User talk:Notuncurious/Archive 2

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What GIS software do you use?

Your maps are really excellent, NU, and I'm wondering what software you use to produce them? I'd like to make some of my own for similar regions and time periods... Thanks, Gaelicmichael —Preceding undated comment added 15:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC).

Make new friends but keep the old

Hey NU, lest you think I'm being overly crass with a newcomer, the particular user in question is someone who has been around a long time and is very familiar with Wikipedia. Feel free to email me if you like.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:25, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Will definitely keep the old, none of whom need ever worry on that account. I thought actions were appropriate and not crass; I was merely trying to lay oil onto troubled waters. And I've been around long enough to recognize when 'new' users take aim at one topic and seem to know a bit too much about how the system works both in practice and in theory. Am still somewhat absorbed in some research of interest, making a few contributions but mostly focusing on that research, much of which hopefully can be used in articles. It goes slower when I indulge myself in following interesting but educational tangents. I will certainly return to 'the land of the living' when I finish scratching this itch. Best Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 23:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

More image comments

User:Tony1 has left some suggestions for improvements to the images you authored (which are fine on my screen as they are, but not so good on others) on the review page [1]. I don't know if you can do anything, but thought I'd leave you a note just in case. All the best, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 19:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello Deacon, very good to hear from you. I still have the source data, and can change things per specification. btw, I figured out how to get around "resolution problems", so future images will have good clarity (no "bottom of fish barrel" impact). Comments below, if you have suggestions, don't feel constrained by them – please speak up.

Re File:Carrick.13th.to.14th.century.jpg:

• I agree about "crowding", but options seem limited without making a too-big map.
  • one possible fix is make either town or church text very small, perhaps preferably town text (eg, see the effect in fort names in File:Roman.Scotland.north.84.jpg, see Britannia (Roman province)#Occupation and retreat from southern Scotland for the readers' experience. Sound like it's worth a try? Or I'm open to suggestions.
  • else, the map is now very large in the article, leave it large (maybe not too large), but decrease text size a bit. Leaving the map large means that the title box can be smaller yet still readable, and leaves room for a "locator submap".
• needs a locator showing where it is within Scotland ... will do, will incorporate it in the next version. Does a small version of File:Carrick (district).PNG sound ok, or I can erase district borders, or try something else.
• Did I miss anything? Just go ahead and suggest whatever improvements that you think might be useful (and we can still iterate to a best solution from there).

Best Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 19:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's a need for a locator. I think Tony's complaint for the first map was that the text of the provinces (e.g. Kyle, Carrick, and so on) was hard to read, and that in the second the map in general is too crowded. I think it's reasonable enough to assume that, having read that much of the article and having seen the province map, the readers will realise the location and shape of Carrick. I'm not sure a locator is worth it ... :/

• Regarding the province map. If you do edit it, can you think about getting rid of the red for the modern Anglo-Scottish border and/or "Cheviots" (doesn't look niece and looks like it's saying Cheviots are the line); also, if it's not too much, Lennox needs to go west or over Loch Lomond ... on the current map it strays into Menteith a bit much.

BTW, as a spin-off of this map, would you one day consider making a general Scottish province map? Like with pre-1286 provincial lordships, earldoms, rural deaneries and so on? :) Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:23, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, got it. Since I have the maps and annotation, adding and deleting and changing are no big deal.

For the region map, will better locate "Lennox" and delete both the border and "Cheviots"; will also delete "Southern Uplands", unless you say otherwise. For readability, will use different font, wider spacing between letters, etc, until I get something good. I recall that I tried a lighter shade of green before, but it didn't work out (black letters on green surface lessen readability, but other colors are too obtrusive).

For Carrick map, it's still crowded ... will reduce text size and title box size and make it less crowded. Will still have to be large in the article to be readable, but perhaps not so large as it is now.

If they don't work out, it's trivial to revert to the existing images on commons, so we can do no harm ... will do this tomorrow, I think. (BTW, already have some of the info on general medieval map for Scotland; let's pursue this in the not-distant future; I have a couple of irons in the fire that I'd like to deal with first). Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 03:08, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Files uploaded

Uploaded new versions of the files, File:Carrick.13th.to.14th.century.jpg and File:Scotland.south.c1200.regions.languages.jpg ... lightened one image, uncluttered the other, used a better font and spaced out the letters on both ... may still need to be tweaked ... see what you think; for the article Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick, you may need to reload the page or press CTL-shift-r to clear your cache before you can see the new images. Further tweaks possible, let me know. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 22:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Hey, looking good. Thanks! All that needs to be done is to check if Tony is happy. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 22:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You're very welcome. If there are some further tweaks that he'd like to see, let me know, should not be a problem to get them in. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Year issues / Welsh sources

Please see My response here.Pickle23 (talk) 23:58, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

John Lesley

I fixed up the citations in the John Lesley article, including removing you {{fact}} template. See Talk:John Lesley. I do not watch this page and will not be back to it in the near future so this is just a heads up in case you want to take it further. -- PBS (talk) 02:36, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Hey!

Hey Not, long time no see. Good to see you back, your contributions and your lovely maps have been greatly missed.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!! It feels good to be back. Hope all is well with you, and looking forward to working together again. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 14:21, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Wales (Roman era)

I'll try to find a better source. Cheers for the heads up. FruitMonkey (talk) 16:54, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Right, I've got rid of the offending source and tried to change some of the wording that is being challenged by the GA review without changing the original message. I've decided to mentioned Arthur, this may be extremely contentious, but an article on Wales that fails to mention him in some respect must be missing a trick. Do you feel it is allowable to mention Arthur within the historic section, and if so can you correct my dates? There is confusion regarding the year he is meant to have victored over the Anglo-Saxons, which I think is the Battle of Badon Hill. Is it c.496 as I have in one source or 516 as I have in another. Thanks in advance. FruitMonkey (talk) 19:31, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello

I'm happy you're back! It's nice to see you. That article shows promise and I think we could expand the Irish section. Probably there is good evidence of Welsh/British movement to Ireland also. Some have alleged that many of the southern Irish were/are of Brittonic origin. The Brigantes appeared in both places. Possibly the Eóganachta themselves had British origins. DinDraithou (talk) 21:20, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

River maps

Hiya, I dropped your name in the discussion here, since we seem to be lacking a proper map which indicates all the main rivers in England (let alone one which gives other details, too). Incidentally, have you seen this Cavila (talk) 09:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Good to hear from you, Cavila, hope all is going well. I've responded on the article talk page. I hadn't seen the OS site recently, looks like a good source for better mapping in the future. My focus is more on history and I think that that requires at least some knowledge of topography, which was my original motivation. For modern lay-of-the-land, I look forward to someone's uploading of many maps of THIS and THIS and THIS quality. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 15:41, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

That looks absolutely savage (apparently by the same guy who did this. You'd almost sue him for passing off a commercial map as his own). I've tried using the OpenData from OS in Illustrator and a nifty little tool called Mapublisher, but there is so much detail that it can be rather heavy on memory, at least on my pc. I cannot complain about the vast amount of data though. Anyway, thanks for your input - I'll wait and see what other editors have to say. Cavila (talk) 19:03, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty good stuff. It may be more tedious than difficult if you have good geo-data and you're very good with both Illustrator and Photoshop; you'd want to be able to weave the layers of background arbitrarily; trying to satisfy "user requests" looks technically possible but prohibitively tedious, especially when users don't know how to express their requests in technical terms ... the cartographer's equivalent of a mathematician's NP-hard problem. I also imagine that you'd be wise to have this set up on one dedicated computer and run the up/down loads through a LAN to your main box. I'm not sure where the limit-of-need/want is located for a good cartographer to spend tons of time trying to satisfy general 'pedia editors. We're probably stuck with the-way-things-are for awhile.

Like I said, I'm mostly focused on my own interests for wikipedia, and I set up the mapping stuff mostly for my own uses, with a few other efforts here and there to round things out. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 21:14, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Referencing the DNB

Concerning your edits in the references for William Roy: I don't see that the reference to the archive.org version of the particular volume of the Dictionary of National Biography is in any way superior to linking to the specific article available on Wikisource. The link [2] simply leads to the volume as a whole, while s:Dundas, David (1735-1820) (DNB00) is the required article itself, with the author name and link, and the page numbers in the left margin. Can you be more explicit about your objection? For the avoidance of doubt, the text is taken from precisely the same edition, page images can be viewed by clicking on the small numbers so that anyone can verify the digitisation, and work is going on to make the article into hypertext by filling in the [q.v.]s as links. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello Charles, nice to talk with you. If you think the concerns given below may be overstated regarding the William Roy article, then simply revert my last edit, noting that it was "reverted with permission".

Regarding the archive-link going to the volume as a whole rather than to the page, I might have been more diligent in the citation, but that can be corrected by changing it to go to the specific page, so let's lay that point aside.

I'm a fan of wikisource, and have made contributions myself. It's certainly more accessible to the general reader than url-based citations, and appropriate notes and annotations can be added. My concern in general is the lack of 'curation': for reliability, it needs to have an assertive and credible effort to ensure that it is in fact the document it claims to be, and not something edited 'by anyone' (the 'pedia principle) that may have 'corrections to the original source's mistakes' or other errors (digital scans also produce errors at times). And if someone alters an entry inappropriately, there needs to be a process (rather than individual eyes) to make corrections quickly (or something along the line of the recent wikipedia "approved revisions" test).

I'm not familiar with the effort to enter the DNB into wikisource, and verifying any particular group's efforts for a variety of different projects is not practical for the general wikipedia editor, as I hope you would agree. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 13:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your reasonable response. We do have WikiProjects under way: the one at WP:WP DNB is quite recently set up, the one at Wikisource having been there for a couple of years. If you want a very stable direct reference, it is possible at archive.org using the "Read Online" option displaying a couple of book pages at a time. I'm not in the habit of replacing those, though I think there is a case for doing that: other matters should take priority. The point you make about editable texts has been put to me before. In fact Wikisource is now moving to a system based on a MediaWiki extension called ProofreadPage. Basically this means that proofreading can go on opposite images of actual pages, and the complete DNB articles (say) are transcluded from those proofed texts. Casual vandalism is reduced to minimal proportions, and the verifiability of the digitisation is a big gain. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Avoiding redirects

Your recent edit to Legal English implies that the departure of the Romans from Britain and the end of Roman Rule on Britain are total synonyms, which is not necessarily the consensus position. I have reverted your edit, please be more careful when editing in future. Thank you. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 20:56, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Welsh Note

I've left a comment at Talk:Cadwaladr, per your request. Again, sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, but I've been away.
On another note, have you seen the edits at Hen Ogledd? I've tried to discuss it with the editor in question at the talk page, but it hasn't taken, I'm afraid. Never a dull moment around here.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Aeron

There's been some more todo at Hen Ogledd, specifically about Aeron this time. The user has brought up the same point at Aeron (kingdom). Basically, he's challenging the idea that Aeron may have been connected to Ayrshire/the Ayr and wants it removed from the articles. I've found a number of sources that mention the connection, but he wants one that explains the rationale explicitly. Do you happen to know of one? I've found this interesting paper, which cites William J. Watson's History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland on the identification; however I don't have access to a copy of Watson. Bromwich, Foster, and Jones' Astudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd also contains some information, but I'm not competent in Welsh. At any rate, any assistance would be appreciated.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:46, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Have been otherwise occupied of late, but noticed events when I checked in from time to time. *sigh* Here we go again, not sure what the most productive approach would be at this point. He argues and edit-wars to get his way, and if you point out his errors, he changes his reasons but continues arguing the same points. Last year it didn't stop until he got blocked.

Your efforts at resolution have been commendable, but at this point I fear that if you tell him where he is wrong, it only places him in the catbird's seat ("you haven't proved it to me") to further obstruct anything that doesn't fit his own agenda.

Let me return to my break for awhile and think things over, then will try to contribute to a productive resolution. I'm not in the right frame of mind at the moment. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 20:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

No worries, real life is always more important than arguing on the internet. I've found a couple of source that I'll add to the articles. This is about as much time as I'm planning on spending on this; if he keeps pressing the issue it may have to go through dispute resolution. Cheers,--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:49, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

in the EMA

Scotland in the early middle ages

Hello, Notuncurious. You have new messages at Sabrebd's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hello, Notuncurious. You have new messages at Sabrebd's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thanks for your support on help on this attempt, but as they say, its not worth the candle as fault will clearly continue to be found whatever I try. All the best.--SabreBD (talk) 21:44, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It's sad that things went that way. Neither you nor your meritorious work deserved it. I suspect that we have other overlaps in interest and I look forward to our running across each other again in the not-distant future. Best Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 17:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I hope so too. Thanks again.--SabreBD (talk) 18:02, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Human migration

Could you take a look at the history and the recent edits, there's an IP there determined to keep out any suggestion that the AS were anything other than a 'Germanic colonisation'. I think the article needs to be clear that this is disputed. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 16:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Will do; hope I can be of help. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 20:03, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 21:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Ingaevones

Hi, first of all I want to apologize for my english. I'm translating the above mentioned article and when I was seeking for references I found a mistake:

Pliny ca 80 CE in his Natural History (IV.99) lists the Ingvaeones as one of the five Germanic confederations, the others being the Vandili, the Istvaeones, the Hermiones and another group he does not name

That's not correct because here you can read this:

a fourth, dwell in the interior, and include the Suevi14, the Hermunduri15, the Chatti16, and the Cherusci17: the fifth race is that of the Peucini

So the group was mentioned by Pliny. I don't want to correct the article by myself because as I said before, my english is very poor. For that, I found you in the 'article story' and therefore ask you for check and correct that. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.132.109.65 (talk) 22:59, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I was not logged in. --Mechusriva (talk) 23:01, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

High resolution maps? Coalfields in Ireland?

Hi Notuncurious, I write to you on behalf of a professor researching significant coal mining areas in Great Britain and Ireland throughout the 19th and early 20th century. One of your maps, entitled "British Coalfields 19th century", provides an excellent resource for this professor to reference. In the case that the professor is interested in reproducing this map for a published work (with proper citation), do you have a high resolution image that you are willing to send via email? Furthermore, do you have a rendition of this map that includes not only Great Britain, but also Ireland?

Thank you for your time, KevDoh (talk) 15:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)