User talk:Grant65/Archive July-Dec 04

Lets talk further because I think the comment you made on my talk User_talk:Philip_Baird_Shearer page needs clarification. So that the discussion is public please see talk:Rugby football Philip Baird Shearer 10:34, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The changes I made to the Football page today were not unannounced look at the comment I made in the Talk:Football Rugby section on Aug 1:

I think that for clarity integrating and separating the current Rugby text in this article from North American Football (NAF) is desirable. After all the the NAF section not only mentions Rugby but FA rules as well, it also includes dates which pre-date and postdate both! Does anyone have any objections to that? Philip Baird Shearer 19:08, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You did not object to it so why the comments: (Restored chronology again (sigh); added a new par on Canadian football/rugby.)

As you an I can not seem to agree on this I suggest a Poll see talk:Football Philip Baird Shearer 18:13, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pacific War

Hi Grant, I saw you added Germany to the participants in the Pacific War. What was their contribution? Just curious. Erik Zachte 21:53, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for answer, interesting. Erik Zachte 10:34, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

X band dispute page

I moved your favorite page to: Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment. Good luck! Mackerm 05:47, May 6, 2004 (UTC)

I've decided to rewrite the top part of the X VfD page to make my case clearer, so hopefully there'll be less arguments and more votes. I'll remove most comments, but I'll leave the existing votes. Keep up the good work! Mackerm 04:07, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Re. your comment on the VfD page: I reverted before I figured out why nobody was voting. I'll revert it to David's last edit when I put up the VfD notice. Or you can do it now if you want, and I'll leave it. Mackerm 06:20, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Ford Falcon

My disagreement wasn't with the quality of the image at all (in fact, if you go look, you'll find it's one of mine ...) but rather that it seems to be Wikipedia policy to avoid large inline images to help those with slow internet. —Morven 10:09, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Australian divisions

Hi Grant, I was wondering what your plans were for the Aus. 1st to 5th Division articles, regarding WW2? I don't know how much there is in common between the WW1 and WW2 divisions so would it make more sense for me to move the existing articles to "Australian Xth Division (World War I)" or "Australian 1st Division (1st AIF)"? I know very little about the Australian army in WW2 so I can't really judge for myself. Geoff/Gsl 05:55, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. My inclination is that on Wikipedia, articles are cheap so there is no reason not to have separate articles for seperate periods of a units existence, if it makes sense to do so. I think it is more useful when linking to the "Australian 1st Division" from a WW1 battle to get to an article on the WW1 division. The plain Australian 1st Division article could give an overview of all periods of the unit's existence and link to the division's detailed articles for each war period. That's my preference anyway, and it's the approach I adopted (sort of) with the British WW1 divisions (British 1st Division (World War I) versus British 1st Infantry Division for WW2).

I have no problem with either approach (all-in-one or separate articles). If the all-in-one approach is taken, I'll remove the navigation table as it only really applies to WW1. If you want to do a separate article for post-WW1 periods, I'll move the existing articles out of the way (or feel free to do it yourself).

Even if we don't produce any content at this stage, I think sorting out a structure with stub articles could be useful. I do intend to complete the WW1 histories eventually but I don't have much time for it at the moment. Geoff/Gsl 00:54, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I decided to move the existing division articles to "Australian Xth Division (World War I)". The corresponding "Australian Xth Division" article is now clear to be used for some other purpose. Geoff/Gsl 01:56, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Bold text

Just an observation on the use of bold text in articles. I haven't been able to find anything in the Manual of style that says not to use bold in paragraph text but my understanding was that bold was used for highlighting the main and alternate article titles in the lead para (and elsewhere) and emphasising text. In most cases I reckon where you have bolded a name in Australian Army, etc. it can be made into a link. For instance Bushveldt Carbineers instead of Bushveldt Carbineers.

This is no criticism -- as I said, I don't know I am right or that you are wrong. As for your proposed structure to Australian Army, it looks great to me. I'm glad someone has taken it on. Geoff/Gsl 00:57, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

As long as you're comfortable with using bold, that's fine. I imagine everyone has got their own editing style. I, for one, will always put a blank line after a heading and two spaces after a full-stop, despite it contravening the Manual of style, because I find it easier to read the text in the edit box. Sooner or later someone comes along and "fixes" it.

But I think if an article doesn't exist but you think is worthy of being an article eventually, then making it a link rather than bold is helpful. It gives it a (slim) chance of making it on to Wikipedia:Most wanted articles and it might mean someone knowledgeable will notice it is missing and write the article. Geoff/Gsl 01:40, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Slavery article

Hi Grant, I seem to consider you some kind of authority on the subject of Slavery, so I was wondering if you could take a look at the section that was just removed in the discussion that followed and perhaps leave a message, or deal with it? ---Dittaeva 19:43, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Australian Soccer

Hi. Can you please take a look at talk:Soccer in Australia. I've tried to look up the chap who wrote the pdf document I've linked to but I think he may have retired from Melbourne University, I can't locate his email address. Mintguy (T) 11:31, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Australian Wikipedians

Why haven't you added yourself to the Western Australian section of Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Australia? Our list is pitifully small. - Mark 13:51, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Far East Command

You might like to take a look at British Far East Command and a link to Operation Matador both of which are straying into an area I know you are interested in (Australian 8th Division and The Fall of Singapore). Philip Baird Shearer 01:06, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Pacific War and defensive war

Splendid! /Tuomas 14:58, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

South West Pacific

I think the link to "South West Pacific Command" in ABDA should be "South West Pacific Area Command". What do you think? Philip Baird Shearer 14:39, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Maybe. With re-directs from the other permutations, including "South West Pacific Area", which seems to be the most common form.[1] Grant65 (Talk) 22:38, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Rutgers Vs. Princeton, 1869

[deleted duplicate post & heading Grant65 (Talk) 08:58, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)]

I'm having a slight difference of opinion with ExplorerCDT about whether the Rutgers/Princeton game was American football, rugby, or soccer. He says it was nothing like soccer. I disagree, I say it's more like soccer than today's American football, but there also may have been elements of rugby in there. So I put down "football (or soccer) " in place of "football", and we got into a dispute about it (even though I'm a Rutgersman myself). Rickyrab 06:48, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To Rickyrab (and for the edification of Grant65)...The Princeton/Rutgers rivalry in football died in 1980. They haven't met on the gridiron since. So you are DEAD WRONG in saying it "continues" in your edit on the Football article. ExplorerCDT 07:30, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have copied these posts to Talk:Football. Please have this debate there or on the Talk:Rutgers University. page. Grant65 (Talk) 08:58, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

I accept your argument and have changed the page accordingly. —ExplorerCDT 15:38, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if you have seen it, but Rutgers have changed their picture since the debate last year: http://ruweb.rutgers.edu/timeline/1800m.htm If not I hope you find it of interest. Philip Baird Shearer 19:50, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Royal Australian Navy ships

I used the pennant number because that is the WikiProject Ships standard. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships. -Joseph (Talk) 00:14, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

Battle of Leyte Gulf

I'd like to propose this page for featured article status. However, I can't do that while there's an ongoing edit war. So I would be grateful if you could contribute to Talk: Battle of Leyte Gulf and agree on a wording for the paragraph about it being possibly the largest naval battle in history. Gdr 12:20, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

Thank you for replying. Now we just need User:Chino to agree! Gdr 22:47, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

Battle of Buna-Gona

I notice you linked to this unwritten article on the Pacific War page. "Battle of Buna-Gona" appears to be a wikipedia invention: Google finds only one hit for the phrase once Wikipedia mirrors are discounted. "Battle of Buna" appears at first sight to be a much more popular name for the battle. What was your reasoning behind the change? Gdr 13:42, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

Thank you for the references. Gdr 22:47, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

History of rugby football

You additions are most interesting. But could you please add them to the History of rugby union and summerise them on the Rugby football page. If you read the talk page you will see that it was agreed some time ago that we would try to keep the history on the Rughy Football page to the minimum so that information is not duplicated all over the place. (similar to the problem with the football and history of football)

As you will appreciate there are strong feelings about the 1895 schism and anything seem to increase the importance of RU (like adding informaiton about clubs which stayed with the RU) on the RF page will lead to additional information on RL which takes us away from the original agreement to keep it brief.

Also for brevity, I think that the paragraph on Canadian and American football should stay on the Football page which is clearly referenced in the first line of the section. This is particularly true for Canada because of the confusion generated between the older tradition of rugby and the modern one Rugby Canada. To the casual reader they might think that the rugby played in North America is not the same as the Rugby played in the rest of the world Philip Baird Shearer 01:22, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Pacific battles

Let me know which articles are you concerned about and I will try to fix my errors. Gdr 19:06, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

"Rugby" at Rutgers

In response to your brief message at my Talk page.

If Rutgers officially refers to it as derived from "rugby" and the historical resources in their libraries and archives point to it as such (which I have reviewed), it won't be changed, and I will continue to revert any attempts to do so until the powers that be officially say otherwise. --ExplorerCDT 11:13, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bismarck Islands

The Bismarck Islands belong to Papua New Guinea politically, but I think it makes sense to describe military campaigns geographically. And New Guinea is an island as well as a political entity. However, if you feel strongly about this, please revert my change to Template:Campaignbox New Guinea. Gdr 12:10, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC) (P.S. What about Bougainville? The US Amy history puts it in the "Northern Solomons" campaign...)

Operation Matterhorn

I knocked this together today. You might be interested in expanding it as you pointed out that not all the US forces in China were under SEAC. Philip Baird Shearer 15:01, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket

I see you have recently contributed to the article cricket. May I invite you to a new WikiProject to improve the quality and depth of cricket articles on Wikipedia. It's located on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket. I'm taking the approach of let's see who's interested and let's see which bits we want to improve/expand to begin with. Once we know that, hopefully we can work together to improve Wikipedia's cricket coverage. jguk 16:30, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

British Eighth Army

I understand your wish to accurately describe the contribution of Commonwealth soldiers, but the "British" in "British Eighth Army" refers to its command, not to its composition. (It is in this way that the French Foreign Legion is French.) The British Commonwealth supplied the troops but had no say in the army's operations, which were directed by the British government, so I think it wrong to refer to it as "the British Commonwealth's Eighth Army". I think there may be better ways to describe the contribution of Commonwealth soldiers than to change the name of the army they served in. Gdr 02:27, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

The nationality of the general is a red herring. My point is that the Eighth Army was controlled by the British Government, not by the British Commonwealth, and therefore it is fair to call it "British" even if the majority of its troops were from other countries. Gdr 17:37, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

Attack on Darwin

Attack on Darwin is a realy bad name because someone is bound to have had a relative with that name who got mugged and wants to write an article which clashes. So there would have to be an "Attack on Darwin(disambiguation)" page. Although I doubt if many called Darwin could claim that they had had an air raid ;-)

BTW I think it is a most interesting article. I did not realise that the initial raid was so big and that Darwin was so small at that time. I can't imagen where the looters could have stashed their loot. It is not as if they could have popped into the next large town to pawn it! --Philip Baird Shearer 09:24, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)