User talk:Reaverdrop

ST language

Hi,

You made the comment that words distinguished only by tone in standard Mandarin are "pronounced" differently in other Mandarin dialects, but if they're distinguished by tone, they're pronounced differently in the standard Mandarin too.

However, I'm not sure the comment is needed. A tonal language may come to rely more heavily on tone over time, but that in itself doesn't mean that at one time it was a non-tonal language. kwami 05:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Links

Okay, I think you over did the links on the Onion. You can restore the section but the links are WAYYY overboard. Thanks! Sasquatcht|c 02:12, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Paul Hospenthal

I noticed we're in disagreement over whether or not this article was an attack page. I thought it was an attack page (or at least not NPOV) because it used language like "the otherwise unremarkable", "obscure", and "and yet, (he's engaged to Danica Patrick)." I decided to convert the page into a redirect because it's not likely that it would survive an AfD listing (there really isn't much of anything of significance that can be added to it, as far as I know). If you think that Paul should have his own article, then I (or you) can restore the previous version, list it on AfD, and get suggestions from other editors on what to do with it. --Idont Havaname 04:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't telling you to stop editing! Sorry if it seemed that way. There are just some precedents (some are listed here) that have been established in AfD. Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies might answer any more questions you might have. (If you have any questions there, then ask on those talk pages and people who have been watching those pages for a while will see it and have an answer for you. I've been on AfD a lot in the past, and generally consensus has been to delete articles on people who are only well-known for dating (or being engaged or married to) somebody who's famous. I know I've participated in AfDs in the past where articles about kids of famous people were deleted. Hope this helps. --Idont Havaname 17:37, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Orson Scott Card

Hey, this is Geoffrey Card ... you added a comment to the Orson Scott Card article that seemed to assert personal knowledge of things I said while attending BYU. I deleted the comment as being a little misleading and off-topic, but now I'm curious ... who are you, and how did you come by the information you asserted?

Hi Geoffrey. It was from personal conversation between you and me. You introduced yourself as Geoffrey Card from Greensboro North Carolina, I asked you if you were named after Chaucer (remembering your dad's written comments); you pointed your finger and asked me not to tell others who your father was. Sorry if it struck you as misleading. I took it as I took it at the time, that you didn't want your own experience with people to be distracted by fans (like me!) always asking you about your dad - which I thought was an interesting insight into OSC's own experience.

Hey, it's Geoffrey. All right, I was just curious :) I thought that the comment in the article made it sound as though I wanted to publically distance myself from my father, and in the current political climate surrounding him, that could give the total wrong impression :) While I don't always agree with him, it would still take quite a bit to make me publically disavow my connection to him.

At BYU, my connection to him came up a LOT, and in one case, even influenced my non-acceptance to the school of Theater and Film, so I was extra-sensitive about standing on my own, outside his shadow. But that was years ago.

Truthiness

Great job in the Truthiness upgrade, Reaverdrop. I'm humbled!ERobson 03:07, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks man. We got it on the Wikipedia homepage - cool! - Reaverdrop 03:08, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Movement to impeach Bush

Reaverdrop, Thanks for adding this citation. I hadn't gotten around to it yet. You may want to cite the article name, date and author, as the Post link may not be permanent. I'd do it, but I'm at a library and it closes in a few minutes.--Beth Wellington 01:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Duke of Devonshire

I'm just embarassed I didn't notice it: an American spelling? In Duke of Devonshire? What's the world coming to?! :-D JackyR 01:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Colbert pushing

I really think you need to take a step back and think about your work on the Colbert Report related articles. Creating a whole category and navigation template is unneeded. All of the articles you include in both exist as 'See also' links on most of the pages. It comes off like you're using wikipedia as a fan site, not an encyclopedia when you do that and treat it as you own those articles. --waffle iron 23:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

So a navbar that helps one find articles more easily, transforms encyclopedic articles into fan pages? No. - Reaverdrop 07:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

It does when you start inserting it into articles tangentially related to the show like, The Second City and Bears. Why not add it to Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and Fox News if that's the route you're going? --waffle iron 17:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Bears are gone; Colbert was a member of The Second City, and it's a Colbert navbar, not a Colbert Report navbar, so what's tangential about that? - Reaverdrop 18:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The article has virtually nothing about him besides a little note saying he is an alum. --waffle iron 21:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Michelle Bachelet

She herself has said in an interview with Raquel Correa in El Mercurio — Chile's most prestigious political interviewer in Chile's most prestigious daily — that she considers herself to be agnóstica — an agnostic. The interview is dated November 30, 2004. It can be read here. I haven't found a single interview where she declares herself to be an atheist. I believe this settles the point for good. —Cantus…☎ 04:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Politics. The first three sources I read - Christopher Hitchens, the New York Times, and the Miami Herald, all referred to her as an atheist. Hitchens discussed it at length and with enthusiasm. He is not the type to hear one thing and be capable of mistaking it for the other - as if the Times were either. If she became inconsistent, it was for campaign season. Nice job waiting until five reverts before ever bothering even to try to explain yourself. But you're still wrong. The best we can say is that she reported both atheist and agnostic to different sources, which should be reflected in the article, not an arbitrary judgment call by you. If you want to demand that the two aren't mutually compatible, go strike it up with Michelle. (Cross posted to MB talk.) - Reaverdrop 08:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Electro-industrial

hey, i'm just wondering something re the term 'electro-industrial' and this edit on the ebm article. there's a bit of talk on the ebm talk page and i was just wondering if you had any sources for the change? it's just that the industrial.org faq, the german wikipedia and even ishkur's guide (however unreliable it can be) note that it refers to a later more evolved style compared to old skool ebm. --MilkMiruku 17:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Response at User_talk:MilkMiruku#Response:_EBM_v._Electro-Industrial

The Colbert Report - screenshot request

You asked for a shot of the eagle flying towards the camera? I'm not sure exactly which frame you wanted so I did a sequence from when the eagle first appears to the swallowing of the camera to the set reveal. There are about thirty at http://al001.blogspot.com/2006/02/colbert-report-title-sequence.html as thumbnail images - click on them to see them full size at the image host (ImageShack). Can I take it that you'll be OK uploading whichever ones you like for use in Wikipedia? That's something I don't have much experience with. Hope this helps Al001 08:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

User_talk:Al001#Response_re._Colbert_Report_Eagle - Reaverdrop 20:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Truthiness - a Good Article

Thanks for the nod to Truthiness, Zanimum! - Reaverdrop 01:33, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

No prob, it's a good article. I'm hoping in the next couple weeks it can be worked up to Featured Article status. It would be really cool if Stephen mentioned the article on air, even if he panned the site. -- user:zanimum

A follow-up question - the Truthiness article includes Template:Colbert, which has been proposed for deletion. The delete votes outnumber the keep votes, and I am planning on deleting it soon. Since you tagged Truthiness as a good article with the Colbert template, do you think eliminating it would improve the article? - Reaverdrop 00:04, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I've revised the template to be more compact, and as it's become, it's less distracting and more of a chance some will side on keep. -- user:zanimum

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Alberto J. Mora, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Gurubrahma 05:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Unitary Executive theory

Cross-posted on User talk:Nescio

Het viel me op dat je dit artikel hebt bewerkt en vroeg me af of je een opmerking kunt achterlaten bij een RFC betreffende de toelaatbaarheid van kritiek in dit artikel. Je hoeft alleen aan te geven of bronnen mogen worden vermeld, je eigen mening over het onderwerp hoef je niet te verdedigen. Groetjes Nomen Nescio 11:25, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Ja zeker, Nescio; ik heb genoeg tijd nog niet gehaad, maar ik ben bronnen aan het verzamelen. Groetjes terug, - Reaverdrop 18:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Compliment voor je goede Nederlands. Had niet direct begrepen dat je niet afkomstig bent uit het koude doch progressieve landje aan de Noordzee. Mocht het te moeilijk worden, zeg het maar dan ga ik verder in het Engels. Nomen Nescio 23:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Het spijt me dat mijn nederlands nog niet echt goed is, maar ga naar verder in het nederlands; ik heb klein kans om het te gebruiken, en ik wou het graag beter leren. Ik zit op het ook koude maar minder progressieve landje van Minnesota - dat toch progressieve verschijnt tegen het helemaal van Amerika. Ik zou graag in de toekomst ons land zo verinlichtigt als Nederland zien worden. - Reaverdrop 17:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Zolang ik het begrijp is je Nederlands prima. Waarom deze moeilijke taal gekozen? Mocht je interesse hebben in Nederlandse Literatuur dan heb ik nog wel enkele suggesties. Probeer Nescio (verklaart mijn naam) eens te lenen bij de bibliotheek, of de gedichten van Slauerhoff.

Of we verlicht zijn weet ik niet (de Dalai Lama is daar beter in). Zoals bekend zijn niet veel landen het eens met ons drugsbeleid, onze abortuswetgeving, of de uiterst controversiele euthanasie. Maar over het geheel genomen is ons sociale stelsel, samen met dat van Scandinavie wel iets waar ik het meest trots op ben. Nomen Nescio 08:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Bedankt voor uw suggesties - ik lees Nederlands literatuur graag, en ik heb de artikelen begonnen voor Willem Kloos, Herman Gorter, Frederik van Eeden, Lodewijk van Deyssel (maar een stukje), De Nieuwe Gids, en Tachtigers (dat opgenomen werd in de artikel Dutch literature). Ik heb op de artikelen van Nescio en Slauerhoff gekeken - ik zal er meer over moeten lezen.

Ik eerst leerde Nederlands om een Mormonse zendeling in Vlaanderen te worden - waarna ik verlaat de kerk en atheïst werd. Ik had daartussen ervaring om de taal met vele Belgen te spreken, op een rondreis van Leuven, Antwerpen en Gent, ongeveer twaalf jaar geleden. Ik had ook Oud Engels vroeger een beetje gestudeerd, dat iets samen met Nederlands deelt, en ik zat in een klas van Nederlands daarna (waarbij ik eerst Kloos, Gorter enz. ontdekte). Ik vind de Nederlandse taal heel mooi. Meer engelstaligen zouden het moeten leren. Het heeft vele weergalmen van klassieke engels. Ook denk ik het belangrijk dat iedereen ten minste één andere taal bovendien hun eigen aangeborene taal zou moeten leren. Ik vind het rugwaarts dat in Amerika het nog opmerkelijk is als iemand maar twee talen kan spreken. Julie hebben de recht idee in Nederland waar het niet opmerkelijk is als iemand drie of vier talen spreekt. - Reaverdrop 02:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Mormon collaboration

I saw you added your name to the list of participants on the Mormon collaboration. Welcome and I look forward to working with you. uriah923^(talk) 22:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Photos of Paul Mirecki

Hi. You've reinserted "although newspaper photos showed him with obvious signs of physical injury" into the para about Prof Mirecki in Michelle Malkin. I'd like to link that text to such a photo, but the photo in this LJWorld.com item isn't as convincing as one might hope. It looks more like a studio portrait than a news photo and shows only 1 bruise. Do you by any chance have URLs for a better photo? (If Prof Mirecki got a good lawyer, he may well have had some shirtless photos taken when the bruises looked worst and might have given them to reporters.)

Cheers, CWC(talk) 13:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Response at CWC(talk) - Reaverdrop 17:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Back here again (I'll watch this page for a week or so, so feel free to respond here): I've added some links to the Paul Mirecki article, on the theory that what we've got is better than nothing. I ended up making a bigger change than I expected, and my wording is a bit clumsy. See also Talk:Paul_Mirecki#Paragraph_about_Beating. I made at least one change you may disagree with: I've removed "showing obvious signs of serious physical abuse" and inserted "showing two black eyes and a bruise". People with serious physical abuse do not walk into the E.R., nor do they walk out after treatment. It's possible Mirecki had extensive bruising not shown in the photo, but then we can't claim that photo shows them, can we? That's why I was hoping for a shirtless photo. By the way, a Google search failed to find any mention of the beating since (IIRC) January, nor anything about Mirecki suing the Sheriff. Have you come across anything recent?

On a related note: User:Stesichorus and I have edited the Michelle Malkin article today, including the bit about Mirecki, so you may want to check our work. Cheers, CWC(talk) 17:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Hooray! 1,100,000 Articles in English Wikipedia

Note to whomever: I just went to the front page of English Wikipedia and noticed it said there were 1,099,992 articles. I couldn't resist adding a new article as quickly as I could to help top it over the 1,100,000 mark. Thus was born the Philip B. Heymann stub. It ended up probably not being one of the last eight articles; by the time I finished and checked the front page again, we were at 1,100,026. To think of the exponential addition of knowledge, which theoretically could continue without end; that's pretty cool. - Reaverdrop 17:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

No offense meant

Hey - just wanted to drop you a personal note - I was probably a little hard on you today and I was too argumentative, for which I'm sorry for. I hope there are no hard feelings from our differing points of view at Talk:Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#No racial discrimination under Joseph Smith. I just get so sick of the same arguments when I feel they are not educated arguments as they seem to draw on the same five or so secondary or tertiary sources over and over again. I try to spend most of my time reading the primary sources, and therefore probably have a different view than the analysis that others read. The problem is that 'I' see the conclusions as not educated, when to others do see them as educated views. Please know I think you are very brilliant in your edits and your contributions here to the LDS-related articles on Wikipedia, and I, for one, value your work here. You've made a very positive influence IMHO to this corner of the Wiki. Keep up the hard work, and I'm sorry I was so condescending and hard on you in today's discussion. I'll probably do it again, as that is one of my many character flaws. I hope you'll forgive in advance. Keep up the good work. -Visorstuff 22:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Relocated off-topic discussion on race and the LDS Church

Cut & pasted verbatim from Talk:Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints#No_racial_discrimination_under_Joseph_Smith, where it had become a huge tangent:

Off topic discussion

I propose from here to the end of this section be refactored (i.e. moved to an archive) as not helping improve the article. - unsigned

Interesting side note - in the same talk where Brigham Young explains that no one with a drop of African blood can be ordained to the priesthood, he also says the same thing about Jews - and then points out a Jewish member of the audience and says he was able to receive the priesthood because God transformed his blood when he converted - so he no longer had a drop of Jewish blood. Too bad he didn't stick with that idea for Blacks too. He also said any priesthood holder who "mixes his seed" with a Black woman would drop dead on the spot.

Even though the Church repealed the doctrine of racial discrimination in 1978, they did so with no more rationale than the equivalent of "hey look, there's Elvis". That lack of explanation has resulted in many Church members today being led to adopt discriminatory feelings from trying to make sense of the historical doctrine with faith that the prophets could do no wrong. In the vacuum of official comment on it, what reasoned explanation is there? The Church will continue to be responsible for ongoing moral damage until the president of the church gets up in General Conference and says that Brigham Young sinned in denying priesthood based on race, and that all the church authorities until Spencer W. Kimball perpetuated that sin.

And they know they should, because they sent Bruce R. McConkie on tour to reinforce the rescindment by admitting that he had been all wrong in the explanations he had taught for the discriminatory doctrine. Having only one apostle actually admit he had been wrong though was too little an effort for real restitution.

- Reaverdrop 18:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

You may want to read the history of this issue more, Reaverdrop. It seems that since the 1890s the brethren weren't sure if it was a revelation or if it was simply a policy. Because of that one dispute for which there is no evidence of either way, the church will probably never officially offer an apology for this. How can they offer an apology if it was instituted by the Lord? There is a conundrum of this, and naturalistic historians would see it as a man-made policy, but if church leaders are unsure (or until more documents come to light on the matter) we'll not see it in our day. Was it racist? Yes - by today's standards. But God has a history of racist practices that we as humans don't understand or try to explain away - whether it is wiping out entire groups of people, or allowing entire ethnicities to be destroyed. That's just how he decided to do some things, or if you are a naturalistic historian, that's survival of the fittest. Not a church teaching I'm a fan of, but there's not a lot we can do until more documents come to light. -Visorstuff 23:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, if the Brethren felt at any time that it had just been a policy from the beginning, they would also have recognized their complete freedom to change it. And it seems like anyone who argued that it was revelation would have had to explain why it obviously was not recognized by Joseph Smith throughout his lifetime - and why a revelation of such magnitude, as one that categorically denies exaltation to a segment of the human race, and thereby would frustrate God's work and glory, would not have been unambiguously reported and recorded in the first place.

I suppose it depends entirely on perspective. If one happens to believe that the Church only abandoned doctrinal racism in 1978 after relentless moral pressure from the outside world, which they finally managed to convince themselves coincided with a message from God - then one can hope that they will accomplish the additional moral progress needed to convince themselves that God wants them to admit it was a mistake in the first place - doubtless a mistaken policy, rather than a mistaken doctrine - and thereby serve as a force for the moral betterment of those who revere them as god's mouthpieces, who otherwise allow their faith to lead them to accept that treating an entire racial group as spiritually inferior, or even that wiping out entire groups of people or allowing entire ethnicities to be destroyed, may sometimes be mysteriously in accord with the will of God, rather than crimes against humanity without exception. - Reaverdrop 23:35, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

When God gets around to it, it would be nice if an apology was given for keeping all the other tribes from possessing the Levitical priesthood. That was even more unusal than being racist. You could not even tell the difference but one tribe could officiate in priesthood positions and no one else was entitled to the same positions. You can imagine all the people that longed to officiate and yet God turned a cold shoulder to their pleas, not for a few decades, but for thousands of years.

Reaver, you attempt to speak from a position of "knowing" what is so. Most believers of Christ operate from a position of "I don't know everything and some things I have to take on faith." It is not much condolance for the committed sceptic, but living by faith is not for everyone. Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Reaverdrop, I'm sorry, I think you missed my point. Just prior to his death, Smith apparently instructed the Anointed Quorum not to ordain blacks to the priesthood. At the time, he was setting policy, giving revelations, and many other instructions that were not clarified due to his death. The brethren did not know if the teaching was policy relating to the presidential campaign, relating to the prophesy on war, relating to issues with the Utah migration, relating to revelation from God. Wilford Woodruff was asked if a black polygamous wife could be sealed to her husband in the temple. He responded that he didn't know if the teaching was a doctrine or policy, and that God didn't clarify with him at the time. Later, JFSmith was asked similar, and gave a similar reponse. These brethren believed and knew that it was a teaching of Smith's, but didn't know if it was given as a one-time instruction or as a general doctrinal revelation. Thus each president of the church since Woodruff prayed about it. The most publicized is David McKay's when he said "Well, I've inquired of the Lord repeatedly. The last time I did it was late last night. I was told, with no discussion, not to bring the subject up with the Lord again; that the time will come, but it will not be my time, and to leave the subject alone..." [1]. There was heated discussion about presedence set by Smith previously ordaining, so it wasn't completely prohibited, but then there was discussion and evidence set forth as to why the prohibition would have been delayed. It is a complicated issue of policy versus revelation. - and to the brethren who were believers in Smith, they waited for a revelation to come on the matter. If you don't believe they receive revelation, then you should expect an apology. But that is the issue.

Incidentally, it was only six years earlier (1972) that baptist conferences voted to allow blacks similar privelges. That is hardly after years of "relentless moral pressure from the outside world" - especially as there were groups that changed their policies after the Mormon church. As has been stated elsewhere on wikipedia, the issue is that for Mormons the answer came, not by vote and popular opinions, but by revelation though a prophet.

Finally you wrote: :"that treating an entire racial group as spiritually inferior, or even that wiping out entire groups of people or allowing entire ethnicities to be destroyed, may sometimes be mysteriously in accord with the will of God, rather than crimes against humanity without exception." Again, tell this to Joshua, Caleb and the Canaanites. Tell this to the Anti-duluvians, the Jewish babylonians or assyrian survivors, the folks from Sodom, the folks from Samaria, the Philistines, the folks that David destroyed, the Jews after Jesus death, - all under the direction, instruction or approval of God. God is not an assasin, but he does things for a reason. And those who believe in him accept that he may have to do things that we may not agree with. Lot and Abraham didn't agree at first with His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but they accepted it. The issue is much more complicated than you seem to be so absolute on. There are few absolutes in the world. -Visorstuff 01:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The issue is "complicated" as in genocidal campaigns, racial discrimination, and other prima facie evil acts have to be considered potentially justifiable if you accept the literal reality of the God of either the Old Testament and/or the Book of Mormon. But just asserting that there are few absolutes in the world is a pretty bland and unresponsive way of equivocating over the moral acceptibility of genocide. You have to accept an argument along the lines of, a whole society was evil enough that only by exterminating it entirely can the evil be stopped from perpetuating. In our day, it is only sick thugs like Joseph Kony and Ratko Mladić who apply that idea in practice, and if their stories are accepted at face value, the Moses and Joshua of the Old Testament belong in the same category. What is complicated about this is that reasonable people who would otherwise feel pure moral repugnance to accounts of murder and genocide such as those that fill the Old Testament are instead persuaded to equivocate over them by their faith that such horrors somehow spring from an all-benevolent god. That is why I see faith as inevitably immoral. Faith by definition is suspension of rational thought and accepting beliefs in the absence of objectively verifiable demonstration; by definition then it is irrational and arbitrary. While it has often inspired people to do good, there can never be any guarantee that this will persist, because an irrational foundation remains always capable of arbitrary change. When the only standard for determining good and evil is what an unobservable god says it is, there can be no surprise when that standard of good and evil becomes unrecognizable compared with a rational, objective standard. It is precisely that "complicated" logic that creates suicide bombers for Al Qaeda and Hamas. As Steven Weinberg said, there have always been good people who do good and evil people who do evil, but for good people to accept evil, that takes religion. - Reaverdrop 05:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank-you for your views. I did not justify any of the above actions, nor did I support them with my explanation, however, I did state that by being so absolute as to what is right and wrong is not wise. What is right and wrong is very subjective - and to understand that - with or without faith - you need context. You likely did not live through the issue of prohibition of Blacks and the priesthood, nor of polygamy. You cannot understand the issue without having expereienced it. Thatis like understanding the revolutionary war issues completely - merely, we get a surface understanding as we read the account. "Taxation without representation" was not the issue, but it is the easiest thing for historians to understand and teach to others. You do not take into account the context. I'm personally for making immigration easier, yet 80 percent of the public in the US thinks we need tighter restrictions. I see it as a racism issue for most involved (the same racist issue against chinese, japanese, irish, scottish, ethiopians, laotians, vietnamese and others), and think that denying others to come here except for security issues, is wrong, and shows an aryan-like superiority - called by others "America patriotism as a religion." To me it is wrong. We are in a cycle yet again, and in another 20 years, we'll be in the same place again. Its been going on since 1812. But I do understand the context, as I am living through this one. I see the crime here in arizona by illegal aliens, but think there are better ways to solve this issue. To me citizenship and religious practice are two seperate issues - especially in matters of ethnicity and background.

Comparing this issue to Joseph Kony and Ratko Mladić is very different - they do not compare. Mormons did not seek to kill others, nor wipe out their culture - in fact, just the opposite. And in any case, those are more cultural and ethnic focused than race-related. You wrote: "But just asserting that there are few absolutes in the world is a pretty bland and unresponsive way of equivocating over the moral acceptibility of genocide." I did not use absolutes to justify or even to discuss the racism issue, but rather to discuss your absoluteness that you know the issue, when you weren't involved. I try not to discus items I am not familiar with, and I try to go deep into understanding all of the issues at hand. You seem to have a surface understanding of this issue, have formed an opinion (which is a good thing), but feel that your opinion is the right one, regardless of any other evidence. It is not that simple. There were many factors in play, and you should not be so quick to judge others historically. Was it wrong that women wreen't allowed to vote? In todya's world, yes. But what factors in the victorian era (ironically named for a woman) that led to a lack of sufferage? Why in republics did one vote per household stand, versus one vote per adult (male or female). (incidentally, Utah territory allowed woman and black sufferage for many years, before the law was repealed and they were prohibited to do so by the federal government). What they saw as right in that situation - equal citizen rights - was prohibited by other americans. Deciding who holds the priesthood seems tame compared to that - especially when today, any one can become a minister by filling out an online form. Blacks could still pray in church, become auxillery president heads (and were) and do the rest that women could do, yet, because they couldn't give blessings, it is seen as a bad thing. Most churches don't allow any member to give blessings or lead meetings as it is, so the point is circular. Nice discussion, but would suggest a comparitive history class that helps with context for you, but probably won't respond again to this thread, as we obviously have different views, and further discussion will be fruitless. Happy editing. -Visorstuff 16:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You keep insisting that points in which I differ from your point of view are due to my incomplete understanding or superficial knowledge, apparently because my insufficient knowledge hasn’t convinced me of moral relativism - an odd stance in the defense of faith in God. Sorry, but I simply don’t agree that one can’t possibly form moral evaluations of anything outside one’s personal experience. My grandfather has personally related to me remembrances of his materal grandfather always on the run from federal authorities because he was a practicing polygamist, and I have the journals of two other polygamist ancestors - but I should be prohibited from conceiving any moral judgments on polygamy without personally living it? I just don’t understand why you would argue that.

As for the comparison with Kony and Mladic, it was made in reference to Moses and Joshua - there are something like fifty different occasions in the five mosaic books when one of them reports an order from God to attack or wipe out pretty much anyone outside their own tribe as enemies of God. Mormons and all other Christians, Jews and Muslims are constrained by their faith to interpret that genocidal campaign as divinely inspired and morally blameless, and leave them to reason from there. While Mormons haven’t toppled the walls of Jericho, they have practiced a belief that race is indicative of spiritual worth - a direct legacy of the teaching and practice of that doctrine in the Old Testament, as applied to justify ethnic cleansing. Whether or not most churches forbade any lay members from performing ordinances that Mormons forbade only of Blacks is irrelevant to the systematic racial discrimination of the Mormon church. Minimizing it as only preventing them from giving certain blessings is disingenuous - the priesthood is required for exaltation, and for temple endowment and marriage which are also required for exaltation. The official Mormon belief on Blacks was that they were ineligible to receive the steps necessary to return to Heavenly Father and receive eternal life, making it only logical for prophets, seers and revelators (as every apostle is sustained as) like Bruce R. McConkie to reason and teach that this must be because they were only marginally valiant in the pre-existence, ineligible for eternal life, and therefore a permanent spiritual underclass on Earth. That an otherwise good man like him, and many other Church members I know, would be led by Mormon doctrine, whether present or historical, to honestly embrace the belief that some human beings could be categorized as of secondary worth in the eyes of God, is an example of the inevitably irrational and arbitrary dictates of faith serving as a force for corrupting the moral good sense of its believers. - Reaverdrop 07:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

This is somewhat off-topic so I apologize in advance - Although the blessings of the temple were not available to blacks prior to Official Declaration 2 - it was always church doctrine that they could return to Heavenly Father and live in the Celestial Kingdom. When the revelation came, the ordinance work would be done for those members (as work for the dead if the revelation was not received prior to their death). As you know, Bruce R McConkie changed the wording you refer to because that was never the church doctrine.

Back to topic If the effort is to include some information about JS's actions re blacks - then we need to include that he ordained, authorized the ordination, etc of black members. The comment that the instruction to stop was not explained is very relevant in that his death prevented anything other than speculation about the purpose.

Finally, this is getting too far afield and we should refocus on what needs to be done to the article Trödel 13:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes Trodel, it is now completely off topic. Reaverdrop, it was taught, from Young onward that someday Blacks would be ordained again, and that ALL blacks would have the same blessings as other races in regard to exaltation. Just they would have to wait for a time and possible recieve in the next life. Christ said/taught similar of Samaritans and others that were not Jewish. Temporary exclusivity and inclusion of a group of people is not a new religious concept, but it is usually temporary. Why could only Jews be saved between 1400 BCE and the time of Christ? Dunno. Not for me to decide. And just becuase you have ancestors who lived polygamy does not mean you understand their situation or polygamy. The author of the book "A Mormon Mother" very clearly tells her children that they will never understand polygamy because they didn't live the principle, nor did they have to sacrifice for it. Just in the same way as I've never experience the spiritual effect of levitical sacrifices, I can study them, but I'll never fully understand them. In the words of Brigham Young, "To know, they must experience." I don't claim to know, and I'd be willing to bet I've studied both of these issues more than most. I'm not claiming relativity, but jsut don't be so absolute. There are too many factors to "know for sure" unless you claim personal revelation or were there. If you have either of those two, I'll gladly accept your arguments, disagree and (I've already) move(d) on. Back to the discussion, I actually think a link to Blacks and Mormonism should suffice for the main article. -Visorstuff 19:13, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Then I guess we can't morally condemn any murderers unless we go out and try committing murder first. What a load of crock. If humans can understand black holes by analyzing them without diving into them, they can understand moral implications of actions they don't directly participate in. In fact, personal moral judgment would be impossible without making moral evaluations of actions without trying them first.

As for "the church taught all along that Blacks would get the priesthood someday soon", that is the Church's Soviet revisionism. I grew up hearing that too, but I haven't found any pre-1978 evidence to confirm it. On the contrary, Brigham Young said pretty clearly that they would never get it - just as there is no written evidence dating before 1838 for Joseph Smith claiming to have seen both God the Father and Jesus as corporeal beings in the First Vision. Take your own advice and read up a little more on the history before you try to teach others. - Reaverdrop 19:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Comparison murder to polygamy and denying a group of people a privilege is laughable and idiotic (no offense meant). I imagine that you believe the church is just as evil for denying women the priesthood. But that is another topic - is is it just more acceptable. In fact, we deny those under the age of eight membership and the priesthood. That is equally evil as murder? C'mon, you are getting too emotional to this argument.

Second you wrote: "the church taught all along that Blacks would get the priesthood someday soon, that is the Church's Soviet revisionism. I grew up hearing that too, but I haven't found any pre-1978 evidence to confirm it."

This confirms my point above. You haven't studied the issue very indepth at all - especially if you base that off of Brigam Young, who in multiple sermons taught blacks would get the priesthood one day. Even the old infobases CDs had access to that level of detail. Try studying an issue before arguing it. If you are this un-informed, you don't have much to stand on. The difference is that I do study and write about this. You, apparently, do not. To satisfy, here are a few examples:

President Wilford Woodruff "The day will come when all that race will be redeemed and possess all the blessings which we now have." [2]

Brigham Young: "Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the holy priesthood, and the law of God. They will go down to death. And when all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the holy priesthood, then that curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will then come up and possess the priesthood, and receive all the blessings which we now are entitled to." [3]

In 1970, during the administration of David O. McKay, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency had voted to end the policy, however, McKay was absent because of age-related disability and First Counselor Harold B. Lee was traveling on church business. When President Lee returned, he called for another vote on the issue, and this time it was defeated, upon Lee's belief that such a large change in Church policy should originate in revelation." (Edwin B. Firmage, ed., The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, "Editor's Afterward", Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 1988.)

"Then change will come in due course. It seems to me that if we had admitted the Negro to the church as a full member, at the time of Joseph Smith, we would have had more trouble with the government than we then had. Holding ourselves aloof from that until after the Civil war gave us the opportunity to establish the church without that question coming to the front. It was, in other words, [I believe] a policy, not necessarily a doctrine." (Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, page 129)

You may wnat to go back and read the bio of president mcKay, quoted above for example, which states "Well, I've inquired of the Lord repeatedly. The last time I did it was late last night. I was told, with no discussion, not to bring the subject up with the Lord again; that the time will come, but it will not be my time, and to leave the subject alone...".

Or a letter "To General Authorities, Regional Representatives of the Twelve, Stake Presidents, Mission Presidents, and Bishops" dated, December 15, 1969: The position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affecting those of the Negro race who choose to join the Church falls wholly within the category of religion. It has no bearing upon matters of civil rights. In no case or degree does it deny to the Negro his full privileges as a citizen of the nation. This position has no relevancy whatever to those who do not wish to join the Church. Those individuals, we suppose, do not believe in the divine origin and nature of the church, nor that we have the priesthood of God. Therefore, if they feel we have no priesthood, they should have no concern with any aspect of our theology on priesthood so long as that theology does not deny any man his Constitutional privileges...From the beginning of this dispensation, Joseph Smith and all succeeding presidents of the Church have taught that Negroes, while spirit children of a common Father, and the progeny of our earthly parents Adam and Eve, were not yet to receive the priesthood, for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which He has not made fully known to man...President McKay has also said, "Sometime in God's eternal plan, the Negro will be given the right to hold the priesthood." Until God reveals His will in this matter, to him whom we sustain as a prophet, we are bound by that same will. Priesthood, when it is conferred on any man comes as a blessing from God, not of men."

It is true that the Negro race in their native land occupy lands of much heat, as well as they did before the flood, but such discussion does not aid us much in the matter of the curse placed on Cain and his posterity. In regard to this we should be satisfied with what the Lord has revealed in relation to Cain and his posterity. The Pearl of Great Price tells us definitely that the Egyptians were denied the priesthood. The Prophet taught his brethren that Cain was denied the priesthood and his posterity also to the latest generations. The promise was given that this curse, or restriction, will be removed, when the time comes in some future sphere, when Abel will have posterity. This is published in The Way to Perfection, chapters 15 and 16. Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, Vol.2, p.177

Or you may want to read the widely publicized talk by Elder SW Kimball about the "change of color" of dark skinned people to lighter skin based on time and righteousnes. Or the much published by church critics mntues of a 1st presidency and twelve meeting about whether or not Elijah Abel's daughter could go trhough the temple, or the biography of Heber J. Grant. Or the Biography of Hugh B. Brown. or the Orson Pratt comment that the priesthood would be given to blacks after the blood of Israel flowed in the veins of all peoples of the earth" or Brigham Young stating that they'd get it after all of Abels progenitors received it, or the 1949 first presidency statement that said "but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time"

You may want to study the topic in-depth - even from such readily available sources (or even read Blacks and Mormonism and its talk page history) before thinking you understand the issue. I could have gotten your previous arguments from any old anti-Mormon or church critic web-site - but the difference is that those sources discount the balanced view and statments such as above that are easily accessible as primary sources. I did "Take [my] own advice and read up a little more on the history before [I] try to teach others" The advice is still offered to you. I'm sorry if this seems condescending, but this same issue comes up over and over and is really a moot point. You are a gifted editor, and you raise good questions that need to be addressed in the article. Keep up the good work. Once again, happy editing. Sorry to take up so much room on this page on this already-hashed over topic. Other editors, feel free to move the referenced quotes above to the relevent articles. -Visorstuff 20:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You're right that I didn't get the wording right about one thing above: that the church authorities taught that Blacks would never receive the priesthood, when what they taught was that Blacks would never get the priesthood until after the work had been finished for everyone else - and that everyone else had even received the resurrection, which places the event after the Millenium and at the very end of the world. Although, that's not much of a significant difference; it's still totally inconsistent with the church's doctrinal switcheroo in 1978, making the Church's post-1978 re-interpretations of earlier pronouncements revisionist, and it still imposes a doctrine that Blacks as an entire people were second-class citizens in the kingdom of God, a doctrine they never repudiated in the act of saying merely that "okay now enough time has passed for even Blacks to have the priesthood", and that still has an ongoing, active effect of convincing church members, because of their faith in earlier church prophets, that there must have been validity to the doctrine and therefore that Blacks are on some kind of inferior spiritual basis than everyone else.

And I don't find it laughable to compare doctrine-enshrined racism with the types of genocidal campaigns in the Bible that you referred to as murder. Every serious genocide and ethnic war is based in part on dehumanizing the opposing tribe as less than fully human or as unworthy as an entire class in God's eyes. The distinction between that and the Church's racist doctrine is one of degree only, not of kind. The Biblical precedents of God's blessings being restricted by ethnicity cited to support the Mormon doctrine of racism are the same teachings that went hand-in-hand among those Biblical people with justifying wars of aggression and genocide among their neighbors. Slavery and lynchings in America were often done under religious justifications for viewing Blacks as the seed of Cain, inferior, and disfavored of God, parallel to those justifications held by the church leaders who introduced racism into Mormon doctrine. Rather than serving as a force against one of the great evils of human history, which a great many people were doing then, and which anyone claiming the special moral insights of being the only group with direct communication from God must have been expected to do, the Church remained thoroughly neutral and complicit on slavery, an institution maintained only by daily violence and threat of violence against its subjects and which intrinsically constitutes violence against human dignity. Regardless of the form in which religiously justified racism expresses itself, it constitutes people's faith assuring them that evil is good, thereby interfering with their own conscience.

It’s again disingenuous for you to characterize the Mormon doctrine as merely denying a privilege; Mormon doctrine considers priesthood an absolute prerequisite for temple marriage and eternal life. This sets the Church’s racist discrimination on the priesthood apart from its gender discrimination, since it still teaches that women are fully capable of having temple marriage and eternal life by benefit of their husband’s priesthood. Not Black women though, even if they wanted to marry a white man, since he would then drop dead on the spot, according to Brigham Young. And it’s not honest to treat the question as one the Brethren were unsure was a matter of doctrine or policy, as many of them tried to do in your quotes, in light of the early church leaders’ pronouncements; it could hardly be mere church policy for Blacks to have been ineligible for the priesthood until after everyone else was resurrected.

Support for the Church’s teaching that Blacks could not receive the priesthood until the end of the world can be found in your own citations, such as Brigham Young: “And when all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the holy priesthood, then that curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will then come up and possess the priesthood, and receive all the blessings which we now are entitled to.” And Joseph Fielding Smith: “The promise was given that this curse, or restriction, will be removed, when the time comes in some future sphere, when Abel will have posterity.”

And there’s this, from Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 2:136 (references are to the talks beginning on the cited page number): “We have this illustrated in the account of Cain and Abel. Cain conversed with his God every day, and knew all about the plan of creating this earth, for his father told him. But, for the want of humility, and through jealousy, and an anxiety to possess the kingdom, and to have the whole of it under his own control, and not allow any body else the right to say one word, what did he do? He killed his brother. The Lord put a mark on him; and there are some of his children in this room. When all the other children of Adam have had the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four quarters of the earth, and have received their resurrection from the dead, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity. He deprived his brother of the privilege of pursuing his journey through life, and of extending his kingdom by multiplying upon the earth; and because he did this, he is the last to share the joys of the kingdom of God.”

This also from Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 7:282 – and you tell me whether his description of Blacks indicates whether his doctrine was born of revelation or personal racial prejudice: “You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind. The first man that committed the odious crime of killing one of his brethren will be cursed the longest of any one of the children of Adam. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race-that they should be the "servant of servants;" [the same religious justification commonly used by slave-holders] and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree. How long is that race to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. Until the last ones of the residue of Adam's children are brought up to that favourable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood.”

Brigham Young again, also from the talk starting on Journal of Discourses 10:104 - compare the reality of this teaching with your citation of Hugh B. Brown suggesting the church's racist doctrine was just to avoid upsetting the federal government (if that was a valid justification, why polygamy?) and tell me he was not in top revisionist gear: “The rank, rabid abolitionists, whom I call black-hearted Republicans, have set the whole national fabric on fire. ... The Southerners make the negroes, and the Northerners worship them; this is all the difference between slaveholders and abolitionists. … If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.”

To work for Blacks to be free of slavery was to worship them?! Give him credit, I guess, for calling slave-holders to repent of treating their slaves abusively, rather than "merely" using them like human beings.

And here’s a little chestnut, also from the talk starting on 10:104: “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” Even in 1978 after the "revelation", the Church News ran a column reminding its readers that this didn't mean they should start intermarrying with Blacks.

My point stands: the Church encrusted a sadly typical nineteenth century racist mindset into a doctrine, thus ensuring that it persisted generations longer among its believers than it did among the general populace; and rather than repudiating and atoning for its earlier racist doctrine, the Church through today has only tried to minimize it through revision, unwilling to admit to past error, thus ensuring that its believers continue to accept the validity of the old doctrine, which can only serve as an ongoing influence for corrupting their consciences.

- Reaverdrop 23:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I do not have more than three minutes to respond, and conversations elsewhere have suggested I drop this topic. However, you have a few major doctrinal errors in your argument.

You wrote: "Mormon doctrine considers priesthood an absolute prerequisite for temple marriage and eternal life" This is not true - mostly. For example, little children are "excused" from having the priesthood as a requirement for exaltation - which is/was equally true and taught about blacks who joined the church.

Second, I still find no revisionism in any of my research - on this topic or otherwise. Yes, things are simplified now, and emphasized differently, doesn't mean they weren't taught before. If you re-read the quotes above (and the other references I pointed you to) you'll find that the promises were believed to come either just prior or after the millenium. Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee taught that blacks would get the priesthood after the blood of israel flowed through the viens of all the nations of the earth. Both prior to 1978. HBBrowns' memiors reference this and his belief that the time was close for this to occur. One study was cited in other research, that every person alive today is a decendant of Moses, and that our nearest common ancestor lived in the 12-1300 AD - an argument used by apologists on the matter. Again, I'm not judging or justifying the doctrine, but stating it is much more complex that you are making it out to be. The accusation of revisionism by most critics is unfounded. Why did early missionaries emphasize living prophets to those they taught (except in Asia/Africa)? Because the people they taught already believed in Christ. Why teach the first two principles of the old missionary discussions if the people already believe it? But then you have violent defenses of the atonement by each of the apostles from David Patten (if you ever read history of the church, its my bathroom reading) to David Bednar. Revisionism is a lame argument and is wholly unfounded. Okay three minutes is up, gotta run. -Visorstuff 00:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:Bush encounters colbert small.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Bush encounters colbert small.jpg. Wikipedia gets hundreds of images uploaded every day, and in order to verify that the images can be legally used on Wikipedia, the source and copyright status must be indicated. Images need to have an image tag applied to the image description page indicating the copyright status of the image. This uniform and easy-to-understand method of indicating the license status allows potential re-users of the images to know what they are allowed to do with the images.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. If you need help on selecting a tag to use, or in adding the tag to the image description, feel free to post a message at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 02:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Project: Space

Rock on!!! Chadlupkes 18:10, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Question about your beliefs?

Hey, I know you have strong ties to Mormonism. Are you a member of the LDS church? -Visorstuff 22:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Reply at User_talk:Visorstuff#Reply_to_Question_about_your_beliefs.3F

I've also responded at my talke page (same section). Your help is needed. -Visorstuff 23:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Ruparel College, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Martyn J. Fogg, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Cactus.man ✍ 15:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

I was going about with my usual wiki trawling, doing a few minor edits and uploads, when I decided to check if there's anything new on my watch-list. And hey! Somebody's been editing my user page! And what do I find, but a sweet barnstar laid out there - my first very own barnstar.*brushes off a tear and sniffs* Thank you sooo much! -- thunderboltz^{a.k.a.Deepu_Joseph |TALK} 12:15, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Exmormonism

Thanks for the note. Its been interesting to read your experiences as you described them on Visorstuff's page. Happy to know another former Church member that doesn't have a rabid hatred of all things Mormon. I'm looking forward to collaborating and knowing more about you in the future. Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 04:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm on travel right now, so have no time to edit, however, it seems that you two are more the type of exmormons I come in contact with, rather than the exmormon stereotype you just described. And according to the research, you are typical. I, and other editors, appreciated your NPOV help on the article. Happy editing. -Visorstuff 16:42, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Another Reaver!

Check this out - I just found a user named The Soul Reaver. Awesome. - Reaverdrop 04:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh, I love it when someone starts a new conversation on their own talkpage. Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 04:51, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

That was of the "general announcement" type, as in something wikipedia in general should get to know. - Reaverdrop 05:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

DYK it! Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 07:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Sweet idea. Better yet, we should put a link to "Reaver-themed users" in the toolbox. - Reaverdrop 14:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Browncoats rule. reavers drool. ++Lar: t/c 02:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Tulu documented? OK

It was just the lack of any reference. A TV show is not a reference if it isnt recorded. But if theres a reference ... (sorry, my apostrophe key just went wonky in a strange way).

Im a Browncoat too. Zora 01:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Oho, there are TWO uses of the term Reaver. In the sadly doomed TV series Firefly (television) and its film sequel Serenity (film), Reavers were deranged cannibals from outer space. "They rape you to death and they eat you and they sew your skin to their clothing and if you're lucky they do it in that order." Browncoats are the deranged fans of the TV series and the movie and I are one. There are Browncoats in the Netherlands too. You must know one, who will gladly loan you the DVDs of the TV series and the movie, and then try to initiate you into the arcane mysteries of fandom. Zora 19:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

DYK!

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Christopher McKay, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

RC

I saw your edits on RedColony. I think that the author was trying to say that RC is a less political organization and focuses more on colonization and terraforming then acctuly getting there. We (I'm a part of the site) have gone through many revisions of purpose and it shows. Right now I am acting head, I am setting a direction knowlege collection and organization along with working with MarsDrive to create a PR campaign to get the public to support Mars exploration. If you have a good way to word this in the article, I would appriciate it. I would do a poor job at it. The author was a member then left for lack of time, but I think that any edits by me would come out with similar wording as the original. I would like to see this article be correct under the NPV. If you could make the edits or point me in the right direction, I would greatly appriciate it (I try to not edit the article much, as I am a member of the organization). Also, MarsDrive, has become a large organization in the past year. It may be worth it to try to make their article more detailed (no, I am not a member of that organization).

Also, I would like to join the WikiProject Space Colonization. I saw that there was a todo list. Do you have anything you would like worked on first, or I could work on the Colonization of Mars article (no, not to advance my site, but because that is where I am most knowlegable).

Thanks, Jimktrains 02:17, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Please don't edit war - use the talk pages!

For great justice. 21:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Response: User_talk:For_great_justice.#It.27s_not_an_edit_war... - Reaverdrop 21:13, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Nonetheless, it helps for a more transparent discussion to use the talk pages, especially on controversial topics! Yours, For great justice. 21:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Response: User_talk:For_great_justice.#It.27s_not_an_edit_war... - Reaverdrop 21:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I only raise it because things can get heated, and I don't want to get off on the wrong foot - to me, there's more danger of not communicating enough and misunderstanding each other's motives than there is in communicating too much! For great justice. 21:21, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

userbox

Thanks. I've second thoughts about it, though.User:Mikereichold | User_talk:Mikereichold 23:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletion

You might find Wikipedia:Guide to deletion useful. Thanks! For great justice. 01:06, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry

THere are plenty of like-minded wikipedians out there to support you in efforts to NPOV the article on Apollo moon landing hoax accusations. I'm one of them. If you want to drop the AfD, I'll lend a hand. --ScienceApologist 14:32, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

At home

Hi, I saw your demeaning and defamitory remarks about my improvements to the Terrorist Surveillance article I made while I was "at home" using that computer. While at home the computer stamp at the time was 141.150.244.164 and that was my signal to John Wesley, one of the main editors of the article, that it was me and not some other anomyous person contributing to the article. Check out my P.S. in his talk and you will see the system I am using so that you editors of the article will know when it's me making changes away from the computer I use at work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.98.154.35 (talk • contribs)

Fair use

I'm sorry, I had to revert your recent edits to Aishwarya Rai. Image:Bollywood saga bookcover.JPG can only be used in an article discussing the book in question. Thus, it cannot be used in the article on Aishwarya Rai. Additionally, you did not yet provide a detailed fair-use rationale so it currently cannot be used in any article. This is not meant to be a personal attack or anything, you have a history of high-quality edits. It's just that Wikipedia tends to play it safe when it comes to fair-use. --Yamla 16:44, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Source request

Hi Reaverdrop - great work on Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_White_House_Correspondents'_Association_Dinner

is there any chance you have a source for

"The popular blog Crooks and Liars, the first place that the video became available, recorded their busiest day on record."

Namely the claims it was the first and that it was thier busiest day on record?

It is for the featured article candadicy.

Thanks! RN 18:28, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Ron Sorensen - Speedy Delete

Thanks. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/wp:space) 04:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome.Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 04:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, albums are not people, and cannot be speedied. Use {{prod}}. Thanks, Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 04:39, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, since the {{prod}} template was previously removed on Someday, Somehow, it should not be re-added (see WP:PROD#Conflicts). If you want to pursue its deletion further, please list the article on Articles for Deletion. Regards. ×Meegs 01:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

User:UniverseToday

I'll look into it, probably tomorrow. If it's urgent, you could post to WP:ANI. Thanks for letting me know, Tom Harrison ^Talk 02:04, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

That was an amazingly thorough report on RfI - I had assumed he simply floated away after the first set of incidents. I remember that incident well; not for the personal attacks, but for the truly odd attempts at linkspamming his site. I added a very simple postscript with the original AN link. Thanks for picking this up! Kuru ^talk 03:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up on this report Reaverdrop. I have added a little clarification to it, I hope that was okay.--Kalsermar 14:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think I see what's going on. I'll keep an eye on it - that doesn't preclude anyone else from taking action on their own. Thanks, Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Are the remaining IPs on WP:RFI still a problem? If so is Tom dealing with it? Petros471 12:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

response

Dank

Dank je, ja het is ff wennen, al die nieuwe knopjes en linkjes, maar het zal wel gaan denk ik. Ik weet wel dat ik niet de meest fanatieke admin zal gaan worden, maar overal een beethe bijdraag aan het ordelijk houden van wikipedia. En d'r is genoeg te doen! -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 07:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Invitation and Recommendations for writing articles on Hindi Wikipedia

Hindi wikipedia invites and welcomes Wikipedians to contribute for the cause of spreading knowledge and the Hindi language. This page contains guidelines for writing a wiki-article on any topic at the Hindi Wikipedia, with special recommendations for writing in Hindi (Note: The script/font-family for Hindi is Devanāgari; the script/font-system for English is Roman script, also, the Hindi spelling system is not completely standardized). This article is yet in English language (mostly), in order to encourage even non-native/foreign people who have learnt/are learning Hindi to contribute to the Hindi wikipedia, and native Hindi speakers who normally write in English. The examples given below are only for explanation.

Recommendations:

1. Firstly for proper viewing, it is recommended to keep all links NOT-UNDERLINED. Otherwise the मात्रा below the Hindi alphabets might get partly hidden behind the underlines. For this, please go to My Preferences (मेरी पसंद) at the top of the page, then click Misc., and then choose "underline links -> Never". Save your settings. Also, do not click yes for "justify paragraphs", otherwise on some browsers, the devanagari script will appear highly distorted.
2. All users are requested and encouraged to contribute articles here, especially, to create new articles on general topics. They are also encouraged to expand the existing articles, and improve upon them. A non-user can also do the same; it is recommended but not required to register yourself as a wikipedian user at the Hindi wikipedia. As far as possible, each article should be written with a Neutral Point of View (NPOV)—no nationalistic or partiality or hatred based articles are welcome. The articles should be based on facts—and appropriate references should be provided as and where needed. See the English wiki's help page for editing in general. Almost all the general wiki-features are available for editing on Hindi wiki too. Guidelines for the content matter is mostly the same as given in English wiki.
3. Since the Hindi wiki is at its initial stages, users are welcome to take introduction and basic points from the English (or another) wikipedia's corresponding article and translate them for small articles. An in-page link to the English wiki's article will be deemed sufficient for references (a template might be created stating this). For longer articles, it is recommended to mention the references separately.
4. Since most computer users in India and elsewhere have the standard Western-type keyboard, it is best recommended (but not necessarily required) to use the virtual (software) keyboard like the one of Hindimozhi or of ISIS (Tavultesoft Keyman)—which are freewares. These are advantageous because the contemporary Hindi-speakers in India often write messages/chat using Hindi words but written in Roman (English) script, and the layout of these keyboards is quite the same that such people use. For example, using the "normal" keyboard with this software, typing ga would give ग and ghaa would give घा.
5. Create the article with its name written in Hindi (devanagari script). Always take care to include the nukta (dot below) for foreign / Urdu loanwords wherever it occurs in the standard spelling. For non-Indian names, use that spelling (for article name and other words) which is commonly encountered in Hindi newspapers, G.K.-books, Hindi-dubbed TV documentaries and Hollywood films and magazines. e.g., America-अमरीका (या अमेरिका), China-चीन, French-फ़्रांसिसी. For English acronyms/short-forms, use the initials in Roman script, and again create a full form in Hindi and redirect it to the short form. e.g. IPA (अन्तर्राष्ट्रीय ध्वनि वर्णाक्षर); UNO (संयुक्त राष्ट्र संघ). Doing the opposite is also fine. But creating the article with the Hindi short form, as सं०रा०सं०, is not recommended. Also, the article proper must be written with the proper nukta, as फ़ारसी, and then, a non-nukta (mis-)spelt version फारसी should preferably be created to redirect to the correct spelling.
6. Hindi wikipedia strongly recommends the users to write articles in everyday common Hindi in the खड़ीबोली dialect (Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu, i.e., बोलचाल वाली हिन्दी, which may include many loanwords from Persian and Arabic). The use of शुद्ध संस्कृतनिष्ठ हिन्दी is in general neither required nor recommended. E.g., use: वजह instead of कारण, ख़ास instead of विशेष, वगैरह instead of इत्यादि, लेकिन instead of परन्तु etc. However, for technical and specialized vocabulary, the use of शुद्ध संस्कृतनिष्ठ हिन्दी is recommended and usually mandatory. Thus: upper House of Parliament—संसद का उच्च सदन, but not Urdu—मजिलिस का ऐवान-ए-बाला ; Foreign Minister—विदेशमन्त्री, but not Urdu—वज़ीर-ए-ख़ारिजा ; knowledge/science—ज्ञान/विज्ञान, but not इल्म. Use spoken Hindi's ये and वो instead of यह and वह / वे. Do not use the title of respect जी after names, it is unencyclopedic. Thus: कृष्ण / श्री कृष्ण but not कृष्ण जी. Use the आप form and its corresponding 3rd person verbal conjugation for writing about respectable persons. Thus: श्री वाजपेयी मध्य प्रदेश में जन्मे थे. But not: वाजपेयी मध्य प्रदेश में जन्मा था. But do not use the pronoun "आप" itself in-text in biographies.
7. English should be used sparingly, only when required; i.e., if the corresponding शुद्ध हिन्दी word is too "difficult and not generally encountered", or if it is a proper name of non-Indian person/place/terminology/title, or if the user is highly unsure of the proper translation. It is recommended (but not required) for English-to-Hindi translation while writing articles, the Shabdkosh online dictionary should be used. For each English word, that alternative should be used which is generally encountered in everyday spoken Hindi, and also fits well into the context. Use of intelligent guesses for newly encountered words is also allowed, and so are translations encountered in Hindi-dubbed TV documentaries, Hollywood films, Hindi-translated books, etc. e.g., दमपिशाच for en:Dementor (used in dubbed HP films).
8. If used, it is recommended to use the English words within the articles using the English (Roman) alphabets rather than devanagari (or better, the devanagari transliteration should be used in the sentence, followed by the English word in Roman alphabet in parentheses). Such words should be italicized and not put in quotation marks. Preferably, there should be an in-page interwiki link (like :en:) on the word to the English wikipedia. If the word comes as an integral part of a sentence, so as not to break the continuity, the en: prefix should be hidden by writing the word again after the pipe sign (piped link). Thus, recommended: हैरी पॉटर ने ''[[:en:Pensieve|Pensieve]]'' के अन्दर ''[[:en:Little Hangleton|Little Hangleton]]'' गाँव में लॉर्ड वोल्डेमॉर्ट की माँ ''[[:en:Merope Gaunt|Merope Gaunt]]'' को देखा. ''[[:en:Resplendent Quetzal|Resplendent Quetzal]]'' पक्षी के ऊपर एक मेक्सिकन पादरी डा० ''[[:en:Pablo de la Llave|Pablo de la Llave]]'' ने काफ़ी शोध किया था. Whence,
   • हैरी पॉटर ने Pensieve के अन्दर Little Hangleton गाँव में लॉर्ड वोल्डेमॉर्ट की माँ Merope Gaunt को देखा
   • Resplendent Quetzal पक्षी के ऊपर एक मेक्सिकन पादरी डा० Pablo de la Llave ने काफ़ी शोध किया था
9. Always start the first 1 or 2 lines of the article giving its definition (from any standard dictionary/other wiki) or suitable introduction. Thus, recommended: ललिता सहस्रनामन हिन्दू धर्मसुधारक आदि शंकराचार्य द्वारा रचित देवी दुर्गा को समर्पित एक पूजा-मन्त्र है, जिसे कई हिन्दू रोज़ श्रद्धा से जपते हैं । But not: ललिता सहस्रनामन मन्त्र जपने के लिये लड्डू-पेड़ा, ताम्बुल, सिन्दूर, लाल चुनरी के साथ नित्य इस मन्त्र का पाठ करें, तो जल्द ही गड़ा हुआ ख़जाना मिलेगा । Recommended: वैमानिक अभियान्त्रिकी (en:Aeronautical engineering) विमानों (en:Aircrafts) की अभिकल्पना, निर्माण और प्रचालन करने का विज्ञान, कला और कार्य है । (translated from Eng. Webster's New World Dictionary). But not: आजकल वैमानिक अभियान्त्रिकी के लिये देशभर में कई कॉलेज खुल गये हैं, जिनमें अग्रणी स्थान यूटोपिया स्थित लालू-यादव टेक्लिनक कॉलेज का है ।
10. For names of countries, cities, places, languages, people, books, films, technical vocabulary, mythology, etc, start the article like this:
    • 1. The name in bold ('''अपोलो''')
    • 2. starting parenthesis, then English name in Roman script, in-page interwiki-linked to English wiki ff. by semicolon ((अंग्रेज़ी : [[:en:Apollo]];)
    • 3. The native name(s) if applicable in the italicized native script, preferably followed either by its italicized approximate Hindi pronunciation or non-italicized phonological transcription within / /, ff. by closed parenthesis (यूनानी : ''Aπollων अपोल्लोन''))
    • 4. the rest of the definition or introduction (प्राचीन [[यूनानी धर्म]] (ग्रीक धर्म) और प्राचीन [[रोमन धर्म]] के सर्वोच्च देवता थे ।) For country names, only the standard short form of the name is needed in the first line. If there is a common name for a difficult word in Hindustani, also mention it. Whence: अपोलो (अंग्रेज़ी : en:Apollo; यूनानी : Aπollων अपोल्लोन) प्राचीन यूनानी धर्म (ग्रीक धर्म) और प्राचीन रोमन धर्म के सर्वोच्च देवता थे । If you don't give the interwiki English/another language link (which would be deemed to be the default reference), then you MUST provide an appropriate reference.
11. Please leave no article without an appropriate category. See the list of created categories here; you can also make a new category (pref. in Hindi). Please leave no article without at least ONE off page (like en:) interwiki link. E.g., the user can check the article name (say Apollo) on the finally redirected English page and append to the Hindi article ([[en:Appolo]])). These interlanguage links will help a bot to update all interwiki links for that article in all wikipedias. The category and the aforementioned link should be typed at the end of the article. If the article is very small, mention it as a stub/substub.
12. Use of templates is welcome. See the list of templates here. If creating a template, name it pref. in Hindi.
13. Use पूर्णविराम ( । ) instead of a period (.) for ending statements. The पूर्णविराम, semicolon, colon and dash (but not comma) must come after one space after the word to prevent ambiguity. Use the international form of the Hindu-Arabic numerals (1,2,3 instead of १,२,३), as used by the Constitution and the Government of India (even for Hindi). There is no need to use the हलन्त at the end of Sanskrit words wherever it occurs. Hence, prefer: संसद over संसद्; अथर्वन over अथर्वन्. Use the proper quotation marks “” from the Insert toolbox, not "". Write dates as 2 मई 2006 (ईसवी or ईसापूर्व). Write time as 3:45 pm. Separate common suffix-words like शास्त्र, विज्ञान, ज्ञान with a hyphen. Thus: रसायन-शास्त्र. For most others, leave both the words of the noun-cluster free. Combine them into one word only if it is very common to do so. Thus: सामवेद.
14. The use of ज़ for the en:voiced alveolar fricative (/z/, as in zoo, rose) is fundamentally wrong. Its nearest counterpart is the en:voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ (as in sea), and not Hindi ज (en:voiced palatal plosive). Hence, it is suggested and recommended that for the sound /z/, whether it comes in English (etc.) spellings (z) for while pronunciation otherwise, should be transcribed as स़ (स with a dot below, available in the Insert toolbox). Hence: Reason रीस़न, not रीज़न ; Roses रोस़ेस़, not रोज़ेज़. But common Hindi words borrowed from Persian/Arabic (so-called Urdu words) are allowed to continue with ज़ spelling. Thus: ज़रा, नज़र, तर्ज़. The en:voiced postalveolar fricative (/ʒ/ as in treasure), inexistent in Hindi, can similarly be transcribed with श़. Thus: treasure ट्रॅश़र. The nukta (dot) available in the Insert toolbox can be combined with various consonants to suggest a more exact phonetic devanagari rendering of foreign sounds. E.g., since phonetically, English Think and this are not equal to थिंक and दिस, a better transcription could be थ़िंक and द़िस. Please take care of the dot below in so-called Urdu words, otherwise the Hindi spelling is deemed incorrect.
15. For the following English vowels met, mate, mat, transcribe as मॅट (short vowel), मेट (not मेइट), मैट (not मॅट, as popular in Marathi). However in contemporary Hindi and here, it is acceptable to use ए instead of ऍ. Thus: अमेरिका is more popular than अमॅरिका. For cot, coat, caught, transcribe as कॉट, कोट, कॉट (not कौट). Transcribe English /t/ and /d/ as ट and ड.
16. Use half-न before त, थ, द, ध, न, instead of anuswaar अं. Use half-म before प, फ, ब, भ, म. Use the anuswaar before all the rest of the consonants (not half-ङ, ञ, ण). If the मात्रा is not above the alphabet, use chandra-bindu, but only for nasalization. Thus: अन्दर, not अंदर ; अन्त, not अंत ; हिन्दी, not हिंदी ; सम्भव, not संभव ; पंचमी, not पञ्चमी ; अंडा, not अण्डा ; कंठ, not कण्ठ ; लैंड, not लैण्ड ; आँख, not आंख. However, both forms are acceptable in contemporary Hindi as well as here; the prec. are just recommendations.
17. When proceded by another vowel, use the pure vowels instead of य (unless the य is clearly articulated while pronouncing). Thus : जाएँ, not जायें (not जावें) ; आएगा, not आयेगा . However, both forms are acceptable in contemporary Hindi as well as here.
18. Please pay careful attention to the masculine/feminine gender (and singular/plural) in adjectives and verbs, else the sentence becomes ungrammatical.

For more information/suggestions/criticisms, please contact any one of the administrators of Hindi wiki here, preferably en:User:Magicalsaumy.

This page can also be found here.

Thank you,

Cygnus_hansa 00:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Your note on Branson's user talk page

I have moved that note to the appropriate forum. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 05:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted, sorry. If you have let other admins know, I'd reckon they will see the AN link first. What you have posted is in the wrong place, violates AGF, and is. Do not revert. Please keep it at AN. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 05:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

US securities law as pertaining to the NSA call database

Dear Reaverdrop, US securities law does not only govern stock trading, as you suggest in your revert message at NSA call database. US securities law also governs acceptable legal behaviors of publicly-traded companies, such as the phone companies allegedly involved in this call database. The section of law I referenced there (available at [4]) is called "Periodical and other reports", within "CHAPTER 2B–1—SECURITIES INVESTOR PROTECTION", "TITLE 15—COMMERCE AND TRADE". This law governs whether companies are allowed to lie in their periodic reports, accounts, etc. Normally, they are not, but, according to the referenced section (15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A)), the President can authorize them to legally do so in the interests of national security. The linked presidential memo at [5] delegates the authority to make such a designation to John Negroponte, a few days before the call database story hit the media and the denials by the telcos started. These are reputable sources, and this data as presented does not involve any expression of opinion. It is purely a statement of facts, backed up and properly cited. Readers can draw their own conclusions from these facts. I have started a discussion on this at Talk:NSA call database. If you feel this information should not be included in that article, please state your reasons there. Kwertii 16:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Universe Today

Hello Reaverdrop, you may recall your involvement regarding the article Universe Today from a few weeks ago and the RfI regarding the user. The article was again editted by a possible Wayne Smith sock and is up for AfD again. Could you please take a look at the situation and possibly comment on it. Thanks!--Kalsermar 19:08, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I've now dealt with the RFI report. Any others while I'm at it? Petros471 10:39, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Well 203.10.59.63 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) is a shared IP, although it does appear to only be used by that one user recently. I'll leave it at 48 hours for now (which is double the standard 24 for first block on static IPs, and much more than the usual 3 hours for shared). However, I'd be happy to block again, for longer, if the user continues when the block expires. Feel free to alert me on my talk page (if I appear to be around) or report to WP:AIV (for quickest admin response) if that is needed. Hope that's ok, and do realise your efforts are greatly appreciated. Remember good contributors work stays around a lot longer than the vandals :) Petros471 11:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeh but those blocks were a long time ago, and it is usual for shared IPs to be blocked repeatedly. As I said, I'll extend it if need when it expires. Petros471 14:12, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Source in NSA article

I see you gave a source for a quote used in the article,[6] however I have been unable to locate that quote inside the text. Can you please help me locate it, or let me know if it is there or not. Not sure if you were giving a source that the interview was said, or that those words were actually used. --zero faults ^{|sockpuppets|} 12:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Zero. Last paragraph of the first page: "And under repeated questioning from FOX News's Carl Cameron, he refused to even confirm that he was refusing to confirm or deny reports that the government is maintaining a secret domestic telephone database." Someone replaced that cite with a "citation needed", and I rechecked the original cite at that time and then put it back. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 00:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I see the old version made it seem like a direct quote, from him. Thanks for clearing it up. --zero faults ^{|sockpuppets|} 01:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Starcraft article fork

I think making a seperate article for professional play is a good idea so thanks for that, but please make sure that this is linked from the original SC article/that it's clear that such an article exists, so it that it doesn't just "disappear". The reason I reverted the first time it because I couldn't find a link to the new article anywhere, which doesn't bode well in terms of random users who aren't following the editing finding it. ShardPhoenix 15:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I put in a "see also" heading with a link to StarCraft professional competition when I reforked Gameplay of StarCraft. It's also in a few relevant categories including Category:StarCraft, which is a great way to track down StarCraft articles. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 16:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

What on Earth

Reaver, what on earth are you doing up at this hour anyway? I thought I was one of the few mindless ones unable to sleep at night. Do you work at night or are you an insomniac? I hope it is the prior, the latter makes working the next day tough.

You comment on membership using CUNY analysis seems to evade your true point. If I were you I would attack the issue in a more straight forward manner i.e. Thought the LDS church reports membership annualy, it is not capable of distinguihing between those who are active members and those who no longer participate in any church activity. Another option would be to more precisely identify who is being counted and who is not in the church's reporting. Regardless, I am against using old data in an attempt to disprove more current reporting. It unnecessarily weakens your critique. Storm Rider ^(talk) 09:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think crazy sleep habits and editing Wikipedia probably have a positive correlation. Keep in mind, too, I'm two hours ahead of you. I was just checking up on wikipedia to cool off after a few hours of the true addiction, starcraft. (Yes, I dropped reavers on one guy.)

Sorry CUNY hasn't managed to do their survey more often than once in eleven years (1990 and 2001), but it's relatively current, and relatively easy to compare directly with the Church's official stats from the same year - I couldn't find a Church cite for just U.S. membership in 2001, and they don't report membership that's only 18 and over, but I didn't want to get needlessly long in describing this one study. I also think some reference is better than saying just "not all of the Church's reported membership are active Latter-day Saints", and I think there's a compelling need to put some kind of actual informatation to that effect in the article - and since the Church doesn't report active membership numbers, I don't know of a source more current than this CUNY study that is also as authoritative and neutral. If you know of a more up-to-date, similarly authoritative source, then fantastic. Otherwise, what would you propose? - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 09:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Several things

Hi! I saw some of your comments on the article on Stephen Colbert's speech at the Dinner With A Really Really Long Name, and your name intrigued me (I was hoping to find a Firefly fan, since "Reaver" is used in the series to refer to the crazyass cannibals at the edge of the "'verse". Oh well, c'est la vie, eh?). Felt the need to comment on some things so here I am. :) Most of them are completely unrelated to the article that brought me to your userpage, though, heh.

1.) In regards to your philosophy... "The policy of absolutely open edits is typically justified by the assertion that the great majority of edits are constructive, and it lowers the entry barrier for new constructive editors. I happen to believe the ratio of constructive to worthless or negative edits could be sharply raised, and put the encyclopedic articles on a rate of growth sufficient to eventually overtake the cruft articles, by upping the entry barrier slightly - at least just by requiring registration, preferably registration tied to a unique IP address, or some other way of investing editors with accountability and reducing the ease of sock puppetry and block evasion."

Well, that's fine... except for the "preferably registration tied to a unique IP address" part. First off, some of us edit from more than one computer, and second, some of us edit from SHARED computers or computers on networks! For instance, I've edited from three different locales (home, work, and one of my local community college's own local networks), only two of which have IPs that couldn't possibly change, because the one at campus (where coincidentally, I have access to a decent library to help back up sources and cite things!), I've used half a dozen or more different computers (at least two different computers in the student lounge, one from the library proper, and several from the main lobby). Of note is the fact that I've recorded at least three different IP addresses based on these changing edit locations - and eventually, there might be at least one more, since my laptop has wireless capabilities, and other of the two campuses I take classes on has a free student-accessible wireless network, and that's assuming that I don't use the free wireless connection in the local Barnes & Noble as I'm very much inclined to do someday, or the wireless connection in any number of other local cafes, coffee shops and restaurants!

Of even more note is the fact that I got two different IP addresses even when logging into the same internet account. That's right; my family's place of business uses the same internet account as we use at home, and what's more, we use one of those annoying, cheap services that won't even let you log in to it on more than one computer at a time. And yet, lo and behold - two different IP addresses, because it's two different phone numbers!

I'd also like to note that while I made a handful of edits anon (mostly when I forgot to sign in or during the brief couple of months when I forgot my password), the vast majority of my edits have been signed-in. So would you prefer to punish hard-working Wikipedians who're willing to work from a number of different locales and computers, including and especially computers on library or college campus networks, or Wikipedians who have no internet access at home but are willing to work from library or college campus networks or from friends' or family members' computers where said friends or family may also have accounts (because "unique" means "no one else has it", after all), Wikipedians who're already signed-in anyway, simply because they do not work from "a unique IP address"? And in case you're thinking "people who do it when they're over at their friends' houses probably aren't serious about it", there's always the possibility that they're a "grammar nazi" who simply likes to correct grammatical mistakes and weird/bad phrasings on pages - which is still a perfectly good, perfectly valid contribution that can even make the difference between a Good article and a Featured article (since prose quality is included in the qualifications for Featured)!

Food for thought! :) (I don't exactly disagree on the "require it to be signed-in", though, since registration is already so bloody easy, and besides, that way it's easier to contact them about their edits and track their other edits and contact them about projects and pages they may be interested in chipping in on).

On some other, even more unrelated sidenotes:

• Yay! A Daily Show/Colbert Report fan! :D Glad to see you starting so many pages, too!

• WHOA! O_O That is one impressively long list of article creations! (I've only created three, and one narrowly escaped deletion, heh. Then again, I've been here only about six months, so that's perhaps to be expected)

• I agree totally on the "NPOV should not extend to userpages". It's ridiculous that the button that puts you in the category "Unitarian Universalist Wikipedians" is actually marked "interested in" (I was only hoping to learn about it as per my general interest in religions; I'm not actually ONE of them. Yet the darn thing has no way of actually putting yourself in the category of "interested in", and has no way of denoting "belongs to", despite there being a category for it! WTH!? Makes no sense, no sense at ALL!). Additionally, I think we have a right to know stated biases - for instance, if somebody's staunchly Republican, that may or may not affect their judgement on articles related to Republican or Democratic issues and candidates. Similarly, if they're Republican, they presumably know a thing or two about the party, so they'd be a potential source of aide in creating articles that cover all major points of view, assuming they could also stay neutral. I just don't get why NPOV is being shoved onto userpages in that way. Or to be fair, it's only userbuttons, but still! Jeez!

• Oh, and I was also wondering if, as a lawyer (you don't seem to specify what kind, although it IS 2:30 AM where I am, so I could have missed it, I suppose), and one interested in fiction at that, you might be willing to take a look at the "Legal issues" section of the Fan fiction article? It's one of the ones I've been working really hard on lately (well, not VERY lately, since I've been focusing a lot of my efforts elsewhere and on other articles, but you know), but I'm too scared to touch the "Legal issues" section, as I'm not even sure how to cite court cases. I know it needed work the last I saw it, though, because people kept saying things like "[unauthorized derivitive works are] totally legal [in Japan]", which is patently false (they're not "totally legal", but rather, tolerated, even in small profitable print runs, so long as they aren't published for really big profit or claimed as canon. The Japanese aren't particularly confrontational with each other, though, which is why that's the case). Again - I don't even know how to cite court cases properly, and in regards to fan fiction, it's pretty damn important! :)

Anyway, I need to go to bed now. See ya 'round. :) Runa27 07:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Response - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 00:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Game Guides policy

You may have noticed that many articles have been nominated (and deleted, even without clear consensus) lately, on the theory that they were gamecruft or game guides. On Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and video games#Recent video-game deletions, we are working to craft a policy about video game notability and what is and isn't encyclopedic. Your comments on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/StarCraft units and structures, were very well reasoned, so I'm inviting your input. Thanks for your contribution. Ace of Sevens 01:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Response - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 23:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I've commented on your deletion review. I believe overall comparisons between units, structures is pretty well covered on the pages for the races right nw, htough that equivelancy chart didn't have an analog. I'll probably go weak keep if it comes up again. Ace of Sevens 23:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

How to sway the crowd

Hello. Thanks for letting me know about the deletion review, I'm always happy to have any of my adminstrative actions reviewed. Or bog-standard editorial ones for the matter. Rather than pore over the specifics of that particular nominstion, I'd like to offer some advice for handeling similar situations in the future.

And AfD is a complex hybrid of fact finding mission, debate, and beauty pagent (and we all know how ugly those can be.) The facts always have the highest priority, followed by the debate (usually about policy interpretation,) and finally the pure opinions.

Trying to change an opinon is a mug's game. If someone thinks something is "trivial" then there is probably no shifting them. For example, in this debate some quite good arguments were presented. The chess example was apt, but in the end people can still simply say "I don't care about that. Nominate it for AfD if you'd like." Because the process is often inconsistant, and precedents without a guideline supporting them are very weak.

But if in the midst of the nomination an article is re-written with multiple reliable sources, people tend to notice. If an article is trimmed down, fully cited, and the arguments are presented with clear concise reference to policy, people really notice. That's where the time is usually more effectivley spent, rather than discursion on the nomination page.

brenneman ^{L} 05:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
By the way, I'm a serial "Sneak in one Probe to build two Cannons then a Pylon and laugh as their Builders are annihilated."

Wayne Smith's linkspam names

This is the current list of domain names owned by Wayne Smith AKA Projectorion/UniverseToday/UniverseDaily/ etc ad nauseam

yowiehunter.com spaceforums.net spaceforums.org badastronomer.net universedaily.org badastronomer.org spaceonion.com space4peace.com badastronomer.com jeeperscreepers3.net universetoday.net robertzubrin.com spaceforums.info spacedaily.info universetoday.info nuclearspace.org universedaily.com jonathanbreck.com wikipedian.info universedaily.info everythingspace.com stephenhawkingsuniverse.com jerrypournelle.net alienlife.info wikipediac.net wikipediam.net wikipedial.net wikipediac.info wikipediam.info wikipedial.info sciforums.info carlsagan.info amateurspaceflight.com atomicrockets.com projectorion.org projectorion.net projectorion.info

BTW He is one of the vandals on the israel page:

projectorion.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=wiki

BTW Part 2... That S.O.B appears to be using the handle that I typically use on the net: yales

to vandalize the pages. He often pretends to be me when he is pulling his moronic BS. Could you remove any references to "yales" and lock out the ID?

Tanks Mudge,

Yale

Gamecruft discussion

I've recently opened a discussion on Proto's talk page on how to deal with all of the recent game-related AFDs. I figured you might be interested, since I used your chess analogy as the reference. While I personally support the existence of most of the Chess pages along with descriptions of the notable units and mechanics of RTS games, I think the current debate is touching on a much wider issue, specifically the scope of the WP:NOT policy with regards to game content. I believe that if the debate is widened to a wider audience of disinterested editors, as would occur with a chess discussion, a more clear policy could be formulated. 129.61.46.16 14:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)Josh

Linkspammer/Vandal Wayne Smith on the rampage

Wayne Smith AKA Projectorion/UniverseToday/UniverseDaily/Flying Fox etc is on a tear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=202.137.162.250

Altho many of his sockpuppets have been blocked, he is posting via a new IP

projectorion.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=wiki

yale

AfD Nomination: Tommy T. Rapisardi

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, but all Wikipedia articles must meet our criteria for inclusion (see What Wikipedia is not and Deletion policy). Since it does not seem to me that Tommy T. Rapisardi meets these criteria, I have started a discussion about whether this article should be kept or deleted.

Your opinion on whether this article meets the inclusion criteria is welcome. Please contribute to the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tommy T. Rapisardi. Don't forget to add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of each of your comments to sign them.

Discussions such as these usually last five days. In the meantime, you are free to edit the content of the article. Please do not remove the "articles for deletion" template (the box at the top). When the discussion has concluded, an administrator will consider all comments and decide whether or not to delete the article. Flabreque 02:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Colbert

Just wanted to say thanks for your work on Colbert's WHCD article, it's on Wikipedia's frontpage today :) --kizzle 21:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi

Just wanted to drop a note to tell you hello, and hope things are goind well. Miss seeing you around the WP:LDS corner of wikipedia. Drop in sometime. -Visorstuff 01:07, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

A new truthiness graph

Hey Reaverdrop, I was wondering what technique you used to get the graph of the use of truthiness in blogs, and whether that technique could be used now to recenter the graph a little to show use a couple months, say December '05 to June '06. Let me know if that's feasible, or how I could crank one out if you're too busy. Cheers, JDoorjam Talk 05:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

- Go for it. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/w:s) 20:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Untagged image

An image you uploaded, Image:Ruparel seal.jpg, was tagged with the {{coatofarms}} copyright tag. This tag was deleted because it does not actually specify the copyright status of the image. The image may need a more accurate copyright tag, or it may need to be deleted. If the image portrays a seal or emblem, it should be tagged as {{seal}}. If you have any questions, ask them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. -- 07:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Better Source Request for Image:Terraformed mars from nasa public domain.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Terraformed mars from nasa public domain.jpg. You provided a source, but it is difficult for other users to examine the copyright status of the image because the source is incomplete. Please consider clarifying the exact source so that the copyright status may be checked more easily. It is best to specify the exact web page where you found the image, rather than only giving the source domain or the URL of the image file itself. Please update the image description with a URL that will be more helpful to other users in determining the copyright status.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source in a complete manner. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page or me at my talkpage. Thank you. MECU≈talk 23:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Orphaned fair use image (Image:Colbert eagle sequence.jpg)

Thanks for uploading Image:Colbert eagle sequence.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable under fair use (see our fair use policy).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any fair use images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. This is an automated message from BJBot 09:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Image:Terraformed_mars_from_nasa_public_domain.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Terraformed_mars_from_nasa_public_domain.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Nazgul533 22:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Image:Reaverdrop.jpg

Hello, Reaverdrop. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Reaverdrop.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Reaverdrop. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 08:18, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Reaverdrop.jpg

Hello, Reaverdrop. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Reaverdrop.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Reaverdrop/Userboxes/protoss-loyal. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 08:18, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Reaverdrop.jpg

Hello, Reaverdrop. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Reaverdrop.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Reaverdrop/Userboxes. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 08:18, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Truthiness2.JPG

Hello Reaverdrop, an automated process has found an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, such as fair use. The image (Image:Truthiness2.JPG) was found at the following location: User:Reaverdrop/Userboxes. This image or media will be removed per statement number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. The image that was replaced will not be automatically deleted, but it could be deleted at a later date. Articles using the same image should not be affected by my edits. I ask you to please not re-add the image to your userpage and could consider finding a replacement image licensed under either the Creative Commons or GFDL license or released to the public domain. Thanks for your attention and cooperation. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 04:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Unspecified source for Image:Anatoly_liberman.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Anatoly_liberman.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 13:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. MER-C 13:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:Truthiness2.JPG)

Thanks for uploading Image:Truthiness2.JPG. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BetacommandBot 06:00, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

email

I've responded to your email. Look forward to our disucssion. -Visorstuff 21:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The Church of Jesus Christ

I'm struggling to maintain the pre-discussion state of The Church of Jesus Christ, as you suggested be done on the talk page. Can you provide me with some back-up there as I seem to be the only one (apart from your previous comment) there who is intent on maintaining the status quo until a consensus can develop there, which clearly hasn't yet. Thanks. :) Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 01:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions. I essentially agree with your position, but as I've seen taking an absolutist stand is not going to work in gaining a consensus, I've tried to propose some awkward compromises. They don't seem too keen on any of them. I suspect the only editors commenting are members of said church and are dead-set against any sort of compromise with their belief system. Classic WP:COI. The anon-IP thing looks suspicious to me, but I'm not going to push it. Do you have any suggestions about dealing with the thing? Should I just let it go, or should I press on with the compromise? If you are the only one who agrees to a compromise, can we push on and implement that or are we just stuck at a standstill if they won't budge? Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 23:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Reply at User_talk:Rich_Uncle_Skeleton#Bickerton_.2F_LDS....3F - Reaverdrop (talk/nl) 23:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for all your work and help. You're a bloody legend finding all those citations.

Incidentally, what I said to Visorstuff on his/her page I can just as well say to you too. Do you have any thoughts about how to deal with things like this or where this page should go from here? Moving the page, the meat puppet issue, etc.? Thanks Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 03:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Facts

As you seem pretty apt to make the page better, which facts where you referring to that are relevant that are not covered, or as covered as should be. I could probably find some good sources (although probably not as many 3rd party) to cover these facts that you wish to see better coverage of. As it seems you don't know as much as I do on the organization (no offense intended) I would like to offer as much assistance as possible. I have a good library to draw from to help. Thanks JRN 16:03, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to rename an article you started: Dura (linguistics)

Hello Reaverdrop. I suggest renaming the article: "Dura language" or "Dura languages" in keeping with the format of other language pages. What are your thoughts on this?Rosiestephenson 03:05, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

My reply - Reaverdrop (talk/nl) 08:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

regarding Protoss

what is it that you exactly need? The article looks normal, but it does need more references. Good friend100 00:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

My reply - Reaverdrop _(talk/nl) 03:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It surprises me that the article was nominated for deletion because this article is an integral part of Starcraft (which several editors failed to notice).

Is it that we need a "gameplay" section on the article? If so, there is much [7] here and more about protoss strategy at the official korean site [8]. If its the gameplay that we need, then I'm pretty ready. Good friend100 02:10, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Linguistics and the Book of Mormon

I'm not entirely sure whether this is what's happened, but I think the nominator has simply refactored a long discussion into a "keep" propounded by another user. It looks ugly and confusing, and I may be utterly mistaken in thinking that, but that's why I'm avoiding closing it as a withdrawn nomination just at the moment. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 03:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Protection image

Due to a technical problem, a lot of cached thumbnails got screwed up, purging fixes the problem, as it did in this case. Yonatan ^talk 03:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

protoss edit

wow, quick response and thank you for complimenting me

If you were waiting for my edits, I'm sorry. The last two weeks were quite busy and didn't hae time for any editing. Good friend100 22:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment

Hm, you're on sabbatical. Well, in case you get this message anyway, could you comment on the merge proposal at Patriarch (Latter Day Saints)? It involves merging this article with Evangelist (Latter Day Saints). Thanks. Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 03:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

reply - Reaverdrop _(talk/nl) 03:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment

Thanks for your comment on my page. I have been pleased with much of the progress as of late between most of the editors on the page. I hope it can continue JRN 13:02, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Re:Trimming

Thanks a lot! I was going to put it up for a GAC (seeing the conversation on the talk page) but seeing all the OR in it, I thought trimming some of it out might help a bit with the article. The trmming will be going on for a litle while;I don't think I'm done yet.... (and yes, I've been trying to think of a different color scheme for my talk page b/c that one is so difficult to read, so I think I'll experiment a bit...) -Bella Swan 00:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Much better; don't you think? Bella Swan 00:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Onward with the trimming then... -Bella Swan 00:58, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge templates

The date syntax is: {{Merge|other arguments|date=August 2007}}, but if you leave the date off it will be added by a WP:BOT. Rich Farmbrough, 19:59 23 September 2007 (GMT).

Re:Space and survival

I deleted it because I didn't get any feedback. Thus I hope to proceed with the plan of making the Space and Survival content a part of the Space Advocacy page. I think it does not really stand on its own as a wiki article. Plus, there is more work to be done on the Space Advocacy article itself. Thanks for noticing! Would you like me to put up a notice on what I will be doing with Space and Survival? Sirstubby 17:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:NPOV.

Done. Good luck resolving the edit war, let me know if I can help. · AndonicO ^Talk 20:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

reply - Reaverdrop _(talk/nl) 20:10, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

StarCraft species.

I want you to take a look at this in-progress article, since you seem to be the only one really trying to work on the species articles. I've had this going for quite a while, this is aimed at merging all the StarCraft species into a single article, essentially killing four birds with one large stone:

• Species: The playable races will have sections on gameplay (two are done already, adapted from the current versions), physiology and basic background information not contained elsewhere - ie, the history of the race. The Xel'Naga can only consist of race history at present.
• Factions: Story progression is already covered in not only the game articles but also in the character articles, so it is not necessary to cover this in the species articles as it will only repeat information. This will incorporate the factions back in, keeping it to a description of the faction, how it works and what its role is in the series. These sections will be short and not contain much in the way of plot detail - as said, this is covered elsewhere.
• Psionic technology: You put up a merge proposal on the psionic technology page, and I've thought the same for a long time. Therefore, there will be sections in the Terran and Protoss (as the Zerg don't really use it) for psionics, kept nice and brief and to the point: I don't expect more than a couple of paragraphs on key points for this.
• Notability: There will be sections on the development of the species through the various betas and what-not, analysis of concept art and interviews. There will also be a section for reception of these concepts. In the same way that the characters article deals with the story of the game, this will deal with the gameplay. When I get round to doing the locations, that will focus on mapping and level design. In addition, there will be a section for merchandise and possibly something on competitive play. This way is superior (and easier, as much of the information available generalises for all the species, rather than just one) than attempting to do this for each individual race in separate articles as it allows notability to be established for the StarCraft species as a collective concept, and is also the only way to properly include the Xel'Naga. The current push forward with the species articles, balancing gameplay with lore, is not enough on its own under WP:FICTION to warrant inclusion.

I'd appreciate some help completing this, as its a long and grueling process to write an article from scratch with the objective of good article status - the characters article took around a month to create and bring up to an acceptable standard before it could be moved out (upon which it got given good article status within 48 hours :) ), and that was during the holidays whilst I didn't have anything better to do. The scope of this article is even wider and I'm no longer as free as I was in August. If you don't want to help, I'll just push along on my own with sporadic help from the Clawed One, although that will take even longer.

-- Sabre 14:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Category nomination

I've nominated Category:The Church of Jesus Christ for renaming. See the discussion HERE. Rich Uncle Skeleton ^(talk) 03:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Truthiness - A Featured Article

Well done on your work on getting the article up to featured article status. ISD 11:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Well done padawan

The force is strong with you in your victorious effort to get truthiness promoted... sorry I was too late to be of help. :) --kizzle 11:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Alastair Reynolds The Prefect bookcover.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Alastair Reynolds The Prefect bookcover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 13:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Walker Lewis

Hi Reaverdrop,

You inserted a cleanup notice on Walker Lewis a few months back. I'm curious what your thoughts are now. Cheers, --Rojerts 20:55, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

?--Rojerts (talk) 05:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use Image:John hutson.JPG

Replaceable fair use

Thanks for uploading Image:John hutson.JPG. I noticed the description page specifies that the media is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this media is not replaceable, please:

1. Go to the media description page and edit it to add {{di-replaceable fair use disputed}}, without deleting the original Replaceable fair use template.
2. On the image discussion page, write the reason why this image is not replaceable at all.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace the fair use media by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by taking a picture of it yourself.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified how these images fully satisfy our fair use criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, fair use media which could be replaced by free-licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if not used in an article), per our Fair Use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. High on a tree 20:54, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Andy Jones-Wilkins

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Andy Jones-Wilkins, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of Andy Jones-Wilkins. TheRingess (talk) 00:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Journal of cognitive neuroscience samplecover.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Journal of cognitive neuroscience samplecover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 23:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Red State Diaries

An editor has nominated Red State Diaries, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Red State Diaries and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 06:14, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Al reynolds galactic north.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Al reynolds galactic north.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 18:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Colbert on notice board.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Colbert on notice board.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 21:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:User moral realism 2

A tag has been placed on Template:User moral realism 2 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:15, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Bollywood saga bookcover.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Bollywood saga bookcover.JPG. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 10:30, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Physics participation

You received this message because your were on the old list of WikiProject Physics participants.

On 2008-06-25, the WikiProject Physics participant list was rewritten from scratch as a way to remove all inactive participants, and to facilitate the coordination of WikiProject Physics efforts. The list now contains more information, is easier to browse, is visually more appealing, and will be maintained up to date.

If you still are an active participant of WikiProject Physics, please add yourself to the current list of WikiProject Physics participants. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 16:08, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Amrit Desai

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Amrit Desai, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Jeepday (talk) 00:00, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to List of refractive indices. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Article collaboration proposal at WikiProject Space Colonization

Hi, I've put together a proposal for an article collaboration of the week here. I would appreciate if you could take a look and let me know if you're interested in participating. Wronkiew (talk) 17:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Jack Dann Anthologies

Hi, I noticed you have started most of the articles on Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois anthologies. I have put links for all these into the updated Jack Dann article in the anthologies section if you create any more do let me know, or of course you could do this yourself if you feel so inspired03:51, 8 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mesmacat (talk • contribs)

File:Sharon Marko.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Sharon Marko.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. MBisanz ^talk 22:47, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:The Grantville Gazettes

I have nominated Category:The Grantville Gazettes (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) for merging into Category:1632 series books (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Axem Titanium (talk) 06:32, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Stephen Colbert GAR

Stephen Colbert has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Reaverdrop! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 4 of the articles that you created are Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. Please note that all biographies of living persons must be sourced. If you were to add reliable, secondary sources to these articles, it would greatly help us with the current 365 article backlog. Once the articles are adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the list:

1. Doug Herzog - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
2. Jeroen Wiedenhof - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
3. Tamara Chalabi - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
4. Mike Ashley (writer) - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

FAR for Steven Colbert at the...

I have nominated Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. --Plotfeat (talk) 16:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Spaceflight portals

Hello! As an member editor of one or more of the Spaceflight, Human spaceflight, Unmanned spaceflight, Timeline of spaceflight or Space colonisation WikiProjects, I'd like to draw to your attention a proposal I have made with regards to the future of the spaceflight-related portals, which can be found at Portal talk:Spaceflight#Portal merge. I'd very much appreciate any suggestions or feedback you'd be able to offer! Many thanks,

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Human spaceflight at 08:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Space Colonization activity

Hello there! As part of an experiment to determine how many active editors are present in the spaceflight-related WikiProjects, some changes have been made to the list of members of WikiProject Space Colonization. If you still consider yourself to be an active editor in this project, we would be grateful if you would please edit the list so that your name is not struck out - thus a clearer idea of the critical mass of editors can be determined. Many thanks in advance.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Space Colonization at 16:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Spaceflight reboot

Hello there! As you may or may not be aware, a recent discussion on the future of the Space-related WikiProjects has concluded, leading to the abolition of WP:SPACE and leading to a major reorganisation of WP:SPACEFLIGHT. It would be much appreciated if you would like to participate in the various ongoing discussions at the reorganisation page and the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page. If you are a member of one of WP:SPACEFLIGHT's child projects but not WP:SPACEFLIGHT itself, it would also be very useful if you could please add your name to the member list here. Many thanks!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 00:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC).

Speedy deletion nomination of Tamara Chalabi

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Tamara Chalabi requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Alexf^(talk) 20:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The Downlink: Issue 0

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 0, December 2010
Welcome to The Downlink · Reorganisation of Space WikiProjects · User Activity Checks Welcome to The Downlink Welcome to The Downlink, a new monthly newsletter intended to inform members of WikiProject Spaceflight about the latest developments in the project and its articles. Future issues will contain information on issues under discussion, newly featured content, and articles written by members of the project to appear in the newsletter. All members of WikiProject Spaceflight are invited to contribute any content that they would like to see in the newsletter. If you were not aware of being a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, membership of the former Human spaceflight, Unmanned spaceflight, Timeline of spaceflight and Space colonization WikiProjects was merged into WikiProject spaceflight during the reorganisation of the spaceflight projects, for more details, please see below. Reorganisation of Space WikiProjects The ongoing discussion of the future of Space WikiProjects has been making progress. WikiProject Space was abolished on 5 December 2010, with the Spaceflight, Astronomy and Solar System projects becoming independent of each other. On the same day, an assessment banner, {{WikiProject Spaceflight}} was created for WikiProject Spaceflight to replace the generic space one which had been used previously. On 9 December, WikiProject Space Colonization was abolished, with its tasks being subsumed into WikiProject Spaceflight. On 12 December, the Human spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight WikiProjects became task forces of WikiProject Spaceflight, whilst WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight became a working group. A number of issues are still under discussion: Introducing better defined assessment criteria and an A-class review process Setting clearer importance criteria for assessing articles Establishing a joint task force with the Astronomy and Solar System projects to cover space telescopes and planetary probes Defining the roles of projects, taskforces and working groups, and processes for establishing new ones Improving the profile and activity of the project Much of the current discussion is taking place on the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page, however there is still some discussion on the original proposal page. User Activity Checks A series of checks are underway to establish the numbers of users who are still active within WikiProject Spaceflight, its task forces and working group. All usernames on the members lists were struck out, and members were asked to unstrike their own names if they were still an active member of the project. If you wish to do so, and have not already, please unstrike your name from the master list, plus the lists on any applicable task forces or working groups Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 16:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

File permission problem with File:Chris Coleman and J Kerry.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Chris Coleman and J Kerry.jpg. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file agreed to license it under the given license.

If you created this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either

• make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
• Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-enwikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{OTRS pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.

If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-enwikimedia.org.

If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags#Fair use, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See Wikipedia:File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Kelly ^hi! 17:43, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The Downlink: Issue 1

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 1, January 2011
Welcome to The Downlink · Project News · News from Orbit · Article News · Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics · Salyut 2 Welcome to The Downlink Welcome to the first full issue of The Downlink, a new monthly newsletter intended to inform members of WikiProject Spaceflight about the latest developments in the project and its articles. Below you will find information about happenings within the project, our recognised content, spaceflight in the news and events needing to be covered in articles. You will also find an editorial about the first concerted effort to develop featured topics related to spaceflight, and an article in need of your help and improvements. Project News will provide details of discussions about and changes in the organisation and structure of the project, newly recognised content, and changes in membership. News from Orbit will summarise spaceflight news and upcoming events, and list suggestions for articles in need of updating as a result. Article News will give details of requests for assistance within articles, and discussions regarding content. All members of WikiProject Spaceflight are invited to contribute any content that they would like to see in the newsletter, and we would particularly welcome the submission of editorials, or an article about an area of spaceflight which you are working on, or particularly interested in. Please see The Downlink page for more details. Project News A new working group has been formed. The space stations working group is expected to work towards creating Featured topics related to space stations. It currently has three members. Discussion within the project is still dominated by the reorganisation proposals. A discussion over the formation and roles of working groups and task forces has led to some clarification regarding working groups, however the roles of the task forces remain vague, and several proposals to abolish them have surfaced. The Human Spaceflight to-do list has been merged into the main project to-do list, with the combined list currently located on the Tasks page of the Spaceflight portal. A discussion regarding opening relations with the Aerospace biography task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation was held, but no conclusions were reached. The Article Alerts bot has resumed operation, and a problem with the information the bot had been delivering was discussed and resolved. New assessment criteria for importance and quality have been implemented, and refinements continue to be made to the importance scale. The scope of the project was redefined to exclude astronomical objects explicitly. Although A-class criteria have been defined, a review process is yet to be discussed or implemented. Colds7ream conducted an analysis of open tasks related to the reorganisation which four major issues remain unresolved: Discussion concerning the existence and roles of task forces within the project; recruitment of new editors; updating guidelines and whether the project or the task forces should be responsible for maintaining them; and the continued existence of the Human spaceflight portal six weeks after consensus was reached to abolish it. Discussion about the structure of the project is ongoing, with several proposals currently on the table. One proposal calls for the abolition of task forces in favour of increased emphasis on working groups, whilst another calls for the task forces to become a list of topics. The idea of a formal collaboration system has been suggested, however opposition has been raised. One of the main open tasks at the moment is replacing the older {{WikiProject Space}} and {{WikiProject Human spaceflight}} banners with the new {{WikiProject Spaceflight}} banner. Articles which need to be retagged are currently listed in Category:WikiProject Spaceflight articles using deprecated project tags. ChiZeroOne is doing a very good job replacing them, but as of the morning of 31 December, there are still 1,424 left to be converted. Additionally, the implementation of a new B-class checklist built into the template has necessitated the reassessment of former B-class articles, which the template has automatically classified as C-class. News from Orbit On 3 December, USA-212, the first X-37B, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base after a successful mission. On 5 December Proton-M with a Blok DM-03 upper stage failed to place three Glonass-M satellites into orbit, the first of three failures in less than forty eight hours. The NanoSail-D2 spacecraft was supposed to have been ejected from FASTSAT in the early hours of the next morning, however it does not appear to have separated. Finally the Akatsuki spacecraft failed to enter orbit around Venus in the evening of 6 December. The Proton launch was the maiden flight of the Blok DM-03, which does not currently have an article. On 8 December the Dragon C1 demonstration mission was conducted, with the SpaceX Dragon making a little under two orbits of the Earth on its maiden flight, before landing in the Pacific Ocean to complete a successful mission. The Falcon 9 rocket which launched the Dragon spacecraft also deployed eight CubeSats: SMDC-ONE 1, QbX-1, QbX-2, Perseus 000, Perseus 001, Perseus 002, Perseus 003 and Mayflower. The CubeSats do not currently have articles. On 15 December, a Soyuz-FG launched Soyuz TMA-20 to the International Space Station, carrying three members of the Expedition 26 crew. It docked two days later. The Soyuz TMA-20 article is currently short, and could use improvements to bring it up to the same level as articles for US manned spaceflights. On 17 December, a Long March 3A launched Compass-IGSO2. There is currently no article for this satellite. 17 December saw Intelsat regain control of the Galaxy 15 satellite, which had been out of control since a malfunction in April. The Galaxy 15 article is in need of serious cleanup and a good copyedit. On 25 December a GSLV Mk.I failed to place GSAT-5P into orbit. A Proton-M with a Briz-M upper stage successfully launched KA-SAT on 26 December. Barring any suborbital launches at the end of the month which have not yet been announced (a NASA Black Brant was scheduled for December but does not appear to have flown), 2010 in spaceflight concluded on 29 December when an Ariane 5ECA launched the Hispasat-1E and Koreasat 6 spacecraft. These do not currently have articles. Four launches are currently scheduled to occur in January 2011. A Delta IV Heavy is expected to launch NRO L-49 on 17 January. The satellite is expected to be an Improved Crystal electro-optical imaging spacecraft. Two launches are planned for 20 January, with Kounotori 2, the second H-II Transfer Vehicle, being launched by an H-IIB, and the Zenit-3F making its maiden flight to deploy Elektro-L No.1, the first Russian geostationary weather satellite to be launched since 1994. On 28 January Progress M-09M will be launched by a Soyuz-U. 28 January will also be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L. Article News It was requested that the article Walter Haeussermann be expanded. Haeussermann, a member of the von Braun rocket group, died on 8 December. Although the article has been updated following his death, a user requested that more information about the engineer be added. Another user requested that the articles Commercial Space Launch Act and Launch Services Purchase Act be created, to cover laws of the United States concerning spaceflight. Articles related to methods of taking-off and landing were discussed. The term VTVL currently has an article whilst VTHL and HTHL do not. It was suggested that the existing article should be merged, and each term be covered by the article for the equivalent aviation term, however some distinction between use in the fields of aviation and spaceflight should remain. Concern was raised that a large scale deletion request could cause many images to be lost from articles, help was requested to investigate whether any of the images were not subject to copyright, or if they were then whether they could be uploaded to the English Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. Concerns were raised about a large amount of content in the newly-created article deorbit of Mir duplicating existing content in existing Good Article Progress M1-5. A proposal to merge deorbit of Mir into Progress M1-5 was made, however objections were raised, and discussion has since stalled without reaching a consensus. It has also been requested that the article Mir be copyedited. The existence of separate categories for "spaceflight" and "space exploration" has been questioned, with a suggestion that some of the exploration categories, including Category:Space exploration iteslf, should be merged into their spaceflight counterparts. Missile Range Instrumentation Ship is currently listed at requested moves, with a proposal to rename it tracking ship. The only open good article nomination is of the book Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet, which is currently awaiting review. Editorial – Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics There has recently been much talk about trying to increase the activity of the project. To this end, a major reorganisation effort has been undertaken, which has seen the space WikiProjects separated into the Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight groups, with WikiProject Space being abolished. We have also seen the child projects of WikiProject Spaceflight being abolished, with Timeline of Spaceflight becoming a working group, and the Unmanned and Human Spaceflight projects becoming task forces for now, with some suggestions that they should be abolished outright. The problem with the previous structure was that there were too many different groups of editors, and nobody was sure which projects were supposed to be doing what. Now there is only one project, this is somewhat clearer, but spaceflight is still a huge topic. Another way to improve the activity of the project is to attract more editors. Spaceflight is a topic which many people have at least a very casual interest in, and therefore it is strange that there are only about four or five people regularly participating in discussions on the project talk page. Evidently action is needed to raise the profile of the project. One way in which the project's profile can be raised is to have a major success associated with it. The creation of a featured topic could be one such success, and would also be hugely beneficial to articles in the area that it relates to. Space Stations are one of the most high-profile and notable areas of spaceflight, and are therefore a logical choice to spearhead such an initiative. To this end, in late December a working group was established to concentrate and coordinate efforts to establish featured topics related to space stations. An initial proposal calls for topics on Skylab, Salyut, Mir and the International Space Station, as well as one on space stations in general. There is currently an effort to get Mir promoted to Good Article status; the article currently requires a copyedit, after which it will be sent for peer review and then to GAN. This is by no means a short-term project. There are many articles, particularly for the larger space stations such as the ISS and Mir, which are currently nowhere near becoming recognised content. Skylab is the smallest of the proposed featured topics, but it still requires that three C-class articles, two Start-class articles and a redirect all reach at least Good Article status, with at least three becoming Featured Articles. The ISS topic is so large that it may have to be subdivided. I don't expect that we will have any featured topics by the end of the year, but I believe that a Good Topic, which requires all articles reach at least GA status, but does not require any featured articles, may be possible. I also believe that several articles on the subject can easily be improved to Good Article status, and some articles may be at featured level by the end of the year. In the long term, having featured topics will benefit the project and its content. Selected Article – Salyut 2 Salyut 2 was an early space station, launched in 1973 as part of the Salyut and Almaz programmes. It malfunctioned two days after launch, and consequently was never visited by a manned Soyuz mission. The Salyut 2 article describes the station: “ Salyut 2 (OPS-1)(Russian: Салют-2; English: Salute 2) was launched April 4, 1973. It was not really a part of the same program as the other Salyut space stations, instead being the highly classified prototype military space station Almaz. It was given the designation Salyut 2 to conceal its true nature. Despite its successful launch, within two days the as-yet-unmanned Salyut 2 began losing pressure and its flight control failed; the cause of the failure was likely due to shrapnel piercing the station when the discarded Proton rocket upper stage that had placed it in orbit later exploded nearby. On April 11, 1973, 11 days after launch, an unexplainable accident caused the two large solar panels to be torn loose from the space station cutting off all power to the space station. Salyut 2 re-entered on May 28, 1973. ” The article is currently assessed as start class, and is in need of attention. It consists of the above paragraph, along with a list of specifications and an infobox. The article needs to be rewritten in a more encyclopaedic style, and with more information about the space station. It has not yet been determined whether Salyut 2 would have to be included in a featured topic about the Salyut programme, or whether since it was never manned it is less integral to the topic, however if its inclusion were necessary then in its current form it would be a major impediment to this. Downlink readers are encouraged to improve this article, with a view to getting it to B-class and possibly a viable Good Article candidate by the end of the month. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 15:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

File copyright problem with File:Ruparel seal.jpg

Thank you for uploading File:Ruparel seal.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their license and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The Downlink: Issue 2

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 2, February 2011
Project News · News from Orbit · Article News · The Charts · Yuri Gagarin Project News A report on popular pages from December 2010 revealed surprising trends in readers' interests. Boeing X-37 was the most popular article within the project's scope, with SpaceX Dragon in second with Global Positioning System in third place. The top seven articles were all assessed as C-class, with the remainder of the top ten being Good Articles. It was noted with some concern that moon landing conspiracy theories was more popular than moon landing. A discussion regarding whether missiles warranted inclusion within the project scope was conducted, and resulted in the continued inclusion of missiles. The last remaining articles tagged with the banner of the former Human Spaceflight WikiProject were re-tagged with the WikiProject Spaceflight banner. The last banner was removed on 8 January, and the template has since been deleted. The project is thankful to ChiZeroOne for his work in this field. Concerns were raised that the new article reporting system was not working correctly, however it was noted that there is sometimes a delay before articles appear on the list. Discussion regarding the existence of the separate spaceflight and space exploration category structures led to a mass CfD being filed on 10 January to abolish the space exploration categories, merging them into their counterparts in the spaceflight category structure. This was successful, and the exploration categories have been removed. Several other categorisation issues remain unresolved. A proposal was made to standardise some of the infoboxes used by the project, the future of Template:Infobox spacecraft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was discussed, and design work began on a replacement. Template:Rocket specifications-all (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was nominated for deletion and subsequently kept due to extant substitutions, however it was noted that the template had been deprecated by WikiProject Rocketry. Concerns were also raised that the existing infoboxes were not well-equipped to handle spacecraft which operated in more than one orbit, or whose orbits changed over the course of their missions (which in practise is most of them). Five members of the project gave interviews for the Wikipedia Signpost, and a report on the project, authored by SMasters (talk · contribs), is expected to be published in the 7 February edition of the Signpost. It is hoped that this will raise interest in and awareness of the project. News from orbit Four orbital launches were conducted in January, beginning on 20 January with the launch of Elektro-L No.1 on the first Zenit-3F rocket. This was followed later the same day by the launch of a Delta IV Heavy with the USA-224 reconnaissance satellite. The articles for USA-224 and the Zenit-3F rocket could use some expansion, whilst the Elektro-L No.1 satellite needs its own article. On 22 January, an H-IIB launched the second H-II Transfer Vehicle, Kounotori 2, to resupply the International Space Station. It arrived at the station on 27 January. Less than a day after its arrival, another cargo mission was launched to the station; Progress M-09M departed Baikonur early in the morning of 28 January, docking on 30 January. In addition to payloads to resupply the station, the Progress spacecraft is carrying a small subsatellite, Kedr, which will be deployed in February. Kedr does not currently have an article. Progress M-08M departed on 24 January to make the Pirs module available for Progress M-09M, and has since reentered the atmosphere. Its article needs to be updated to reflect the successful completion of its mission. The NanoSail-D2 satellite, which failed to deploy from FASTSAT in December, unexpectedly separated from its parent craft and began operations on 18 January, with its solar sail deploying on 21 January. Nine orbital launches are scheduled to occur in February, beginning with the launch of the first Geo-IK-2 satellite; Geo-IK-2 No.11, atop a Rokot/Briz-KM, on the first day of the month. Articles need to be written for the Geo-IK-2 series of satellites, as well as for Geo-IK-2 No.11 itself, and the Briz-KM upper stage that will be used to insert it into orbit. A Minotaur I rocket will launch NRO L-66, a classified payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office, on 5 February. The payload has not yet been identified, however once more details are known, it will need an article. Iran is expected to launch the Rasad 1 and Fajr 1 satellites in February, with 14 February the reported launch date. The satellites will fly aboard a single rocket; either the first Simorgh or the third Safir. Once this launch occurs, the satellites will need articles, and the article on their carrier rocket will require updating. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, is scheduled to launch on 15 February to resupply the ISS. Docking is expected to occur on 23 February. 23 February will also see the much-delayed launch of Glory atop a Taurus-XL 3110 rocket. This will be the first Taurus launch since the launch failure in early 2009 which resulted in the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. In addition to Glory, three CubeSats will be deployed; KySat-1, Hermes and Explorer-1 [PRIME]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. On 24 February, a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket will launch the first Glonass-K1 satellite; Glonass-K1 No.11. Articles are needed for the series of spacecraft, as well as for the specific satellite being launched. It is likely that a Kosmos designation will be given to the payload when it reaches orbit. In the evening of 24 February, Space Shuttle Discovery will begin its final mission, STS-133, carrying the Permanent Multipurpose Module, a conversion of the Leonardo MPLM, to the ISS. Other payloads include an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier, and the Robonaut2 experimental robot. The first manned mission of 2011, Discovery's six-man crew will transfer equipment to the station, and two EVAs will be performed. The launch has already been scrubbed five times, before Discovery was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to inspect and repair cracks on its External Tank. At some point in February, a Long March 3B rocket is expected to launch two navigation satellites; Compass-M2 and Compass-M3, as part of the Compass navigation system. The date of this launch is currently unknown. Both satellites will require articles once more information is available. A PSLV launch, carrying the Resourcesat-2, X-Sat and YouthSat spacecraft, is expected to launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre towards the end of the month, probably between 20 and 23 February. Stop press: The Rokot launch was conducted at 14:00 UTC on 1 February, and at the time of writing it appears to have ended in failure, due to a suspected upper stage malfunction. The spacecraft is in orbit, it is not clear at the time of writing whether it will be salvageable. Article news Reaction Engines Skylon is currently undergoing peer review, its discussion page can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review/Reaction Engines Skylon/archive1. A user requested feedback on major changes which had been made to the article, however at the time of writing no responses have been offered. Following up on the issues covered in the last issue, the requested move of Missile Range Instrumentation Ship to Tracking ship was successful, with the article being renamed. The discussion concerning types of launch and landing resulted in a proposal to merge VTVL into VTOL, however this has been met with some opposition. Several other options have been suggested on Talk:VTVL. The large scale deletion of mis-tagged Soviet images on Commons went ahead, with most of the useful ones having already been backed-up locally under fair use criteria. Discussion was held regarding the naming of spaceflight-related articles. Concerns were raised regarding inconsistency in article titles and disambiguators. A project guideline was adopted to standardise titles, with the parenthesised disambiguators "(satellite)" and "(spacecraft)" being adopted as standards for spacecraft, and the exclusion of manufacturers' names from article titles was recommended. Issues regarding Japanese spacecraft with two names, the correct names for early Apollo missions, and dealing with acronyms and abbreviated names remain unresolved. A large number of articles were moved to conform to the standard disambiguation pattern. In addition, several Requested Moves were debated. A proposal to move SpaceX Dragon to Dragon (spacecraft), which began prior to the adoption of the standardised disambiguators, was successful. Atmospheric reentry was subject to two requested moves, firstly one which would have seen it renamed spacecraft atmospheric reentry, which was unsuccessful, however a second proposal shortly afterwards saw it moved to atmospheric entry. A proposal currently under discussion could see Lunar rover (Apollo) renamed Lunar Roving Vehicle Questions surrounding the transliteration of Russian names resurfaced, with a proposal to rename Vladimir Chelomey to Vladimir Chelomei being closed with no consensus, and a proposal to rename Yury Usachov to Yuri Usachev ongoing. Several long-standing merger proposals were closed. A proposal to merge Venera 15 and Venera 16 into Venera 15 and 16 was closed as no consensus, with the combined page being moved to Venera 4V-2 to reduce the overlap in the articles' scopes. Returnable satellite was merged into Fanhui Shi Weixing. Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures was nominated for Good Article reassessment due to concerns over the article's quality. Doubts were also expressed over the thoroughness of the original review conducted upon its nomination for GA status. It was also suggested that the article's title may not be the most common name for the experiment, and that it might be necessary to move the page. Concerns were also raised regarding whether Space Interferometry Mission was up-to-date, however these are being addressed. Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet looks likely to be promoted to GA status. Help was requested for adding citations to List of Mir spacewalks. A request was made that STS-88 be reviewed against the B class criteria, and suggestions for improvements made. Another user requested improvements to the article Yuri Gagarin, with a view to having the article promoted to featured status in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his Vostok 1 mission. As a result of this request, Yuri Gagarin is this month's selected article. Questions were raised as to whether an article or category should be created to cover derelict satellites. The categorisation of spacecraft by the type of rocket used to place them into orbit was also suggested. In another categorisation issue, it was questioned whether Space law should fall under space or spaceflight. Stop press: Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet has now been promoted to GA status. The Charts There is no editorial this month as no content was submitted for one. Instead, we present the "top ten" most popular articles within the project, based on the number of page views in January. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was the most popular article of the last month, up fourteen places from 15th in December. Space Shuttle Challenger was the highest climber in the top 40, up 42 places from 50th. December's most popular article. Boeing X-37, dropped 57 places to 58th. On a happier note further down the chart, moon landing is now ahead of moon landing conspiracy theories. № Article Movement 1 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↑14 (15) 2 Richard Branson ↑5 (7) 3 Neil Armstrong ↑2 (5) 4 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster ↑16 (20) 5 Global Positioning System ↓2 (3) 6 Apollo 11 ↑2 (8) 7 Satellite ↑4 (11) 8 Space Shuttle Challenger ↑42 (50) 9 Apollo 13 ↓3 (6) 10 NASA ↓1 (9) For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or the archived record for January). Selected Article: Yuri Gagarin Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly in space, aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961. He was subsequently awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and was training for a second flight at the time of his death in 1968. His article describes him and his spaceflight experience: “ Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин, Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968), Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut who on 12 April 1961 became the first human to journey into outer space. On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first man to travel into space, launching to orbit aboard the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1). His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar; Russian: Кедр). During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows" (Russian: "Родина слышит, Родина знает"). The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky". This patriotic song was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1951 (opus 86), with words by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky. ” The article is currently assessed as C class, and had been assessed as B class prior to the criteria being redefined. Although a full reassessment has not yet been made, it seems close to the B class criteria, however details on his spaceflight experiences are somewhat lacking. It has been requested that the article be developed to Featured status by April, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his mission. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 00:41, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Stephen Colbert

On behalf of WP:CHICAGO, I would like to note my appreciation for being one of the people that helped to raise the quality of the Stephen Colbert article.

This user helped promote Stephen Colbert to good article status.

--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 19:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The Downlink: Issue 3

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 3, March 2011
Project News News from Orbit Article News Direction of the Project The Charts Europa Project News There have been very few discussions relating to the administration of the project in the last month, as things start to settle down after the merger. An invitation template has been created in an effort to attract new users to the project. Discussion was also held regarding the creation of a list of common templates, however no conclusions were reached. A proposal was made to implement an A-class assessment process, however editors are undecided about whether it would be best to copy the system used by another project such as WP:MILHIST, or to develop one specifically for the requirements of this project. User:ChiZeroOne has set up a collaboration page in his userspace, initially focussing on articles related to Skylab. Collaboration pages were at one point proposed as part of the structure of the Spaceflight project itself, however no consensus was achieved on the issue. If this collaboration is successful, it could open the door to a reevaluation of that situation. News from orbit Five orbital launches were conducted in February, out of nine planned. The first, that of the Geo-IK-2 No.11 satellite atop a Rokot/Briz-KM ended in failure after the upper stage malfunctioned. The Rokot has since been grounded pending a full investigation; the satellite is in orbit, but has been determined to be unusable for its intended mission. A replacement is expected to launch within the year. A general article on Geo-IK-2 satellites is needed, to supplement those on the individual satellites. A Minotaur I rocket launched USA-225, or NROL-66, on 6 February following a one-day delay. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, was successfully launched on 16 February to resupply the ISS. Docking occurred successfully on 24 February, several hours before Space Shuttle Discovery launched on its final flight, STS-133. Discovery docked with the ISS on 26 February, delivering the Leonardo module and an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier to the station. Following several delays, a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket launched the first Glonass-K1 satellite; Glonass-K1 No.11, on 26 February. It is currently unclear as to whether the satellite has received a Kosmos designation or not. Seven launches are expected to occur in March. On 4 March, the Glory satellite will launch atop a Taurus-XL 3110 rocket. Three CubeSats will be also be deployed by the Taurus; KySat-1, Hermes and Explorer-1 [Prime]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. This launch was originally scheduled for February, but following a scrubbed launch attempt, it was delayed. 4 March will also see the launch of the first flight of the second X-37B, atop an Atlas V 501. An article is needed for that flight, which will probably receive a USA designation once it reaches orbit. On 8 March, Discovery is expected to land, bringing to an end the STS-133 mission, and retiring from service 27 years after its maiden flight. On 11 March, a Delta IV Medium+(4,2) will launch the NROL-27 payload. Whilst the identity of this payload is classified, it is widely believed to be a Satellite Data System communications satellite, bound for either a molniya or geostationary orbit. An article for this payload is required. 16 March will see the return to Earth of Soyuz TMA-01M, carrying three members of the ISS Expedition 26 crew. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is expected to deploy the Resourcesat-2, X-Sat and YouthSat spacecraft during a launch in March. The flight has been delayed several times, and was expected to have launched last month, however it is currently scheduled to occur no earlier than 20 March. On 29 March, an Ariane 5ECA will launch the Yahsat 1A and New Dawn communications satellites. Both currently require articles. On 30 March, a Soyuz-FG will launch the manned Soyuz TMA-21 mission to the International Space Station carrying three Expedition 27 crewmembers. On 31 March, a Proton-M/Briz-M launch will carry the SES-3 and Kazsat-2 spacecraft into orbit, in the first dual-launch of commercial communications satellites on a Proton. Several other launches may occur in March, however their status is unclear. Last month, a Long March 3B rocket was expected to launch two navigation satellites; Compass-M2 and Compass-M3, however this launch did not take place. It is unclear if it has been delayed to March, or further. The launch of the Tianlian 2 communications satellite on a Long March 3C may also be conducted in March, or possibly April. Both the Compass and Tianlian launches would occur from the same launch pad, which requires a turnaround of almost a month between launches, so it is unlikely that both will happen in March. A Safir launch, which had been expected in February, now appears to have been delayed to April, but given the secrecy of the Iranian space programme, this is unclear. Article news Discussion regarding the merger of articles on launch and landing modes seems to have stagnated, with no consensus being reached on any existing proposal. A discussion regarding changes in the sizes of Soviet and American rockets during the 1950s and early 1960s was conducted, with claims that rockets became smaller in that period being dismissed, however it was noted that smaller rockets were developed with equivalent capacity to older ones were developed, as well as much larger ones with increased capacities. Category:Derelict satellites orbiting Earth was created as a result of discussion surrounding the categorisation of derelict satellites. Concerns have also been raised that satellites are being listed as no longer being in orbit whilst still in orbit and derelict, and a discussion was held on how their status could be verified. An effort to categorise spacecraft by the type of rocket used to launch them is underway, however the categorisation of satellites by country of launch was rejected. It was reported that a sidebar has been created for articles related to the core concepts of spaceflight. Editors noted that it should only be used for core concepts, and not where it would conflict with an infobox. An anonymous user requested the creation of an article on moon trees. It was pointed out that the subject already had an article, and a redirect was created at the title proposed by the anonymous user. Concerns were raised regarding the quality of the article Japan's space development. Editors noted that the article appeared to be a poorly-translated copy of an article from the Japanese Wikipedia, although there have been some signs of improvement. Discussion regarding moving the article to Japanese space program is ongoing, however a move request has not yet been filed. A particular concern was raised regarding false claims in the article Van Allen radiation belt. In one case a scientist to whom one of the claims had been attributed was contacted, and clarified that he had made a remark to that effect as a joke in the 1960s, but was not entirely sure how or why it had been included in the article. Other concerns were raised before the discussion moved to WikiProject Astronomy. A question was raised regarding the copyright status of images credited to both NASA and ESA, particularly with regard to images of the launch of the Johannes Kepler ATV. The discussion reached no general conclusions, however it was found that the specific images that were suggested for inclusion in the article could be used, since they were explicitly declared to be in the public domain. A template, Template:Spaceflight landmarks (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), was created to cover landmarks in the United States that are related to spaceflight. Several sources of public-domain NASA images were also discussed, and it was noted that almost all NASA images are public domain, however there are some exceptions. It has been proposed that Leonardo MPLM be merged with Permanent Multipurpose Module since the two cover separate uses of the same spacecraft. A review of the article STS-88 has also been requested. Three new Good Articles have been listed: Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet, Bold Orion and SA-500D. Orion (spacecraft) was delisted after concerns that it contained out-of-date content. SA-500D is currently undergoing good article reassessment, using the community reassessment method, after the review of its good article nomination was criticised for being lenient and not sufficiently thorough. Mir, Mark E. Kelly and Reaction Engines Skylon have been nominated for Good Article status and are awaiting review, whilst List of Mir spacewalks is undergoing a peer review with a view to it becoming a featured list. Editorial: Direction of the Project Well folks, its now been more than three months since the discussion that reformed the space-related WikiProjects, and in that time we've had a number of achievements we can be rightly proud of; we've gathered members up to a total of 43, improved awareness of the project via an interview in the Signpost, and refreshed the spaceflight portal into an attractive, up-to-date and useful page. Meanwhile, User:ChiZeroOne has made a sterling effort in clearing up talk page templates belonging to prior projects, we've managed to sort out various policies, started work on rearranging our templates, and User:GW Simulations has begun this excellent monthly newsletter for us. However, there are a few areas of the project that seem to be passing by the wayside, specifically the areas dedicated to fostering collaboration on articles and article sets between the project members, so here I present a call for more collaboration on the project. Presumably, the lack of collaboration is due to folks not being aware of what's going on, so here's a quick rundown of some of the ways you get involved in the group effort. Firstly, and most importantly, it'd be fantastic if more members got involved in the discussions ongoing at the project's main talk page, found at WT:SPACEFLIGHT. There are several discussions ongoing there, such as the relaunch of the spacecraft template, requests for assistance with various assessment and copyright queries, and conversations regarding category organisations, which affect many more articles, and thus editors, than are currently represented in the signatures so far. Secondly, it was established earlier on in the project's formation that a great way to attract more editors would be to develop some good or featured topics. There are a couple of efforts ongoing to try to see this idea to fruition, such as the Space stations working group and ChiZeroOne's own collaboration page, currently focussed on Skylab-related articles. These pages, however, have been notably lacking in activity lately, which is a shame, as their aims, given enough editor input, would really see the project furthering itself. Similarly, there are a number of requests for assessment for articles to be promoted to GA class, among other things, on the Open tasks page, which lists all of the activities needing input from members. If everyone could add this page to their watchlists and swing by it regularly, we could power through the good topics in extremely short order! Other things that could do with being added to people's watchlists include Portal:Spaceflight/Next launch‎, the many templates at Template:Launching/Wrappers and the task list at Portal:Spaceflight/Tasks. Finally, I'd like to try and get people involved in finally settling the organisational problem we have with reference to the task forces and working groups. Whilst the Timeline of spaceflight working group is a continuation of the old Timeline of spaceflight WikiProject and thus is ticking over nicely and the space stations working group has been mentioned previously in this editorial, the task forces (Human spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight) in particular are currently dead in the water. I'm unsure as to whether or not this is because people are unaware of their existence, they clash too much with one another and the rest of the project or because people don't see a need for them, but if interested parties could make themselves known and others voice suggestions for getting rid of them, we can decide either if they're worth keeping and get them running again, or do away with a layer of bureaucracy and close them down. Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated. In summary, then, we've got a great project going here, with a nice set of articles, a good editor base and lots of ways of getting involved. Thus, a plea goes out to everyone to get involved, get editing with the other project members, and hopefully we'll see ourselves take off in a manner not dissimilar to the trajectory dear old Discovery took last week. Many thanks for everyone's hard work so far, and poyekhali! :-) The Charts Since it is useful to keep track of the most viewed pages within the project's scope, it seems like a good idea to continue this feature, which was originally included in last month's issue as a one-off. Satellite was the most popular article of February, up six places from seventh in December. STS-133 was the highest climber in the top 10, up 78 places from 88th. January's most popular article, Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, dropped seven places to eighth. Moon landing remains ahead of moon landing conspiracy theories for the second month in a row. Of the top ten, two articles are featured content, two are listed as Good Articles, and the remaining six are assessed as C-class. № Article Movement 1 Satellite ↑6 (7) 2 Space Shuttle ↑11 (13) 3 NASA ↑7 (10) 4 Neil Armstrong ↓1 (4) 5 Apollo 13 ↑4 (9) 6 Global Positioning System ↓1 (5) 7 International Space Station ↑5 (12) 8 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↓7 (1) 9 Apollo 11 ↓3 (6) 10 STS-133 ↑78 (88) For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or the archived record for February). Selected Article: Europa Europa was a rocket developed by a multinational European programme in the 1960s. Consisting of British, French and German stages, it was intended to provide a European alternative to the US rockets used for the launch of most Western satellites to that date. Although the British Blue Streak first stage performed well on all flights, problems with the French and German stages, as well as the Italian-built payload fairing, resulted in the failure of all multistage test flights and orbital launch attempts. The programme was abandoned after the failure of the Europa II's maiden flight in 1971. The article Europa (rocket), describes it: “ The Europa rocket was an early expendable launch system of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), which was the precursor to the European Space Agency and its Ariane family of launchers. The programme was initiated by the UK and the first launch occurred in August 1967. Tasks were to be distributed between nations: the United Kingdom would provide the first stage (derived from the Blue Streak missile), France would build the second and Germany the third stage. The Europa programme was divided into 4 successive projects : Europa 1: 4 unsuccessful launches Europa 2: 1 unsuccessful launch Europa 3: Cancelled before any launch occurred Europa 4: Study only, later cancelled The project was marred by technical problems. Although the first stage (the British Blue Streak) launched successfully on each occasion, it was the second or third stage that failed. ” The article is currently assessed as start-class, and is missing a lot of information. It also lacks some basic features such as inline citations. Since Europa was a fairly major programme, enough information should be available to produce a much higher quality article, and it could probably be brought up to GA status with enough effort. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Spaceflight at 09:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC).

Hi! A request for your input

Per wp:CANVASSING, this is a neutrally worded notice being sent, without any type of "selection" bias, to everyone that edited fairly recently the MOS page about how to term the Latter Day Saints denominations on Wikipedia in the belief that your various and collective expertise or expertises, if that's a plural, can help us improve its wording, if possible. a bit. The most pertinent section is here. And the issue is to what degree the terms "Mormon church" and "LDS church" relate to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in specific, and to what kind of sourcing should be used to document this. Thanks, if you find time and the interest to look into the matter and offer your opinion or commentary.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 23:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Jean-Luc De Meyer

The article Jean-Luc De Meyer has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Poorly sourced article about a non-notable singer.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Scottdrink (talk) 21:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

File:Edward stevenson.jpg

{{di-no source}}

While I would love to keep this image. You have not given enough information for the copyright status to be determined. Just being from the 19th century isn't enough. Per See 17 USC 302, "Works of unknown authors or where the author's death date is unknown are copyrighted until the shorter of 95 years since the first publication or 120 years since their creation". Since Stevenson died in 1987 the age of the photo is not over 120 years, unless you know when the image was take.

I would really like to keep this image, so if you know who the creator was, when it was published, or even when it was taken, I would love to work out this issue. If you don't know, it's ok, I have found a less "nice" image of Stevenson that can be used (as it was punished in 1901.--ARTEST4ECHO (^talk/_contribs) 17:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

He died in *1897*, not 1987, so that was a big waste. - Reaverdrop _(talk/nl) 05:39, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

You are correct and I was in error, however, you need to ask the admin who deleted the image to restore it. Addationlly you may want to supply a source since someone else is going to come along an tag "no source" again.--ARTEST4ECHO (^talk/_contribs) 12:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Re:Dutch-to-English

Re:Dutch-to-English

I would be grateful if you could check quality of google translation (my understanding - National Bank of Belgium agreed to distribute images of the banknotes it has issued using the same rules as euro banknotes) - please reply on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:BEL-500f-rev.jpg Bulwersator (talk) 06:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Ichthus: January 2012

ICHTHUS

January 2012

In this issue...

• From the Editor
• What are You doing For Lent?
• Fun and Exciting Contest Launched
• Spotlight on WikiProject Catholicism

---

Ichthus is the newsletter of Christianity on Wikipedia • It is published by WikiProject Christianity
For submissions contact the Newsroom • To unsubscribe add yourself to the list here

Shen (programming language)

I notice that this article which you created completely lacks references. Please supply sufficient third-party references to establish notability of the product. Thank you. Yworo (talk) 21:27, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Shen (programming language) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Shen (programming language) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shen (programming language) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Msnicki (talk) 10:27, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Hammerschlagen for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Hammerschlagen is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hammerschlagen until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. MelanieN (talk) 17:16, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space

The article Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

no sources since creation in 2006; no evidence of notability for the book

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. David Gerard (talk) 11:40, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of 5th Duke of Cleveland hoax for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 5th Duke of Cleveland hoax is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/5th Duke of Cleveland hoax until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. DGG ( talk ) 05:03, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Nomination of Ignacio Anaya for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Ignacio Anaya is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ignacio Anaya until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:14, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Rex geveden.jpg

The file File:Rex geveden.jpg has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unused, low-res, no obvious use

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:02, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Harris Beach

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Harris Beach, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, group, product, service, person, or point of view and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator. Nomadicghumakkad (talk) 18:58, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Harris Beach for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Harris Beach is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harris Beach until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

Nomadicghumakkad (talk) 03:46, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

FAR for Truthiness

I have nominated Truthiness for a featured article review here. You are a major contributor to the article. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 08:58, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Michael Carroll (lottery winner)

The article Michael Carroll (lottery winner) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Lack of any real notability, apart from having won the lottery and being a moron. Lack of citations makes this even worse, as there's hardly anything to say about this guy.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 03:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of Michael Carroll (lottery winner) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Michael Carroll (lottery winner) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Carroll (lottery winner) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 02:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)