User talk:Gerry Ashton/Archive 2

WikiProject Disambiguation Talk Request

This is a form message being sent to all WikiProject Disambiguation participants. I recently left a proposed banner idea on the WikiProject Disambiguation talk page and I would appreciate any input you could provide. Before it can be approved or denied, I would prefer a lot of feedback from multiple participants in the project. So if you have the time please join in the discussion to help improve the WikiProject. Keep up the good work in link repair and thanks for your time. Nehrams2020 21:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry...

...I stomped your edits on Waterbury, Connecticut. However, looking at the diff, it looks like I did what you were doing already. Funny we both moved TIMEXPO. ;) Done as far as I am concerned. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 02:20, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

A quick look suggest our edits amount to the same thing; I just didn't go back far enough to avoid all the deterioration. --Gerry Ashton 02:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Your edits to Anno Domini and Common Era

Hi, I reverted those references to "conception of" Christ. Did you base those changes on some particular reference? The Catholic Encyclopedia is very clear that the calculation is based on the presumed date of birth. (Which of course we all know now is incorrect.) -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 00:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Please read Anno Domini#History of Anno Domini. Take note of the reference Blackburn & Holford-Strevens (2003, 778–779). Furthermore, Blackburn & Holford-Strevens refer to "Dionysius' Incarnation year" on p. 780. On P. 778 they write "if Dionysius, whose calendrical rues ro argumenta make September, not January, the beginning of the year, treated incarnation as synonymous with birth (as his early followers, including Bede do) rather than conception...", indicating it is an open question whether Dionysius considered the conception or the birth to be the Incarnation. --Gerry Ashton 00:20, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The glossary of Blackburn & Holford-Strevens (p. 881) contains this entry:

• Incarnation era: an era reckoned from the supposed date of Christ's Incarnation; usually that of the year AD, otherwise called the Nativity, Christian, or Common era, but in an Alexandrian, Coptic, or Ethiopic context an era reckonned from 29 August AD 8. (The distinction between Incarnation and Nativity was not drawn until the late ninth century, when in some places the Incarnation epoch was identified with Christ's conception, i.e. the Annunciation on 25 March; see 'Annunciation style'.) --Gerry Ashton 00:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Gerry, I'm not sure what the term conception would even mean when applied to the traditional story of the genesis of Christ. I won't revert your changes; I don't do edit-wars. I've asked Joe Kress for his opinion. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 00:37, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Nice move on the Common Era page. I was trying to figure out what to do with that little screed. Moving it to the Talk page works just fine.
Septegram 20:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

edits to Anno Domini#Popularization

You added to my talk page: 'You added the statement "Most Syriac manuscripts written at the end of the 19th century still gave the date in the end-note using the "year of the Greeks" (Anno Graecorum = Seleucid era). Can you provide a source for this statement? "' I presume you mean some written reference which says this. Well, unfortunately, sad person that I am, this comes from my study of texts extant in Syriac manuscripts and catalogues of these libraries, and not from any single source. The best that I can offer you is a partial translation (by me) of the catalogue of the abbey of Rabban Hormizd at Alqos. This only mentions A.Gr. a few times, tho. Feel free to delete the comment if you wish. It is true, tho. Years AD are simply not found in the colophons of these things, which is a nuisance for those of us who don't remember the conversion quickly. Roger Pearse 19:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Scher's catalogue is: Addai Scher, Notice sur les manuscrits syriaques conservés dans la bibliothèque du couvent des Chaldéens de Notre-Dame-des-Semences, Journal Asiatique Sér. 10: 8, 9 (1906). This may be found online at gallica.fr, by searching for "Journal Asiatique". Whether it is fair to quote it in support of that comment, tho, I do not know. Roger Pearse 18:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at this

This anonymous user just made a series of strange edits, all of which appear to be vandalism. Since your user page was targeted, I thought I'd bring it to your attention. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 07:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --Gerry Ashton 19:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Notary Public

Discussion moved to User talk:Misterrick.

Rifles

Sorry, I've not used the History tab in that way before; I did make sure to leave a notification in the discussion page about my actions, though. ^_^

Edit: I meant to say not the History tab, but the "Edit summary" box. Heh. So much for listening. But now that you've pointed it out to me, I've made much more use of it.

Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess

Dear Gerry—you may be interested in putting your name to, or at least commenting on this new push to get the developers to create a parallel syntax that separates autoformatting and linking functions. IMV, it would go a long way towards fixing the untidy blueing of trivial chronological items, and would probably calm the nastiness between the anti- and pro-linking factions in the project. The proposal is to retain the existing function, to reduce the risk of objection from pro-linkers. Tony 04:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, Gerry. Tony 07:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

MoS (writing about fiction)

In the past you have participated in discussion about this guideline, or voted in it's acceptence. There is currently a discussion about a partial rewrite of this guideline. The discussion could benefit from some more input. Thank you for your contributions. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 16:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Realnotary

I am not, of course, able to offer any legal advice concerning Realnotary.com. My observations are merely one layman's opinion, with no intent to provide guidance on legal matters:

Florida does have this new law concerning notarization of online documents -- allowing notarization of electronic signatrures for electronic banking and such. As far as I can figure it out, Realnotary operates on the following logic: once a physical document has been scanned into an electronic database, it becomes and electronic document, subject to electronic notarization, which they provide. As a matter of my own personal political opinion on a matter of public policy, I don't understand how a system such as Flordia's, which seems so open to poetntial abuse, won't defeat the whole purpose of noatries, which is to create public trust in notarized documents. I am also not impressed with what is, in my opinion, congused and confusing English on Realnotary website.

I come from a state where the notary fee is so low it would be utterly impossible for anyone to have a notary "business" that makes money. Thus, notaries are almost always: stationery shop and candy store owners, as a neighborhood service and to get people into the store; employees of banks, for customer service; secretaries of lawyers and real estate agents, for the same reason; and active political party members, mostly to navigate our state's rather complex and burdensome nominating petition system. If someone opened up a business as a full-time notary, I'd be puzzled and suspicious.HarvardOxon 01:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Abbe condenser

I'm fairly new at this, but it didn't look like a completely proper article to me, and knowing nothing about the subject I wasn't confident to clean it up. Would Wikify be better? Frickeg 06:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I've replied to your message on my talk page User talk:Frickeg to keep the discussion in one place.Frickeg 21:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Spaces v. commas

The article on SI seems to indicate in the "SI writing style" section that spaces (it hints at smaller-than-normal spaces, perhaps the Unicode punctuation space) are used as separators to prevent any confusion with the period or comma as decimal points (both of which are allowed). The section has an air of authoritativeness, but it doesn't actually state that this is standard, and there is no reference for that bullet. I'd rather stick with what's there (though I would prefer the punctuation space or another small space, but there's Windows 9x to consider) than risk upsetting someone, which I do all too often anyway.—Kbolino 06:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I know, I was merely making idle conversation.—Kbolino 20:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Revert

Reverted your removal on Digital signature. I'm in the process of revamping the article, and I'd rather that kind of information stay so I can try to verify it. I added a "citation needed" tag though. Mangojuice^talk 19:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Verifiability

What is this? Did you see that quotations fall under the category of "material", which is already stated there and the reason you gave in the edit summary is irrelevant to that? What about the second, unrelated change, which you also reverted and is not mentioned in the edit summary? —Centrx→talk • 04:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying that " 'Verifiable' in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source" means that quotations must be attributed? That's not how I understand that sentence. I understand it to mean that anything that isn't obvious should be mentioned somewhere in one of the references, but there is not necessarily any requirement to provide inline citations saying which sentence came from which source. In the case of really obvious facts, like the fact that March comes after February, readers can be expected to consult general reference works like dictionaries. But that isn't good enough for quotations. Quotations should be accompanied by an inline citation showing which source, and which page within that source, it was taken from (or other location information for electronic sources in place of the page number).

As for striking the phrase "or it may be removed", I think this is covered well enough further down the page, but if you want to put that back, I don't feel strongly one way or the other. --Gerry Ashton 04:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Quotation citing is a very particular aspect. It is not central to Wikipedia:Verifiability and it does not belong in the introduction. The introduction is not the place to cover all contingencies and details. —Centrx→talk • 04:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Moving the part about quotations from the introduction to the body of the article could be done, but I don't see any such mention in the body of the policy right now. Furthermore, the requirement to attribute quotations does not fit naturally under any of the existing headings, so either a new heading would be needed, or one of the existing headings would have to be modified. I really do feel it should be in the policy, and not just buried in a guideline; I would really feel justified in removing a quotation that lacked an inline cite from an artcle just because it lacked the citation. On balance, I think I prefer the conciseness of having it in the introduction. --Gerry Ashton 05:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Why would quotations have a higher requirement for citation than other material? I don't see any special reason why: 'Plato defined human beings as "featherless bipeds"' would require any more citation than if it did not have the quotation marks. This extends to even longer quotations. Sometimes people get the quotations wrong, but so too do people get plain information wrong. —Centrx→talk • 16:04, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I realize that some media, like television and newspapers, do not identify the specific place a quotation was taken from, but all scholarly papers do, and that is the model usually followed in Wikipedia policies. One frequently used style manual, the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed.) says on page 356–357 "Whether authors paraphrase or quote from sources directly, they should give credit to words and ideas taken from others. In most instances a note or parenthetical reference in the text keyed to the bibliography or list of sources is sufficient acknowledgement."

Another guide, by Kate Turabian (1987), A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is often adopted by college professors as a requirement for their students. It says on page 69:

This chapter demonstrates how to include the words and ideas of others in a paper by quoting works accurately and attributiong quotations and ideas to their authors in notes (chapter 9), parenthetical references and reference lists (chapter 10), and bibliographies (chapter 10). Failure to give credit is plagiarism.

Citing quotations is a big deal in the academic world; if a student doesn't bother with it, it would be tough to graduate from university. Changing the Wikipedia policy about it would be a big deal. --Gerry Ashton 19:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

All quotations should be cited—all material should be cited—but that is different from making this distinction between quotations and material in general. There is no need for such distinction; the essence of the sentence you changed was that "Any controversial material without a source may be removed" not "Controversial material should have sources". All non-trivial statements should have sources. —Centrx→talk • 19:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

(Unindent) Any quotation that is not accompanied by an inline or prose citation indicating where it came from should be removed, or modified to indicate the source. The quotation marks make it evident that plagiarism has occured. Now, when ideas that can only be found in one source are paraphrased and there is no citation to the source, that's plagiarism too, and it should also be removed or repaired, but since there are no quotation marks, it isn't obvious on its face that plagiarism has occured. For all the casual reader knows, the ideas are present in many sources and so don't need an inline citation. --Gerry Ashton 19:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

BWMA

I noticed that you removed the link to the website of my book, About the Size of It. This particular book, and Vivian Linacre's forthcoming book, are both BWMA publications: he's the President, I'm on the national committee, and we have written these books to explain BWMA's beliefs and policies to the wider public. I notice that other sites contain links to their publications. For example, the UK Metric Association has a long-standing link to their publication 'A Very British Mess,' and no-one has removed it. Is it inappropriate to post these kinds of links at any time, or did I just add the link in the wrong way?

I believe it is inappropriate for an author to promote his or her own book through Wikipedia. If someone else wishes to mention a book, fine. Ideally the ISBN would be included so that the reader would be led to a more neutral source of information about how to access a copy of the book; suggestions about free access through libraries would be provided, as well as a variety of book retailers. This is more appropriate than linking to the author's web site. See Wikipedia:ISBN for information about this linking process. --Gerry Ashton 22:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Deleting user warnings

Your blocking threat to Incustuff27 (talk · contribs) - can you cite anything on that? I'm not challenging you per se, I want to be able to cite it myself! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

My reasoning is that a sequence of warning templates are applied, such as test1, test2, test3, test4, or spam1, spam2, .... If the early warnings in the sequence are hidden, editors will not apply the correct level of warning, and the user will unfairly evade the final warnings that could result in blocking on the next offense. I do recall reading in some policy or template that removing warnings was not acceptable, but I can't find the quote at the moment. --Gerry Ashton 00:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Rats. Please do let me know if you find it. Would come in very handy from time to time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

RFC/discussion of article National Union of General Workers

A request for comments has been filed about the use of anonymous sources in reliable publications. The RFC can be found by the article's name in this list, and the actual discussion can be found on Talk:National_Union_of_General_Workers#Request_for_Comment_-_Use_of_anonymous_sources_in_reliable_publications in case you wish to participate. Thank you for your contributions. Sparkzilla 06:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Unicode punctuation space (U+2008)

The Unicode punctuation space is designed to be the same width as a narrow unit of punctuation (period or comma). The code chart says nothing about breaking behavior, so I assume it does break. I also considered the problems it creates with potential editing, but I've been chastised for using HTML entity references in the past, so I tend to avoid them when making edits (there is no a character entity, but the decimal reference is  ). I was only going to replace the FONT tags (which have been deprecated for some ten years now) at first (noticing them in the diff report), but I couldn't think of a reasonable alternative in ASCII, without adjusting font size (which is a crappy workaround way to do it, deprecated tags or otherwise). As with all Unicode characters, this creates potential compatibility issues, but I honestly cannot think of a reasonable way to separate the digits without using the special Unicode spaces (thin space, six-per-em space, punctuation space, or hair space--I think the Unicode folks were high when they created all these darn spaces) or a locale-specific character (like the comma or single quotation mark).—Kbolino 15:31, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Side note, I'm going to take a nap, so don't take a lack of response as an insult or anything.—Kbolino 15:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

February name

Hello. I put a mere note about the name of february in the gregorian calendar article that you inmediately drop, arguing that is mere speculation. I think, as a member, that a 'citation needed' or a talk in my member page would be more fairplay.

First, I did not try to put a full etymological explanation on the fact, simply a mere note.

Second, and citing the february article in the wikipedia, "February was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 in the old Roman calendar". But, What was the 'leit motiv' of this ritual?

As I wrote, february is the coldest month, along with january, in the northern hemisphere winter. For that epoch, influenza was real deadly epidemic, and the peak of its mortality was, precisaly, on february. Many corpses, mainly childs, were needed to be handled in low healthy conditions in towns which extents diseases even more (in peace periods - let left the war apart). This is why this month was named after Februus (Etruscan god of death) and also why in Roman mythology, Febris ("fever") was the goddess who protected people against fevers and malaria (the last cited literally from the wikipedia again; see Febris). Both terms are intimately related, which is more noticiable in romance languages than in germanic and anglosaxon ones.

Then, under this conditions, these supersticious ancient romans celebrate purification rituals and shortened the length of this "bad month", in a hope that its bad influence ends as soon as possible.

This is, in summary, my current knowledge on the matter, so it is not mere speculation. I'll try to find any academic proof of this and I'll expose to you as soon I'll got. Yours.Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 11:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I've found a reliable source of the etymology of february in spanish ("febrero") and related words, which connects to the word "fiebre" ("fever") in english and other languages: Quarterly Newsletter of the Spanish Language Division of the American Translators, Volume 9, Issue 1 / March 2005 / ISSN 1550-2945, article "Whats in a word?" by Adriana Rosado-Bonewitz, available at http://www.ata-spd.org/Informate/Intercambios/InterV9No1Mar05.pdf (in spanish). I don't know if it could be useful for you as it is, but I give to you and I'm still searching.

Also, the wicktionary stands that "february" comes from "februa"-purification rituals and perhaps from "febris"-fever (please, see the entry). Do you'll drop this speculation too? ;-)Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 12:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

More citations: On A Self-Congratulatory Note, Or, All The Year Round: The Names of The Months (Filed in Oxford Etymologist on March 7, 2007) by Anatoly Liberman, available at http://blog.oup.com/2007/03/on_a_self_congr/, in english. A good summary of etymology of the names of the months. He cites the relationship between "february" and "fever" (although not in a strong way that I'm looking for).Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 17:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I would regard the Oxford University Press blog and the Quarterly Newsletter of the Spanish Language Division of the American Translators as reliable sources, so I would say that you have established with reliable sources that "February" and "fever" are related, and also the relation to purification rituals. I still don't see a reliable source for the plague being related to the name February. I would think the name February was well established in the English language by the time the black death reached Europe in 1348 (date for black death reaching Europe comes from http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=227323 ). --Gerry Ashton 20:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't get confused. I talk about influenza, a yearly winter recurrent disease related with cold weather, not black death. Although today the common winter influenza is under reasonable control in developed countries, in ancient times (and, in fact, up to the 20th century) it was extremely dangerous to weak persons. Not *every* year, of course, but periodically: the human body gets resistance, if it survives, but as you probably know, influenza is a highly mutant virus. Simply recall the actual governments' fear to the avian influenza and its possible infection to humans. Perhaps I pictured, or you recall, a hell-on-earth scenario when I talk about corpses, etc. Today is unimaginable a high mortality every february in peace times, year after year, but by the awakening of the roman empire this was a displeased reality. Ancient romans were really terrified when this month arrives and due to that reason dedicates this month to purify and to supersticiously avoiding the disease. One measure, among others, was to sacred the month in itself to the ancient etruscan god of the death, februus. Remember that the previous Romulus calendar even lacks winter months: they were simply a blank "juju" period. You should to suposse the fear they had to the winter, cold and fevers, mainly influenza. So it is not a surprise the fact that later reforms reduce the days of this fatal month, with the general approval. Think about it.

The ancient lack of knowledge about the true origin of infectious diseases derivated on religious rules and prohibitions related with health worldwide: the kosher of the jews, not to eat pork nor to drink liquors among muslims or not to eat meat at all among hinduists are sample remains, and all of them of the higher relevance to the cited religions. Why not similar ones for the ancient romans?

Meanwhile, I'm still searching for reliable sources that can confirm this. And, as you could see, I make efforts to find *true reliable* sources, not merely any text found randomly on the internet: there are many blogs, forums and personal pages (mainly in spanish; I am from Spain) which supports this point of view, but I discard them. And let me to translate the most relevant paragraph of the AT article (note: not an authoritative translation); as it is an article about spanish and latin words, I kept them as is, with their english translation in parenthesis:

There are many, many, the actual spanish words that have direct kinship with an ancient indoeuropean root that should be in use thousands years ago with the primitive meaning of 'to burn' or 'to warm'.

We have, in first place "fiebre" ("fever"), one of the most noticiable signs in medicine, characterized by the increasing of the body's temperature, along with its derivatives "febril", "afebril", "febrícula" and "febrífugo" ("febrile" and derivatives), all of them of common use among physicians.

It is also one of the most international physician's words, easely identifiable as derived from the latin "febril" in the most of the modern languages: "fievre" (frech), "fever" (english), "fiebre" (german), "febbre" (italian), "febra" (rumanian), "febre" (portuguese), "feber" (danish and swedish).

In the hypocratic times, fever was considered as a good simptom, without it there was almost incredible the cure; it is suspected, then, a direct relationship between "febril"-"fiebre" ("fever") and "februus" ("to purify"), having in mind that in every culture the fire has been always one of the main purify means.

Anyway, the case is that from the latin "februus" derivates the month name of february. In fact, the roman "februarius mensis", --sacred to the god februus-- last of the year of their calendar {N. of T.: it refers to the original king Numo calendar reform, in which the order of january and february were reversed} it was the purify month, that were celebrated from february 11 to 24. During this period, all the temples were closed; at sunset, offerings were made for the rest of the deceaseds' souls, and marriages and music playing were not allowed.

(copyright held by the author and publishers I already cited)Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 10:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

And more citations: Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, chapter III The sanitary conditions of ancient Rome, by Rodolfo Lanciani published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company Boston and New York, 1898, available at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/Lanciani/LANARD/3*.html. Classic and excellent (and length!), it focuses on malaria and Febris, not influenze and february explicitely, but you can easily relate them ("fevers" was in fact a wildcard word that covers many actual different diseases). And he talks about corpses, many corpes...Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 11:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

And, by now, the ultimate: St. Valentine's Holiday by L.L. Neuru, published in Labyrinth 64 (1996), Department of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, avalilable at http://www.classics.uwaterloo.ca/labyrinth/valentin.htm. Although focused in the St. Valentine's day, it makes an explicit connection between influenze ("flu") and february.

Can we agree right now? And, please, Could you put again my original note to the article or rewrite/re-edit it? At the end, I simply defend my contribution.Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 12:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I will not be available for a few days. May I suggest you put your contribution back, but include the references you have found. Remember that Spanish-language references are just fine; there is no need to find an English-language reference. --Gerry Ashton 12:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I did it. Thanks. This way is how wikipedia grows up and it is better day after day. Yours.Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 13:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism in Metric System

Examples of vandalism include: "The metric system was going to be changed but they didn't.of the base units and distribute copies."

Examples of ambiguous information: "France was introducing the French Republican Calendar which was falling in disuse and was finally abolished..."

Thank you. Count de Chagny 22:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I went back to what seems like a good version of the article, and fixed the differences. I also agree the information about the French Republican Calendar was not well expressed, and really does not belong in that spot in the article, if at all. --Gerry Ashton 23:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)