Thank you and God bless you!!
Sincerely yours,
Antonio What the heck?? Martin
God bless you
"However, this tactic [shock and awe] does not seem to have been successful in that war - the expectiation that most of Iraqi forces would capitulate after the shock and awe campaign were wrong."
I agree with the initial statement that SaA was a failure (in the above described sense), therefore I wonder why you removed this part? -- mkrohn 17:02 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)
Do you'd know who'd be interested in editing articles pertaining to Brazil and Russia?
Hi again, Mav. I've down a substantial rewrite of the Four Courts page about a historic building in Dublin. It has two photographs. The first is large but I think works and seems to open OK so I don't think there is a need to shrink it. (The nature of the photo I think needs to be largish). But the second photo definitely needs shrinking. Unfortunately while I can crop photos on this computer, reducing their size isn't possible. Because it shows architectual detail, cropping would be the wrong solution. But given your skill at these things, could you possibly shrink it for me? I have left in on the page for now, but it is simply too big in its current form to be left there in its current size (way too big). But it definitely is a picture worth having on the page. Thanks in anticipation. STÓD/ÉÍRE 00:00 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)
Actually JohnOwens has done it already so problem solved. Thanks anyway.
Hiya Mav, me oul' flower (Irish expression, that!) as a graphics wunderkid, maybe you could tell me - is GIMP Mac compatible? We Mac kids are used to using straight-forward. I have great fun designing pages on quark xpress, etc (jeez. I haven't done an advertorial for a whole 17 days. I'm kinda having withdrawal systems here!) I'm afraid all the GIMP info I could find on their download page left me knowing less when I left than when I went in there. And it seemed to be something akin to a jigsaw puzzle putting it all together if you downloaded all the bits. I like systems all in one chunk, not getting an assembly kit, let alone one written in techno-pap. Now I know what happened to the kids in my class who couldn't write english: they went off and wrote rock music columns and computer manuals!!! Slán go bhfoill. STÓD/ÉÍRE 00:42 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, I'll take a look! -Poor Yorick[?]
Many thanks. Mav. You help is appreciated. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:28 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)
I really don’t deserve this reputation of being biased.
I’ve chronicled some statements that I’ve found in support of the bulk of my contributions:
Hi, thanks for the onservations on the Irish Famine page. After a pretty pointless and abusive debate there, it is nice to receive intelligent, thought-provoking commentary from someone.
> I say this in all seriousness: 172 is forcing us to look at aspects > of totalitarian regimes that we might otherwise miss.
User 172 seems to have the ability to arouse great passion.
172 has a great deal of expertise in certain |fields. On the development of European colonialism, for example, I |think I'm safe in saying that I am not alone in having developed |considerable respect for his knowledge. (See Talk:New Imperialism for |evidence of my assertion here.) He writes in great detail, and on |dauntingly difficult subjects
they are set in concrete, they make an excellent foundation for |readable, fact-filled articles of real scholarship.
172 was, on the whole, co-operative with us, and the |article began to improve a great deal.
But he also makes a very useful contribution to Wikipedia, and is not impossible to work |with..
172 also now seems to be getting things under control on the IPF Irish Potato Famine page.
(wikify, remove redundancies...needs more simple editing! (but great article!))[about the New Imperialism article, which I started and most of which is mine]
You are a competent historian, 172.
172 is doing good work.
(I didn't want to quote people on someone else's site, but I can verify these quotations. I've already proven that I'd make a good sysop.)
A good article is not only a list of pros and cons, but a source that should illumiate why particlar events happened, why history unfolds in the way that it does. I'd never engage in whitewashing because the “positive” and the “negative” aspects of regimes are usually intertwined.
No political agenda, therefore, determined my edits to the Saddam Hussein article.
This user wrote a small anti-capitalist tirade on my user page. After I had written him a fairly lengthy critique of those statements, he revamped and paraphrased much of that content, converting it into roughly the same anti-capitalist tirade.
Aside from the perspective, the editing reminds me of Vera Cruz’s edits to New Imperialism. I don't mind my facts being cited in a piece that doesn't share my perspective entirely , but I'm just wondering if Vera has made a comeback.
A number of people some days ago reached the same conclusion, looking at DF's articles and comparing them to past edits by VC. Initially DF seemed to be being constructive. Now they seem to be going out of their way to be destructive and provocative. On the list of people connected with WWII (I can't remember the name right now - well it has been 24 hours since my last wiki-fix!) they threw tantrums if titles were used, renamed the Duke of Windsor as [[Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor]], put in Elizabeth Bowes Lyon[?] even though she was already in as Queen Elizabeth (Consort of George VI), her contemporary name in the war, and like Susan Mason is preoccupied with lists, complaining about how lists are listed on wiki; one gripe was 'how can I find Elizabeth Bowes Lyon alpabetically if she is in as Queen Elizabeth?'. After a series of dodgy edits (names wrong, screwing up titles which they obviously didn't understand (sounds familiar!) duplicating names etc) that were undone by various people, DF moved away. The whole approach they have shown sounds very suspiciously like that practiced by VC. In Irish folk mythology we have a story called the 'Children of Lir'. I think a similar phenomenon exists on wiki, though unfortunately it isn't mythological but all too real. And to think, DF started so well that even though people immediately suspected they were VC II (or should that be Lir IV? God, we'll have to develop a special naming convention for Adam's offspring!!!) everyone was happy that if they remained constructive we'd turn a blind eye to their past record. Oh well. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:56 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)
Hi Mav, 2 points. (1) have you looked in on the Images of Rachel Corrie page debate? Danny, Zoe and I agree that the page of images is POV and unencyclopædic, in effect a shrine. Only a few of the pictures have newsworthiness; they are already on her main page. The rest consider of Rachel smiling in the US, Rachel pensive in the US, Rachel in front a a bulldozer, Rachel in front of a bulldozer some other time, Rachel in Gaza smiling. etc. As a page I think it is at best utterly pointless, at worst glorifying. Personally I would have a lot of sympathy with her cause, but two pages, one entirely of pictures seems OTT for someone who, with the greatest respect, is only going to be a minor footnote in history. Some have argued for re-directing, but I think that misses the point; it isn't the name that's the problem, it is the page's existence. We can always do re-directs for external links to the main Rachel page, which has the key photos anyway.
(2) I see a new user called George Washington appeared last night. I think it is Michael/Weezer. He redirected some of Weezer's stuff to the new page, which immediately looked suspicious. He also included some of the main George Washington stuff to the page, with the tell-tale additions about Washington's sex life that was Michael's preoccupation before; this time it isn't bits about blow jobs but a reference to Washington's penis turning green!!! So it looks like Michael is back and has the same carefree attitude to facts as before (before he even touched an article, at least as far as I noticed. I don't know if anything happened to Michael III last night, but if not it might be worth keeping a close eye on the new user. '"Slán STÓD/ÉÍRE 22:12 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)
I blocked the account of user:George Washington. --Uncle Ed 22:51 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)
The Iraqis are good people, love your enemy! Dietary Fiber
All I did was clarify this sentence pointed out by Dachshund: “As mentioned, the Soviets bore the heaviest casualties of World War II. These war causalities can explain much of Russia's behavior after the war.”
I added content. I did not delete content. Maybe some user prior to me deleted some content, but who knows. I wasn’t following the rest of the article, just this sentence pointed out by Dachshund.
My parents were Holocaust survivors and my entire family apart from the two of them was eradicated. I demand an apology from all you users who believed that slander coming from that lunatic user who has been banned repeatedly.
Aw Mav, how can wikikind cope without you for ONE WHOLE WEEK??? Anyway, have a great break (if it is a break!), get a good tan (if you get a tan, or there is sun there!) and have a lovely wiki-free time. (And watch wikikind go to pieces without the all-powerful, all-knowing Mav to look down from on high, as he pulls together all these historic facts.
Slan, agus go n-eiri an bothár leat (in english - good bye, and may the road go with you). Safe journey. STÓD/ÉÍRE 08:27 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)
What do you think? -- RTC 06:56 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)
Great. It will probably be a couple days before I can finish clipping them out of my full sized (4 megapixel) photos, with Photoshop Elements... Guess I'll upload what I have already clipped now (the first three rows) and do more work tomorrow... -- RTC 07:11 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)
Take a look at these two "experimental" subpages of elements with samples: User:RTC/Lithium and User:RTC/Phosphorus. Assuming I crop the JPEGs to just show the sample instead of the whole vial... what do you think? -- RTC 07:27 Apr 22, 2003 (UTC)
Hey, mav, welcome back. -- Zoe
Hey Mav, welcome back. Tannin (And already you are faced with archiving your talk page - that should get you back into the swing of things like nothing else.;)
Thanks for everything an God bless you!
Sincerely yours, Antonio always a Menudo!! Martin
I agree, and thats why I asked. But I meant to say a list of people who have admitted to be racist or been involved in racist acts. I for example, think that everyone who is involved in the KKK has to be racist but if we were to do the list and include, say, a famous KKK leader who has not admitted to be racist or been convicted of a racist act, then the site could get sued. Lists like that, there's a fine line between listing people who have proved to be and becoming POV.
Antonio Madonna's Long Lost Brother Martin
Thanks mav -- I appreciate it, although I am not sure what good it has done. I think I have reached my limit -- you can look at the most recent talk if you care, although I won't blame you if you don't, Slrubenstein
Why did you remove the recent death ? Did you hear she reborn after 3 days ? Ant
Ah ? Another question then ... If Saddam is proved dead, will he not appear on this page then, but only on the recent death page ?
Zoe[?] suggested I ask you for references to standards for biographical and titular information on Wikipedia. (I hope it's not, as she suggests, something that is kept secret amongst a mysterious clique of editors.) -- mib.
Divergences between the development levels, levels of state ownership, and economic structures between the five Communist states of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, and North Korea or whether or not China is "capitalist" and has betrayed its Marxist-Leninist philosphy thus don't matter to this discussion. The ruling Communist parties of these countries share roughly the same structure and share similarly intertwined state and party institutions and share roughly the same constitutional forms. They represent a common government-type based on the Leninist state and are bound by having to adapt to similar circumstances, that is (with the exception of Castro's Cuba which wasn't at first definitively Communist) supplanting or revamping existing state institutions to fit the mold of an underground revolutionary political party.
Hah! *big roar of laughter* You are only just back and you are at 33K again. As they say, an archive a day keeps cut-ofsf at bay!!! Hope the digital camera works out. I am about to get one too, as soon as a large pay cheque for briefing a politician comes in. Anyway *sigh* you'll love this, Mav-man. Adam/Bridget/Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan Mason/Dietary Fiber is BACK. (Were you around when Susan inadvertently admitted to being DF and was banned? (How many times is that that Adam has been banned?) Anyway, Adam's new identity is Shino Baku. I'd been suspicious all night but couldn't put my finger on what. Then Shino left a message on 172's page. He and I saw it simultaneously and each went to each other's page simultaneously to say that it sounded a hell of a lot like something one of the Adam family would say. The edit pattern since Sino came on is the same. The debate style on all pages is the same. The tendency to make evert increasingly ludicrous and provocative statements that was Susan's trademark. The tendency to wait until a row had died down and some controversial opinion accepted or rejected, then to jump in at the last minute and start it up again by saying I (always first personal singular) think 'x', 'x' being the opposite of the almost agreed 'peace deal'. And the moment we mentioned our suspicions everyone immediately said 'that explain's it.' There was something familiar about this new user. But the scary thing was the line on 172's page was word for word what Susan regularly said, what DF said, what all of the Children of Lir said. Always in the same format. Always in first person. The only change was the topic. How many times does a user have to get banned before they can be banned permanently? ÉÍREman 07:03 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)
Heh heh. Thanks for the laugh, Mav. Hope the pixs came out OK from your new digital camera. My five thousand euro cheque came through today so tomorrow I'm a buying a digital camera too. Then I can go around Dublin and take photos by the hundred for any wiki pages remotely mentioning Dublin! OK. I admit it. I'm a wikiholic. And just in case there was any doubt, my phone bill arrived and looking at the amount of time I spent wiki-ising . . . AAAAAAGH. wikilove and digi-cameras! ÉÍREman 23:23 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, mav. I'm just a little p*ssed off tonight. -- Zoe
sorry mav, nothing has arrived. Slán ÉÍREman 20:45 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)
Go ahead, mav, I wasn't looking forward to doing all that reverting, anyway. :) -- Zoe
Mav, I don't think I could leave. Let's face it, that would involve some serious difficulties, such as trying to remember what it is like to have a ... er ... (damn it, the term is on the tip of my tongue) ... ah yes ... to have a "normal life". But my former enthusiasm for doing fauna entries has evaporated. After doing a bit of this and a bit of that, I was really enjoying working in a field which is, if not controversy-free, at least one where the controversies are very civilised.
Consider the horrible mess that is bird taxonomy, with the English, the Americans, the Australians, the Dutch, the South Africans all having different and incompatible classifications. And yet, here on the 'pedia, we have two Englishmen, an American, and an Australian - all happily cooperating to build a body of work that is as up-to-date and scientifically correct as we can make it. It has a long, long way to go, and there are several thorny issues to resolve, but bit by bit we are getting there.
Or consider the woeful state of the mammal entries. (I'm thinking of the Australian ones in particular here.) I've spent days and days working on these, checking all my facts with appropriate sources as I go along, and they have started to take some form and accuracy on.
All the while I've been swallowing, largely without complaint, the constant and tedious fiddling from people who, however well-meaning, are being very unhelpful. Yesterday I reached a "last straw" state of mind and I've spat the dummy out.
I don't want to do fauna stuff here anymore.
I take your point about using common names instead of specialist names, and agree with it. However, we need to think this through. Consider the three basic situations:
In summary, there are three possibilities:
I would be delighted to return to crafting factual, readable, accurate entries about fauna of all kinds. I have greatly enjoyed doing that over the last few months. But, fair dinkum, I have had a gutfull of constant hit and run edits that do nothing but spoil the result of all the effort I put in. I don't want to be unreasonable or petulant, but let's face it, we all only work on articles because we enjoy doing it and find it rewarding. I am no longer enjoying it, and it's no longer rewarding. As I have documented elsewhere, everyone who is doing bird entries on any significant scale has similar problems. It's not just me. I just happen to be the one who has reached the end of his tether first.
Best wishes, Tannin 03:57 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)
It's really odd how the changing of just a couple of letters from upper to lower case "spoil the result of all the effort". -- Zoe
Thank you for telling me, Mav. You are a gentleman and even if we disagree I always respect you. What I wrote on the mail was based on a number of emails I received from a number of quite experienced people on wiki, a number of whom are leaving over the capitalisation issue. I know I have been annoyed on occasion when I have gone to the trouble of double, treble and quadruple-checking capitalisation rules on something and then been overruled on wiki, where it has been insisted that it breaks naming conventions on capitalisation. On occasion I have checked with experts on the issue, and they would turn around and say wiki is 100% wrong. But still an edit war would erupt. A classic example was with Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote which should be treated as a proper noun because it is the specific name of a specific voting system, but which ended up being renamed Single transferable vote before after a war finally put in as a partly correct Single Transferable Vote. The term can be used generically to refer to a proportional system using a single transferable vote, but when referring to a specific electoral system is, as a proper noun, capitalised (and written also as PR.STV, never ever pr.stv. (Google searches in this like so many other areas (the 'Charles Windsor' nonsense, for example) is simply wrong, and based on a mistake being copied and copied and copied by lots of people). I have changed plenty of capitals to small letters in articles where they should not be capitalised, but there are a scary number of areas where capitalisation should be automatic but has been removed. Anyway that is the issue. But it is driving some serious academic people away because they feel that academic standards are not being followed.
BTW, re China, I know I probably appeared Bolshie there (little communist-ish joke there :) ) but the point is that there is a strict number of definitions used to categorising states and Communist state is one. It does not define how communist a state is or pass judgments; it simply uses one of a list of I think 10 categories that are universally applied in all sourcebooks and textbooks to define which type of governmental system each state has. 172 and I repeated ad nausaum that the category only referred to the governmental system, not the political system, and went to the trouble to put a link defining what the term means, as I have with others on the list, Constitutional Monarchy, Popular Monarchy, Federal, Unitary state, Republic etc. But others on the page still misrepresented what we were talking about and got into discussions on the political system (a fundamentally different thing) or threw up 'alternatives' that do not exist. (A Nation means something completely different that is unrelated to system of government, socialist isn't on the list because it has at least nine meanings worldwide, so different wiki readers would interpret it differently depending on which political culture they were from - hence its non-use in sourcebooks as a definition - etc.) In the first minute of the first lecture to first year third level students on Chinese governments, they are told China is a Communist state. It is elementary an political science definition, taught from Washington, to Cape Town, Geneva to Dublin to Dubai. But not acceptable on the China talk page on wiki!
Finally (Ok you'll have to archive again!!!) could you please take a look at the Communist state page. The page is constructed purely as a definition on what the term means, ie the unique relationship between state and party that does not exist in any other system, hence the use of the term rather than any other. A number of people contributed to the page. One user still thinks the page is about communism, and keeps adding in heavily POV additions (on concentration camps, peasantry, etc) which (a) are a matter of controversy; (b) even if accurate belong on a page on communism or Chinese and USSR history, not on Communist state and so are utterly irrelevant, as is obvious from the two topics I mentiond. (Its like putting a mention of George W. Bush's linguistic prowess on a page on Federal Republic!) Every effort to remove this irrelevant material is reverted by its author, Fred Bauder. (Tannin's view on Fred's additions is on my talk page. It might be worth glancing at.) Maybe you could have a word with Fred. It is tedious for people who did a lot of good and interesting work on the page to keep having to revert it to remove irrelevant material. It can and perhaps should be debated elsewhere. But not on a page that it is purely on a 'system of government', not the history behind the party that runs that system of government. OK. I'll finish now. Sorry for taking up so much space and thank you for your notice. I appreciate your candour and good grace, even when I can be rather tactless and . . . em . . . bolshie sometimes. (Not in my politics, mind!) ÉÍREman 04:37 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)
Hi. Can you please help in some way. Once again, I am blocked. I tried to make an edit and I received the message "Goodbye Michael". This is getting ridiculous already. I have told Zoe this, and she responded that the ban will be lifted in a day. That is unacceptable to me. I understand that everyone is on a witchhunt because of a few rowdy users, but that is no reason to block me as collateral damage. Danny
Yes. WHY THE HECK AREN'T YOU A SYSOP? Your workload and quality of it suggests you'd be an ideal one, Danny. (See Mav, I'm not gone to bed yet. Afraid of images of writhing Madonnas! BTW, I took a look at Double jeopardy. If it is a formal legal title, shouldn't it be treated as a proper noun? Hah. The Capitalisation Debate Rolls On. . . . hee . . . hee . . . hee . . . ÉÍREman 06:37 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)
To me, replacing my correct capitals with lower case is the same sort of unneccesary irritating behaviour.
On the broader issue of redirects, in the bird articles you will always have lots of these anyway, because of varying English names, and sometimes scientific names, eg US Parasitic Jaeger= UK Arctic skua[?], which should of course be [[Arctic Skua]] jimfbleak
Thanks for the greetings. If you see any newbie mistakes, don't hesitate to let me know! Sam.
Mav, PLEASE intervene in [Communist state]]. At this stage, Tannin, 172 and I have had to do nearly 20 reversions. No-one (except Shino Baku!) agrees with what Fred Bauder is doing. He himself admits his additions are "unbalanced". But even if they were NPOV, everyone is agreed he is putting them into the WRONG ARTICLE. But he will listen to absolutely no-one. Instead he does not nothing but keeps reverting, reverting, reverting to put his irrelevant right wing rant into the text. Someone needs to protect the page because Tannin, 172, myself and others (who have admitted themselves disgusted that no-one has intervened to stop this blatent vandalism that has been going no now for days and are offering to help reverting) cannot and will not spend all our time guarding one page from what at this stage is outright vandalism. If it doesn't stop, I'll have to ask Jimbo to have a word with the user if not ban him entirely. I only came on here this morning for one minute to check one thing. Already I have had to do two revertions, as did Tannin. This has to be stopped. ÉÍREman 10:19 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)
Thank you for the welcome message, and the help links. Susanth[?] 23:11 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)
Me too. Thanks! Uyanga
Hi Mav. Please take a look at the Johnny Rebel discussion. Danny
Hi Mav, sorry I may have received your email but technical problems are causing havoc here. At various times tonight on wiki, my keyboard has gone wonky, typing y for z, z for y, refusing to type ~, etc. This only ever happens when I am on wiki. I can use this browser for days elsewhere and no problems occur, but spend a few hours on wiki and it starts and I have a frustrating, infuriating time. When I started archiving communist state, I ended up cutting and pasting [ and ], colons, ~s, ( and ). It drove me bloody well mad. It has occured using both safari and I Explorer 5.2 for the Mac but only ever with wiki. In the end I just left the computer and began playing with my new digital computer (Its official. I am now someone with a photograph on wikipedia. It is great fun going for a five minute walk down the road here at 8.30pm to take a particular image I wanted for wiki, then coming back and putting it onto a wiki page, and hey presto it is now available to millions, with no copyright issues whatsoever!!! I have now transferred over onto the new camera an old picture I took of Mary Robinson's resignation as president of Ireland - I was invited to attend it as Mary's guest so now I can put an image of it on wiki too when I get the chance, an 'exclusive' shot of a resignation in the President's residence, copyright-free!) I have mentioned this browser trouble on the village pump page. Maybe someone will know what is going off. Is it a Mac thing? The fact that it always occurs on wiki suggests it must be linked to wiki and its relationship with Mac browsers.
BTW, I know I was argumentative on the communist state page, but there is very good reason. On China, people didn't want to use the definition there because they didn't understand it, then the same people who said they didn't understand it came to the definition page and tried to plant much the same stuff there as they had tried and failed to plant everywhere else (not that it was blocked in other places because it was irrelevant, just that it was blatently POV in those version to the point of absurdity.) And yes, Communist state is a basic definition used worldwide. It is not about communism. It is not about a state. It is as the name suggests Communist+state. And colleagues of mine in departments of History, Politics, China Studies, lecturers in politics who lecture on Russia (and previously the USSR), China and other states internationally described as Communist States are at a loss, as I am, as to what the problem is and find people's inability to understand that the type of communism or status of communism in these states is of no consequence whatsoever to the definition, baffling. And so do other academic friends of mine totally outside the area, and a journalist who covered both China and the USSR for Irish newspapers. It is a clear, precise, narrow definition of a clear, precise narrow issue. Why people want to go all over the place and introduce stuff that is completely irrelevant on that page I cannot for the life of me understand. From people continuously misunderstanding the definition, to introducing all sort of bizarre alternatives ('nation', a totally different thing that has nothing to do with governmental systems, to 'socialist state', a non-existent definition for obvious reasons (socialist is not linked to a system of government means something different in almost every political culture on the planet) ) At least Fred has stopped his reversions, which in the end must have numbered fifteen to twenty, because that is how many reversions, Tannin, 172 and myself and I think one or two orginal contributors to the page had to do.
Sometimes Mav, even you can be argumentative. :-) Anyway, with this camera, the historian in me may end up taking second place to the photographer! Wikilove. ÉÍREman 03:56 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC) PS: have I pushed you yet over the 32K with my longwindedness, or will I have to come back and add some more? (ONLY JOKING!)
Hi Mav, I'm going to sleep. Can you please freeze the Johnny Rebel page. I would do it myself but I am involved in the war. Also, my general policy is not to engage racists in dialogue because it grants them legitimacy. Danny
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