User talk:Alex756

I am new at this, any suggestions will be appreciated. Alex

Steal from elsewhere in the wikipedia - style, templates, text, etc. I routinely have multiple windows "editing" pages, just so I can cut-n-paste things that would be error-prone to type. One useful item for authors like Pamela L. Travers is a comprehensive list of works sorted by date (see Méric Casaubon for one that I did recently), it can be surprisingly difficult to find a definitive list on the net. Linking within the 'pedia is ultra-important - it helps when cross-checking and validating content. Pictures are a step towards the professional look, though difficult to find GFDLed unless they're old, govt, or made by yourself. Stan 22:47 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages Mintguy 10:22 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

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No problem. Most of the web references I saw list him as being born in 1872, but I figured that the early records on him are murky enough that the birthdate could be left as-is. - Hephaestos

• law comments to User talk:Shino Baku

Welcome to Wikipedia! It's always nice to have another professional on board. Since you asked, here's some suggested reading for newcomers:

• Wikipedia:Welcome newcomers
• Wikipedia:FAQ
• Wikipedia:Help
• Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines

That should keep you busy for a few years. Don't worry about trawling through all of that at once; just work away and look at the work of other Wikipedians; you'll get a feel for the place. You can always ask a question at the Wikipedia:Village pump is you get stuck. -- Stephen Gilbert 03:11 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Alex. Thanks for the info on United Empire Loyalists. I wasn't aware that they had special status. Please do improve what I added. -- Zoe

You are certainly making a valid contribution to Wikipedia. I don't know much about the law, but if you could do an article about the law regarding the appointment of the United States Office of the Independent Counsel, that would be appreciated. Does it still exist? Thank you. Jacques Delson

Thanks, excellent article on the Independent Counsel. What law did Leon Jaworski (? spelling) operate under re Nixon? I have a few things on the Quebec Civil Code/Code of Civil Procedure that I ask you to consider an article on as soon as I get a chance. Jacques Delson

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No offence, but your legal articles don't make much sense to the layperson. Could you reword some of them? LittleDan

Well, I was just reading estoppel and it completely contradicted what I thought estoppel was. It also didn't make sense. I thought estoppel was when the courts blocked someone from saying something that was contradictory to something said previously in court.

I'm glad to review any comments, and I hope I can contribute something that can be improved by others and become a part of Wikipedia. I wish there were more legally trained individuals on Wikipedia, it is sometimes difficult in explaining these legal concepts to someone without a legal education, even Nolo Press' Plain English legal dictionary is not easy to understand. Unfortunately it is difficult for someone without legal training to edit such prose as without understanding the content editing may really destroy the underlying meaning. Alex756

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Alex, nice job with the legal entries. As you've probably noticed, some of the existing entries are in need of a revamp, inquisitorial system being one of them. Perhaps you can put it on your docket (sorry, :P), that is if time allows you? -- Notheruser 03:53 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't think kosher law pertained to the legal system (I was thinking more along the lines of a religious 'sacrament', for lack of a better word). It seemed like an odd entry (I thought perhaps it was erroneously added), but I'll add it back as you say it is relevant (I wasn't sure, hence the 'I have the feeling it doesn't quite fit into this category' comment). -- Notheruser 00:09 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for creating Constitutional Convention (United States) -- Zoe

Sorry I haven't put together my questions on the Quebec Civil Code/Code of Civil Procedure but will soon. Meantime on CBC radio today there were talking about www.bigclassaction.com. Interesting how the guy set this up to legally make money. If you haven't already, please do another one of your great articles on Class Action cases. Jacques Delson

Alex, in response to your letter on my talk page, I agree that the article on Kosher law indeed is a law article; however it is a sub-set of Jewish law, and there are many subsets of Jewish law; most of them would have little to do with this page. The entry on Halakha (Jewish law=Halakha) is important, because I think this page should include every major legal system, secular or religious. As I understand the intent of this page, sub-categories of religious systems usually would not be appropriate here. However. sub-catergories of religious law would be appropriate here when they overlap with secular. In many countries, especially, the USA, there is a great deal of overlap between the two. (Witness the long history of state laws being written on the subject of certifying kosher foods; these laws are still evolving, as you know.) This, in this case although kashrut is just one of many sub-sets of Jewish law, I think it should be included here. Also included in the list of legal topics should be Mishpat Ivri; this is a Hebrew term that literally means "Hebrew law", and covers subjects that many people usually do not consider as religious law. (i.e. laws for buying, selling, renting, copyright, property rights, safety, liability, etc.) Within classical rabbinic Judaism all of Mishpat Ivri is subsumed under halakha (Jewish law in general). However, in the modern state of Israel Mishpat Ivri is the basis of Israeli civil law, which is distinct from religious law! Sounds like we might need a new article! RK

I just started an article on Mishpat Ivri. RK

Re United States Office of the Independent Counsel. Could you include in the article who pays the cost for the Independent Counsel? Jacques Delson

Thanks. When you get a chance could you post an article on Quebec's Code of Civil Procedure, Article 414 (2) then relate/compare its function and powers to the USA's OIC law? Jacques Delson

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Hello Alex, I have given an offer in Wikipedia:WikiMoney to anyone who will verify the Software piracy article for legal validity (the full offer is in the WikiMoney page), since you may be knowlegeable in this field, it may be of interest for you. --Rotem Dan 15:02 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for working on the article! I have honored you with 15 wiki-compliments ($) (triple the amount I initially offered) ;) --Rotem Dan 17:36 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Re DMCA, User:MyRedDice inadvertently delted some important stuff that he is going to put back. Once he does, maybe you could look at it. Jacques Delson

It looks like I put a much of that stuff in when I rewrote the page earlier today and that text has been moved to Talk:Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act so I will just try to merge the text I wrote there and the stuff on the talk page (in my copious spare time). Alex756

Absolutely great what you did. The only way is to do what you think is best and if wrong then someone who knows better will tell you. Keep up the good work. Jacques Delson

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Hi Alex, I got your note about the entertainment law page - thanks for fleshing it out. Obviously some of the linked pages haven't been done yet: I'll get started on those in due course. I will follow your recommendation on the use of a disclaimer on pages containing what might be construed as legal advice, and I'll also add new pages to the list of legal topics, now that I know its there.

(As an aside, if you're an independent film maker in NY, do you know Nicholas Chin? He won a Palm D'Or at Cannes last year. Nice guy.)

Cheers - David Stewart[?]

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You're a great contributer. I nominated you for sysop on the mailing list. The policy says we must have your consent (some people have actually said no!), so would you like to be a sysop? LittleDan

Being a sysop isn't that different. There are actually two levels above sysop, which are developer and supreme-dictator-for-life (Jimbo). All (to my knowledge) of a sysop's actions are reversible, and the only increased abilities are deleting pages (this can be reverted), reverting pages, moving pages, and editing protected pages (like the homepage). Don't worry that you think you're a new user, I became a sysop after only a month, and I'm 13! (although it might have been because people were trying not to seem prejudiced against me for my age) For some reason, nobody's responded to my nomination for you, which worries me. You are a very active contributer and just the person who would make a good sysop. LittleDan

Someone does have to second the nomination (but wikipedia does not use Robert's Rules of Order). Tell the list if you want to be a sysop (but make sure you remind them that I nominated you in case the message didn't go through on the list). LittleDan

How do you format an SQL query? I've asked some people but they never responded. LittleDan

The trouble with nominating new users is that we simply don't know a person well enough to make an up or down decision. But after reading some very thoughtful comments and really good articles by Alex I have decided to second the nomination. --mav

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Alex - I wasn't aware there was discussion on fair dealing - I'll go and set the record straight. Thanks for the tip on user names, too. David Stewart 01:43 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

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Since you're a lawer, could you offer you're opinion on libel in wikipedia? We're very suceptible to it, but it is usually fixed very quickly. LittleDan

I'm sorry. There was a discussion about two or three weeks on the mailing list before you joined Wikipedia about how much Wikipedia could be liable for libel if some vandal posted libelous content but people saw it before it was deleted. Do you know what would happen if they decided to sue us? Can they? Are we liable? Would any kind of disclaimer on the homepage help? I'm just paranoid about the whole thing -- what if Wikipedia got shut down? LittleDan

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It all sounds fine to me. I'll defer to your judgment on it; I'm not an expert, just mildly interested in copyright. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi

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The lists should probably be kept separate as list of legal topics could get quite lengthy. As for the entries I added, please place them where you think they fit best. I wasn't aware of the list of basic criminal justice topics and just placed them on the legal topics page (the search engine was working, so I figured I should flesh out the list). -- Notheruser 20:36 17 May 2003 (UTC)

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Good work on Tikhon of Moscow. Please note that articles around here should start with full sentences (I know some other encyclopedias do it differently). I've fixed this, and also removed the March 25 death date, to which there was no further reference in the text -- perhaps you could clarify that. --Eloquence 03:12 18 May 2003 (UTC)

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Alex, please don't use &— in your posts; it only works on windows computers. LittleDan

I was trying to do —, but I messed up LittleDan

Yeah, I should change that page. Many browsers (in particular mine until I updated it 5 minutes ago) don't support the mdash or ndash. People usually use - for the ndash and -- for the mdash. I don't use anything. LittleDan

Arrrragh! We are still seeing hoary old myths about the em dash! (Sorry Little Dan, but listen up and I'll explain how dashes work.) Alex, the problem Little Dan is talking about is a browser problem, and can be easily fixed, in either of two different ways: (a) use the single most broadly supported HTML character reference for an em dash—which you enter by typing (with spaces inserted so the codes show up on the screen): & # 8 2 1 2 ;. (Leave the spaces out, of course.) Or (b), give up your Century of the Fruitbat browser—with the arrival of several almost-fully standards-compliant browsers in the last few years, sooner or later we are going to have to stop worrying about Netscape 4.x, which really is crippled by its inability to cope with modern CSS code.

Just the same, it is good coding practice to try to write for as broad an audience as possible, Entering & m d a s h ; works with nearly all browsers—but & # 8 2 1 2 ; works with just about everything. For an authoritive overview of getting typography right on the web, refer to The Trouble With EM ’ EN (http://www.alistapart.com/stories/emen). Please, anything is better than that appalling, amateurish "--". Tannin 11:54 20 May 2003 (UTC)

(PS: yes—writing & # 8 2 1 2 ; works with Netscape 4.x. Tannin)

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Hello, I did some scouring and found these topics which I believe should either be added to the list of legal topics or the list of basic criminal justice topics (I checked the aforementioned lists and these topics were not linked). I decided to list them here rather than add them directly to the lists to prevent erroneous placement. Please let me know if you would rather me place them directly on the page. Thanks -- Notheruser 21:42 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Abortion, Affray, Arbitration, Bar, Barratry, Burden of proof, Capital punishment, Deterrence, Directed verdict, Disbarment, Fact, Malpractice, Peremptory pleas, Plaintiff, Plea of nolo contendere, Punitive damages, Quid pro quo, Shoplifting, Strategic lawsuit against public participation, Term of disparagement, Vexatious litigation