User talk:Fuzheado/Archive1

beginning to Dec 2003...

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

I for one am glad you brought your class here, they've added a lot of valuable content. A little bit of cleaning up English is a small price to pay for information that I for one have no idea about.

I noticed the images too, also very nice, I assume most of these were taken by the class with digital cameras. It might be a good idea to have a look at our copyright policy though, it would be better if they made an explicit release of the image material under the GNU FDL.

Thanks again! Hope you and your class have a great time here. - Hephaestos 05:41 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I too always like to see schools and unis picking up Wikipedia. Could you do us a favor and describe in a little more detail what you are doing and how on the newly created Wikipedia:School and university projects page? Thanks! --Eloquence 05:52 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Same here, is any arrangement needed? kt2 05:57 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think what you're doing is great. To have a large number of keen, intelligent contributors suddenly writing interesting material about Hong Kong was a pleasant surprise. I just have one request: I was a bit confused at first, I didn't know where they were all coming from or what they were doing. In the future, do you think you could ask them to fill out their user pages? Just something like "I'm a University of Hong Kong student doing a project on Wikipedia," and maybe a link to Wikipedia:School and university projects. I just want to avoid confusing all the other Wikipedia contributors, that's all. -- Tim Starling 06:07 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the warm welcomes. I've posted information on the class to the new topic Wikipedia:School and university projects. And yes, I'll tell them to put something in their user pages to identify themselves.

BTW, to folks who have posted or queried here, I seek your advice. I'd like to do a survey of the students after the exercise is over. I want them to evaluate the experience. None of them had used a Wiki before, and to many the concept was completely foreign. So I'd like to somehow capture the "buzz" and reflections afterwards. So if you could pose some interesting questions for them to answer, I would apprecaite it. The best ones are quantifiable choice questions (ie. on a scale from 1-10, true/false).

Some I had in mind already, but please add, and we can put a recommended list to educators on the Wikipedia:School and university projects page.

How useful did you find the project?

Did you ever run into an editing conflict?

How did you resolve it?

What parts of the interface were hard to use?

Some ideas:

I found the editing syntax difficult to use. [1 (very false).. 10 (very true]
I found the website design appealing.
I found the experience as a whole confusing.
Exploring Wikipedia was an enjoyable experience.
- Which aspects in particular?
I did have many social interactions on the site.
Sexual or offensive content should be censored by editors.
The social interactions I had were pleasant.
I think Wikipedia is already a serious work of reference.
I learned something new from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia shows that humans can work together online in large groups, even without being paid to do so.
I think that maintaining a neutral point of view will be impossible.
Wikipedia will eventually replace all other encyclopedias.
I will use Wikipedia again, as a reader.
I will use Wikipedia again, as an author.
I think wikis should be used for other purposes beyond creating an encyclopedia.
- Which ones?
Wikipedia needs more centralized control.

Note that you could derive some interesting correlations from these questions. Are the pro-control types more inclined to believe that the principle doesn't work? Are those who found the design unappealing less inclined to come back? --Eloquence 07:02 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

More ideas:

Working on Wikipedia has improved my English language skills.
I felt comfortable working collaboratively with native English speakers.
The information is Wikipedia is unreliable.
The Wikipedians I encountered were helpful.
I found it frustrating when others edited my work.

I'm pleased that you're using Wikipedia in your class, and I hope to see more experiments like this. -- Stephen Gilbert 15:32 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

On interlanguage/multilingual aspect

I'm a contributor from the Chinese Wikipedia.

Q for students: How do you find Wikipedia's multilingual capability? What contributes to the imbalance between the size of different language-versions? What caused it?

Also, even just within the English WP, for some proper nouns or exotic words, we place local texts. (See Three Principles of the People (anthem) for an example)

Q for students: Do you find having local texts (such as Simplified or Chinese Chinese characters, Hanja, and Kanji) annoying visually or helpful? Do you think non-Hong Konger feel the same way as you do? Why or why not? Why do you think Wikipedia does this? Does it mean English is unimportant here (in the English Wikipedia)?

--Menchi 18:31 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

On publishing and research

I'd like to begin doing some detailed papers on Wikipedia and need some statistics from the backend. Anyone know who to best talk to about this? Also, I will be in San Diego next month, and would appreciate any contacts with Wikipedians and Bomis to see if I could go for a site visit. Thanks. (Fuzheado 06:03 22 Jul 2003 (UTC))

Stat -- Here's some: size & contributions by Erik Zachte. --Menchi 01:24, Jul 30, 2003 (UTC)

Site visit -- try User talk:Jimbo Wales. --Menchi 04:37, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for exposing your students to Wikipedia! We can always use more interested people contributing (or even just reading). I recently worked up some pages on river dolphins, and I was wondering if any of your students might know about the Chinese River Dolphin. It's in the Yangtze river only, so there are certainly none in Hong Kong, but someone might do a lot of reading, so I'd appreciate any help you could offer. Thanks in advance. --Dante Alighieri 04:07, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Please use the "Move this page" function next time so the edit history remains intact. --Jiang 01:13, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Excellent job on the addition ("overthrow") to the Hawaii History section. I'm a Hawai'i resident and a haole, but you got it straight and avoided POV in my opinion - Marshman 04:52, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks much. That section was long overdue. Fuzheado 06:25, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi there! I want to create articles like "List of Chinese people by name: 李" in order to clarify some confusions in the transliteration of Chinese family names. But English Wikipedia don't accept non-latin letters in the title. Could you give me some suggestions? Wshun

That's a good question. Perhaps some of the other Chinese experts in Wikipedia might know, like User:Jiang and User:Menchi - Fuzheado 06:13, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

User:Wshun, do you mean articles which detail the background of common Chinese surnames? There already exists a list of the "Hundred Families' Names" (well, actually, there are only around 60 listed), but you can expand on this topic by painstakingly going through the list and resolving any discontinuities. I am currently working on the Zhang surname, and transliterations using other systems (Wades-Giles, Cantonese, etc.) will be redirected towards the correct page. --Taoster

Regarding Ivy League. This page has a bit of a problem with people adding comments about who they consider to be on the same level of the Ivy League, like you've done with MIT and "Ivy Plus". This article is about the Ivy League - and just the Ivy Leauge. It is not a page on decent universities and I think adding stuff on Standford and MIT is opinon. Also, when you moved Oxbridge and the Russell group you lost all kind of description as to why they are there. CGS 07:07, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT).

You are right. I have been expecting one of the cricket buffs to do one for ages. I'm not especially well-up on cricketers, but I'll see what I can do. (I removed some no-longer-needed stuff from above while I as at it, BTW - revert that if you prefer.) Best -- Tannin

I have nominated you for adminship. Please go to Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#Fuzheado to accept (or decline) the nomination. --Jiang 04:47, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sysop promotion

You're now a sysop. I predict you will now feel the weight of responsibility falling heavily upon your shoulders. But you will also experience an upwelling of strength to carry that burden! --Uncle Ed 23:30, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yah, Ive been spending the last quarter of an hour trying to figure out what a "night wather state" is. Haven't found one reference to such a thing. Lirath Q. Pynnor

pump message

Answer at Wikipedia:Village pump#Anon updating cache. --mav

All is well now. :) --mav

First of all, thanks for your great involvement with Wikipedia. Could you give some insights as how your students are graded? Is the quality of the articles they are assigned to/ number of edits taken into account? I had an epidermic reaction to User:Maggiemei's comment on Talk:Sha Tin. Cheers. olivier 07:13, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Someone needs to rewrite Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks, especially the "replies" section. At the moment it's just an advocacy page for Martin and Eloquence's POV. I think it should more accurately reflect the contentious nature of the proposal. -- Tim Starling 02:31, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Well, since it is Martin and Eloquence's POV, and not just rubbish, the text probably shouldn't be deleted. Perhaps just a more neutral opening section would suffice. The subheadings could be changed to H3 level, under an H2 "proposal" heading. I'm not sure what to do with the "answers to concerns" section -- should it be moved or should it stay? -- Tim Starling 04:05, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Could you please look at ATV Enterprise Limited? It looks like it was copied and pasted for elsewhere. RickK 04:01, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Voting Rights

I think that rule should be applied. Try adding it to the deletion policy and see whether anyone complains. I think that's a better way than discussing it on the mailing list, where you just get a load of people who don't even participate in VfD objecting when they don't actually realise the problems occuring in VfD. I have certainly been ignoring Wartortle's votes and noting so in the reason for deletion when I delete something. Angela 07:31, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

Yep, definitely. VfD is 82kb again! We can leave the vote open so people can object there if they want to. Angela 07:41, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

Copyvio

Hi Fuzheado, I have deleted ATV Enterprise Limited as it was listed on VfD for a week without objection, but am now having second thoughts about the deletion as it appears to be your students who were editing it. It was suggested that article was a copyright violation, but I have realised that none of the authors of the article were asked about this and perhaps they don't have on their watchlists. The authors were G10ChengKaiYing, G10KarryCheng and G10karry. I was just wondering whether it was worth checking this out more. Anyway, if you think it is you could undelete the article. Angela 23:14, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

Funny titles

Once upon a time, Wikipedia used CamelCase links instead of the double brackets, so titles had to have at least two capital letters, hence AardvarK etc. Brion's view is that you should "never ever ever break links without good reason". There could, in theory, still be external sites linking to these, so it is generally seen as a good thing to keep them unless they are causing particular problems or are inappropriate redirects. Goddess of deletion.

from personal attacks debate

Alternative version - instead of refactoring, this policy tries to define exactly what personal attacks are unacceptable, and subject to banning. Puts onus on parties not to cross over line, and considers Talk pages as free speech. (Proposed: 27 Oct 2003 (UTC))

Personal attacks that detract from constructive debate do not belong on Wikipedia. The articles and pages "for-publication" are a commons that require a neutral point of view. Talk pages, as discussions among users, are forms of free speech which enjoy certain liberties. However, speech attacking others specifically with intent to do harm or to intentionally disrupt the community is unacceptable and users engaging in such are subject to temporary or permanent bans.

Some possible elaboration on:

Personal attacks lower a user's standing within the community
Escalating personal disputes should be dealt with by the individual parties first, with guidance from the community
The conflicting parties should be responsible for what comments stay on the record or get deleted

Perhaps this could go on another page, since this is really a seperate proposal? I think this was mentioned before on wikipedia talk:remove personal attacks. Really it's not about removing attacks, so it might be better to place it on wikipedia:no personal attacks, or a new page (wikipedia:freedom of speech?). Martin 20:56, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

About the M-16 being "universally praised" - as far as I can tell the original statement is correct, the US Navy SEALs given the weapon for testing were completely enamoured with it. It was only when it was given to a larger audience of barely-trained inductees who were told not to bother cleaning the weapon because it was too space-age that things started turning for the worse. Then when these reports filtered back up, the press grabbed it as a cause celebre, looking for anything to further embarrass the government with. Once equipped with comic books telling them how to clean and combat check the weapon, the problems "miraculously" disappeared.

Long and short of it is that the M-16 is the single best rifle design since the StG44. Efforts by other forces to introduce weapons of even similar quality have been fraught with peril, including the SA80 where the mention comes from. Even the venerable AK-47 has been replaced twice (once in practice, once "officially") while evolving it ever more towards the M-16 light-n-fast philosophy.

Things are starting to change more recently, the new Nikonov design is pretty cool and some of those grenade launcher/gun combos might actually work, but history has shown that the SEALs had it right all along.

I was a bit unsure myself about what to do with the interlanguage link edits. In the end I decided not to include them, in part due to my desire to have a cross-language log-in for all wikipedias and other wikimedia projects. --snoyes 00:42, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

DynCorp

Here is an interesting newstory on DynCorp. Would you be interested in incorporating parts of the newstory into the wikiarticle? [[1]] Kingturtle 00:40, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You may want to add your voice to: Wikipedia talk:Don't include copies of primary sources --mav 07:14, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

VfD

"AIDS kills fags dead" and associated redirects were not deleted after being listed on VfD since 16 Nov: Martin decided to count votes only on Talk:AKFD/redirect. I'm assuming he will honour them there. If you still want to vote on the matter, you may want to make sure your votes are registered there. -- Someone else 19:29, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC

You were of course the first person I thought of when I saw the first question on User talk:PaulAllison. So if you're interested. - Hephaestos 03:42, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As a party in that confict, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#The_Cunctator. --Jiang

I don't know how close this will come to useful contrition, but looking at the Sunset High School vfd boilerplate placement war in the rearview mirror, I can find at least one action that I erred in, when I moved the VfD boilerplate to the bottom of the page without comment and marked it as a minor edit after RickK had put it back in. Marking it minor was wrong, and it would have been much more friendly to give an explanation (instead of only giving an explanation the next edit). --The Cunctator 13:00, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I didn't take any offense. It's true that I had a short history of participation, and a few hundred rather than thousands of edits - and I took your comments as indicative of a need to set standards for the future - which I fully agree with. -- Pakaran 07:01, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How to cast a horoscope

FYI: The content of How to cast a horoscope copied to Horoscope under its own section together with some external links. I think How to cast a horoscope can be deleted or redirected now. Optim 07:22, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)