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Something like an edit war?

Please refrain from removing my request for undoing an edit with no consensus as pointed out in the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Plain_text_Date_templates_redux as you did here and here. Nsaa (talk) 22:04, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Until the last edit, you did not make it clear that you wanted to undo an edit that was made while the page was protected. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:07, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Ok that's fine. No hard feelings :-) Nsaa (talk) 23:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Unsigned comment by 68.154.253.60

The edit, my friend, is made by you without citations. The answer is very simple since the decree from Pope Gregory XIII is a matter of history. You cannot change something that has been apart of recorded history for 400+ years. The terms BCE and CE are relatively new, but certainly cannot apply to the GREGORIAN calendar. If you would like to argue that BCE and CE are being used in the academic world, that is one thing, but this article is about the GREGORIAN calendar developed by decree from Pope Gregory XIII. This is NOT a Christian bias, it is a historical fact. I am not even an overly religious person, and I am especially not Catholic; I am, however, someone who despises revisionist history in any form. You have NO right to change history to your liking--and neither do I. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.154.253.60 (talk • contribs) 23:46, 25 March 2009 UTC

I will contest your edit through dispute resolution at once. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
That is like someone changing an article that says Lincoln was the first President of the USA. Even if a majority say it was true, it still was not. There is nothing to dispute. It is fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.154.253.60 (talk) 00:03, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Why do you not choose a compromise approach instead of trying to be a cyber bully with a chip on their shoulder. Add a section of the article that states that some have chosen recently to use BCE and CE as an alternative to BC and AD. Do not write it as if the decree from Gregory XIII included this. Unless of course you are a anti-religious bigot who just wants to erase history because it was based on someone else's religious beliefs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.154.253.60 (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
in an attempted compromise, I have added a section that explains that in recent years some have attempted to implement this change. I think there needs to be a clear distinction, so people do not falsely believe this alternative was included in the original decree. I hope this is to your satisfaction. 68.154.253.60 (talk) 00:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Please discuss on the Talk:Gregorian calendar. It is not correct to say that Common Era or the abbreviation CE are recent inovations. If you read the Common Era article you will see that Common Era has been in use for a long time, although it may be going through a period of renewed popularity. Also, "CE" can stand for "Christian Era". --Jc3s5h (talk) 00:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

then feel free to add that to the section I created. However, there is a Christian bias because the pope was a Christian. He clearly created it with a Christian bias and you should not attempt to change that historic fact in this article. 68.154.253.60 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC).

Good catch

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Microformats.
Message added J JMesserly. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

-J JMesserly (talk) 01:25, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Nautical mile

Though I agree in Nautical mile that "correspond" does not mean "approximately", what does it (or did it) mean, is more important. Nowadays it is defined as 1852m. That obviously is at opposition with saying it is a unit of arc, which will vary between the equator and the pole. I do think this needs to be made clearer, at least in the lead-in. Knots obviously (or maybe not) were literally knots on a payed-out rope to judge speed (and thus assumes a lateral crossing, or at least a known heading from which it can be worked out by trigonometry) so perhaps this could do with a little rearrangement or tidying? I must admit I have always thought this article slightly puts the cart before the horse.

To reiterate, I agree with your revert; it is not approximate in any sense. Inaccurate, possibly-- but that's a different thing. SimonTrew (talk) 03:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see my error. It's stated that it's along any meridian, which is true of course assuming the Earth is spherical not oblate. That is perhaps the "bad" word there-- while technically correct, in the lead-in perhaps I and thus others would not be thinking that, I was thinking oh latitude and longitude. I know it is technically correct (save the oblation) but perhaps it could be put into more common terms before delving into the details? SimonTrew (talk) 03:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I'll check later and see if better wording comes to mind. --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:19, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 20:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Replied on Kraftlos's page --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Corporate sources

Hi — I've replied to your comment at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#conflict of interest causing content removal?. I haven't included an answer to your statement "But they all have something to loose, unlike the anonymous author of a personal website." I think that anonymous sources are something very different than self-published sources. Also, a person who has published something has put up his or her reputation on the line, so of course they have to lose something. It's just that you don't expect the shareholders of a company to elect people who don't talk complete nonsense. They may have an interest in electing people who are quite experienced in the fabrication and dissemination of lies (see the tobacco industry example).  Cs32en  22:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:Verifiability - Meaning of "self-published"

It appears that your comment was posted in the wrong section, conflict of interest causing content removal? (and please comment on that section if you wish). —Richard Taytor (talk) 01:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Transmitter

The website www.transmitter.be is not a commercial sales page, but gives information about many different transmitters from all brands. It is a true objective site about Radio Broadcast Transmitters and very relevant for the topic "Transmitter". Broadcasttransmitter (talk) 15:10, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not believe the preceeding statement. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
Why not? Do you have any arguments? Have a look at the site and you will notice that nowhere any product is offered for sale. There is an archive of old shortwave transmitter details and besides that it is a guide for broadcasters looking for a transmitter with the possibility to compare in an objective way! We do appreciate that you are looking after the objectivity of Wikipedia, but should consider to allow neutral informational websites, isn't it? Broadcasttransmitter (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

High-precision numbers

Hi, Jc. I've been noticing the good work you've been doing with the page. Just a few points you might consider: I believe a widespread practice is to use parentheses only, without the "e.g.", on the basis that it's pretty obvious that parenthetical items are examples, and thus it's possible to avoid a bevy of ee-gees throughout (not the most attractive pearl). I think that's what is mostly done at MOS main page unless there's a good reason not to, and I see lots of (examples) without the "e.g." at MOSNUM. There's a "Note that ...", which is discouraged by MOS. And I believe there should be no hyphen after "-ly", in "easily readable groups" (Large numbers). Thanks and do keep it up! Tony (talk) 12:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

lane splitting and burden

If you could endorse your outside view with your signature, that would be helpful. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:25, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar . . .

. . . and I think you deserve one yourself;

The Citation Barnstar The Citation Barnstar
For locating a link to an obscure Navy handbook that had gone dead long ago in the Power dividers and directional couplers article SpinningSpark 22:24, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Hatnotes

Just saw your reversion at Electrical engineering. Technically . . . that hatnote was correct. Flock of Seagulls have an album called Listen. One of the songs on it is called Electrics. What they really want to do is redirect "Electrics" to the "Listen" album article. However, they are not able to do that because "Electrics" already redirects to "Electrical engineering". The accepted solution to this problem is to place a hatnote in the redirect target article so readers following the redirect can find the article they are looking for if they haven't arrived at the right place. Thought you would appreciate the information, but I haven't undone your edit, I'm tired of seeing music links on nearly every conceivable science/engineering article so I'm leaving it to someone else to do. I might go and create a disambiguation page for it if I can work up the enthusiasm, which is the other solution and would keep it off the Electrical engineering page. SpinningSpark 01:26, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment - I agree that the user interface can be more sophisticated - I'm now making changes to use an expression builder to solve this problem. The ability to perform complex unit conversions, albeit manual at this time, is quite unique and useful however. Many users will look beyond this issue because the real strength is in providing correct answers to complex unit expressions. The possible combinations of expressions is vast and serious application of the converter enables students and professionals to perform research without being bogged down in the arithmetic. MikeVanVoorhis (talk) 14:52, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

There are a constant stream of people adding unit converters to various Wikipedia articles. Please indicate where the converter is and on what Wikipedia talk page it was discussed. --Jc3s5h (talk) 14:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I propose that this expression evaluator be added to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_quantity articles. I also recommend that it be added to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement article. I am new to the Wikipedia and have not started a talk page with this proposal - should I start a new talk page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MikeVanVoorhis (talk • contribs) 16:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I created my user page at [1] User:MikeVanVoorhis so that a talk page is available for this topic. MikeVanVoorhis (talk) 16:40, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
The only article I would suggest adding it to is Conversion of units. I especially wouldn't add it to International System of Units since conversions within that system are usually simple powers of 10. You should discuss the addition on the talk page of the article where you are thinking of adding it. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:42, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Your request

Done. :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 17:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Questions about examiner.com

Hi, I noticed that you recently participated in the examiner.com on the reliable sources noticeboard here:

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_35#examiner.com_.3D_paid_blogging.2C_no_editorial_oversight.

I missed that discussion, and I could not have participated anyway because of some personal concerns. I would like to ask your advice offline about reopening the discussion. I don't have a way to post an email address at this time, so I'm not sure how to contact you.

Thank you for your time.Jarhed (talk) 06:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I have had no contact with examiner.com and have no opinion about how it should be treated in Wikipedia. My only point was that if it is unreliable, it should not be used as a source. It's usefulness as a source is unrelated to whether the people trying to use it are spammers or well-meaning. --Jc3s5h (talk) 11:37, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I missed the discussion and I would like to reopen it. Do you think that would be a problem and do you have any advice?Jarhed (talk) 23:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
If there is some new information that indicates the Examiner is reliable after all, go ahead. --Jc3s5h (talk) 01:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the style point

Thanks for fixing the style point on the GMT article -- sorry I missed it and put you to the trouble. Terry0051 (talk) 12:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Block evasion by Celebration1981

Many thanks for your efforts in helping to reign in this rouge, as I've seen by your post on the Administrators' noticeboard. Not being familiar with the process of reporting abuse, I'm grateful others are showing the way. Now that I know a bit, hopefully I can due my part.

I've a feeling we might be at this for a while. As best I can tell, I've been dealing with this user for nearly a year under various IP's. Along with Bidgee, Ccrrccrr, the admins and others, maybe we can finally bring an end to this nonsense so we can concentrate on actually improving the articles. That's what really bugs me; time that could be spent making constructive edits is wasted on repeatedly reverting destructive edits and rebutting specious arguments. Cheers, Rico402 (talk) 06:45, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts in improving the article. --Jc3s5h (talk) 12:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Fixed PNP BJT drawing

You just fixed a drawing on the BJT page. In particular, the base current was shown in the wrong direction, and you fixed the arrow. That's nice, but the arrow you added is a lot bigger than the other current arrows. Additionally, now there's an asymmetry between the NPN and PNP versions. The NPN version has an additional arrow showing the position and orientation of the emitter. The old PNP version also had that, but the new version does not. —TedPavlic (talk/contrib/@) 14:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I used a different approach to making the arrow; the base arrow should now match the emitter and collector arrows. As for the crude arrow that pointed to the emitter, I didn't think that was much good. For one thing, the letters "E", "B", and "C" next to the rectangles indicating the regions do a better job of indicating which is which. For another thing, the diagram does not indicate the meaning of the crude arrow; I didn't know what it was for until you mentioned it. I suggest removing it from the NPN structure diagram. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:56, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
That's fine. I just think they should be symmetric. If I recall correctly, the crude arrows were added in after the creation of those diagrams. So it should be easy to revert to an old version of that fig. —TedPavlic (talk/contrib/@) 16:16, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Done. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:44, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Citation?

You're correct that I'm somewhat interested in this subject; but I don't know of any, and could not find any, source, other than this: [2], though I'm not sure if it really supports Name_change#Paganism . --65.92.51.19 (talk) 12:58, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Duncan Steel

I put him as an astronomer. u changed it to calendricist. it was then changed to astrobiologist. his comments on his uni site could put him in any category. I think it's relevant and important for this article that he is noted as a calendar expert (the only sourced person that is). There is no society/institue for calendricists that I am aware of that would award the title. He's published a book on designing calendars and I think that's as good as you'll get to attaining the title 'calendricist'. Likewise there is no astrobiologist title I know of. http://aca.unsw.edu.au/People/Steel.htm "I am a physicist with interests mainly in the space and astronomy fields, including astrobiology" "I have some considerable knowledge of the mathematics, history and astronomy of calendars, and the life and times of Charles Babbage." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.188.100.205 (talk) 11:49, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for following up after me and cleaning up my errors. I think I'm done now. Looks like you have an interest in calendars, yes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by BW95 (talk • contribs) 15:57, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome; thanks for fixing so many things in Conversion of units. Yes, I'm interested in how calendars relate to astronomical cycles. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

United States customary units

Hi, thanks for your comment. Yes, I did take the time to read pages 24-28 of the referenced book, which was available to me via Google Books preview. It dealt with Fahrenheit's process for picking the ends to the scale that he did, but it wasn't in line with the point that the editor had made in the article. Thanks for taking the time to check that my edit was correct and not just reverting me. Appreciate it. --HiltonLange (talk) 17:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Manual of Style

Sorry about the over-hasty revert! I misunderstood your intent. --Boson (talk) 14:37, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Refbegin

I have updated the documentation to show that {{refbegin}} supports hanging indents. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have my doubts many people will ever notice this capability. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
This is true of many good templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Julian day

I have concluded the dispute discussion over on it's talk page if you are curious where the discrepancy came from. If you want to reply then you should reply on that page to keep the article all together. 82.132.136.205 (talk) 20:41, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

in that MOSNUM discussion ...

you wrote: "I have changed the proposal in response to Sssoul. I didn't use his exact wording because ... " thanks for seeing the tree i was barking up - but i'm a she-sssoul. i don't feel like interrupting the discussion over there, but if you felt like discreetly switching that "his" to a "her" (or, if you'd rather, to "his/her" or "their"), i'd be grateful. here's a link, for your convenience - thanks! Sssoul (talk) 15:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Citation Conventions

I'm of the opinion that references should match the standard of the 'community' to which it belongs. For me, a technical subject would use footnoted references, whereas everyone else (humanities and social sciences) uses parenthetical references. I've always taken this to be a consequence of physical sciences citing pieces of information located in many articles, and social sciences making multiple citations to a smaller set of books or articles. Cthomas sysplan (talk) 17:16, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Protection templates on userpages

Please see my response at Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy#RfC:_Should_incorrectly_placed_protection_templates_be_allowed_in_user_.27sandboxes.27. Debresser (talk) 18:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I got mixed up between two maintenance categories. Now that you mention it...
These parameters (|accesdaymonth= and |accessmonthday=) are officially deprecated. I have been instrumental in their removal from templates, and can assure you that in most templates they will effect precisely zero, null. In addition they have been removed from over 1500 pages now, with about 300 left, see Category:Cite web templates using unusual accessdate parameters. Including tens of userpages such as yours. This deprecation has been going on for quite some time now, and has entered its final stages about a week ago, see Template talk:Cite web. In the light of the above, may I ask you to reconsider your revert? Debresser (talk) 19:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I prefer to see my user pages break so I become explicitly aware that something has changed. I have placed {{Nobots}} on all user pages where I consider bot or bot-like edits to be undesireable. Any failure to respect this template will result in a RfC on the conduct of the editor responsible (if that editor has received a warning). This post is your warning. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Xyzzy - Perl HTTP::Message default boundary marker

What was the problem with the addition of Perl's HTTP::Message module to the "Uses" section of the Xyzzy article?

Semifor (talk) 19:05, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


The claim was not supported by the citation. I read the source, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I searched (non-character-sensitive) for "xyzzy" and "boundary" and those words did not appear in the source. --Jc3s5h (talk) 19:20, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
It's in the actual "source code" HTTP::Message source code. Search that page for "xYzZY". My reference pointed to the HTTP::Message documentation which has a "source" link at the top. Should I resubmit with the source link only? Both links? Semifor (talk) 20:27, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
See the policy on original research. The citation should make it possible with littile or no programming skill to see that the statement is true. If one must be a high-powered programmer to see that the statement is true, it would probably be better to find a reliable source that makes the statement in plain language. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Emitter-coupled logic

I didn't realize the diagram I removed was referred to in the page. I deleted it because it is not an ECL circuit. After reading the article over I think the whole section labeled Explanation should be removed along with the diagram. It is all by one author who has been told by several editors to confine his POV and NOR to his own talk pages. The "explanation" is just more of his incessant rambling that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Zen-in (talk) 04:31, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the "explaination", but the diagram is of an ECL circuit. --Jc3s5h (talk) 04:34, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Really? Where are the inputs and the common emitters? The bigger issue is that this article has been continuously edited by just 1 person for the past 4 months. I guess we can say the laws of thermodynamics apply to Wikipedia articles and given enough time they all become nonsense.Zen-in (talk) 04:50, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
T1, T2, and T3 form the differential amplifier. T4 is one of the emitter followers. T5 is the other emitter follower. T5' is the emitter follower of a preceeding logic circuit. R1, D1, D2, and R2 generate the reference voltage that is half way between the up level and the down level. --Jc3s5h (talk) 04:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
The diagram has some elements of an ECL circuit but it doesn't have a differential output and has parts from the previous stage. It really is a mish-mash of confusing stuff. If you think this all belongs in an encyclopedia so be it. I think it all should be removed and the article restored to what it was before C-F started mucking it up. What do you think? Zen-in (talk) 05:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't object to restoring the article to the way it was before C-F's edits.
ECL circuits don't usually have differential outputs. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:36, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Help desk

Please see my request for more info, Wikipedia:Help_desk#Regular_expression_search_of_Wikipedia_articles, cheers,  Chzz  ►  04:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

System time / dates

You mention in your edits to System time that the date form "DD Mon YYYY" is to be prefered over "YYYY-MM-DD". That's fine, except that the actual dates supported by the operating systems and languages almost never provide actual historically accurate dates prior to 1582 (or 1752, whichever), but almost always use a proleptic calendar algorithm. So it is probably inaccurate to say that, for example, MS Windows and COBOL support dates from 1 Jan 1601 because they probably support only proleptic Gregorian dates back to 1601-01-01 (which is not 1 Jan 1601). The form "1 Jan 1601" implies a historical date, whereas the form "YYYY-MM-DD" is arbitrary (accoring to ISO 8601 rules) and can represent a proleptic date. — Loadmaster (talk) 22:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Which date to regard as the switchover from Julian to Gregorian depends on the article. Since computer operating systems as a group are not tied to any particular country, the most reasonable date to regard as the first Gregorian date is 15 October 1582, which is the date Gregory XIII ordered it to go into effect. There are a variety of more recent dates when the calendar went into effect in various countries; it didn't go into effect in Greece until 1923. If you wish, you could put a note somewhere in the article that all dates are (proleptic) Gregorian.
There is an advantage to not including such a note, however. By not stating whether a date is Gregorian or Julian is intended unless the documentation has been read to be sure which it is, the ambiguity lets the reader know that the editors who wrote the article have not checked, and in the case of early dates, the reader should investigate which calendar was used. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I see your point, but I'm arguing that the "YYYY-MM-DD" form is technically the more correct form to use in that particular article because it does not imply actual historical dates. Should this discussion be moved to the talk page? — Loadmaster (talk) 02:26, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
The YYYY-MM-DD date is inappropriate for the article because there is no telling what it implies. Some people see that format, and think ISO 8601 applies to it, even though Wikipedia has never adopted that standard. If the standard did apply, conformance would require reaching an agreement with the readers that we could use it for any date outside the range 1583 through 9999, and no such agreement has been formed.
I don't really understand when you say "it does not imply actual historical dates." Can you amplify? --Jc3s5h (talk) 02:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Since ISO 8601 format does not imply a particular (agreed upon) interrepretation of Gregorian calendar dates, it does not automatically imply historically accurate dates. E.g., saying "1601-01-01" by itself does not imply the actual historical date of 1 Jan 1601 according to the historical Gregorian calendar(s). "Reaching an agreement with the readers" is as simple as providing a footnote in the article stating that the dates do not align with historical dates but are (typically) based on the proleptic Gregorian calendar. Rewriting the dates in "DD Mon YYYY" form does not buy us any more clarity. — Loadmaster (talk) 17:53, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Writing "1601-01-01" by itself does not imply adoption of ISO 8601, and therefore there is no implication that the date is a Gregorian date. If it were written in a context where ISO 8601 applied, then it would indicate January 1, AD 1601, in a year numbering system where the new year begins January 1, local time (but the locality would have to be discerned from the surrounding text).
I don't understand what "the actual historical date of 1 Jan 1601 according to the historical Gregorian calendar(s)" means. There is only one Gregorian calendar, in the sense of the sequence of month names, date numbers, leap years, date of Easter, etc. Various countries considered the year to begin at various times while the Gregorian calendar was in force. Long after 1601 some Asian countries adopted the Gregorian calendar but numbered years from some culturally important event, such as the founding of the country. --Jc3s5h (talk) 19:14, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The plural "Calendar(s)" was an error on my part. But I still think it's better to use the "YYYY-MM-DD" format than "DD Mon YYYY" in the article. — Loadmaster (talk) 21:50, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) OK, correcting your statement to the singular, it becomes E.g., saying "1601-01-01" by itself does not imply the actual historical date of 1 Jan 1601 according to the historical Gregorian calendar. "January 1, 1601" in an article that is not associated with any particular country, could mean either the Gregorian calendar or the Julian calendar. Likewise, "1601-01-01", in the absence of any statement about ISO 8601, could mean either Gregorian or Julian calendar. So why is it better to use the later in the article? --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:42, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Since you're saying that both formats are therefore equal with regards to historic/non-historic dates, then why is it better to use "DD Mon YYYY"? The form "YYYY-MM-DD" at least has the advantage of being an international standard format. — Loadmaster (talk) 01:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
No decent English-language publication uses the "YYYY-MM-DD" format, and neither should Wikipedia. Furthermore, the format, by itself, is not an international standard. ISO 8601 is an international standard, but Wikipedia has not adopted that standard. If you think Wikipedia should adopt ISO 8601, propose a policy to that effect at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
I would oppose such a policy for many reasons, not the least of which is that ISO charges exorbitant fees for copies of its standards, and Wikipedia, as a source of freely available information, should not support such an organization.
Also, while technically ISO 8601 only applies when the publication using the YYYY-MM-DD format says it applies, there are many people, such as yourself, who cannot get it out of their heads that ISO does not own the YYYY-MM-DD format and think ISO 8601 always applies. Since it is impossible to explain this horrible mess to our readers, the format should be banned.
It's like World War II era Jeeps. The Army found that no matter how many warnings were made about the handling characteristics, people who bought surplus Jeeps kept rolling them over. So finally the Army punched big holes in the chasis of scrapped Jeeps to make sure they could never be driven again. --Jc3s5h (talk) 02:09, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

→ I've taken the liberty of copying this discussion to the System time talk page. — Loadmaster (talk) 16:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Watt and its ability to accelerate one kilogram

I see you have been active on the Watt article. Isn’t one watt required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second squared?

My take is as follows:

  1. One newton of force must be exerted upon one kilogram of mass for one second to change its velocity by one meter per second (1 m/s2)
  2. One newton of force exerted upon one kilogram for one second moves it one meter.
  3. For every meter of distance through which one newton of force is exerted, one joule of energy is expended.
  4. So one could also rephrase #1 #2, and #3 to say that for every second that has elapsed, one newton of force acting upon one kilogram results in A) one joule of energy expended and B) accelerates one kilogram of mass to a velocity that is 1 m/s faster.
  5. This means that one joule of energy per second accelerates one kilogram at 1 m/s2
  6. One watt accelerates one kilogram at 1 m/s2
  7. 9.80665 watts accelerates one kilogram at 9.80665 m/s2 (standard gravity)
  8. 9.80665 watts accelerates one kilogram at 9.80665 m/s2 in a zero-gee environment with respect to an observer in the same zero-gee environment, or withstands the acceleration of one standard gravity acting upon one kilogram that is unsupported and would otherwise fall with respect to the surface of the earth.

Here is what I am wrestling with: To me, this math should equate to the following

Check out what our Watt article says: 1W = 1Js-1 = 1kgm2s-3

I don’t understand why I can’t figure this out (which, I supposed is always the situation when someone can’t figure something out).

My bottom-line questions are as follows: 1) how many watts are required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second per second, and 2) how many watts are required to accelerate one kilogram at 9.80665 m/s2? Greg L (talk) 18:06, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

(Consider this:)
1. When a force of 1 newton is applied to a mass of 1 kilogram for a duration of 1 second it will accelerate at a rate of 1 meter/s/s (or 1 m/s^2) during that period of time. If initially at rest, its velocity will change from a speed of 0 meters / second to an instantaneous speed of 1.0 m/s. Calculus shows that the velocity is the integral of the acceleration * time step over the time period, velocity = integral(acceleration * delta-time) = acceleration * time.
2. The position of the mass at any point in time during the 1 second acceleration period is the integral of the velocity curve. After 1 second of constant acceleration at 1 m/s^2, the mass has moved 0.5 meters. s = 1/2 * acceleration * time^2
3. The cumulative energy expended through this period is 0.50 newton * meter = 0.50 Joules = integral(force * distance). The mass has kinetic energy at the end of the period = 1/2 * mass * velocity^2 = 0.5 Joules. :4. The rate at which this energy is applied is not constant during the period however. It increases during the period as the mass increases in velocity.
5. ... IF the acceleration is constant during the time period.
6. 1 watt = 1 J/s. The instantaneous power required to accelerate a 1.0 kg mass at a constant rate of 1.0 meter / second / second after 1.0 second of duration is 1.0 watt. The cumulative energy applied during this time period is 0.50 Joules. Power is the rate of energy application.
7. If the acceleration was 1.0 g = 9.8 m/s^2, the velocity after 1.0 second would be 9.8 m/s and it would have travelled a distnace of 4.9 meters. It's kinetic energy would be 48 J and it would have an instantaneous power of 96 W.
The calculus is needed to derive the relationship between velocity, position, energy and power. Power is the rate of change of energy and position is the integral of velocity which is the integral of acceleration during the time period. Your analysis did not consider these rates.
1 W = J / s, 1 J = N * m, 1 N = Kg * m/s^2 = Kg * m^2/s^3
The power consumed is not constant during the duration so using it to understand constant acceleration is confusing. The kinetic energy contained by the mass at its intantaneous velocity (its inertia = mass * velocity) is the cumulative energy acquired as it accelerated from rest. Equating this to a power requires that the specific time duration be known because the energy and rate of energy acquired (power) is changing during the time period.
I hope this helps! MikeVanVoorhis (talk) 23:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
I've confirmed the formula found in the Power (physics) article for instantaneous power:
.
In the case of a hovering rocket close to the Earth, with a vertical exhaust, while the velocity with respect to the surface of the earth of the rocket is 0, and that power is 0, the power needed to expel the exhaust is (rounding the acceleration due to gravity to 10 ms-2):
P = 10 mve W
where m is the mass of the rocket and ve is the exhaust velocity of the rocket. Thus, there is no single answer; the answer may be changed by redesigning the rocket to accelerate a large (measured in kg/s) exhaust stream at a low speed, or a small exhaust stream at a high speed. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


(Revised response) You state "One newton of force exerted upon one kilogram for one second moves it one meter." Actually, this is not so. For this to happen, the mass would have to accelerate instantly from 0 m/s to 1 m/s at t = 0. In reality, the mass accelerates gradually; at t = 0.5, the speed is 0.5 m/s. During the first second the mass only moves 0.5 m.
v = t
x = integral of t or v (since they are equal) with respect to t
x = 0.5 t2 (if we begin the integration at t = 0 and the initial position is x = 0)
At t = 1, x = 0.5 m by substitution.
For a more intuitive example, consider a 1 kilogram object held at rest with respect to the moon, a substantial distance above the moon. It is released. Initially, the speed is slow, it will take substantially more than 1 second to move the first meter. Let's suppose when it is near the surface it is moving at 1,000,000 m/s. So it will move the last meter in just about 1 microsecond. Yet, since a force of 1.6 newtons is being exerted, the gain in kinetic energy, or the work done by the moon's gravitational field, must be 1.6 joules over the course of the last meter. So the average power over the last meter is
P = 1.6 J / (1 ×10−6 s) = 1.6 megawatts
Jc3s5h (talk) 18:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I recognized this phenomenon of how the kilogram would be moving faster and was trying to find a way to null that in my above logic train. Still, can there be any doubt that a constant power, in watts, is required to counter one standard gravity? That is, to accelerate one kilogram upwards against timespace, which is accelerating downwards? Clearly, the kilogram would be stationary and the required power would be constant. Greg L (talk) 19:04, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
P.S. My intuition (though my algebra abilities don’t support the ambitions of my intuition), is that 9.80665 watts of power are required in order to expend 9.80665 joules of energy per second in order to generate an upwards force of 9.80665 newtons in order to counter the 9.80665 newtons of weight exerted by one kilogram being acted upon by one standard gravity. Whether it is 9.80665 watts or 9.806652 watts, it has got to be the case that a constant power of some sort is required to suspend a kilogram stationary with respect to the surface of the earth against gravity. I would really appreciate it if you can show me the math and confirm the watts. Greg L (talk) 19:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


That question usually brings beginning physics classes to a screeching halt for at least half an hour. Consider this: my fuel oil tank is being pulled toward the center of the earth with a force of about 9000 newtons. My basement floor is pushing up with a force (not acceleration, force) of 9000 newtons. There is no motion, so there is no work. I can confirm this by feeling around the fuel tank and notice that no warmth is being produced; if energy were being expended, there would be warmth.
Now suppose 9 of my friends and I were to lift the fuel tank. Our normal resting power to keep us alive of around 60 W each (600 W total) would increase, perhaps to 1600 W total. There would be motion associated with that work, but it would not be readily visible; it would be the motion of our hearts beating faster, all the little DNA, RNA, and proteins moving around in our cells to repair the damaged muscles, etc.
So a human lifting an object is not easily comparable to an object resting on another rigid object that holds it up. --Jc3s5h (talk) 19:20, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I also understand the difference between effort and mechanical work (I have 15 patents, most of them in energy-related fields). Clearly, a table holding up a kilogram mass does no mechanical work nor does it expend any energy. However, a rocket with a mass of one kilogram will accelerate at one meter per second squared in space with a thrust of one newton. This is a fact. That same rocket on the surface of the earth, pointing upwards, with that same thrust of one newton would not accelerate upwards, yet it would—while hovering there—still be expending chemical energy while technically accomplishing no mechanical work inasmuch as lifting a mass higher above the ground. The Saturn V rocket weighed 7 million pounds and generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust. Most of that thrust was spent just neutralizing the effect of gravity, which is why it accelerated so slowly (accomplished so little mechanical “work”). So… Don’t give up on me yet…

We both know energy must be expended to suddenly hover one kilogram stationary to the earth’s surface against gravity once we yank the table out from under it; just as the rocket must precisely match its weight with thrust in order for it to just hold steady with respect to the ground after one yanks the launch pad from under it. I can’t deal with the math, but I strongly suspect that since 9.80665 newtons of downwards force is generated by a kilogram being acted upon by one standard gravity, that a power of 9.80665 watts (assuming a 100%-efficient electromechanical machine) is required to hold it stationary. We both know that if we expend no electrical power, the kilogram is going to fall. Let’s not confuse “mechanical work” and “effort” issues here, we should be able to apply—literally—“rocket science” here. Greg L (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) OK, let's consider the Saturn V sitting on the launch pad before engine start. The launch pad exerts 30 MN upward, and the gravitational attraction between the Saturn V and the earth exerts 30 MN downward, so the forces cancel. Then the rocket ignites, rises 1000 m straight up, and due to some anomaly, stops rising and hovers. The gravitational attraction is unchanged (to 2 significant figures) but it is the rocket engines that are exerting 30 MN upward. Let's neglect the effect of the exhaust gases acting on the launch pad. So the 30 MN gravitational attraction between the Earth and the Saturn V is being canceled at the Saturn V, but not at the Earth. So the Earth is experiencing a 30 MN force toward the Saturn V, and the entire Earth-Saturn V system is experiencing an acceleration:

Since f = ma

a = f/m

a = (30×106 kg·m·s-2) / (6×1024 kg)

a = 5 ×10−18 m·s-2

This has a practical application. While the force of any conceivable rocket is negligible compared to the Earth, it is not negligible compared to an asteroid. Thus a rocket hovering above an asteroid can be just as effective at altering the asteroid's orbit so it does not collide with the earth as a rocket that had landed on the asteroid's surface. My intuition had been that the landed rocket would be more effective, but now that I've done the math, I see this is not so.

The only reason to land the rocket on the asteroid would be if there was not enough time to wait for the low thrust to do the job, and it were necessary to land a rocket that exerted more thrust than the mass of the rocket.

Jc3s5h (talk) 20:48, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

So your conclusion is that it essentially takes no power (assuming a 100%-efficient electromechanical machine) to elevate a kilogram at the level of a table surface after pulling the table away and leaving it unsupported? That strikes me as a sort of perpetual motion machine since if one turned the thing on its side, the kilogram would shoot out. Given that 9.8 newtons of force must be (is) required to make a kilogram hover in place, and given that this force could be from a chemical rocket, I would say there ought to be a mathematical way to calculate the (100% efficient) electrical power required instead of the chemical power required. My guess is it is 9.8 watts, not attowats. I am disgusted with my inability to massage algebraic formulas to support this conjecture. This dilemma clearly isn’t getting resolved so far trying to use mental models since your approach and mine are not aligning. Looking at the earth’s acceleration induced by hovering a 7 million pound rocket nearby isn’t a technique I would think would be speaking to the issue of the power required to keep it up in the air. So I contacted Arthur Rubin. He’s massively into math (he has a patent on a math algorithm) to see if the magnitude of the power can be be mathematically resolved so the error bars are better than the “attowatt to 100-watt range”. Thanks for taking the time here. Greg L (talk) 21:06, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) You asked "So your conclusion is that it essentially takes no power (assuming a 100%-efficient electromechanical machine) to elevate a kilogram at the level of a table surface after pulling the table away and leaving it unsupported?"

Yes. A very simple magnetic device is two magnets with the north poles facing each other. Suppose one magnet is above the other, and some kind of track is used to keep them aligned. One magnet will float above the other with no energy being expended. Indeed, the table itself retains its shape through a combination of electromagnetic fields and the weak force (which keeps electrons from being attracted into the nucleus of an atom), so the table itself qualifies as your 100% efficient electromagnetic machine. Another example is the example of high temperature superconductive beads suspended above a magnet.
If we had a chemical rocket holding up the 1 kg mass in a hover, even an ideal rocket would consume energy to move the Earth. Let me get back to you on that calculation. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
There is no arrangement of permanent magnets that accomplishes what you are talking about. You are correct that the Meissner effect can indeed levitate masses without using power. I can’t speak to precisely why it is inapplicable (because the Meissner effect is a bit too curious of a phenomenon for me to fully understand), but I think it amounts to essentially a table holding up the kilogram where, because of the superconductor rejecting the magnet’s field lines, the magnet is ultimately supported by the table (which is doing no work and exerting no effort, just like any other scaffolding) except that the “supporting” job the table is doing has a curious air gap due to the Meissner effect.

What I am specifically talking about is the Watt balance, which measures the kilogram by comparing the electrical power necessary to oppose gravity acting upon the kilogram. Here is an NIST press release. It reads, in part, as follows:


Note that they are referring to the effect gravity has on the kilogram as a “mechanical power”. I wasn’t expecting that you were going to reject the entire notion of constructing a solenoid coil and measuring the power required to counter 9.8 newtons of force—that much is the very foundation of the watt balance—but only to help ensure the required power is properly quantified. I had already e-mailed the head researcher on the watt balance and he e-mailed back that the real-life situation is much more complex. Just to start things off, they use a 500-gram countering tare weight and only have to generate half as much force (4.9 newtons). And then it goes much much more complex.

I forwarded that big-ass response to A. di M. (he and I corresponded off-Wikipedia via e-mail and he can’t figure this out either). And I also e-mailed the Ph.D. researcher working on the watt balance about the watts theoretically required to counter a whole 9.8 newtons. I just find it astonishing that with this much brain power at Wikipedia, we can’t solve it all by ourselves over the weekend. Very frustrating.

I think what is going on here is the watt balance can be thought of as using impulse to prevent the kilogram from developing momentum. I think that is where the algebraic magic lies. I wanted to quantify the electrical power without bothering the NIST researcher. It will be interesting to see what amount of power is required to move the whole earth. Talk about a round-about method… While you are working on solving the problem using a version of Archimedis’ lever and are pushing the earth around, I’m also seeing if Arthur Rubin can solve this by pushing some algebraic notation around on paper. Greg L (talk) 23:44, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Saturn V example

These will be rough numbers, just to get some general ideas.

The mass of the Saturn V was 3,000,000 kg and the thrust was 34,000,000 N. If it had been throttled back to 30,000,000 N it would have stood still.

The first stage rocket motors could pump 15,000 gallons per minute of RP-1, a type of kerosene. This is equivalent in terms of chemical energy to 37,000,000,000 (or 37 GW). Scaling this by the factor 30/34 gives 33 GW just to get the Saturn V to hover. This is 11,000 W/kg. This is much greater than Greg's suspicion of 9.8 W/kg.

Jc3s5h (talk) 04:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, Jc3s5h. I see now, by your writing This is much greater than Greg's suspicion, that this has turned into some sort of face-saving contest where you perceive there is some sort of world-wide audience watching this discussion with bated breath and it is this audience you are now addressing. So rather than simply address me with something like “Greg, here is a calculation I just did…” (which would have been much more polite and mature) you behave like you’re in a 6th-grade classroom. I should have contacted you via e-mail.

It is obvious on the face of it that the watt balance, which is an effort by the world’s physics community to define the kilogram via a device that counters the mechanical power of gravity acting upon a kilogram mass by using a carefully-measured electrical power, that there is a relationship between the watts required to electromagnetically oppose a force in newtons. I was hoping to figure out exactly what that mathematical relationship was so I could quantify it—not argue that the relationship even exists (such as your citing examples of tables and scaffolding and how they don’t expend power to support a kilogram mass). Uhm… yeah, it’s infinitely clear to anyone who understands physics that a granite floor doesn’t expend energy keeping a kilogram mass in one spot as timespace tries to accelerate it downwards whereas the equivalent of superconducting solenoid will have to expend some power to prevent the mass from gaining momentum. It would have been nice that you had not painted yourself into a corner where you found yourself compelled to poo-poo the very premiss of the watt balance.

So, forget it. The NIST researcher is busy right now trying to make an accurate machine that, according to the NIST, exploits the “relationship between mechanical and electrical power” and will get back to me when he has time. I thought it would be an interesting exercise in the mean time to figure out on our own just what that relationship is. The only part of I had down right is that this has been “interesting.” Goodbye. Greg L (talk) 17:25, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Creating electric or magnetic fields initially requires energy, whether it be setting up a current in an inductor, or magnetizing a bar of steel. In the ideal case, I am not sure that any energy expenditure is needed to maintain the field. I think it is quite possible that in every case where an electromagnet is making an object hover and consuming continuous power, the only reason for the power consumption is because the equipment is non-ideal (for example, due to resistance of the wire making up the coil. I mean, really, how does this really differ from a magnet that is suspended from the top, with a nail on the bottom? The only difference is that the strength of the field has not been carefully adjusted to exactly balance the force of gravity.
The only reason for pointing out the great difference between the 9.8 W/kg figure and the Saturn V figure was to show it would be futile to try to explain the difference by refining the estimates for the Saturn V; some of those figures might be off by a factor of 2, but the difference in result would still be there no matter how much effort was put into refining the results. The only potentially fruitful way to examine the Saturn V figures would be to look for gross blunders (which are always a possibility). --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:53, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Gregorian calendar

You reverted an edit I made here; I’ve opened a discussion here.
I am not confused as to what the Counter-Reformation was: I am confused as to why you think the CR would make a Catholic innovation more palatable to Protestants. Moonraker12 (talk) 12:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

answer

Tx.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Rollback

Please use rollback only for reverting vandalism, rather than good faith edits such as [3], [4] and [5]. This editor was probably simply unaware that Americans spell "metre" as "meter", so a revert should have a proper edit summary explaining why it was done rather than the standard rollback message. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:17, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

These articles have had so many such changes recently that I'm not inclined to think it is good faith. --Jc3s5h (talk) 19:33, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Have they? I can't see any such changes to these articles in their recent histories. Can you point to where this happened? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:52, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Let's see. There was a good faith spelling change to Mile by Enquire at 18:59, 24 October 2009. Whether by coincidence, or through imitation, the spelling change was repeated by 91.85.131.108 at 13:44, 28 October 2009 (address assigned to Eclipse Dynamic ADSL Pool). A clear warning was given by me at 14:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC). Then we see a series of similar changes by another Eclipse Dynamic ADSL Pool address, 91.84.81.9, beginning at 16:33. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's nowhere near enough evidence to override the policy of assuming good faith. The warning was by no means clear as it was a raw template, which didn't explain that this word is spelt differently in different varieties of English, which is probably something that the majority of English speakers don't know. This is a clear abuse of rollback. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:19, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps I have misinterpreted a failure to look in one's rear-view mirror as an intentional refusal to communicate. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review for Euclid D. Farnham

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Euclid D. Farnham. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Mickmaguire (talk) 17:51, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

.

Oh yeah!! Daniel Christensen (talk) 20:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Television antenna

Someone complained about the antenna article being too long; and truly it should be broken up further as many of it's sections contain enough data to form a page. 192.156.234.170 (talk) 22:38, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

How could you take out one quarter? The elements are one half or one quarter. Daniel Christensen (talk) 22:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Television antenna. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
All right. Hey, are TV antennas ever the whole wavelength? If so, would they be even better/more efficient? And according to you, the source must be LYING becuase it says quite straightforward that the quarter/half issue is one thing that makes aerials better. Daniel Christensen (talk) 23:06, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't interpret the source to say that TVs use quarter-wave elements. Can you post a link here and a short quote that I can search for, so I can spot which part of the source you are talking about? As for full wave, one way to do that is to have the element be as shown below:

The perimeter of the image is one wave length. The feed line (roughly drawn) is at the bottom. Full wave loops with the feed at the top or bottom are horizontally polarized; those at either side are vertically polarized.
I have to drop this discussion now to attend a ham radio club meeting (really, no joke). --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Is the feed line shown supposed to be twin-lead? How could you do it with coax? A balun? Daniel Christensen (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Also how would that be oriented? Vertical as it appears in the illustration or horizontal? Daniel Christensen (talk) 23:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

For television, it would be vertical, as shown. The feed line could be twin lead or coax with a balun. It would cause a little asymmetry and perhaps some signal pickup with the coax, but you could usually get away with hooking the shield of the coax to one side and the center conductor to the other. I don't remember the nominal impedance, but it is somewhere around 75 Ω or so. --Jc3s5h (talk) 04:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Would it be better than a half-wave antenna? And aren't all (mostly) TV antennas 300 ohms by nature and if they have a coax connection it just means they have a balun built in? My 1991 Wingard has a 75 ohm coax lead which is interesting for it's age. They still make it; they call it "HD" now; proving that that means nothing. Daniel Christensen (talk) 16:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
If you want a more directive antenna, the full-wave loop would be better than the half-wave dipole (although making a Yagi or a log-periodic might be a more cost-effective use of materials to achieve the same thing. Due to all the elements so close to each other, it's hard to guess what the impedance of a multi-element TV antenna would be. I have not seen one for quite a while, so I don't know if the current ones have a built-in 75 Ω to 300 Ω balun or not.
What if I made an antenna out of a bunch of rabbit ear antennas cut and/or adjusted to the right lengths; wouldn't that be better? Aren't they more anodized becuase they get adequate reception with just ONE dipole versus a whole directional apparatus? What if I formed an aerial just like a regular one just formed out of a bunch of rabbit ears. Done right wouldn't it kick ass? 192.156.234.170 (talk) 23:26, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
If you look at the web page http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/antennas/log_p/log_periodic.php about log-periodic antennas, you will see they are essentially a bunch of rabbit ears with the shortest set at one end and the longest set at the other end. How the dipoles are arranged and connected to the receiver is important. --Jc3s5h (talk) 00:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop

As you participated in the recent Audit Subcommittee election, or in one of two requests for comment that relate to the use of SecurePoll for elections on this project, you are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (talk) 08:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

fn

My apologies. I found a fast way to make the fn text appear. Sorry for the confusion, and thanks for pointing it out.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi

Can you give your input at [6], given that you have commented on the subject many times? Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 14:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

template cite web title field

Hey Jc3s5h, this question is off of the template cite discussion. I like the way you relate the work and title fields, but the doc seems to imply that title is just the way the citation will appear to the reader, and I take this to mean that the title could differ in any way desired from the "smallest informational unit" of the source. So we could say any of

  • title=The Two Towers | work=The Lord of the Rings
  • title=Frodo | work=The Lord of the Rings
  • title=Ent moot | work=The Lord of the Rings

— CpiralCpiral 04:01, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll use a horizontal line to separate edits, because indenting would make writing these examples a pain. Let's take a specific example and see what the template does with it. This is a report that was issued in 1893, and is not on the web independently, but is reproduced as an appendix of a larger report.

* {{cite web | author = T. C. Mendenhall |title = Fundamental Standards of Length and Mass |url = http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP447/app3.pdf |date = 1893 |work = Weights and Measures Standards of the United States: A brief history }}

is rendered as

  • T. C. Mendenhall (1893 / 1976). "Fundamental Standards of Length and Mass" (PDF). Weights and Measures Standards of the United States: A brief history. National Institute of Standards and Technology. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

As far as it goes, this is exactly as I would expect it to appear. Unfortunately this template does not have some of the parameters that cite book or cite journal have, which allow one to provide a separate entry for the author(s) or editor(s) of the containing work.

I think the real solution to this problem is to rewrite the documentation to tell people to use cite book, cite journal, etc. whenever a work that fits well with those templates is placed on the web, and reserve cite web for types of information that are unique to the web. However, all the parameters would still have to be documented to support existing uses of the template.

It turns out that The Lord of the Rings was not a good example to choose, because there are movies, and also books published in several different formats. Let us imagine that in the future Donald Knuth's book becomes available on the web. The template might look like this:

* {{cite web | author = Donald Knuth |authorlink = Donald Knuth |title = Fundamental Algorthms |url = http://www.example.invalid |date = 2032 |work = The Art of Computer Programming |publisher = To be determined }}

which renders as

The APA Style manual is the style the templates were originally based on. The 6th edition says it should be written link this (except I don't know how to do hanging indents):

Knuth, D. (2032). The Art of Computer Programming: Vol. 1. Fundamental Algorithms (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. (Original work published 1973)

So it seems to me the cite web really falls far short of what is needed to cite books, movies, etc. that have been placed online. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:52, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

--Jc3s5h (talk) 04:52, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Dear Jc3s5h, I like your style, the way you chose your name, the we hope for an online Knuth, and the way you get very active responding and how you work very hard. I read your post, every bit. Your observations about "all is going to cite web, but should diverted back to cite journal and cite book, etc" is impressive and remarkable and memorable. But I feel an upwelling of empathy for you, because you seem to be so eager to express your good ideas, even at the expense of alienating your listeners.
Listen, I have had the humbling experiences here on Wikipedia (that I sought, and nothing can dampen my spirits). The result of a consistent barrage of "I don't understand your..." for me was a game changer in my "page save" button pushing. Before doing so now I will edit my output mercilessly. In fact, I regularly cut out half of what I write. First I type like mad, and then, (because of my earlier mentioned humbling experiences), I go back and read what I was supposed to be responding to, and make closer alignment. This is called "humbling myself" or "reality check". Then I make lucid the writing. I like to say I do it for "Lucy". :-)
In my opinion you are not in alignment with the reality of my question here. If you look carefully at my question, and then review your answer, you might see what I see. I could be wrong, but I know I don't want to talk about much more than my direct question, which you seem to have ignored. And I see the same pattern in our cite web talk discussion (linked above in my first question statement) where (1) You say that "Employment is irrelevant.", yet I used fifteen derivatives the word "employ" in my lengthy statement and you refer to none of the logic or context, as if you did not read them, and (2), the topic is about how the fields work and title publisher fields go together, not work and title fields as your contribution focuses on, and (3) you can't figure out what my phrase "(two) reversions explanation" means? All of these three show you don't try as hard to read and honor and respect the intelligence of me as you do your own (very good) writing. — CpiralCpiral 07:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
The two basic issues I have with what you have written are
  • trying to apply meanings of words that are not applicable in the context of a citation; words really only have meaning in context
  • focusing on the meanings of the words chosen for the parameter names, rather than on what information the citation should contain; if "work" isn't a good name for something that ought to be in the citation, we should change the name (but keep "work" as a deprecated parameter).
No outside citation style tries to capture the employment relationship between the publisher and the author. It would be so novel to try do so that anyone with experience with citations wouldn't understand what we are talking about. So making the publisher field dependent on the employment relationship is really a non-starter. I suppose we could put something in parenthesis after the name of the publisher if it is a vanity press, something like "New York: Vantage Press (vanity publisher)."
In the context of citations, "work" is just a general term for any creation that has been recorded on a tangible medium (paper, film, tape, hard disk, etc.)
I really am not able to understand passages where out-of-context meanings are forced onto words. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Certainly you could be right about work as a citation field not relating to publisher as a citation field by way of the explanatory word "employment". I believe it does. We will see how this plays out on the discussion page (linked in first sentence). Laters. — CpiralCpiral 16:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

excellent

may I say you are a superb contributor. You handle the citation thing very well; just noticed you got a barnstar for that. It's great to see people adding reasons onto talk pages for reversing edits, and inviting discussion, rather than just deleting it and not saying why. Eugene-elgato (talk) 00:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Jc3s5h (talk) 01:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank heaven

This revert about made my day. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 01:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Airplaneman's talk page.
Message added 02:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the correction. Therefore I'll do no more damage. Thank you! 

 Airplaneman talk 02:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Extended Date Time Format

This should interest you; and solve some problems here. I'm sure you could make a useful contribution, if you have time: http://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/listserv.html Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 00:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

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Dates

There is no way to ensure that the dates are Gregorian. However ISO 8601 does not apply to non-Gregorian dates. Rich Farmbrough, 23:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

RD on Electromagnetic Frequency Pollution

Hello Jc3s5h, I have noticed that you have elected to have my page deleted and I urge you to reconsider your request. I created this page on Electromagnetic Frequency Pollution for academic purposes, it is part of a final research project that I'm currently working on. I have yet to contribute any solid evidence due to lack of time, however I do have a substantial amount of research. By Tuesday my page will be complete, thorough, and supported by scholarly references. Thank you for your time and feel free to contribute any way you will like.



Dfenelus1

PS here are a few of the references I will be using:

Electromagnetic fields and public health. In World Health Organization Fact Sheet. Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs296/en/index.html.

Kovach, Sue. The Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation. In Life Extension Magazine Retrieved December 8, 2009, from http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2007/aug2007_report_cellphone_radiation_01.htm.

Classic, Kelly. Radiofrequency (RF) Radiation. In Health Physics Society. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from http://www.hps.org/hpspublications/articles/rfradiation.html.

Tel Oren, Adiel, PhD. Sources of Electrical Pollution. In Ecological Solutions for Metropolitan Living. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.ecopolitan.com/health-services/emfprotection/146-sources-electrical-pollution.

Solheim, Valerie Ph.D. Bees Healing Bees. “Bees and the Electromagnetic Field” In The Honey Bees Organization. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.media.healingbees.org/Footnoted%20BHB%20Research%20Paper.pdf.

Definition of: ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION. In PC Magazine Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=electromagnetic+radiation&i=42458,00.asp. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dfenelus1 (talk • contribs) 22:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I only nominated the page for deletion; it is for others to decide if it will be or not. If the page is deleted, you can always create a better version under an appropriate name. --Jc3s5h (talk) 02:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

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Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MWOAPBot.
Message added 00:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

replied to your question. MWOAP (talk) 00:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

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Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MWOAPBot.
Message added 18:20, 30 December 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

MWOAP (talk) 18:20, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Common Era

Thank you for your advice and I apologise for not adding a comment, since it clearly needs explanation. I checked the citation at the end of the sentence; it is rather vague and certainly does not support the implication that CE is the most common calendar designation worldwide - where does that come from? IMHO the easiest solution may be to reword the sentence, but I wanted to be sure folk had an opportunity to find a citation. I see from the hidden comments, that I'm not the only one to query the statement! Cheers. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:27, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The Astronomical Almanac Online" states that the Gregorian calendar is used in most countries, and goes on to give the leap year rule in terms of CE years. If some other year numbering system were used, the leap year rule would not work.
Sources tend to take well-known facts for granted, and not state them explicitly. Therefore, it is difficult to find an explicit statement that most of the world uses the CE year-numbering system with the Gregorian calendar, as opposed to some other year-numbering system combined with the Gregorian system of months, days, and leap-years. It would be great if you could find such a source.
Also, the article never states "CE is the most common calendar designation worldwide" so naturally the source does not support it. The article states that the numbering system is the most common world-wide. Since the designation would be something else in any language but English, it would be highly unlikely that any English designation would ever be the most popular designation world-wide. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:50, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
I meant to say "see the edit summary". The version you propose does not make grammatical sense. You cannot have a sentence like this:
Common Era is one of many designations for the calendar system most commonly used world-wide for numbering the year part of the date.
Only one designation can be the "most common". -- Scjessey (talk) 00:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
The phrase "the calendar system most commonly used world-wide for numbering the year part of the date" is a description of the year numbering system. That system has many designations, including "CE", "AD", "year of our Lord", and "l’ère chrétienne". The system is the most common system; the sentence says nothing about how commonly used the phrase "Common Era" is. Please discuss further on the article's Talk:Common Era#RfC: differentiate CE from the system it designates. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:51, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Your report at WP:AN3

Thanks for the report about the eclipse internet IP user. I've consider the report, and it's not something that needs further action. In the one instance, you changing metre to meter was completely un-necessary, as Wikipedia has readers from all over the world our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles. As the metric system is used in other English speakers countries more commonly than in the US, the spelling on metre would be most appropriate.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to the other, even if you don't normally use the version the article is written in. Respect other people's versions of English. They in turn should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. If you have any queries about all this, you can ask me on my talk page or you can visit the help desk. Thank you. NJA (t/c) 10:48, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The articles concerned topics that had adopted the "meter" spelling which were improperly changed by the Eclipse user; I merely restored them to their proper state. Furthermore, the articles fall under the category of most strongly associated with a particular English speaking country, in that the topic of the article is an American customary unit of measure, and United States is the only country where the unit is still a general-purpose lawful unit of measure. Everywhere else in the world, the unit is outright illegal, limited by law to specific realms (e.g. road signs), or the government has such great difficulties it has better things to do than make weights and measures information available to the international community (Liberia and Myanmar).
Therefore I deem your advise to be incorrect. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I realise what you did, ie changed the spelling from metre to meter. My advice that worrying over minor spelling deviations in the English language is pointless, and that it is generally discouraged within the guidance is however valid. Non-Americans understand what meter means, but apparently it's been decided on this article that metre would be too confusing. I can assure you that the yard is still widely used in other parts of the world, including road traffic signs throughout the UK. Saying that, I'm not really bothered and don't have the time to get too caught up in this, therefore goodluck and happy editing. NJA (t/c) 22:24, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Just as a point of information, I believe Canada is one prominent example (possibly the only one) of a country that uses SI and uses the spelling meter. - PhilipR (talk) 04:41, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

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Thanks

Thanks for your edits to Acre. I agree that this resolves my issue about US-centered bias. - Regards, PhilipR (talk) 04:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

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Siva Shankar Baba

Hi

Thank you for the proactive review. I am not too much of a computer specialist. Can you guide me on how to create a sub page as you have indicated.

Looking forward to your reply. I will see your talk page as well as mine.

Thank you!

God'sFlute (talk) 04:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC) User:God'sFlute (talk)

thank you Re: Siva Shankar Baba

Thank you very much for taking me step by step through the process.

Your time and help is much appreciated.

God'sFlute (talk) 05:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


Will be great if you can, if it will not hinder your work in anyway.

Thanks a lot!

God'sFlute (talk) 06:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Re: Siva Shankar Baba

Thank you very much So this was what you meant. Thank you for the time and effort and interest

God'sFlute (talk) 07:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Have placed a thank you note on my talk page. Thanks a lot for all the guidance and help

God'sFlute (talk) 03:13, 19 January 2010 (UTC)


seeking clarification

Hi

I went to the 'Siva Shankar Baba' page to make a few additions

There is a box on top; is there something I need to do, or is that for the editors who finalise in wikipedia?

Thanks in advance for your guidance

God'sFlute (talk) 04:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking through the article's history (by clicking the "history" tab) I see that the box was added in this edit. What was added was a template, {{NPOV}}. Templates are short bits of text that the Wikimedia system expands into a larger amount of material, in this case, the box you saw.
The editor who added it feels the article does not have a neutral point of view. The article does seem like it might have been written by a publicity agent for Siva Shankar Baba. If you read an article about important people in a newspaper or magazine, like the Washington Post or Time, they usually have good and bad things to say about most people, or at least describe some disappointments or difficulties the people have encountered.
Also, I am not familiar with the media in India, so I can't tell if the web sites that are cited are run by Siva Shankar Baba, or if they are independent (like the Times of India). --Jc3s5h (talk) 05:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


Hmmm I think I understand what you are saying. Thank you for clarifying. I will review and develop it more objectively. Just recently I have been drawn to the subject of spirituality , and been meeting gurus in and around South India, and started looking for information in wikipedia about them . Then I thought let me record info about those not yet here to help future seekers:)

God'sFlute (talk) 07:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

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Difference between gregorian and julian calender dates

Hallo Jc3s5h,

unfortunal my english is bad and I hope, that you understand me. You deleted some pictures of user LenderCarl and there was no reason for that. I hope you agree, that the days in both calenders have an one-to-one conversion. For example the 18. februar 1700 in the julian calender correspond to the 28. februar in the gregorian calender. The dates differ in this case by 10 days. An other example is the 1. march 1700 in the julian calender with coresponds to 12. march in the gregorian calender. Now the dates differ by 11 days. Now the question is: on which day the difference between both calenders swith from 10 days to 11 days. Please have a look to this proplem from far away. We introduce a very simple calender, which only counts days from the beginnig of the world an look to the two calenders. Both count the days in the same way until the 28. februar 1700 in julian calender. On the next day, the 29. februar 1700 in julian calender and the 11. march in gregorian calender happens something. The julian calender counts 1 day more in comparsison with the gregorian calender. One this day the difference between the two calenders becomes 11 days. There is no need to exclude a range of 10 days, where the difference should be "not defined".

Greetings from Germany --D(e)r Lero (talk) 13:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean this picture:

The file is not deleted, it exists on http://commons.wikimedia.com. Please provide a link to the place I said it seemed wrong, so I can refresh my memory.

Whether it is right or wrong really does not matter. There is a big problem with having this file around at all. It says (c) Karl Nimtsch. So how can we be sure we really have permission to post this. It appears on the surface to be a copyright violation.

Second, it is complex. To use it in a Wikipedia article we should have a reliable source to verify it with. No source has been provided. Please see the WP:No Original Research policy. --Jc3s5h (talk) 13:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Hallo Jc3s5h,

thank you for the fast answer. Yes, you found the picture which disappeared in the english wikipedia. For references please look the following page:

web.whosting.ch/Dauerkalender/html/referenzen.html

This is the private page of the "inventor" of the perpetual calender as well in gregorian and julian version. He presented the two calendars last year in the german wikipedia and there was no problem with the copyright. I suggest to contact the author via his private page to verify, that user LenderCarl is the author of the english version.

Greetings from Germany --D(e)r Lero (talk) 13:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If Karl Nimtsch is the author and placed it on the German Wikipedia, then certainly anyone can translate it and place it on Commons, although the file description really should have a link to the original German version to give proper credit.
Still, the web.whostin.ch site seems to be a personal web page. To use the information we need to see it published in a reliable publication, or we need to establish that Karl Nimtsch is an expert in the field and has published in a reliable source that is related to astronomy or calendars. I have already left a message on LenderCarl's talk page but have not received any response. --Jc3s5h (talk) 14:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
I have found an accuracy complaint, it was in the edit summary for this edit. The edit summary reads (Karl Nimtsch's conversion rule is wrong. 10 days before 10th March, 1700 is 29 February. 11 days before 11th March, 1700 is also 29th February!)
This complaint is correct. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
About your complaint that in the Gregorian calendar article, certain 10 day ranges are not defined for conversion purposes. The article actually says "Note that the difference is not well defined when it spans the end of a February that has a different number of days in the two calendars." You're right, it is well defined, it is just hard to explain how to make the change in a few words. I have just created an article, Conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars which gives much more detailed tables and is based on a reliable source. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


Sorry, but your new article Conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars is not correct in all detailes. First: The gregorian calender is not defined before 15. Okt. 1582. Your calculations in the time before are maybe correct in mathematical view, but not in a historical view. Second: I do not agree with 10 days before 10th March, 1700 is 29 February. 11 days before 11th March, 1700 is also 29th February! Please remember, that 29th february 1700 does not exist in the gregorian calender. Don´t mix the calenders in your mind. At the 29. februar 1700 in julian calender and the 11. march in gregorian calender the julian calender counts 1 day more in comparsison with the gregorian calender. Exact at this day the difference becomes 11 days. Third: Please tell me the reliable source, that calculations in the article "Gregorian calender" are correct. (not a computer program... )

--D(e)r Lero (talk) 16:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

(un-indent) I agree with you about when the Gregorian calendar started, and the article already explains that in the Conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars#Conventions section, which says:

  • The Gregorian calendar did not exist before October 15, 1582. Gregorian dates before that are proleptic, that is, using the Gregorian rules to recon backward from October 15, 1582.

About the edit summary 10 days before 10th March, 1700 is 29 February. 11 days before 11th March, 1700 is also 29th February!, of course this is not a true statement. But it is what happens if someone follows the directions in the image. Therefore the directions are wrong.

As for the calculations in the "Gregorian calendar" article not having a reliable source, I suggest you discuss any that you doubt on the article's talk page. If you mean the table in Gregorian calendar#Difference between Gregorian and Julian calendar dates, please understand that I did not create that table. I just verified the first four rows in The Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Ephemeris and the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, prepared by the nautical almanac offices of the US and the UK in 1961 (page 417). The table in that book stops at March 13, 2100 Gregorian. --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I found the book online: asa.hmnao.com/ Maybe, you are faster to find the corresponding table. Please provide a link here and I will check it. Sorry, I have no time for long discussions on article talk page of "Gregorian calendar". If you have a concrete question, then I will try to answer. Or better: ask LenderCarl... he ist the real expert. —Preceding unsigned comment added by D(e)r Lero (talk • contribs) 17:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

That is not the book. So far as I know, the book is not on line. I bought a paper copy of the book. --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
mmh... so I can not easily check the table. Is it possible, that you make a scan of the page? Is there a newer version of the book at amazon?

--D(e)r Lero (talk) 18:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

nthis one? books.google.de/books?id=uJ4JhGJANb4C&dq=The+Explanatory+Supplement+to+the+Astronomical+Ephemeris+and+the+American+Ephemeris+and+Nautical+Almanac&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=de&ei=gZdYS4CWLpewnQPOurH_Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=The%20Explanatory%20Supplement%20to%20the%20Astronomical%20Ephemeris%20and%20the%20American%20Ephemeris%20and%20Nautical%20Almanac&f=false--D(e)r Lero (talk) 18:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
The one you gave a link to on Google is newer. Instead of having a table, it gives pseudocode for computer algorithms to convert between the Julian calendar and Julian Day Number, and also between the Gregorian calendar and Julian Day Number. Obviously these algorithms could be combined to convert between Gregorian and Julian. I have taken a digital photo of the table. My understanding of Crown Copyright is that it may be copied for private study but not republished. Therefore, I am willing to email it to you, but not to put it on Wikipedia. You may use the option in the toolbox in the left margin of my talk page to send me a suitable email address to which I may send the photo. It is 738 KB.
By the way, if you thinking of buying this kind of book, a new edition is due this year, also edited by Seidelmann. You might want to wait for the new one. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

"help"

Well. I hope you dont land up feeling 'there again; turned up like a bad penny'

the page on Siva Shankar Baba. Don't know whats going wrong. Lost! (lots of stars clouding my vision!) Can you help, please. From late 2009 I have been visiting a lot of gurus in and around South India and you know how it is, one gets so used to looking up wikipedia for a information to know more about anything. So everytime I met someone I would gorge down lot of info from wikipedia as a start point. I got info about Jaggi Vasudev, Sathya Sai, Ma Amritanandamayi. Couldnt find anything on Siva Shankar so thought why not I research and develop a page, I have taken a lot from wikipedia this is some way I can give something, I guess you figure what I mean.

Thanks!

God's Flute 03:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by God'sFlute (talk • contribs)

Just to point out

A couple days ago, I said "You would think so, but I have seen people claim the opposite: that even if a primary source includes interpretation or analysis we can't use that interpretation or analysis, and instead he have to find a different source for it.". The current discussion on WT:NOR is an example of what I was referring to. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources

I noticed you were contributing the a debate on primary secondary and tertiary sources at WT:NOR. Are you aware of the draft separate guideline on PSTS? The idea is that it would allow WP:NOR to concentrate on the NOR aspect of PSTS. The definitions etc. etc. would be in the guideline. Take a look at User:Yaris678/PSTS. Yaris678 (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

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Requesting your opinion

Hi. I've started a discussion here. (Actually, it's a restart of a prior discussion that went cold; you can just scroll directly down to the first post I made today in that section if you want.) Can you offer your thoughts? I think it's very important. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 02:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Difference between Gregorian and Julian calendar dates

Copy (fragment)

Gregorian calendar Julian cal.(Leapyear) Diff.
12 February 1900
28 February 1900
1 March 1900
12 March 1900 		31 January 1900
16 February 1900
17 February 1900
28 February 1900 		12 days
13 March 1900
14 March 1900 		29 February 1900
1 March 1900 		13 days

Verzeihung, ich spreche leider nur deutschLenderCarl (talk) 12:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


Ich spreche nur Englisch. Bitte sehen File talk:Permanent calendar.png --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Good morning Dear calendarfriend, Thanks for Your replay (answer ?); my tables/files: of english please.

The first print was by C.H.Beck-Munic 1992 "Juristenkalender/Steuerberaterkalender". The next print by "Max-Planck-Institut" Heidelberg, see by "Sterne und Weltraum" 5/93. The next print was a poster in special nr.5 from march in year 2000 by "Sterne und Weltraum".

I am the dokument for "the first perpedual and permanent calendar" from "Guinnessbuch-Verlag" oct/1998, pleas see http://www.ewige-kalender.de

Sorry, my english it a liddle bid craysi...

Thank You for yours time Greetings from germany/saxoniaLenderCarl (talk) 07:36, 1 February 2010 (UTC)LenderCarl (talk) 09:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)LenderCarl (talk) 06:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

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WP:RS

I'd appreciate you coming back to WP:RS to continue our discussion on this funny "impact factor" requirement. I agree with your position but it's not how impact factor is being controversially used and I'd like eventually to get to a proposal to modify the article. Could you help me? TMLutas (talk) 15:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I have added an inline under-discussion template to Talk:Global warming/FAQ Q 22 which points to Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources#Scholarship section (2.1) - does sources = journals?. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Citations

Thanks I appreciate you posting on my talk, but I venture to say that you may have made an is/ought fallacy. I do not say that citation templates are necessary, simply that they are used (furthermore, I think they should be used, but I'm not proposing that kind of policy or guideline.) If someone elects to add sources without using a citation template, that would simply be irrelevant to my proposal, as it is predicated on the use of these templates. Again, it's nice to get a reminder about policy, I suppose, but I'm not sure what to do with your information. Please post on my talk if you would like to respond. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:24, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Forget it I re-read what I wrote. You were right and I was wrong. Sorry for the interruption. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

perpedual calendar

Good morning,

1."copyright":

The first print was by C.H.Beck-Munic 1992 "Juristenkalender/Steuerberaterkalender". The next print by "Max-Planck-Institut" Heidelberg, see by "Sterne und Weltraum" 5/93. The next print was a poster in special nr.5 from march in year 2000 by "Sterne und Weltraum".

I am the dokument for "the first perpedual and permanent calendar" from "Guinnessbuch-Verlag" oct/1998, please see http://www.ewige-kalender.de

2."differenc between..."

this table it not exist in last exemplar from , 7 February 2010 00:26, see please hear. LenderCarl (talk) 07:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

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Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources

Thanks for reverting my edit. I was editing from my phone and I'm not sure why it didn't give me an edit conflict warning. Gigs (talk) 18:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring on Julian Calendar

That's a content dispute, not vandalism -- be sure you don't get blocked for violating the rules against edit warring.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Repeatedly putting nonsense into articles is edit warring. The fact that the nonsense might require a little thought to recognize, as opposed to remarks like "xknloied was here", does not turn edit warring into a legitimate content dispute. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
The 3RR exemption for vandalism only applies in clear cases of vandalism, which this isn't. It may not be correct, but it's not vandalism either. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:55, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't claim it is vandalism, I claim it is nonsense. That is one reason why administrator intervention is required, because users who recognize the nonsense for what it is must obey the 3RR, while the IP editor does not. Since I am not a mind reader, I cannot determine if the IP editor is a troll, or just reads and writes everything with his/her ideas so firmly in mind that he/she cannot see that the statements are nonsensical from the point of view of the Wikipedia reader. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:20, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
This guy (I doubt it's a she) is not a vandal, he's a crank with a bee in his bonnet. Two years ago he insisted on inserting the same misinformation, and persistently refused to debate, discuss or justify the edits in any meaningful fashion -- at that time he wouldn't even use the Talk pages. The end result was that he tried to find one place after another to get his ideas into WP that wouldn't be noticed, causing a large number of articles to be semi-protected for quite a while: Julian calendar Roman calendar Mercedonius Leap year Bissextile day February 24 February 29 and probably others I've forgotten. Check the admin history for these articles around February and March 2008. Evidently, he has decided to wait long enough for the articles to be unprotected in the hope that people will have forgotten about him; and so anyone who does object will have to go through the whole admin justification process again from scratch. Since he does change his IP address from time to time the only real solution (at least, until he decides to get a Wiki account) is to semi-protect these articles permanently. --Chris Bennett (talk) 01:14, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
The IP addresses (only two have been used this year) are more stable than one usually sees with an ISP. If they were blocked, the stability might imply a greater than usual effort needed to get them changed. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:22, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
It was a small number last time too. At that time I looked a couple of them up. One was a terminal in the Hackney public library in London. I wasn't able to confirm it, but it looked like another was a terminal in a different public library. Although the addresses weren't dynamic, he did keeping coming up with new ones. Again, the record for that period should have a listing. I haven't checked whether the current addresses are the same, but, quite apart from the content, one comment he has made confirmed we are dealing with the same person. --Chris Bennett (talk) 01:30, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Ottawa meridian

I see you have removed my addition of a claimed Ottawa meridian from the Prime Meridian article, with the explanation "Undo claim for which no citation was provided. Nothing contained in an edit summary counts as a citation because it is impractical for readers to search through edit summaries."

I don't understand this. A citation was provided (not by me). Ok, it was in the wrong place, "External links" instead of "References"; so wouldn't it make more sense to move it to the right place? Or maybe you don't like that citation because it is just a photograph, in that case I can understand your removal of the claimed meridian.

Moreover most of the meridians listed in the article, including Rio de Janeiro which I added on 4 August 2009, cite no reference, and you haven't removed those. I can provide a reference for the Rio meridian — should I do so?

Maproom (talk) 11:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

The only thing you added to the article to hint at where the reference might be was the link to the Ottawa article. The citation to the source of your information should be right in the Prime Meridian article. As for some other things not being cited in the article, if you can provide citations, please do so.
I also am not convinced the plaque means "prime meridian" in the same way as the article. In the article, prime meridian is used as the basis of longitude lines in all kinds of publications, including nautical charts. But in the field of geodesy, especially for most of the 20th century, it was common to choose a meridian as the "working prime meridian" because it was readily accessible, but give it an assumed value in terms of the Greenwich meridian. This is because, before modern space-based methods, the relative longitude within a continent could be measured more accurately than the longitude across an ocean. A text explaining how the Ottawa prime meridian was actually used would be needed. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I understand and accept your second paragraph above. I do not understand the first one. "The only thing you added to the article to hint at where the reference might be ..."? I added nothing to the article about any reference, it was already in the article, albeit in the wrong place. Also, I do not understand why you removed a meridian from the list because its reference was done wrong, but you accept others with no reference at all. Maproom (talk) 18:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Each article is treated independently. Wikipedia is an unreliable source, so just because a claim appears in one article does not mean it can be copied into another article. To copy from one article to another, the supporting citation must be copied too. Ideally, the editor who copies would look at the source that was cited to make sure it really supports the claim. For example, if a link was dead by the time I came upon it, I wouldn't copy any claim that relies on that dead link. Unfortunately, there is too much unreferenced material for any one person to deal with, so I tend to concentrate on newly-introduced material, because the person who added it might notice their contribution has been removed, and will have at hand whatever source of information they used.
Also, it is not necessary to provide citations for well known facts unless someone challenges them. I recall reading a number of times that Washington and Paris were prime meridians, so I wouldn't challenge those. Thanks for finding a citation for Rio. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand this. I didn't copy anything from one article to another. I added the Ottawa meridian to the list on the basis of evidence cited in the "External Links" section of the same article. But I accept that the evidence was inadequate, and I don't plan any further changes to the article. Maproom (talk) 21:44, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

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Dispute tag on Julian calendar

I have removed this. IMO it's overstated, and not very helpful. The ongoing disputes are about a small number of small points, not about the accuracy of the article as a whole. The Celsus issue isn't even a Julian calendar issue -- it's a pre-Julian calendar issue! The antagonist is a crank with several axes to grind, but he clearly doesn't have a serious leg to stand on. --Chris Bennett (talk) 02:06, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The lead is a mess. If the "logic" (if I may use that word) of the lead is followed, one must conclude that the anti-religious USSR government (Religion is the opiate of the masses according to Marx) adopted the religious New Calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar, despite the fact that the USSR changed calendars in 1919 and the New Calendar was not created until 1923. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the second paragraph of the lede has fallen victim to the antagonist. And that somehow he needs to be got under control. But this is not the way to do it: overall its a minor point. Yes there are details which are being disputed, even if it's for no sane or comprehensible reason, but I still contend that tagging the whole article is going too far.

As to what to do about this guy, the only solution I know is to get an admin to work through it and agree we're dealing with a nutter. Unfortunately its a slow and painful process. Last time round I did eventually get several admins involved. Unfortunately they were not willing to agree to a permanent solution, so all the semi-protections got lifted after 6 months or so. This is one reason I have basically given up on WP. I'm not sure why I'm reinvolving myself now, and I'm not willing to go through that part of it again.

Anyway, if you want to restore the tag, go ahead. I only suggest that you follow through. --Chris Bennett (talk) 03:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

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PN junction dubious

You have a right I completly forget of melting process made diodes. --Čikić Dragan (talk) 12:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:IRS sources controversy starting up again

If you would like to wade in to the fray again we have edits busting out on WP:IRS section 2.1(4). A user, Hipocrite, edited 2.1(4) and you may want to drop in here if you want to once again give your opinion. TMLutas (talk) 08:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

International calendar

The grounds of title change I discerned are based upon the most commonly used form of calendar internationally, in the context of international being the global familiarity of information and the twelve month calendar, not strictly international for official or administrative purposes as stated in the article, as the Gregorian calendar and Julian calendar is a historic and religious terminology, within many calendars. The international calendar article contains the differentiation of Gregorian or Revised Julian calendars and links to their historic details in their articles and the month article. The ideas you mention are distinct in the phrasing of the article, with civil calendars and secular calendars varying, though a commonly recognised "international" calendar (Gregorian) is predominantly used by the majority of the population of the world for reference, usual consistency and for conventional time keeping.
The redirects to the international calendar article are civil calendar and common calendar. Secular calendar redirect is to the main calendar article. The title civil calendar is synonymous with international calendar, with civil being secular and international being a common standard and most conventional. — RW Marloe (talk) 16:44, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

While the Gregorian calendar is the predominant international calendar, it is not called by that name in English, so that should not be the title of the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:51, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The Gregorian calendar has its own article, it is reasonable to refer to the most commonly used calendar as the international calendar and contain details about civil and secular calendars in the article.
You have misspelt "civl", it is "civil". — RW Marloe (talk) 17:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Your comment contradicts itself. The Gregorian is the most commonly used calendar in international affairs, so it is the international calendar. It would be redundant to have two different articles about it, one titled "Gregorian calendar" and another titled "International calendar". Most important, nobody cares what a Wikipedia editor thinks. You must find sources that say there is a calendar named "International calendar" and explain exactly what it is. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:30, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

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Meletian

I am now contributing under the above name. When you notice activity please do not run to the clerks. As a result of your last SPI I was blocked for 72 hours. That block has now been lifted. As this keyboard does not have a tilde I will be leaving it to Sinebot to authenticate my posts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Meletian (talk • contribs) 08:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Your account User:Vote (X) for Change is indefinitely blocked. You should not edit Wikipedia in any way, shape, or form unless you can convince an administrator to lift the block. Go to User talk:Vote (X) for Change and follow the directions in the last edit. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Indefinite means exactly what it says. The administrator has reviewed the case and cleared me to edit provided I make constructive contributions. Meletian (talk) 16:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

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Publisher-Work debate

hi Jc3s5h, i'm spencer, I've put together an api that can figure out a wikipedia reference's 'publisher' field unambiguously, given a url, and am trying to have it worked into the citation bot. There is some confusion though about what sort of things we want to have in the publisher field. Can you comment on this over here? I'd like to know what you think. cheers Spencerk (talk) 19:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

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diffferential eq

pls study diffferential eq before commentsWdl1961 (talk) 15:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Please look up analog and hydraulic. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:39, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
pls use dictionary and elementary Eng. handbook or xxxx101.Wdl1961 (talk) 15:54, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

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File:WRCBarnstar.png

You should notify the original uploader Spitfire ch. Hekerui (talk) 13:33, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

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mw:Extension:HarvardReferences - MediaWiki extension that supports "Harvard" references

Thank you for your interest in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#MediaWiki extension that supports "Harvard" references. X-romix (talk) 09:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

WRCBarnstar.png

I suppose this might qualify for FFD? Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 02:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I see it has been nominated, thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 02:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Re: Castleton VT Train Station Coordinates

I'm not so good with coordinates, but the parameter for them can be found between the address and the line. As for the station location, I found it on a Google Map of Castleton itself, and scrolled along Vermont Route 4A where I finally encountered it between Mill Street and Packing House Road. ----DanTD (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

As soon as my back is turned...

A discussion is currently taking place on ANI. 86.152.101.215 (talk) 14:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

The preceding post is by a sock puppet of User:Vote (X) for Change. The post is contrary to policy and I demand the right to proceed as if the post did not exist. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:12, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

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Warning

Do not restore to a talk page personal attacks which have been previously removed, as you did with Talk: Julian calendar. Thank you. 78.151.240.205 (talk) 19:43, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The preceding post by a sockpuppet of the blocked User:Vote (X) for Change is null and void because it was against policy for this person to post to Wikipedia. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
He has take you to WP:ANI. SGGH ping! 21:17, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

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Re: guy fawkes night edit

Thanks for your message - you're right - I only changed that section because it was changed to US spelling in a previous edit, so I reverted it but assumed the rest of the article was ok. I'll go through it a bit later and double-check the rest of the article. Cheers! Whitehatnetizen (talk) 09:13, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Ad hominen attack

This so called "results of discussion"[7] is little more than a thinly veiled personal attack. If you disagree with another editor, do say so and why. However, ad hominem attacks are not constructive and if you try this again, we will be discussing this matter at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I stand by every word. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:26, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
That is up to you, but I don't see how it profits either one of us, nor how it furthers the discussion, nor how your comment could lead to a resolution that is mutually agreable. Truely, the choice is your own. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

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ANI discussion

A thread has been opened to which I contributed a few moments ago. 195.191.66.225 (talk) 09:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

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June 2010

Please do not attack other editors, as you did here: Common Era. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. (Huey45 (talk) 01:25, 24 June 2010 (UTC))

It was wrong for Huey45 to post the preceding warning and I will disregard it. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:47, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
There you go again. It most certainly was not wrong. The only action that was wrong was for you to accuse me in your edit summary (for a disrupted and unjustified edit at that) of not understanding the information, thereby implying ignorance or intellectual inferiority. It was an ad hominem argument to "justify" your removal of content from the article and as I noticed on your talk page, it's certainly not the first time that you've engaged in personal attacks. If you actually cared to read the rules some time, you'd notice that WP:NPA makes it very clear that one should address the content and not the contributor; something which you seem to repeatedly fail to do. If you continue to flaunt the rules and disregard the warnings that result, then you're going to find yourself in trouble over and over again.(Huey45 (talk) 03:14, 24 June 2010 (UTC))

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Merge discussion for Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going to the article and clicking on the (Discuss) link at the top of the article, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Martinvl (talk) 19:39, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

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Misleading evidence submitted by you on SPI

The above has been reported on ANI. 86.174.115.50 (talk) 14:13, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I refuse to acknowledge this notice because it was made by a sockpuppet who has no right to edit this page. Thus I have no obligation to pay any attention to the ANI. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:20, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Since you have actually deployed an argument to advance your position I am continuing this thread.

Why do you consider me to be a sockpuppet when I have never tried to bolster my argument by putting forward my view under the name of someone else? Why do you need an SPI to prove that my four accounts are related when it is obvious from their names that they must be? Since they are demonstrably related, why did you object so strongly to Former Account templates advertising the fact that you went to ANI (where you were knocked back) and posted a message on my talk page which was removed by another user?

Why are you so obsessed by the calendar system of Russia that you went to the trouble of starting an SPI where you made the lying claim that I had said they introduced the Eastern European calendar in 1918? 86.152.101.215 (talk) 09:32, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

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WP:ANI

There's a thread at WP:ANI regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. N419BH 18:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. Actually, since the editor who opened the ANI thread was a sockpuppet of User:Vote (X) for Change, he was not eligible to edit any page except User talk:Vote (X) for Change, where he could have begged for forgiveness. Thus the ANI thread is null and void. If he has posted a notice of the ANI thread on my user page, the notice would have been null and void too. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:49, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Elockid just provided a similar response. WP:DENY and WP:BOOMERANG are the suggested courses of action. Happy editing! N419BH 19:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Editing another editors remarks

The child friendly computer I am on edited another's editors remarks which I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing this out so I could apologize. I am not on this type of computer as my first choice. Student7 (talk) 22:50, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

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Reliable or not: Robert K. G. Temple on Chinese and world history

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion on Temple's reliability here. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

RfA

This often causes drama on RfAs, so I'm trying to minimize it by asking here instead: Have you revealed (somewhere that I missed) or do you intend to reveal your previous account? This isn't a dealbreaker for me, but for some it might be. If the answer is "no", would you consider revealing it to one or more individual users for review and comment?  Frank  |  talk  15:39, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I do not intend to reveal my former userid in a forum where it can be found by internet searches, but I would be willing to reveal it by emailing it to administrators interested in my candidacy. My reasons for not wanting to reveal it are
  • There are a very small number of users and former users who persistently cause trouble. None of them have caused me any trouble outside Wikipedia, but they are not the sort of people I want to give my real name to.
  • Internet searches often find quotations from Wikipedia that are taken out of context. If I am, for example, applying for a job or asking a lady out for a date, they might decide to Google me and information that is misleading when taken out of context. Or my talk page comments might reveal my position on issues that ought not to be relevant in certain contexts (say, job applications) but might be considered nonetheless. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:14, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Frank's right, this is really a can of worms-type issue. I don't know if it's better to simply put yourself forward on the merits of the current account, and I understand the motivation to provide at least some kind of up-front disclosure. It's a double-edged sword. I've offered to voir dire your previous account further to Pichpich's request - check your email. –xenotalk 17:37, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at SimonTrew's talk page.
Message added 21:36, 12 August 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
I responded at my talk page. Theleftorium (talk) 08:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Bob Widlar

Brought here because of your RFA introduction. Could take a look and review Bob Widlar?

Good luck at the gauntlet, East of Borschov 05:46, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Rideau Canal Festival

Where do you see the copyvio? I can't find anything... Theleftorium (talk) 09:42, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Search for "Rideau Canal Festival set for July 30-Aug. 2" which is a heading in the web page http://www.ottawafestivals.ca/tag/rideau-canal-festival/ and read the text there.
However, after I found the copyright violation, the editor stated the information came from a different source. See Talk:Rideau Canal Festival. Before this statement, I was thinking that the amount of text wasn't that much, and it was borderline fair use, but it would definitely have been plagiarism. Now that we have a statement that it came from somewhere else, we can't call it fair use without seeing the original source. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:29, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I still don't see the copyvio? None of the text in Rideau Canal Festival is copied from http://www.ottawafestivals.ca/tag/rideau-canal-festival/. Facts can't be copyrighted. Theleftorium (talk) 17:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I saw the copy at the time I made my comments, but I don't see it now. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:23, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Votre nom

You may say it's three cards, but whenever I see it, I read jeesh. =) –xenotalk 15:34, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

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Your RfA has been closed

I regret to inform you that your request for adminship has been closed as unsuccessful. I encourage you to review the comments and suggestions made there and apply them as necessary. If you choose to run again, this will improve your chances of a successful candidacy in the future, especially if you can point to specific issues raised and show significant improvement. If you have any questions about the process or anything else related to adminship, please let me know. I wish you success in your editing and any future candidacies. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 08:10, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Template vs style

Quick couple of points relative to your last missive, and a question on style:

  • Firstly, instead of quoting jargon, could you have just "assumed" good faith?
  • I was not aware that the template diverges significantly from commonly accepted standards-- I usually apply a template to make references Web 2.0 "friendly"-- it is implied that it makes page parsing for other computer systems/engines and what not easier.
  • A quick check of my past contributions and edits would have revealed that this was no drive by hack requiring such brusqueness
  • And in your haste you forgot to specify: Which article? What do you consider the damage to be?
  • Feel free to revert if it pains you too much, or is a significant departure from the standards that you are used to using
  • Is this a US -vs- UK style issue? By the way, what standard or style do you use, and how different is it from the template? Would a different template have served better?

The Signpost: 23 August 2010

Equation of Time

Thank you for your reply. Just so you know in the future, comments about other users should be made on the user's talk page, such as User talk:DOwenWilliams or User talk:Jc3s5h. I will look at the web site you provided to see if it is suitable to be cited as the source.
Please take a look at WP:Verifiability which explains the need to provide reliable sources. In this particular case, if a person had the capability of checking the program himself, he probably wouldn't need the program to begin with. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
I am not sure how well known the Green Life Innovators site is, so I have asked if it is a suitable source at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard‎#Source for QBasic program. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I wasn't suggesting that every user should check the program himself. I was suggesting that if an editor, e.g. yourself, has doubts about its reliability, he could check it by running ETIMSDEC, and then decide whether or not the routine should be in Wikipedia.

I have no idea what they'll tell you about Green Life Innovators. But I am quite certain that the code I posted is good.

Delete it if you want. I have plenty of other copies to use myself! Other people won't know what they've missed.

I'm not sure what you mean by referring to "comments about other users". I just replied to the note you sent me, which didn't refer to anyone else. I thought I put my reply on your User talk page, but I may have made a mistake. If so, sorry.

While I have you, let me ask you an unrelated question. Does anyone ever compare articles that are written in different languages? I can read several languages reasonably well, and have sometimes looked at articles in English, and also the corresponding articles in Spanish, French, Italian, and (with some effort) German. Often, they are nowhere near alike. It's like Spanish-speaking people live in a whole different universe...

DOwenWilliams (talk) 23:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC) David Williams

I am only fluent in English. Once in a while I will look at an article in another language, and I can tell they are quite a bit different than the English version, but I can't understand them. The main reason I look at the other languages is they often have English language references that are useful for the English language article. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:41, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Something is said to have happened to the astronomer Galileo - though it isn't on his page in Wikipedia. He discovered the four large satellites of Jupiter, using his newly-invented telescope. Plainly, they revolved around Jupiter, which violated the accepted knowledge of the day, which said that all heavenly bodies revolve around the earth. This accepted "truth" was based on citations of biblical text and other scriptures. Galileo was already in trouble with the church over his teaching that the planets revolve around the sun. The Jovian satellites made matters worse. He was ordered to recant. He offered to let the churchmen look through his telescope so they could see the satellites with their own eyes, but they refused to do so, saying that their citations proved that the satellites could not exist. Galileo was imprisoned.

As they say in French, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." ("The more it changes, the more it is the same thing", i.e. history repeats itself.)

DOwenWilliams (talk) 03:08, 27 August 2010 (UTC) David Williams

Let me tell you another relevant story. I can personally vouch for the truth of this one, since I was involved...

Several decades ago, I was a Ph.D. student of chemistry. Of course, I had free access to a university science library. An acquaintance of mine, to whom I will refer by his initials, J.E., was accused of a fairly serious crime. If found guilty, he faced several years in jail. Pending his trial, he was free on bail. The case was unusual in that there was no doubt as to what he had done. The prosecution and defence were agreed on that. But there was room for doubt as to whether what he had done was illegal. The law under which he had been charged had never been tested in court, so there were no precedents. Curiously, the prosecutions's case depended on a matter of scientific fact. If a certain chemical discovery had been made, then JE was guilty. If it hadn't, he was innocent. The prosecution was able to cite a whole lot of textbooks and the like that all said that the discovery was real. Things looked bad for JE. However, knowing that I was a chemist, he asked me to see if I could find any flaws in the prosecutions's argument.

I looked up the textbooks to which the prosecution referred, and sure enough they all said that the discovery had occurred. However, I found that every one of them based its statements on just one publication, a paper that had been published in a highly respected, peer-reviewed journal, by a team of scientists led by a professor who was a world-renowned expert in the field. His initials were E.C.. I looked up this paper, and sure enough it described making the discovery that doomed JE. The prosecution's case looked watertight. I couldn't help JE.

However, I found the subject matter scientifically interesting, so I looked ahead to see if there had been any further discoveries, more recent than the one in the paper I had read. To my astonishment, in a later issue of the same journal as the original paper, I found a very short paper by the same group of scientists led by EC, in which they retracted the original finding! An experimental error had been made by accident. The scientific discovery that would have doomed JE had not been made!

A lot of the books that cited the original paper had been written after the retraction was published. Their authors just cited "accepted knowledge". Very few people knew it was wrong.

I called JE, who told his lawyer. However, the prosecution persevered, and went to court with all the fallacious citations. JE's lawyer just produced the one short retraction. The jury was confused, and ended up "hung". At the re-trial, JE's lawyer subpoenad EC, and forced him to describe in open court how he had made a mistake and how it had made its way into "accepted knowledge". The second jury was convinced. JE was acquitted.

And I learned to be profoundly suspicious of citations, no matter how reliable they appear to be. I still am. I far prefer to look through a telescope, run a computer program, or do whatever it takes to verify any statement, rather than relying on quoted references.

DOwenWilliams (talk) 22:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC) David Williams

Earth's rotation image perspective

Re this edit, it's clearly stated as such on the image-description page. But even if not, the image really isn't useful unless the perspective is stated. I added the note because a reader was confused about "which way around the sun" the orbit direction vector pointed (need to know if we're looking out from sun-region/orbital center vs in with sun behind. DMacks (talk) 14:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I will look for a discussion on Talk:Earth's rotation. If you have not already done so, please copy your comment there. I think that would be better than discussing on the image's talk page, because we may discuss not only the image, but also it's suitability for the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Done. See ya there! DMacks (talk) 15:17, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2010

Complaint on ANI

A complaint has been made about your editing. Bsically this is because you have been editing religious articles without stating your religious affiliation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.177.205 (talk) 10:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

...and I removed the post from ANI as obvious trolling by an obvious sock of an indefinitely blocked former editor. If there was a policy shift to require editors in any area to state their religious beliefs then I missed the memo. It'd be impossible to prove, in any event - as I'm sure our IP friend knows. TFOWR 10:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

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Terrestrial Dynamical Time = TBD?

Do you have a Wikipedia-independent source for [8]? My Googling says unsurprisingly that Terrestrial Dynamical Time = TDT. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Looking through the sources I have at hand, I can't find a source. There is a TDB; I'm not sure if I read the letters in the wrong order, or if there is a source that isn't at hand that used the order TBD. In any case, since major current sources don't list any variety of time abbreviated it TBD, I removed it from the disambiguation page. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

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Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/WillieBot_2.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

 Ⓢock  21:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

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Time machine

Well spotted. [9] :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:11, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

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Thanks

Thanks for this well-sourced expansion. I appreciate it, and hope it will clear up some of the confusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

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Pound (mass) vs. Pound-force

re: YOU SAID... Please do not change the content of articles so it addresses a different topic than the title of the article indicates, as you did here. This is particularly inappropriate when an article on the topic that you want to write about already exists (Pound-force). Jc3s5h (talk) 21:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You've got to be kidding me. That article is the biggest pile of horseshit I've seen here since I first edited in Oct of 2004. Pound is a weight -- a FUNDAMENTAL UNIT in the English customary measurement system and therefore a natural force unit--by Newtonian physics. "Pound-mass" is a newfangled derived unit which I can't even validate as being defined by any competent authority... from SI no less. AND THAT WITH FOUR ENGINEERING DEGREES... Further, The talk pages have repeated professionals telling liberal arts air heads they're wrong. THEY ARE. I've never been embarrassed for Wikipedia before as much as I am after view both of those articles... and then the the crowning achievement... that redirect of pound (weight) to Pound (mass) which is CLEARLY WRONG... The mind boggles how many have been confused by the stupid arguments on those two talk pages. CIRCULAR CIRCULAR CIRCULAR. The SI gram was DEFINED as a fundamental unit, with a definition deliberately chosen to make the best approximation of the gram (weight) then extant in Europe. THAT gram relates to the pound weight. You folks are clueless. But few seem to realize that gram was a weight. And Yes, they are all measures of quantity, just the force use is new--from the seventeenth century. I'm sincerely embarrassed for Wikipedia. Most all seem to have little idea of a fundamental unit versus a derived and defined unit. Most of the articlein Pound (mass) should be under Pound (weight), make Pound-force redirect to that, and make Pound-mass a one para article repeating what I wrote in the disambig page Pound. This is a mess. // FrankB 01:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
Say what you want on talk pages, but this is your final warning that damaging article will not be tolerated. Jc3s5h (talk) 05:16, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

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Sent you an email with a question about "third party" & verifiability
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I read the talk page in question, and I think the people discussing it are already grappling with the appropriate issues. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

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cquote/quote

Can you please further explain this? The first usage bullet at {{cquote}} pretty clearly states "This template should not be used for block quotations in article text" and suggests, instead {{quote}}. cquote is for use in pull quotes of text needing emphasis otherwise appearing elsewhere in the article, which is not the case with the quote in question. Using the quote template does not cause any aberrant formatting or make the commented-out heads-up about "L-rd" any harder to spot. Why the reversion? --EEMIV (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Before it was a pull-quote, random editors would constantly come along and change "L-rd" to "Lord" even though this created a misquote. Since it has become a pull-quote this problem seems to have stopped. As far as I'm concerned, we should ignore all rules in order to prevent this common misquotation. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Removing my comments

Hi there. I'm user msadaghd. You just removed my comments in the Volt article, saying they were wrong. How do you know my edits are incorrect? I am an electrical engineer with a masters degree and I checked my comments before I put them in. If you have questions about my comments, then let's communicate, otherwise please put them back. I wrote them because I thought those help people to understand better, not to fill the space! Msadaghd (talk) 20:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but it is up to you to provide a reliable source for anything you want to add to an article. Readers must be able to look in the reliable source to confirm the article is correct. There is no reliable way to connect a Wikipedia userid to a real-world identity, so your claim to be an electrical engineer cannot be verified.
In addition, some of your comments were just wrong. For example, the statement "In other words, voltage is the amount of existing energy used to move one coulomb of charge" is wrong. The voltage required to move one coulomb of charge depends on the resistance of the conductor and the time over which the charge is to be moved. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think my statement is wrong. According to the formula provided in the same page, V=J/C. J is energy, so voltage is the amount of energy that moves one coulomb. You are correct about that the amount of voltage depends on the impedance of the medium, but for a different medium, the required energy to move one coulomb also changes and hence the statement remains true. Msadaghd (talk) 21:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The main situation where the formula V = J/C applies is a capacitor. If the energy stored in a capacitor is 1 joule, and the charge stored in the capacitor were 1 coulomb, the voltage across the capacitor would be 1 volt, and the capacitance would be 1 farad. But as soon as a resistor was connected across the capacitor, it will start to discharge and the voltage will be less than 1. Many other combinations of voltage and capacitance could be associated with 1 coulomb of stored charge, such as 10 volts and 100 mF or 1,000,000 volts and 1 μF. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:48, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

This formula always holds. There is no case of this formula being wrong. If you need to move 1 coulomb of charge, you will always need J amount of energy and that creates V volts across your medium. This is the definition of voltage: Voltage is a representation of the electric potential energy per unit charge. http://physics.about.com/od/glossary/g/voltage.htm . Again, to move a unit of electrical charge, you need some certain energy which equals to volt. My statement basically says the same thing. If you disagree, please let me know. Msadaghd (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The weird unconventional term "existing energy" and the lack of a precise definiton of "move", in the statement "in other words, voltage is the amount of existing energy used to move one coulomb of charge" make the statement meaningless. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Well I guess it is wikipedia's nature to correct the language, not remove the information! I admit English is not my strong point. So I'll keep my thoughts to myself! If you wanted perfection, you shouldn't have asked people to contribute. Have a good day.Msadaghd (talk) 22:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

If I can stick my nose in here, as of this year, the SI units still use the ampere as a measured base unit experimentally derived from the kilogram, metre, and second, with the definition for the volt at one kilogram metre / second2 / ampere. The equivalent "one joule per coulomb" is therefore a derived identity, not the fundamental definition. This, however is almost certain to change in the next few years. The BIPM, in its efforts to eliminate the use of artefacts from the SI, is in the final stages of developing definitions based on fundamental physical constants.

A key activity of this year’s CIPM meeting was the review of progress towards the redefinition of the kilogram, which is the only base unit of the SI still tied to an artefact. While remarkable progress has been made over the last few years, the conditions set by the General Conference at its 23rd meeting have not yet been fully met. For this reason the CIPM does not propose a revision of the SI at the present time. However the CIPM drafted a Resolution for the CGPM to take note of the intention to redefine a number of SI base units in terms of invariants of nature, namely the kilogram, the ampere, the kelvin and the mole: the new definitions would be based on fixed numerical values of the Planck constant, h, the elementary charge, e, the Boltzmann constant, k, and the Avogadro constant, NA, respectively. The definitions of all seven base units of the SI would also be uniformly expressed using the explicit-constant formulation, and specific mises en pratique would be drawn up to explain the realization of the definitions of each of the base units in a practical way.

— BIPM Bulletin Nov 2010

A quick look at the refs to SI units would have found this information. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:09, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm aware of the possible change. In any case the volt is a derived unit. A number of possible theoretical derivations exist, all being equivalent, but the description of any derivation should be clear and use widely understood terms. A number of possible realizations also exist, and the best realization can be expected to change from time to time as technology advances. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

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WP:APO

Awesome question on the WP:APO talk page. Thanks for contributing. --Hutcher (talk) 04:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

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Verifiability

Please don't insult people with edit summaries like this one:[10]. Actually I was in the process of explaining on the talk page, only SlimVirgin basically filibustered the process, and contrary to your assertion, Blueboar's edit showed a total understanding of the issue. Which suggests that you're the one with the deficit in understanding. Would you care to go clean up any of the hundreds of references to personal communications littering articles, or would you rather pretend the problem doesn't exist? Fences&Windows 21:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Due to the length of time since the edit, and the fact that the corresponding discussions on the talk page have been archived, I can't recall the precise objections I had to the section you added. I do agree with you that communications from an established expert to a Wikipedia editor cannot be added to an article because they are not published. My impression from Blueboar's edit combined with the discussion on the talk page was that some interpreted your article to be about what it really was about, others interpreted it as referring to personal communications that the Wikipedia had sent to someone and now wanted to add to Wikipedia, and still others thought it referred to communications amongst Wikipedia editors. Then there is the question of personal communications from authority A to an author B which were subsequently reliably published by B, and could be quoted in Wikipedia. I sincerely believe the only people with a better-than-even chance of correctly interpreting your new passage are the people who already understand how to use sources both in Wikipedia and elsewhere. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:44, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

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Feb 2011 Newsletter

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The Signpost: 7 February 2011

Your recent revert in Birthright citizenship in the United States

Re this revert, I've commented at Talk:Birthright citizenship in the United States#Section heading: Statute, by birth within U.S. Cheers. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:50, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Your revert in pound (mass)

I don't understand your edit summary History is anything before the birth of the youngest literate person. The point is that the pound was never defined as a unit of force; at least there is no source cited to say that it was. It makes no sense to make this statement in the introductory paragraph to the definitions when all the definitions discussed in the section are clearly referring to a unit of mass. SpinningSpark 00:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I have created a new section on the article's talk page to discuss this. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 February 2011

Please desist in your personal attacks.

I stand by what I wrote. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:30, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Why make this edit—with that edit summary?

With this edit you removed a comma with an edit summary of "Fix date conversion error". The recent conversion was made via this edit however that edit did not introduce the comma that you removed (following the 2010). Why did you perform your edit with the edit summary you provided?  GFHandel.   03:31, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

A correct date conversion would have removed the comma after the year, because such a comma is used after years in mdy dates, but not usually in dmy dates. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
By usually, I meant that a comma is not used unless it is needed for some reason other than just because there is a date present. Chicago Manual of Style 14th ed. p. 176 gives the example "On 6 October 1924 Longo arrived in Bologna." But if there were a list of 3 or more dates, commas would be required, as with any list: Longo's arrival dates in Blogona were 6 October 1924, 8 March 1925, and 12 September 1925. Chicago specifically states "In the date style preferred by the University of Chicago Press [dmy], no commas are used to mark off the year".
As an American, I suffer from the disadvantage of not having British, Canadian, or Australian style guides at hand, so it is not convenient for me to consult any other style guides that prefer the dmy format. My other style guides prefer mdy. I have no personal preference for either style, so long as each style is carried out in line with high quality sources (and recognizing that high quality sources use consistent format within a(n) article/book/web page....) Jc3s5h (talk) 03:52, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I see now where the problem arises... It may be proscribed in the CMOS, but is not incorrect to place a comma after a date in the Ai Weiwei case. It is a common usage outside the USA, and is "needed". Like in many other instances in English when commas are employed, not necessarily to solve ambiguities when reading, but because it helps to emphasises the natural pause in the phrase at its placement when reading it. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:28, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
When I was in grade school I was taught to put a comma where I would take a breath when reading aloud. I respect this system and will not remove a comma if I think that is the reason for its placement. Of course, bots don't breath and so that method won't work for bots. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:38, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
My point exactly. SO what's the problem with trailing commas? Now perhaps you could find me a few examples which clearly show that a date with trailing comma converted from mdy to dmy whose meaning will have changed by the comma's non-removal? Feel free to consult with Mr Anderson, who is shouting just as loudly, if you cannot come up with an example. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 08:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
It is not necessary that the meaning change for an edit to change the meaning to make the edit wrong. An edit that changes correct style into incorrect style is wrong. Since Wikipedia does not provide a regular expression search, it is difficult to find examples of specific instances. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:58, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

An example of unnatural placement of a comma if mdy to dmy conversion were performed may be found in Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union (after 1939):

Thus the military agreement from August 14 and subsequent Sikorski-Mayski Agreement from August 17, 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in relation to Poland null and void,

Jc3s5h (talk) 13:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

  • "When I was in grade school I was taught to put a comma where I would take a breath when reading aloud."—Interesting idea. Might be OK as a contingency to get little kids to think about one aspect of comma usage, but as a principle for adult writers, it is a gross oversimplification. Concerning the bot application, methinks you may run the risk of appearing to be WP:POINTY. Please assure me this is not the case. Ohconfucius is not perfect (as for me and for you), and has made mistakes as a bot and script runner. But he shows every sign of good faith and of learning from any mistakes he has made (how else does one acquire the right experience?). I think you need to give him a little more slack, and come back with full force if he doesn't live up to BAG's high standards if granted bot permission. (I am posting this at the application, too.) Tony (talk) 06:54, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I think a minimum level of responsibility for a person running a bot is to acknowledge that if an article was free of errors before a bot runs, and it contains an error after the bot runs, the bot, the person who ran it, or both are responsible for the error. Period. No one who rejects this notion should be writing or running bots. Upon reading Ohconfucius's passage about the scope of the bot, and not being responsible for punctuation that follows the bot, I inferred that Ohconfucius does not subscribe to the underlined principle. I will regret my statements if, and only if, my inference proves to be wrong over the course of time. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

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WP:APO template deletions

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The Signpost: 28 February 2011

Headbomb's edit to WP:MOSNUM

Headbomb said you conceded that the cite dates may differ from accessdates in the references section in a MOSNUM talk discussion. I've read through the discussion and could not see such a 'concession' from you, nor do I see that there has been consensus to change the wording in support of allowing what he wants. Have I missed anything? --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:59, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

There was a proposal in 2009 on all-numeric dates; that proposal did not establish a consensus. Before the proposal was offered, there was an example in the guideline showing an accessdate parameter in the YYYY-MM-DD format, so I concluded that the proposal did nothing to disturb the existing consensus to allow accessdates in the YYYY-MM-DD format. Personally I would prefer to see the same format used throughout references, but that preference does not have consensus. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:08, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:APO March Newsletter

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RE: What is a symbol?

I would say, that as far as current English usage (not necessarily the "proper" usage, but usage by a majority of people) of the terms symbol, acronym and initialism, the term "UTC" would fall under acronym or initialism. Coordinated Universal Time isn't a unit of measurement like metre or second, so I don't think one would call it a symbol. Whether is is an acronym or an initialism depends on one's definition of the words. There's really no single authority as to what differentiates the two, but the word "initialism" isn't really as widely used as acronym, and most people would just call it an acronym. I think. :P Who knows, maybe I'm completely wrong; it's happened before and it's bound to happen again :) We could just call it an abbreviation like the lead does. Hope this helps! --- c y m r u . l a s s (talk me, stalk me) 00:26, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

US customary units nickname - Fred Flintstone units

Dear Jc3s5h, I understand your undoing of my edit 417057753 on United States customary units. However, I must admit the originality of the nickname FFU. How about mentioning the term FFU is a nickname or an ironic alternative name instead of simply removing the term? I wouldn't have added this if it weren't for the respectful source. Xionbox₪ 10:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I just found the term is mentioned in the FFU article (I simply added the link just now) Xionbox₪ 10:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the redirect is useful, because a reader might encounter FFU in some context were it is not explained, and try to look it up in Wikipedia. Since the redirect is appropriate, some mention of it in the article is appropriate, so long as it is portrayed as a term used by metric advocates (including me) who deride customary units. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good. I added "pejoratively" before the term, and kept the source (which is necessary due to the originality of the term).Xionbox₪ 11:01, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

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ern== The recent proposal to amend the external links policy ==

The reason for this proposal was that I was specifically told by another user that the external links policy did apply to links used as citations. Is there a similar policy regarding external links used as citations (that they must be in footnotes). If there isn't, this can be resolved at once.James500 (talk) 20:35, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The external links guideline states "Sites that have been used as sources in the creation of an article should be cited in the article, and linked as references, either in-line or in a references section. Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline...." Jc3s5h (talk) 00:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

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Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Talk:Earthing system.
Message added 03:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thanks

For the changes on Birth Certificate. It's much better now. Mystylplx (talk) 17:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 April 2011

Question on reverted edit

Hi Jc3s5h,

first of all: Should my language seem offensive or inappropriate in any way I beg your pardon as I am not a native speaker.

I refer on your latest revert of my edit to the article on "Equation of time". I added an additional case which you removed stating that it was an error which I do not think is the case.

Let me explain my position: The problem was that we want to make α a continuous function of λ satisfying α(λ=0)=0 by choosing the correct branch of tan−1x.

In general

for all . If you are not so familiar with mathematical notation, this means essentially that for all x slightly less than the expression tan x obtains very high positive values and for all x slightly greater than the expression tan x obtains very high negative values. Now, given the value of ε we get cos ε ≈ 0.92 > 0. Thus, also

for all . Applying the "generic" arctangent function Tan-1 (i.e. and ) as done in the article thus yields

again for all . Informally spoken, you need to add (as k gets greater) an additional π at every to make the function continuous for all . As by default, the required branches of Tan−1x to make the resulting function continuous of λ are

Now, as , the following inequalities hold: . This means that the case that I added was correct and required. In addition to my original edit one could even omit the last case in the article () as it is impossible to occur (although it is not wrong in mathematical terms, of course...).

I would be thankful if you leave me a message on my discussion page on your thoughts about this. Thanks!

Regards,

Eloquant (talk) 08:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Jc3s5h. You have new messages at Jayjg's talk page.
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Talkback

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Smally Perturbed by singularities

Um. Not to be an enormous pain in the keester, and I thank you for all of your kind intentions, but...not all one-word edits are incorrect and/or bad. I'm going to try and be as precise as possible in the wordage I use here, because this is an issue that directly and fervently concerns me.

Circumscision is not a Commandment. Seriously. It is not mentioned in /any/ of the Ten Commandments. It was a "spoken" command to Tzipporah, at some point after she had a child with Moses, to which she responded with the presumably correct sacrifice. If they had made something like the BonsaiKitten, or BonsaiAngoraGoat, would really be more kind of geographically apt; that mighta worked as well.

Yes, it was intended to represent all of the following generations of Abraham, etc, but as near as I can figure, there is no "leadership' requirement to this constraint, other than that god be willing to listen to you. Which happens after you've achieved a certain age, in earth years, in Judaism, or upon other, yes, standard, nebulous ephemera....

In any case, I think "directive" is a better word there; because it is, in all complete honesty, the truth, as it is written in the King James Version of the Bible, and, also, less misleading.

I'm suggesting this last bit as a warning against pain/suffering in the generalest of senses: you may not want to do too much research into my source material, but the Biblical stuff can be found in Exodus. Thank you, again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darion29 (talk • contribs) 23:55, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2011

Transformer article

Hi Jc, regarding your deletion of a newbie edit in the transformer article. I would support that if the article was already 100% referenced, but in this case the entire section is unreferenced. Did you have some other objection to the edit? If not, I think a better approach would be to restore it and politely ask the contributor to supply a source. SpinningSpark 09:23, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Almost everything in that section is non-obvious. I would support asking the new contributor if he has sources available to support the whole section, since he/she seems to know something about the subject. Indeed, I will make such a request. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
You did not respond to the question of restoring their edit. I think we should AGF on this one and only delete if a source becomes available which contradicts it. SpinningSpark 23:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Assume good faith applies to people, not information. I feel any non-obvious information should be cited, and this should be insisted upon when there is an editor who seems likely to have a source at hand and just didn't realize that he/she was supposed to cite the source. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Agreed, but it is spiteful to delete their post in the meantime. This is the sort of thing that drives new editors away - although good chance he has walked already. As I said above, if this were a featured article it would be different, but the edit is an addition to a section already unreferenced. As far as either of us can tell, it is perfectly accurate information. Again, it would be different if you suspected it of being dubious - do you? If you think in all likelihood it is good, then let it stand. What I am asking for is show some encouragement to new editors, not give them a slap in the face. The assumption that the editor has a source to hand and has just neglected to quote it might not be the case. It sounds to me more like he is talking from experience and a demand for a cite will need a search on google or whatever, just as me or you would have to do. SpinningSpark 20:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Gentlemen, I just logged in after a long time. I see the edits were modified and published on the web site. The reason I did not site a source is because the requirement is driven by Underwriters Laboratories and much of this information is available on a vendors web site (such as http://www.dolphs.com/pdfs/Dol_VarnishsResin_chart.pdf). I did not think it would be ethical to list a source that is specific to a vendor and/or agency. For that reason I had a hard time deciding what to use as a reference. JC, i don't know how you want to treat that. If you want me to look up specific Underwriter Laboratory requirements, i can list them as a source. Just don't know the right thing to do. Please let me know and I can site your preferred source. Ajsharma01 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajsharma01 (talk • contribs) 14:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Commercial websites are not our favourite source of information but they can be used with care if there is nothing better. However, the page you have linked to is merely a list of products and does not really discuss the issues so I don't think it could be used except in a very limited way for facts about those specific products. On the other hand, a quick google book search turned up numerous sources discussing this subject so referencing to textbooks should be easily acheivable. SpinningSpark 17:01, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello spiningspark. you are absolutely right regarding the google search. i will find the right book/page and reference it in the near term. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajsharma01 (talk • contribs) 06:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 May 2011

Hello

I am very sorry you deleted my picture.I wanted to show how Californian notary seal looks like.I posted in "united states" section. I think it is quite interesting thing,and something I would like to take a look while reading that article. When a man comes to review this page,he probably wants to have as many information as he can.I just want to allow that to him AdnanS (talk) 07:15, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 May 2011

Greek letters

Hi. Just a question: What's the status on the matter of use of Greek letters inside math formulas? did we have any development on that in the Manual of Style or somewhere else? Thanks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I have not seen any responses. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism help

Hi Jc3s5h - pretty new to wikipedia so please forgive me any faux pas. You and others have warned user 212.62.5.158 about vandalism of pages, but this user has added what appears to be outdated information not really relevant to the whole of an article in an attempt to discredit the organisation. What is the best route to address this please? I don't want to merely delete. Can provide more info and sources if you are able to help. Thanks & regards Bottlegr33n (talk) 14:56, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, 212.62.5.158 is assigned by a British internet service provider to one of its customers. The customer to which it is assigned probably changes from time to time, so I would suggest concentrating on the recent behavior of whoever has the address at this time. Place warnings about any inappropriate edits on User talk:212.62.5.158. Templates may be used for this purpose, or you may use your own words. A selection of templates is available at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:30, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

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Non-Obvious Changes

Sorry, I don't know the proper way to reply to a user talk message, and hope this method is appropriate. You made a comment about a "non-obvious" entry that I added to the Gregorian calendar page, presumably concerning the possibility of using a short 30800-year computus, but that is obvious arithmetic. If you just work through the information provided using an arbitrary precision calculator such as WolframAlpha.com then you'll obtain the exact Gregorian mean year. It is simply a multiple of the 400-year Gregorian cycle (= 400 years times 77 repeats) having a mean month within a good range for the present era. I don't know how to properly remove your "citation needed" flags, so could you please do so? The point here is not to propose any computus reform, but rather to indicate that there was no real need for the computus cycle to be so long, and it was probably done unintentionally. Kalendis (talk) 16:56, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Please read WP:CALC. I hope you will agree the complexity of your calculations go far beyond what the policy contemplates or what a typical reader of the Gregorian calendar article could reproduce.
Because the Gregorian calendar has a religious origin, and is subject to religious disputes, and also because there are people out there who are zealots about their personal calendar reform proposals, it is important that the Wikipedia: No original research policy be strictly enforced in this article. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:25, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

You undid my equinox graph at the Revised Julian calendar page. The SOLEX program that generated the data for it was published by Prof. Aldo Vitagliano of the University of Naples, it is not my original research. All I did was format it nicely for graphic presentation, and convert universal time moments to Jerusalem local apparent time, then placed it in the public domain. The graph is certainly more useful than the vague and misleading and unsupported equinox drift statements that were there previously. Compare with this graph on the Gregorian calendar page, which is what inspired me to make this graph for the Revised Julian page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Calendar_seasonal_error Would you call that "original research" too? That graph is entirely erroneous because it depicts the summer solstice, which is irrelevant (the solstitial mean year is presently more than a minute shorter than the equinoctial mean year). The appropriate chart for both calendars should show the spring equinox of the northern hemisphere. Kalendis (talk) 00:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It must be published in a reliable publication. I did a bit of searching and found that Prof. Vitagliano is not a professional astronomer, and his program is a hobby. Trying to perform simulations over a 20,000 year span involves a great deal of original research. I would say your graph is flat-out wrong because it says it is giving Revised Gregorian calendar dates. Calendar dates throughout history have always been a count of days, which are affected by the gradual and unpredictable slowing down of the earth (ΔT). That effect alone creates uncertainty that dwarfs the effect the graph is claiming to show.
As far as the graph in Gregorian calendar, I would tend to agree that the northern summer solstice is probably the least relevant solstice or equinox to graph, but the dates of one of these events over a 400 year span near the present is a lot easier to verify than over a 20,000 year span. If you wanted to delete that graph on the basis it is original research, I wouldn't complain. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:24, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
As far as "the graph is certainly more useful than the vague and misleading and unsupported equinox drift statements that were there previously", yes the previous equinox drift statements were so badly worded it was hard to figure out what they meant, and they were unsupported. However, uncertainty in ΔT makes long-term graphs useless. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:34, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The SOLEX numerical integration algorithm was published in Celestial Mechanics 1997; 66:293. The program is widely used by professional astronomers. It was used and cited frequently in the calculations behind many of the Mathematical Astronomy Morsels book series (volumes 1 through 5) authored by Jean Meeus, published by Willmann-Bell. Without doubt SOLEX is more accurate than the world "gold standard" in celestial mechanics (Jet Propulsion Lab) because it uses a higher-order integrator than JPL, uses 80-bit floating point precision (JPL only uses 64-bits), takes more near-Earth and near-Mars asteroids into account, and can take solar mass loss into account at all times (JPL entirely ignores solar mass loss). JPL can get away with their limitations because their focus is on near-present era and recent historical observations and space missions.

Trying to perform simulations over a 20,000 year span involves a great deal of original research.

It is only a 10,000 year span. SOLEX is valid for plus or minus 10000 years from the present era. This was shown in the article cited above, and validations of the current version are always included in the SOLEX user manual, using JPL as the comparison method. By ending my graph at 10000 AD it went only 8000 years into the future, and that calculation took only about a minute. The graph could be truncated to start in the year 1900 and end at the year 8000, but that would result in the loss of some interesting features in earlier and later years, respectively.

I would say your graph is flat-out wrong because it says it is giving Revised Gregorian calendar dates.

In the file name, title, and x-axis title it says Revised Julian, not Revised Gregorian. The dates are truly Revised Julian dates. SOLEX computes the equinox moments as the number of days relative to noon on January 1st, 2000 AD (Gregorian=Revised Julian), but I converted those moments to proper Revised Julian dates.

Calendar dates throughout history have always been a count of days, which are affected by the gradual and unpredictable slowing down of the earth (ΔT). That effect alone creates uncertainty that dwarfs the effect the graph is claiming to show.

The effect of ΔT was included in the calculation, using the Espenak/Meeus polynomials recommended by NASA at their Eclipses web site, and their sources are cited there. If ΔT were not taken into account then the graph would be quite wild. Perhaps you misinterpreted the graph. The graph is not claiming to show any effect. It merely depicts when the equinox moments occur according to a Jerusalem local apparent time clock. The long-term calendar performance is impressively good, certainly much better than is the case for the Gregorian calendar. The medium-term equinox wobble of about 2 days is similar to the Gregorian calendar and is due the same reason, which is that the leap years are not as smoothly spread as possible. If they were smoothly spread then the leap year intervals would mostly be 4 years with occasional 5-year intervals, but both calendars have mostly 4 years with occasional 8-year intervals (when a century leap year is omitted). Would it help to reinstate the graph and then add an interpretation paragraph along these lines?

As far as the graph in Gregorian calendar, I would tend to agree that the northern summer solstice is probably the least relevant solstice or equinox to graph, but the dates of one of these events over a 400 year span near the present is a lot easier to verify than over a 20,000 year span.

The only relevant reference point for a March 21st target date is the northward equinox. The north solstice certainly isn't any less relevant than the southward equinox or south solstice. Anyone designing a calendar for use today and into the future would be well advised to refer it to the north solstice, as the mean north solstitial year will be stable for the next 10-11 millennia. By contrast the mean southward equinoctial and south solstitial years are both rapidly getting shorter, and the mean northward equinoctial year will be stable for only another 3-4 millennia. Nevertheless, the Julian, Gregorian, and Revised Julian calendars were all concerned with March 21st, so the superior stability of the north solstitial year is irrelevant.

With SOLEX it makes no difference in "difficulty" to go for 400 years or 10000 years or for that matter 100000 years, but the Earth axial tilt becomes progressively more uncertain if pushed beyond 10000 years from the present era.

I also used astronomical algorithms published by Jean Meeus, and those in "Calendrical Calculations: 3rd edition" by Dershowitz and Reingold to verify the SOLEX calculations. Again, using such astronomical algorithms the valid time range is similar and the longer time span is not an increased difficulty -- for a computer -- and I used the same polynomials for ΔT. The calculated moments were so close that on the scale of the graph the differences are barely perceptible. Nevertheless, I go with SOLEX as it is indisputably the more accurate method.

If you wanted to delete that graph on the basis it is original research, I wouldn't complain. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:24, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree that it is original research, only that the solstice chart is wrong and not the appropriate event to depict. If I were to submit my Revised Julian equinox chart to a journal for publication they would reject it as being too trivial to publish. No journal would regard it as original research! Nevertheless, the chart is highly pertinent to the the Revised Julian article in Wikipedia.

Before you deleted my chart, I was planning to replace the Gregorian solstice graph with an appropriate equinox graph similar to the one that you deleted. However there are some twists that make it less obvious how to produce such a graph for the Gregorian calendar. The reference meridian for the Revised Julian calendar was explicitly defined as Jerusalem, and because the reform occurred in the 20th century it is obvious that the beginning of the civil calendar day is at midnight. The reference meridian for the Gregorian calendar, however, was never specified, and because the reform sought to restore the equinox to the place it had in 325 AD the calculation should properly use the prior sunset as the start of the civil calendar day, as was the Christian practice then, so the locale makes a difference for reckoning the sunset moment. This will result in a Gregorian equinox graph whose interpretation is moderately obscure. Anyhow, I'm not about to produce such a graph if you are going to continue undermining my work. Kalendis (talk) 03:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Since SOLEX was published in a peer-reviewed journal, that puts a different light on the matter. I have not seen anyone object to values being looked up in a computer ephemeris, and the fact that SOLEX uses numerical integration rather than Chebyshev polynomials to find values between pre-computed values doesn't matter, since the system as a whole has been published.
However, polynomial approximations to ΔT are not reliable; Borkowski, who is cited in Tropical year, wrote "many researchers have attempted to fit a parabola to the measured ΔT values in order to determine the magnitude of the deceleration of the Earth's rotation. The results, when taken together, are rather discouraging" and "because of high uncertainty in the Earth's rotation it is premature at present to suggest any [calendar] reform that would reach further than a few thousand years into the future." Blackburn & Holford-Strevens (also cited in "Tropical year") also found that uncertainties prevented long-term calendar reform; they mentioned a suggestion that extended to the year 6000, but didn't give a specific end date beyond which calendar reform predictions were futile.
I could support replacing the graph in the "Gregorian calendar" article with one of the northward equinox provided the SOLEX program were properly cited (the URL for a copy of the paper is http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997CeMDA..66..293V&link_type=ARTICLE&db_key=AST&high= ) since the shorter time span will not be significantly affected by ΔT.
If you wish to include the Revised Julian calendar graph, I think it should be limited to a time span where the uncertainty in ΔT is small; I would suggest cutting off at the point where the estimated ΔT is 0.25 day, which is one major division on the graph. The fact that a polynomial prediction of ΔT is used should be stated.
Please keep in mind that any non-obvious material added without a citation is regarded as (unacceptable) original research. It is the responsibility of the editor adding the material to provide the citation, not the responsibility of other editors to find one. Jc3s5h (talk) 07:38, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, I added a March Equinox section as per our discussion here, and put considerable effort into citations and links to support it. It may be necessary for you to refresh your web browser when you access the graph to see the new version, because the file name is the same as before. If you have any further concerns, please work with me constructively to converge on an acceptable version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kalendis (talk • contribs) 03:27, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

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