User talk:Plange/Archive3

Category:GA-Class (core) biography articles

Hi Plange, any reason why this category is named differently to the others? Could you fix it? --kingboyk 20:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

If we look at Category:Biography (core) articles by quality I see what you mean, since it is misleading you should be bold in changing it. Lincher 21:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not a case of being bold, it's exhaustion after spending the last two or three days writing a plugin for WPBio, today making big changes to our template etc etc etc. I'm knackered and have a glass of wine waiting for me :) Just building some lists for my bot and testing my plugin, and then I'll be off. --kingboyk 21:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll fix it tonight (i'll be off work shortly), but not sure how? I didn't see a Move button on the Category page... If you're meaning changing it in the WPBio template I can't since I'm not an admin... Thanks for all your hard work, BTW!! plange 22:18, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Lol, yes, you're right about the template and not being able to edit it :) I was so tired last night I forgot that. I'll rename the category in the template later when I try to fix the remaining bug. As for the moving of the category, unfortunately categories can only be removed manually - copy the old text over into the new category, include the names of the authors of the old category in the edit summary, and edit it. The old category then gets deleted. The same procedure is needed for changing the importance categories to priority. Let me know when it's done and which old cats need to be deleted and I'll attend to it. (Ordinarily, category renaming is done through WP:CFD, and if the move is large a bot is employed to help out. I think we'll skip that as the job is small (just moving the categories themselves; the template will take care of moving the articles into the new categories), and as we're dealing with WikiProject infrastructure which is of no interest or consequence to other editors we can skip the bureacracy. But if you ever want the same done for main categories, WP:CFD is your port of call. Just so you know, future admins need to know these things :)).

I found a small bug in my plugin (pages containing only {{Blp}} and not {{WPBiography}} were getting the WPBio template added but Blp wasn't being removed, I was referencing the unaltered text variable rather than the text which has been through the "zap Blp" routine) so I didn't get my lists built last night. I'm just finishing off the articles which use Blp now, then I'll do a few more Living people manually before getting the bot back into action later today if all is well. Then I'll try to fix our template. --kingboyk 10:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Help with ref

Yeah, cite.php has been acting up lately. The way to fix it is to click on "edit this page", change the &action=edit in the location bar to &action=purge, and hit enter. Kirill Lokshin 01:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

signature

plange, if you use something like "--~~~~" (where "--" is simply the most common separator) then your username will not mingle with wikilinks such as "Category: Burials plange". That will be helpful because your username looks like an ordinary word. --P64 21:49, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Bob Dylan

Hi....I would be grateful if you would add your opinion to debate about current state of the Bob Dylan article, taking place on FARC page. thanks Mick gold 23:29, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Request assessment

Hi Plange... ...I've added the name of Michael Oliver (actor) to the assessment request list having tried to rescue this piece from vandals at the request of the person writen about.

...just in case you have any time free.

trezjr 16:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Eddie Fenech Adami

Could you please explain your reason of this article being A-Class? I disagree with that rating. Green caterpillar 23:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Seemed pretty complete to me and all statements sourced. However, anyone is free to change it, though if you do, you should leave a detailed explanation as to why in the comments link in the project banner... --plange 00:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I wouldn't have put it at Start. Here's the definition of Start, which only has to have one of the elements:

• a particularly useful picture or graphic
• multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic
• a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic
• multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article

And then B's definition is to have most of these, and since the article does have most of the above, it should be at least B. Do you truly think there's more information out there on this person? Please specifically state how it doesn't meet the definition of A-class, thanks! --plange 20:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, maybe it should be B-class, but definitely not A-class. This article can be expanded with other websites such as this. The Early life section, for example, can be expanded. The article is about 7.25 KB, not enough info for a complete description, as required by A-class standards. Green caterpillar 21:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

let him know of this other source and your opinion of which section can conceivably be expanded. Size in K should not be a determiner though, but rather whether the subject a) has enough verifiable data b) whether subject warrants a longer article. --plange 21:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The Novels WikiProject Newsletter - Issue IV (September 2006)

The September 2006 issue of the Novels WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 12:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Refs again

Nope, just a personal preference. I tend to follow the CMS pretty religiously, for what it's worth. ;-)

It's not productive to try and force a standard on the whole project because most of our high-quality articles have a very distinct primary writer (or a handful of primary writers) who tend to become somewhat upset when told that they cannot use their preferred citation style; while a lot of our featured articles do use the CMS style (which I have suggested for articles where the citations were a mess to begin with), a number of others (notably T-34 among the recent promotions) use Harvard references instead. Kirill Lokshin 02:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

John Floyd (Virginia politician)

Hi, sorry for reverting you at John Floyd (Virginia politician); it wasn't intentional. I was removing links to that site added by certain IP addresses, because they added hundreds of links and continued after being warned. If you think that particular link is relevant, I don't have a problem. Wmahan. 21:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

DYK?

On 7 September, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article John Floyd (Virginia politician), which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

(I'm filling in because an admin only managed to half-finish the DYK changeover) --Daniel.Bryant 09:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Absence

I just wanted to drop in and personally apologize for my on coming absence from the Great Wiki for the rest of this month, while I study for the LSAT. You've done so much work, that I can't help but feel guilty for vanishing. I'll be back in October, ready and rearing to do all that I can to help WP:Va. ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 04:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Biography

I added a comment at Talk:Biography#Complex insight which I was hoping might inspire a response from you. I realized much of our disagreement about the adequacy of Jackie McLean arises from my doubts about the utility of biography. John FitzGerald 13:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the welcome, and also you have superb writing skills. Nice job with the John Floyd article. T REX_speak 04:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! How did you know I'd worked on him? --plange 05:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I saw the DYK notice on this page. T REX_speak 17:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on the VA Project, you're really helping the community with your efforts. Try not to work too hard though ;) Joshua4 03:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Check this out

Click here [1]

User:Kingbotk/Plugin

Hi Plange. A first version of my plugin is ready. I've tested it with all sorts of weird and wonderful template instances and all seems OK. Basically, you load AWB as normal and you get some extra options. Select WPBiography and you get an options tab, just select the parameters you want to add and optionally the name of the category being trawled, and the plugin will automatically add the template (if missing) and set up the necessary parameters, remove obsolete templates/template names, etc. Do you want to try it? I'll add support for WPMilHist next.

Kingbotk is now back up and has fixed the British Royalty articles, currently he's replacing active importance= params with priority=. --kingboyk 10:56, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool, but there was no link to download? --plange 23:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

let me know when you're online and want to play, and I'll upload immediately. In the meantime I'll carry on testing as the changes required to implement this were quite substantial. --kingboyk 20:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Kingbotk/Plugin - Release notes and download

User:Kingbotk/Plugin/User guide - The manual

I hope to add work on it some more tommorow (Martin's added a couple of extra properties to AWB for me which I need to test and make use of; I want to make the plugin useful for people doing assessments; and I want to add more templates. Of course I can't do all that tommorow but hopefully at least one of those can be released tommorow, along with any bug fixes etc.) --kingboyk 21:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool, no worries, I'm in no rush, I just thought I was looking in the wrong spot because I thought you said it was ready.... good luck and have fun! --plange 23:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Didn't you see download in bold? :) It was ready last night (but Lincher couldn't unzip it). While I'm here, what's your current thoughts on adminship? --kingboyk 10:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I did see the download but you said you had some more things to add so I thought I'd wait... Do you think I'm ready yet for admin? I hear it's pretty brutal :-P --plange 13:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Software's never finished! There's always something to add. I'd have thought you're ready. --kingboyk 13:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, taking a deep breath -- I think I'm ready to try for RfA --plange 01:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

If you'd like me to nominate you I'm quite happy to, but give it a few days - you know why I'm busy :) I take it you didn't find any bugs? I'm still worried that tearing open the meat of the code to make the template placement changes has introduced some little bug but I haven't had any rants on my talk page so I guess it's OK :) I'm working on the manual assessments feature at the moment for Lincher. Then I'll add support for other templates - is getting WPMILHIST supported high priority for you? You still have many military articles to tag? --kingboyk 09:25, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

That would be great (your nom), but I'm in no rush -- is it cool with you if I ask Kirill to co-nom? I don't know if he'll say yes, but thought it'd help me "run the gauntlet" easier with 2 such people helping! On the plugin, I didn't find any bugs, though I did find one tweak -- if I put {{talkheader}} and {{WPMILHIST}} in my "other options" area in the old section of AWB, it will make a space between it and the bio tag. I made sure I didn't have a carriage return after my prepend stuff. No biggie, just an aesthetic thing. It was great as it would have taken me a lot longer the old way when I ran across pre-existing tags and would have to carry them over, etc. I'm definitely interested in any support you can give for WPMILHIST as there's still tons of tagging to do there. I'll have to check out the Manual assess thing, sounds cool! Thanks! --plange 15:25, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't add talkheader to talk pages where this isn't controversy, imho it's just talk page clutter :) I think that might be happening because AWB always adds a linebreak after text it prepends. I could fix it but there doesn't seem much point as soon enough I'll add support for MILHIST. I'm a rather slow programmer as you may have noticed, but I think I have manual assessments nailed now so I'll finish that today and then get to adding support for that template. MILHIST will take a while because there's so many options, but adding other templates should be much quicker because of the way my code is structured - all templates will share base code for common tasks, and only differ where needed (thanks to inheritance).

Thank you very much for the barnstar! I've really worked hard (and full time) on this plugin, and had many sleepless nights, so a little recognition like that is lovely :) --kingboyk 08:37, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Adminship: edit summaries: get them up to 100%! :) --kingboyk 15:44, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Did you try the latest version? I'd be interested to know if you still find bugs in the assessment feature. Also how's the speed for you? I found it quicker to use Firefox and tabs, not the plugin's fault though (you can see how quick it processes pages from the red/green light). --kingboyk 11:02, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

DYK

On 12 September, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Wyndham Robertson, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

The Lake House

Dear Mr/Ms Plange, I brought back my Trivia comment on this movie, and added a link to an Imdb file on the Argentinian short "Líneas de Teléfonos" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127658/ I hope now you won't delete it ;^D Fernando K 03:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Bio notices

Hi Sandy-- Just wanted to let you know that the place you're posting the bio notices for FARs isn't the one on the box on the FAR talk page-- It's not a big deal, but thought I'd let you know since sometimes I've already added it (as in the case of the last two you posted) and it would save you work if you're able to see they're already there :-) Thanks for all that you do! Here's the link --plange 23:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

oh, my ... I told you I'd forget :-) Thanks for the reminder ! Sandy 23:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks a lot Plange. I'll keep helping in Peer reviews, since it is something I enjoy.--Yannismarou 08:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

thx for the newsletter link!--I'll bring the food 22:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks from Bob & mick

Many thanks for the Barn Star. I'm thrilled. An admin called Walkerma said I should get an award but I had no idea what form it would take. A book token? An honorary degree? Wikipedia Ambassador to the Court of St James? It was your footnoting expertise that gave me the idea I could provide the references. Thanks & best wishes Mick gold 09:26, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

Thanks for the welcome, plange. I will do my best to continue submitting biographies about evangelical Christians and others – I'm currently working my way through the members of the Clapham Sect and other British abolitionists, as well as contributing the occasional article about journalists, typographers and illustrators who have worked on various newspapers, magazines and other publications. If there's anything else I can do, please let me know – although my available time is somewhat limited at present, I will do my best to help. – Agendum 15:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: FAC question

FAC doesn't usually move all that quickly (except when an article is being buried under a landslide of objections, anyways), but not having people comment may be a sign that reviewers don't see progress on the nomination. I'd suggest working on the remaining objection; an article with three supports and no objection might actually pass. Kirill Lokshin 19:58, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Kingbotk/Plugin

The latest version of my plugin has just been released. It includes support for reviewing articles, rating them, and optionally leaving a comment. I hope you like it. --kingboyk 18:44, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

You da man!! --plange 18:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

You haven't tried it yet! It might crash your computer and send out spam email for all you know! ;) --kingboyk 18:56, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

LOL, naw, you da man, it won't do that! --plange 22:20, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

OK I've now added WPMILHIST and WP Australia support. Will be uploading shortly. --kingboyk 18:49, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I think from your contribs it works :) I might have to do something about the edit summaries though.

Anyway, as always, comments good and bad - and bug reports - are most welcome :) --kingboyk 21:32, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Oleg replies

He'll do it :) [2]. --kingboyk 19:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Whew! --plange 22:20, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Now implemented, as you'll see from the worklists. --kingboyk 14:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Please vote

Hello, there. Please take the time to vote for the various candidates over at Core_biographies#Voting_booth. If you can, try to read a bit about the candidates you don't know about so you can get a better idea of how to vote. Thanks! ♠ SG →Talk 10:44, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

We need this!

Historical count/monthly changes. I want :) Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment#Historical_counts --kingboyk 18:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but...

[3] ...I'm actually a "he". ;) EVula 21:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

oops, sorry, and someone just did that to me a few minutes ago [4] calling me a he :-) --plange 21:02, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we should form a support group (or, more applicably, a WikiProject) for users who constantly have their gender confused. "WikiProject I'm a he or a she, not a she or a he, dammit!" has a nice ring to it... EVula 21:08, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

LOL! Sounds good! Yep, been called a 'he' here a lot! --plange 21:10, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you like this ACW task force "Userbox"?

new ACW task force Userbox!

--Fix Bayonets! 13:08, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Grammatical point well made

With respect to secretive vs. secret you're correct of course. However I can't help but feel there ought to be a word that would work better than "secret" in that context. Perhaps it's just me. --Rydra Wong 19:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Headsup

Please see this thread: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Musicians#Organisation_of_this_project.2C_scope.2C_and_templates. --kingboyk 14:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this would be great, but want to say I like the solution of putting the line of scope for musicians as displayed in the video game template example rather than what happened with BRoy. Please see my carefully worded invitation to the same group that I worked out with Kirill who has been my mentor in trying to get groups to move to us - discussion here and here. The last link is particularly important, as Kirill points out that we don't gain anything if we don't have some control over the project. Plus, it's more work for us to create a different looking template (which sets a precedent like I'm afraid BRoy has become). This is not to knock your attempts for a merger, I would just like to be a part of them before you approach, if that's cool, so that we can have be on the same page. Thanks! --plange 15:02, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not going to give them a custom design, it's too much work. They'd get a line like A&E (actually they'd replace A&E, if an article is within the scope of the musicians workgroup A&E wouldn't be displayed, since musician is more specific than A&E). Anyrode, chip in over there if there's any terms & conditions you need to lay down or anything I got wrong, OK? :) --kingboyk 15:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC) PS Do you feel able to add them to the template if they agree? It would be the same as the changes I made for Broy, except the style change. musician= overrides a&e; add their classification and other categories (which already exist); add a display line; fix up their cats to be children of ours etc. Getting towards complicated... (I don't know how techie you are but you seem pretty damn good so far!) --kingboyk 15:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I can do it-- I'll test it in my sandbox first --plange 14:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's sandbox version -- I didn't know how to not show a&e if both params are on, but I did include a&e categories with the musician one so that they will still be in a&e's worklist, etc... (we should do the same for BRoy too) -- I didn't populate the categories or make the work group page as I wanted to have you take a look and make sure I named them correctly :-) --plange 04:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll copy it to my sandbox and test/tweak. Thanks for that!

• Leaving the British Royalty articles out of the main Royalty list is by design. I think if it's for our purposes only we should continue doing it that way - the lists are long already, why make them any longer by having an article on Henry VIII appear in 3 different lists? Of course the lists aren't just for our benefit, so perhaps you'd ask the WP1 folks which method they prefer?
• I added the 3 new WPBIO parameters and a new WPMILHIST workgroup to the plugin last night (but I haven't released the new version yet).
• I'll take a look at the category namings etc and get back to you.

--kingboyk 10:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

<--

• I've removed the code placing the Musicians articles into the A&E categories. As above I think we don't want to do that, and if we do we can probably do it by checking parameters in the a&e section rather than pasting the code.
• I think musicians and a&e can share the a&e needs-infobox/attention categories though, rather than making new ones?
• Categories look good to me. Can you turn them blue? They need to fit into our current scheme (be children of a&e) and also fit into the WPMusician's parent category.
• It occurred to me this morning that changing the KLF and Beatles templates won't be as straightforward as I imagined. Currently, if they have a parameter of living=yes or living=no they add the article to the A&E workgroup. Of course, those WikiProjects cover people with any connection to the bands many of whom aren't musicians. I can't, then, just change it to place them in the musicians categories. I suppose I'll need to add a new param or 2 to those templates and do another AWB run. Sigh.
• Need to update template instructions and project sidebar, and add our sidebar to their pages.
• New template has just gone live
• I'll do a run fixing up their template now, which will serve as a good test of the plugin's support for their template and our new template code!

--kingboyk 10:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey look at this for a diff :) Not only replace {{musician}} with WPBio but merge active params :) Cool huh? --kingboyk 13:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sweet, did you do that with your plugin? --plange 14:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. I have it recognise musician as a valid instance of WPBio. It finds each instance of WPBio on a page, and then stores their parameters. This has the effect of merging the templates. If the parameters clash, e.g. the plugin finds a WPBio class=Stub and then a WPBio class=FA it'll skip that page and log it as a bad tag.

One little glitch I just found though: Talk:Michael Jackson contains a valid musician tag, and an invalid WPBio tag. It finds the valid musician tag, so it assumes that's job done and processes the page. The plugin wasn't programmed to run the "second chance" looser regular expression if it found a valid tag, I mean why would it?! :) I'm changing and testing that now - even if it finds a valid tag it will run the second chance regular expression to look for bad tags. I don't think it will impact performance noticably as these regular expressions seem to be very fast. --kingboyk 14:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted the old musicians by importance and quality cats. They weren't hooked up to Mathbot so there's no old worklists to zap. --kingboyk 16:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hacking a template to bits. Sigh. It works though! :) Next, WPBeatles, which is a nightmare of a template already. Wish me luck! --kingboyk 17:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

GayFest GAN

It's right there on the page: "You cannot choose an article you've significantly contributed to." ROnline has made the overwhelming majority of edits to that article, according to its history. Daniel Case 22:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

That refers to who is allowed to review not nominate --plange 00:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Right. Anyone can nominate a page, although - in actuality - the norm is for somebody who has been heavily involved in writing it to nominate. Only uninvolved persons may review the nomination however. --kingboyk 10:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Re:Peer review

Whoops, I thought that I only had to make this page. Thank you for finishing it for me. T REX_speak 15:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

How many biographies are in scope?

I just checked several of the most important Russian writers and painters and was shocked to see that some very important ones (and also well-known in the Western world) are as yet not in scope of the Biographies Project (think Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak, Ivan Turgenev, Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky). Which raises the question, how many more important persons are not in scope? Errabee 11:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

They're within scope, they probably just haven't been tagged yet. Please feel free to tag them - it will help us. Also, if you're interested in specifically Russian writers and painters and there are other editors you know who share that focus you might want to form a WPBio workgroup? --kingboyk 11:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep, we just started tagging things in July and given the large numbers of biographies we need to tag, we've just scratched the surface on tagging, so any biography articles you come across you can definitely help by tagging them :-) Thanks! --plange 15:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Primary sources?

Hard question. The requirement that a primary source be published is intended to ensure that other people can check it; to what extent this applies to sources of which (presumably) only a single copy exists—but where said copy is available to the public—is something that's been debated on-and-off, but not something on which any firm consensus exists, to the best of my knowledge. It's not being used for a controversial point in this article, I think, so leaving it in (at least until somebody complains) may be the best approach here. Kirill Lokshin 00:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Biography template

In my opinion including biography as a level 2 heading when the only thing diccussed in the article is the persons biography, then the hading is totally unnecessary. But where there is a biography and other stuff like important published works - like Max Weber that would be difficult to fit into the narrative of the article then it might be necessary.--Peta 02:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• I should add that each most biographies are quite different, so trying to apply a template to them is kinda hard. But in this case, I though the redundancy of the heading - when the conent was obviously a biography - was silly.--Peta 02:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Worker's Barnstar
		I, Heaven's Wrath, present this award to you in recognition of your exceptional hard work and tireless effort in helping WikiProject Musicians work with WikiProject Biography. Wikipedia could use more dedicated contributors like you.  Heaven's Wrath   Talk  22:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!!!!

GA nomination for John Floyd

I am the Good Article reviewer for the John Floyd (Virginia politician) article. You seem to be the lead editor for this article so I thought I'd let you know this: it's too long. I have absolutely no problem promoting this article to GA status. It meets all the requirements and is quite good. However, GA criteria all but requires that articles be under 25kb. The current article is 36kb. According to policy, this means that the article should be edited so it meets Featured Article criteria, and then nominated for FA. I have posted a new section on Wikipedia_talk:Good article candidates in order to ask other reviewers what should be done. Please leave replies there. I certainly want to promote this to GA, but the rules... --Tjss(Talk) 20:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

On the advice of others, I have promoted it. Good work! --Tjss(Talk) 21:17, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

John William Vessey Jr.

As requested, I referenced the one source--the PDF file on the JCS.mil web site. This article is out of my normal area of interest. That is why I just converted the PDF file into an article. The man deserves a full listing considering his remarkable achievements. He became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff without graduating from high school.Jmcneill2 18:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Bios lacking citations

Plange, here's the list I came up with (from the list originally provided by The Disco King): while I was doing the work, I noticed many of them have not yet been identified as bios, but it was such a large task that I couldn't stop to add the bio tags. Hope this helps, Sandy 20:08, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Whew, thanks! Just got through marking all them! --plange 22:01, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: New peer review?

See the second section of WP:MHPR#Requesting a review, please. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 00:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Barack Obama

Plange, Thanks for your helpful comment on this article. I've just completed some more fixing. Do the quotes look OK now? Other suggestions for improvements? Kindly respond here. --HailFire 16:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually I was just the messenger :-) See post above: User_talk:Plange#Bios_lacking_citations -- If you'd like some more feedback, you might try our Peer Review dept at WP:BIOGRAPHY --plange 15:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Published, verification and easy of verification

Hello Plange, I didn't respond in your discussion at WP:V [5] because I didn't see it. Your questions weren't well responded to. But WP:V's discussion pages have talked a lot about what, exactly, consitutes "published" and "verifiable". It has been agreed upon in the past that when a document (of any kind) is available at a public library, that it is "published" and "verifiable". Therefore your reference to a document held at a public library is a reference which Wikipedia accepts. Unfortunately, WP:V does not yet spell it out explicity. Probably the main reason it does not is because a lot of the editing is not done by experts whose interest and editing is in the areas you are contributing toward. Be of good faith ! Press onward ! Good luck ! Terryeo 14:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Terryeo! I appreciate it, that makes sense :-) --plange 15:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Here is what I would do. I would go ahead and consider any document which is in any public library to be verifiable. I would write the article, quote the document and treat it as if the New York Times had published it, for purposes of writing and referencing and citing. That is, treat that information as if it were widely published. At some point in the future it might be possible that someone would challenge some of that information. At that time the question, "is that information published", "is that information verifiable" might arise. When it does arise then that question can be delt with. But probably it won't arise. The other information which is mentioned by your google search, [6] but isn't spelled out exactly, I would recommend putting it on the website, the family website or whatever you are talking about there and then using that information as if it were published by the New York Times, citing that website. It is possible that information might be challenged. Challeneged based on it not being previously published by a reliable source. It is possible. But it is unlikely unless some nut case gets into that article and makes a major issue of whether the gentelman preferred blue or black socks, if you know what I mean? The very worst thing that would happen would be, some really tendentious editor could remove the reference to the information on the family website (or whatever that kind of website is called) and it would have to be placed as an "exterior link" or "further reading" kind of thing within the article you were using it as a reference. Wikipedia policy is a bit grey in this area because there are so many nut cases with personal (an sometimes offensive) websites. But good information has a good shot at standing in an article. Now, I've probably said too much, my wife yells at me when I do. heh. Terryeo 15:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history Newsletter - Issue VII - September 2006

The September 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by Grafikbot - 19:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Stephen Trigg

Hey, I've given the article a copyedit, but I'm afraid I accidentally undid your most recent edit. You might want to go back and change whatever you were hoping to change in the first place.UberCryxic 00:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: GA

My thoughts on this are pretty heavily colored by my general disapproval of the GA process, so you should probably take them with a grain of salt:

The essential problem, in my opinion, is that the GA system wishes to have, simultaneously, the ease of a single-reviewer process and the prestige of the more rigorous reviews. The only possibility of combining the two lies in the attempts to impose increasingly strict formal criteria that have been occurring recently; the more sensible approach taken by FA—where the interpretation of what the vaguely worded criteria may mean evolves through the consensus of the reviewers—is not available, since no consensus (or derivative thereof) is applied to individual articles during the normal GA process. The creation of more formal criteria, meanwhile, leads to the increasingly silly votes being taken (in which people who want the GA standard to be substantially below the FA standard are disproportionately influential).

I don't think, in general, that the GA system can be made to work as intended. Certainly it will not be taken very seriously if it allows uncited articles through; but there's really no good way of actually imposing citation requirements retroactively on a system that was designed entirely around informality and individual discretion.

(All of this is somewhat tangential to the current debate, of course, and I apologize for not having a more useful answer here.) Kirill Lokshin 19:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Wasn't GA working as it was intended until people started trying to make it more serious? Perhaps the problem here is including it in the WP1 assessment scales. GA was never meant to be a thorough process, more of a "Blue Peter badge" for "pretty good articles" which were too short for FA or not quite there yet. AFAIC, if an editor has serious pretensions (s)he should be going to FAC not GA (but getting GA first is not a bad idea). --kingboyk 19:56, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It's been staggering to and fro since its inception, alternately trying to sidle up to FA and moving far away from it, seemingly on the whims of the most active participants at the time. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

(reply to kingboyk after edit conflict) Perhaps so, perhaps I shouldn't care, but since it is included in the scale, we're trying to make it fall in line with that. Also, we'd been hearing that GA was a joke because it was too lax, so we're trying to help with that. I like the process of going to GA as the next rung up towards FA, so that you know you're almost there and are ready for a PR, instead of just jumping in to a PR or FAC blind. I think the bigger problem is actually the protest by some that they shouldn't have to include inline citations in articles, which is a separate issue than GA, it's just that GA's changes have highlighted this split.... --plange 20:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Thomas Lee peer review

I noticed that you mentioned about animosity between Thomas Lee and Robert Carter I, do you have any sources about this? This was new information to me and would certainly improve the article. T REX_speak 01:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure thing! I got it from "The Virginia Dynasties: The Emergence of 'King' Carter and the Golden Age" by Clifford Dowdey -- if it's not at your library, let me know and I'll type out the relevant passages... --plange 01:17, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

There's only one copy and unfortunately someone checked it out :(. If you have the passages that would great. T REX_speak 01:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure thing-- I'll put them on the Talk page --plange 01:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Ben Savage - Project Wiki

Hi Plange...can you please add the name of Ben Savage to the WikiProject Biography? I have been spending time on the page this week. Thanks!

trezjr 02:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

No problem! Done :-) You're allowed to add them to, and once you get comfortable with assessments, it's acceptable to self-assess up to and including B... Keep up the great work! --plange 02:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks...

Thanks so much--boy, you are fast.

I'm going to add "living" to it for the warning because the page was already semi-protected when I got there, due to persitent "death" listings recently.

Thanks again!

trezjr 02:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Michael Oliver

Can I trouble you to take a look at the Michael Oliver (actor) article as well?

I believe it has moved past the "Start" phase; I'd rather you do this one.

I have been in touch with this individual in an attempt to get a recent photo for the bio box--similar to what I did with the Ben Savage and to see what recent material may be available.

It's a tough egg to crack.

Thanks!!!

trezjr 02:29, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Stephen Trigg

I noticed that you seemed to be quite passionate about that particular article - even though your writing of it is professional and neutral in tone. I was wondering if you might have some connection to Colonel Trigg - and then I saw your bio-page ;) - Vedexent (talk) - 07:26, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep, he's a 4th-great-uncle :-) --plange 14:27, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Response

Hi Plange – in answer to your reply to my query - which I can't find at the moment (perhaps this page has been edited? – or maybe I placed it somewhere else). I asked why so many existing biographies are not included in the WikiProject listing – including many that I have personally worked on, and I remember you asked which these were.

Firstly, I'm sorry I have taken so long to get back to you. I'm totally new to working on this sort of project and in some things feel as if I'm going to need to be walked through with my hand held. I guess the answer could be that it's up to me to create new categories that these biographies fit neatly into – as they don't fit any that you have listed from the WikiProject category list page or on the Portal page.

I am working a lot on biographies of English Anglicans or British abolitionists – these are both existing categories (although not used with any consistency) and I would be loath to create **yet another** general category (I think there are already far too many – and many of these are quite unnecessary). If this is indeed how we get them listed on your "Master List", can we use either of these two? You can see the type of article I'm interested in from the list on my User page – I'm currently gradually revising and adding to John Newton.

Cheers, – Agendum 23:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It might be better and easier if you respond privately on my Talk page – here: Agendum's Talk Page. Thanks. Any other criticism/input would be welcome.