User talk:Goatasaur

Hello and Welcome! I hope you like the place. --mav

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No problem on Four Seasons. By the way, there's a bit of help on Wikipedia markup at Wikipedia:How to edit a page, and on formatting style at the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, but don't worry if you can't take it all in - there'll always be somebody else there to fix things up. The main thing is to add and improve good content (which you're doing) and have fun (which I hope you're doing!) --Camembert

I like your examples in forced perspective. Please contribute more such fine work! --Uncle Ed

I dont think its wrong per se to blank Vandal pages... -豎眩

Yeah, but you'll admit - its hard to tell sometimes :) -豎眩

羊蜴 (Goat/Sheep/Ram+Lizard) -- :) -豎眩

I owe you an apology for being so sharp with you earlier. I'm not normally quite so bad. You just caught me very exhausted and annoyed over someone who screwed up a page I had spent a couple of days working on. I think instead of taking my anger out on that person I took it out on you.

The whole 'conversation' probably made me sound like an Irish language fanatic, and I'm not. Far from it. But I do think you are seriously misunderstanding the Irish constitution and the relevant status it gives to Irish and English. It explicitly says Irish is the 'National Language' and treats it as the language of Ireland. The superiority it gives to the language is such that the Irish language version of the constitution overrules the englsh language version, in the event of a clash. Irish language laws overrule english language laws, in the event of a clash. It is quite unambiguous in stating and implying that the official language of Ireland is Irish. The early leaders of the state like de Valera or Presidents Hyde and Ó Ceallaigh spoke it almost exclusively. Its superiority is shown even in the President's inauguration oath. Even though either language can be used in that case, no president, no matter how poor their Irish was, would dare to use the english version of the oath.

However English is in reality the spoken language of the vast majority of Irish people. The constitution's author, Eamon de Valera, could not ignore english, so he gave it a grudging recognition. But whereas the earlier 1922 constitution gave Irish and english co-equal status as two official languages, the 1937 constitution nailed its colours to the mast by describing the former as the 'national language' and the first official language, while English was demoted to being a second official language, ie, not merely was it made clear in the language it is in the second division, overruled in the event of a clash, it wasn't even the second language but a second language, as if other languages could in time be added to the second division with it. (The third most spoken language in Ireland, BTW, is chinese!)

So a page on official languages has to recognise that Irish is the 'national language, the premier language given priority. (Irish language speakers even get special tax breaks denied to the rest of us english-speakers!) English is the second language, in fact according to the constitution a second language, with a lesser official status, and it would be a seriously misleading factual error to suggest that they have equal status when they unambiguously don't.

Again, apologies for being sharp with you. It was just bad timing.. JtdIrL 09:59 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not a lawyer but as far as I know, luckily the 'clash' between Irish and english in law has not materialised. I say luckily because while people often presume that the constitution for example was drafted in one language and translated into another, de Valera bizarrely ordered two rival versions, the english one done by a lawyer called John Hearne, the Irish by a non lawyer Irish language expert. At various points they differ - for example, one requires a president to have reached 35 years of age, the other to have 'competed' 35 years. In the event, the less specifically worded, less legally sounding Irish version would take priority, which lawyers (most of whom would be less knowledgeable in Irish) have spent over 60 years dreading.

I don't know about statute law, but again the Irish version takes priority in the event of a difference. But the 'superiority' of Irish is shown in such areas as:

• Irish receives greater weight than any other subject in calculating exam results. (Entry to Irish universities is won by getting a certain number of points. Each mark for each course has a numerical points value with most subjects equally weighted. Irish however gets special 'extra' marks.)
• Civil servants are required to pass a special exam in Irish. In the civil service, no Irish means no job.
• People living in Irish speaking areas (called the 'Gaeltacht') get special tax exemptions and tax breaks that people living in english-speaking areas (the 'Galltacht') are excluded from. (There is currently a row over claims that peope in the Gaeltacht are getting massive tax breaks, housing grants, etc even though in reality they themselves have stopped speaking the language.)
• Businesses opening on Gaeltacht areas get special tax breaks and grants.
• The Irish language television station, TG4, is subsided by vast sums each year, something which many elements of the Irish media have criticised.
• Students used to be legally required to study Irish. Officially this has been abolished, but still students are in effect required to study the language because otherwise without the weighted points, they simply would find it next to impossible to get entry into their preferred university course.
• Irish political leaders are in effect 'required' to have a knowledge of Irish. Speeches by leaders at Árd Fheiseanna (Irish for party conferences) are in reality required to deliver part of their speech as gaeilge (through Irish), even if they don't in reality speak a word of it, having simply learned off the Irish section of the speech phonetically. Being accused of being unable to speak the 'national language' is potential political death. Erskine Childers, the oxbridge-educated president of Ireland, had to struggle to deliver his declaration of office as gaeilge, which sounded comic, given his British upper class accent. JtdIrL 00:56 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

People are objecting to our using un-Engerlish for a sig... not that I care what they think, but Ive agreed to compromise with a bilingual sig... 豎眩SV I dont endorse making this policy though. just passing it on..

Well said. But I think its just stoopid. 豎眩^SV

I didnt call anyones opinion "stupid"... rather their behaviour in expressing it, sometimes. I stand by that. But I grok your intent. -豎眩sv

please don't take it for language facism... when it was just SV who wrote a sig like this, I knew a "??" sig meant him. Now I have no idea who's who. I'm all for giving Wikipedia a more international feel, but remember few users have those character sets installed. Even if they do, they lack the experience to distinguish them. -- Taркюин 09:38 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

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Photos people are a bit more confusing. I think (but don't quote me on this) the publicity photos on imdb.com are fine. They are publicity photos after all. For more clarification, Wikipedia:Copyrights is the place to ask, because I just parrot back what others have told me. Tuf-Kat

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Hi Goatasaur, do you know whether 18 Songs/The Unseen[?] actually exists? It may be a Michaelism, see Talk:The Unseen -- sannse 09:35 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

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Sorry about taking your joke about daughter in the box vs. daughter in a box. It wasn't intentional. Maybe we can still find a way to link from particle in a box, which is what reminded me of the "daughter" thing anyway. ^_^ --Uncle Ed 00:22 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

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I guess that proves I'm better than you. Michael Hardy 01:03 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

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Oops, I always forget to put the "User:" part in those, for some reason. Pretty silly, redirecting the page to itself. Thanks for catching that one. -- John Owens 22:51 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

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Re: Car -> automobile LOL, yes, I have started doing that, except in the rare case where "car" is actually the more common term in context -- those get [[automobile|car]]. This is a good way to find articles which need help, though -- the people who use "car" instead of "automobile" are the ones who aren't writing clearly in the first place. Thanks for paying attention.... I'll change my summary note so as not to confuse anyone else. Catherine

A follow-up, after feedback from others -- apparently the word "automobile", although understood, is NOT generally used in Europe -- they use "car" universally. So I will now be using [[automobile|car]] in all of the car articles. Thanks for the recommendation, though! Catherine 00:11 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

That might not be a bad idea -- might want to discuss it with Jtdirl and User:Camembert, the others involved with the discussion. Catherine

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Oh. I still think the entire article is POV against South Park and should be changed completely. LittleDan 14:34 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi. (Hope the date went well!) There is a row brewing on the Republic of Ireland page. Put simply, we have an agreed template, structure and text. One user some months ago tried to muck up the page through ludicrous and factually inaccurate changes. In the end he was told to back off, that the consensus was against him. Now he is back, trying the same mucking around. He wants to remove relevant information he almost alone thinks irrelevant, change facts to his own inaccurate understanding of them, etc. He tried to ignore the consensus last time. He now wants to pull the same stunt again and highjack the page to introduce his own factually inaccurate version again. If you could visit the page and join in the chorus of telling him to stop messing the article it would be most appreciated. It took a lot of effort the last time (from a lot of Irish people who were furious at what he was trying to do!) to stop him. Every bit of help in stopping this nonsense before it becomes a full scale edit war a second time would be most appreciated. FearÉIREANN 03:15 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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What's with the "_" article? I deleted it manually. --Eloquence 21:04 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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You have been nominated and throughly approved for Adminship. All we now need is for you to either accept or decline the position. Please indicate your decision on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. --mav

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Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban signed in users. What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban anonymous vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Votes for deletion for more than a week, protect pages when asked to by other members, and help keep the few protected pages there are, among them the precious Main Page, up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information at Wikipedia:Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun! --Eloquence 02:54 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well hello there, fellow sysop! :-) FearÉIREANN 04:30 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Regarding your boilerplate text for anons, you may wish to link to Special:Userlogin on the "registering under a username" text; my experience is that many newbies don't figure out immediately how to do that. --Eloquence 05:02 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oh, and you have a typo. It's "future" (instead of "futre"). --Eloquence

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Conga-rats on becoming sysop. And if you have any questions about what it entails, go suck yourself 8-) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 08:53 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Only 12 that time. Not bad. :)
Hephaestos 03:55 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For padded edit counts, tune in the Michael show every day between 1 and 6 Central time. Slightly more fun than Hunt the Wumpus. ;) - Hephaestos 04:09 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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G, just a heads-up, that Bill Hicks guy also vandalized the Strom Thurmond page. I blocked the IP. If you think the contributor is salvagable from the depths of vandalhood, unblock the IP, I won't object. --Dante Alighieri 05:44 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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re: plutocracy. what i meant to say was that saying simply "goverment system" implies to me that it only describes a system which was intentionaly set up that way, where many would use the word to describe the goverment if it really is working that way even though it claims it isn't, etc. If you agree and could phrase it better, please do.