This is an archive of past discussions with User:Bryan Derksen. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Hello there. By convention, we don't group a peerage succession (e.g. Earl of Balfour) with offices. I've made the necessary change at Arthur Balfour. Just so you know. Mackensen (talk) 03:00, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okie-dokie. It's my first time using these things, I'll keep it in mind for the future. Bryan 03:02, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No worries, and I'm glad to see someone else doing the grunt work. Happy editing. Mackensen (talk) 03:12, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully any messes I've made will be easy to clean up now that the data's been put into templates like these. It looks like a very tidy system. Bryan 03:36, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

After over a year of trial and error...mainly error it seems like. Ah well, nothing like free time I don't have. Incidentally, I think I've straightened out the Lord Warden bit. Whomever went and did them all in the first place really didn't know what they were doing, and we're always tripping over them and fixing them. Mackensen (talk) 05:48, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. BTW, did I guess right on the pluralization of Lord Warden when I created the category for them? I have the sneaking suspicion that I should have called it Lord Wardens instead of Lords Warden. :) Bryan 05:52, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea ;). Go ask Lord Emsworth. He knows all. Mackensen (talk) 05:55, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, it seems Emsworth is taking a vacation. From a cursory Google search, I'd think it's "Lords Warden", but Emsworth, John Kenney, etc. are far more knowledgeable on the topic than I am :) ugen64 20:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd say "Lord Wardens", since they are primarily Wardens rather than Lords. It's similar to Lord Chancellors, Lord Great Chamberlains, etc. (Have a look at Category:Great Officers of State.) Proteus (Talk) 15:03, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the re-cat of L.A. County. That was exactly what I had planned to do someday. You got it done while I was still thinking about it! Cheers, -Willmcw 05:17, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I'm not actually serious about this project. It would, most likely, be a terrible idea. Think of it as a hoax about propagating hoaxes. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 10:19, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That in itself is also a bad idea, since I'm sure it's going to result in a lot of bad attention from other editors who react even more strongly to the idea than I do. Besides, I don't think I can really trust you at this point; you've inserted blatant disinformation into an article once already that I know of, and the same disinformation is presented on that page as an example. Besides, what's the merit of a hoax project to insert hoaxes? Remember that our goal here is to write an encyclopedia, not build an online community. Everything ultimately must serve that goal. Bryan 16:36, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

*sigh*

You're probably right. I'm sure someone could come up with a really good justification for the idea, but I can't see it at the moment. I think its best use is as a thought experiment and cautionary device. What if there really was such a project? Is there a better way to "ping" how closely Wikipedia's content is monitored? It wouldn't work if everyone knew exactly where the inaccuracies were. Maybe I'll just throw Category:Humor at the page or sth. I am interested in who might believe it to be serious, though. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 21:42, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

To ping Wikipedia, how about selecting a number of random articles and independantly verifying the information contained within to see if there are flaws? That's straightforward statistical sampling, and it has the added benefit that it will allow any errors so detected to be corrected. I recommend deleting the disinformation page entirely, it's only going to draw heat. Bryan 06:34, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the note to Grey goo about Bloom, that was on my todo list. Now all we need todo is write an article for the book. Edward 21:51, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Hi Brian, I've spent the last couple of weeks going through all the geo-stubs and putting them in their correct subcategories (such as Africa-go-stub, UK-geo-stub, etc). I had another look today, and lo and behold there were a fresh bunch of new African ones just put in geo-stub. I appreciate you adding the stub messages to articles, but please can you make sure there aren't more appropriate subcategories when you do? Cheers, Grutness|^hello? 04:59, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wasn't aware there were subcategories to that, I've just been tossing it in whenever I was doing something else in a geographic stub anyway. I'll take a look and try to remember the subcategories in the future, thanks. Bryan 05:04, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. They're all listed at the top of Category: Geography stubs. Grutness|^hello? 23:33, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

G'day Bryan

there seemed to be a problem with the redirs at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Timeline of fictional historical events and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Timeline of fictional future events, so I edited the articles to avoid them. Do you mind if I now list the redirs on redirects for deletion? No criticism intended, I just wanted to get it working and this way seems to have worked in the past. Andrewa 23:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No problem, as long as the VfD discussion can be easily reached from the VfD headers on the articles being VfDed I'm perfectly happy. Bryan 00:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Done, and I've wikilinked from the nomination to this discussion, so please don't archive this or edit the heading for a week or so. Andrewa 01:54, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay. It takes a lot longer than a week for my talk page to fill up, fortunately. :) Bryan 01:56, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 09:38, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)) Hi, given your recent interest in the politicisation of science, you might be interested to look at Scientific consensus or Consensus science and maybe Wikipedia:Requests for comment/William M. Connolley

Please stop, I beg you. What you're doing is put it completely in the wrong direction I had going. I'll be happy to explain but please stop changing everything. Cburnett 21:39, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've stopped for now because I think I'm done with the things I felt needed doing. By all means explain what you think is wrong with what I was doing, and if I agree I'll help fix things. If I don't agree, though, I'll be happy to explain my own philosophy as well. Bryan 21:43, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, one or two minor things just came to mind which I think you'll find noncontroversial. I should put the (film) subcategories under Category:Films and the actor subcategories under Category:Actors (that aren't already included via Category:Academy Award winning actors). Also, I just noticed that Category:Best Director Oscar was put on the Lord of the Rings movie article when the award actually went to Peter Jackson for his work on that film. The movie itself would fall under something like Category:Films directed by Academy Award for Best Director winners, under the renaming scheme I proposed on CfD. Bryan 22:14, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

First, please see my rational on the CFD page.

• Regarding film categories: I'm not sure where they should go. Putting films under Category:Films makes sense and likewise for actors
• Regarding Best Director: I don't think that was my addition. I had created the category but didn't populate it. Someone who saw my best picture category addition must've added all the oscar categories for it.

Cburnett 22:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My biggest problem with your renaming is the massively lengthed categories now. I'm not entirely sure how long, but I spent hours just thinking of ways to name categories to make them succinct but understandable. For a film that won 11 awards or even a couple, those category names will fill up several lines in the category box already, but now several more because of the extended length. My optimal choice would be to put everything back and strike up a discussion on a talk page instead of involving WP:CFD on the issue. :) Cburnett 22:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As with most of the big categorization projects I wind up involved in, I didn't intend to do this much work at first; I was just browsing through Special:Uncategorizedcategories and when I first started trying to link these together into subcategories I found the names to be highly non-intuitive. So I started working up ways to label them more clearly, and that CfD was the result of my thoughts. I've added some discussion of why I thought those names needed changing to the CfD discussion now, with a link to the naming conventions I think apply here. Bryan 22:34, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Bryan

Philip and I are the two main categorisers of cricket-related articles. As you saw, we were both in favour of retaining the cricket subcategories category as a tool to help us - and there are good reasons for keeping it rather than a list. Categorisation takes a lot of time as it is, maintaining a list of subcategories would merely add to it (after all, it takes one second to add "Category:Cricket subcategories" at the bottom of a newly created cricket subcategory, given WP's current performance, it could take up to a minute to add it to a long list.

I think your proposal to convert this category to a list would not only be a waste of your time, it would also hinder our work to categorise cricket and lead to a waste of Philip's and my time. When the software changes so that we can "look through" categories, we will no longer need this subcategory - until then, I ask you to appreciate that this is just one of thousands of categories, and to realise it is doing more good than harm. Kind regards, jguk 07:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nevertheless I remain committed to doing just that. See Wikipedia:Ownership of articles - you may be one of the primary users of this category, but I have just as much right to fiddle with it as you do. You're a fan of cricket, so you do a lot of work on cricket articles; I'm a fan of good, clean category structure, so I do work on tidying up cases like this. I don't think it's worth the trade of a few seconds' convenience to have this inappropriate category remain in Wikipedia. How often do you create new cricket subcategories, anyway? There are roughly 250 of them in that category right now, so it would have taken a grand total of 4 hours to add those all to a list if you did them one at a time and it took a minute for each one. How long have you spent arguing with me to keep that category?

Please, tell me what sort of work it is that you think will take years to complete on these categories, I'm not trying to be obstructionist and I really do think that a list will be more helpful for whatever it is that you're trying to do. I can even help out with doing it, I'm good at categorizing stuff and can probably contribute way more than four hours' worth of work if it needs doing. Bryan 16:30, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bryan, you have offered your opinion and now been told by at least 3 members of the Cricket WikiProject that we do not like your idea of having a list of subcategories rather than a category of subcategories. It is members of the Cricket WikiProject who are most likely to be categorisers of cricket articles. I ask you to just accept the position as it is. I thank you for your idea, but ultimately, what tools are used by those who categorise cricket-related articles should be determined by those who categorise cricket-related articles, rather than your good self.

I would also add that your persistency is beginning to have a negative effect - certainly I for one am reluctant to continue much categorisation work as I am not sure whether you are going to hinder or destroy that work going forward. I'm sure that is not your intention, but I would like to point out that as far as I am aware this discussion is now counter-productive to the categorisation of cricket-related articles. After all, we are only talking about one category amongst thousands - if you do not like it, it is easy enough to overlook it, Kind regards, jguk 17:29, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have never suggested that I would "destroy" any categorization work you've done, indeed I've offered at several points to help with it. I categorize a lot of heck of a lot of articles. I've had people think I run some sort of categorizing bot through this account (I don't, it's all manual). But so far none of you have actually told me what sort of work you're trying to do here, you've given me no reason to believe that this "cricket subcategories" category is of any use and you've certainly given me no reason to believe you consider it only a temporary thing. I don't think I'm the one who's being counterproductive here. Would you please at least answer my question? Bryan 00:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As a note, when showing succession of peerage titles, we generally use Template:PeerNavbox instead of the succession boxes, unless we have to show the movement of multiple titles. In neither case do we show the years when the peer held the title. Best, Mackensen (talk) 03:28, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ah. I note, however, that that template is actually just a wrapper for the succession box template; using it is identical to using the succession box template while leaving the "years" value blank. Just blank the years on the ones I did and it'll have the same effect, with (very) marginally less server effort. Bryan 03:35, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please keep the "English cricketers" (or other nationality) categorisation in the individual players' articles - I'm not alone in finding it very useful. By all means remove the "Cricketers" categorisation in the individual players' articles. Kind regards, jguk 04:15, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm probably going to regret asking, but what do you find it useful for? This sort of redundancy is explicitly frowned upon in the categorization conventions on Wikipedia:Categorization. Specifically:

• An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, e.g. Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software.
• A good general rule is that articles should be placed in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in. For example, Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People, but Queens of England might be a good place for her.
• Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible. Categories should be more or equally as broad as the articles they contain; articles should be more or equally specific as the categories they are in.

There are exceptions to these, of course; I made one myself on Thomas Lord, for example, because he's not just a Middlesex cricketer but there wasn't an Epsom cricketers category to put him into. Eventually I presume there will be one, at which point I'd put him into Epsom cricketers and take him out of English cricketers. Did I miss other cricketers who didn't have appropriate English cricketer subcategories to add when I removed them from the main English cricketers category? Bryan 05:02, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It may be useful, in a spirit of co-operation to explain the categorisation of cricketers.

1. The year of birth and (if applicable) death are categorised;

2. The nationality and the fact that a person is a cricketer is categorised (eg "English cricketers). Sometimes a player has had a number of different nationalities - for instance, Kepler Wessels is a South African who became Australian and then South African again.

3. Players are categorised by skill and by nationality (eg "English batsmen", "English bowlers", "English all-rounders", "English wicket-keepers"). A player may be in more than one of these categories - and if he is an all-rounder he will be a batsman and a bowler too. Personally I do not like these categories and am not convinced people find them too useful as I do not understand why anyone would specifically wish to search by nationality and skill, but I have to date respected the fact they are there and used them. As far as I am concerned, this is the only redundancy in the current classification system.

4. Players are categorised by major domestic teams that they have played for. This is where cricket-knowledge comes in most useful - as it can be difficult to spot what a major team is if you're unfamiliar with the history of cricket in a particular cricketing nation. For instance, I know that there should never be a category "Epsom cricketers", as Epsom is not and has never been a major team. The most difficult situations are pre-19th century cricketers (like Thomas Lord), cricketers in Pakistan (where many of the major teams are tied to different companies), and more recently South Africa and Sri Lanka, where there has been a recent consolidation of the major sides. Note that there is no redundancy with 2 - many cricketers have played domestic cricket in a number of countries - for instance, the English cricketer Ian Botham infamously played one season for the Australian side Queensland, and so is, amongst other things, categorised as a "Queensland cricketer".

5. If a player has played international cricket, then this is also noted. There are two sorts of international cricket - Test cricket (with categories such as "English test cricketers") and One-Day International cricket (with categories such as "English ODI cricketers".

6. If a player has captained a national side this is also noted (eg "English cricket captains").

7. Certain other honours - such as whether a cricketer has been knighted, or received a Wisden Cricketer of the Year award are noted.

8. Many cricketers have gone on to become commentators, broadcasters or writers - this may also be noted.

The categorisation is pretty comprehensive. And, except for the categorisation by skills, I think all the categorisations have intrinsic interest, particularly for cricket aficionados. Source information can be found on www.cricinfo.com and www.cricketarchive.com.

Note that there are many cricketers on List of cricketers who need categorising. Your assistance would be welcome - as each category expands it becomes more and more interesting, jguk 19:38, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay, you're probably going to argue with me more on this, but as far as I can see from the thorough explanation you've given (thanks for that, BTW) it looks like removing those articles from category:English cricketers was the right thing to do after all. This is because those articles were already in various more-specific subcategories of English cricketers, such as for example Category:English bowlers. Every article that's in Category:English bowlers is also considered to be in Category:English cricketers, since it's a subcategory; the nationality information is automatically included that way. You were okay with me removing them from Category:Cricketers which I did for exactly the same reason; consider the analogy there and I hope you'll understand where I'm coming from on this. I'm not going to lunge straight for those articles to re-remove them again, before you panic, but I'll probably get around to it eventually - I'm pretty sure my understanding of category conventions is correct in this case.

A suggestion for the non-major-team cricketers. How about creating Category:Minor team cricketers for them, or some other more appropriate name? That way it'll be easy to tell which cricketers are from minor teams without categories of their own and which are just not yet fully categorized.

Later tonight I'll get to work on that list of cricketers. This is the sort of categorization job I'm really good at, IMO; I can probably work my way through all four hundred in the next day or two. Bryan 05:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please do, but please preserve the "English cricketers", "West Indian cricketers", "Indian cricketers", etc. categories - they are very useful. The classification by skill, certainly for older cricketers, is somewhat pernicious, and I for one find searching for cricketers by skill to be confusing, jguk 07:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just said that I wouldn't "preserve" those categories (meaning I presume leaving articles in them that belong fully to one or more subcategories), at least not in the long run; articles that fall into subcategories of them should in general be removed from the categories those subcategories are in. I've given my reasoning above, with citations of the relevant conventions from Wikipedia:Categorization. It makes as much sense to remove them from "category:English cricketers" as it does to remove them from just plain "category:cricketers", in most cases. Bryan 08:10, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh, in case you were keeping track, turns out I didn't have time on the second day to finish categorizing that cricketer list, and I'm going to be out of town from now to the end of the weekend. I'll have to get back to it on monday to finish up. Bryan 07:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Do you mind if I remove the CFD tag from here now that the situation has been resolved? --Phil | Talk 07:27, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

By all means. I had assumed it would be done automatically as part of the resolution. :) Bryan 09:15, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Err... I've never done that before, and I must not be understanding correctly how to do it, since that website doesn't appear to be listed on the blacklist, so... I've left a note on the talk page to get someone's attention. Tuf-Kat 14:46, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

It's here in this section:

### BEGIN RUSSIAN SPAM SECTION
\.6x\.to

All the others in this section aside from \.pillsbook\.com have .su or .ru TLDs, so if it's legit it may still be in the wrong section. Bryan 17:17, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aah, okay. Done. Tuf-Kat 18:02, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Article categorized. :) Bryan 18:08, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please stop sending user death threats or I will block you. --Capital of Liberty 05:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any death threats I've sent out, perhaps you could point one out for me? Seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about. Bryan 05:58, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

With a pop of ~1500 and few if any abandoned buildings I doubt that Tombstone, Arizona qualifies. 198.189.6.105 17:09, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) (oops! forgot to log in Pretzelpaws 17:11, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC))

The only reason I put it in that category was because it was already in category:ghost towns, I was just moving things to the right geographic subcategory. Recategorize freely. :) Bryan 19:53, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations on your inclusion in the Wired article. I wonder if there is an entry for Wikicelebrity? --Ctrl build^talk 15px| 04:43, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm also in the dead tree edition, with picture no less - The Book Stops Here by Dan Pink had some profiles of Wikipedia users that was the inspiration for the ones you link to. Not meaning to brag, of course. Hope this won't go to my head. :) Bryan 04:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I feel strangely compelled to write the Wikicelebrity article now. I thought a few weeks off from wikipedia would have cured that compulsion. Oh well, at least I now know what I am going to do this spring break. (I am a pitiful excuse for a college student. Really.)--Ctrl build^talk 00:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also, this may make any Wikipedian Windows user switch. See WikityWidget lower down the page. This is my last comment. I just thought it would be something you might find convenient, finally being able to put wikilinks in your regular text documents. --Ctrl build^talk 00:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think it's time that quickpolls be re-evaluated as a solution to short term disputes between users. What say you? --Ryan! | Talk 05:11, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the great work you're doing on Astrology and related articles! It was overdue for the kind of rebuild you're giving it. Foobaz·o< 07:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No problem. Did I miss any of those "shared section" templates? I only stumbled across them by accident Bryan 07:43, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28miscellaneous%29#Retrospective

Anthere 06:03, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Brian,
back in 2001 you wrote in the interference pattern article.

Light beams that can produce interference patterns are called "coherent," and have all of their photons' phases aligned with each other. Lasers are an example of a coherent light source. Light beams which cannot produce interference patterns are called "incoherent." Most ordinary incandescent light sources (including the Sun) are incoherent.

Lasers are the only source of coherent light, and lasers have been available since the 1960's. Double slit experiments were conducted in the 19th century. The famous Michelson-Morley interferometry experiment, failing to detect motion of Earth with respect to local space, was performed around the turn of the century.

Coherent or incoherent doesn't matter; incoherent light can produce an interference patterns just as sharp as coherent light can. The advantage of laserlight is that it is monochromatic. Possibly early experimentors used sodium lamps to get a lightsource as monochromatic as possible. Or they spread the light of an incandescent lamp into a spectrum with the help of a diffraction grating, en then used a smal spectral band of the light. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 09:18, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wish I'd added an edit summary when I did that article, I can't remember it at all. :) From the way the text is written I suspect I just pasted it in from some other article, I'm not familiar with Huygen's principle for example. Go ahead and fix it up however you see fit, you sound like you're much more knowledgeable than I on the subject. Bryan 16:33, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll see what I can do to fix it. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 19:26, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've thought about creating a "Law by year" structure of categories (Category:1986 in law and so on); I think ultimately this would be the best way to organize court cases by their year of decision and statutes by their year of enactment. What do you think? Do you have any objections to doing it that way rather than placing the law articles directly in the year categories? Postdlf 02:46, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I suspect there might well be enough court cases to justify that; I started categorizing the articles in one of the smaller case law subcategories and only later stumbled upon Category:U.S. Supreme Court cases. (I've only done up to the "B"s so far :) My philosophy with categorization has generally been to dump everything into root categories and then later look at what's in there to see whether the creation of subcategories are warranted, but I've no objections to doing it other ways if someone wants to set up a category scheme ahead of time. I'll lay off further categorization for the time being. Put in as many "year in law" categories as you think are warranted, bearing in mind that the density of articles per year will probably be lower farther back in time, and I'll get back to work on them then. Bryan 02:56, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bryan Derksen and Jfdwolff, as the first two people with self-described interests in medical articles that I noticed in the page histories of some brain-related articles I just dab'd [take a breath], I thought I might ask you to contribute to an omission I came across. In creating an article on Arachnoid (astrogeology) for the new Featured Article Venus (planet), I came across Arachnoid, which was just a redirect to Meninges, which linked to Arachnoid again. This seemed odd to me, because the other two meninges layers, dura mater and pia mater, had their own articles, however brief. Anyway, I changed Arachnoid into a disambiguation page with three meanings and dab'd the old references into Arachnoid (brain) for about a dozen articles. Could one or both of you create a short article to fill in the missing layer? Thanks. — Jeff Q (talk) 05:45, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't think I could do much for such an article. Perhaps instead of creating an arachnoid article, the other two should be merged in to meninges instead? I could do that, if anyone else thinks it's a good idea. :) Bryan 07:06, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That might be a useful alternative. I must admit that I could probably have patched a stub together, the same way I did Arachnoid (astrogeology), but I was already 5-deep in nested article editing tasks when I hit this issue, so I just punted. Don't worry about it too much. If we wait long enough, someone's bound to do something with it. I only asked in case either of you two had a burning desire to create a quickie article. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 09:06, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Bryan, Noticed you have made several category changes by deleting category Sailing and adding Category yachting. Why?

Boatman 22:05, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There were a couple of subcategories under sailing that were solely yachting-oriented, specifically Category:Yachts, Category:Yachting races, Category:Yachting associations (incorrectly capitalized as Category:Yachting Associations at the time) and Category:Yacht clubs. Since "Yachting" seemed to be the most reasonable name for a category to encompass all of those and it already existed anyway, I picked that one to serve as their root and moved them all under it. Since Category:Yachting is under Category:Sailing those other more-specific categories are still categorized under Category:Sailing too, just one level removed now. The guidelines at Wikipedia:Categorization#Creating subcategories say "A good general rule is that articles should be placed in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in", and by putting yachting-related subcategories under the "Yachting" category I believe I'm following that principle. Bryan 22:47, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and while we're on the subject of sailing ships and boats, I'd appreciate your input over at Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Sailboat_Names. "Sailboat Names" is the wrong title for that category and I proposed moving the current contents into "Sailboats", but it appears there's some difficulty over the distinction of boat and ship that needs to be worked out. Bryan 22:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And now I just noticed another one at Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Sailboat_types you might be interested in. Bryan 23:07, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You must've misread the characters—the template categorized by year and by century in law, so that Category:1901 in law went in Category:1901 and Category:20th century in law. The change you made removed the categorization by individual year. I'd appreciate your help in completing the application of the template to the remaining year in law categories, however. There are quite a lot left to do. Just replace the current text in each category with {{Law by year|''year''|''century''}}, i.e., Category:1901 in law would have {{Law by year|1901|20th}}. Postdlf 17:31, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I realized exactly what I'd done a couple of minutes after I'd gone out the door. I really need to stop checking Wikipedia in the morning before going out to work, when I haven't fully woken up yet and won't until I've reached a place with no net connection. :) Bryan 00:44, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Could you take a look at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Helium if you have time? :) --mav 02:50, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bryan, could you throw me an e-mail at my handle plus R-C-N dot com? You know me and I was surprised to find you here, but I'm not sure if my name in this context'll sound familiar. WCityMike 16:56, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Bryan, could you throw me an e-mail at my handle plus R-C-N dot com? You know me and I was surprised to find you here, but I'm not sure if my name in this context'll sound familiar. WCityMike 16:58, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Hey I've started a project of documenting all of the isotopes (a monumental undertaking I know) and seeing as how you worked on the isotope charts a few years back I was wondering if you could lend your opinion on what I've done so far. See Hydrogen atom for a sample of the first isotope i've done. If you know anyone who would be interested in collaborating on this project let me know. oo64eva (AJ) 21:35, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I did it more because I love fiddling with HTML tables rather than because I know a lot about isotopes (it was the biggest table I've ever worked on :), but I'll give it a look with my half-forgotten introductory chemistry course brain.

On a related note that might prove useful for your project, I've recently been considering creating an entirely new version of the isotope and periodic table charts using Wikipedia's EasyTimeline plug-in. This should in theory allow the creation of "thumbnail" chart images that are fully linked using link maps so you'd be able to click on the teeny-tiny square representing a particular isotope and go to its page. See Help:EasyTimeline_syntax for an intro to the syntax used by this plugin and the map down near the bottom of de:Theben (Ägypten) for an example of the sort of layout that's poissible with it. I've been putting off starting this project because it's bound to be way complicated to pull off, but if you're interested in something like this then it may kick me off on it. :) Bryan 23:15, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comminution is a recent article related to your work on Crusher. You seem to have a working knowledge of geology which would help with a reorganisation which seems necessary. Could you look at both articles and assist? Josh Parris ✉ 02:59, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll take a look, but I'm not really an expert; I was working off of existing reference books when I wrote up chunks of that stuff. Bryan 06:25, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Two things you might be interested in commenting on. There is a discussion right now over whether or not a max size range should be added to the featured article criteria. See Wikipedia talk:What is a featured article#Size. Also, the Origins article is up for de-featuring. See Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates#Origins of the American Civil War. --mav 15:52, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Heh. I don't think I'll contribute to the size debate, since aptly enough it's too long. I expect anything I'd have to say has already been said, but there's too much text for me to look for it all. :) As for the Origins article, I'm game to get back to work on finishing up that old summary article we started. Seeing that the main article has been spliced back together, I take it that the old logjam preventing any alterations to the basic layout of the page has been cleared. I'll take a look tomorrow. Bryan 06:23, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for supporting my adminship — I vow to use my super powers for good not evil. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem. Hang tight on that emdash thing, I know how frustrating it can be getting into a nitpicky fight like this - I spent months arguing with Sam Spade over the capitalization of "god" in that article, myself. Just remind yourself that there's no hurry, we've got years to work out these things. Perhaps in the interim we can use just plain hyphens, like I did two sentences ago, so that everyone would agree about the wrongness of it. :) Bryan 00:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is an article naming dispute over Devil's Lake. I am of the opinion that Devil's Lake should redirect to Devil's Lake (North Dakota), while another editor, DreamGuy, prefers to have Devil's Lake point to a disambiguation page. Since you have edited the article, I would appreciate your comments on this matter at Talk:Devil's Lake (North Dakota). Thank you. --Alexwcovington (talk) 05:33, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image:Columbia SEAS.GIF is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

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