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Quit changing my edits

Read the discussion page before you go throwing your opinion around. I have a valid reason for editing what I'm editing.

Please sign your edits on talk pages. Just because you believe something doesn't make it true. I will let someone else revert your edit only because I don't want to violate the three revert rule. VMS Mosaic (talk) 19:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Spelling changes

Resolved

 – WP:ENGVAR was originally applied in correct priority order.

I note that you are changing very many articles to American English spelling. Most of the reasons cited are to make spelling consistent. If consistency is the aim, then I am all for it but please bear in mind that Commonwealth English is equally acceptable in Wikipedia and in several cases you have changed articles that have either been started or de-stubbed in Commonwealth English into American English. Before changing any more articles please check the history and where possible make consistent in the language appropriate to the article. If you could re-visit your existing edits and restore those incorrectly changed that would also be appreciated. Velela 13:02, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Was that revisting ever done? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

There was no need to. Most all of the changes up to that point were in color or color related articles (i.e., blue, green, beige, fuschia, etc.) none of which had any American/British or other issues which would require one or the other spelling. He wanted me to apply the WP:ENGVAR "if all else fails" rule (Follow the dialect of the first contributor) first instead of last. In the article he complained about, my edit clearly was covered by the higher priority "Stay with established spelling" and was not in conflict with the other higher priority rules. However, once he objected and would not agree that higher priority rules applied, the "if all else fails" rule was applied.

The "if all else fails" rule sometimes is pretty difficult to apply given that a particular dialect may not be detectable and the disputed word not appear until years of edits have taken place. If you haven't tried searching thru years of edits to find the first time a word is used, it is not a lot of fun. I know because I just did it a few days ago.

For colors like Irish Green, the "If there is a strong tie to a specific region/dialect" rule would have been taken into account if spellings had been intermixed. --VMS Mosaic 08:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah so! I was just asking because the topic remained open for a couple of weeks.

Commercial sites

Resolved

 – Guidelines are clear on the matter.

To save you some time and effort, I'd like to point out that we cannot use a commercial site as a reference or even an external link. If a site sells anything, has a shopping cart, accepts Visa/Mastercard, etc., it cannot be used a reference. I'd suggest using a rock and mineral book. There doesn't have to be an online version of the reference. Jefferson Anderson 21:13, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not true at all. See WP:EL and WP:SPAM for guidance. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That's what I thought, but it wasn't worth an argument since I did manage to find a very good completely non-commercial reference. I'd rather do something as opposed to arguing about done something. --VMS Mosaic 08:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I hear ya; I just don't like seeing people misquoting policy. I took it up on his page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR - your viewpoint?

Well, I see somebody already growled at you about changing English variations.   ;-)   But after checking out the situation at Olfaction I'm glad I didn't growl first. You made this change, changing 'odour' to 'odor' with edit summary "Consistent spelling per WP:ENGVAR". Because I wanted to growl for a reason, I checked out the usages of odor/odour on the page.

And...   (grrrr)   I can't fault you, for two reasons. First, the section in which you made the change uses the 'odor' variation. Indeed, all the sections except for the area of Olfaction#In_the_brain use 'odor'. Wondering if this was a case of parochial creep by Americans who absent-mindedly 'incorrect' the correct, I then went and checked a couple versions back to 2004. And the 'initial' usage in the article was 'odor'.

Now the insipid inserters of insular (or continental) spellings quite irk me. Especially when they are simply changing to their 'own' spelling. But I have to wonder, what should be done in this article? Within the article there is a mix of usage. Within major sections, there is no mix. I'd like to think the situation could be left well enough alone, but then this remain unstable, that is, one 'side' or the other will decide to fix things. (sigh) What's your viewpoint? Shenme 02:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I got confused and responded to this via email. Oh well, I will cut and paste it here:

First I see I was less than thorough. The section Olfaction#In_the_brain still has odor and odour randomly intermixed.

I make spelling changes in both directions (British to American and American to British) based on WP:ENGVAR. I agree strongly with WP:ENGVAR(Articles should use the same spelling system and grammatical conventions throughout). Inconsistent spelling, besides being "jarring to the reader", is simply unprofessional. My edits are based on the assumption that most (non-vandal) Wikipedia editors desire to produce a professional product.

I have lost count of the number of times I have found intermixed spellings in the same sentence. Someone actually "growled" at me for fixing several such sentences. They argued that it was better to have an "ambiguous" dialect (way too PC for my tastes).

In cases where it isn't clear what the consistent spelling should be I usually go with WP:ENGVAR(Follow the dialect of the first contributor).

As far as Olfaction or any article being left intermixed, it just results in continued problems particulary with future editors of the article who cannot tell which spelling to use. The spelling just becomes more intermixed, which causes even more problems when someone trys to clean the mess up. Falling back on WP:ENGVAR(Follow the dialect of the first contributor) and/or WP:ENGVAR(Stay with established spelling) can be a lot of work. The last time I did that, I had to review several years of edits to find the original established spelling. If the spelling is kept consistent over time, then it is a simple matter (usually with no argument) to "correct" any future edits. --VMS Mosaic 08:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

First contributor: I generally agree, but it is sometimes debatable, and sometimes an outright mistake. A mediating concern is whether the topic is a (chiefly) British/Commonwealth or American/(sometimes) Canadian/Carribbean one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Please be more careful with ENGVAR "fixes"

Resolved

 – Mutual understanding achieved.

In particular please stop changing the spelling of "colours"/"colour balls" balls to "colours"/"colour balls" balls in snooker articles. Like "judgment" used in the legal profession, even in areas where "judgement" is the more common vernacular spelling, "colours"/"colour balls" is a term-of-art in snooker, and is virtually never spelled the American way (BTW, I am an American; this is not a UK/US English bicker.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I am no snooker expert obviously, but after researching the issue on the web, it appears that it is often spelled "color" in the US. I was unable to verify the info, but it appears the Billiard Congress of America spells it "color". Outside the US it is also sometimes spelled "color" (see www.snooker.org in Norway). The web FAQ for snooker spells it "color". This appears to be nothing more than the usual British vs American variation, but I have wasted far too much time on it already, so we will leave it your way. --VMS Mosaic 23:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

BCA is why I qualified it with "virtually". BCA's "American snooker" is a strictly amateur and rather recent pastime (dating to some time in the late 1960s), with very few adherents. Somewhere there's an unaffiliated American Snooker League (or Association, or something), but it fits the same description, other than being even newer. The internationally authoritative snooker "governing bodies", for both professional and am. world competition are both British, and the sport originated among British officers. As for Norway, a non-native English source is not reliable for English usage. Web FAQ: Nonauthoritative for snooker. Every actually authoritative reference for the sport - books, internationally-signficant organizations, and reliable websites, are British or Commonwealth. It would be an incredibly weird result to go into WP:CUEGLOSS and change the spellings for snooker terms to American ones, given that snooker is just a curiosity in America, while it is a huge national pastime in Britain. It would be a bit like changing "baseball" to "besubaru" just because baseball is also played in Japan.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: American cue sports authority Mike Shamos, curator of the Billiards Museum and Archive, uses "colour" in both his [New] Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards and his other major book, Pool: History, Strategy and Legends (which despite the title the publisher chose to slap on it, is actually an overview of the history of all cue sports generally). I think you've mistaken American (and in some cases foreign) laziness/ignorance for currency. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Given that snooker is apparently an English sport in the same way baseball is an American sport and that the terms "colours" and "colour balls" are terms specific to snooker, I was wrong to change them. However I would suggest that "balls of different colours" is not a 'term' but is instead a simple statement of fact where the proper spelling per both WP:ENGVAR and WP:MOS as applied to that particular article is "color".

It might be a good idea to move this discussion to one of the related talk pages in case the issue comes up again in the future. If moved, please delete from here. --VMS Mosaic 07:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: "Balls of different colours" - yeah, I caught that too, and fixed it. Re: Refactor: Maybe so, but I'd be reluctant to simply delete something off your talk page; more like let you move it into your talk archive. Actually I think what I'll do instead is simply update WP:CUESPELL to account for this issue. Thanks for your responses and understanding by the way, and more power to ya on the cleanup work in general. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Update: WP:CUESPELL edit done. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I have restored the original spelling in Propene which is as a result of substantial revision (and others introducing it into places where it did not originally exist). I see that you are a continuing source of controversy on this particular issue. Please concentrate on helping to improve the content of this encyclopedia. If anyone appears to be following a particular personal agenda then this frustrates our task.--AssegaiAli (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, early on I may have made a mistake or two on WP:ENGVAR edits, but I have since made at least a thousand of them with little if any controversy. If you review my edit history, you will not see any personal agenda other than enforcing WP:ENGVAR regardless of the spelling dialect (i.e., I have made many changes from American to British). Propene started in American, was destubbed in American and used American until it was changed to mostly British in the recent past. It used both dialects when I found it and your edits fail to make it consistent because "synthesizing" is still spelled American. You appear to be the one with some type of agenda since you have no justification for your spelling changes. VMS Mosaic (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

River Mureş

Regarding your changes in the Mosaic article you should know that the Romanian name of the river is Mureş not *Mures. The difference is important because the name is pronounced as *Muresh in Romanian. Zello 00:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps changing the wording to "near the Mures, River, in" or simply dropping the punctuation comma since it is optional would solve the issue (I believe this is what I originally meant to do because I checked the Mures, link but messed up the edit). --VMS Mosaic 00:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Aaaaargh!

When I saw your changes to Tiffany glass it sent me into a spasm. But, I'll cope... I'll cope... Yes... I'll go and make another cup of coffee and I'll cope with having my English English changed to American English because... after all, Tiffany probably used it himself.... if that's any comfort... --Amandajm 01:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The change was made per WP:ENGVAR. All the other sections in the article used American spelling. --VMS Mosaic 02:05, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Your revert at List of home computers by video hardware

Thanks for that VMS Mosaic, I was not aware of it, but I now see that only a few minutes after a long discussion with Sarenne, and after I said I could not be bothered to continue his senseless blattering he went to List of home computers by video hardware and reverted my edits -again-. My last edits was a compromise to his insistence that my page -must- use the new KiB notation. During the "discussion" he at least retained from editing "my" page, but him doing this felt like a stab in the back. I'm glad I did not have to start a revert war -again-. Sarenne is the most stubborn single minded guy i have ever "met".Mahjongg 11:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Spelling edit

Many thanks for checking the spelling in the Odor artikel. I'm a certified dysliexamatic. Scubafish 07:28, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Your edit on Rosewater

Thanks for catching that for me [1]. I so meant to preserve BE spellings, and I had it right all the way up to the end and then missed it in the last rewrite. Oh well. Chromaticity 03:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

spelling fixes to Belgian beer

You reverted my entire edit to Belgian beer, per WP:ENGVAR referencing the article's version of 17 April 2005. Even if this is the version where the stub-tag was removed, it is full of obvious misspellings. Further, it already has mixed use of BrE and AmE (flavor, licensed, but draught), and the version prior to my edit had a lot of mixed use of BrE and AmE (yoghurt, recognised, but flavor, color) so I carefully went through the article to make it consistent. I corrected some misspellings and made some minor improvements, yet you reverted the entire edit. I am going to replace my corrections. Without some justification for your position, I will change to consistent BrE spelling as well. MKoltnow 21:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see the talk page for the article. At this point in the article's history, the correct variant is the one which has predominanted in usage over the article's history. If needed, I can do a full review of that history. VMS Mosaic 21:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I may have missed one or two. I see 'license' spelled both ways once each, 'recognised' once, 'recognized' twice, 'neignbourhood' once, 'colours' twice and 'colors' three times. 'flavor' is consistently spelled that way. I don't consider 'yoghurt' or 'draught' as a problem since those spellings while uncommon would not be considered wrong in American English. Yes, the article does need some work, but five or so changes should do it instead of the dozen or so changes needed to make the spelling British. VMS Mosaic 21:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I am willing to continue this discussion at Talk:Belgian beer. I think that my edit was in good faith and your reaction is insulting, at best. MKoltnow 22:07, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Please post warnings

Thanks for reverting vandalism, as you did at the article Toothpaste. But when you do this valuable service, please also add a suitable progressive warning to the talk page of the vandal. Otherwise they will not get blocked and can continue to absorb the manhours of Wikipedians in undoing their actions. This new editor has vandalized a great many articles in the past hour, and without a series of progressive warnings, a non-admin such as myself cannot even go to the noticeboard and request that an admin block the vandal. Just reverting the vandalism is not enough. I suggest that you post {{subst:uw-vandalism3|Toothpaste}} ~~~~ in this case, because of the two previous warnings. This is explained further at WP:VAN Thanks!Edison 20:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, another editor posted it. Edison 20:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Bitmap

Instead of changing all those links, how about supporting the idea of making bitmap be about the bitmap concept, and moving the file-format article to a more appropriate place, either merged into bitmap image format or a new bitmap file format? See Talk:Bitmap. Dicklyon 23:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I would fully support making the current article be about the bitmap concept. I never understoodd why the current Bitmap article was not left under the title 'Windows and OS/2 bitmap' which is now a redirect (along with 'Bitmap image'). I won't chnage any more links for now.VMS Mosaic 23:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Your username

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia!

I hope not to seem unfriendly or make you feel unwelcome, but I noticed your username, and I am concerned that it might not meet Wikipedia's username policy. After you look over that policy, could we discuss that concern here?

I'd appreciate learning your own views, for instance your reasons for wanting this particular name, and what alternative username you might accept that avoids raising this concern.

You have several options freely available to you:

• If you can relieve my concern through discussing it here, I can stop worrying about it.
• If the two of us can't agree here, we can ask for help through Wikipedia's dispute resolution process, such as requesting comments from other Wikipedians. Wikipedia administrators usually abide by agreements reached through this process.
• You can keep your contributions history under a new username. Visit Wikipedia:Changing username and follow the guidelines there.

Thank you. --Ronz 22:35, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Please see my comments below. I am not strongly attached to it. It is simply a reflection of my main computer related hobby (Wikipedia being another). VMS Mosaic 23:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you'll be OK if you keep it given our discussions. --Ronz (talk) 00:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

1. editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with,
2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors,
3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);

   and you must always:

4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you. --Ronz 22:35, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

VMS Mosaic is freeware. No one is trying to SPAM or make money. Given that I am the only remaining developer after ten years of work, I am the only one who knows the full history. Please check my edit history to see what I mainly do on Wikipedia. It very rarely has anything to do with VMS Mosaic. If my user name is a problem, then I have no issue with changing it. I picked it because it reflects my main hobby in life outside Wikipedia. VMS Mosaic 22:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

As I already stated elsewhere, I didn't want to create a 'VMS Mosaic' article, but at the same time I felt it was worthy of being on the list of web browsers (it has users in many countries including Russia, Japan, Canada and the UK to name a few). Creating an article appeared to be the only way to keep it on the list. VMS Mosaic 22:51, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I sympathize and am not sure how to proceed. One thing that would be very helpful would be to find sources that meet WP:N for the VMS Mosaic. --Ronz 18:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

If I can document that VMS Mosaic is the oldest web browser still being actively developed, would that be notable enough? VMS Mosaic is a direct continuation of the NCSA Mosaic for X browser which was created in 1992 (it still contains all the NCSA license and copyrights). Some of the VMS programmers who were working with NCSA on VMS support were the ones who continued development under the name 'VMS Mosaic'. No other web browser started in 1992 or earlier is still being developed. The Lynx text browser (the only known browser from that time period still under development) was started in 1992, but it did not gain a web interface until 1993. Even if Lynx is considered older, VMS Mosaic would still be the oldest GUI web browser.

My goal here is historical documentation. It is not promotion; any one who might want to use VMS Mosaic already knows about it. VMS Mosaic 22:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

After re-reading WP:N, I guess being oldest is beside the point in that regard. I have added various sources to try to meet WP:N. Please let me know if I am going in the right direction. As far as coi, I have tried to keep the article as neutral as possible. There is no mention of myself or the organization I work for (a government agency). VMS Mosaic 01:29, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you've done a good job, though it would be helpful to use the article TALK page to explain the situation to other editors who might want to help. --Ronz (talk) 00:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Revert

Hello. Maybe you can help me a little bit with the formulation but the licence is driving me nuts because accounts are not ready to be deletable otherwise they would violate the GNU. D@rk K (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure what you are trying to say. What do you mean by "Useless contributions are not deletable" and "accounts are not ready to be deletable"? Articles get deleted all the time. You might try asking on Talk:Wikipedia. VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. D@rk K (talk) 10:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Revert

Why do you revert the Belgian beer article when it does not violate WP:engvar? Mikebe (talk) 21:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't revert your edit. I reverted an earlier edit which violated WP:ENGVAR by changing the article's spelling dialect from American English to British English. I had to manually redo your edit; did I do it wrong? VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Did you mean my edit yesterday? That edit was also made according to WP:ENGVAR because the article uses American English. VMS Mosaic (talk) 22:04, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

No, you did my edit correctly. I asked you because you were quite correct the first time that the article mixed International and American spelling, however, someone else corrected that (made all the spelling International), yet you reverted it back to American. It is, of course, an article about something non-American, so I feel it would be entirely correct to use International English rather than American spelling. Do you disagree? Mikebe (talk) 12:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are claiming that the "Strong national ties to a topic" section of WP:ENGVAR applies to this article, I do not agree. That section would only apply if British (or American) English was a national language of Belgium which it is not. I believe the other sections of WP:ENGVAR have been properly applied to this article. Please see previous discussions on my and the article's talk pages as to how WP:ENGVAR was applied. Once an article has been made consistent per WP:ENGVAR, it is improper to change the spelling dialect without good reason (such as "Strong national ties to a topic" which in this case does not apply). VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:12, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

According to WP:ENGVAR: "Retaining the existing variety - If an article has evolved using predominantly one variety, the whole article should conform to that variety, unless there are reasons for changing it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic. In the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used, unless there is reason to change it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic. Where an article that is not a stub shows no signs of which variety it is written in, the first person to make an edit that disambiguates the variety is equivalent to the first major contributor." The first version of the article used International spelling, as well as the next contributors, including the major ones. As this meets the requirements of WP:ENGVAR, I hope you will show that your interest is in supporting the policies and not in making WP an American-English only site. Mikebe (talk) 13:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I spent a good bit of time on an analysis of this article's spelling the first time I made it consistent per WP:ENGVAR (and at least once since). Several points:

• Your bias is showing. International English is little more than a made up concept. Approximately 2/3 of people who speak English as a first language use American English instead of British English. See English language for the relevant statistics.
• I try not to let my own bias interfere. Please see my edit history where I have kept the spelling of many articles consistently British. Once I have done so, each article remains on my watch list so that I can monitor the spelling. I would guess more than half of the 1000+ articles on my list are there due to WP:ENGVAR spelling edits (e.g. Belgian beer).
• Would you agree that User:Justinc was a major contributor during the article's initial creation (i.e., its first few days of existence)? He used American English. I believe the spelling remained intermixed from that point. If someone else made it consistent after that point (per WP:ENGVAR), then my analysis may not have been detailed enough.
• I believe my initial analysis was detailed enough to satisfy WP:ENGVAR, considering that the main goals of WP:ENGVAR are:
  • Consistent spelling within an article
  • Prevention of spelling wars (and long pointless discussions like this).
• It is not a goal of WP:ENGVAR to make WP conform to International English (whatever that may be).

The article's spelling was made consistent at a point in the past. What is your goal in changing it now?

Also, please note that WP:ENGVAR is constantly being revised, so in order to have an accurate analysis of how the article's spelling was made consistent (i.e., were the edits correctly made) requires also looking at older versions of WP:ENGVAR. For example, WP:ENGVAR used to state that the four rules were in priority order. VMS Mosaic (talk) 19:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Question for you

I moved the Spearmint (flavor) article and replaced most of what I saw misspelled and you caught the one incident of flavor I missed. My question, do you know which variant Wikipedia goes by? I love spelling behaviour with a U but only that and rumour are spelled in Canadian English. Do you know what Wikipedia standard is? I assume articles about England, Canada and any other country or country related article would use standard for that country. But in the case of spearmint, it's everywhere. Do you know standard? Thank you KellyAna (talk) 01:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

See WP:ENGVAR. The English Wikipedia has no "standard spelling" other than that the spelling within an article should be consistent. The Spearmint article probably should not have been moved at this point in its history. VMS Mosaic (talk) 20:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

User:72.146.12.234

I noticed that you reverted vandalism committed by User:72.146.12.234 against the WWNC article on January 16. While I whole-heartedly commend you for your efforts in fighting vandalism on Wikipedia, I would politely suggest that you post a warning to the vandal's Talk page in order to discourage future acts by the same person, a message this user did not get because he vandalized the Robert C. Weaver article on January 18, which I just reverted a few minutes ago. --TommyBoy (talk) 09:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I do leave warnings for anon IP vandalism if it appears that future vandalism is likely, but I revert a great deal of anon IP vandalism where the next user of the address is likely to be someone else. A warning in a case like that has little value. A judgment call. VMS Mosaic (talk) 22:05, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Isopropyl alcohol

Hi there

The edit [2] is valid, per IUPAC nomenclature. There is no need to revert. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess I should have investigated more, but after getting 180,000 search hits on the original spelling, I assumed it was the correct one. What is the most acceptable naming style on Wikipedia? After checking some other related articles, the style used appears to be very inconsistent and intermixed within articles. Changes like the one I reverted appear to only be making the styles more intermixed. VMS Mosaic (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

You're right. I suppose if you are more interested you can pop by Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. Briefly, the systematic nomenclature by the IUPAC would be for "propan-2-ol", where the number is immediately before the functional group (-"ol", for alcohol); the "2-propanol" style is a variant of the IUPAC system popular among the Americans (thus the G-hits), but does not strictly meet the IUPAC rules.

As for which style is preferred, we prefer "common names" (i.e. isopropanol) over IUPAC names, but here it appears the IUPAC-style name was being used to make a point. So, propan-2-ol in this case should be preferred. Hope this helps! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 01:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

University of Queensland

I don't think you reverted far enough, as the example pictures were still there. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 23:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was careless. The last two edits looked like they were from the same address, so I thought a rollback got them both. VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Spelling

I noticed you made some changes to spelling on taste. I've been trying, with absolutely no success due to lack of interest, to get it made part of the guidelines that we should state what spelling each article uses at the top of the page (as a hidden comment). I should probably just be bold and add it myself... But anyway, if you could do something like this - add <!-- This article uses XYZ English --> to the top of the page - it will surely make it clearer in future for other readers, each of which must try to figure this out for themselves otherwise. Richard001 (talk) 00:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Consistent spelling within article per WP:ENGVAR

Thanks for your corrections to St. Patrick's Blue. Although I use American English normally, I tried to Hibernicize my orthinography for this article but missed a few. House of Scandal (talk) 23:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Why revert?

What do you mean that the following link is "useless" in the black body radiation article?

http://heelspurs.com/black_body.html

The link needs to go to a page with some type of explanation of its purpose. I just get some meaningless (to me) stuff about IE, zip, sxc files, etc. It sort of leads me to believe that the link is to some type of spreadsheet. What does that spreadsheet do? What type of info does it provide? Wikipedia is not (just) for experts. Links should lead to something a non-expert (on the subject) can make at least some sense of. VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, please try the link again to see if it's better. It's ironic that you mention it's "too complex" since all the other links are more complex. Here's an interesting story about all this: I needed a graph of black body radiation. A very common and simple request, I would think. So i went to wikipedia and tried all the links. They had various problems and were not really usable or understandable. For example Java applets that were stuck to the authors' units and such. So i created an Excel spreadsheet to make it easier for wiki visitors to deal with the black body radiation equations and get their own graph. But the link was reverted because "excel is dangerous". So I converted it to OpenOffice. Then I noticed Internet explorer wouldn't open it because it (very strangely) converted it to a zip file, so i created an html page that gives instructions on how to download without internet explorer forcing an extension change. Wiki may not be for common folk anymore. It seems like it's getting more and more difficult for non-wiki experts to contribute anything.

I think the complaint about the Excel spreadsheet was due to the fact that the link went directly to it. I will leave the link alone if you add it back, but the other editor is actually more experienced with this type of issue. (BTW, you can sign comments on talk pages by adding four '~' at the end of the comment). VMS Mosaic (talk) 22:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The original link went straight the excel spreadsheet. Apparently, excel spreadsheets are universally banned from wikipedia. That seems heavy-handed, but it might also be a good idea. If a user enables macros, their computer is completely exposed. Zawy1 (talk) 22:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Revisions to user talk page

Hello, please don't revert changes to my talk page without giving a reason, thanks. 69.143.226.129 (talk) 23:43, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Removing vandalism warnings from an IP talk page is considered vandalism. I simply reverted your vandalism to the page. If you want you own talk page, then your should create an account and login. VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:46, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

660099 vs. 800080

What is wrong with #660099? #660099 is the standard shade of purple and it looks richer than #800080.

Because #800080 is what the source says. As simple as that. Wikipedia is based on sourced facts, not on what "looks richer". If you have a source that says otherwise, then we can discuss which source is correct. VMS Mosaic (talk) 18:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

your revert on taste

And why isn't yumminess a valid section heading for umami? Where is your translational/lingvistic backup? Can you not tell between English and Latin words? -lysdexia 22:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with translational/lingvistic issues. The section is discussing umami using the word "umami", so logically "umami" should be used in the section heading. If "yumminess" is a better word than "umami", then the section (perhaps even the entire article) should use it in place of "umami" throughout. If "umami" is not the best word to use, "savoriness" would be better than "yumminess" since it is at least used elsewhere in this and other articles where umami is discussed. VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

The main text offers translations of "umami" as the word is meaningless here; the section headings are inconsistent and are not all in English. "savoriness" is still not English, nor is it older and better-known than our yum- words. Why don't I put a "or" or ( ) in there as it's common practise for dialects and translations; yeir dumb reversions destroy all the other work I did in the page. -lysdexia 18:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually I was the third editor to revert all of your changes, so I don't believe "dumb" is an accurate description of my revert. One of the others even labeled your edits as vandalism, but I think that may have been going too far. I would suggest making your non-controversal edits separately from the "yumminess" edit. VMS Mosaic (talk) 19:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Spring soup

I saw your posts at soup. I just created spring soup. It needs more info if it is to make it on DYK within the next five days. Please consider adding to the article. Thanks. Bebestbe (talk) 06:08, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

... for that (seems that I'm very popular with some of our vandals ;) ) →Christian.И 21:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Water-fuelled car

Care to have a look at Water fuelled car with ENGVAR in mind? The title has always been in Br Eng (2 L's in "fuelled"), but currently there's talk of both gasoline and petrol, and also of "electrolyzers" (I assume Br Eng would spell it with an "s"), and also I see "aneurysm" which understand can be spelled "aneurism" but I'm not sure if this a British/American thing or not. Perhaps there are more instances of inconsistency. (Just found "vapor" and "carburetor"! Yilloslime (t) 05:17, 19 August 2008 (UTC))There are several American inventions described, and it would sound ridiculous (to me) to say that one of them "claimed that he ran a dune buggy on water instead of petrol," since no American would ever use the term petrol, but this also strikes me as weak to invoke the "Strong national ties to a topic" argument here—while most notable purported water fuelled cars are American, certainly not all are, and I wouldn't say the topic itself--water fuelled vehicles--is inherently more related to the US than anywhere else. Thoughts? Yilloslime (t) 05:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I will try to look in detail when I have a little more time. The title usually has priority unless it has been changed in violation of WP:ENGVAR. "gasoline" may have to be handled with something like "petrol (gasoline)" as is done elsewhere in the article. The "Strong national ties to a topic" applies only to the article as a whole, not to individual article sections. VMS Mosaic (talk) 17:30, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

This is an article I probably wouldn't touch as an outsider. "aneurysm" is okay. "electrolyzers" should be spelled with an 's'. "vapor" and "carburetor" should be made British. I'd just leave "gasoline" alone when talking about American inventions given that "petrol (gasoline)" was used previously in the article; see WP:Use common sense. VMS Mosaic (talk) 20:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks. Yilloslime (t) 21:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

For unvandalising (I know it's not a real word) Sapphire. You were 1 minute ahead of me. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 20:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge reverts

MERGERS (Asphalt) - merger help page said to be bold and merge w/o asking first, why do so many dislike this merger? (someone on #wikipedia reverted me too), all my edits get reverted! getting tired of nothing i do in the wiki sticking! Mrqwerty987 (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Concrete and asphalt are too completely different things. Yes, they can both be used for pavement, but they do not belong together. Also, a merge means merging the information on the pages together, not just replacing one of the pages with a redirect. VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:27, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Notable browsers

Explain to me the value in having a list of "notable browsers" by order to release, directly under a historical list of all browsers notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. This seems extremely redundant and superfluous. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 23:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

See my reply on the article talk page. The short historical list was there first before the mostly useless first list was added. VMS Mosaic (talk) 19:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

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