User talk:Bookandcoffee/Archive 2006 Jul - Sep

ARCHIVE - please do not leave comments here, as I may well miss them. If needed, copy the relevant text from here to my User talk:Bookandcoffee page and continue the conversation there. Thanks. --Bookandcoffee 18:37, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Solidarity

Tnx for your work with refs on Solidarity. Please note that I have split History of Solidarity from that article, and most of the references are in the subarticle now (which I intended to polish for PR and FAC in the coming weeks). Any and all help is appreciated.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 02:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For your help with references in History of Solidarity, which is just but one example of the ref-related work you do, I, Piotrus, present you with this Working Man's Barnstar. Wear it proudly. PS. It also fits nicely with your labor-related contribs, too :) Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Your article, Trade unions in South Africa, was selected for DYK!

On July 16, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Trade unions in South Africa, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Thanks for your contributions! ++Lar: t/c 04:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

hey

the organized labor project seems to be running smoothly, and I've started a new wikiproject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pipe Bands to deal with the mostly sub standard wikipedia articles concerning pipe bands. I've come up with a cool looking infobox here:Wikipedia:List_of_infoboxes/Proposed#Pipe_bands and I'd like to turn it into an easy to use template similar to the union infobox template. I've no idea how to do this though, and I cant find any article explaining it in enough detail. Could you help me?--Musaabdulrashid 08:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

CNV de Publieke Zaak

I disagree that CNV Public needs a separate article. This is because it is only an affialite union of a larger organization. In the public space (the news, academia etc) the large federations are the point of reference, while the smaller affiliate unions are overlooked. This can bee seen at the Dutch wiki of CNV (even if you don't speak dutch). At the Dutch page on CNV. All affiliate unions (except for CNV jong, which has received some press recently as innovation within the CNV) are red links. Furthermore in the Netherlands talks between the top of the government, employers organizations, and the unions (i.e. the federations) are very important. In my dutch perspective CNV public does not merit an own page, and we should concentrate on expanding CNV. --C mon 14:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Your examples are from English speaking countries, that is not only logical from a linguistic perspective, but furthermore compared to dutch unions unions in anglosaxon countries tend to be weak and decentralized. From the Dutch perspective CNV public appears a very redundant article. --C mon 15:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Spambusters

Bookandcoffee: Defender of the Wiki

Thanks for removing SPUSA linkspam added by an anonymous user (or users?) to many articles. This user has been persistently adding such links (as well as spam to the body of articles) for some time, as:

• 83.131.104.65 (talk · contribs)
• 83.131.99.127 (talk · contribs)
• 83.131.104.65 (talk · contribs)
• 83.131.171.239 (talk · contribs)
• 82.45.209.91 (talk · contribs)
• 82.35.70.213 (talk · contribs)

and probably countless others that have escaped my attention. I just removed dozens of these SPUSA links myself — there's still many more to clean up, but I got a headache :( I noticed that you and user:Carl.bunderson have also been doing this thankless work! So, here's a barnstar to make it not so thankless :) ntennis 05:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Replied on my talk page. In the meantime, here's a link to the other SPUSA. :P ntennis 02:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey

I tried to work on Infobox Union to remove the whitespace, but didn't have any luck so I've reverted my changes. Might be worth asking somewhere like Village pump (technical). - FrancisTyers · 09:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Template:LabourProject

Yeah, looked like a "Doh!" from copying the code from {{TrainsWikiProject}}. I noticed there were about 200 new articles in Category:Unassessed rail transport articles this morning, so I went back through my own edits when I noticed the TTC strike article in the list (since I know I put a rating on that one). We'll probably have to do null edits on all the articles where {{LabourProject}} to get them sorted right. Slambo (Speak) 13:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

<talk voice="Strong Bad">Null'd!</talk> They're appearing in the right category now. Slambo (Speak) 14:08, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

National Workers' Union (Trinidad & Tobago)

You think I put too much information in this new entry? It is probably my first new page so I am interested in what made you delete most of what I had put.

National Workers' Union (Trinidad & Tobago)

Thanks for your comments posted to my talk page. I can see what you have done and why. Also, thanks for putting up the info box.

I will keep an eye on the Organised Labour project and should be able to put up some more information on Unions in the Caribbean and Trinidad and Tobago in particular. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TriniSocialist (talk • contribs) .

National Trade Union Centre

I made an amendment to the info box for NATUC by adding details of the President but this has not shown up yet even though an amendment I made to the formation date of the organisation has appeared. What would be causing this? I don't understand why some changes appear immediately and other seem to take their time. Dave Smith 10:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Workers' Central Union of Cuba

I notice that this article has been related to North America. I don't think anyone in the Caribbean would see this as appropriate (especailly the Cubans) because of the language links which point them towards Latin America, and their ties to the rest of the Caribbean. What has to happen to change this? Does it need a discussion and who makes the final decision or makes the change if that is agreed?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by TriniSocialist (talk • contribs) .

How to add abbreviations?

I want to put in a reference to the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and Non-Governmental Organisations which is abbreviated to FITUN. How to index FITUN? Dave Smith 21:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Henry Sylvestre-Williams

The entry on Henry Sylvestre-Williams has him in the category of a Trinidad and Tobago trade unionists but on reading the entry this does not seem to be his main claim to fame. In fact, apart from noting that he was a member of the teachers union, there is nothing to suggest his was an activst trade unionist - in fact, on the contrary, much of what is said about him would seem to give him a very conservative agenda. I would think he should be taken out of this category. Is there a process for doing this? - Dave Smith 04:36, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Workers Union's of Eritrea

First, thank you for rving the change if it caused a problem, I apologize...also I think the NCEW is the only major labor union in the country, complemented by NUEYS and NUEW. I know some of the larger construction companies have their own unions but I am not sure if they are official. --Merhawie 21:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hi Bookandcoffee! Thanks for the message. I've seen banners on many article pages over the past few days and thought that it was allowed there as well as on the talk pages. I will correct my error as soon as I have some time as I am just jumping online briefly to submit some edits that I made offline.Lekogm 16:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Template:LabourProject (again!)

Sure, I'll take a look later tonight. Slambo (Speak) 19:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Finally got a chance to take a look this morning. The only thing I noticed was the importance template names. They were moved from X-Class to X-importance in June to avoid confusion with the quality assessments. All but {{No-importance}} had redirects in place from the page moves. I've updated the project banner to avoid these template redirects. Slambo (Speak) 11:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

From Goldsztajn

hi, thanks for the message. am working on some of the lists of unions and information about the international unions. what is the best way to discuss an issue of terminology with the people involved? i'm thinking mainly about the issue of "international" trade unions. regards Goldsztajn 00:09, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

You can start by just leaving a note on the talk page of the project. (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour) Outline what you're thinking, and see what others think. Be prepared to wait a few days for responses though, people tend to be a bit slow to get involved in group conversations here. (unlike myself, who's more likely just to barge in and say something!). BTW, one small point - when you leave a note on a talk page (like you did on mine), sign your name by using four tildes (~~~~). That way it automatically produces a link back to your page when you save the page. See Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages for more detail. Cheers. --Bookandcoffee 13:58, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

re: International unions

thanks for the help. will add something to the discussion list. --Goldsztajn 00:11, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Coal Strike of 1902

I reviewed the above titled article you nominated for good article status. I have failed the article in my review due mostly to the lack of in-line citations. I hope that the article can be improved and that you will seek good article status in the future for it. I found the article to be quite interesting. Erechtheus 20:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Re:Union stubs

Hi Chris - I agree: the sooner this is sorted out, the better. I've closed the current debate and invite you to reopen it as you suggested.

I would suggest (and will suggest at SFD once debate is reopened) that, since the parent category is Category:Trade unions, it would make a lot of sense for all the stub templates and categories to be named that way too ({{US-trade-union-stub}} → Category:Unied States trade union stubs, +c). The use of the word "union" can be a little ambiguous, but "trade union" is pretty well defined, so it shouldn't be a problem. It also avoids the messy labor/labour problem and the political overtones of the word "worker". That said, I don't have any problem with {{worker-activist-stub}}, since if someone is active within the labo(u)r movement they already are in a political role, and the scope of the category with this name makes it slightly wider, including also people who aren't strictly speaking unionists. Grutness...wha? 05:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Organized labour stubs

Hey,

I actually didn't really follow the discussion because I was on vacation so your comments definately were not the reason I left the conversation.--Carabinieri^T_T^a_a^l_l^k_k 19:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Centralia 1919

I was reading the article on the Centralia tragedy of 1919 (linked from the main IWW page) and noticed that there were many factual errors in the article (Everest was not castrated, who shot whom is wrong, Everest never served abroad in WWI, etc.). I'm new to Wikipedia. How do I go about trying to get this changed? I'm the author of a 1993 book on the Centralia case published by the U of Washington. Tom Copeland —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tomredleaf (talk • contribs) .

Hello Tom. Welcome to Wikipedia. Thanks for your note about Centralia Massacre (Washington). It would be great if you were interested in contributing to (and correcting) the article. The interesting thing about Wikipedia is that you already have all the tools you need for editing right in front of you. On the article page you simply click on the edit button - this will bring up the text of the document, and you are able to make the changes you feel are appropriate. For more detailed instructions about editing you can follow this link to the welcome page.

To answer what I think is your real question - there is no central authority you need to contact to make your changes. For both better and worse, your edits will be reviewed by others (such as myself) who keep an eye on labour related articles. If you are comfortable with revealing some information about yourself you may want to leave a short note on the discussion page of the article (Talk:Centralia Massacre (Washington) outlining some of your changes, and perhaps more importantly, the fact that you have legitimate expertise in the subject area. Also, just as a warning, there are occasions when people who perhaps do not know a topic as well as they think they do, may alter information which you believe is correct. This may also happen for political purposes (and sometimes simply to make trouble!). I wouldn't expect this particular topic to be terribly controversial, I just wanted to mention the possibility so you know the environment you are working in.

Thanks for your interest in helping out Tom. Be careful... it always starts with just one edit, and before you know it you're addicted to Wikipedia like the rest of us! Don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of any help. Cheers. Chris.--Bookandcoffee 16:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Batay-Struggle better than Fight

your article on Batay Ouvriye is rendered in english as 'workers fight'. 'Workers Struggle' is a better translation. Battle is the literal of Batay. I made some changes today. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jdlyall (talk • contribs) .

Hi Jdlyall. Thanks for your note about Batay Ouvriye. I created the article as part of a larger project with WikiProject Organized Labour to start articles about all the major unions/labour organizations around the world - so I don't have any particular expertise concerning Batay Ouvriye. The reason I named it as the Workers' Fight Federation is simply because that is the translation in the source I used: Trade Unions of the World published by the International Centre for Trade Union Rights. I'm not opposed to changing the name if Struggle is a better translation than fight, but I would also be interested in knowing how the organization itself has translated their name. Sometimes the translation is not the most accurate, but is nonetheless the official translation. Cheers. --Bookandcoffee 17:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

They use Workers Fight on their own web page. - Dave Smith 00:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Gewerkschaft der Polizei

Hi Bookandcoffee,

I'm writing you, because you created the article Gewerkschaft der Polizei. I have just expanded it a bit by translating content from the German page. I am now considering moving the article to Trade Union of the Police, which is the direct translation of the German name.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) states "If a native spelling uses different letters than the most common English spelling (eg, Wien vs. Vienna), only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form.".

If one googles the words "Gewerkschaft der Polizei" limiting the search to just English pages one definately gets more hits (even if one doesn't count the vast majority, which are German sites) than with "Trade Union of the Police". (The other possible translation "Labo(u)r Union of the Police" does not get any hits related to the union in question, so we can pretty much disregard this one).

But I did find one academic paper ([1]) and a government document ([2]), which both used the translation "Trade Union of the Police".

I also found a few other translations such as "Union of Policemen" and "German Police Union", but I don't like them, because they're very imprecise. I'm leaning towards translating the title rather than leaving it in German, but I want to ask you, what your opinion is first.

--Carabinieri^T_T^a_a^l_l^k_k 23:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Carabinieri. I'm certainly OK with the idea of moving this to Trade Union of the Police. I'll defer to your opinion about which translation is best, (given I don't speak German :). I would note that "German Police Union" actually sounds like a union name, as opposed to a literal translation, but your logic makes sense to me.

The source I used for starting many of these articles often had both the native language name and a translation - but the translations for the DGB were clearly imprecise descriptions rather than true names. (eg. GEW was just education and science), so I stuck with the original names.

Just out of curiosity, would you move IG Metall and Ver.di to English traslations, given their prominence and the familiarity of the names?--Bookandcoffee 15:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I will move the article. I would probably move IG Metall, but "German Metalworkers' Union" is clearly not a good translation; I would prefer "Industrial Union Metal" or something like that. I don't think it's necessary to move ver.di, because it's almost always refered to by this abbreviation, rather than by "Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft", so I think the way the article describes the name right now is ok.--Carabinieri^T_T^a_a^l_l^k_k 15:45, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

batay ouvriye-fight, battle or struggle

Well, I went and looked closely at their web site. They do say 'workers fight'. Hm. Ok, that is what they want it to be I guess. I lived in Haiti for four years so I know a little about them, but have never actually met any of them. Jdlyall 07:09, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

National Confederation of Eritrean Workers

Why did you add the word "centre" to the first sentence? I do not think it fits, thank you. --Merhawie 20:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Merhawie. Thanks for your note. I added the word because the NCEW is a national trade union center, not just a single trade union. Here's a description from ICTUR.

"The NCEW is now reported to be independent of the government and the PFDL. It comprises some 250 unions and five federations, the largest being the Textile, Leather and Shoe Federation."

Cheers. --Bookandcoffee 20:39, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding so promptly, I would like to correct that the source probably means PFDJ not PFDL. Thanks again! --Merhawie 20:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

thanks!

Thank you for the friendly welcome! I appreciate the offer for help and may contact you next time I have questions. Syndicalista 00:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Internationalisation

It looks good. I've removed the other part as I don't think this is productive at the moment, swimming before walking and all that. The sub page idea is interesting. Although, it could be easily made as a template too. I'm not sure which would be better. I think the summary articles are a great opportunity and a great way to go. As is having a sane system of templates and categorisation (which we have).

I don't think having sub-sub-pages is a good idea, but rather in some central location we should have just a list of languages and summaries. Don't ask me how this would work yet though. It is good to keep them together in one place I think.

I've been thinking about how to deal with the issue of proper names. It seems many a time these are many up of similar elements, e.g. "national federation", "union of journalists" etc. But there is no water-tight naming scheme for each country. I'm of two minds. 1) It might be possible to "translate the names" -- e.g. give translations for words, then put them together. 2) It might be just as quick to find translations for each name individually. How many are there? 1000? A table could be effected with names in rows and languages in columns. We would need to compile a list of names at any rate in order to make the stub articles (even without translated proper names). - FrancisTyers · 02:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think having /Summary would be good. We can have each translation in a separate section, keyed with language code. We can also have a central list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized Labour/Summaries with all the articles which have these summaries.

I have procured Tajik, Urdu and Macedonian translations so far for the infobox based thing. Do you know if List of trade unions is complete, or even almost complete. I'd like to try and get people started on translating the names. I can write a script to turn a list into a table no problem. But it would be best if we can have a full list :) I think the table should be structured something like:

! Native name || English name || English country name || Tajik name || Urdu name || Macedonian name || ... 

It is quite straight forward to do a search/replace on country name, at least for Tajik and Macedonian. - FrancisTyers · 18:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately yes, some double translation will be in order. I think it is worth it in the long term though, it isn't entirely necessary to have native name for all of them, but it is desirable. I will see if I can find a comprehensive list of trade unions somewhere on the web that I can import in. I'll probably start by looking on the TUC site or something. - FrancisTyers · 18:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, it just occured to me that, the native name section may need to be 'native names'. :) - FrancisTyers · 18:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. It might be an idea to drop a note on the talk page of User:Jmabel. He seems interested in labour related topics, and is a good writer. I will try and see if I can rope other people in too :) - FrancisTyers · 17:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

James Larkin

Hi there

I see you rated the above article for the organized labour wikiproject.

As the person responsible for most of the content, I'd be interested in hearing your rationale for the rating and any comments about how the article might be improved. Cheers, Palmiro | Talk 20:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I'm actually more interested in improving the article itself than upping its rating but I doubt if I'll have time any time soon, and anyway I'm less and less convinced that time spent on Wikipedia is useful - not that I want to discourage you or anything, I see you have been doing sterling work. But James Larkin is a bit of a pet article of mine as it was basically the one that brought me into wikipedia (perhaps i should be cursing his revered memory!). Good luck, Palmiro | Talk 00:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

{{Europe topic}}

I've added the template for the relevant continent to all "trade unions in country" or similar articles (such as Australian labour movement, for which I created a redirect from Trade unions in Australia).--Carabinieri^T_T^a_a^l_l^k_k 12:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey Chris. Thanks for the welcome. Considering that there seems to a relatively high labour consciousness in BC, it's not adequately reflected on Wikipedia (yet). There also seems to be an obsession with local history in Vancouver and trying to agree on an identity for the city, so its not too surprising to find more than one other Vancouverite in the labour field.Bobanny 17:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Assessment department

I noticed that you had assessed a couple of the articles I posted. Is this normal? Are all articles assessed? How do you chose which ones to assess? Just interested. - Dave Smith 00:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Farmers' Union of Wales

I see this organisation is down in the list as needing expansion. However, this is an employers organisation not a trade union. I have deleted is from the TU categroies and stubs. The same applies to the National Farmers Union and the Scotish Farmers Union. How to get this off the list for expansion? - Dave Smith 01:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents box

Hi. Me again asking questions. How to get a Contents box in an article? I've looked at some pages but it seems to be hidden. Thanks. - Dave Smith 02:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Organized Labour

Hi

I am interested in organised labour and won't mind working on the project, especially if it relates to organized labour in Fiji and Australia

Girmitya

International Labour Organisation

The article on the International Labour Organisation seems a bit limited. Looking at the 'Discuss this page' it does not seem to have been the subject of much discussion. Has this been debated elswhere? - Dave Smith 22:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

James Manswell

I've just done a major re-write having acquired some new information. - Dave Smith 01:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I18N

Hey man,

Great work :) I took a look and it is only really a couple of countries that we don't have a complete list for -- Finland and Mexico -- and a few from others. It might be worth stubbing these before going on to the next stage. I will get onto it as soon as I can. - Francis Tyers · 11:33, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

When is a stub not a stub?

I was wondering when an article ceased to be a stub. For instance, the original article on James Manswell was really just a holding page and clearly a stub. But, whilst recoghnising that any article is capable of being expanded and improved, does the major re-write that I did make it now not a stub? To stub or not to stub ... that is the question! - Dave Smith 09:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a perennial question around here. In my opinion, people tend to leave stub tags on articles longer than necessary. I think they're afraid that they're making too strong of an statement that the article is "finished" in some way if they remove the tag. I would agree that James Manswell isn't a stub anymore. More details at WP:STUB.--Bookandcoffee 14:15, 29 September 2006 (UTC)