Allens

For barnstars and similar, please see my main page.

Barrack

Wikipedia has the concept of National varieties of English. We also have a project called Simple English Wikipedia "It is suggested that articles be simplified using only the 1000 most common and basic words in English and fewer complex grammatical structures" (Simple Main Page).

Barrack is a perfectly useful Commonwealth English word, which conveys the meaning of what the soldiers were doing. From the Oxford English Dictionary "To shout jocular or derisive remarks or words of advice as partisans against a person, esp. a person, or side collectively, engaged in a contest". If ever you listen to the House of Commons Prime Minister's question time you will hear barracking. Basically it is mass heckling combined with trying to shout down the opposition. Back in the eighties one of the pro-European Tories said of his European-sceptical colleagues "The have mastered joined up shouting, but haven't mastered joined up thinking." -- PBS (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Are you actually sure it's Commonwealth English and not UK English, which is what Wiktionary says? It doesn't matter all that much.... except that apparently in Australian English it means to shout in support (of a team). To a speaker of US English, it's simply an unknown word (except for a possible connection to barracks - my first thought on reading it was that it was a word for "taking someone out back of the barracks and beating them up"...); to a speaker of Australian English, it actually means the opposite of what the article needs it to mean. Allens (talk) 01:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Back to the specific point you ask "Am I not allowed to express this viewpoint on an article and ask for clarification?"

Of course you are. But usually this is used to ask a question about something which is not clear in the sense of syntax. For example "John Smith's father was Peter Smith. He was a well known and widely published biologist". One can not tell from that sentence who was the biologist and it would be reasonable to ask for clarification. But I do not think it reasonable to ask for clarification for the word biologist. Or suppose he was a thespian should one expect a person to know what that word means?

The other area where one is justified in asking for clarification is when people use words that are jargon inside a specialist field which a person with a well rounded eduction who is not a specialist is unlikely to know.

In the examples above one can not fix the text without access to the sources. In the first case they may not be on line so one would have to go to a library and perhaps a specialised one. If on the other-hand the sources was available then, then rather than asking the question just fix it. In the second case there is a reasonable chance that the jargon is impenetrable unless one is an expert, so again it is reasonable to ask the question. But in the case of a dictionary word then why not look it up?

Your placing of the template into the article because of the word leaves us with four options:

1. Leave the template there semi-indefinitely;
2. Remove template as the word is a standard English word and invoke National varieties of English (which is what I am doing); -- PBS (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

   I understand, although I do note commonality is also a policy, indicating that the word should be changed to a more-commonly-understood term (e.g., "shout down" in this case, if they were shouting so loud that Charles couldn't be heard (which I suspect was the case)). Actually, I may ask on the Talk:Regicide page if someone with ready access to the historical sources can confirm whether they actually succeeded in full-scale shouted him down; if so, then "shout down" is actually more accurate (barrack means that they tried, as I understand it, not that they succeeded?). Allens (talk) 01:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

3. Remove the template and change the word for another word or phrase;
4. Remove the template and link the word to Wiktionary like this: barrack.

I personally think that barrack is a perfectly usual word that most educated readers ought to know, hence my removal of the template. If you do not then how about linking it to Wikidict? I do it for words I do not think most would know but ought to know because they will come across it in other general sources about similar subjects; eg "wikt:cousin-german", which can be replaced with "first cousin", but if it is then people will not lean from a suitable Wikipedia article what cousin-german means (in several places in Wikipedia editors had capitalised "cousin german" to "cousin German" showing that they did not know what it meant and guessed incorrectly). -- PBS (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

(I'm surprised they didn't "correct" it to "German cousin"...) I'm also willing to go with linking to Wikidict (I trust it's possible to link to the particular meaning of the term in Wikidict?), if the above substitution for accuracy isn't right (or if people want to place priority on reading learning new vocabulary). I have to say that I have a rather large vocabulary - including words gotten from reading Victorian English history - and am quite educated (Ph.D., with my bachelor's being from a Liberal Arts school); this is the first time I've ever run across on Wikipedia a non-jargon/technical word I haven't already known the meaning of. Thank you for the courtesy of a quick reply, BTW. Allens (talk) 00:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

"She married her cousin german Frederick of Hanover" becomes "She married her cousin German Frederick of Hanover" :-)

Yes we can link to a specific section: wikt:barrack#Etymology 2 and hide it behind a pipe barrack

In the UK barrack has only a negative meaning the last example in the OED is

1963 Times 11 May 5/1 When Miss Truman led 4–1 in the first set, the crowd began to barrack every point she scored and to encourage the Italian girl with prolonged cheering.

In Australia it can mean either (which was a surprises to me) I did a search on the website of www.smh.com.au (Sydney Morning Herald) and it seems that Australians still use it as a neutral word (barracking for or against). In the context of civil war guards and a prisoner Australians will understand the meaning. Notice it is a word used in newspapers so it is in no way a specialist word -- people who read the Times or the SMH are assumed to know what it means by the journalists of those papers.

"Shout down" is not really accurate (but then "He would say that wouldn't he" as it was I who put in the word barracked into the article (in 2005). Perhaps this will help Brown vs. Cameron during Queen's Speech debate The point is not to stop Brown speaking but to make him sound foolish, by stuttering and repeating himself etc. King Charles I had a speech impediment and he was not used to being interrupted. This is from the treason trial of Daniel Axtell

I saw him the most activest person there; and during the time that the King was urging to be heard, he was then laughing, entertaining his Souldiers, scoffing aloud, whilst some of the Souldiers by his suffering, and (I believe) procurement, did fire powder in the palms of their hands, that they did not onely offend his Majesties smell, but enforced him to rise up out of his Chair, and with his hand to turn away the smoke ; and after this he turned about to the people and smiled upon them, and those Souldiers that so rudely treated him : ...[at the end of the trial] Mr. Axtell, Prisoner at the Bar, commanded his Souldiers to cry out, Justice, which the Souldiers not readily obeying of him, I saw him beat four or five of them with his Cane , until they cried out, (with himself) Justice, Justice, Execution, Execution,"

So I don't think that "shouted down" is the best description when we have a word like barracked, and I think that is an brief accurate summation of what Axtell was found guilty of doing.

--PBS (talk) 09:05, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, then - linking to the appropriate definition. It also sounds like wikidict may need a bit of correction on the UK meaning also extending to at least part of the Commonwealth, and possibly all of it. Allens (talk) 00:48, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Gloucester County College - thanks! And one question...

Hi. Thanks for going over the Gloucester County College page and rating it. What sort of infobox is suitable (the WikiProjec New Jersey tag says one is needed), besides the college/university one that's already up there? Thanks again! Allens (talk) 17:01, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, happy to take a look. It is a good start, but some sections are entirely unreferenced. If references were added for each section, that would go a long way toward making it into C-class. As for the infobox, I didn't pay attention to that tag. Removed, as it obviously does have an infobox. Cheers. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 17:23, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Greetings from WikiProject Medicine!

Welcome to WikiProject Medicine! I noticed you recently added yourself to our Participants' list, and I wanted to welcome you to our project. Our goal is to facilitate collaboration on medicine-related articles, and everyone is welcome to join (regardless of medical qualifications!). Here are some suggested activities: Read our Manual of Style for medical articles and guide to Reliable medical sources Join in editing our collaboration of the month (the current one is Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) Discuss with other members in the doctor's mess Have a look at some related WikiProjects Have a look at the collaboration dashboard Have a look at the Trusted Sources recommended by Wikiproject medicine Have a look at the most powerful citing tool Diberri's tool If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask at the project talk page, or please feel free to ask for help on my talk page. Again, welcome!. Happy editing, JFW | T@lk 20:22, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicine, tasks you can do:

style?

What are you talking about? Try best and just show by diff. 99.90.197.87 (talk) 02:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Try saying "Try your best and just show what you mean using a diff". Allens (talk) 03:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

If user Allens insist. Yes, try your best and just show what you mean using a diff . (note: However "such" wording imply logical preposition, which was not considered exactly.) 99.90.197.87 (talk) 10:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Sigh... you didn't understand what I meant - I was giving an example of how you are very unclear. I have no idea what you're meaning, if it wasn't what I said in the first place. Allens (talk) 15:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you understand: "Try your best and just show what you mean using a diff" ? 99.90.197.87 (talk) 15:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Women in Victorian England, Beeton, & copyright

Thank you so much for pointing out the Project Gutenberg copy of Beeton's book! I've reverted back to the "tables" version of the article and updated the source citations to the Gutenberg copy. Many thanks. OttawaAC (talk) 14:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Magna Mater

Could I suggest that you and your confrère Machine Elf 1735 proceed more cautiously in mucking about with this? Those of us who write regularly on ancient Roman religion are aware of the problems with this title, which are unlikely to be sorted out through the proliferation of dabs and redirects. You are both causing more problems than you're solving. When I've linked to "Magna Mater," I've expected it to go to "Cybele" for now. But I agree with comments made elsewhere by Haploidavey that "Magna Mater" is a divine honorific that may refer primarily to Cybele, but can refer to other deities. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless you're doing something informational to improve the situation. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:34, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

That is, in fact, exactly what I was trying to do with my editing - indicate that Magna Mater can mean Cybele or can mean other things. The situation as is is not satisfactory and needs fixing. If you wish to have Magna Mater redirecting to Cybele, with Cybele having a link to a disambiguation page for other meanings of Magna Mater, I'm fine with that. But there needs to be an indication that Magna Mater doesn't only mean Cybele, since it doesn't. Allens (talk) 18:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Hey, just a note to thank you for the useful tag. I never think of these things. Haploidavey (talk) 00:34, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure; happy to help! I should do it myself the next time I'm intensively working on Gloucester County College or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or such, but I never think I'm going to make that many changes... :-} Allens (talk) 00:38, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for your help with the article Cestus. There are some more things to do there, aren't there? Would you be interested in joining any of the discussions on the talk page or starting a topic about new ways of improving the article? As always, feel free to edit it further. Chrisrus (talk) 01:16, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Biographies

Actually, I did have that parameter set at first...until I discovered a couple of stray living politicians. I thought it was best to err on the side of caution, just to be certain. Regardless, you won't have any more to worry about - that was the last batch of talkpages I was going to create...unless I decide to check on Irish MPs tomorrow (and those are all dead, so that shouldn't be a worry.) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

help

I have a problem. I've discovered that I have come to create two users that I both use, by accident, and I'll tak not expelled for using multiple accounts. Can you help me? Okay, I came to write incorrectly. I use only one of the accounts were when I forgot the password to the other.--80.161.143.239 (talk) 14:50, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Phospholipid-derived fatty acids

Mr. Allens:

I apologize for deleting the original template that was on this page, as I am new to Wiki and just learning the rules. I would have responded sooner, but just learned how to respond. I am also planning to imbed the remaining citations once I am back at work on Monday, in order to fully follow the Wiki guidelines. Will leave your original template and references alone from here on out.

I am curious about your interest in PLFA? Did you work with Dr. Max Haggblom while at Rutgers. He is someone we have worked with for many years. Regards.

Ckunitsky (talk) 21:18, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Max? Heh! Yes, as it happens, at least peripherally. I was in the same department (Biochemistry & Microbiology) during my graduate (doctoral) work, and the class I TAed for most of that time (Experimental Biochemistry) used his analysis machine for lipid analysis of one of the labs - one that I generally graded, and also helped the students with on numerous occasions. (They were doing analyses on lipids in food products; among other things, unless it was a microbially-generated - fermented or whatever - foodstuff, I needed to help them distinguish which lipids were unlikely to be found except in bacteria/archaea and thus should be ignored in favor of more-likely alternatives.) I also first drank alcohol at the party for his getting tenure. If you happen to talk to him, do say that Allen says hello, if you would...

I understand fully being new to Wikipedia and not having learned the rules just yet - while I had done a bit of editing a few years ago, I've only been regularly editing a couple of months myself. (One of the rules is "don't bite the new editors"...) In terms of the "template", there's actually two different things. The first is the presence of an initial section, the lead above all of the sections with headers (those things set off with equals signs on each side); this should be an initial summary with in specific the name(s) of the article in boldface. Feel free to edit the lead section, provided the guidelines for it (linked above) are being followed. The second is the template that I had added (the thing in doubled {, etc) regarding the need for the citations to be in a more-manageable format. (I may try to help out with those later this weekend, although I've also got classes to teach & get prepared for...) Once they're in a manageable format (I recommend the one with "ref" and "/ref", in less-than and greater-than signs, which is the easiest to maintain as far as I can tell), feel free to remove that template. I wouldn't actually call them "my" sections & references - for one thing, all I did was to take what was originally written for the article before you massively expanded it (for which I thank you...) and stick it in as an introduction, with the references for it kept in to indicate where the material for it was taken from. (It's quite possible that the other portions of the article will provide sufficient references for the lead section - as long as this is the case, the lead doesn't need specific references, unlike the rest.)

A few other hints: One generally doesn't put the person's userid or similar, with or without salutation, in a message on that person's talk page - it's assumed that one is talking to the associated user of the talk page if one "writes on it". (Among other reasons, it's frequently uncertain exactly what salutation to give - Mr/Ms/Dr/whatever.) The "talk" page of an article - accessible usually via the "discussion" tab at the top of the screen is generally the best place to discuss changes to it, and also has things like links to various "WikiProjects" that the topic of the article falls under. (I'll have to remember to change the "class" of the PLFA article - sort of a quality rating - according to those to something other than "stub" (usually a very short article) after the citations are revised. Either I or you or someone else should ask someone with the WikiProjects it falls under to determine its new classification, since - at least to me and some others - it's not quite right to try to fully rate an article that one has oneself revised (bias).)

It's very good to hear from you; I really wasn't looking forward to having to take any other actions than talking, nor others doing so... Allens (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

On second thought

Pursuant to your enquiry on my talk and having checked both my reverts on Minoan civilisation. I have found that they were both correct. The first revert cleared the duplicate text while the second revert changed "fisherman's" which is wrong to fishermen's which is correct. So I am not sure about the purpose of your query. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 21:30, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The text was a duplicate? Oops... I hadn't spotted that. Thanks for your quick reply, and sorry for bothering you... Allens (talk) 22:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Thank you for your clarification. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 22:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Romy Haag - Agree with your revert.

Hi Allens!

Thanks for your prudent revert of that unreffed sentence in Romy Haag. It is true that I just really meant to revert the rigurous cuts by the anonymous editor, who b.t.w. did the same to the Dutch and German versions of this article. Those changes carried the suggestion of self-editing by the subject, i.e. Romy Haag herself. Since Romy happens to be a good personal friend of mine (hence my picture of her at the top of this article), I simple gave her a ring and asked. She denied having anything to do with the cuts. In fact, she didn't agree with them, since the parts that were cut away represented common knowledge about her person, readily available from many more sources than just Wikipedia.

I thought you might be aided by knowing this. Cheers from Holland, Thor NL^{AMAZE ME} 13:03, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Quite welcome on the revert. I'm happy to hear that Romy is fine with the info being known (particularly from my personal perspective as a supporter of LGBTI rights). Nice picture, BTW - she doesn't look 60! Allens (talk) 13:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

"Greatly"

Thanks for your update of the animal research page. I particularly favor your sentence structure over my original version. However, I must quibble with your point about needing to keep the adjective "greatly." This seems to me far too qualitative to keep in this section. Where would you draw the line between "different" and "greatly different?" I suppose it could be argued that the adaptive immune systems of insects and animals are greatly different; in the sense that insects don't have one at all. The innate immune systems, on the other hand, are very similar and much of what we know about innate immunity was originally discovered in insects with subsequent identification of similarities in mammals (i.e., toll and toll-like receptors). Anyway, that is a long-winded way to say that I think "different" is accurate while "greatly different" seems biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nathan a fisher (talk • contribs) 06:37, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops - forgot to reply; sorry! One difficulty I can see is that the innate and adaptive immune systems in mammals interact, and the lack of an adaptive immune system in insects thus makes a difference for their innate immunity. I really should locate a reference for this point, of course... I can understand the question about where to draw the line between "different" and "greatly different"; perhaps one could look to see what description is typically used by review papers on the subject? Allens (talk) 12:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Peer reviews

Thanks for your help with peer reviewing and in getting the backlog reduced. I have restored a couple that you took out of the backlog – NBC logos and Hurricane Lenny – because I don't think the extent of comment was really sufficient to justify their removal. It's a difficult call, but we try to ensure every article gets a fair chance of significant comments, and neither of these had been overlong in the backlog. Please continue reviewing, your help is much appreciated. If you're uncertain whether to remove or not, leave it; I monitor the backlog quite regularly. Brianboulton (talk) 21:28, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

No problem, I wasn't sure exactly how much comment was needed; that info will help me judge. Allens (talk) 00:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Metagenomics reviews

Allens, I just wanted to say thanks for the time you took to review Metagenomics in both the peer review and GAN. I've added your content suggestions (HMMs, etc.) to the todo list, right along getting genomics and microbiome up to speed. And that pesky thesis, I suppose. Best regards, Estevezj (talk) 10:10, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Blush... you are quite welcome, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you (and others, of course) make of those articles. (Among other classes, I teach microbiology for the health sciences, and I always mention the human microbiome project. BTW, don't forget that thesis! I know it can be a drag sometimes... From personal experience, I would also suggest not waiting on making papers out of it, if at all possible.) Allens (talk) 13:18, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

• Hi Allens, thanks again for your help on the peer review. If you have time, do you think that you could take another look at the article? It's at FAC now and I got this note during the review. A couple people have been working on fixes prose issues, but I'd like to get all the eyes I can, if you have a chance. Thanks again, Mark Arsten (talk) 16:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

• OK, I'll take a look. Allens (talk) 21:00, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Peer review limits changed

This is a notice to all users who currently have at least one open peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review. Because of the large number of peer review requests and relatively low number of reviewers, the backlog of PRs has been at 20 or more almost continually for several months. The backlog is for PR requests which have gone at least four days without comments, and some of these have gone two weeks or longer waiting for a review.

While we have been able to eventually review all PRs that remain on the backlog, something had to change. As a result of the discussion here, the consensus was that all users are now limited to one (1) open peer review request.

If you already have more than one open PR, that is OK in this transition period, but you cannot open any more until all your active PR requests have been closed. If you would like someone to close a PR for you, please ask at Wikipedia talk:Peer review. If you want to help with the backlog, please review an article whoe PR request is listed at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog/items. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up - will look at it in the next day or so (busy IRL now). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Politics of Memoruy

do not insert your personal pov on the page, that too whuile tagging for cited!Lihaas (talk) 03:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

That's funny, I thought I was noting the lack of neutrality on the page (mentioning the Dresden, etc bombings while not mentioning exactly what the Germans had been doing - to, IMO, completely deserve the bombings, but that's a POV that I wouldn't insert). Allens (talk) 20:29, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Requested articles

Hello. Would you be interested in contributing to this Wikipedia:WikiProject New Jersey/Requested articles? Tinton5 (talk) 20:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll take a look and see if I can suggest something. Allens (talk) 20:27, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

RE: February 2012

Dont template the regulars. a note on the article or prose on the talk page suffices ;_)Lihaas (talk) 02:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

There's more than one viewpoint on that (I seem to recall an essay entitled "Template the regulars" or something like that ;}), but I'll keep in mind that's your preference if it ever happens again (doubt it will, and hope it won't)... Allens (talk) 03:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

GOCE requests pages

Hi. Please would you refrain from moving requests between the GOCE general requests and FAC requests pages. If people choose to place requests on the general page, that's allowed, even if they are aiming for FAC. If people place requests incorrectly on the FAC requests page, a GOCE coordinator will deal with it, but note that any article that the requester is genuinely trying to take to FAC is welcome there; it doesn't have to be a FAC at the moment. Regards, --Stfg (talk) 14:00, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh. Sorry... Allens (talk) 14:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I know you were trying to help. I hope I didn't come across too prickly. Best regards, --Stfg (talk) 15:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon GA1

Could you please review Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon for GA? :) Best --Khanassassin (talk) 17:30, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

No problem... it may be a couple of days before I get a chance (about an hour of sleep last night and exams to grade tomorrow evening). Allens (talk) 17:46, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Hehe...well, thanks :) --Khanassassin (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome. Allens (talk) 23:37, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Allens! Thank You for your kind review! You did alot of copy-editing etc., so thanks! --Khanassassin (talk) 08:47, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Parliament of Croatia

Hi Allen. I wouldn't normally presume to check the writing of a professional academic, but since you asked on the GOCE requests page, I took a look. Actually, only a fairly brief look, because it became clear to me almost immediately that the article now reads very smoothly. It was also apparent on the talk page how well you got on with Tomobe03 and Joy. Please do take on some of the requests on our potential FACs page as well, if you like. This is exactly the quality of work we need over there.

On another subject, I wonder what your plans are with Newspaper Boy (film)? Since DdraconiandevilL is permanently blocked, GOCE has no obligation to service the request, so it's only a question of whether you want to or not. I can either delete it or wait for you to do it, at your preference.

Best wishes, and thanks for helping with our work. Simon --Stfg (talk) 22:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I forgot one thing. The article has a lot of duplicated wikilinks, with is out of favour under WP:OVERLINK. There is a very useful tool, User:Ucucha/duplinks, that checks for this problem. Best, --Stfg (talk) 22:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I am gratified by your opinion of my copyediting; I actually find copyediting in many cases easier than writing well in the first place, incidentally (it avoids my deficits as a writer of overly-complicated sentences - that being an academic vice!). I had originally taken on the various requested copyediting tasks to try to clear out some of the backlog; I'm quite willing to switch back and forth between that page and the FAC subpage.

Regarding the Newspaper Boy (film) article, I have already gone through and shortened or eliminated the various quotes via paraphrasing. Feel free to delete it - I am simply working on it whenever I happen to feel like it.

Regarding duplicated wikilinks, that sort of thing is exactly why I asked for someone to look over the material. The more experienced copyeditors like yourself know the MoS and resources available rather better than I do! Thanks! Allens (talk) 00:53, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! I will delete the Newspaper Boy requests and leave it to you to handle as you like. Regarding tools, three issues of The Signpost carried descriptions of some of the most useful ones:

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-06/Dispatches
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-20/Dispatches
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-11/Dispatches

Best, --Stfg (talk) 11:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The Doon School

Hi Allens! Would you like to participate in the peer review for the Doon School here Wikipedia:Peer review/The Doon School/archive1? I will be grateful for any suggestions. We are seriously working on it to make it a Good Article. Thanks! Merlaysamuel (talk) 17:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'll take a look. Quite welcome... Allens (talk) 18:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Prolactin

Noticed that you placed a fact tag in the lead( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prolactin&curid=214297&diff=478855122&oldid=478854287). I would rather avoid extensive sourcing of overview sections as long as the content is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial. Do you have some specific concern with the text I have placed there? -- Richiez (talk) 23:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, the material in question should really be in the body (and cited there) as well as in the lead. Part of it is (which I admittedly didn't spot - "Structure" is not the most intuitive place to have a discussion of variants, IMO), but part of it isn't. As long as it's in the body with citations, I have no problem whatsoever with it being summarized in the lead sans citations. Allens (talk | contribs) 00:14, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Good idea, renamed that section and will have closer look at it to amend and fix. Richiez (talk) 12:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Seán Treacy (disambiguation)

fyi... living=yes on this because someone listed in the main article is alive. Also, listas doesn't contain any diacritics, so lists=Treacy, Sean. I'm sure there are other things wrong, but I've only read .001% of the gazillion wiki rules and my head hurts. Bgwhite (talk) 21:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I understand fully about the headache - it's why I usually don't do listas! I'd thought that there weren't any real rules on whether living=yes or blpo=yes for list, disambig, etc pages with living people. IIRC, I suggested the use of blpo for list/disambig cases on the Template talk page for WikiProject Biography, and nobody seemed to object, so... Allens (talk | contribs) 21:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Counting Astatine

Hi Allen, I saw the question in your edit summary about counting Astatine. It's an interesting question I haven't seen before, but would you mind terribly if you didn't count it, as you've been on it for some time now? I know you wouldn't abuse the precendent, but some might ;) Thanks for the great work you're doing. Simon. --Stfg (talk) 10:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Sure, and quite welcome... Allens (talk | contribs) 11:17, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Doon School help

Hi Allens, I need your help on the Doon School page. In the (Notable alumni) section, I want to utilise the white space between the Rajiv Gandhi photo and individual names by putting more photos of the alumni. How do I do that? Making a gallery is not working as the photos are being pasted below the Rajiv Gandhi pic. I just want to put 2-3 photos in the White space between without altering the overall size of the section? Please take a look and teach me trick or two :) Thanks! [[User:Merlaysamuel|Merlaysamuel]] (talk) 08:47, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've given a try at filling the white space with the list via the use of the {{Div col}} template. One could theoretically use the {{Col-begin}} template to do what you're talking about (by putting the list in the first column and the pictures in the remaining columns), but there would be a problem if someone was viewing it on a narrow browser (like for a cell phone) or with the text width turned up (such as because they've got vision problems) - there wouldn't be enough space for the pictures but the browser would still try to shove them in. What I've done will fill up the whitespace if someone has a relatively wide browser width, but should still be OK even if they don't. I don't know of any way to have it automatically put pictures into the whitespace beside the list that will work for all browsers and browser width settings; even what I've done won't actually be seen (but should still look OK) on some browsers. It's possible that such exists - I am not a very visual person (I do text much better) so haven't really looked into it previously. Allens (talk | contribs) 21:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Article copyedit

Hi Allens, hope things are going well with you. I'm wondering if you would be willing to help with a copyedit of Ahalya? It was unsuccessful in its most recent FAC and has just undergone a significant peer review. The article's creator asked me to help out, so in addition to going over the article myself I thought I'd mention it to a couple skilled copyeditors I knew as well. It is a kind of long article, so if you don't have time/interest enough to go over the whole thing doing a section or too that would still be much appreciated. Mark Arsten (talk) 23:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Pretty well, thanks; hope the same is true of you... I'll find the time to take a look over it. It might be in about a week - that's when spring break starts for some of my students. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:40, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Sure, take your time, it's good to think of spring break coming up--it sure doesn't look like Spring where I live! Mark Arsten (talk) 02:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for taking a look. If there is any issue you find, please leave a note on Talk:Ahalya. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 16:14, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Clarifications regarding the referendum article

Hi! Thank you for copyediting another article - the Croatian European Union membership referendum, 2012. I tried to explain the items tagged for clarification on the article talk page, but I did not make any changes to the article itself yet. That is mainly because I'm not sure on how to proceed on a couple of those, so could you please take a look at the talk page when possible?--Tomobe03 (talk) 20:31, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome, and will do... Allens (talk | contribs) 22:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Gloucester County College

Hi Allen. I took a quick look because you've raised the question of splitting it. To me it doesn't look as if it needs splitting -- at around 3000 words it's not excessively long -- and it's not obvious how one would do so anyway. But I think this question ought to be decided before a copy editor goes to work. It would be a pity if someone spends time on it now and then the work gets superseded in the course of a split. Cheers, --Stfg (talk) 11:33, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't sure on splitting, so that helps me decide - thanks! Allens (talk | contribs) 11:42, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Richelieu class battleship

Hi Allens. I am impressed by the precision of your coediting work, and the number of needed citations and clarifications. You saw I began to fulfill your wishes.

But I have a problem with unit conversions specially concerning ship displacement.

I found in Jordan and Dumas's book, «French battleships 1922-1956» (p.22 and 38) that the French Navy used the long tons for the Standard Washington displacement, as defined by the 1922 Naval Treaty of Washington, and metric tons for another displacements, (trials, normal, or full load displacement). So it's incorrect to use the conversion unit from metric-ton to long-ton, as «35000-tonne (34447-long-ton)standard displacement», as in the second line of the «Background». I think it would be better to indicate the Standard displacement of 35,000 tons, without any conversion, or with the inverse conversion, as «35,000 tons (35,562 metric-ton)». Samething for any indication of a Standard deplacement concerning a French warship, as 70,000 tons for the global displacement for the battleship building authorized to France and Italy during the battleship building holiday, or 23,333-ton, or 17,500-ton for the French battleship projects.

But

• first, I dont know the formula for the conversion of long-ton in metric-ton,

• second, I am less sure how to proceed with German ships, and specially for the limitations from Treaty of Versailles. 10,000 tons, but which unit ? Metric tons or lon-tons? No matter for the Deutscland class, as the Deutchland is reported to have 11,700 tons displacement , in Breyer's book «Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970», as in H.T. Lenton's «German surface vessels» in the «Warships of World War II» collection, both English written books, so largely in excess to the Treaty of Versailles limitations, that the difference between long-tons and metric-tons changes nearly nothing. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are reported to have a 31,750 tons or 31,800 tons displacement, following the same sources.

• third, it would be necessary to mention the different use of long-tons and metric-tons, by a foot note. But I dont know to write it in Wiki markup, I am not the author of the foot notes, though I appreciated their creation, as I know only how to write a reference. I suppose that this foot note would have to be placed in the infobox for General Characteristics, to explicit the mention «35,000 tons (standard) and 48,950 tonnes (48,180 long tons) full load».

I submitted this question of unit conversion to User: The ed17, as responsible of Operation Majestic Titans, and I wait for his answer.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 17:33, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

(Thank you for your praise, and also thank you for your work on the citations and clarifications.) The French did what? I... see. This begins to explain some contradictions between the ship displacements in various articles (I went with whatever was best referenced). I know that it was specified as "tonne" in at least one part of the discussion on the two treaties, and possibly at some points thereafter - we'll need to take a look at the prior version of the article and do a search on "tonne". Oh, dear; I had been assuming that when not specified when discussing the French vessels that it was metric tons, given the association between the metric system and France (this is what I get for not simply putting a "clarify" tag by the first mention of "tons" without specification - I wasn't thinking... sorry!). I'm guessing the Washington Treaty specified limits in long tons, and since it's what a standard displacement is taken from, long tons are being used for standard displacements.

• The formula to get the wiki system to automatically do the conversion from long tons into metric tons is, for example, {{convert|1111|LT|t}}, which yields "1,111 long tons (1,129 t)"; adding "|disp=flip", as in {{convert|1111|LT|t|disp=flip}}, "flips" which is put in parentheses, yielding "1,129 tonnes (1,111 long tons)". The basic sequence is "convert|#|unit-from|unit-to" in double brackets, with "LT" being the abbreviation for long tons, and "t" for metric tons.
• The way to do a footnote is by {{efn|footnote goes here}}, which would yield a footnote reading "footnote goes here". You can even stick a reference inside the footnote, which I find impressive.

Allens (talk | contribs) 19:29, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Allens. User: The ed17 answered to my question on unit conversions, in talk. I am not sure to have well understood it. I consider that every Standard displacement, and every indication of displacement given in tons, in an English written book, is in long-tons, and only an indication of another kind of displacement (normal, full-load) given in tonnes is given in metric tonnes. It's why I so edit many displacement unit conversions in File: Richelieu class battleship.

Thanks very much for doing that! I feel guilty for not having helped on that... Allens (talk | contribs) 18:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

But my question to day is different : what do you exactly mean by «Full citation needed», as : « The Richelieu refitted at Durban from 18 July to 10 August, and arrived via Diego Suarez at Trincomalee on 18 August, learning of the Japanese surrender on 15 August. She left Trincomalee on 5 September to participate in the liberation of Singapore, Operation Tiderace. While she was passing down the Straits of Malacca on 9 September, at 07:44 a magnetic mine detonated 17 meters (56 ft) to starboard. She eventually limped into Singapore at noon on 11 September.» Is the citation of Sarnet; Le Vaillant incorrect, and why ? Thanks.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 17:37, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem with the citation of "Sarnet; Le Vaillant" is that there's no corresponding book in the Bibliography - thus no title to look up the book by, nor edition or ISBN, all of which would be needed to make use of the page numbers. (There's also that it should be {{sfn|Sarnet|Le Vaillant|1997|page number}}, but that's minor.) Any idea what book is meant? Allens (talk | contribs) 18:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The reference of the book of "Sarnet; Le Vaillant" (*Sarnet, René (1997). Richelieu (in French). Nantes: Marines édition. ISBN 2909675327. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)) is in the Bibliography of French battleship Richelieu, but not in Richelieu class battleship. I added it. But "Sarnet;Le Vaillant" is not in my Library, so I could not verify the exactitude of the pages of the citation (these edits are not mine), but I am sure, from Lepotier, or Jordan and Dumas's books that the dates of refitting in Durban or Operation Tinderace are correct.

Another question : Why the inline citations of the file French battleship Richelieu are not properly formatted? Thanks.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 10:51, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the Sarnet reference! I'm not sure of what you're meaning by "the file French battleship Richelieu". Are you meaning that article, or other citations (like "Dumas, Richelieu|2001", which should be "Dumas|2001b")? Allens (talk | contribs) 11:10, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Above the Bibliography of the article French battleship Richelieu, there is a tag «This article includes inline citations, but they are not properly formatted. Please improve this article by correcting them.» What does it mean exactly ?Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 22:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I see. That's an excellent question. I'll take a look and see if I can figure it out. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

OHH. That message. That message comes from the tag {{format footnotes}}. It was put on there because:

• The citations are not consistently formatted:

• There are things like "Henri Le Masson 1969, p. 69" - the other notes don't include the first name
• "jordan & Dumas 2009, pp. 109–111" - first letter needs capitalizing
• "Giorgerini et Nani 1973, p. 319" - all the other notes use "&" between multiple authors

• The citations are generally not done in such a way that the links from the notes take one to the appropriate bibliographic entry. For this to work:

• The citations need to be done in the format {{sfn|name1|name2|name3...|year|p=# or pp=#-#}}.
• If there are multiple books by the same author(s) with the same year of publication, you put a, b, c... behind the year, like 2001b for Dumas|2001b. This will also need to be changed in the corresponding Bibliography entry - like for the Richelieu class article I changed the Dumas 2001 Richelieu book's year to 2001b.
• The code "|ref=harv" needs to be added to each book in the bibliography's code.

Once those things are taken care of, the tag can be removed and the message will go away. Is the above comprehensible? Allens (talk | contribs) 23:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Social determinants of health

Hi. I noticed your comments at Talk:Social determinants of health. A new editor has proposed writing Social determinants of health in poverty at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. They've been pointed to Social determinants of health. I wonder if you'd be interested in offering them advice and support if they decide to have a crack at a rewrite? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:06, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I can try, but I don't know if I'd advise a new editor getting into that mess, at least not directly - this User talk:Dennisraphael guy is rather jealous of any changes to the page, and a new editor should probably not get into a quarrel with him directly (for one thing, as far as I can tell he's a (bad-tempered) moderately-influential professor in the field, and I don't want anyone's career ruined IRL). Perhaps Inequality in disease and/or Health equity would be better places to start, unless a merger is to be done with Social determinants of health? I also have my political biases on these subjects (although I like to think I do a better job of controlling them than Dennisraphael), which is largely why I haven't done more about rewriting the article myself - I don't quite trust myself to keep NPOV. Allens (talk | contribs) 13:55, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Allens. I'm a newbie at Wikipedia editing but I am interested in how to improve the page given that I work at WHO in Social Determinants of Health and this is an important portal of information on the area. Sounds like there are major difficulties involved. Wonder if there's anything we can do? Haejelee (talk) 14:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, in Dennisraphael's last few postings, he seems to have calmed down quite a bit (no longer using all-caps - aka shouting - not using personal insults, etc). His argument the last time he reverted (one of my) changes was even cogent by Wikipedia standards - that I wasn't properly representing what the source said; I then attempted to write a compromise viewpoint, plus including the full quote I was trying to represent in the footnote. One of the tenets of Wikipedia is Assume Good Faith; as long as he behaves correctly (including not attempting to pull an argument by authority, which is what he tried last time), he should be assumed to have good interests at heart. So I think we may be able to try modifying the article without his trying to revert whatever we do all the time, which would be rather frustrating.

Incidentally, one reason that his behavior was counterproductive is that it spurred me to reply somewhat more extremely than is my actual viewpoint (see the talk page for Social determinants of health). While I am in favor of a difference between rich and poor - capitalism doesn't work otherwise - I'm not in favor of the poor lacking access to basic care or, worse yet, having things like lack of neighborhood safety (and thus no exercise) forcing them into bad health.

One thing that I'll need to caution you on - as an employee of the WHO, you would be considered to have a conflict of interest (abbreviated COI) if you promote the WHO too much (or edit the WHO's article pretty much at all). (I am similarly limited from editing the Kaplan University article, since they pay me a large part of my income, and have to be cautious with the Gloucester County College article, since I do get some income from them. Dennis Raphael needs to be similarly cautious about sticking in his publications, particularly any books that he gets money from.) Allens (talk | contribs) 15:51, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply and for the information. I will keep the COI point in mind and read more on Wikipedia's guidelines. It would be nice to contribute to making the Social determinants of health page better. Haejelee (talk) 18:19, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome; happy to have you! Feel free to ask on any needed advice, etc. - I'll do my best to help or point you to someone who can. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

BTW, there's someone else interested in trying to come up with a revised version of the page - see User talk:Lbockhorn - although it looks like she/he is doing it due to some class project or another. One result of said discussion is that someone's put up a poverty section in the Social determinants of health page. Allens (User_talk:Allenstalk | contribs) 16:31, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I think a good starting point would be to move "Inequalities among Canadians" to Health equity, which I've written on Talk:Social determinants of health. The material doesn't logically flow where it is right now. What is the process for doing this? A general question - if I want to suggest new text, what do I do after creating it in sandbox? Thx in advance! Haejelee (talk) 14:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

In regard to the first question, sounds good - I'll take a more detailed look shortly (I'm doing copyediting on Geography of Croatia, which is interestingly enough involving the Demographics of Croatia and its Demographic transition). Ways to suggest new text after you've created it in your sandbox: I can think of a couple of ways. The first is to copy and paste it onto the talk page with an appropriate header, although that may require some alterations in order for it not to mess up the talk page formatting (section headers, for instance). The second is to give a summary of the text and a link to your copy of the full thing on the talk page. These are both assuming it's a large block of new text; if it's a small one, then one of Wikipedia's principles is Be Bold - just go ahead and make the change, unless you're needing help on reference formatting or something (understandable if so!). Allens (talk | contribs) 15:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Steven Rubenstein

How did you confirm? Just the fact that there is currently no source documenting his decease, or do you have information?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:43, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I looked at his page on the University's website; I would assume they would know, unless he's been missing or something. Even if it is truly unknown, a policy of "assume living unless known otherwise" is generally best, since that helps protect Wikipedia from lawsuits. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:50, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I hoped you might have information to the contrary. According to reliable (but unpublished) sources it appears that unfortunately he is not living anymoreUser Talk: Slrubenstein. I guess its fine to update the page when published reports come.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:07, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for copyediting!

Hi! I'd like to thank you not only for copyediting but also substantially improving the Croatian European Union membership referendum, 2012 lending it much more clarity - I really appreciate your work!--Tomobe03 (talk) 00:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

You are quite welcome; I always enjoy working with you, and thanks very much for the compliment! Allens (talk | contribs) 00:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Reverting a change to International Fair Trade Mark

Hello! I got a message that you'd reverted a change I made. I know it must have looked like vandalism, since I deleted 2500 odd words from an unregistered account, but I was wondering if you read the talk page for the International Fair Trade Mark, since there was no reply to my explanation for the deletion. The section was the entire contents of another article (Fair Trade Debate) copy/pasted with no formatting. Also, while it was relevant to fair trade in general, it is not relevant to the topic of the article, the fair trade mark itself. If you read and stand by the reverting of my change then i'll defer to your greater knowledge of wiki-policy, ut if it was just because it looked like vandalism, I'd like to re-remove that section. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.250.206 (talk) 17:58, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

It was because it looked like vandalism - wholescale removals tend to be; was there an edit summary that I missed seeing? Feel free to re-remove it, and I'll remove the warning from your IP talk page. Sorry about that! Allens (talk | contribs) 18:17, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

No problems :) I thought I'd left an edit summary. I certainly tried to, though I'd not be surprised if i stuffed it up. :)

Borders of Croatia

Hi! I just posted several clarifications to the Geography of Croatia talk page, and I'll add some more directly to the article tomorrow to avoid edit conflicts.

Thanks! Allens (talk | contribs) 01:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

As a side note: You may find those borders twisting around rivers funny, but there's a "better one" - there's a single mile of road (fairly straight at that) crossing Croatia-Slovenia border five times.--Tomobe03 (talk) 00:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

That's got to be one of the most inconvenient to use roads in existence, unless some arrangement has been made... at least the situation isn't quite as bad on these borders as with, say, West Berlin prior to the wall coming down! You may find of interest:

• The gerrymandering article.
• I know of disputes between states (going to the US Supreme Court) as to jurisdiction over pieces of land thanks to rivers (used as state boundaries) shifting (formerly they were islands, belonging to state A, now they're joined onto the mainland of state B, which wants them).
• Canada is north of the US, right? In general... but the border in places follows various rivers, lakes, etc. In one location, it actually loops south of the rather significant city of Detroit. Due south of most of Detroit is Canada...
• Near Middlesboro, Kentucky where I grew up is what used to be a highway going to Tennessee through a gap in the mountains. As it happens, the road passed through Virginia briefly before going into Tennessee. There was a store set up right there along the road, sitting what always looked to me to be entirely too close to the edge. Why was this store there? The taxes on cigarettes were lower in Virginia, so people came there to get cigarettes cheaper than they would in Kentucky or Tennessee.

Allens (talk | contribs) 01:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:DTTR

Allens, I don't appreciate the vandalism template. It's OK if you disagree with my edit and revert, but I'm trying to help the editor in question understand that pumping up articles about himself with his list of publications is not the same as providing the citations needed at Push–pull technology and Zeyaur Khan. I left him a message at User talk:Jaramogiphil. Dicklyon (talk) 14:59, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I apologize; I misunderstood the situation. Allens (talk | contribs) 15:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for copyediting Geography of Croatia! Your work was thorough and top-notch!--Tomobe03 (talk) 18:40, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You are quite welcome, and thank you for your praise. Very interesting article, as are your others! Allens (talk | contribs) 18:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Curiosity

Hi! I saw you started copyediting the Adriatic Sea article - thanks for volunteering! Just out of curiosity - I noticed the "Serbo-Croatian" tag next to "jugo" - is that out of convenience to avoid tagging multiple languages?--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:41, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome; I figured I was already familiar with at least some aspects of it from the Geography of Croatia article. Your guess is correct regarding convenience on "Serbo-Croatian" (and, as I commented in the edit, according to the Sirocco article that's actually not enough to encompass the Slavic languages with that word); I'm not taking a side in the disputes over Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian being separate languages, incidentally. (Actually, an alternative idea is to use South Slavic languages as the tag. Would that be better?) Allens (talk | contribs) 13:51, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'm not about to go into that dispute... Nearly all South Slavic call sirocco "jugo" - I'm positive on Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Slovene and Serbian and that type of solution would surely forestall any edit warring on the issue. Unfortunately no quick fix is available here because it seems that Bulgarian uses various forms from descriptive "southeasterly wind" (Югоизточен вятър) to сироко which is pronounced the same as in English and широко which is pronounced with initial "sh" instead of "s". Incidentally the last one is also used in Croatia as "široko" although less often than "jugo". Macedonian aside (because Macedonia has little to do with the Adriatic Sea), Slovene language is never encompassed by the um, whatever one calls language/languages/group of languages spoken in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia - and sirocco is called "jugo" in Slovene as well. So how about using a less edit-war-inviting: "The predominant winter winds are the bora and sirocco (called jugo locally along the eastern coast)." or something to that effect? Incidentally, name of the wind in Albanian appears to be "shirok". The issue can, no doubt, be discussed in detail in sirocco article if necessary.--Tomobe03 (talk) 14:49, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, well. I've altered it according to your suggestion; thanks! There is a redirect from jugo to sirocco, incidentally, which is good. Allens (talk | contribs) 17:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Please help out at the Paid Editor Help page

While not a huge backlog yet, we're getting to it on the Paid Editor Help page. The sections that need replies include Colin Digiaro, Guy Bavli, Strayer University, Stevens Institute of Technology, and a general backlog in the Request Edits category. If you could help in any of these sections (primarily the first four), I would be really grateful. This notification is going out to a number of Wikiproject Cooperation members in the hopes that we can clear out all of the noted sections. And feel free to respond to a section and help out even if someone else had already responded there. The more eyes we get on a specific request, the more sure we can be on the neutrality of implementing it. Thanks! Silverseren^C 03:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ahalya/archive2

Thanks for your comments. If you have time, can you please go over the article once more. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 18:44, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

 Doing... I am having difficulty finding much - the current writing is rather similar to how I would write it in many respects, making it unlikely for me to be able to help very much. Allens (talk | contribs) 12:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope more people who read the article feel the same. :) Replied on Talk:Ahalya#Unploughed_field_.26_dried_up_stream.2Fstone.3F. One more thing. IMO, the 1st para (now a liner) needs to be expanded. How can the three primary events: the seduction by Indra -> the curse by Gautama -> the liberation by Rama be put in that para? Ahalya is primarily known due to this incident, also taking into account Fowler&fowler's comments. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 17:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome; I'll take a look... Allens (talk | contribs) 17:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Ahalya#1st_paragraph: I have temporarily moved the sentence to the article considering the ongoing FAC. I don't reviewers complaining about a short 1st para :) --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 18:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

No problem; I'd be personally happy with it staying there, unless we want to expand it into 3 separate sentences. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:58, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

We have a winner now. Thanks for the initial draft. Please let me if your keen eye notices any more problems with the article. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 18:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit by Ryleeew2012

I'd hate to be a bother or anything, just wanted to thank you for warning that user about editing that page again, I undid his/her edit after I realized he/she kept messing with that page. Click...If you dare! o,0` (talk) 13:17, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome, and no bother... Allens (talk | contribs) 17:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

The Edit

Hello. This is about the edit on the Just Dance 3 article. As you saw, I tried to revert it back. I was trying to revert it back because the following songs: Hot N Cold,Spice Up Your Life,Firework & Come On Eileen are not available as downloadable content for Just Dance 3. There is no proof or source that indicates that those are available as downloadable content for the said game. After I reverted it, I realized I did the wrong one so I decided to just delete it but after I did that, I got an Edit Conflict so i did it again and still got an Edit Conflict and then after doing it again it worked. And then you reverted it back saying that I vandalized the page but I just wanted to say that I wasn't trying to vandalize the page and that the songs mentioned in this comment are not available as downloadable content for Just Dance 3. --70.131.102.34 (talk) 02:34, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh no its okay. (Talking about the post you put on my talk page) --70.131.102.34 (talk) 02:43, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Adriatic Sea

Hi, thanks for your great copyedit. I only want to ask you why you added STA as work in the references: STA is only the acronym of Slovenian Press Agency (Slovenska tiskovna agencija) - the publisher. It seems strange to have the publisher's name listed twice in a single reference. Thanks. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 08:04, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

(Quite welcome, and thanks for the compliment!) Hrm. Then what's the name of the publication itself? The "work" field is much more important than the "publisher" field for "cite news". I'll go back through and put in STA (Slovenian Press Agency) as the work, if there's not anything else, and delete the publisher field. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Coast extention of Adriatic sea

Hi. I have read about your classification of the Croatia coast as the longest in the Adriatic sea. But I want to remember you that the italian geographer Vittorio Vialli calculates that the adriatic coast of Italy includes even nearly 500 little islands inside the lagoons of Venice, Marano, Grado, etc..plus those in the Po river delta. This fact would made Italy's coast the longest in the Adriatica sea.....Anyway IMHO I think it is not encyclopedic to include in the article Adriatic sea this phrase about the lenght of the Croatian coasts: "....in Croatia, with 1,246 counted. The number includes islands, islets, and rocks of all sizes, including ones emerging at ebb tide only....". If we calculate even the "ones emerging at ebb tide only", we would double the number of the small islands in the italian lagoons! But that would be ridiculous. Louis M. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.140.184 (talk) 17:51, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Could you provide a reference on the Vittorio Vialli thing? I'd like to make the number of islands for Italy as accurate as possible.

I was actually going by the mainland coast lengths only, without the islands, in the length listing. Coastal lengths are somewhat arbitrary in any event - they depend on what scale one measures on (fractal phenomena); note that measuring by the two end points' distance from each other gives a different result also...

I'll investigate the thing on the islands - I think it's directly from a source.

Thanks, Allens (talk | contribs) 18:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I am aware that number of islands greatly depends on what is defined as an island. There is no general consensus in scientific community what is the minimum size of those other than that they must be permanently above water level. Naturally, some islands along any coast are bound to be very small and it should not be up to us to decide what's acceptable and what's not permissible - rather it should be what's published. I am also aware that Venice itself consists of 117 islands (it's in the article), whose coastline must be of considerable length, but I cannot offer any guess the figure. The source used claims 23 km - which seems low to me, but I found no source claiming otherwise. There was some confusion in Croatia too regarding number of islands - with figures of 1185, 1233 and 1244 claimed before an official count of 1246 was published by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.

In summation - if there are other sources claiming other figures in terms of coastline length or number of islands, I'd be happy to include that in the article - but lacking sources I have no other recourse.--Tomobe03 (talk) 18:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll look up the Vittorio Vialli lead and see what turns up, though.--Tomobe03 (talk) 19:01, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Vittorio Vialli seems to have been a Paleontologist but I found no source attributed to him on the subject. Then I thought of another approach: Italy has only two island clusters in the Adriatic - Venetian lagoon islands and Isole Tremiti. I found this source and it provided coastline lengths for five islands there (mind you the smallest of the five is 400 metres long and 200 metres wide, so the list should be quite comprehensive). The five are San Domino (10 km of coast), San Nicola (3.7 km), Pianosa (1.3 km), Capraia (4.7 km) and Il Cretaccio (1.3 km) - which adds up to 21 km. I suppose this fits the 23 km cited for island coastline in the article - allowing for rounding off, measurements taken at high or low tide etc. This would mean that the Venetian lagoon island coastline is unaccounted for - but I have absolutely no source on that (for now at least). Perhaps a note (third one) should go into the table to indicate that the figure does not include coastline length of 117 islands in the Venetian lagoon until it's found someplace. What do you think?--Tomobe03 (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it's probably needed. It would admittedly be the third note, as you state - starting to use ^a instead of *, ^b instead of **, etc is probably a good idea.Allens (talk | contribs) 23:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Good idea - replacing the asterisks with superscripted letters. I'll rework the notes and add the new one tomorrow morning and keep looking for any sources on the Venetian lagoon archipelago measurements. Thanks for the tip on this issue!--Tomobe03 (talk) 01:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Done now... Sourcing Venetian lagoon islands coastline length still remains though.--Tomobe03 (talk) 10:42, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi again. I still cannot understand why in the article there is no reference to the lagoon of Grado ( http://www.abr.fvg.it/educazione-e-documentazione/cartografia/cartabatimetrica-della-laguna-di-marano-e-grado/carta-batimetrica-della-laguna-di-marano-e-grado-note-illustrative ) that has 120 little islands (with 500 kms of island coasts) or to the 80 hectareas added every year by the Po river to its delta (that creates 10 little islands yearly there). BTW, Vittorio Vialli is famous for his book "Geografia", that can be easily googled.It is "strange" that Tomobe cannot find all this.....croatian nationalism sometimes is too much "balkanic"!...(;D)...Louis M. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.236.74.14 (talk) 22:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Umm... ad hominem beside, the reasons either he or I could find a book without an English (or Croatian) translation? And the page reference you're giving is to a page that Google refuses to translate. And I found multiple references (from EU documents, for instance) to Venice and Tremiti being the only island groups of significant size along Italy's Adriatic coastline. The Po river delta's extension is actually already in the article, and the definition of islands doesn't include mud flats. In regard to Grado, everything that I can find indicates it's a total of one island; I doubt people would have missed 120 "small" islands with a circumfrence of over 4 km each! Allens (talk | contribs) 22:41, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

The lagoon of Grado is not specifically mentioned in the article because it is one of ten Ramsar wetlands along Italian Adriatic coast (which are explicitly mentioned and wikilinked). A paper says that "it is separated from the sea by a long shore bar composed by isles and more or less persistent sand banks", and looking at a map - there are several islands in the lagoon... As far as I can tell, all the sources I have looked at treat lagoons - this one as well as the Venetian lagoon - as if they were not part of the Adriatic, at least in terms of morphology of the coast. I thought of this because I read "separated from the sea" in the paper and other sources and descriptions of lido as land between the lagoon and the sea (like this one). That may amount to nothing, or maybe that is because the areas are treated as zones where rivers empty into the sea, as in case of the Po delta, only with Sile (river)/Brenta (river) and Soča/Tagliamento rivers in the two lagoons. At any rate, I'll try to see if this is so or if there is another explanation for this.

As far as Balkanic Croatian nationalism is concerned - I really have no intention to "belittle" one coast by saying there are fewer islands nearby than elsewhere even if that were possible. Let's perhaps move this discussion to Talk:Adriatic Sea?--Tomobe03 (talk) 23:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

this source and this one appear to define coastal lagoons as inland water bodies, while dictionaries are generally vague on the topic. Maybe that's the source of this exclusion of the lagoon islands from the sources in the article?--Tomobe03 (talk) 00:15, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

HI again for the last time. How it is possible that experienced wikipedians like you don't know how to translate with goggle translator? Here it is a small section translated:

• The Laguna is bounded seaward by a string of islands bar-barrier (Grado, Marina Macia and Manzi, Buso, S. Andrea, Martignano), most of which have been profoundly altered by human intervention. Especially for the Lagoon of Grado they are faced toward the sea by another complex system of sand banks in rapid evolution (Brambati et al. 1998) with shares often close to sea level and only strengthened by dunes (and Cats Morocco, 1992). I have lived in the city of Grado 3 years, and I can send photos of the eight little island that compose Grado, a city-island that like Venice is composed by many little islands.....but I am astonished by all this.....with croatian-balkan nationalism there it is nothing to do! Good luck with your "serious" encyclopedia.Louis M. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.21.16.9 (talk) 22:22, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of The Doon School alumni/archive1

Hi Allens sir,

May I request you to look at the above nomination? An editor named Fowler is letting his emotions in and spoiling the whole review of the list. He is not objectively reviewing the list which, I believe, is very unhealthy for Wiki editing. I have given my explanation there being a Dosco and am hugely looking forward to your comments there. Thank you! DoscoinDoon (talk) 01:19, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Your expertise concerning NRL statistical history

Care to elaborate?

Probably best to a> not edit articles when you have no knowledge of the subject matter b> not leave snooty messages when doing so, and c> actually look at the edit you're erroneously reverting - nothing was "blanked", information was being corrected.

I suggest:

• Using edit summaries
• Citing sources when changing information - this is most definitely a requirement, and failing to do so when earlier information was cited is going to look like vandalism even if done in good faith
• Signing your posts to talk pages (try ~~~~)

Allens (talk | contribs) 12:48, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Wonderlic Test

Thanks for your comments on peer review for the Wonderlic Test. This is my team's first substantial edit on wikipedia, & we're trying to get the hang of it. Again, thanks for your help! Mdwilliams2 (talk) 08:07, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Miranda Hart

Hi. Just thought I should let you know this was actually correct, but I can understand why you might think it was vandalism. Paul MacDermott (talk) 16:15, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

The combination of the term and the name of the page, yes. Should have checked and saw that there actually was a valid link to her father's name; sorry! Allens (talk | contribs) 23:43, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Scripts

Hey. If you look at my mono book, the scripts you're after are those in the //Plastikspork script area. Cheers! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:18, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Doon School GA Nomination

You're invited to express your opinions for Doon's GA NOmination here:- Talk:The Doon School#Time for GA nomination? :) Merlaysamuel :  Chat  13:03, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Stiki

Hi Allens Congrats for being the biggest STiki user this month as per Wikipedia:STiki/leaderboard I myself use stiki and like it a lot, but i am rather annoyed by the lack of flexibility in terms of edit summary and warning templates leading to complaints on my talk page, being such an extensive Stiki user how do you handle these ? id be glad to know , thanks and regards -- ÐℬigXЯaɣ 21:54, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks... Well, I try to be careful not to mark anything as vandalism if the person would have a reasonable claim otherwise. (I also usually set the edit summary to "nonconstructive" or "unconstructive" instead of "test/vandalism" - that way, it also encompasses "joke".) I've made a few errors, but not that many, I'm happy to say - if I'm not sure one way or another, but I think it might be (subtle) vandalism, I press "pass" so someone with, say, more knowledge of sports can decide. I've encouraged West.stephen.g to add an "uncited/comment" button, as you've seen, since that's what I encounter even more than vandalism - I'd be marking a lot of things as "uncited/comment" that I now hit "pass" or "innocent" for. How am I processing that many pages? I read fast - very fast (1000+ words per minute at my best). The best advice I can give is to locate a good speed reading course/book; I've not used one myself, but I know people whose reading speeds were massively increased with one. (I can check with one of them as to her recommendations as to a book, if you'd like.) Allens (talk | contribs) 22:13, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

• thanks for responding, I agree marking as nonconstructive would be a far better idea as it covers lot of things, ill try this hope it does work for. Although I am under an impression that my speed is reasonably fast (never measured though) but looking at the book wont harm any way , so plz do ask abt few recommended readings. regards-- ÐℬigXЯaɣ 05:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

• Quite welcome; will ask! Allens (talk | contribs) 13:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

• She recommends: Princeton Language Institute; Beale, Abby Marks. 10 Days to Faster Reading. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-0-446-67667-0. Allens (talk | contribs) 12:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Is there a way to use STiki without downloading anything (like a script on my monobook.js page or a Firefox extension or plugin)? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 11:20, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, even if it was a Firefox extension/plugin, you'd still need to download it. It's a full-scale Java program, not a JavaScript thing, and isn't really set up to be run by a browser - that's unreliable in any event. BTW, note that if downloading it to a computer would be a problem for some reason, you could download it to a flash drive and run it from there. Allens (talk | contribs) 13:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Chickie's & Pete's

Thank you for the extra eyes on the C&P article. I think you may have accidentally reverted into a bad link for the home page. An IP editor has reverted that portion of your revert. The actual C&P website is probably appropriate in this case. - UnbelievableError (talk) 00:32, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh. Oops! I hadn't noticed that part of the original edit. Glad someone else did... Allens (talk | contribs) 00:42, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Search for references/citations

Do you know how I can get some sources for citations for Wikipedia pages on Georgia State Route 223, Georgia State Route 383, or Georgia State Route 388? What about the other Georgia state routes? I have tried using Google, but that doesn't help. The Editor Formerly Known as "Allen" (talk) 02:02, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... good question. I've never done much with road references except for with the Gloucester County College article, and for that one Google Maps did fine (all I was wanting was how far various roads were from GCC; you might be able to get similar references for the structure of Georgia State Route 223, say, by asking Google Maps for how to get from one place along SR 80 to another that's along US 278). You might take a look at any Featured Articles for roads, ask at the Georgia WikiProject, and/or ask at the U.S. Roads WikiProject. (BTW, are you from/in Georgia? I have some relatives from near Athens, and others in Macon.) Allens (talk | contribs) 02:20, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I will check out the links. I have already asked at USRD, as I'm a member, but to no real avail.

I am currently working near Augusta, where the three state routes come together. That is the main reason I want to edit them. Also, I really like roads, especially Interstates and U.S. Highways. The Editor Formerly Known as "Allen" (talk) 02:31, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

WIKIPEDIA IS KITTENS!

Pppowercurve (talk) 04:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Luciano Sabrosa

Hey mate, I just want to explain my recent edit to Luciano Sabrosa. The reason I did that is because we do not know how many games this player has played for Salgaocar S.C.. That user just put down a random number of caps and random number of goals. It is impossible to know how many games he played because before this Indian Football (Soccer) season match-reports were not published to the public so we never really knew who played in this match and who played in this match. Thus why it is important that Sabrosa have ?? for caps and goals. If you want to reply back to me please do so on my main account Arsenalkid700. Cheers. --IndianFootballPlayersWiki (talk) 15:22, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hey its cool mate. Ya that does not help that references are not in the infoboxes. Thanks for replying on this page btw. Cheers. --Arsenalkid700 (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

New Stiki

just a reminder that the new stiki has been released, cheers -- ÐℬigXЯaɣ 21:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, already submitted a bug report and going to report another... Allens (talk | contribs) 21:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

STiki: A new version and a thank you!

Greetings Allens. As the developer of the STiki anti-vandal tool, I would like to thank you for recent and non-trivial use of my software. Whether you just tried out the tool briefly or have been a long-term participant, I appreciate your efforts (as I am sure does the entire Wikipedia community)!

I write to inform you of a new version of the software (link goes to list of new features). This version addresses multiple long-term issues that I am happy to put behind us. Try it out! Provide some feedback!

The STiki project is also always seeking collaborators. In particular, we are seeking non-technical colleagues. Tasks like publicity, talk-page maintenance, advertisement, and barn-star distribution are a burden to technical development. If you are interested, write me at my talk page or STiki's talk page.

As STiki approaches two significant thresholds: (1) 100,000 revert actions and (2) 400 unique users -- I hope to have your support in continuing the efficient fight against unconstructive editing. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 23:53, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi - no, no problem at all, thanks for that - all in good faith - best regards - Youreallycan 20:16, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Your rollback request

Hello Allens, I have granted rollback rights to your account in accordance with your request. Please be aware that rollback should be used to revert vandalism/spam/blatantly unconstructive edits, and that using it to revert anything else (such as by revert-warring or reverting edits you disagree with) can lead to it being removed from your account...sometimes without any warning, depending on the admin who becomes aware of any misuse. If you think an edit should require a reason for reverting, then don't use rollback and instead use a manual edit summary. For practice, you may wish to see Wikipedia:New admin school/Rollback. Good luck. Acalamari 14:45, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm planning on pretty much only using it with STiki, unless I come across vandalism otherwise by chance due to watchlisting or whatever. Allens (talk | contribs) 14:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Booger Hole

Allens, This is Tweegytoes. You recently reverted a change that I had made, and I would like you to explain why please. It was on the page Clay County, West Virginia. I am sorry if you got this message twice. I was not sure that my reply on my talk page would notify you.

Thanks, Tweegytoes (talk) 22:46, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I didn't see it on your talk page; I'm sorry about the error. Booger Hole is not a very likely name for a community... Allens (talk | contribs) 00:57, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand. It is a strange name. Sorry I did not cite it on the clay county page. I also made a page for Booger Hole that day and I put my citation there and forgot to do it on the Clay page. Tweegytoes (talk) 02:16, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Tay–Sachs disease

Hi Allens, are you still working on the above article? Have you finished your copy-edit or have you abandoned it? If the latter, or if you don't intend to continue, I'll continue when I've finished the article I'm currently working on. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 04:50, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm currently waiting on clarifications from the requestor. (If you see anything obvious that I've missed, feel free to correct it, though!) I should probably label it as "on hold" and go to working on another article - probably one of the Croatia ones; Tomobe03 and I work well together. Thanks for the reminder! Allens (talk | contribs) 11:18, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

No worries; it's been there for a while and I was wondering what was going on with the article. Thanks for clarifying. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 00:41, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Hey just for the record, I just did a complete (?) copyedit/tweak of this article a few weeks (?) ago. If I fumbled the ball on that, I sincerely apologize. If you would like me to take another look or another crack at it, just leave me a note on my Talk Page. Best regards:Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 12:55, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Concerning recent edits.

I'm really dreadfully sorry about that recent edit, a young friend of mine logged on to my PC while I was in the kitchen and did that daft removal of content. I shall be more secure about my account in future, you have my humblest apologies.

--Purple1342 (talk) 16:48, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand fully... Allens (talk | contribs) 16:52, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Astatine

Hi Allen. Just to let you know that the Astatine request that you have in hand is now on the main GOCE requests page, as we're abaondining the separate FAC page. Cheers, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 19:22, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Got it; thanks! Allens (talk | contribs) 20:28, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

snatam kaur khalsa, and 3ho

hello, i apoligize if i in some way violated wikipedia policies concerning unconstructive editing, i am new to wikipedia and it was unintential due to my ignorance. i assure you it won't happen again. i thought uncited text can be removed or sources affiliated with the subject, i.e. the internet link to Snatam's personal website. Snatam is a 3ho member. at the Rick Ross website (www.rickross.com) is copy of a Court Affidavit of Rickard Ofshe, Ph.D a renown cult expert, who has testified many times regarding cults. he testified that 3ho is a cult. a major contributor to the Snatam Kaur Khalsa's page is Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa, also a 3ho member. it seems there is a collabative effort of these cult members to infest wikipedia with propaganda about their leader Yogi Bhajan and the 3ho agenda, cost free at wikipedia expense. See my post at the Yogi Bhajan talk page. Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa treats the yogi bhajan page as his own website. there I have detailed there are 91 sources, 58 are affiliated with the subject, and there is also a neutrality issue. again sorry for my error. respectfully submitted, daan singh Daan singh (talk) 17:48, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

One can rely on a subject's website for some basic biographical information. Now that I look at the edit more closely, I see exactly how much other material is there; what I'd mainly seen before was the blanking of a page, which is almost always vandalism (more selective edits are more appropriate in almost any case except, say, copyright infringement). I'll work on trimming it down myself, and will remove the vandalism notice from your talk page - sorry! Allens (talk | contribs) 20:50, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

Hello, Allens! I hope you enjoy this cookie as an amicable greeting from a fellow Wikipedian and vandal fighter. SwisterTwister talk 05:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Mmm... chocolate... Allens (talk | contribs) 06:40, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Re: Counties of Croatia

Hi! Thanks for volunteering, I'm looking forward to working with you again. The Counties of Croatia is meant as a list hence such short prose. I took a quick look at the border disputes article and spotted a couple of issues which need updating, largely due to last general elections results - neither Kosor nor Pahor are prime ministers right now.--Tomobe03 (talk) 22:05, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Ditto! I understand it's meant as a list - good thought on having a section on historical changes; I was thinking about that myself. Thanks for taking a look at the border disputes article! I should be able to work on both of them this weekend, starting on Friday. Allens (talk | contribs) 16:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

RE: May 2012

Wow! Did you even look at the change (and the link supporting it) before issuing the warning? Please take time to look again. Info in article is outdated (5 years old!), I actually updated it... --Ele boz (talk) 14:08, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea how I managed to do that. I think I hit the wrong button. Sorry! Allens (talk | contribs) 16:02, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

No problem! --Ele boz (talk) 16:50, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Genetic erosion article copyedit

Hello Allens, nice to meet you. I'm responding to your comment you left on my Talk Page regarding my recent copyedit of the Genetic erosion article.

First, thanks for re-checking my stuff. As you may soon learn, the most frequent result of my copy edits are the generation of an urgent need for a further copyedit :-O I do the best I can, though (lol).

With regard to Tag Removal ... I never remove tags. Period. I know I'm supposed to, but too often I screw things up, so I leave it for a better copyeditor to find. Forgive me?

Tell you what, I will propose a compromise - I'll bust my hump working EXTRA hard on the Drive to make up for my slacking on Tag Removal. If you think the job I have done on a given article is sufficient to justify the removal of the tag, go ahead and remove it after you recheck my work. Sorry you have to babysit me!

Lastly, that article wasn't very good at all - in fact it stunk, in my opinion. The Talk Page had some discussion about merging it with another article, an action I would support. I just picked it because it was on the Backlog list.

Thanks again, and best regards: Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 16:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I understand; I wouldn't say you're bad at it - you do a good job of simplifying material so that a wider audience can read it - but I understand that you feel otherwise. I'll take a look at your other copyedited articles, since you ask. In terms of that particular article, I can see merging it. What it most needs, in my opinion as a geneticist, is a discussion (with references, of course!) of the immune system problem with small, inbred populations - they're all so close to one another, any disease that one is susceptible to, the rest are also. I keep meaning to look up the needed references on this... Allens (talk | contribs) 19:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Carbohydrate chemistry - I'm afraid I had to remove a lot of what you did, not because of you, but because it turned out to be a copyright violation. (I'm a bit surprised you didn't spot the first part, namely the inter-wiki copying; the "[edit]" and "[#]" marks are a giveaway. Once I spotted that, I checked the history, and saw another large addition of text, which turned out to be a copypaste from a webpage given as the only reference.) It's currently waiting on revision deletion. Allens (talk | contribs) 12:45, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, and kudos to you for spotting the copyright violations - interestingly enough, I have myself recently run two examples of doctors "plagiarizing" (DIRECT copy and paste!) things I've written here for Wikipedia in major peer-reviewed journals without a cite, attribution, etc. Sorry about missing the CV "hints" - I don't know much about coding, as I intimated earlier somewhere, and obviously missed those clues, so thanks for the education - will try to pay attention now that I know  :-) Lastly, thanks for any checking of my stuff that you do, I welcome it - don't want editors to think I'm negatively influencing their articles with my "readability tweaking", just hate to "create more work" for folks. Best regards:Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 17:43, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Gloucester County College in progress

Hi Allen. I thought I'd have a go at this today. Just to warn you that I've sent a redirect you created for it to WP:RFD#New Jersey County College, because it looks as if it could be the name of a college. I'll link to the list of colleges by a less name-like pipe instead. Hope that's OK. Cheers, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 10:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for working on it! Good point on the name - I hadn't thought about that. Allens (talk | contribs) 11:48, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I'm done now, E&OE. I hope it's not too bad. I'll keep it watchlisted for a while. Good luck with GAN. --Stfg (talk) 10:41, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good; thanks! I think the next stage is (another) peer review, then the GAN. Allens (talk | contribs) 14:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Transitional fossil

Hi Allen. Are you familiar with the Transitional fossil article? I copy edited it a while back and now its near the end of its GAN review, held up for need of some phylogenetics references. Isn't that your field? I was wondering whether there was anything you could tell them. Cheers, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 19:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not particularly familiar with the article, although I am with the concept. I'll see about helping out with it - and, yes, phylogenetics is my field (or, rather, one of them). Allens (talk | contribs) 21:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Map of counties

Hi! Thanks for copyediting the Counties of Croatia article, your contribution is very valuable. I saw you reordered counties map caption alphabetically to allow easier finding of the counties on the map, but I am concerned that the change, while allowing finding a county name in the caption far more easily, makes identification of associated colours on the map very hard simply because the colours are similar. The original scheme placed all blues/reds/yellows in an sequence to allow easier identification of key colour and map colours much like water depth colour key allows use of a bathymetric chart. I am aware that's not a very fortunate solution, but I think it solves one problem (colour identification) while leaving unresolved alphabetization as a comparably less problematic issue.

What do you think, which solution of the two would be better? I tried placing identification on the map itself, but it is simply too small to allow use of names in the map, and 21 colours that are that different are not really an option - besides the three colour "types" used are also meant to designate NUTS regions. I have also tried to make a clickable image map, where hovering mouse pointer provides name of each of the counties - in my sandbox. Do you think that would be an improvement over present situation?--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:12, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome... I like the clickable map - good work! (How'd you do it, BTW?) I'm thinking that the current alphabetical ordering of colors together with the clickable map would be the best of both worlds - the clickable map allows going from the map to the county far easier, while the alphabetized ordering of colors helps in going from the county to the map location. What do you think? Allens (talk | contribs) 17:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that seems to be a good option. There's an image map editor available and Help:Imagemap redirect to more details on the topic.--Tomobe03 (talk) 19:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Reg. edits in the "Most Prominent Persons" section of Dhenkanal, India and similar edits on Dhenkanal district page

Hi, Thanks for intervening. These are regarding the persistent edits done by the series of ip addresses to delete factual contents. I am listing out the information for your reference to make an educated decision.

• Harmohan Patnaik >> Well known revoltionary from that area... mention present in Dhenkanal (princely_state)
• Devendra Satpathy>> She was married to Devendra Satpathy who was twice the Member of Parliament(MP) from Dhenkanal.
• Nandini Satpathy>> Ex. Chief Minister... wiki page exists
• Brig. Kamaksha Prashad Singh Deo >> Member of Parliament multiple times
• Baishnab Charan Patnaik
• Surendra Mohan Patnaik
• Braja Kisore Dhal
• Suparno Satpathy >> There is a wiki page for him too. Suparno Satpathy
• Sudhir Kumar Samal
• Nabin Chandra Narayan Das (Member of Legislative Assembly)
• Prafulla Kumar Bhanja
• Justice D. N. Patnaik
• Haladhar Mishra (MLA- Member of Legislative Assembly)
• Kalpana Dash --- has wiki page Kalpana Dash

The activities by the ip address included...deletion of the names of "Devendra Satpathy", "Nandini Satpathy", "Suparno Satpathy" from the list; and removal of wiki links for "Nandini Satpathy" and "Tathagata Satapathy". Changing of name of "Tathagata" to "Tata". And insertion of "Samant Suryanarayan Patnaik", "Prasanna Kumar Patnaik", "Jitendra Kumar Patnaik"; who are of unknown importance.

These changes are coming across a range of ips... and is pretty difficult to single out one to report out. However the origination point is the same.

• netname: TATACOMM-IN
• descr: Internet Service Provider
• descr: TATA Communications formerly VSNL is Leading ISP,

Also to let you know, other editors have pitched in to undo these changes but we have a person who is pretty adamant on doing that.

The criteria listed to be a part of Notable persons about not only having a wiki page is not correct... pages can be created by other contributing editors and a visible invitation may be created by making the links "red"... and some do indeed have wiki pages, possibly this was overlooked for the IP editor also deleted the wiki links... some of them are notable freedom fighters... some politicians (Member of Pariliament or Member of Legislative Assembly)...

I am sorry that I don't have that much time to bring out details for each of them, but the listed names were all proper and valid, whereas deletion of wiki links, names of prominent people being deleted and unknown persons being listed is not good. I have left message on the talk page on those ip addresses seeking the rationale behind those edits but am yet to get a response.

I am putting the information back (with some wiki links) and would request you to please let me know about what can we do to prevent this user from making further changes.

Thanks, --Karan1974 (talk) 20:46, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Currently, IP addresses can't edit Dhenkanal, India and won't be able to until 10 May 2012, although that's not true of Dhenkanal district. I've now watchlisted the latter.

In terms of criteria, the difficulty is that calling someone "prominent" or "notable" is something that requires citations from a reliable source (e.g., governmental records or newspapers or whatever for someone who's a politician saying that they're a politician). Otherwise, it's uncited editorializing/POV. (This is to protect against people putting themselves, their friends, and their family on lots of pages.) If the person has their own wiki page, then that's one way to evince their being notable (assuming the person's page has the required two citations). Otherwise (and a redlink is fine for such cases), it generally requires at least one citation for that person saying that and why they're prominent/notable. (If there are two citations on the person, then a page can be properly created for them, of course.) Take a look at WP:NLIST and WP:Source list. (It's also necessary to find something saying that the person is from Dhenkanal (or wherever), but that's generally not too difficult.)

Currently, only the names with wiki pages are on those two pages. If other names are added only with the required citation for each, then all that getting long-term semi-protection for those two pages will take is evidence of repeated uncited additions (or other violations of policy) coming from multiple IP addresses, ideally together with warnings on those IP addresses' talk pages; with that, an appeal at Requests for page protection will result in a block - possibly only a short-term one at the start, but if this person comes back after that, it'll get extended. If enough reversions happen within a short span of time, with properly cited reasons (lack of citations) for the reversions, an admin may well notice and put temporary page protection on the pages anyway - that's what appears to have happened with Dhenkanal, India. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Allens. I will find the appropriate references for the persons who are "prominent" enough to be listed. I am at loss for freedom fighters, where I may not readily get the information but I will give it a shot. I was a bit confused towards the statement "Otherwise (and a redlink is fine for such cases), it generally requires at least one citation for that person saying that and why they're prominent/notable."- So does it mean that having a redlink is fine if I am not providing any citations. Please clarify this.

I certainly appreciate the inputs towards the process and how we should go about it. The changes coming from the IP address does not seem to be static, it is a wide range but all seem to come from one service provider. Blocking the service provider completely would be unfair towards other users and I doubt if that could be done. Short term blocks are a good start, and my leaving message on the talk pages have not got me any response. But I will assume good faith edits and work on providing the necessary citations. You have been very helpful. Thanks. --Karan1974 (talk) 23:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry about the confusion. You need at least one citation for the person; provided that's present, having a redlink is fine, so as to encourage creating an article about the person. Quite welcome on the help! Allens (talk | contribs) 23:56, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Allens, I have populated the list citing the external sites and most of them are authentic Govt. of India sites. I would request you to please review them. Thanks.--Karan1974 (talk) 02:38, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good overall! I'm a bit worried about the googleusercache one - it may well disappear at some point. Aside from that, I didn't spot any problems in a brief glance-over; I did some tidying up via automated means and may do somewhat more. Incidentally, these citations may well also help someone put together pages instead of redlinks... Allens (talk | contribs) 03:12, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Allens, I appreciate your time and effort. And you are right, I am also a bit worried about that too... it's just a matter of time till the cache is cleared off. Searching for the individual name (Harmohan Patnaik) turns up multiple pages but they are mostly commercial sites and kind of reflect the info what is there in another article. Most of the historic persons names are normally available in Oriya (vernacular) language and difficult to source content on the internet. I however managed to find a link to another credible source which I will insert. I saw the clean-up work you have done and do commend you for that. Thanks. --Karan1974 (talk) 03:29, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome. In terms of availability and language, it's fine if a reference is a book only available offline, or is a language other than English (I've been helping out at an article for which most of the references are in Russian, and it's considered a high-quality article!). It is preferable to have references that are easy to verify for most users, but not required. To cite a book, take a look at the {{cite book}} template. Allens (talk | contribs) 04:09, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Allens for this information. I have responded with the required information on Dhenkanal, India talk page based on the suggestion from NeilN. Also, I have inserted 3 additional links for "Nandini Satapathy". Thanks. --Karan1974 (talk) 18:41, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

• Allens,Some user is posing that Nandini belongs to Dhenkanal, and that is not a fact. Please visit Dhenkanal,India Talk page where there is a series of discussion after you referred to one Karan, who argues in a strange manner.. I dont like certain users of WIKI, because they provide subjective information...Love.Mgsports (talk) 14:16, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)It should be noted that MLAs and MPs are inherently notable persons who should have articles here. If you can find a reliable source which states that So-and-So Thus-and-Such was 1. an MP or MLA and 2. from Dhenkanal, then there is nothing wrong with listing them with the reference, since there should definitely be an article written about them. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:07, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - that's a clearer version of what I'd posted above. Allens (talk | contribs) 15:11, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Revert

Hi, there's a post concerning this revert at Wikipedia:New contributors' help page/questions#Editing a page for a School District. Your input would be appreciated. Cheers, benzband (talk) 16:58, 15 May 2012 (UTC

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Hi There Sertelsiraci (talk) 10:15, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

About an edit in list of beatle song

I'm a Thai Wikipedia user and noticed a message about 61.90.23.206 IP User's edit at List of The Beatles songs on 6 May 2012 but I'm not that user. My latest edit was adding Da Capo III link at Da Capo (visual novel) without logging in.

Why I recieved that message?

P.S. Sorry if I use incorrect or impolite languages.

--TeruM (talk) 12:16, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, that IP address is evidently shared between people by your ISP - basically, whoever happens to dial in. You should always log into your account when editing, to avoid receiving messages not meant for you. 12:58, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

GOCE requests on hold

Hi Allen. I noticed your on-hold of the request for c/e of Counties of Croatia, where you said "Waiting for comments from featured list discussion to see what further revisions are needed". I think that once you've done the initial copy edit for a request, it's probably best to declare it "done" on the requests page and let me archive it. I usually keep articles copyedited for GA and FA on my watchlist until they get there too, in case any further help is wanted, but removing them from the requests page might help to avoid confusion, unless you specifically want another editor to get involved too. Best, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 09:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, will do. Allens (talk | contribs) 16:23, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. How's Tay-Sachs? --Stfg (talk) 17:06, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

In the middle of its GA review. I'm finding I don't entirely agree with the medical article MOS, specifically on where the "Epidemiology" section should be placed, but I think I'll bring that up on the appropriate more-general talk pages (as opposed to Talk:Tay-Sachs disease). Allens (talk | contribs) 17:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Hello, you are invited!

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London Borough of Brent

You might like to visit Talk:London Borough of Brent and the IP's talk page to mitigate the offence caused to an editor that we'd probably prefer to encourage. NebY (talk) 19:11, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I've done so, and apologized. Allens (talk | contribs) 19:40, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

And you've done it in a more collaborative manner than my own (I plead RL) - thanks! NebY (talk) 07:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome (I understand re RL!). Allens (talk | contribs) 10:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Ecology section in Geography of Croatia

Hi! I recently added section "Ecology" to the Geography of Croatia article following a GA review request, as well as a paragraph (currently the last one) in the "Biodiversity" section of the same article. Could you please take a look at those to see if there is some nonsense in there requiring clarification and perform any copyedits that may be needed there? Thanks!--Tomobe03 (talk) 18:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

No problem - I was already planning on doing so after you were finished :-} Allens (talk | contribs) 19:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Done again, I think. The septic system assumption is correct, but I was unsure how exactly to spell that out since the source says "44% have sewerage system connections" and "public sewerage systems and septic tank systems are in use".--Tomobe03 (talk) 22:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome. I've tried to state what the source says re septic tank systems. Allens (talk | contribs) 22:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Please could you check ...

... your total word count? I've reduced it by 399 as I imagine the slave health article may have been entered twice on your calculator, but I'd like to be sure I haven't swindled you :) Simon. --Stfg (talk) 10:53, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Oops! Yes, 35,342 is the correct total. Thanks for catching that! Allens (talk | contribs) 10:58, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Barnstars for May 2012 GOCE drive

Moved to main page.

The checking work you did was especially appreciated. Thanks for doing that. --Stfg (talk) 08:57, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome; I'll try to do some more of that. Umm... there was also a 10K article, Global storm activity of mid 2010. (It's not 10K now, after I removed some of the news portions.) Allens (talk | contribs) 14:02, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh sorry! I've added it above now. I really need to get this process more accurate! --Stfg (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

It's OK; thank you for all the labor you put into the drive! I'll try to work on a Perl program for processing the drive page and spitting out at least a preliminary version of the barnstars page. Allens (talk | contribs) 14:36, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

That would be fantastic if it's feasible. It took most of a day, working half-on-half-off, to do it, and I know I made at least four mistakes. Thanks. --Stfg (talk) 15:31, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: Geography of Croatia

Thank you very much - both for kind words and great help copyediting the article, your contribution really made the difference.--Tomobe03 (talk) 18:27, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome, and thank you! Allens (talk | contribs) 21:19, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

GOCE May drive wrap-up

Guild of Copy Editors May 2012 backlog elimination drive wrap-up Participation: Out of 54 people who signed up this drive, 32 copy-edited at least one article. Last drive's superstar, Lfstevens, again stood out, topping the leader board in all three categories and copy-editing over 700 articles. Thanks to all who participated! Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: We were once again successful in our primary goal—removing the oldest three months from the backlog—while removing 1166 articles from the queue, the second-most in our history. The total backlog currently sits at around 2600 articles, down from 8323 when we started out just over two years ago. Coodinator election: The six-month term for our third tranche of Guild coordinators will be expiring at the end of June. We will be accepting nominations for the fourth tranche of coordinators, who will also serve a six-month term. Nominations will open starting on June 5. For complete information, please have a look at the election page. – Your drive coordinators: Dank, Diannaa, and Stfg To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 15:13, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy.

Dear Allen on my article "Nadiya Samdani" there are showing a tag "This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy." Can you please advice me what I need to do now and how can I avoid this deletion.

Taslim ahmed (talk) 06:28, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Please try to locate news or other coverage focused on Nadiya Samdani that is distant in time from the existing sources. In other words, try to find coverage focused on her that is either from well before April 2012, or well after (e.g, in June 2012). It is likely, incidentally, that the article will not be entirely deleted, but will instead be merged with one on the Samdani Art Foundation. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Tay-Sachs

Hi Allen. Is there a reason why it needs to stay on the requests page? While there it's attracting other editors: apart from Uploadvirus, it has just attracted Rumiton, and provoked Wizardman's action of this afternoon. I've asked Wizardman to clarify that, but ... Cheers, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 14:56, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I had been holding it because it's in the middle of its GA review, but I suppose I should treat it as (temporarily) done - for one thing, doing otherwise would mess up the statistics on GOCE work and GAs that I've been working on! Allens (talk | contribs) 17:22, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

want to delete article nadia samdani

Dear Allen I want to delete my article "Nadia Samdani" please advice me how can i delete it.

Taslim ahmed (talk) 05:33, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, OK, since you're the only one that's done anything substantial with it. (Why?) Put {{db-author}} at the top of the page, without removing anything else. Allens (talk | contribs) 10:29, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for blocking harassing editor

Thanks for blocking the editor who has been harassing me on my User and User Talk pages lately. I appreciate it. It seems to be relatively slow and low-level right now but if it escalates I'll follow your advice to have my User page semi-protected and take additional actions as necessary. Thanks again for your help and advice! ElKevbo (talk) 17:50, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome... (of course, there's also the admin who did it); happy to help, although not in the need for it! Allens (talk | contribs) 21:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Ooh - I hadn't noticed that Orangemike actually levied the block. Thanks for pointing that out to me! ElKevbo (talk) 21:50, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Again, quite welcome - I'm complimented by your assumption I'm an admin! Allens (talk | contribs) 13:25, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

2012 GOCE requests archive

Hi. I've changed a couple of column headers before I realised that might impact the development of your program. Please let me know if it does, and I'll revert it. Cheers, --Stfg (talk) 14:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I haven't written that section of the program yet (I've just finished doing LoCE, GOCE templates, and GOCE drives), so no problem; thanks! I'll discuss this further on the GOCE talk page. Allens (talk | contribs) 19:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Help Survey

Hi there, my name's Peter Coombe and I'm a Wikimedia Community Fellow working on a project to improve Wikipedia's help system. At the moment I'm trying to learn more about how people use and find the current help pages. If you could help by filling out this brief survey about your experiences, I'd be very grateful. It should take less than 10 minutes, and your responses will not be tied to your username in any way.

Thank you for your time,
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Help needed

Hi! Could you please take a look at the second paragraph of the "Parliamentary elections" section (in its introductory bit) of the Elections in Croatia? I seem to have mangled an explanation in there, then tried to clarify, so I would really appreciate if you could see if everything is alright in there. A lengthy explanation of the situation which I tried to sum up in the paragraph is present at Talk:Elections in Croatia/GA1. Thanks!--Tomobe03 (talk) 14:46, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure! No problem... Allens (talk | contribs) 14:53, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for lending a hand! I really appreciate it.--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome. Allens (talk | contribs) 14:11, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

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July drive

Hi Allen. The drive discussion seems to have slowed down, though I don't think it has really bottomed out all questions. I'm thinking of starting a new section tomorrow, summarising on the basis that I suspect that the latest statements not to have been challenged may represent a consensus, and inviting everyone to express any differing views. If that goes well, I can then create the drive page on Wednesday (20th). Are you happy with that plan? Are there any issues you'd like addressed before we do that? I've also asked Torchiest and Dianna. Cheers, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 20:09, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I've been working away at programming gathering data from the drive and requests archives. I've found problems with interpreting both due to renames, disambiguation, etc of articles, and username changes by editors; I think I'll have it solved soon. (It doesn't help that people, not knowing that I'd be coming along using a program to interpret the results, haven't always been very consistent about formatting their sections of the drive pages...) Allens (talk | contribs) 21:57, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's very difficult (or is this an understatement?) to get people to format things consistently. We may find ourselves needing to tidy some up when we go looking for what to review. Before I create the drive page, we're going to need to settle on how to tell people to mark entries for requests and oldest months, so that we can apply the markup. I have some questions about the archives one when there's time, too, but let's get the drive announced first. --Stfg (talk) 22:12, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I've wound up doing some tidying of the past drive "Final numbers" pages, actually - part of what's been occupying my time... Allens (talk | contribs) 14:28, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

(←) Hi Allen. It looks as if a consensus is emerging for a leaderboard with 5 columns of 6 rows, and a 50% increase in the word count for both requests and articles from the oldest 3 months. Those markups apply only for the word count for the main barnstar, not for leaderboard positions, so what we've done in the past and I think we should do again is to have people enter the real word count in their entries, and then we calculate the markups after the drive closes. To help us do that, I suggest we might have people mark requests with *R, and old articles with *O immediately after the article's word count. That's just a suggestion, though -- we can do whatever makes it easier for you. What do you reckon? --Stfg (talk) 14:05, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

That looks good to me (it's a sequence of characters that's fairly unlikely to occur otherwise, which makes it easier for the program to spot); do be sure to clarify on the discussion page that the word count boost for both R and O only count for the total word count, not the leaderboard (that's currently not quite clear for Requests). (Any review marking - {{checked}} or {{n}} or whatever - would be after that?) If people could put any comments like "section only edited" or whatever after the article link but before the parenthesis for the word count, that would help. It would also be helpful if people could be a bit more careful about using the actual article title - not a shortened version without a parenthetical note at the end, for instance - in the listing, although the older cases of that problem that I've seen may well be article name changes that the person couldn't expect. (The program is now looking for links from disambiguation pages and pages redirecting to a page to handle some name changes.) I have one comment regarding the requests page articles, but I'll put that on the discussion page. Allens (talk | contribs) 14:28, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I've just created the new drive page, trying to incorporate all of those in the new paragraph at the top of the Totals section. Could you check it out please? --Stfg (talk) 13:59, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks! Allens (talk | contribs) 18:28, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

My inadvertent vandalism of European Day of Languages

Thanks for catching this - I thought I'd used Igloo to revert myself, but clearly it hadn't worked properly. Too many vandal-fighters tripping over one another in their rush to revert! Cheers, Yunshui 雲‍水 13:42, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Heh! Quite welcome; I've removed the template. Do you think it was simply a matter of speed, or that Igloo's code needs an examination? Allens (talk | contribs) 13:52, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Probably an overclick on my part, although Igloo's been disconnecting on me a lot today. Problems at ClueNet, perhaps? With the exception of the repeated loss of connection everything else has been functioning normally, so I see no immediate cause for overhauling the code. Thanks for removing the template. Yunshui 雲‍水 14:03, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism Warning

That was not vandalism, apparently Huggle didn't revert the 5 edits of vandalism User:Dneeraja made several edits and deeply embedded vandalism. Thank you for catching the overlook :-). <3 ♥ Solarra ♥ ^{♪ Talk ♪} ߷ _{♀ Contribs ♀} 13:47, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome. Doesn't Huggle use rollback when available and applicable (last several edits were by the same user)? Allens (talk | contribs) 13:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

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GOCE Requests Archives

Hi, looks as if you've been making some progress. I saw you'd corrected some dates based on history files. Would you like me to go through the Purpose column to make it more consistent, like removing "for" and free-form comments like "plot section only"? Are there any other changes that would facilitate things? I'm not going to touch the layout any more without your say-so, but we can if you want.

I'm not yet sure what output you're planning to generate. Is it an issue if aims change after a copy edit? -- for example, requesters somtimes get cold feet and go for PRs or A-class intead of the FAC they said they were going to, or just tinker with the article for months; and on a couple of occasions I've completed a copy edit by tagging the article for a citation check and saying fairly strongly on a talk page that the article isn't ready for FAC/GAN until the fake citations have been dealt with. --Stfg (talk) 11:24, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I see that I haven't been clear - sorry! I wasn't planning to (yet) look at stated intentions - just at whether pages, after the date of a copyedit, became a GA, FA, or FL. (This would include pages that later lost that status, although those would probably be noted separately.) I've about finished with the program to gather what pages the LoCE/GOCE has copyedited; these currently include 11687 pages (of which 10918 pages have known copyeditors and thus completely known times of edits). Next will be:

• Updating the barnstars program a bit to take into account false positives/negatives the other program has located on past drives (not in the most recent one, don't worry!);
• The program - which I anticipate being rather easier - to gather data on when those articles became GAs/FAs/FLs (and on their current status); and
• Possibly some variety of table, or set of tables (split by month/year, copyeditor(s), or reviewer(s) if any) of all of the copyedited articles.

If you can think of any other outputs that would be of interest, I'd be happy to work on them. (I've also done some corrections on past drive "Final numbers" pages, incidentally.) Allens (talk | contribs) 12:27, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that's fabulous. It looks as if this program could be a wonderful source of data to inform future strategy. I don't have any specific ideas at the moment -- perhaps new ideas will emerge from seeing the results of the existing programs. --Stfg (talk) 13:06, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

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Copyediting A8

Hi! I was wondering if it would be possible to declare copyediting of the A8 (Croatia) completed on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests if there's nothing left to tackle there, so that I could add a new request to the GOCE page? Thanks.--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:40, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh. I thought I had already. Oops! Sorry about that... I tend to be forgetful about doing that. Allens (talk | contribs) 13:47, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

No problem. I wouldn't notice it had I not went to the GOCE request page about another article. Once again, thanks for the copyediting.--Tomobe03 (talk) 20:30, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Quite welcome; looking forward to the GA! Allens (talk | contribs) 00:15, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

The article just passed GA review - and it is in a great part thanks to your thorough copyedit and overall improvements, just like in many other articles. Thanks once again!--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Copyedit?

Hi Allens, I hope things have been going well with you. Glad to see that you're doing well in the election. I know you're busy, but I thought I'd ask if you'd be interested in copyediting my new project, Marshall Applewhite. You might find it interesting, he led the largest mass suicide on American soil. No problem though if you don't have time or energy. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 03:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Pretty well, albeit rather busy - I'm teaching a summer course (covering in 5 weeks what I'd normally cover in 15!). Thanks regarding the election! I'll try to get around to looking at Marshall Applewhite, but I'm not sure when it will be. You may wish to list it on the GOCE requests page - we're trying to promote working on pages listed there during the upcoming July copyedit drive. Hope you're doing well! Allens (talk | contribs) 13:10, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, whenever you have time is fine. I recall taking 5 week summer courses back in college, it always felt somewhat odd seeing the campus comparatively deserted. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

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re Rhino tank review

Hi I would like to make a very belated thank you for your review of the Rhino tank article. Your comments were not in vain and were all acted upon, so you did no waste your time ;) Cheers EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 15:16, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

GOCE July 2012 mid-drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors July 2012 backlog elimination drive mid-drive newsletter Participation: Out of 37 people signed up for this drive so far, 25 have copy-edited at least one article. It's a smaller group than last drive, but we're making good progress. If you've signed up but haven't yet copy-edited any articles, every bit helps; if you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Template:J Progress report: We're almost on track to meet our targets for the drive. Great work, guys. We have reduced our target group of articles—May, June, and July 2011—by about 40%, and the overall backlog has been reduced by 264 articles so far, to around 2500 articles. Copy Edit of the Month: Starting in August, your best copy-editing work of the month will be eligible for fabulous prizes! See here for details. – Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest. >>> Sign up now <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 16:22, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

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GOCE

I've copyedited articles, but I don't know how to update my stats. Can you please help me? Thanks, Electriccatfish2 (talk) 00:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC).

(talk page stalker) Hello Electriccatfish2. Allens is busy in RL at present. If you'd like to pop over to my talk page and let me know what copy edits you want to record in your stats, I will help you. Best, --Stfg (talk) 08:59, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Controlled Bleeding edits

I didn't go through all the Controlled Bleeding albums and delete their links for nothing. Do your realistically expect every album to have separate articles made for them? This band isn't that popular. 75.179.63.37 (talk) 04:35, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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Please comment on Talk:Barack Obama on Twitter

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A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Your great contribution in copyediting helped promote four good articles Croatian European Union membership referendum, 2012, Geography of Croatia, A8 (Croatia) and Government of Croatia, as well as Counties of Croatia featured list in June and July alone - and I present you this Original Barnstar as a sign of recognition! Tomobe03 (talk) 10:41, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I've enjoyed working with you, and plan on keeping doing so. Allens (talk | contribs) 01:35, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

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July 2012 Study of authors of health-related Wikipedia pages

Dear Author/Allens

My name is Nuša Farič and I am a Health Psychology MSc student at the University College London (UCL). I am currently running a quantitative study entitled Who edits health-related Wikipedia pages and why? I am interested in the editorial experience of people who edit health-related Wikipedia pages. I am interested to learn more about the authors of health-related pages on Wikipedia and what motivations they have for doing so. I am currently contacting the authors of randomly selected articles and I noticed that someone at this address edited an article on implantable cardioverter-defibrillator . I would like to ask you a few questions about you and your experience of editing the above mentioned article and or other health-related articles. If you would like more information about the project, please visit my user page (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hydra_Rain) and if interested, please reply via my talk page or e-mail me on nusa.faric.11@ucl.ac.uk. Also, others interested in the study may contact me! If I do not hear back from you I will not contact this account again. Thank you very much in advance. Hydra Rain (talk) 13:01, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

GOCE July drive wrap-up

Guild of Copy Editors July 2012 backlog elimination drive wrap-up Participation: Out of 45 people who signed up this drive, 31 have copy-edited at least one article. Lfstevens continues to carry most of the weight, having edited 360 articles and over a quarter of a million words already. Thanks to all who have participated! Final results, including barnstars awarded, will be available early in August here. Progress report: We are once again very close to achieving in our primary goal—removing the oldest three months from the backlog. Only 35 such articles remain at press time. The total backlog currently sits at under 2400 articles, down from 8323 when we started out over two years ago. We are just two articles away from completing all requests made before July 2012 (both are in progress). Copy Edit of the Month: Starting in August, you'll be able to submit your best copy-editing work for palaver, praise, and prizes. See here for details. – Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 23:47, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

COI+ certification proposal

I've thought of an idea that might break our current logjam with paid editing. I'd love your sincere feedback and opinion.

• WP:COI certification

Feel free to circulate this to anyone you think should know about it, but please recognize that it hasn't agreed upon by either PR organizations or WikiProjects or the wider community. It's also just a draft, so any/many changes can still be made. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi EdwardsBot (talk) 15:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

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Drive barnstars

Hi Allen. I hope your summer teaching was successful and enjoyable. From your note at the top, I guess that you may be taking a few days to recover and chill out. When you're ready, please can we make the barnsars file for the drive? I have a question about that: does the program like to work directly from the drive page, or from the "Final Results" file? (I haven't made one yet, but will if it's wanted -- it's very easy). best, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 09:59, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! It was successful, enjoyable, and exhausting - you are correct about the recovery time! (Part of it was that it was a new course to me on top of being a summer course.) I should be OK with doing the barnstars file tomorrow morning or so; it works directly from the drive page. Allens (talk | contribs) 01:33, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice to have you back. Don't bust a gut and spoil your recovery. Whenever you're ready. Cheers. --Stfg (talk) 09:26, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'm now working on the adaptations to include the additional barnstar categories, etc. BTW, I did manage to get close to finished on a program to report on past LOCE/GOCE efforts (I just need to check to see if all the tables are properly wiki-formatted); the "raw" version of that output will be used for comparing with GA/FA/etc. It's got a number of tables: by date according to LOCE/GOCE tag, drive, or request page (split by month and year); by source (LOCE/GOCE tag, drive, or request) and year; by date according to editing history; by article and user aliases/former names (split by initial character); by article name (split by initial character); by copyeditor or reviewer (split by initial character); by date of review (split by month and year); and missing or newer-than-copyedit-time articles. (Hmm... perhaps I got a bit perfectionistic... ah, well.) Thanks for the good wishes; nice to be back! Allens (talk | contribs) 00:25, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

That looks wonderful! Is there anything I can do do make the barnstar program's life simpler, e.g. some manual pre-processing of the drive page? (Things like inserting spaces between word counts and *R, or making sure word counts are/aren't surrounded by parentheses, aren't particularly error-prone, but I don't know what would and wouldn't help). Rgds, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 09:17, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Heck, I was getting kind of worried about you, Allen - wondered if you were OK. Listen, I've got a little extra time over next day or two or three myself - if you or Simon need any help with some "grunt work" just let me know. Very best regards to both of you: Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 18:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

FAC/Cancer pain

Hi Allen. Just letting you know I've nominated Cancer pain: Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Cancer_pain/archive1. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

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Adriatic Sea is in FAR

Hi! Just wanted to let you know I recently nominated the Adriatic Sea as a FAC at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Adriatic Sea/archive1. I don't expect major issues with the prose since you comprehensively copyedited the article, but could you please have a look at the review if any prose-related issues come up during the FA review? Thanks!--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:09, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Merger request List of computer viruses (all)

Hi, I can see that you have been editing the above page and was wondering what your thoughts would be on merging it with the List of computer viruses page.

Both articles are dealing with essentially the same subject, but have filtered their lists differently. I believe that by merging the two would be of enormous benefit.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. The talk page on this subject is as follows: Talk:List of computer viruses

Sirkus (talk) 16:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SirkusSystems (talk • contribs)

Fretting like an old woman

Hey Allen:

Some of your Wikifamily out here are getting worried about you. Hope things are OK. Let us know you still have a good strong sinus rhythm when you get a sec.

Your buddy: Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 21:38, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate the thought (that people care does bring a much-needed smile to my face) - don't worry, my heart is still beating fine; I've just not been feeling up to doing much, or being in contact with people... having problems getting myself to do more than the bare minimum needed for work (2 classes that I'm teaching). Sigh... hope I can get out of this funk this weekend.

Yours, Allens (talk | contribs) 03:13, 11 August 2012 (UTC)