ)

You first, kid. I'm certainly more mature than you. -- Tarquin 08:45 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

lol. Braggart!


Faut te calmer! C un lieu de réflexion et de concertation. JE ne suis pas sur que cela soit la place pour des "JE vais me le payer ce petit connard", vraiment. Et encore une fois, mon but n'a rien a voir avec mettre de la pornographie dans ce site, certainement pas. Marymary 09:58 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

calm is for the weak. -- t

no calm is for the strong -- a (je suis pas toujours strong)

Salut, Tarquin
Sincèrement, je crois que ce gus, JohnQ aux multiples avatars, fait perdre beaucoup d'énergie à trop de monde. Il a ouvert un débat, on peut débattre, mais pas avec lui ;D
Je suis s$ur que le Q de JohnQ est là pour dire "cul" en français ! car il cause français, le bougre ; je ne suis pas assez calé pour comparer ses écrits en anglais et en français pour vérifier si c'est la même personne, je deviens parano, j'ai l'impression qu'il agit avec un pote ;-(
Allez, bonne continuation
Alvaro 22:18 May 11, 2003 (UTC) s/$/û/g ;D Alvaro

John c'est Jean... Jean Q... Jean Cul etc....
Ericd 22:21 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


Tarquin, I don't understand your interlanguage hack you described on the wiktech list and then linked to on the Wikipedia:WikiMoney page. Could you describe it to be in more detail? LittleDan

Sure. Suppose we have a set of pages to link together on en, fr, eo, de and es. Each of those 5 pages needs a different list of links:

  • en needs: fr, eo, de and es
  • fr needs: en, eo, de and es
So if you have all 5 pages open, you need to do a LOT of copying and pasting. The most efficient way is to put together a list of all 5 page links, and paste it to each page. Then delete the "self-link".

My idea is this: simply have the system ignore the self-link. So you paste the same thing onto each page:

  • en, fr, eo, de, es

Much less work :-) It's only meant to be a temporary solution until we get some sort of form system running. But since that may not be for a while, this seems to me to be a quick hack that wouldn't take much to implement.

Specifically, the system ignores any link of the form [[xx:anything]], where xx is the language code of the ''current wikipedia''. So on the English wikipedia, [[en:foo]] has no effect, it's just ignored. -- Tarquin 19:34 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

That alone would help out a lot - it is a pain in the arse to make the separate lists. --mav

go tell the dev list, mav! I've had zero feedback ion the idea apart from Anthere saying it was a good idea. -- Tarquin 19:42 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing Hull for me! I moved it with exactly that intention, then somehow forgot that I was working on it. Andre Engels 08:34 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the redirect on AOC. I think I might have left the database in an inconsistent state by clicking the move button twice, but it looks like it's fixed now. Thanks, Wnissen 22:51 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Argl, j'avais pavu que tu passais par là ; j'ai mis tout ça au clair, avec l'orthographe correcte : Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée ; j'ai modifié ttes (!) les pages de redirection, ainsi que les pages avec les entrées fautives ; cependant, il y a un lien sur lequel je dubite et m'interroge : TLA, qui cause d'informatique ! (cf. ci-dessous)
Alvaro 00:15 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée

(List of links)

The following pages link to here:

    * Appelation d'Origine Contrôlée (redirect page)
    * AOC (redirect page)
          o Brie cheese
          o Saint-Nectaire cheese
          o Wikipedia:WikiProject Cheeses
          o Roquefort cheese
          o TLA
          o Burgundy
          o User talk:Tarquin 
    * Appelation d'Origine Controlée (redirect page)

bof. j'y comprends rien a TLA. -- t


Thanks for the edits on the music therapy article that I started -- very good edit!

~eeka (Triangular)

you're welcome! -- t


I removed the redirect from Binswanger's disease and replaced it with a brief description and a link to Multi-infarct dementia. See also Talk:Binswanger's disease. Jfitzg


Hi Tarquin, I just tried to mail you to say your message got through to the list, but I got an "undeliverable" message back. Let me know if you need more detailed info. Regards, -- sannse 15:42 17 May 2003 (UTC)

thanks! but weird.... I still get the messages from the list. confusion abounds .. -- Tarquin 15:51 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin, if you are around, would you please give your advice on José Bové

Otherwise, I am gonna move absolutely EVERY disputed article in the meta space, and it is gonna be messy. Your advice ?


Re SI prefix: The "new material", as you call it, was at prefix, together with a request to merge it with SI prefix. KF 08:36 20 May 2003 (UTC)


Tarquin, I'm no maths guru, but I confess to some suspicion of User:Stupidmoron's contributions so soon after the other nonsense, now deleted. Mind running an eye over them? Tannin 13:42 20 May 2003 (UTC)

physics rather than maths. I'm not sure, best ask TOby or Axel. -- Tarquin 16:24 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Axel says he's OK. Good! We need more quality contributors. Thanks Tarquin. Tannin


In magnitude you said "the modulus of -5 is 5". What do you understand is the meaning of "modulus"? I know two conflicting mathematics definitions of the word: the absolute value (as here), and to divide and take the remainder ("%" in C) in modular arithmetic. Do you know which is correct, or are they related in some way? CGS 16:14 21 May 2003 (UTC).

I caught you on Village Pump, so you can ignore this. CGS 16:18 21 May 2003 (UTC).


You mention you are a "sloppy typist" (you didn't say if it was slow/painful or not, btw) -- you might like speech recognition (no typos, just misrecognitions). Try IBM Via Voice or Dragon Naturally Speaking (I use the latter). With some practice, it's really nice and fast (but you /do/ need practice).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoiceGroup is a good place if you decide to give it a go. -- Stephanie

thanks for the recommendation. I have an old IBM viavoice (the 98 version I think -- it dictates to Word or its own text editor, but not to other apps unless I've set it up wrong). The problem is one of habit. dictating a written text is fine -- if I want to type up a quotation from a book, no problem. But for things I'm making up as I go along, like PG Wodehouse I find I make too many hums and has and pause often. It's very annoying to have these turn into words! on the other hand, I know people who say they can't type directly, they must write on paper first, and I think they're bats. So it's probably a habit I could acquire with practice -- Tarquin 16:48 31 May 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure about viavoice, but Dragon lets you dictate anywhere (and create super-cool macros to do repetitive tasks). I agree that "composing out loud" takes some practice, but you get used to it. And it's nice when suddenly you have a burst of words coming up to be able to spit it all out without being limited by typing speed (yeah, I do type pretty fast -- but I speak faster!). You get to correct it after of course, but at least it's recorded :-) (if you dig in my weblog you might find something I wrote about composing-typing, composing-writing, composing-dictating and the effect of dictating on style... maybe in French) -- Steph


Determine the veracity of this statement:
  • As x approaches 0, F(x) = 1 / x2 is not approaching a limit as it is unbounded; a function which approaches infinity is not approaching a limit. Note that as x approaches infinity, F(x) = 1 / x2 does approach a limit of 0.
Pizza Puzzle


I am of the understanding that this is the Product Rule; not merely a product rule. Pizza Puzzle

you'll have to look up the maths conventions, but I'm fairly sure the theorems take a litle "t" too. -- Tarquin 14:25 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

and where would those be? The science laws seem to frequently be capitalized. Pizza Puzzle

It should of course be capitalised. This is yet another of these annoying occasions when wiki seems to have a passionate determination to lowercase things that should be capitalised. It hardly does wiki much credit when the formal name of a rule that as the name of a rule is treated as a proper name is put in wrong. But then most of the political science terms on wiki are in a form that if used by students would see them docked marks, but every effort to correct them on wiki leads to edit wars with the same couple of users who seem to spend their entire time on wiki chanting the mantra "lower case, lower case, lower case" . (BTW, Tarquin, you aren't one of them!) FearÉIREANN 21:15 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)


ROFL, good call on the election issues! Are you going to be the official Wikipedia news anchor? -- John Owens 09:33 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

lol I don't think I'd make a terribly NPOV reporter... :) - Tarquin 09:35 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ho ha! Beat you to it. ;) -- goatasaur 09:35 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

lol. vandalism doesn't last long around here! :-)


Received your request on the article I wrote about Tardi[?] - I'll try to write a brief outline of the ligne claire ASAP :) MarkBoydell

nice! -- Tarquin 20:26 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm not too sure why you change the link to Jacques Martin. I'd thought it shoudl link to Jacques_Martin_artist[?] as the current JM is not the comic strip artist... Anyway, I'm nto sure how to deal with this so you probably know better :D Mark 22:17 GMT


I'd just like to go on the record as asking you to please not bite off my scalp. ;) last new "paragraph" in the diff (/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Anthere/ban&diff=0&oldid=1094884) --Dante Alighieri 08:33 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)


Hi Tarquin, You edited (M)Talk:Gene Roddenberry, but I can not see any difference. Is this a Wikipedia problem or did you not change anything? Fantasy 08:25 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A single apostrophe: "it's" -> "its". :-) (I remember you saying somewhere you're not a native English speaker. The rule, BTW, is that "it's" always means "it is". It's one of those confusing rules.) -- Tarquin 09:41 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I found it, it was just a comma "," too much, sorry for bothering you. It was so small on my screen, I really had to look hard for it ;-) Fantasy 12:06 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)
PS: Many thanks for correcting my errors!


I have posted a reply to comments you made on Talk:Dirac delta function. Cyan 06:04 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Hey. Finally answered a comment you left on Talk:DDT back in April. If you're still interested... Graft 00:07 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

thanks. Interesting (and worrying) stuff. -- Tarquin 07:42 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)



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