User talk:Gene Nygaard/2006Nov-2006Dec

Sort keys

Please stop creating articles such as Nikola Špirić if you cannot add the proper sort keys so that the articles are indexed properly in categories. I fixed that one. Go back and fix any others you have messed up the same way I have no idea what you are talking aboutBigz 23:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

{{Municipalities in Salamanca}}

Hello. Perhaps you'd like to comment here. I've nominated this template for deletion. You left a comment at its talk page a while ago. Cheers, Fang Aili ^talk 21:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Eastern Railway WA

Hey thanks for your cleanup work! Could you possibly cast your eyes quickly over the linked arts to Railways on the West Coast of Tasmania? there might be some begging some cleanup there too...it would be appreciatedSatuSuro 14:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Dduallt railway station

I note that you have editted Dduallt railway station. I have reverted the header were you have removed the capital letter on the second word - "The Deviation" should be properly capitalised in Ffestiniog usage. It is a Proper Name. However, I have not done anything to the metric equivalents as I do not know your source of this figures. Have you selected the nearest equivalents, or have your taken them form the Ffestiniog Railway official mileages and gradient profiles. One example why I ask is that 35ft = 10.66m not the 11m you have entered. As regards distances, the Branch Line Society have produced what is now the official distances chart for the FR. Next time I am in the Control Office in Porthmadog, I will remember to make a copy. Best regards --Stewart 16:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

No, this 35 feet has some amount of uncertainty to it, as do any measured quantities. It is maybe not even the nearest foot, but perhaps the nearest five feet. Even the starting and ending points for making the measurement are not likely really sharply defined points. If it were to the nearest foot, it would be somewhere between 34½ ft and 35½ ft. If those were exact numbers (and they aren't really), it would be between 10.5156 m and 10.8206 m. If it is to the nearest five feet, it would be between 9.906 m and 11.43 m. Saying it is 10.66 m would be false precision. See rounding and significant figures. All the "11 m" says is that it is probably between 10.5 m and 11.5 m. Keeping the originals first is also a good way to preserve the clues we have as to the actual precision of the measurement. Gene Nygaard 16:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

bcm versus km³

[not archived yet]

Al-Hasa

Re: Your opposition to a move of Al-Hasa → Al-Ahsa. The article is now largely about the current admin unit rather than the historical region. I went along with a move req because there is a point that the current admin unit uses the Al-Ahsa spelling. I have already prepared a rump article about the historical region and, if the move goes through, I'll post it at the Al-Hasa location after it's vacated. Due to the differences in context, the two articles shouldn't be considered POV Fork. Does this address your concerns or am I misreading you objection? —  AjaxSmack  03:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

My point is that if Al-Hasa is the better spelling for the historical place, that's the spelling that should be used right now in the article as it stands. Gene Nygaard 03:06, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

A few weeks ago you would have been correct. However, Brokenlove has added extensive material recently most of which does not apply to the historical region but only to the current admin unit which is probably better spelt "Al-Ahsa." Moving all of that info to a separate article for the current admin unit would be pretty much a cut-and-paste move of the whole article so I figured do a RM and then immediately create a new Al-Hasa article for only the historical region and maybe do a few copy edits for the old one as well.. —  AjaxSmack  03:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Margaret Osborne duPont

Thank you for your suggestion regarding Margaret Osborne duPont! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.

By the way, calling other editors "silly" is close to being uncivil. Tennis expert 11:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Agriculture in India category

Hi Gene, you have removed Category:Agriculture by country from Agriculture in India with the comment "not desirable with subcat of same name". I didn't understand it, can you explain. Jay 18:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Looking at that edit summary, I can see that you might be confused. What I meant was that the category named "Agriculture in India" already appears in Category:Agriculture by country as a subcategory, so that there is no need for the article named "Agriculture in India" (which is the primary article for that subcategory) to appear in the parent category as well. It is also based on the fact that similar articles for other countries do not appear in the parent Category:Agriculture by country. Articles such as Agriculture in Australia do not appear in the parent category, but only in the subcategory with the same name as the article, Category:Agriculture in Australia. (Other subcategories such as Category:Agriculture in Mexico do not have an article of the same name.) Most or all of the similarly named articles for the agriculture in a particular country which appear in the parent category are those which do not have a subcategory yet. For example, Agriculture in Greece appears in Category:Agriculture by country because there is not yet a Category:Agriculture in Greece.

Is that clearer? India is like Australia.

One of the factors is that having a lot of articles in a category with a lot of subcategories makes it hard to find those subcategories, reguiring paging through more displays to find them. Gene Nygaard 19:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Ernst Stavro Blofeld and User:MarkBA category sorting

I'm sorry but I don't know what the hell you are talking about. Each article is categorized properly and stubbed properly. And please do not patronize our work .These new stubs will be expanded later but need to be set up . Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

What you mean is about the accents. No each article should have the accents in the title and the intro. This is the correct name of the village. On every article a redirect is created directing from the clear English to the Slovak. The villages must be named with there accents . Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry Gene Nygaard, but I don't know know what the hell you are talking about. Are we missing categories? No. And we MUST created the village with diacritics, otherwise it doesn't go. And those stubs must be created asap, they can be fixed at a later date. MarkBA 15:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

If you had bothered to check our work carefully you would see that Mark is covering a completely different district. I made a slight error on one or two in Martin district where I forgot to change the name of the district in the article -the categories were perfect. If you had looked you would see I am not racing through them , I am setting up one of two villages in each district for Mark to cover and sorting out disambiguation. Good work I think. Especially as an entrie country has almost been mapped out and ready for writing them all up. I have had many compliments for setting up "stubs" because thet will become full articles later. You should have just pointed out to me I forgot to change the district name rather than giving us both a lectureErnst Stavro Blofeld 15:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

<edit conflict>

I checked enough to know for certain 1) that the two of you are working in cahoots, and 2) that neither of you are indexing the articles properly in the articles you create.

But I'm not talking about "changing the district name". Go read about sort keys Wikipedia:Categorization so that you have some inkling about the subject of the discussion here. Gene Nygaard 15:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes I know this this is minor task that will be done once we have completed all of the articles. I know. If you look at some of the earlier distrcits I have done in Kosice Region for instance you will see I have done these. You were acting as if there was a major problem with our work. This will literally take two minutes when we have finished, Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Look, don't try to pull my leg.

You've been editing here for at least five months. Can you show me even a single instance from the past where you've gone back later and fixed the sorting of a category, after you added it without sorting properly, either directly or by making a move?

• For example, way back on July 5, 2006 you moved Ögii Nuur Lake, and even today it remains missorted in Category:Lakes of Mongolia to this day. EXACTLY THIS WAS WHEN I WAS STARTING WIKIPEDIA AND I WASN'T AWARW OF THIS THIS WAS SO LONG AGO!!!

But that's what I'm asking you to do, now that you do know better. Go back and fix the ones from before you knew this. You know better than I do or anyone else does which ones you might have already fixed and which ones you haven't fixed. Gene Nygaard 16:44, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, it it will "literally take two minutes when we have finished", it should take even less now, and most importantly, there is then absolutely no reason for you not to take those TWO MINUTES to fix the ones you have already messed up, before you proceed with adding new ones, and that is all I am asking of you. Gene Nygaard 16:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, I have no reasonable way of checking whatever you might have done in "Kosice Region" because you haven't had enough sense to create a Category:Kosice Region. Gene Nygaard 16:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Cant' you see how empty Slovakia actually was? How dare you insult me like that. Haven't enough sense? THis will be set up in due course once the country is mapped out. I am very disappointed with your attitude towards me. I have done a great deal to help the project far far more than Slovakia and you still refer to be as thick.

For God's sake mate the minor problem with indexing was nothing to do with me I was editing an entirely different district. I am fixing it now it won't take two minutes don't make such a big song and dance about it. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Please look at Category:Villages and municipalities in Rožňava District in the Kosice Region to see that I have been indexing properly. I cannot beleive how unpleasant you are about it all. I am very disappointed with how you have treated me. User mark is new and wasn't aware of the indexing. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I did, now, even though you still hadn't pointed out any category to look in since Category:Kosice Region doesn't exist.

• In Category:Villages and municipalities in the Košice Region, Kráľovský Chlmec should be before Kravany, though admittedly neither you nor MarkBA show up in the history of that article.
• In Category:Villages and municipalities in Rožňava District, Bôrka should appear before Brdárka, and you have edited created the Bôrka article, with categories, and it is in Kosice Region.

So I ask again, can you point out any article or any category, preferable with either a link to the differences or with the article name and date you fixed it, where you have actually fixed the category sorting? Gene Nygaard 16:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Note that I hadn't seen that the Rožňava District, the one which contains the Bôrka article, was also the one you had pointed me to, claiming you had fixed. I simply couldn't see it, when I looked at my page—because it wasn't there (I could have if I'd read it on the differences page, but didn't do so). There's a little trick you need to use when putting in a link to a category, so that we can see it in the text and go to it, rather than my talk page getting categorized in that category. You need to put a colon in front of the word Category, like this: [[:Category:Villages and municipalities in Rožňava District]] Gene Nygaard 22:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

There are, of course, also several other articles misindexed in that very category to which you pointed me. Just because I mentioned only Bôrka, I didn't mean to imply that it was the only one mis-sorted. Is it possible that you were just confused, and somehow thought that it is only the initial letter of a word which gets sorted on? Gene Nygaard 22:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

HI mate. Yes I assumed that once it indexed under B it automatically indexes it with the rest of the letters e.g Ba comes before bo etc but I can see now what you mean. The second letter has an accent so would probably come after bu. I'm sorry that I have done this. It didn't really occur to be about this but I will try to correct these in due course. I would prefer as I'm sure you would agree with me to make sure everything is done perfectly. I understand that wikipedia needs to be seen professionally and easier for readers to browse through. I can see why this may seem annoying to you. I can see you are only helping in trying to make everything is done 100% properly. Please respond to me so we can discuss it. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 22:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Now that you can see that there are a whole lot more articles involved than you originally thought, you'd probably revise your "two minutes" estimate for fixing the problem as well. Do you see now why it would be a whole lot easier just to put the proper sort keys in every time you create an article, rather than trying to clean up after yourself at a later time? That way you will have them so that even if more articles get added to a particular category in the future, yours should still remain properly indexed. Gene Nygaard 22:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I have sorted his mistakes on Category:Villages and municipalities in Galanta District and the other district. I do not make repeated errors in indexing and I didn't create any of the articles that were started with the wrong indexing. I really wish you knew how much quality work I have put into wikipedia with few major mistakes. Several of my articles have featured on the main page in the did you know - if I was such a disastrous wikipedian I don't think this would have ever happened. and I have often been praised for my work from others users. Remember it was me who actually set up all the different categories and most of the templates anyway and removed the main category Villages in Slovakia. I am giving you a chance to clear the air between us because I like to be on good terms with other users and 95% who I have come across have been very nice to work with. Your comments have been discouraging and to be honest have made me feel like a shit wikipedian when i and many others know I am quite the opposite. I aopologize for MarkBA's minor mistakes and for any small mistakes I have made in the past. Are we cool? If you knew me you wouldn't think of my in such a negative way Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S I am setting up the regional categories later. This way other features such as rivers monuments etc can go in them with the village category. Sound good? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I must agree with Ernst. You were very rude and you treated us like a bunch of idiots, but that wasn't my fault for incorrect indexing. Also, when you started, you didn't say detailed, but overall description, what triggered this senseless debate AND I don't want to say anything wrong, but you seem to be too much jealous on what we done. But I give you one chance to cool it down, because I don't want to have bad relations with anyone here. MarkBA 17:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

If you were creating a few pages a week, it wouldn't be a big problem. But at the rapid rate you were creating articles, it was best to get your attention right away. This problem is better dealt with as you create the articles, than later, wouldn't you agree? Gene Nygaard 17:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I must only partly agree, because some problems are simply unavoidable or you are unaware of, when you create an article. But what this does have with the speed of creating? But about this later, I feel we need to cool down this a bit. MarkBA 17:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Gene Nygaard, please stop this senseless campaign against us, and try doing that what we did yourself. Then you can show up with your unreasoned complains. We are getting mostly praises for our work, and any minor mistakes are mostly fixed. And I still think you are jealous, I think your category says it all. I was, and I'm still extremely disappointed how you treat(ed) us, and if you still think that I'm doing that deliberately, try doing those villages. And to your opinions about templates, I can say that you are only idiot. What "useless"? And reading what links here takes some time. Templates are, in contrast to your opinion, extremely useful, because you can jump from one village (or topic) to another. I hope you can understand this before giving both of us another wave of unreasoned lecture. MarkBA 08:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm extremely sorry, Gene Nygaard, but how do you dare insult me for that? I'm doing even worse mistakes than indexing and only this one must be a real pain in the neck for you. And those links were meant as a joke? I see nothing wrong on my work. And I consider your criticisms to me as offensive, you don't know to tell me that constructively? I think User:Ernst Stavro Blofeld (talk) would at least partly agree. To conclude this, I think you are one of the most nastiest people I've ever met, who doesn't know anything else than complaining INSTEAD of explaining.

P.S.: How do you dare to threat me with sanctions? I don't know about anything that I have vandalized. For God's sake, I think you started this cruel war, and I think you should also stop it. And please don't ever tell me that I'm doing nothing about it, that is the worst insult I've ever heard. MarkBA 09:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

You couldn't do that earlier, do you? We could do more articles instead of flamewarring here, but it's too late. I must tell you two things:

1. I think you deserve fixing that for insulting me and Ernst.

2. I'm not talking with you anymore, because you made me an enemy to you, and your style of explaining is arrogant, you jealous American (sorry).

That's all I can say to you. MarkBA 10:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

March Turbo

Thanks for helping with translation cleanup! If you're looking for more of the same, see the list of articles at the bottom of User:Ek-10stToyama. --Geniac 19:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Huh?

I did not understand your message... at all... What? Renata 04:16, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Unspecified

What do you mean mate? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Depends on what you are talking about.

1. Your "two minutes" are up. Have the categories been fixed?
2. Navigation tools are not a substitute for those categories, which will work fine once somebody gets them sorted correctly. We do not need redundant relistings of those categories slapped onto every article in the category.
3. You need to cite your sources.

Did I hit the mark with one of them? Or are you talking about something else? That's one of the big problems with one of my pet peeves, split up discussions—you don't have the antecedent references to know what the discussion is about. Gene Nygaard 15:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Golf course issue is back

Check it out. --AlexWCovington (talk) 06:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Ryukyu Islands

Regarding the page move, please be sure to vote yourself as well.

Also, there seems to be more support for Ryukyu Islands rather than Ryukyu (no macrons, of course). All English dictionaries and encyclopedias use Ryukyu Islands with no macrons. Please respond to questions in Talk:Ryukyu Islands and comment there if Ryukyu Islands will be acceptable for you. Thank you.--Endroit 16:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Torr and torr

Gene. I see that you corrected references of "torr" to "Torr" in Specific heat capacity. What you changed it to is fine and correct. But do you agree that it wasn't technically a "correction"? According to the BIPM's Table 10. Examples of other non-SI units, when one refers to the unit torr by name, it is spelled with a lowercase t. Since the unit torr is rather unique in that it is named after an individual and its symbol is spelled the same: Torr (except it's uppercase), it appears to me that one can correctly write both of the following: "a pressure of 760 torr" and "a pressure of 760 Torr." This is just the same as writing "a temperature of 23 degrees Celsius" and "a temperature of 23 °C". For both the pressure and the temperature, the first entries were the unit name, and the second entries were the unit's symbol. Your edit does, however, appear to be an improvement because the preceding value used a symbol for kilopascal "101.325 kPa" so one could argue that the torr-equivalent value works better if it is written with a symbol, "(760 Torr)". Still, I hope you will agree "760 torr" and "760 Torr" are both entirely correct ways to write the value. Greg L 21:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Remember, I was reverting your change that claimed the "Torr" was incorrect. Furthermore, 760 torrs is correct, but 760 Torrs never is. That's one of the distinctions between the spelled out word and the symbol; symbols should always remain unchanged in the plural. So using 760 Torr avoids arguing whether it is better to say 760 torr or 760 torrs for the spelled out word, and avoids an unnecessary, irregular plural for an obsolete unit best thrown out completely anyway if the irregular form is chosen. Gene Nygaard 21:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course, I never wrote "torrs", but point taken. Greg L 21:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Árpád Élő

Now, please move that back, or I will have to find the appropriate place for a complaint against your actions.

O! I am all atremble!

You go ahead and do that. I'm sure that anyone reading at said appropriate place will be also examining your track record. Hint: not good. --Calton | Talk 05:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Calton, this seems to be an immature response that doesn't address the issue at hand. Did you read and understand Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)? Are you planning to address the points that Gene made on your talk page? Or are you just using Gene's track record. Hint: not good as a convinient excuse to pile it on?

By the way, you've mis-interpreted Gene's track record - it's good, not the other way around. --Duk 18:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Attention to Gene Nygaard: in the Category List of chess players there are separately Chess players and Famous people who were/are avid chess players, so Arpad Elo, like others, should be placed into one of those groups. --Mibelz 23:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The original names (in their own languages)

There is a discussion on correctness of original names usage. I suggest to look at solid sources on chess. One of the best is http://www.olimpbase.org/ (see, http://www.olimpbase.org/statistics/all_id01.html). --Mibelz 9:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Bullying

Mate try to tone down the bullying. It is not helping wikipedia at all. Wikipedia needs people like Mark who have the decency and enthusiasm to create new articles. He is genuinely is attempting to help the encyclopedia very much and I like many others such as Chris and Tankred appreciate his work very much. I see you are saying that they are in the wrong categories. Think of it like this. There are thousands of villages in Hungary. Every city, town and village in hungary should NOT go in one category it would be ridiculously over bloated and would be on many many pages. Already the Category:Cities, towns and villages is divided appropriately into county categories which after Mark's great mapping work will have many in each one in alone. However I suggest that only cities and towns in Hungary e.g with a population of 3,000+ are placed in the main category. THis way it would still be full and everthing would be categorized sensibly. Most countries on wikipedia do not have a general national category for villages!

As for imposing sanctions against him what? Mark has actually been awarded for his work with a barnstar and praised? - I doubt very much this qualifies as vandalism? Wikipedia if it doesn't already should have a policy against bullying - it is a serious matter and your unpleasantness may deter users from using the website -not exactly what we want..

On a personal level I have offered the chance to clear the air between us I would far prefer to discuss things rationally and on decent terms rather than attempting to pursue a war. I have even offered you friendship but for some reason you have rejected me.

I will make sure that all of the CITIES AND TOWNS rather than villages go in the national category.

I hope very much that you will consider what I have said and answer me positively.

Best wishes, Ernst Stavro Blofeld 10:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

HI. I have checked Category:Cities, towns and villages in Hungary and it is subcateogrized off into all of the counties. Only Cities and towns should feature on the national category. If, you are concerned about the villages not being together with all of the towns nationally, specialized lists of all of them have already been created so it is unfeasible to use both categories for the small villages Mark is creating. I have been going through the towns though and I have seen you have done some good work in the past with categortization and indexing. Thankyou it makes wikipedia easier. Just try to be a little more easy-going that will make wikipedia easier for everyone. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 11:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

See my correction and indexing of Füzesgyarmat to show you what I am doing. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 11:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I have now indexed all of the places in Category:Cities, towns and villages in Békés county properly. All of the villages can now be accessed from the main page. I can see that wrongly indexed places can be frustrating especially with articles being created quickly I have just gone through bekes county! On every new article that is created now I will make sure that both Mark and myself write the name in English in the category -this will avoid conflict and having to correct all of the indexing later. Agreed? And about the category. Technically Cities towns and villages in Hungary means villages as well. I am attempting to make wikipedia as consistent as possible and in a way technically all of the villages should be on the mainpage but there are so many it will be incredibly bloated especially as there are all of the many subcategories too which attempt to break it up. But I can see that say for instance someone in looking in the category for a village and they don't know what county it is in then they wouldn't find it. Can you see my rationalization? Please resspond to me so we can discuss Ernst Stavro Blofeld 12:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I have spoken to Mark and he can still continue doing his great work just with the slight indexing and category ammendments. It is a very minor thing so cause such a bad relationship but if articles are created so quickly then they kind of add up. The slight change can be made to the new articles with minimum effort and will mean that we or others will not have to index and categorize them further at a later date. If this is done I really can't see any cause for argument. Agreed? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 12:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey I am getting round to it. I'll sort out Csongtad next if you haven't alreadt and then do the other afterwards / I have completed Bekes district. Allright. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 14:22, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

OK cool mate I'm glad we agree on something. Yes Mark is now using the sort keys. if any villages in the past need adjusting I'll do that. I've done a few already. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I've sorted out all of the towns so far I think so that they not only indexed properly but also have the additional cat which is need ONLY for the cities and towns. If you don't beleive me just look at my latest contribs. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Why on earth is it automatically putting the villages in the main category? There is no way to index it then? How do you fix the template? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

It is the template info box at the top right which is causing all the problems. It is this which automatically puts it into the other category. But if you remove that then you are taking away information. What do you suggest I do?Ernst Stavro Blofeld 16:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

HI yes I know I figured out about going to the template about an hour ago and I did remove the part where it says category:Cities in Hungary but then I go back to the index and find that it is still putting my villages in the main section. You say it takes time to be deleted from there? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I won't guarantee the part about it being fixed eventually, but we can give it a few hours or a day and check again. Unless you want to go to the trouble of making all those null edits now. I do know that a while ago I was doing a bunch of null edits like that, though it was for a different type of change to the template other than not adding a category, but after I got about halfway through, the ones I hadn't done yet were fixed too.

Note that there will in any case be some articles for villages which have had the category manually added so that the sort key can be fixed, and those will still appear in the Hungary category even if the templates are fixed to not add the category. Gene Nygaard 17:48, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

By the way, you did not fix Template:HungaryCities2 which is used for some of these villages. Your name doesn't appear in the history for that template, and villages using that template won't change if even if you do a null edit, because the template hasn't changed. Are there more templates than this, also? Gene Nygaard 17:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Note also that while Template:Infobox Hungarian settlement doesn't appear to add any categories, articles for villages such as Hárskút which use it have had Category:Cities, towns and villages in Hungary manually added so they will still be in that category, and still in need of having their sort keys fixed in other categories as well.

Since neither you nor MarkBA have edited that Hárskút article, you may well run into conflicts with those who have as to whether or not that category belongs there. And it doesn't make much sense to have one bunch of you going in one direction and another bunch going in another direction when it comes to what should be included in that category. Gene Nygaard 18:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

HI . Thanks for your advice it is appreciated. You were right that it would take a while for that template to be fixed. I removed the category from it over 2 hours ago and it has only just removed my villages from the main category. If you look at Category:Cities, towns and villages in Hungary you'll see it now looks better. It seems the problem has now been solved with the categories. Villages shouldn't really go in two categories only the larger cities and towns in two. Apologies I thought it was you adding the other category when it was actually that bastard template!! I believe that if new articles are added now that template won't continue to add them automatically to the main category with the wrong indexing. It will just add them to the county category as is appropriate but yes I will always used the proper indexing and Mark too from now on. From this I think it should be OK. Am I making sense? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 18:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course that would save all the null edits we would have to do to sort out the index! I'm sure you have done thousands of those!! Ernst Stavro Blofeld 18:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I have adjusted Hárskút. This is how the villages will look from now on. In one tidy category of the county and properly indexed. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 18:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I have resumed my work on Category:Cities, towns and villages in Hajdú-Bihar county. It should be looking right So far everyhting should be correct for the towns two categories -cities and towns in hungary and the villages with just the one county category. The main page will gradually be sorted out it already looks a lot better. Every new article should be ok with the correct sort keys. Let me know if you spot any errors. You know that I really want things done properly or else I wouldn't have spent so long today trying to correct everyhing. All the best, Ernst Stavro Blofeld 21:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Shut up you one whining son of a bitch. DO you really think I care what you have to say to me? You are so pathetic. Oh yeah of course it was me with all those different identities. I can't believe you actually think it was me before. I have only ever had one user name which I chnaged a few months ago Get a life a find someone else to bully. I have checked Category:Cities, towns and villages in Hajdú-Bihar county and they are all in alphabetical order. Find some one else to take out your disturbed nastiness on. I have had it with you. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 15:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Well why the hell are you going on at me then? Clearly not my mistake Almost right and you act as if I have deleted all of wikipedia! For God's Sake just drop it will you. Your making wikipedia very miserable for me. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 20:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I tell you what fella, I'll do you a deal. If I go back and make sure everything is indexed and categorized properly in Slovakia and continue doing wmy great work (which Chris 01 and many others think is fantastic) correctly as I have been in my recent articles will you promise you'll shut up for good? I'll start the cleanup on Slovakia now but the second I here one damn little whine from your eager little finger tips or from that undeniably sarcastic and cold brain of yours I'll stop very abruptly. Is that A OK? Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:08, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

No.

Once you finish the villages in Slovakia, and "football" clubs in Slovakia and anywhere else, you can move on to cable cars in the Chech Republic and whatever else you've messed up (fix the capitalization in that article name, too). Gene Nygaard 08:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

User_talk:Rebecca#Concerns

You previously posted concerns on User_talk:Rebecca. You may wish to comment at User_talk:Rebecca#Concerns

The London Paper

Noticed this coverage of some Icelandic things in a local paper here in London [1] Rather inconsistent in its treatment of names (notice both Eiđur Guđjohnsen and Eidur Gudjonsson) but it's interesting to see the thorn in Þorramatur. Haukur 22:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Once in a million events are always interesting little curiousities. Gene Nygaard 08:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

But, of course, there is actually something a whole lot more interesting than that in what you just said.

Notice what happens when I wikilink those personal names you mention—r-e-d-l-i-n-k-s!. Too bad there are so many damn fools on Wikipedia who like to hide things away so that nobody can find them, isn't it? You wouldn't happen to know any of the responsible people who fritter away there time making useless articles that nobody else will ever find, if they look for what they happen to see in their newspapers, would you? Gene Nygaard 08:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, Eidur Gudjonsson is just a misspelling no matter how you look at it - though I suppose it's a somewhat natural one so it's probably worth creating a redirect. Eiđur Guđjohnsen is a slightly eccentric form - it uses đ for ð. But in these enlightened Unicode days I'm seeing that becoming gradually more common so, again, I'll create a redirect.

I've got plans drawn up for a bot to create redirects for different transliterations of names. I hope I'll have the time and motivation to finish it because I agree with you that people finding our articles is important. Haukur 09:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

English speakers confusing Đ with Ð, even in their lowercase forms, should hardly be surprising. There is absolutely no reason for any but a handful of people in the whole world to know all the thousands of different characters used right here on the English Wikipedia, for writing words in at least 500 different languages (and probably in the thousands for the numbers of languages, too). In a reasonable world, that would lead to a rule that those convolutions should generally be avoided except when accompanied by the English alphabet spelling as in giving various foreign spellings in the introduction of an article, and especially avoiding them in the article's names. Gene Nygaard 14:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC) But, OTOH, always including redirects from those spellings. Gene Nygaard 14:08, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to rehash all the old arguments, let's focus on what we agree on. No-one should need to know thousands of characters to use Wikipedia effectively and creating redirects is one way to make sure they don't have to. You've done a lot of good manual work along those lines and I've now got a working prototype of a redirect-creating bot (it was much easier than I thought, with the DotNetWikiBot framework). Currently my bot only does Icelandic characters but it will easily expand. [2] I'd appreciate hints on how to mine pages that are likely to need this kind of service. Haukur 23:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Thorns to plowshares

Okay, here's a conversion table I made with all the alphabetical characters in the ISO-8859 tables and a proposed ASCII transliteration. What do you think?

Now, clearly, I don't know half of those letters and it's possible that many of them have conventional transliterations which are not those below. One problem is that such transliterations are often language specific. For example the German 'ö' is often transliterated as 'oe' but the Icelandic 'ö' is normally translitarted as 'o'. The Scandinavian 'å' is traditionally transliterated as 'aa' but I think redirects from 'a' transliterations should exist as well. And if we do have any titles with 'ĸ' in them (I don't think so) we should probably have redirects from a 'k' transliteration as well as a 'q' transliteration. Clearly, I'm only aware of problems like this for languages I'm familiar with - I'm sure many of the other letters have similar problems. What protocol would you recommend? Haukur 11:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

á	a
Á	A
à	a
À	A
ă	a
Ă	A
â	a
Â	A
å	a
Å	A
ä	a
Ä	A
ã	a
Ã	A
ą	a
Ą	A
ā	a
Ā	A
æ	ae
Æ	Ae
ć	c
Ć	C
ĉ	c
Ĉ	C
č	c
Č	C
ċ	c
Ċ	C
ç	c
Ç	C
ð	d
Ð	D
ď	d
Ď	D
đ	d
Đ	D
é	e
É	E
è	e
È	E
ê	e
Ê	E
ě	e
Ě	E
ë	e
Ë	E
ė	e
Ė	E
ę	e
Ę	E
ē	e
Ē	E
ğ	g
Ğ	G
ĝ	g
Ĝ	G
ġ	g
Ġ	G
ģ	g
Ģ	G
ĥ	h
Ĥ	H
ħ	h
Ħ	H
ı	i
İ	I
í	i
Í	I
ì	i
Ì	I
î	i
Î	I
ï	i
Ï	I
ĩ	i
Ĩ	I
į	i
Į	I
ī	i
Ī	I
ĵ	j
Ĵ	J
ĸ	q
ķ	k
Ķ	K
ĺ	l
Ĺ	L
ľ	l
Ľ	L
ł	l
Ł	L
ļ	l
Ļ	L
ń	n
Ń	N
ň	n
Ň	N
ñ	n
Ñ	N
ņ	n
Ņ	N
ŋ	n
Ŋ	N
ó	o
Ó	O
ò	o
Ò	O
ô	o
Ô	O
ö	o
Ö	O
ő	o
Ő	O
õ	o
Õ	O
ø	o
Ø	O
ō	o
Ō	O
œ	oe
Œ	Oe
ŕ	r
Ŕ	R
ř	r
Ř	R
ŗ	r
Ŗ	R
ś	s
Ś	S
ŝ	s
Ŝ	S
š	s
Š	S
ş	s
Ş	S
ß	ss
ť	t
Ť	T
ŧ	t
Ŧ	T
ţ	t
Ţ	T
ú	u
Ú	U
ù	u
Ù	U
ŭ	u
Ŭ	U
û	u
Û	U
ů	u
Ů	U
ü	u
Ü	U
ű	u
Ű	U
ũ	u
Ũ	U
ų	u
Ų	U
ū	u
Ū	U
ŵ	w
Ŵ	W
ý	y
Ý	Y
ŷ	y
Ŷ	Y
ÿ	y
Ÿ	Y
ź	z
Ź	Z
ž	z
Ž	Z
ż	z
Ż	Z
þ	th
Þ	Th

As far as the redirects go, it should be possible to use more than one possibility. What you suggest for ĸ could be applied to "aa" and "a" for å, for instance. How much opportunity are you going to have to guess whether ä should also have an "ae" redirect as well as an "a" redirect, for example. Will this be fully automated or require approval of each one? I've never tried to set up a bot, so am not familiar eith all the options.

The table above would probably be good for the indexing sort key, where only one possibility will be indexed, even if you put more than one in there.

I do know that the one we discussed above, Đ đ, in at least some languages, has some people who insist it should be transliterated "Dj" and "dj" (it also needs redirects from "d" versions if that is done).

How do you intend to deal with those for which you cannot create redirects, but rather need to have a link from a disambiguation page? Especially when what keeps you from creating the redirect is the fact that that name is already a redirect somewhere else, which might require the creation of that disambiguation page from scratch? Gene Nygaard 13:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Those are some very good questions. Nice to know about the 'dj' option for 'đ'. Briefly -

For now I'm manually approving every edit. When I've convinced myself (and the friendly folks over at WP:BOT) that this works sensibly and reliably I'd like to turn it loose to churn on its own.

Currently my bot checks if the page it wants to create already exists and if so it does nothing. As you point out it's possible that the page that exists doesn't do everything it should - e.g. it may need to be turned into a disambiguation page. But programming a bot to react sensibly to every possibility would be prohibitively complicated - I think we're probably going to require human judgment for this case.

I'm just going to throw out some ideas now - we could maybe have both a 'naive' (å > a, đ > d etc.) and a 'smart' mode (å > aa, đ > dj etc.) for the bot.

It may be worthwhile to create redirects for titles where 'common' diacritics have been retained but thorn and such have been transliterated - e.g. Thorlákshöfn to Þorlákshöfn.

I wonder whether it would be worthwhile to create redirects with very naive transliterations like 'ß' to 'b' and 'þ' to 'p', e.g. Porlakshofn to Þorlákshöfn.

Talking about what I know, 'ð' is reasonably often transliterated as 'th' for Old Icelandic names but very rarely for modern ones. There are also fairly rare conventions like 'ð' to 'dh' and 'þ' to 't'.

Redirects are cheap but there are some disadvantages to creating very many redirects.

• It clutters the "What links here" page (see e.g. here)
• It creates more work for anyone who wants to move the page later.
• If the page title happens to have an error in it then that error is perpetuated in the redirects.
• If the page is ever deleted then there's more work to do in deleting all the redirects.
• Redirects from very 'naive' transliterations might be seen by some as an 'endorsement' of them and meet resistance.

This makes me a bit reticent in creating redirects for every possible permutation, say Porlakshoefn, Torlakshoefn or Thorlakshöfn. Someone might possibly stumble on these but it may not be worth the extra clutter. I don't know where to draw the line - what do you think? Haukur 15:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Good points about excessive redirects. Are you aware of the different ways that the "Go" button treats capitalization variations, vs. the way wikilinks handle them? And of the difficulties to be overcome in being able to create a redirect that will work for wikilinks handling the different capitalization? If this doesn't make any sense to you, I'll try to explain it better. For example, Békés County has redirects from Békés county and Bekes County but not from Bekes county. Yet if you put "Bekes county" in the box and click "Go" you get to the article, but the line at the top says "(Redirected from Bekes County)"—note the difference in capitalization from what you put in the box. So you cannot use that link to be able to create the article. Now click on the redlink above; that's the way you need to deal with it, by first creating a red wikilink in order to be able to create the redirect.

I would say thorn to "t" sometimes, to "p" never for your purposes. Not to say there won't be rare occasions where the latter might be useful, and might perhaps already exist. But I don't think it is common enough to do it as a general rule.

Some such as "ĸ" should probably never occur outside redirects, and there is no particular reason to worry about adding redirects to them from anything else. If they are encountered, they should be flagged for renaming instead.

These might suggest some other possible problem areas, not necessarily something you need to deal with but something to take into consideration as things you might be able to deal with:

• ‘Abd ar-Razzaq
• ’Pataphysics
• ʻIolani Palace
• Α/β protein fold
• ǀXam language
• Δ18O
• ¿Quién Me Iba A Decir?
• En dashes and even em dashes and various other dashes and hyphens in article names, should have redirects from -
• Initials, spaced and unspaced, e.g. V. C. Sreejan and V.C. Sreejan (red now)

Some quite clearly should just be moved (but knowing what to move them to isn't always clear):

• Пocoбие для нaчинaющих: Глac Cépeбpa.

Your 'ß' to 'b' reminds me of the dual use of decimal 225 in DOS Western Europe and decimal 0223 in Windows Western ß for β beta and ß ess-tset. I just did some redirects and changes in related articles for what was redirected through ß-Barium Borate, for example. Probably not many like that, however.

For your purposes, especially in an automated stage, the only thing that is really necessary is some provision for your bot not acting on some articles, but a list of the ones for which this happens would likely be useful for dealing with them manually.

It is hard to say what you might run into. Combining characters shouldn't be used in article names, probably not even in redirects, but can we say that you won't run into that being done?

When I switched from the DOS version to the Windows version of my Brother's Keeper genealogy program, author John Steed made me a personalized version of the program he had for converting databases to the new format, so I could change my ö entries to ø, since the latter wasn't available in DOS (then, I only had a few that I wanted as ö to go back and change manually). I know that there are a significant number of Norwegian (and probably Danish as well) maps (especially anything more than 50 years old) which use ö for place names. Is it common enough to be worthwhile to create redirects for all place names using Ø ø from the Ö ö versions? Perhaps for some other applications besides place names too?

Generally, I don't think there should be separate disambiguation pages for different diacritics added to the same basic 26-letter words, but rather they should all (even if unrelated diacritics usage) be at the same disambiguation page under the English-alphabet version. E.g., Nordstrom, Nordström, Nordstrøm at Nordstrom (disambiguation). Gene Nygaard 16:34, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Again you've brought up a lot of good points. I agree that there is probably no reason for any article to have a ĸ in its title and if one does it would be nice to flag it for manual inspection. For stuff like Α/β protein fold and ¿Quién Me Iba A Decir? the general principle should remain that readers should be able to type ASCII strings into the search box and get what they want - in this case I'd guess alpha/beta protein fold and Quien Me Iba A Decir but maybe you'd want other possibilities as well (a/b protein fold? ?Quien Me Iba A Decir??). Someone familiar with biochemistry and Spanish conventions would have a better chance of telling. I agree that any fancy dashes should have redirects from '-'. I don't know about ö and ø. *I* certainly find redirects from one to the other convenient since I've only got one on my keyboard but, then again, I can also make use of redirects (or disambiguation pages) from plain 'o'.

There's a lot of scope here for nuances and additions. Now I think the best thing for me to do is to get some experience tackling problems in the wild to get a better feel for the lay of the land and not get bogged down in theory. I'll keep you posted. Haukur 00:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I did some Finnish, Serbian and French names. That all seemed to go fine - and it's especially rewarding when something already links to the redirect as it did in the cases of Andre Coindre, Etienne Balsan and Etienne Balazs. These I found with some manual checking - I should have the bot check for this automatically and make notes.

I had no luck with Vietnamese names, will need to look into that. Haukur 00:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I've created hundreds of redirects now. I've been ironing out some bugs and tightening up my code - it's still not quite ready to run on its own. Apart from the Vietnamese names I haven't found any really tricky areas. The bot now logs its successes in creating redirects that have incoming links - as in the satisfying case of Agnes Szavay. Haukur 22:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

ω-consistent theory

Hi Gene,

so actually there are two issues that were sort of conflated in the {{lowercase}} template at omega-consistent theory. The first is that, of course, ideally the name should start with the Greek letter, not with its Latinization, but unfortunately that would be rendered Ω-consistent theory, which would be wrong. In that sense, while what's wrong with the title is not the capitalization per se, but rather the fact that it's Latin rather than Greek, the reason that it's wrong is still the capitalization issue.

The other issue is that there's a sort of convention (at least among LaTeX users, and to some extent on Usenet) that uppercase/lowercase Greek letters are represented by uppercasing or lowercasing their Latinizations. This one is less important, but still sort of relevant, because we can't do that either, and for the same reason. --Trovatore 01:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, right. There's nothing wrong with the article's title.

It was also wrong on a zillion redirect pages. The difference there, is that it doesn't belong on redirect pages (because people don't normally see them anyway), and on top of that, it doesn't do anything to what you actually see on redirect pages, and it doesn't affect what gets redirected through those redirect pages. Gene Nygaard 01:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that there's nothing wrong with the article's title. Using the Latinization is wrong; only the Greek letter is correct. You're right about what the user sees, of course. This is more for tracking purposes; when the restriction is lifted, we should have a way to find these articles and move them to their correct titles. --Trovatore 01:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

No, using the name of the character is not incorrect, but the template being there clearly is. And it is not a foregone conclusion that it should be moved if we didn't have initial capitalizaiton on. Guess I'd better start my own tracking list. Gene Nygaard 01:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Adminship

The recent vandalism to North Dakota articles has shown that solutions can be slow without quick responses from admins. Given your extensive contributions to the wiki, I believe that you are presently the strongest candidate from among the North Dakota contributors for adminship. If you were to recieve a nomination, would you accept it? --AlexWCovington (talk) 19:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Very well, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. --AlexWCovington (talk) 07:42, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Indexing

Hello: Under P. A. Ó Síocháin categories you "fix indexing" by removing the "fada" from the last "a" although throughout the article the name is written "á" fada. Why this, as they now no longer match ? Greetings Osioni 21:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Because we don't alphabetize things by Unicode number. See WP:CAT and read about those sort keys and how they work. In this case, somebody had already fixed the O, but apparently was under some misapprehension that only the first letter is used in sorting. I fixed both the i and the a. Gene Nygaard 02:50, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

If you are going to continue doing this, please index ö as oe, ü as ue, ä as ae, and (e.g. in variants of your name) å as aa. It is illiterate and wrong to just drop the accents instead of replacing them by the corresponding dipthong. —David Eppstein 16:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Quite the contrary; that is the recommendation of Wikipedia:Categorization, might be a subpage linked on that page But I think its on the main page, so take it up there if you want to. I don't particularly care one way or the other; I've done it both ways. But if I recall correctly and it hasn't changed, that is what our guidelines call for: ö as o, ü as u, ä as a (note that this in particular and some of the others depend on language, and while "ae" may be proper for German words, the same isn't true for all other languages, and that is one reason for the guidelines being as they are). But the ligatures æ to ae and œ to oe per the guidelines. Gene Nygaard 16:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

And, along the same lines, in the "König" which you have sorted as "Koenig", the ö is probably a substitute for ő, named after Julius König actually Julius Kőnig (or the Hungarian version of his first name that shows up in the article name, Gyula). I don't think ő is normally transliterated as "oe". But I really don't think we should have to which language a word is from, plus how each particular language treats each letter, to do our sorting, so the guideline method is growing on me. Gene Nygaard 17:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The person's name is Kőnig but the theorem is usually called König's; I think this is explicitly mentioned in the article somewhere. And I think it's not Julius but his son Dénes. —David Eppstein 17:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The category page guidelines aren't written all that clearly, especially in the Oetzi and Aaberg examples. I read it as saying that the Oe and Aa would be okay but they actually recommend just o and a. In practice, I don't change from one form to the other if it is already indexed one way, and when it hasn't been stripped of the diacritics if an "ae" or "ue" or whatever spellig is mentioned in the intro, especially for people who may have lived or attended school for at least a while in an English speaking country, then I will probably use the ae, oe, ue forms, at least for German, and aa in Norwegian or Danish (less likely in Swedish). Some names like Müller seem more often written out in English as, and thus more sensibly indexed as, Mueller. But for less common names, where I don't know of common usage in English even if it exists, I most often stick with the guideline recommendation. Maybe the same for some common nouns too, but if they are often written in English with an e then the article should probably have the English spelling as its name. Gene Nygaard 17:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: "I read it as saying that the Oe and Aa would be okay but they actually recommend just o and a. In practice, I don't change from one form to the other if it is already indexed one way": this agrees with my more careful reading of the guidelines. —David Eppstein 18:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Gonzalo

Why do you revert that? He's knows as Gonzalo and therefor should be sorted like that. SportsAddicted | discuss 22:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Because that isn't the standard, nor an established fact, for just a couple of reasons. Gene Nygaard 02:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

That isn't the standard? Then give me those reasons. He's known under the name Gonzalo and should be sorted that way as well. Would you sort Ronaldinho under Gaucho, or even under Assis Moreira as well? I don't think so. SportsAddicted | discuss 23:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

User page

Love your user page, Gene. ;^> DavidCBryant 14:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

misssorted

You have missorted some Tongan names as ʻAhoʻeitu, ʻIlaheva, etc. The ʻ is not a diacritical mark but a real letter which should be sorted on itself at the end of the alfabet. --Tauʻolunga 02:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it isn't. And even if it were, if it is not a Latin alphabet letter, it doesn't belong in an article's name.

There is no such rule. We sort according to the English alphabet. Period. See, e.g., Wikipedia:Categorization and several other guidelines as well. Gene Nygaard 02:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

If Americans do not know about a particular letter, it does not mean that the rest of the world therefore also does not know. Many other languages have special marks which are a fundamental property of the language. Your quoted categorization page mentions already several cases (for example ae of nordic languages, German umlaut, etc.). They have different rules for sorting, some more some less well established. Although in this wikipedia English will be the first choice, as soon as it gets deficient, the local language rules will have to take over. I do not find this prohibited in the rules. So therefore do not promulgate your own point of view. I am sure that all editors in a particular language will do their best, where possible to simplify sorting in accordance to English. And where not, to find the next best solution. Outsiders who do not know that language should keep their fingers off. And by the way, if you are so picky, then why do you not attack, for example, ¿Quién Me Iba a Decir?? --Tauʻolunga 20:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

You can stop the gratuitous America bashing any time. It has nothing to do with Americans, nor with knowing this thing which is not a letter, nor with anybody other languages's indexing rules. This is the English Wikipedia, with categories quite naturally and appropriately sorted according to English indexing rules, so that people who actually know the English language can find things. That's not so difficult to understand, is it? You said it: "Outsiders who do not know that language should keep their fingers off." So don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Furthermore, you have not cited any authority to support what you suggested as a sorting rule, not only none for English-language sorting but none for any other language either.

Why didn't you fix the indexing of that particular example you found? I have fixed many of them like that in the past. I'm not going to find them all, ever. I'll just fix the ones I do find; I'm busy enough with that. Most of the articles whose names start with ¿ have already been properly sorted by somebody else. Did you stumble one that wasn't on the first try, or did you have to go back and look at several different ones to find one that was missorted? If you decide not to leave, I'd appreciate it if you put your new-found knowledge to work, and go fix the indexing of ¿Quién Me Iba a Decir?. Gene Nygaard 20:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not going to change '¿Quién Me Iba a Decir?', because I know that ¿ is a legal Spanish sign, and I do not know much more Spanish beyond that to be an authority about their rules. This name, by the way, was the first example I found on your own talk page. As you are the one who changed the entries, the burden of the proof is on you, not on me. As you apparently cannot quote an official guideline about this, I have to assume there is none. But I do have: concerning the alfabetisation of the Tongan language: Tongan dictionary, C.M. Churchward, Tonga 1959 and Tongan grammar, ditto. Lastly, just by looking at your talkpage, I cannot escape the feeling that I am by far not the only one who is frustrated by your god-like attitude. Still I accept your suggestions, "people who actually know the English language can find things", and shall take appropriate measures. --Tauʻolunga 21:43, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I already showed you our guidelines, or at least some of them. You can also see places like WP:MOS-JP. Even if you could show a different sorting order in the Tongan language, it is totally irrelevant. We are dealing with English language sorting.

Now, let's see how much you really know. Tell us,

1. If that ʻ in ʻAhoʻeitu and ʻIlaheva is the first letter of those names as you claim, then just why in the hell did you capitalize the second letter? Note that you cannot not fall back on initial capitalization being turned on in the English Wikipedia as an excuse in this case.
2. What's this nonsense about me changing them, when the links to one of the names copied and pasted from your own entry is a redlink? Is this something just squirreled away, hidden from view because the author and other editors of these pages are too ignorant to create the appropriate redirects?
3. How would the following be sorted, if they were article names and put into a category without any sort key?
4. How do you think they should be sorted? Gene Nygaard 22:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

῾abe

‛abe

ʻabe

′abe

'abe

‛abe

`abe

‘abe

ʻabe

’abe

ʻabe

Đabe

Ðabe

Babe

babe

Ẩabc

ẩabc

Zabe

zabe

Ẽabe

Þabe

þabe

Ōabe

ōabe

P.S. Somebody who has difficulty reading a long ess[3] ought not be putting himself forth as an expert in letters. There was no "stupid spellings error"; the problem was all in the reader. Gene Nygaard 01:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

First answers on your questions, even though you do not earn it. (Questions? they rather read as insults!) 1 The systematic writing of the ʻ (fakauʻa) in the Tongan language was introduced in 1943. Before that time it was barely done. By consequence a name like ʻAhoʻeitu was formerly written as Ahoeitu only. It is a missconvention, but not one likely to disappear soon, that the initial capital has remained in place even though it is now the second letter. Indeed the feature of automatic capitalisation in Wikipedia utterly fails in this case, which is always something to give careful attention which names like these. 2 If you are unable to copy a word properly, than that is your stupidity, not mine. If you had looked better, you would have seen that extensive use of pipe links is made with Tongan names, like ʻIlahavea in order to display them properly to a wide range of users, yet to have them entered with an apostrophe (') instead of a ʻ (fakauʻa), so that they can easily be found by non-Tongan readers. 3,4 (assuming that in your infinite wisdom you meant them to be the same). I am not going to answer this question for Nordic and Easteuropean characters, that is to be left to speakers from those countries. All characters will be converted to uppercase first. Then concerning the fakauʻa the official Tongan dictionary is very clear: ATA > BATA > ZATA > ʻATA. It may be noticed that in Sāmoan for example it would be ATA > ʻATA > BATA > ZATA. I do not see that as a problem. Different European languages have also different ideas about proper sorting. A note can be made in special cases as I did on Tongan pages but you in your arrogance took away. 5 There is still a stupid spellings error in Konstantin's name. Your suggestion that it should be the ringel-ess is very well possible (I even did not think about that), but no one knows, and everybody writes the alternative with 'f'. As you could have found out by following the links, like (http://www.matangitonga.to/article/tonganews/royalty/tupoutoa_lavaka270906.shtml) before yelling.

This is the last time I shall talk to you. You are a stupid, arrogant creature, who thinks that he knows everything best and does not care a bit about the opinion of others. In your world there are only 2 ways doing things: your way and the wrong way. First yelling and then still to have a big mouth. I am sick of that type of people. In fact I am going to suggest that you will be banned from contributing to Wikipedia forever, and looking over this page only, I am sure that there are people who would eagerly agree to it. Do not bother to answer me. I know you have the faster internet connection, able to make 10 changes in the time I can do one, so you always can outbully me, in the same way in former times the big powers sent their envoys to the Southseas on board of warships, so to convince the poor kings of the islands that they better signed the treaties of friendship without comments. --Tauʻolunga 22:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Tongan Wikipedia can sort by Tongan sorting rules (but since the same fools who contribute to Tonga-related articles here contribute there as well, they often do not), and the Samoan Wikipedia (if there is one) can sort by Samoan sorting rules. But the English Wikipedia sorts by English rules. We do, of course, have many words and especially names that originally came from some other language. It wouldn't make sense to have the same letter sorted in a whole bunch of different places. The Norwegians sort Å after Ö, but the Swedes sort Å before Ö. Norwegian sorting typically sorts "Nygaard" exactly the same as "Nygård", too. The Germans sort Ö before P, but the Swedes sort it after Z. In English, we first convert them to English letters. As Wikipedia:Categorization points out, there are sometimes two different ways to do this, some letters that might be changed to two letters instead of one. It is acceptable in English sorting to sort Ötzi as [[Category:Anthropology|Oetzi the Iceman]], but what our Wikipedia guidelines recommend, and what is actually used in this case, is [[Category:Anthropology|Otzi the Iceman]]. It is acceptable to sort Lasse Åberg as [[Category:Swedish film directors|Aaberg, Lasse]], and though WP:CAT recommends [[Category:Swedish film directors|Aberg, Lasse]] instead, and the latter is what is currently used. But from some languages other than German, it is never acceptable to sort Ö as Oe; that's the extent to which our sorting depends on languages of origin, this determination whether or not a two-letter equivalent is acceptable. In any case, it boils down to our categories being sorted in the initial letter by the uppercase A-Z, plus in some cases the numbers 0-9 which show up before the letters, plus a conventional work-around use of a space or asterisk to get some articles to sort at the top of the list above everything else.

Several other points.

1. You said "I am not going to answer this question for Nordic and Easteuropean characters, that is to be left to speakers from those countries." But that has no relevance to our sorting. Just look at what User:Haukurth is doing to automate the process of fixing missing redirects, discussed elsewhere on this page.

1. It's no skin off my ass if you choose to waste your efforts and keep things hidden away because you don't have enough sense to make a redirect from ʻIlaheva. Realistically, nobody is ever going to enter that into the "Go" box anyway, and if you don't mind the extra effort of making piped links as well as the proper sort keys, you could just skip the piping and just display the article name. Not having one from Ilaheva would be a more serious problem, but once again, primarily a problem for those who would like to make this information available, not for those of us who don't really care if it remains hidden.

1. All characters will be converted to uppercase first.???? Nonsense. Our category sorting is case sensitive, even if we generally wish it weren't. You are badly mistaken in your understanding of how that works. They are not converted to all uppercase. Where's you get the silly notion that they are? Have you looked carefully at any categories? If you sort a name, for example, starting with "du Pont, ... " rather than the proper sort key "Du Pont, ...", it will appear after Z. But we usually (perhaps always for Wikipedia purposes) don't want this sorting to be case sensitive. And "EZ" in a sort key will appear before "Earl". If the default article name is used and it starts with a letter, that letter will be uppercase. But even in those cases, you could change it to sort with the lowercase letters by adding a sort key.

1. Different European languages have also different ideas about proper sorting. One of those languages is English, of course. And it is the English language ideas about sorting that are the only ones relevant here. ""When a diacritic is used in a page name, categories are used with a category sort key based on the variant without diacritic, regardless of alphabetization rules in the originating language, example:" Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics).

1. Re Tonga: now you have a king who imagines himself to be a British dandy, so that shouldn't be a problem any more, is it? And you obviously don't need any outside warships to reduce the country to rubble, as last months events show. Gene Nygaard 02:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hank Bergman

How exactly is Bergman notable? Sure sources were provided, but couldn't you by that logic put your son the local high school football star in wikipedia? He would get about as much press if not more than Bergman. Are the standards for Wikipedia so low that this gets in?--Matt1978 22:00, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The standards for Wikipedia are so low that every episode of every television series in the world gets its own article, and every fictional manga and anime character gets its own article. Let's treat real people on a par with them. And especially, let's not be using prod on a well referenced, non-stub article. Argue the notability if you like, but do it through the proper AfD channels.

There was already an objection on the talk page, and most high school football stars rarely get covered in articles relating to them individually, unless it is in a small-town weekly—not the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, and Soldier of Fortune. Gene Nygaard 22:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Hoysaleswara temple

Hi. Can you kindly advice me what the exact reason for the tag is. I can take care of the spllings, though I dont understand the words "tone", "style" et. Please cite examples.Dineshkannambadi 04:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a template. It won't necessarily be all of them every time. This is actually a pretty good article, much better than most of them to which I have added that tag, and the main thing was the "kms" and I was just tired of wading through the text and changing so many articles to the proper "km". I'll take the tag off and let you track down the kms and change them. Gene Nygaard 04:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply-->Thanks. I have also played down the adjectives, though they came with citations.Dineshkannambadi 04:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks on Horses in warfare fix

Thanks for your fixes on the Horses in warfare page, I didn't (still don't) know how to do that thing where you correct an article title AND move all the history from the old one with it. I appreciate your doing that--when the article was first created it was a hastily-created sandbox and the title never was fixed. As for the "what is a ton?" question, I think the source the figures came from was a USA source (see the footnote "Russian Draft" that's where it all was from), so I assume it is USA tons. If you want to fix that too, go for it! I really do not have the time or energy to look up the equivalencies and do the various metric conversions (others did the ones that are there...a hand is 4 U.S. inches, that's all I can provide) so appreciate those who seem to be good at it. Montanabw 07:22, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

'Fix missorting'

Hi. I see you have been fixing our opera categories. I wonder if you can tell me how this works? I wasn't aware of any missorting if the first letter was not accented. Thanks. - Kleinzach 20:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

All the letters (and punctuation, for that matter) get sorted. La needs to come before Lo. And Péron needs to be before Powell. Without a sort key, all characters of whatever nature are sorted in the unicode number order. We often use either a space or a star to get the articles that are the main subject of a category at the top of the list, before any numbers or letters, for example. Here are a few of the characters with the decimal value of the Unicode numbers by which they are sorted:

0030 <space>

0039 '

0042 *

0050 2

0055 7

0063 ?

0065 A

0090 Z

0096 `

0097 a

0122 z

0160 <nonbreaking space>

0163 £

0197 Å

0201 É

0208 Ð

0209 Ñ

0233 é

0258 Ă

0272 Đ

0699 ʻ

0916 Δ

7810 Ẃ

8216 ‛

8242 ′

8710 ∆

See Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) for more about the sort keys. From the latter: "When a diacritic is used in a page name, categories are used with a category sort key based on the variant without diacritic, regardless of alphabetization rules in the originating language, example:" [poor example for your purposes, only initial letter has diacritic]. Gene Nygaard 21:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Von Neumann categorization

That's right, he should be categorized as Von Neumann (not Neumann, von), since when speaking about him using only his Anglocized surname he was always referred to as "von Neumann"/"Dr. von Neumann" and not "Neumann"/"Dr. Neumann". Robert K S 14:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. And also, things named after him, such as Von Neumann conjecture and many more. Still a fairly good possibility that someone will change it again, but hope you will help me watch it and revert it if you catch it first or back me up if that happens. Gene Nygaard 14:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Cut and paste move Bourdon

Please see my reply underneath your comment. — SomeHuman 13 Dec2006 00:32 (UTC)

Categorizing Arabic

A few times now I've seen you treat Arabic like English, and it's just plain wrong. You haven't listened to others on this subject, and I'm not sure why. Arabs don't have last names, the way we do. Traditionally Arabs and Persians just have one name, and the name has prefixes and suffices. To try and re-arrange the name for alphabetizing is silly, because the Western standards of surnames doesn't apply. Just write in the names with any diacritics removed, and that's all you need to do. Cuñado - Talk 01:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense. What in particular do you have in mind? Gene Nygaard 01:13, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Talk:‘Abd ar-Razzaq, and Mulla Husayn. You're not the only one who makes this mistake, and since you seem to be running around categorizing things, I want to make sure you do things the right way. Cuñado - Talk 07:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

We don't index by titles. You are the one who is mistaken. Gene Nygaard 07:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

And in neither case, it has nothgin to do with Arabs; Abd ar-Razzaq, for example, has both patronymic surnames and topynymic surnames listed in the article itself. Gene Nygaard 13:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Western clergy)

You recently reverted my changes to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Western clergy) stating that they were 'non-consensus'. This seems to go against the statement "Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes." at the end of the infobox at the top of the page.

Agreed there was no specific consensus, but I did not regard it as a major change. Also, as two weeks had gone by without challenge, I thought that others were in general agreement to my clarifications.

I did a fair amount of research across Wikipedia pages to try and find the definitive answer to whether church article titles should include a dot after St or not. There has been much discussion in the past, which has usually tailed off to no conclusion. (I collated the references in the talk page of a church article somewhere, recently. Could find it tomorrow.)

I examined these discussions, and then examined the Index Search to see how many articles started 'St.' against those that started 'St' (short of actually counting them, as there are many hundreds!) It is clear that the majority omit the dot. The trend is also to move away from using the dot – and this is highlighted by the fact that BOTH examples cited in the guideline 'break the rule'. In both cases, the guideline uses a redirect rather than the actual article title, which seems wrong to me (hence my corrections). In St Paul's case, the article was moved from 'St. Paul's' years ago, while St Mary's was moved earlier this year.

The new paragraph was added to match a similar suggestion relating to 'Saint' - suggesting that the title for a saint should be 'Saint X', but that the 'St. X' form should also be created as a redirect.

When does a correction become a 'major change'? And how can I get a consensus reached? I am expecting to edit many articles relating to English churches (not until next year though), and the article names are an inconsistent mess at present.

EdJogg 02:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

The biggest problem is that "St." vs. "St" is a national varieties of English issue. Gene Nygaard 04:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of List of cocktails

Hello Gene. Thanks for your work on cleaning up the List of cocktails article. Unfortunately, half of the changes you made actually created problems with that page. The other half are very useful changes. I understand the reason behind most of the changes you made, and in most articles they would make sense; however, that list is rather dynamic (lots of frequent editing), and some things that work great in regular articles do not work so well there.

• All drink ingredients except the primary liquor of the section (in Cocktails with beer, the beer would be the primary liquor) that are linkable should be linked, not just the first one that is encountered in the article or section. This is very important because the items on the list are frequently edited. List items move around, are edited for content, etc. It is far less of a maintenance nightmare to just have every ingredient linked, even though it creates redundant links. Furthermore, this is not an article that people sit down and read straight through. People will jump as quickly as possible to the drink in which they are interested, and look for clarification right there, not several items higher up the list for the hyper link. Also, if the ingredient is changed (from Triple sec to Contreau for example), and if it was the only Triple sec that was linked, then that entire section no longer contains a Triple sec link. The primary liquor is the exception. Since it can be assumed that it will appear in the description of every drink in the section, it is pointless to link to it. That is explained in the in-line comments when you edit the section.
• The conversion of fractions (like 7/8 to ⅞) is pretty, but on several browsers I test with, it results in a non-displayable character (½ and ⅓ seem more likely to display, but not on every browser). Also, the drinks are frequently in fifths, and I do not think it is good to mix 2/5 and ⅔ styles together in the same article. The true fractions are also very tiny and difficult to read on high resolution monitors. Unless there is a compelling reason (i.e., Wiki policy or improved readability via screenreaders for the blind), I would prefer to keep fractions written out in the clunkier, but more readable long from (2/3).
• The change from [[Honey|honey]] to [[honey]] is very much appreciated. I was attempting to avoid redirects, without realizing that Wikipedia does the conversion automatically in most cases without requiring a redirect. I just have not had the time to go through and change them back around the other way again.
• Why do you change [[WKD Original Vodka|WKD Original Vodka Blue]] to [[WKD Original Vodka]] Blue. Without having the Blue included in the link, it makes it confusing. To what does the Blue refer? Additionally, Blue is part of the full name of WKD Original Vodka Blue, and it is mentioned in the article. My preference is to link the full name of whatever the ingredient is, unless there is a compelling reason not to. I think it makes the readability and comprehension much easier.
• What about [[Spice|spices]] to [[spice]]s? I have noticed many editors use that style. Is it to save space (6 characters in this case), or is there some other reason? I have no opinion on which way is preferable in this case.

Since you and I have no history editing together, and since you are probably a much more experienced editor than I am (thus pretty happy to keep doing things the way you are used to doing them), and since we cannot see each other's facial expressions or hear tones of voice, there is a distinct possibility that you might take my comments the wrong way. Please do not. First, nothing is meant as an attack or a criticism. I am sure that in most cases, every edit you made is a good choice. I have just been spending a lot of time editing that list, and it to see several "standards" that I worked very hard to establish within that list suddenly be changed took me a little by surprise. I truly wish to understand your reasons. There may be policies or matters of style of which I am unaware (it has happened several times already) that clearly indicate my preferences are the wrong way to go, and yours are right. I'm willing to adapt, but I need to understand why it is the best way before I feel comfortable the changes. On the other hand, I realize that you just spent a lot of work doing that cleanup, and you don't want your changes to have been wasted time any more than I want mine to have been. So, please let us calmly discuss this before making any more changes and come to an understanding about how the list should be formatted in the future. Thanks for your assistance and for your considered response. :-) --Willscrlt 23:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

1. There is no reason to link common, generic types of liquor such as "rum" and "vodka" and "beer" outside the intro. Specific brands, yes, and your point about doing it for each cocktail is at least debatable. Not general types. Too much linking makes it hard to notice relevant ones. Too much linking makes it harder to read, in addition to gobbling up a lot of spoace, especially in the form these links were made.
2. With all the nonsense we get in articles with diacritics on letters stacked a mile high in Vietnamese names and the like, I'll never concede any problem is using fractions.
3. For any link such as [[spice]]s or [[spice]]d where the article name forms part of the word, they can be linked that way and the following letters are part of the link. It can be more than one letter, too. Another thing I didn't bother changing, but which can help make the edit page a little easier to follow, is a little trick with parenthetical disambiguation in an articles name. You can make a link to [[lime (fruit)|]] and the vertical bar alone makes the parenthetical part not appear in lime. Gene Nygaard 23:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the informative and insightful responses.

1. I'll agree with you on that. Since the generics are listed at the top of the page, and since they are linked within each section (see also), there is no need within the individual items. I also agree that specific brands should be linked, but I think that specific brands are too-often listed when any brand of Irish Creme, for instance, could be substituted.
2. I think we will have to agree to disagree on the fractions. Perhaps the solution would be to do away with fractions all together and use "parts" or "portions" or whatever they decide to do over in the related Wikibooks bartending section. Once they come to consensus, I will probably convert our list to match theirs which will do away with fractions anyway.
3. Thanks for the info on the [[spice]]s trick. As to the pipe trick, I am aware of it, and I have been attempting to rename several of the articles so that the pipe trick can be used consistently. It is one of the stated goals for the Project. Of course, I did not know of the pipe trick when I started editing the List of cocktails, but I do use it regularly now.

You did not answer one question I remain curious about: why do you change [[WKD Original Vodka|WKD Original Vodka Blue]] to [[WKD Original Vodka]] Blue? If Blue were an adjective describing the vodka, I could see not linking it, but the Blue is part of the name. There is no separate page for each flavor of WKD, so it makes sense to me to link the entire title to the main article. --Willscrlt 19:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Poor categorised non-ascii Scandinavians

Hi Gene: you've recently visited various articles about persons with Scandinavian non-ascii names, like Janne Hänninen and Edel Therese Høiseth, and carried out modifications that you refer to as "fix missorting" and "fix sorting". These "fixes" turn out to be to de-scandinavise their names inside "Category:", turning poor Hänninen into "Hanninen" and brave unfortunate Høiseth into "Hoiseth". Out of gentle curiosity: (a) Does it make any difference to wikipedia's sorting, whether it says "Category:Finnish speed skaters|Hänninen, Janne" or "Category:Finnish speed skaters|Hanninen, Janne"? (b) In case the answer to (a) is "no, not really", which I anticipate, why do you bother to make the changes (and referring to these as "fixes" of "missorting" operations)? There might be consequences when creating an alphabetised list of say Norwegian speedskaters whose names start with "H", and now Høiseth will be bedfellow with all the Ho's (which is wrong), but perhaps that is the point of your operation? Of course you are free to ask (c) why do I bother, to which the answer is that a name is a name and it feels disrespectful to asciify persons into silly non-existent names – even when it happens in the deep wiki-cellars of administrative categorisation work. Slavatrudu 23:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

a)Yes, certainly.

1) In most cases, they have in fact been misplaced; that's how I notice them, unless it is just a random article that I deal with. In the case of Janne Hänninen, for example, it would be out of place by several hundred entries in Category:Living people; several pages of 200 entries each in the category. In most cases the difference isn't that great, but it still might keep someone from finding it, especially if a page boundary in the category listing intervenes, and someone quits looking when it isn't found where it should be.

2) It is, of course, even more egregious when it is the initial letter. Many categories, for example, have a 26 letter uppercase A-Z navigation tool at the top, sometimes preceded by the digits 0-9. Never any of the thousand or so other letters used in Wikipedia, however. That's all there should be; those are the 26 letters we use for sorting things in English.

3) This also should be done automatically, all the time. There is no reason to check categories to see if it is actually out of order in the currently existing entries in that category. Even if it isn't now, it might be when something else is added to the category—or it might become misplaced when some other article is fixed so that it is no longer missorted with the wrong sort keys.

b) No, Hoiseth being a bedfellow of the other Ho's is not wrong. This is English Wikipedia, following English sorting rules for many good reasons. There is, for example, no reason why anyone using the English Wikipedia should have to know the sorting rules of 500 or so different languages just to determine how some article is likely to be indexed in a category. Nor to understand exactly which languages sorting rules are going to be applied to a certain article.

c) You do know that these indexing sort keys work completely differently from the piping used in wikilinks, don't you? See Wikipedia:Categorization. The sort keys do not change anything in what is displayed.

d) It doesn't matter if it is Category:Finnish speed skaters or whatever; the proper, reasonable rule is "When a diacritic is used in a page name, categories are used with a category sort key based on the variant without diacritic, regardless of alphabetization rules in the originating language". Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) Note that there is never a guarantee that the entries in any category are only going to include words derived from a specific language. For one thing, many of them are going to include English words in the article names. But there are also many football players from one country who go to another country to play, many people who move from any one country to another, and so forth.

e) If you are so interested in the Nordic languages in general, why don't you put your time to good use, and go fix it so that no:Ørsta sorts before no:Ålesund in no:Kategori:Kommuner i Møre og Romsdal, so the Norwegians don't look like they are a bunch of Swedes in disguise? Norwegians don't sort in that order; Swedes do; neither of those languag-specific sorting rules is of no concern whatsoever to English Wikipedia, however, because they should be sorted here as Oresta and Alesund (optionally Aalesund, either is acceptable as a general rule and one might be preferred over the other for various reasons).

f) Or go fix no:Værøy so it sorts before no:Vågan in no:Kategori:Kommuner i Nordland, as well as the subcategories of the same names. At least that is currently achievable through a workaround, since it doesn't involve the initial letter.

g) Or go fix no:Truls Haakonsen so that it sorts after no:Halvard Hølleland in no:Kategori:Nordmenn.

If I am looking at something indexed in Norwegian, it is no surprise to find my name listed after Nygren. But that is never proper when it is indexed in English. Gene Nygaard 01:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

And, by the way, it is disrespectful of you not to recognize the simple fact that it is never "incorrect" to use the English alphabet when writing in English. It would not be incorrect for us to use the spellings such as "Janne Hanninen" in the articles themselves; we at Wikipedia have chosen to allow the use of the diacritics, but that does not in any way mean it is "wrong" to do otherwise; in fact, most English language newspapers and magazines quite legitimately and properly do just that.

A necessary consequence of that, of course, is that there should always be proper redirects from the English language spellings. There is no reason to go to all the trouble of creating these articles, just to leave them hidden away, unreachable through the "Go" box and with redlinks scattered throughout Wikipedia, even though the article actually exists. Are you careful about creating such redirects? Or do your misguided notions of "correctness" make you oblivious to the need to do so? Gene Nygaard 01:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Janne Hanninen, Edel Therese Hoiseth—why are these red? Gene Nygaard 02:00, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

...because there are no persons and hence should not be any encyclopaedic articles with these names? Slavatrudu 23:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course there are; we already have articles on them. We just need to make sure that people who hear about them somewhere else can find those articles.

I'm glad to see you figured that out, took the hint, and created the redirects. Thanks. Gene Nygaard 13:44, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Studio 58

Please stop changing Vice Principal and Artistic Director to lower capitals. They are both title positions, and in the English language, we capitalize those just like we would the President of the United States. You can view more Wikipedia:Naming conventions for further details regarding related policies. Mkdw^talk 19:44, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

No, we do not capitalize them.

No, naming conventions has nothing to do with it. That deals with the names of articles in Wikipedia, not the test within them.

Or rather, we do when followed by a name. Not in these examples.

What does deal with it in our guidelines is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Titles. I'm fixing Antony Holland again. Gene Nygaard 05:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:United Methodist bishops by U.S. State

Hi, I see that at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 December 12#Category:United_Methodist_bishops_by_U.S._State you recommended keeping the area categories, and deleting the state categories. I thought that it might be useful to point out that this would mean keeping 32 categories for 55 artcles, an average of less than 2 articles per category. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 10:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

It beats the current situation, doesn't it? Not only in number of categories, but also in the amount of interweaving among them. Gene Nygaard 13:39, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if you keep live CFD discusions on your watchlist, so I hope you'll forgive me for drawing the attention of all participants in the CFD to some counting I did on how many bishop-by-area categories we would end up with if all the possible categories were fully populated. My estimate (see my comment marked "some counting" is between 100 and 200 categories for 569 bishops, which seems to me to be a navigation nightmare. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 14:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

St. Louis Cardinals article

Hey, thanks for fixing that ref I put in. I didn't notice how the rest of the article was gone, so I guess I have to preview my edits more! 'J Klein ^{my talk my contributions} 02:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Took me a while to figure it out, too. Was looking back for vandalism, but couldn't find any. Gene Nygaard 02:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Misfixed missorting

Even if you think all diacritics must be removed from the English Wikipedia, it's still incorrect to sort Hämeenlinna as "Hamenlinna" with only one e. Please try to be more careful if you claim to "fix missorting". JIP | Talk 15:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. If it had already been there, I wouldn't have made that typo. And I got it a whole lot closer than it was, in fact in the correct spot in the one category as it currently exists, unlike before I fixed them (there were 4 between where it was and where it should have been)—you do know, don't you, that no matter how I spell it in the sort key, it doesn't change what is displayed. But it has nothing to do, of course, with removing all diacritics from Wikipedia. That article even has a proper redirect from the legitimate English alphabet spelling, unlike a lot of the other articles people squirrel away and hide, without creating those redirects.

But you don't get any thanks for missorting it again. Now it there were five articles between where it should have been and where it was in the category you added. Grow up. Gene Nygaard 15:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

diacritic marks in category index

Hello Gene Nygaard, I just a had question about one of your recent edits where you removed diacritic marks for the category and you put a reason of "fix indexing" [4]. What exactly do you mean by this? I do understand that it effects the sorting of the list in the category page, but does this have an impact on any other index? Thanks // Laughing Man 15:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, now I know what policy is calling for this -- WP:CATEGORY#Category_sorting. There are just so many articles that do not use the convention, perhaps a bot should be updating these categories if this is in fact the policy for categories. // Laughing Man 15:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I was discussing this with User:SportsAddicted and he also mentioned your interest in this issue, so I wanted to run by two ideas that might be worth pursuing.

• I'm not too familiar if a bot would be able to do this easily, but I guess I assumed there were bots to create standard alphabet redirects to articles that use diacritics in the titles and that the same ones can perhaps do the same for the categories.

• I think the best solution would be if someone can just fix the "category sorting" code in MediaWiki to support the characters, just so we can use proper diacritic marks everywhere, including categories.

Let me know what you think. // Laughing Man 16:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, as you figured out, the indexing is so that the categories sort correctly. The categories are much better sorted as a general rule than the existence of redirects from the English alphabet spellings.

Note that it isn't just letters with diacritics that get sorted differently. The sorting is strictly by Unicode number of the characters. The lowercase letters index separately from the Uppercase letters. All punctuation is indexed too, including spaces. We take advantage of that by using either a space or an * (sometimes an !) to get the main article(s) for a category to sort at the top, before the numbers and the uppercase English letters and the lowercase English letters. Other things come in various bunches; about the only consistence is that any particular uppercase letter will precede its lowercase version, but by how much and how many characters are in between varies considerably.

The biggest problem with an automated system is that we don't always index them according to the article's name. We generally index people categories by their family name first. But a few people categories are first-name indexed. If an article contains the name of the category and the like, we often drop that name, such as indexing Category:Museums in Canada with the sort key [[Category:Museums by country|Canada]].

Another big problems with an automated system would come mostly with the letters that are sometimes transliterated as two letters in the English alphabet. Sometimes this is a language-dependent phenomenon; coming from one language, it might often go to two letters, but from another language, only to one letter. That language-dependency would be impossible to deal with automatically, and if we want to deal with things reasonably, there needs to be some way to specify which is to be used in a particular case.

An automatic sort key would ideally deal with many other things we actually have not dealt with on Wikipedia in any coherent manner. Should it always be case-insensitive, for instance? What do we do with apostrophes, hyphens, and whatever in the names? So we index "St." as if it were spelled out "Saint"? What about spaced and unspaced versions of a persons last name, "du Pont" or "duPont" for example, should they sort differently? There are lots of other little complications as well.

Discussions of an automated system have been around for years; don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. Just fix them so they work now. Gene Nygaard 18:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Indexing

Any good reason for this? Sigo 16:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. We alphabetize by the 26 letters of the English alphabet, just standard English sorting for the English Wikipedia. No á, no ö, no Þ to be found among them; just look at the navigation tools we see on heavily populated categories such as Category:German writers, or the first-two-letters one at Category:Living people. Furthermore, we have a rudimentary sorting engine, going strictly by the Unicode numbers of all characters, including spaces and punctuation, so sort keys are necessary. See WP:CAT and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics), among other guidelines. Gene Nygaard 17:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't find this very convincing. If someone ignores that the usual transcription of the Icelandic [Þ] is [Th], how can they know that they have to look under [T] to find the name they're looking for? But I'm not really interested in sorting problems, so do as you want. Sigo 18:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Fred C. Blanck article

Thank you finding the information on the birth and death dates for Fred C. Blanck. I greatly appreciated it. Merry Christmas! Chris 13:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Merges

Thanx. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 15:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Response

This is to let you know that I've responded to your comments on my talk page and also provided information on the Departments of France talk page about the edits I made. If you have any further comments, I'd appreciate your making them there rather than here. Thanks.—DomBot ^talk ; Chidom ^talk, owner/operator. 23:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Arabic names

I saw you started indexing several new categories that contain people who are named following Arabic naming conventions. Could we please discuss this before you do any more work on this task?

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 09:59, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Please take a look at the final reply I got in the discussion at User Talk:Garzo#Arabic names. User:Garzo is fluent in both Syriac and Arabic. I trust his judgement on issues arising around Arabic names. I asked him if he thought it made sense to change the order in which articles should be presented. He agreed that it does not.

Arabic men don't inherit surnames the same way Europeans do. If an individual doesn't have the same "surname" as his father -- if we can't shoehorn them into the European surname system, it doesn't make any sense to sort their names on some portion we choose to treat as a surname.

We already made the mistake of sorting a bunch of Categories on supposed surnames. But I strongly feel we shouldn't make this same mistake on new categories -- if we know it is a mistake to do so.

Is there anything further I need to do to convince you it is a mistake?

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 10:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Leading question. And wrong.

Since you have admitted what the rules are, you need to start following them. Stop pushing some idiosyncratic agenda. And show some respect for the English language if you are going to edit the English Wikipedia.

English Wikipedia indexing is standard.

The notion that indexing would be dependent upon the age of a category in English Wikipedia is especially silly.

Tell me, for starters, how is it one bit different from indexing Johan Magnus Halvorsen as [[Category:Norwegian government ministers|Halvorsen, Johan Magnus]]? Then we can go from there. Gene Nygaard 13:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Have we had some kind of previous interaction that leads you act short-tempered with me? If so, could you remind me?

You write that I "-have admitted what the rules are?-" Could you be more specific about which rules you think those are?

I don't see how I am showing disrespect for the English language here.

I am not proposing "that indexing depend on the age of categories". May I suggest you stop referring to people's ideas as "silly"? What I meant was that it was too late to tackle doing the indexing right on categories like [[Category:Guantanamo Bay detainees]].

You ask how "it is one bit different from indexing Johan Magnus Halvorsen as [[Category:Norwegian government ministers|Halvorsen, Johan Magnus]]?" Simple. The article about Mr Halvorsen belongs to a set of articles for which it makes sense to change the order in which they are represented from a naive alphabetical order. Articles about most Europeans, or people with a European cultural background, fall into this set. So do articles about vessels in the Royal Navy -- [[Category:Royal Navy ship names]]. Then there are lots of articles about things where the appropriate sort order is simple alphabetic order, starting with the first character of the article name. [[Category:Armoured personnel carriers]] would be an example.

In my opinion, none of the articles in the categories devoted to Guantanamo captives fall into the set of article names that we should take special measures to change the sort order, because almost all the individual concerned have Arabic names -- and they don't have European style surnames.

Changing the order in which articles about individuals with Arabic names is of very questionable usefulness. Changing the order of representation for articles about Europeans makes sense, as it may make people who are related appear nearby. But Haji Nasrat Khan and his son Hiztullah Nasrat Yar. Shoehorning their names into the European surname system would, incorrectly, give you Khan, Nasrat and Yar, Hiztullah Nasrat. That would be entirely a waste of time. Can you offer a single justification for going to this trouble?

There was one wikipedian who took it upon himself to change the sort order of a bunch of Guantanamo captives. He or she didn't think individuals with names like "Mohammed Ali Salem Al Zarnuki"; "Musa Ali Said Al Said Al Umari"; "Khalid Saud Abd Al Rahman Al Bawardi"; "Saad Masir Mukbl Al Azani" should be sorted on the "Al " portion, just on the "Zarnuki", "Umari", "Bawardi" and "Azani" part of their names. He or she was both completely closed to civil discussion, or to reasoning. They threatened to revert the articles every time I set them back to their original state. Walk away is one of the options for dealing with unreasonable people. That is what I did. I let them have their way. Geo Swan 23:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Getting back to the Johan Magnus Halvorsen issue, what is it that you know that I don't? Do you know his father's name? Just an educated guess on my part, with really conservative estimates, but I'd bet that there's at least an 80% chance that his father's first name was Halvor. And that there's less than a 40% chance that his father was a Halvorsen (overlapping possibilities, of course, because his father might have been Halvor Halvorsen). His brothers with the same father would, of course also be Halvorsen's, but their sons might be Samuelson or Johnsen or whatever. The sisters of Johan Magnus were likely Halvorsdatters.

Only a few Norwegians had "family names" at that time that were passed down through the generations; for the ones that did, those family names were almost never in the patronymic -son form. It was only a generation or two or three later that some of these patronymic names became family names, while other people adopted some other name as a family name.

In any case, it isn't one damn bit different. He and his father most likely also had at least one toponymic name, too, and that was something that might change over time. Something like "Haugen", for example, or "from the south farm", Sørgaard. Whatever. Like Ivar Peterson Tveiten has both a patronymic surname (in the broader sense than a family name) and a toponymic surname, and might have shared neither or both or only one of them with his father.

In any case, there is nothing to be gained by endless speculation about what somebody's father's or mother's name might have been in order to determine how to index an article. All generalizations along those lines will be fraught with exceptions. It reeally doesn't matter if John Wayne didn't get either of his names from his parents; we still index him as "Wayne, John". Lots of other examples, too. The indexing by surname does not depend on that surname being a family name or not. Gene Nygaard 01:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a better example (because I know the answers) would come from the Old West in the U.S., in the John A. "Snowshoe" Thompson who delivered mail on skis between Sacramento, California and Virginia City, Nevada. He was also known as Jon Rue, because he came from the Rue farm in Tinn, Norway. His father was Torstein Olsen Rue. Torstein's father, of course, would have been Ole—don't know Ole's patronymic name, nor whether he was on the same farm so he had the same toponymic name Rue or not. So Snowshoe was Jon Torsteinsen, who Anglicized his patronymic to Thompson in America. Gene Nygaard 09:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Avon Valley School

I'm not sure about removing the 'living persons' category from Avon Valley School. Agreed, not every article that alludes to a living person is in this category, but a large part of the existing article is about Mark Braine and there are some extremely serious things written about him. I think the 'living persons' tag will alert editors to be careful with their facts in this case. What do you think?

Ewen 19:12, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Linking to Living people doesn't accomplish that, and it is useless to see Avon Valley School listed as a "living person" in that category. And the templates that they put on many talk pages might not fit either. Just call people's attention to your concerns on the talk page, and link to the policy on bios of living people (you can find the link at the top of Category:Living people). You might also create a redirect from Braine to the school and categorize the redirect, but put the categories right after the redirect on the same logical line. Gene Nygaard 19:33, 30 December 2006 (UTC)