Archive of discussions, February - November 2003

Greetings

Nice to meet you, Arwel, and I hope you stay. There are several other Welsh people here, including me -- but I can't remember much about TWW. Deb 21:55 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

S'mae Deb! I remember "Tinker and Taylor" on TWW when I was a kid (though reception was terrible, we had a badly-sited mountain between us and the transmitter); my main memory of TWW was their coverage of the Aberfan disaster when I was 8 :-( ... Arwel 03:10 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

...and I was ten! (So perhaps I was a little old to be watching "Tinker and Taylor" every Saturday morning.) Deb 22:59 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I just want to say that it's great work you're doing on ITV etc.. a gentle reminder though to use wiki markup, and follow the manual of style. Cheers. Mintguy

Thanks for the hints, and your updates to the ITV page. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this thing now, and I'm disambiguating some of the company names -- there are too many "ABC Television"s in the world! Arwel 03:10 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Corrie's the only soap I watch, I'm pleased to say. I did go to the studios in 1976 and saw Ena Sharples in full costume, standing around in the canteen. And my sister once had her birthday read out by Gus Honeybun... Deb 19:17 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

Spot on with the Pobol y Cwm article! Hasn't it been sold to lots of other countries as well? Deb 22:22 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm not sure where it's been sold to, so I didn't mention it -- feel free to add to it! How on earth did you find I'd created the entry within 3 minutes of my doing it?! Arwel 22:53 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

You do know about Recent changes, don't you? Deb 22:57 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

Sure, but the "last 50 changes" is only about 10 minutes' worth usually! You must be looking at it all the time :-) Arwel 01:59 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Nice catch at 9/11. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi

--- Hi Arwel! You can ask for the last 500 changes, which is a little more useful (though even that scrolls past pretty quickly). You can drop me an email with questions if you like. Vicki Rosenzweig

Hi there. About your commen on the dates on Talk:Jodrell Bank -- I'm not sure. I started that article as one of those "I can't believe Wikipedia doesn't have an article on this!" things, so it's very much a quick fix. Feel free to completely rewrite it :-) -- Tarquin 23:28 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

I just had a look at the website the Jodrell Bank links to - it says the first telescope was built in 1947, but the big dish went live in 1957, just in time for the first artificial satellites! I'll hack the item around a bit :) 158.152.70.105 23:36 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC) (oops - this is me, I'm just not logged in at the moment!)

BTW, just taken a look at your homepage. You may be interested in http://cy.wikipedia.com/ ... :-) -- Tarquin 23:59 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

hmmm... it looks really busy, doesn't it? I might try something later, but I've got enough ideas for the English version right now! Arwel 00:17 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Trains

Hi again. The railway line articles you're writing look great. There's a British railway system article which gives an overview; it would be good to link the line articles back to that to give readers a "parent" article link. -- Tarquin 22:42 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. I'll have to see how many of these articles I write before I try to tie them in to the main article -- I didn't mean to write all these, I was just doing an article on my home district Crewe and Nantwich, and the history of the place just sort of snowballed!! Arwel 23:01 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Misc.

Oh dear... sounds like the early stages of Wikipediholism... ;-) don't worry, many of us manage to lead constructive lives in spite of it! -- Tarquin 10:30 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Oh drat! I read the entry on the Second World War and suddenly got the urge to expand the Battle of the River Plate! Is there no hope? Arwel 12:17 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Arwel - saw you were having a bit of trouble with redirecting Nationalisation - the correct format is #REDIRECT [[article title]]. Good stuff you're writing, by the way! --Camembert

Ta! I knew I'd get it right eventually! :-) Arwel

Hi there Arwel and thanks for your exhaustive contributions to UK, List of labor unions. The list was started to be a resource for http://www.consumerium.org/ , we are doing most of our research in Wikipedia in order to benefit others too. If you have knowledge on how to figure out who owns which companies in the UK your contribution to http://www.consumerium.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Research would be greatly appreciated. Cheers --Juho 15:18 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

British coinage

Hi, I was wondering what you thought about this:

The obverse of the coin depicts the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell as a laureated Roman emperor, with the inscription OLIVAR D G R P ANG SCO HIB &c PRO, while the reverse shows a crowned shield depicting the arms of the Commonwealth with the inscription PAX QVAERITVR BELLO 1656.

There's just something jarring about all-caps. :) I think I've seen it in this style in numismatic books, but I don't have one at hand to check. - Hephaestos

Ah! That looks like a good idea :-) Looks neat. I've just altered all the coin descriptions I put in tonight. For now though, to quote Zebedee of The Magic Roundabout it's time for bed as it's gone 2 a.m. here! -- Arwel 02:17 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

You're quite welcome on the 5 pence image; I intend to work on it more later. I'd like to have it look more "mint condition." I'm also working on the reverse of the Noble.

I should clue you in about my project. I've been grabbing images off of ebay. To avoid possible (though remote) copyright issues, and since I've been wanting to brush up on my Photoshop skills, I've been taking out the flaws in the coins in Photoshop before posting them here, thus making the image a derivative work (there's little doubt that the pattern itself is public domain).

As you can probably imagine, the Noble is a bit of a wreck after 600 years, which is why it's taking me longer. :) My main concern is that I don't add or erase anything I shouldn't. (This is a lot of why I asked the diameter question by the way, but I guess it doesn't really matter much, given that people run different screen resolutions.)

Hephaestos

On your British currency pages you have been using the format British coin [type]. This strikes me as 'ugly'. A nicer, and more common fomat, is [type] (British coin). Have you considered this? 212

Hmm. Well actually, 212, I'm just continuing the naming format that was in use long before I discovered Wikipedia -- in fact I've just checked the change history and notice that this format was in use when you last edited this article in February of last year! Anyway, there's some discussion going on in Talk:British coinage about this, so there may be changes... -- Arwel 01:15 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Mea culpa 212

I'm making redirect pages for all similar page titles with no content. - LittleDan

Wow! where do you get all of the information from for your british coinage pages? - LittleDan

I remember most of the decimal coinage stuff and some of the younger pre-decimals through having lived through it -- I remember going to the barbers' on 15.2.71 and asking if he wanted fifteen pence or three bob for my haircut! <g> As to actual weights, dimensions, and composition of coins, a good coin catalogue is a wonderful resource... -- Arwel 02:02 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

Wow. Someone else on wiki who remembers the old money! As to article size, I think it is 32K. Anything larger than that and many browsers can't edit a page. If they try, they wipe out anything over 32K (which can be damned annoying if three and a half paragraphs just disappear. Size will of course be affected by using images that take up a lot of space. If necessary, break it up to pre and post date x. One the the largest pages I was involved in was the Irish potato famine and there we had to break it in two. Another large one I did (largely through to the number of images rather than text alone) was the Papal Tiara page. If the article is under 32K it should be fine. (You can check the size by doing a search (on the wiki system rather than this damned annoying google search we have to use at busy times) and it should say how many k an article is up to. I am looking forward to reading your article. God, I still remember the 6d, the thruppence, those massive pennies, etc. And getting a present of ten bob once. (I worked in a shop once and to annoy our accountant, a gang of us doing a till check converted the decimal money into pounds, shillings and pence. I can still remember his 'what the hell?' reaction when he asked what was in till two and someone shouted up £144, 10 shillings and sixpence. Even worse when someone turned the takings into guineas. The account laughed. The boss gave one of his 'pissed off' looks and the younger staff looked in bewilderment. 'Shillings? Guineas? Thruppence? What the fuck are they?' (And watch older customers look all nostalgic. PS - I believe Britain already has a mock-up ready of what British euro coins would look. A bit presumptive, I would think! STÓD/ÉÍRE 00:16 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

Ten bob? God, I thought I was doing very well if one of my relatives gave me a half-crown! :) I remember scaring myself once when I was about 10 that I didn't have enough money for the bus fare for the 4 miles home - the fare was 1/6 and I only had one coin on me, which said ONE... I thought it was a shilling, but fortunately it said FLORIN! The penny article is now 30K long up to the end of Bloody Mary's reign, which seems a good point to break it temporarily... Arwel

Congratulations on a superb set of articles on english coinage. Sometimes you find mediocre stuff on wiki but then you find a gem and you stuff is definitely of the latter category. Well done. I'm deeply impressed. STÓD/ÉÍRE 02:29 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

Japanese Navy

Reading your articles on Japanese ships, I notice you using "IJN" as a prefix. I remember Epopt or somebody declaring this wrong, and my own printed reference works don't use it, although many (like Morison) don't use USS either, so the absence may not mean much. Is there an authority you're going by on this? Stan 01:06 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)

See my reply on Stan's page. Summarised: no particular reason!

Coins

You're very welcome! Actually that one didn't take long to fix up, as the original was an uncirculated coin. I'm still working on a cartwheel penny (and frankly the article's so well-written I almost feel bad about marring it up with a picture *grin*). - Hephaestos

Hard to say; I've still got that picture of a noble I haven't finished touching up after all these weeks. I'll start hunting for a two-guinea piece though, so I'll be ready. <g> (Looks like the ones already up will need some tweaking also, some of them have flat spots near the rims) - Hephaestos

Ireland

I did a revert on the Ian Paisley page. I don't know if the person who did the changes was being ultra cautious, ultra NPOV or was just a big fan of Paisley (I think the latter, given that they changed bad health to good health when it is patiently obvious to everyone that big Ian is physically failing. I changed everything back and left a note on the talk page explaining the changes and why they aren't POV but are factually accurate. (I know about Paisley's depression thanks to a medical doctor who treated Ian and inadvertently let it slip in a conversation about clinical depression versus bipolar depression.) I had heard rumours but discounted them as the usual unsubstantiated gossip. But he noted (as I had being a political anorak) Paisley's regular disappearances from public view and explained why (which obviously I am not going to repeat. Suffice to say that what he said suddenly explained something that had puzzled me about Ian and also explained the strange complexity of Ian's character; the out and out bigot who can make your skin crawl and the warm, affectionate, funny, utterly unbigoted man who had the SDLP's John Hume over for Boxing Day dinner - much to the astonishment of a journalist who picked the 'wrong' moment to visit Paisley about something and walked in on the Paisleys and the Humes eating christmas cake together and sharing cake recipes! Anyway thanks for letting me know about what was happening to the article.

BTW, if you get a chance, could you look at Republic of Ireland/temp to see if it is OK. In particular is the history bit too big and heavy or useful and explanatory. Lol. FearÉIREANN 03:48 27 May 2003 (UTC) (BTW II - for some reason, my eMac on iTunes is cheering me up by playing a song about starvation in the Irish famine of the 1840s. Cheerful, eh! Slán.

Looks OK - I can't speak for anyone else, but I found the history interesting. The only thing I'd change is to drop the article when you talk of "The English..." being a second official language!

'tis done. I don't know where the the came from, but it ain't there no longer. ;-) FearÉIREANN 04:19 28 May 2003 (UTC)

Hey there, if you are really into this Numismatic stuff, you might try this reference: The British Numismatic Journal & The Proceedings Of The British Numismatic Society, 1908, First Series, Volume V, pp. 55-72. Harry Potter

Hi, Arwel. There is a row brewing on the Republic of Ireland page. Put simply, we have an agreed template, structure and text. One user, Scipius, some months ago tried to muck up the page through ludicrous and factually inaccurate changes. (Last time it was to rename the R of I page Ireland, even though that infuriated Irish users, offended Northern Irish users and ignored the approach we had which was to keep Ireland for events before partition, and after that to keep it largely for all-island issues - culture, heritage, etc) In the end he was told to back off, that the consensus was against him. Now he is back, trying the same mucking around. This time he wants to dumb down the agreed template text to remove relevant contextual information he almost alone thinks irrelevant, change facts to his own inaccurate understanding of them, etc. (eg, remove factual information on the formal name of the state - or rewrite it in an inaccurate manner, remove important information that explains where the state came from (ie, partition, the Irish Free State, etc) which he wants confined to a history page, blur facts about the relationship between irish and english (his text implies equality. Officially however the former a the national language, the latter a secondary language, etc.) He tried to ignore the consensus last time. He now wants to pull the same stunt again and highjack the page to introduce his own factually inaccurate version again. If you could visit the page and join in the chorus of telling him to stop messing the article it would be most appreciated. It took a lot of effort the last time (from a lot of Irish people who were furious at what he was trying to do!) to stop him. Every bit of help in stopping this nonsense before it becomes a full scale edit war a second time would be most appreciated. FearÉIREANN 03:31 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Royal Navy

Arwel, I have been checking through current RN ship articles, after finding that a large part of the HMS Sceptre article was lifted straight from the RN website. I notice that you have done something similar with the article on HMS Glasgow. The RN website is under Crown Copyright, and so it is not public domain. Did you get permission to use the text that you have? David Newton 17:47 BST 20 Jun 2003

Having had a look at the HMSO website, and its Crown Copyright waiver publications, I find that I was a little too zealous. Apologies for any slight that you might have felt I had given you. I will update the Crown Copyright article to reflect the waivers. David Newton 18:27 BST 20 Jun 2003

No offence taken. I will add a little explanatory note about the copyright on the HMS Glasgow page, which really ought to be there anyway. -- Arwel 20:01 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the help on Firth of Forth! - Hephaestos

Date format

You are quite correct. Either form is acceptable. I will drop into the page to make that point. FearÉIREANN 19:32 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I tried with Eloquence but for some reason which I find baffling he won't accept what he we say and intends changing dates around to mm/dd/yy. Whenever I catch him doing it I will simply revert as often as it takes. But I really do not understand his attitude. The fact that this agreement was reached is widely known but as it was never written into the manual of style he insists it didn't happen. Eloquence is normally a superb contributor so why he is so determined to ignore everyone and bulldoze his viewpoint through. I have asked Mav and John Owens to have a word with him but he seems determined. I wish I knew why. FearÉIREANN 22:51 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

May I ask why you did not convert Crewe Alexandra F.C. to the British format? See, this is what I am talking about: A mess of stylistic inconsistency on different pages. This is absolutely unprofessional. Whatever standard we use needs to be codified in the Manual of Style, where the current standard is MM DD. --Eloquence 23:48 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I presume you are talking about the one occurrence in that article where a particular day is mentioned? Because I was not looking for any dates to amend -- I was correcting a particularly glaring error in the year that the current manager was appointed, and a spelling error I had introduced. That date has been in the article for as long as the history goes back, when it really was the standard format. However, thank you for bringing the error to my attention. -- Arwel 01:06 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and let me know what you think. Eloquence has suggested as a compromise, that he could tolerate British english if non-Americans agreed to use American mm/dd/yy dating. I delivered a rather long and sharp attack on his arguments on the above page. I'd love to hear your views on it. FearÉIREANN 12:03 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Trains

Hello there Arwell, I was just wondering if you would like to add something to the Settle and Carlisle Railway article which I have started. G-Man 11:27 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

cy.wikipedia

From Wikipedia:Requests for adminship:

I'd like to request adminship on cy.wikipedia -- the software's newly updated, and we don't seem to have any Admins! I've put a note on cy's Admin page, but I don't know if anyone reads it :) -- Arwel 23:09 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I don't work on cy., but I'll second Arwel based on his great work here. - Hephaestos 23:14 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Done. Let me know if anyone else needs to be sysop'd over there. --Eloquence 04:46 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Stamps

Thanks for the kind words, and the additions! I don't actually know that much Icelandic postal history, I just do the articles as an excuse to put up stamp images... :-) Stan 22:16 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Trains

Hello there Arwell, I moved the long history section on the British railway system article, to it's own article History of the British railway system, and it needs some work doing to it (like finishing). As I'v noticed you're interested in British railway history I thought you might like to add something to it. G-Man 18:36 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Football

Hi Arwel. I just noticed your change to English Football League teams. It's funny I was just about to look at the article regarding Welsh teams because I noticed when the football results were given yesterday they gave out results for a Welsh league, which I don't remember them doing before. Is it a new league? (I could of course find this out by googling, but it's nice to chat) Mintguy 22:01, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Private Schultz

I take it you remember Private Shulz too. Your article on Operation Bernhard made me look up "Michael Elphick" and "Private Shulz" on Google and I've just discovered that BBC4 screened it in January as a tribute to Michael Elphick [1]. Arrgghhhh... I've been waiting for 20 years to see that programme again. It's enough to make me get Sky TV (Freeview doesn't work where I live). Mintguy 12:06, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Monstrous Regiment

Arwel, just wanted to note I saw your edit to Monstrous Regiment--I know it was minor, but it's just that attention to detail that I find wonderful about Wikipedia. Since I smiled at the correction, I figured maybe it was worth letting you know I had. Thanks! Jwrosenzweig 15:36, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Of course i was being sarcastic about 'another mall needed. I now realise the error of ways, there is no place for low-witted sarcasm on the wiki! Wow you user page really screws the eyes up between the black and blue. Always good to communicate with fellow UEA alumnis.62.253.32.7 12:36, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Sysop

You're a sysop now. On my left, you'll see a few extra commands. Use them wisely (not hastily, like me ;-) --Uncle Ed 14:33, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Football

On the Football (soccer) article I've inserted "Football is primarily a European and third world sport and these areas dominate most global competitions." to highlight that most of the world plays soccer. I wasn't trying to say it's a sport played everywhere except North America NOR make any comment on women's soccer or Austral-asia soccer. I well know that soccer is played worldwide (the men's US team isn't too bad, though they pale incomparison to other team), BUT it's currently a huge mainstay of european and the thrid world countries. Australia, some North American countries, and misc. countries do qualify for the World Cup finals, though these countries do not "dominate" like the primary countries (from what I can tell). Sincerely reddi 15:50, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Twins

That was pretty funny. I wonder where those wrong dates came from? Deb 16:49, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

BBC ONE

Hi, was your comment at Talk:BBC ONE actually a vote to move the page. I didn't see it as such, but Wik did and moved the page. I moved it back as I thought only Andy G was in favour of moving it. I would appreciate it if you could clarify. Thanks. Angela 23:46, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I've copied your comment to Talk:BBC ONE just to clarify the situation. Hope you don't mind. Angela 00:19, Oct 17, 2003 (UTC)

William Brown

You could have put in a link to Just William when you wrote your William Brown article, or created a seperate disambiguation page. I've put in a disambiguation link at the top. CGS 11:55, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC).

Counties

Thank you for reverting and "protecting" Warwickshire; please do the same for Birmingham and Coventry. Pigsonthewing

And now West Midlands: a county whcih still very much exists; and Tipton Andy Mabbett 09:09, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"let's see if the children can behave now!" as your edit summary on Wikipedia:Protected page made me laugh. Good luck sorting out the Welsh counties! :) Angela 16:06, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Arwel, I moved your latest comments about 80.255 to User talk:80.255 as a discussion of the boundary commission stuff isn't really suitable for the Vandalism in progress page. I'm not sure his talk page is the best place for either it though so you might want to find an article talk page to put it on instead. Angela 23:39, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

"OTOH if each article has to be nearly doubled in size to fully describe both the historical and current counties of the same name that's going to be a hell of a job..." - There is surely a simple solution to this, and one I have suggested before: For each county, have two pages - County (historic) and County (administrative). Clearly state which one is being delt with at the top of each page, and all confusion is avoided. It also solves the problem of places like manchester, birmingham, bournemouth etc. by allowing it to say (for example) "Bournemouth is in the historic County of Hampshire (historic) and was in the administrative county of Dorset (administrative) until becoming an UAA". Similarly: "Huntingdon is the historic county of Huntingdonshire (historic) and the administraitive county of Cambridgeshire (administrative). The fact that there can be two pages means that referal will not be confusing - i.e. a town stated as being in historic cambridgeshire won't be refered to the page about administrative cambridgeshire, and vice versa. Of course, some will also require County (lieutenency area) since this is sometimes different from both administrative and historic boundaries. However, all in all, I think adopting this would make matters much more clear. Would you agree? 80.255 00:28, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

P.s. Another benefit - articles on historical figures may well say "Joe Soap was born in 1887 in Cambridgeshire"; however, as it stands, this redirect would be to administrative cambridgeshire, which would not be correct due to later boundary changes. If my proposal were adopted, this would be avoided by writing "Joe Soap was born in 1887 in Cambridgeshire". 80.255 00:32, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Don't blame me, I just work here. ;) I do like the way certain people have rephrased the 1911 brittanica in some articles because they considered it too modern for them. Morwen 12:29, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Blocks

No problem. I deleted two pages he created as well. Unfortunately IP blocks only last 24 hours. I look forward to seeing the new interface at cy. Angela 11:26, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

"British"

I think between us we saw off the British nonsense rather well. Where the heck did 2toise get such a silly idea from? :-) FearÉIREANN 00:45, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Coins

To paraphrase Bob Dylan "silly ideas are everywhere , just reach out and grab one!" Hi Arwel, wow you are some numismatist, Sir T.B. was probably the first Brit/ Eng. numismatist ( see Iceniarticle. (Unless of course you can tell me of earlier collectors) . I have some v. oldish coins ( 1790-1810) but cannot describe them accurately to you; always good to know of other UEA alumini on the wiki and a sysop now to boot, congrats!!Norwikian 16:16, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)