User talk:EdJohnston/Archive 2

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number standards

Thanks for your note. I'm very pleased that the ISEN and ESBN articles were deleted. You asked about some other numbers based on my knowledge as a librarian.

• ISAN is real. The key there is that it is an iso standard.
• I don't know anything about ISCI. It seems to be an advertising industry standard? Not qualified to comment on that one.
• ISMN, ISRC, ISTC, and ISWC are iso standards, which in my view makes them very legit.
• CODEN. It's been superseded by ISSN, but I don't think that quite makes the term "obsolete" appropriate, because there are still situations where CODEN info would be used to locate an older periodical using older bibliographic information. That's one thing about bibliographic information - it tends to stay in use even as standards gradually evolve. New periodicals aren't being assigned CODENs but the info is still being kept around and is occasionally used. Rlitwin 17:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

ISBN page might be improved

Note to myself: The ISBN page has a large section that looks like a list, and it has become a magnet for inappropriate submissions. With patience, someone might pull out from the external sites the most relevant info, and then drastically reduce the list of links EdJohnston 17:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

ISBN comment

I guess I'd like to contest that my addition to the ISBN page wasn't promotional and also note that the isbn.org tool doesn't work as an API.

• Free ISBN1013 conversion API examples: 10 -> 13 13 -> 10

As noted in the linked blog post, the API was created because nobody could identify a similar resource in the community. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Misterbisson (talk • contribs) .

Harold Berman

There have been some additions to Harold Berman. You may want to revisit Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harold Berman. --Eastmain 02:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

PLEASE CHECK!

I'm understandably shocked by the treatment of Sadi Carnot and others dominating the Talk:Entropy page. Please check my standing in the scientific commnunity at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Entropy#Non-notable.3F . This silly shunting (and description/"content" is a Carnot switch to remove my approach to entropy for beginners who log on to Wikipedia. (I had nothing to do with the writing of "Entropy (energy dispersal)" It is a poor halfasscintific couple of paragraphs.) Thanks for checking! Do you think I deserve the 'bum's rush' that expert Wikipedian Carnot has given me? FrankLambert 05:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Re:Anti-Vandalism

Well, I used to use VandalProof, AmiDaniel's client that shows recent changes and has buttons to quickly revert edits. At the moment, I am using Lupin's Anti-vandal tool which has proved to be very effective in catching the usual types of vandalism (it searches certain words such as expletives and deragotory comments). It works amazingly well and I'm able to revert many pages in short time. Nishkid64 20:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

What you consider vandalism may not truly be vandalism. Some people would like to display the PROVEN facts but you must be a republican and only defending your right-wing propaganda-caster, Bill O'Reilly.

Hey Eddy boy, do you think you can tear yourself away from dailykos and explain why you accused me of vandalism?

RE:Vandalism by IP

Yes, now that I look at the contributions, it's enough to AIV it. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk) 05:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Note about ISEN

Ed, Yes you are right. ISEN is a patent pending but has been approached by the standards bodies about proposing a standard. Will keep you posted. Kind Regards, Matt.   User:Theobald

Re:What to do about vandalism from 24.123.27.138

I just marked the IP with the {{Vandalip}} template. This template is used on talk pages of addresses that repeatedly vandalize in order to facilitate abuse reports when there is no evidence that this is some shared IP like a library or a school. It says that the IP could be shared because this address could be used for dialup users or dynamic IP addresses because many IPs are assigned by DHCP, but I am certain that this is a semi-static IP which keeps getting assigned to the vandal by Road Runner's DHCP server. Jesse Viviano 15:57, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I edited my message above to fix a typo that prevented a template from working. Jesse Viviano 15:31, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Re:Delete Inter-A as cure for vandalism?

Hi Lucasbfr. You and I have both fixed vandalism on this page. Almost every edit since the thing's creation has been vandalism, though from different 'contributors', and it still awaits sources. I got one anon who was trashing it blocked through AIV. The creator of the page has not come back for any further work (I left him a Talk message). Could it be time for WP:PROD, or even speedy deletion for lack of assertion of notability? It doesn't seem valuable enough for page protection. EdJohnston 04:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, personally I have mixed feelings about this article. I think it is on the line between having notability or nor. Speedy is out of the question since the article is old. Maybe you should try to do an WP:AfD, so we would have people's opinion about it. Prod is more for obvious deletions. Personally I'd vote weak keep. Vandalism is usual on all the school related stuff, that's starting to get annoying. -- lucasbfr ^talk 04:46, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Latest ISBN

Hi Ed, this is one of SmackBot's standard tasks, although it is now more intelligent (i.e. fixes incorrect hyphenations) it is aimed at articles with "ISBN:". It may well have picked up invalid ISBNs, but not likely to be more than a few, I probably need to improve the regular scan. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 10:46 15 October 2006 (GMT).

Congratualtions on being first to spot. I had a lot of WP errors there, most were moved off to a subpage, I left that by accident, but rather liked it. Rich Farmbrough, 12:37 15 October 2006 (GMT).

Info.com and the List of search engines

Hello Patstuart. I notice you trying to keep out inappropriate links from List of search engines. Lately a link to Info.com was added there in the 'metasearch engine' category. Seems hard to exclude it if the subject company has an article. They are in fact a metasearch engine. So unless an AfD is proposed for Info.com it seems we have to keep the link. I could find only one genuine print article about the company. It appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 2004, at [1]. At the time, the company was said to have 10 employees. It is hard to search for 'info.com' but easier to look for the name of the company's president, Stephen Scarr. However this search finds no articles in major publications. Do you think this is sufficient notability? If you want to express an opinion, and think it appropriate, I will transfer the entire discussion to Talk:Info.com. EdJohnston 20:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

This is starting to feel like a science fiction movie: [2]. Is panic called for yet :-) EdJohnston 21:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:WEB, states that the notability guidelines for a website having an article on Wikipedia are, among others: "The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself." This does state multiple, and it's not clear if you fit those guidelines. However, the fact remains that info.com does have a Wikipedia site, and I'm certainly not up to doing the disservice of nominating your article for deletion after you pointed it out to me. The problem comes when people create new articles about non-notable websites, add it to the list, and the article is immediately deleted. If the site has an article on Wikipedia, that is enough, unless it is removed. Hope that's a good enough answer. :) -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 21:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Spelling of Alaoğlu

Hello. I haven't got any evidence he ever spelt his name this way. I only know that "oğlu" means "his son" in turkish, and I read in "Banach-Alaoglu theorem" article that he is turkish. Indeed, it is possible this person decided to spell his name without accent. But can we consider US mathematical journals as an evidence of it ? I mean, was it possible in these journals (and at that time) to spell a name with the accent ? An evidence in this direction would be to find a name with a breve accent in one of these journals (I haven't looked for). That would show that it was a choice of his to spell his name without the accent.
Grasyop 20:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

You're right. The correct spelling is Alaoglu. I hadn't noticed the forename. Moreover, I saw his name in the World directory of mathematicians (1982), without accent, and listed among US mathematicians, whereas some turkish mathematicians had a name written with a breve accent in this same book. I also saw that some names which had appeared without any diacritic in an ancient edition of the book were corrected in this one. I am going to revert my modifications.
Grasyop 20:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course, you can remove this comment. I suppose we can even write he is of US-nationality as we've got a source for this, and maybe you could write a small stub about him with that information you gave me.
Grasyop | ✉ 20:34, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, all it would have is his dates of birth and death. The photo appeared in American Mathematical Monthly, June-July 1982. It's not attributed to an author, though the editor of AMM at that time was Paul Halmos, who unfortunately died just a few weeks ago. The Social Security Death Index shows that Alaoglu was born March 19, 1914 and he died in August, 1981. His last address was in Encino, California. Is that enough for a biography :-). Encino is a suburb of LA. The LA Times archives don't go quite that far back, and the NY Times doesn't have him either. EdJohnston 20:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ivan Niven gave the Leon Alaoglu Memorial Address at Cal Tech in 1986 [3]. There is a regular lecture series at Cal Tech called the Leonidas Alaoglu Memorial Lecture in Mathematics. For example, see [4]. EdJohnston 21:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You say : "all it would have is his dates of birth and death". It's not uninteresting (I was wondering if he was still living). You also told me he got his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1938. I don't know if there is a minimal limit for a biography. Personnaly, I think this small information is better than a red link.
Grasyop | ✉ 22:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Late thanks for your work on Alaoglu. Very well. Grasyop ^✉ 19:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello question pertaining to Possible Vandalisim

....how was that Vandalisim?....CanadianCaesar has has been a Major Contributer on the Movie Gallery Page and I wanted to let him Know what was going on a little better with all the Reverts in Asylum part of the Gamecrazy section in it

please dont delete a message of mine unless you can show me the rule I broke

Segasonicdude Sega Forever! 05:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank You Understanding....It was the other Side of the Augument resorting to saying it was lies and there is no real way to verify information about a Semi-Private Members Only site unless you can prove you are a Member....the People who were in fact posting not lies but more like Half-truths were former Members of The Asylum who were banned (one of which was banned after his Wikipedia Posting) I have been a Loyal Member of said Site for almost 2 Years and was the 1st person to notice the Infraction (Rules of the Asylum Site include that you may not talk about Asylum at all)and the Webmaster asked me to Delete this Information because I Already had a Wikipedia Account when that failed "He" and I agreed to post the Truth on the Movie Gallery Page (a few of the Other guys got banned before Asylum went through a few upgrades and didnt know of the Extras and were calling it as lies because they had lack of information)

we have already had a Impartial Moderator Intervene and he deleted the Weasly Language posted by said Former Members and left nothing more than the need to know Information (he even removed some of the info I had posted because it was unnecessary for it to even be posted)

Hopefully the Fight is over Now......Myself and my Comrades have laid down our swords.....it will only start again if the Other people re-start it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Segasonicdude (talk • contribs) 25 October, 2006.

Notice removal on WikiProject Physics talk

The short version is that the past few days have been one heck of a confusing time.

To elaborate slightly, I've been occupied with all sorts of odd technical problems — vagaries with firewalls, ports, dynamic IP addresses and the like — which have caused the availability of the "alpha site" to, well, fluctuate. Not having heard back from the people with whom I've been e-mailing on this subject, I thought I'd post notice at the WikiProject Physics discussion page, but something was still glitchy. I think all of those issues are resolved by now, happily. Jump on board, if you'd like!

I had a Wikipedia account and racked up about seven thousand edits with it; lately, I've stopped using it in order to break old habits and devote myself more fully to other things.

— Blake Stacey 15:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Secrets of SmackBot?

Hello Rich! Tawkerbot and Werdnabot seem to require an administrator to block them if they malfunction. SmackBot is more user-friendly because it will stop if anyone posts a comment to its Talk page. Was it hard to add this capability? Should the other robots consider the same thing? EdJohnston 18:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

It was easy because SmackBot is really just an account. It's edits are either done using Firefox and Javascript and hence I will see the "New messages" box, or more commonly AWB which stops on a talk page message anyway. Having said that I have had a few anon IP's leaving "moo" or whatever on the talk page, which is annoying. TB and WB are both more likely to be subject of vandalistic attacks, so it may not be a good idea for them. Rich Farmbrough, 19:22 8 November 2006 (GMT).