User talk:Alan Pascoe/Archive 1

Archive 1

Welcome to the Wikipedia!

Welcome to the Wikipedia, Alan Pascoe! Hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! And thanks for adding a Wikilink to the Metacognition article. Here are some perfunctory tips to hasten your acculturation into the Wikipedia experience:

• Take a look at the Wikipedia Tutorial and The five pillars of Wikipedia.
• When you have time, take a look at Manual of Style, and assume good faith, but keep in mind the unique style you brought to the Wiki!
• Always keep the notion of NPOV in mind, be respectful of others' POV, and remember your unique perspective on the meaning of neutrality is invaluable!
• If you need any help, post your question at the Help Desk.
• Explore, be bold in editing, and, above all else, have fun!

And some odds and ends: Boilerplate text, Brilliant prose, Cite your sources, Civility, Conflict resolution, How to edit a page, How to write a great article, Pages needing attention, Peer review, Policy Library, Utilities, Verifiability, Village pump, Wikiquette

You can sign your name on any page by typing 4 tildes: ~~~~. Best of luck, Alan Pascoe, and have fun! Ombudsman 22:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Links at Bird

Hi Alan - while it is a legit ext link, it is parochial; all the other ext links listed at bird are international. If we started adding similar ext links for everywhere else, we'd end up with several hundred of them. And wikipedia is not a links repository! - MPF 22:40, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Hullo

Hi Fast Alan, thanks for fixing the Goaste page. WMarsh 16:54, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Removal of criticism header

An entire section devoted to Wikipedia will encourage a counter-attack. Just look at the history. Lotsofissues 21:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines

I understand that you are relatively new to wikipedia, and as such may not be completely familiar with the way things work here. I suggest reading Wikipedia:Consensus, and Wikipedia:Guideline to get an idea of the difference between guideline, policy, and convention. If you have a change you want to suggest to conventions, i.e. Wikipedia:Categorization of people, it's important to present it first on the talk page rather than simply inserting it into the project page itself. Others will have input and opinions on the matter. siafu 21:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

As I have already stated elsewhere, there is a fundamental principle that anyone can edit, which you do not appear to understand. This applies to almost all pages on Wikipedia. There are specific exclusions, e.g. the Main Page, and these are enacted by enabling access only to specific users, e.g. administrators. Guidelines and policies are not exclusions from the anyone can edit principle. These evolve in the same way that articles do. I suggest you actually look at some of them under development, e.g. Wikipedia:Good articles. It is reasonable to seek consensus before making controversional changes to anything, but not essential. The addition I made to Wikipedia:Categorization of people was not controversial. Alan Pascoe 22:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed it was controversial, as evidenced by the dissenting votes issued in the CfD. This should also have been obvious from the number of categories with names of individuals -- somebody created them, and they've survived CfD's before. I am very clear on the principle that anyone can edit; I am equally clear on the principle of consensus, which you do not appear to understand. siafu 23:12, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

You are confusing two separate things. I made proposals to delete two categories which I believed were bad. These have been opposed, mainly because there are similar categories for other notable individuals. Since no-one has supported my proposals, it is likely that they will be rejected, and I accept this is the consensus view. In view of this, I have looked at the guidelines for the categorization of people, for guidance about how this should be done. On finding that the guidelines lacked anything about categorizing people by their names, I added something. If you actually read what I added to the guidelines, you will see that I did not say that there should not be personal categories. What I said was that they should be avoided, particularly if the motive for them is simply to reduce the number of categories appearing at the bottom of an article. The proper method for dealing with over-categorization is clearly stated in the guidlines -- reduce the number of categories to the 4 or 5 things for which the person is most notable. I'm not saying my choice of words was perfect. I acknowledge that they could have been improved. You could have done this. Instead, you simply reverted them.

I have now started a discussion about this issue on the talk page of the guideline. This is now the place to discuss the issue. Please don't continue to make this a fight. My only objective is to improve Wikipedia, not win battles against other people. Alan Pascoe 23:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry this has become a fight, but you assumed belligerence on my part from the beginning, and it was simply my belief that your actions were misguided (not "underhanded" as you stated), as it still appears they were. You nominated several categories for deletion, and inserted text into the guideline page to support it, which is simply not the way to go about things. Your statement in the guideline did, in fact, indicate that there should not be categories with the names of individuals: "People are being categorized by the name of the person itself, e.g. Category:David Bowie. However, this should be avoided.", so I was not wrong in connecting the two issues (and did in fact read the paragraph carefully before removing it). This is the only thing I reverted, so I don't know that the "them" is you're talking about. It is still the case that guidelines and conventions cannot be accepted without first being discussed. siafu 14:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this is going anywhere. I believe you have been misrepresenting my words and actions. You believe otherwise. Leave it at that. Alan Pascoe 15:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Category naming

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories) that may interest you. It is related to your complaint about mis-categorization, in that a stronger naming convention for list categories would discourage placing non-list categories in them. Mirror Vax 17:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll take a look. Frankly though, the last few days, being involved in the issue of categorization, are the only ones I have not enjoyed being on Wikipedia, mainly because of the words and actions of one particular user. I may go back to only editing articles, where I believe I was achieving something. Alan Pascoe 19:32, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

4,4'-MDI

Hi Alan, interesting work on the MDI page, but in my humble opinion you're going the wrong way: It should be intended for ONE isomer only, viz. the 4,4'-MDI as the major chemical compound. So please move the page back, re-insert the little history there was on 4,4'-MDI, and generally add to it to make it more of a one-compound article, don't delete the little there is. Have a look at my last version to see what the idea is. Unfortunately various additions later on did clutter the original intention, but that doesn't mean that the one compound per article is wrong. For further discussion, see the Chemicals wikiproject. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 19:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC).

Wim, I don't agree. As I stated in my explanation that accompanied the move, the article includes (quite rightly) information about other isomers of MDI, because these are produced during the manufacture of pure 4,4'-MDI. The article is now also consistent with toluene diisocyanate which has two isomers. Alan Pascoe 20:58, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see that you don't agree. This was actually extensively discussed in the Chemicals Wikiproject, last year. Read all about it here. And if you then still disagree about the principle of one compound per article, please reopen the discussion in wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:57, 28 February 2006 (UTC).

Superscripts & subscripts

Good call on the subscripts; I haven't encountered many articles with them, but in Safari they look better with the fix.

You may find that they don't need to go down as much as superscripts go up, to visually break through the baseline. After some testing, I've settled on .35em for superscripts and -.25em for subscripts—in my display font, the bottom of the number about matches the bottom of a text descender (as in the letters g, p, y). —Michael Z. 2006-03-12 23:14 Z

Works well with Opera too. Alan Pascoe 20:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

RfA nomination

I just wanted to thank you for the kind RfA nomination. It's a little unexpected just now, but extra buttons would certainly be appreciated, so I've accepted. — Laura Scudder ☎ 18:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Tadley

Thanks for all the work on this subject. Regards Oldfarm 21:35, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Aldermaston

Do you have a better picture of the village? The current one is a scan of an old slide that was not very good to begin with. Regards Oldfarm 04:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Images of isocyanates

Hi Alan, as per your request on my talk page, I've added structural images to the isocyanate articles you mentioned.

Hope this is what you wanted!

Cheers

Ben 21:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC).