User talk:M. Dingemanse/Archive4

My talk archives

Archive 1 (back to August 2004)
Archive 2 (October - December 2004)
Archive 3 (January - February 2005)
Archive 4 (March 2005)
Archive 5 (April - May 2005)
Archive 6 (June 2005)
Archive 7 (July - August 2005)
Archive 8 (September - October 2005)
Archive 9 (November - December 2005)
Archive 10 (January - February 2006)
Archive 11 (March - April 2006)
Archive 12 (May - August 2006)
Archive 13 (September - October 2006)
Archive 14 (November 2006 - January 2007)
Archive 15 (February 2007 - onward)

Algeria

Hey man! Great to hear from you. I've been lying low lately, but that giant empty space finally got to me... ;) Maps in Algerian civil conflict would be great; some possibilities:

the Triangle of Death;
election results of 1991, and maybe 1997 (I'd need to find a data source);
massacres in 1997-1998 with over 50 victims (see List of Algerian massacres of the 1990s; I've found details of most, though not necessarily all)
locations of various armed groups (difficult! would take more research to establish)

What do you think? - Mustafaa 00:48, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I can make several — it looks like you have produced enough text to fit in more than one :). Well then — the first one (Triangle of Death) in any case, for starters. The election results, well, if I have a map with the district boundaries (I've already asked User:Golbez, the creator of Image:Algeria provinces.png). The 1997-1998 massacres I can do too, if you can provide me with sources. Do you know of any places where I could look for maps of Algeria (preferably in vector format)? — mark ✎ 01:14, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, how's this? I think it covers all the massacres of over 50 people in 1997-1998:

Thalit			~ Latitude 35.8856 Longitude 2.7508 
Haouch Khemisti		~ Latitude 36.5406 Longitude 3.0853 
Dairat Labguer		~~ Latitude 35.7058 Longitude 4.5419 
Si-Zerrouk		~ Latitude 36.5667 Longitude 3.1500 
Oued el-Had		~ Latitude 36.2908 Longitude 2.0678 
Souhane			~ Latitude 36.4893 Longitude 3.2314
Beni-Ali			~ Latitude 36.4256 Longitude 2.8767 
Rais			Latitude 36.6167 Longitude 3.1333
Beni-Messous		Latitude 36.7833 Longitude 2.9833 
Guelb el-Kebir		~ Latitude 36.2347 Longitude 3.3039
Bentalha			Latitude 36.6692 Longitude 3.0953 
Sidi el-Antri		~~ Latitude 35.3758 Longitude 1.3131
Kherarba			Latitude 35.7167 Longitude 1.2167 
Sahnoun			Latitude 35.8833 Longitude 1.3167 
El-Abadel		~ Latitude 35.8833 Longitude 1.3167 
Ouled-Tayeb		Latitude 35.8833 Longitude 1.3167 
Ramka			Latitude 35.8500 Longitude 1.3333 
Sidi-Hamed		~ Latitude 36.6194 Longitude 3.2253 
Oued Bouaicha		~ Latitude 35.2425 Longitude 3.1414 
Baloul			Latitude 34.9833 Longitude 0.4667
Tadjena			Latitude 36.3219 Longitude 1.1372

- Mustafaa 21:18, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Very useful. Note that it might take a week (maybe two), as I am pretty busy with other (non-Wikipedia) things these days. But I'll get to it eventually. Thanks! — mark ✎ 21:32, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cool! It'll probably take that long to get the article into reasonable shape... Still no 1990/1 results, but I found the 1997 results at Adam Carr's site: [1]. - (Mustafaa not signed in) 67.115.155.101 03:26, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Map

You said you wanted it in vector format; is an XCF (Gimp format) sufficient? By that, I mean, if you use The GIMP, that would be preferable, but if not, I can probably convert it into whatever format you need. Right now, it's basically a bitmap. I wonder if the Gimp could convert that. But yeah, I have a blank version with the lines. How would I best get it to you? And thanks for the kind words, yours is only the second compliment I've gotten on here, so it's nice to know people appreciate my work. :) --Golbez

Sorry, this month has been absolute hell so far. I'll get it to you soon. Sorry! --Golbez 19:04, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

I just sent it along. If you need help with any of the other maps, or want me to do something extra with this map, let me know. :) --Golbez 07:46, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Those three (Sahnoun etc.) are small neighboring villages which were attacked in a single night; they're probably too close together to differentiate. Sounds cool about the Ajami - but you didn't give the site address! ;) - Mustafaa 20:56, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ha, just saw it — I added it. — mark ✎ 21:09, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

NYPL pictures

Hi, I noticed your note to Xed about the NYPL picture database. I got really interested - but are you sure these pictures are public domain? Looking at [2], it says "The contents of this website are made available for individual private study, scholarship and research only. Any other use, including but not limited to any type of publication or commercial use, is prohibited without the payment of usage fees and the prior written permission of The New York Public Library as well as any owners of rights in the materials, if applicable." Did I miss something? / Alarm 13:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Alarm. I found out about the NYPL via a posting on the village pump by User:Alterego: [3] (extlink because I'm lazy). I must confess that I didn't look into their copyright statements myself; but User:SPUI did, and remarked that

Stuff from there should be evaluated on its own - if it's from before 1923 of from before 1964 and not renewed ([8] (http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~lesk/copyrenew.html)), it's PD.

Since I know that images related to Dahomey and Congo (and, in general, Africa) in virtually all cases will come from books from before 1923, I didn't talk about this at Xed's Talk. But probably you're right. I'll look into it and wait a bit to see where the discussion on the Village Pump goes. And I'll notify Xed of this discussion too. Thanks for your notice! — mark ✎ 13:18, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Move done.

Should be OK. Let me know if anything went wrong... Ta bu shi da yu 13:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

adminship?

Hi Mark, I would like to nominate you to be an administrator. Would you accept if I did so? - Banyan Tree 18:36, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm flattered that you'd be willing to do that. Yes, I would accept, since I would be able to use my wikitime more effectively and I find myself removing vandalism anyway. Maybe you should make note of the fact that I'm here since August 2004, and that I have edited from User:Strangeloop from August 14, 2004 to October 18, 2004. From then on, I've been editing under my real name. — mark ✎ 09:49, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, I've nominated you. Please accept at WP:VFA. Good luck! - Banyan Tree 16:43, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, no, smelling lovely

No, no, I'm still smelling lovely after the undeserved roses you covered me with, Mark! Thanks for being the first past the post on the Colley Cibber vote, too—I was amazed and excited to see people complimenting my 18th-century cruft. Mmmmm, coompliments are good. (Incidentally, what a ticker-tape parade your request for adminship turned into!) Bishonen | Talk 17:09, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

new CSB template?

Hi Mark, I can't seem to stop thinking of ways to make the CSB template more effective. Even though Africa definitely took a huge step forward, I'm pretty close to a decision that CotW is the wrong way to go about it, given the spectrum of needs, and that Xed was on to something by insisting on a 'country carousel'. I've come up with a rough template idea that I've put up on my work page. I'd appreciate some feedback before putting it up for consideration at WP:CSB, and basically proposing the death of CSB CotW. - Banyan Tree 20:23, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wow, it looks great! I think that this is going to be a move in the right direction for CSB. People are not limited to one article this way; it is more inviting to people who just want to get a quick view of what can be done. The biggest question of course is: how are we going to decide which articles are put on the template? And how do we mobilize the CSB participants to take part in this process? But really, you are on to something. This is a Good Thing! — mark ✎ 23:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This seems as good a place as any to jump in.... I was involved in the discussions in the early days of CSB, surrounding its setting up as a project, but while I've created articles that fall within its remit since then I haven't been much involved in the workings of the project itself. I like BanyanTree's new template system very much and you can consider me remobilised for the process. I think CSB will go from strength to strength—the opportunities for articles to write seem to me to be still almost limitless—it's like Wikipedia in the early days when there was no coverage of whole vast areas of human knowledge. I'm just reading a book about the Trobriand Islands and Wikipedia is devoid of information on them. The specific reason I'm leaving you this message is to see what you think about User:Xed/draft5. While it does have plenty of missing sections some great work has gone into it and I wonder what you and BanyanTree think needs to be done before it can be moved into the main article space. Obviously Xed is no longer in a position to complete the work he was doing on it, rather unfortunately in my opinion, but it would be good to see the article 'go live' soon. By the way, congratulations in advance on your impending elevation to admin status! — Trilobite (Talk) 09:34, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great to have you on board again. Incidentally, thanks for weighing in at Xed's arbitration. I didn't know how to say what I wanted to say, and you put it very well. As for User:Xed/draft5, this should certainly not be left alone. Maybe it is a good idea to comment out the empty sections and to go live with the content there is already (which is a lot, actually). I can see at least one real problem: the references are incomplete. I'm sure Xed used much more sources than the three extlinks there are now; so we need to include this sources. I'll see if I can email him and ask about it, but I think this is not the best time. I can very well imagine that Xed is tired of everything about Wikipedia right now (I certainly would be, in his case) and that he really can't be bothered at the moment. — mark ✎ 10:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about commenting out or removing the empty sections, as it would take quite a bit of research to actually write them, and we might as well put the large quantity that's already there into the article space rather than wait for this. I too noticed the lack of references and it is a real problem. Xed noted that he'd researched the article at SOAS, and hopefully he kept a list of books he made major use of which can be incorporated into the article either by an email from him a bit later or perhaps if he comes back after the ban expires. While citing sources is of course very important, I think in the absence of explicit references it would be okay to just put the article up without any, and hope that some are incorporated by one means or another eventually. I think well-researched accurate content without references is, while not best practice, preferable to no content at all, so personally I'd be happy for it to go up without sources cited. — Trilobite (Talk) 10:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You convinced me. Let's do it without the sources for now; I was letting perfect get in the way of better. This content is just too good to leave it languishing in /draft5. — mark ✎ 16:49, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A more distressing fact however is that most of the images contain no source information and no copyright tags. Xed, we need you. — mark ✎ 02:09, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Weird

Strange indeed. There was another very similar vandal on A.H. a few minutes before, and i assumed it is the same person changing IP adresses, hence i blocked without an additional warning. When i put the note, I got a "edit conflict". I addedmy note to the window on the top half of the edit conflict message, and hit save page again. This may have confused the server. But it is indeed the first time I have seen such a thing. -- Chris 73 Talk 13:32, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

African philosophy

I may have misunderstood, but why do you think that African philosophy is in need of review or attention? Is it because it's unfinished, or for some other reason? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:17, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is great. That's why first of all it didn't belong any more in the 'Requests for expansion' section. I placed it in the 'Requests for review/attention' section because it might still benefit from other editors taking a look at it. To clarify, I look at the four sections as a gradual process. If an article doesn't exist, it's in the first one. If a stub is created or existent but needs to be expanded, it's in the second one. Once an article is considerably expanded by someone, it needs to be reviewed (a bit like Peer Review). Then, if it is judged to be 'Satisfactory', it should be moved into that section, which is a sort of CSB 'accomplished tasks' list.

To be sure, I was astonished at the length and quality of the article — you did a superb job. As a matter of fact I was going to review it more closely somewhere in the next few days. — mark ✎ 16:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh, thanks; that's a relief. There's still a lot to be done (and I'm qualified at best to write only part of it). I've tried to drum up some extra help, but with no luck so far (if I tell you that I've often been approached by students and by journal editors as the only person in the U.K. who knows anything about African philosophy, you'll appreciate the problem (I'm sure that I'm not, incidentally, though there can be very few of us). Any contributions gratefully received.

In fat I've left the article alone for a little while, because I've been filling in the gaps reegarding individual philosophers; I've created a couple of articles, and added to the articles on a couple more, but there's a long way to go. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:57, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

'fraid so Mark

I gotta spend some more time in the Real World (tm). Don't worry, noones done anything to me. It's a decision I've made. I need to spend more time with God and the Bible. Wikipedia is taking this time away from me! I'll probably be around doing anonymous edits. Thanks for your kind words though :-) - Ta bu shi da yu 13:39, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You too Mark :-) God bless. Ta bu shi da yu 00:13, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bambara, N'Ko

Hi, thanks to your todo I found out that Ngo should be spelled N'Ko. :) I'm actually adding some info on the Bambara language and a little bit on other Malian languages. I'm also trying to get the Bambara Wikipedia started, although I don't speak Bambara (yet). :) G-u-a-k-@ 18:50, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Twi

Your moving of Twi to Twi language was unneeded, Twi is not ambiguous. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:17, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

The reason most languages are at Foo (language) is because foo is most often also a nationality, this is not the case with Twi so no such disambiguation is needed, this is the custom for other such cases, e.g. Toki Pona and Esperanto. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:26, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

Congratulations

Hi Mark. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate you for your impending adminship, and welcome you to the cabal.

Your new friends as an admin will be the rollback link on page diffs, Special:Undelete/PageTitleHere, and Special:Blockip. Protocol apparently dictates that you only use the rollback link to revert vandalism, and when you're just reverting someone over a content dispute, you do it manually. That almost condones revert wars, which I think is a bit silly.

If you need any guidance at all on how to do the more complicated admin tasks (like page history merging), don't hesitate to drop me a line. - Mark 08:38, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't mind at all you using "mark" in your signature. Firstly, I only ever use the plain old standard signature, which looks significantly different to yours. Secondly, this was not my original username anyway. I adopted it (with the help of a developer) while there were already several Marks editing Wikipedia, so I don't really have a 100% claim to the name 'Mark'. :) - Mark 01:01, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations, Mark!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 19:34, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

not at all — I hope your addiction worsens :oD dab (ᛏ) 21:40, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My pleasure, Mark. Congratulations and enjoy! SlimVirgin 21:59, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations! Enjoy your new evil superpowers. dbenbenn | talk 22:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations! I know you'll be a great admin! Jayjg ^(talk) 22:55, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

More congratulations! I didn't even know that you were being considered as an administrator. I hope you still can contribute the good stuff, as well as combating evil (see Dangermouse)! Gareth Hughes 23:00, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations, and you are quite welcome. It's always good to see new admins. --Merovingian (t) (c) (w) 23:23, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Your thanks just made my point about your courtesy. Congratulations and good fortune. --Theo (Talk) 00:08, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations, and thanks for the note! I've seen your work around and been impressed—and now you have a mop and bucket to clean up anything other than mind that spills on the wiki. :-) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:24, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Glad to see you made it. The more good admins, the better! Jordi·✆ 10:03, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Very sorry about my removal of the word g with ames

My school has this net nanny thing that removes the word g with ames out of every single document. It can be very annoying and it was the cause for this error. I am sorry but I did not mean to vandalize the page. I do not know how to get rid of this so I'll only edit the page at home from now on.

[above comment posted by 68.147.9.249 (talk · contribs) 16:39, 16 Mar 2005]

Thanks for explaining! I didn't think you were a vandal because your other contributions looked serious. BTW, have you considered registering? Registering makes communication with fellow editors easier and enables you to take credit for your work. There are a lot more benefits, please refer to here for the details. Best regards, — mark ✎ 09:11, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your special effect

I noticed your new quote box on your user page and was filled with envy: I just had to make my own! Thanks for straightening out my page. I hope your admin badge will always been shiny! Gareth Hughes 17:10, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

History of South Africa

Hello, I saw that you recently edited History of South Africa. I'm attempting to completely rewrite the article to deal with the fairly shaky organisation of the current version. I would appreciate all assistance you can offer with edits to my interim version before I post it on the History of South Africa article. The version I am working on can be accessed here. Thank you so much! Páll 09:27, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll look into it! — mark ✎ 09:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Verb serializing

Reference

No problem. I bumped into the article when I decided to link Serial verb construction in the Chinese grammar and Coverb articles. I didn't even know someone had created it already. It's good to see Wikipedia at work. :)

Anyway, I think the article title is better left as Serial verb construction since that is the standard linguistic terminology. Doing a quick Google check, "serial verb construction" returns 662 results while "verb serializing" only returns 13. "verb serialization" does come close at 532 results though. Also, the top results of a "serial verb" search all use it within the context of serial verb construction. A better solution would probably be to make redirects from those terms to serial verb construction. --Umofomia 10:19, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think it's better to leave the article as Serial verb construction rather than moving it to Verb serialization. All the references I've seen on it refer to it as serial verb construction, though I don't know if you have encountered differently. We can instead make verb serialization a redirect to serial verb construction.

BTW, thanks for the link to the linguistic articles in need of work. I might make some contributions to them when I get the chance. --Umofomia 10:57, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Hey Mark, I'm writing to thank you for your vote in my adminship nomination, and for your very kind comments and congrats. Your support is very much appreciated, and I'll do my best to live up to it! Best wishes, SlimVirgin 03:17, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Your African language maps are impressive.

Ground 14:52, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! I'm glad you like them. By the way, thanks for listing your Firefox extensions — I'm using Mouse Gestures now and I like it! Cheers, — mark ✎ 17:36, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hwla

Nice work! That's an impressive page, and probably the first reference of its kind anywhere online. Another Ethnologue error bites the dust as well ;) - Mustafaa 02:06, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Volta-Congo and others

Hi! I've hit your Volta-Congo redirect to the inexistant Volta-Congo languages, as part of the Wiki Syntax cleanup effort. Such redirects (I've also found Atlantic-Congo) are normally meant to be deleted, but I can appreciate how these complement the other language redirects. Is there any chance you could whip up a stub or two for these languages, so the redirects can point to a valid target? Fbriere 07:02, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See! It has turned blue! Thanks for your sensible way of handling this. I'll look into the others as well (but I can't tell how soon). Kind regards, — mark ✎ 15:52, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great! Any chance you could do Southern Bantoid languages (Southern Bantoid) as well? Thanks! Fbriere 19:56, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just did it! — mark ✎ 22:00, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here's one more to keep you busy this weekend: Narrow Bantu→Narrow Bantu languages --Fbriere 03:21, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also: Eastern Sudanic→Eastern Sudanic languages. With Atlantic-Congo→Atlantic-Congo languages, this would seem to be the last of them. (Whew!) --Fbriere 09:29, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again for all your work, Mark! --Fbriere 04:28, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not at all! You know, I was thinking 'gotta write those articles some time' when I created those redirects. Now I did. Again, thanks for your sensible way of handling this. — mark ✎ 09:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

greetings by 84.175.247.128

hello mark. nice to meet you. at the moment, i'm trying to translate the enormus list ISO 639 into german. along these work, i setup intlanguage links (thats why you've find me). normally, i'm de:Schaengel89 in the german wikipedia. keep on writing 84.175.247.128 18:37, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sic semper tyrannis

Thanks Mark, I won't deny it's kind of cool to see a risorgimento breaking out, but, with the article being in my space and all, I guess I won't vote, personally. Raul's argument that ETPH won't do because he insists he must have an FA makes you wonder, doesn't it, how it would have gone if the contributors had voted "support" when ETPH was on FAC, instead of larking about and shouting it wasn't comprehensive...? But, nah, there were enough other people ready to object in any case. Hey, btw, why not use something totally unlikely and made-up-sounding like Nafaanra language for 1 April? --Bischånen|Tåk 15:36, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, that sure sounds like a great idea. Along the same lines, what do you think of featuring some obscure Restoration comedy the very title of which has been characterized as a lewd pun by a certain encyclopedia?

As for not voting, I see your point. Then make others vote (I'm referring to your literary cabal)! Frankly, I don't understand Raul654's position. I hope the community will be able to convince him. — mark ✎ 15:55, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, nominating The Country Wife did occur to me, on the double indemnity April fool's jape principle ("He puts out a rumour of what? You're kidding! Aha, look at the date!"), though I'm not sure it's entirely flattering to get my entire output considered for 1 April <cough> Colley Cibber<cough>. It's a little unbecoming in me to canvas on IRC, at least to canvas any more on IRC than I already have <cough> you an IRC'er, Mark <cough>? --Bischånen|Tåk 16:37, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Accident at WP:FAC

There was an editing accident (probably MySQL error or cut-n-paste error) on Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates that resulting in the page contents being duplicated. A number of edits had occurred by the time it was noticed, but I tried to preserve everything while removing duplicate material. Just in case, mosey on over and check if your vote stuck. If you have any questions, respond on my talk page. Thanks!

-- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 20:53, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)