Vacuum

The Value of Science

Hi! I'm the French editor who wrote fr:La Valeur de la Science one year ago (unfortunately no one has ever significantly edited this article...). I'm glad it is translated on en :) If you need help while translating from French, just ask. Meanos 16:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Funny how these things work out: I just nominated this article to be a Translation of the Month. You may be on the verge of getting a lot of high-quality help. JTBurman 00:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's translate

Hi. About « aller dans le sens » in « De façon plus pragmatique, ses arguments vont dans le sens d'une interdépendance, à l'image de celle mise à jour entre intuition et analyse. »

Here it means that Poincaré refers to his previous arguments about intuition and analysis, meaning the two notions are dependant from each other. As mathematics and physics share some ideas about human condition and spirit.

About « en dégager » in « Il examine tout d'abord quelle part de sciences revient à chacune de ces deux catégories de pensée scientifique, et en dégage quelques principes : »

I would suggest something like "and outlines a few principles" (it just means that, from the review of Poincaré, one can extract some main ideas).

About « des précisions » in « apporte des précisions sur des sujets abordés dans son précédent livre »

why not "precision" :) or "some interesting points/facts/information"... Meanos 13:56, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Short pages

The subpages were created a long time ago. So naturally most of the entries must have been fixed. Redirects & (properly formated) disambiguation pages do not belong there (Special:Shortpages is supposed to filter them; so if they appeared in this list it means there is/was a problem). There is not really a threshold, just a common sense. Also, most of those stubs are that short because no or very little info is available on Google. Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks for being interested in my little orphaned project :) Renata 15:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes

Hello, Vacuum. I just read the note you left on my talk page. You should know that I've already given this issue a lot of thought, and I feel I should reveal my personal reasons for using userboxes. I can't account for everyone who uses them, and I'm sure a lot of userboxes are obnoxious and could probably be deleted. Keep in mind, however, that users have managed to be perfectly obnoxious without the benefit of userboxes.

I feel that the core of this issue is POV—specifically, the question of whether userpages should show POV. I remain totally unconvinced of the merits of an NPOV userpage. Frankly, I would consider it dishonest and detrimental to the project to conceal my own feelings on controversial issues. If it came right down to it, I would sooner have no userpage at all than a userpage which misrepresents me as having no opinions of my own. As long as I have opinions, I will continue to advertise them on my page. I do this for the benefit of other editors, so that they can evaluate my contributions in the context of my personal views.

In your note, you go on to claim that userboxes will eventually be deleted anyway. I doubt that this could happen, barring an executive action on Jimbo's part (which would be extremely unpopular). The latest round of userbox purges has been an utter failure. It's become obvious that the majority of rank-and-file Wikipedians support the prudent use of userboxes, or would prefer to leave the question up to the users themselves. I understand that some people simply don't like userboxes, and they don't have to use them. But they have no right to force their preferences on other Wikipedians.

I have nothing but respect for Jimbo Wales, but I emphatically disagree with him on this point, and I will continue to disagree until it is demonstrated (rather than simply declared) that userboxes and user categories are truly detrimental to the project. I don't want to hear a bunch of nonsense about how "ugly" they are, or how they offend sensitive newcomers. It's perfectly possible to be honest and polite at the same time. For my part, I've tried to make my userpage welcoming, and I oppose offensive and provocative userboxes. However, I see no sense in removing all evidence of personal opinion. We are humans, after all. We have biases. Why not aknowledge them? I have run into no problems working with openly right-wing Wikipedians, or strongly religious Wikipedians, or monarchist Wikipedians. They know how I feel, and I know how they feel, but we're here with a common purpose. That's the power of Wikipedia. Bhumiya/Talk 04:07, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

• I wholeheartedly agree with Bhumiya on this. I'll be keeping my userboxes until Jimmy Wales tells me personally. I personally find they tell a lot about me, and add character to what would be an otherwise dull and bland userpage. Beau99|Talk to me 05:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well, the important thing is not whether a person's identity (userpage) is NPOV, it's whether their contributions are; in fact, in a way I am strangely unable to articulate, I actually think it is important for userpages to be POV...maybe to get it out of one's system in preparation to write good NPOV articles. I see userboxes and user pages as a way of connecting with smaller groups within the overwhelmingly large wikipedia community...as one might do within any large community or organization. In any case, I think that POV userpages and userboxes enhance, or at least don't detract from, wikipedia.

Quickest and easiest are NOT always best, they are only quickest and easiest. Sometimes quickest and easiest are detrimental...I would not leave, but I would certainly enjoy wikipedia less if I were not able able to put my real self into my userpage (and if you take a look, you will see that although my userpage is about as heavy POV as one can get, my contributions are exceedingly NPOV...so I am not sure what's meant by the comment that userboxes "are attractive to the wrong kinds of people" - I think I have been quite an asset to the community thus far ;) IMHO).

I think the real problem here is not with POV on userpages, but with a small (but extremely loud) segment of users who can't bear the fact that not everybody embraces their beliefs. I don't care if you're (note: you is hypothetical) a conservative that believes in "God", but I'm not and don't, and that should be ok...but it's not ok because you (hypothetical) can't stand me being a liberal who doesn't believe in "God", so you want to shut me up. You don't see any of us userbox users going around trying to force anyone to use userboxes!!! There's a lot of belief systems out there, yours (both hypothetical and not) is probably just as wrong as mine is...get over it!!! That's all I have to say about that :). bcatt 10:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe Bcatt and I are on the same page. In the end, some users wish to aknowledge their biases, and some users don't. For those who want to make their views public, there should be a convenient and standardized means of doing so. We should concentrate on improving userboxes and eliminating specific problems associated with their use, not eliminating them altogether. Bhumiya/Talk 21:21, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I can't really reply to you all at once, so I'm going to do it here. I'd like to thank all of you for offering your honest opinions, and I'd like to make a response. My reason for opposing userboxes is mostly that time spent prettying up one's userpage is less time spent creating an encyclopedia. I don't really see where people are coming up with userbox deletion = censorship, or that I hold the belief that userpages must be NPOV...

I hope you don't mind me altering your formatting so I can respond to your response. Some people use their userpages as vanity pages, but one's userpage can (and in many cases, does) serve a vital encyclopedic function. It helps other users to know you and your opinions, revealing your biases and establishing a context for the edits you make. I agree that people should spend more time creating the encyclopedia and less time working on their userpages. This is precisely why we should have access to ready-made tools like userboxes, which make it quick and easy to create informative, cross-referenced userpages. Bhumiya/Talk 21:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

GAMEY

Understood. You might want to make a note on talk to that effect so people don't jump on it and say "Hey, you're not supposed to put it back!" ;-) So much for me getting over Wikiholism ... 17:12, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Copyright and trademark symbols

User:Vacuum/Spam. I ran only one query of four at wikisign. It took more than 8 hours to run, so I can't recommend running any of the others. Gazpacho 18:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I ran another query and it took more than a day, so now I really don't recommend running them. However, I did find some spam at Design Web Format! Gazpacho 06:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikireason article format

Dear Vacuum,

The recent weeks have seem significant progress on proposals for article organization at Wikireason. I would like to settle on a model in the near future so that we can demonstrate the power of the Wikireason concept. You have previously provided valuable input on these issues, so I would appreciate any additional feedback that you can provide before this decision is made.

Please take a look at the following pages and comment on their talk pages:

• Category:Wikireason organizational models
• Wikireason:Organization

Thanks, AdamRetchless 05:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

analytical languages

You left a message at Talk:Analytic_language some time ago.. I agree that the example sentence sucks in English AND in Chinese. Perhaps you could suggest a completely new "synthetic" sentence in English which I'll translate. Preferably not containing "friends" or "eggs". 203.218.91.57 09:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Phototropism

Hi, I had a question to you about the article of phototropism. You mentioned there that chloroplasts move to the edge in high light intensity en more to the centre in low light. Should'nt that be reversed? Pardon me, if I'm wrong.

84.80.192.161 20:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Bas M

nl.wikipedia

Summer

Hey. Unfortunately I will be in China for pretty much the entire summer. As for the North Korean missile situation, I am very much uncertain until I look into it further. Thanks for the comments on the IRP, they were very insightful. Oh yeah, avoid references to WMCI or anything else remotely related.

Anyway, have a good one. Colipon+(T) 06:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Bush family conspiracy theory

Hi. I saw your account linked to the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Bush family conspiracy theory page. What I'm not sure I understand is what happened to the page content. The current "Bush family conspiracy theory" page has only a couple of sentences and has been PROD'd. So it looks like the page was deleted and then re-created. However the VfD decision was to keep. Do you perhaps have some idea what happened? Thank you. — RJH (talk) 16:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Be sure that this is what you are doing...

Just put your mouse over the picture to reveal my secret message. ~~_gorter^Sean • (Get a cool signature|Esperanza Membership) 06:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I hope this is what you are doing... :)

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ArbCom elections are now open!

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