User talk:Zoe/archive 2

I just noticed that you reformatted the whole wikitext of the Mayonnaise article when you edited it. Is that a default setting of your browser or something, or is there some other reason for that? It's annoying to many of us, and makes the "diff" function all but useless (see http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Mayonnaise&diff=348274&oldid=347752 for example). If there's a setting you can use in your browser, or some other way you can avoid doing that, I would greatly appreciate it. A good Wikipedia article should not only have good content, but be easy to edit as well. --LDC

FWIW, I find the diffs are much more legible on changes after the text has been put into paragraph form (ie, not filled with line breaks at random intervals). When diffing across the divide, any actual changes are conveniently colored red, so it's a very minor inconvenience. I say thank you Zoe for making the page formatting clean! --Brion 23:55 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

I've never understood why people can't be bothered with formatting the things to begin with. Whenever I encounter badly-formatted articles like that, I tend to fix them. Besides, the diff shows in different colors, so it shouldn't really matter. -- Zoe

Single line breaks in articles are a pet peeve of mine: IMO they strip diffs of context, and so are annoying and contrary. --KQ

OK, I guess I'm outvoted. I prefer line breaks in source text primarily because it makes editing the article easier. And lines are reformatted on display anyway, so there's no reason to format source text for any reason other than ease of editing. --LDC

Line breaks that look great in your edit box may be screamingly difficult to work with on mine -- if my edit box is not as wide as yours, lines are hideously jagged; if my box is wider than yours, you're wasting my screen space, and lines I add will be jaggies to you. Things that are uncomfortable to wrap (long URLs for instance) may be more convenient as separate lines, but most text no. Additionally, line breaks aren't 'silent' in : indents or * and # lists, so the line-breaker has to remember to change his habit -- I've fixed more than one of those in my time here. --Brion 19:48 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

"Annoying and embarassing"? I rather thought "mentally ill." --KQ 02:15 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)

Well, I was trying to be polite. :-( -- Zoe 02:34 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)

I applaud you for it. :-) No need to frown, unless you're frowning at me (which I can understand). Cheers, --KQ

No frown your way. It was directed at the situation. -- Zoe

Ah. :-/ That's frownworthy, too. ;-) And, just to exhaust my repertoire of emoticons, here's Ronald Reagan: 7:^] --KQ 02:48 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)

Zoe, the trouble with replacing the US Supreme Court with the USPO is that non-Americans like myself have some idea of how the Supreme Court fits into the US Constitution and thus I know that the comparison I made with the BBC is fairly close. However I, and probably most non-Americans, don't know anything about the Constitutional situation of the US Post Office. So it's not helpful to us to make a comparison with it. I thought that it was just an arm of the Executive in the same way as the General Post Office is a British Government department. Therefore not independent in any way unlike the BBC. What's the true position ? -- Derek Ross 23:03 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)

I see your point. The US Postal Service WAS, at one time, a Department of the Executive Branch. It has since become privatized, in which the President appoints the Postmaster-General, but it must support itself by its own income, instead of using tax money. If you don't like the anaology, like I said, go ahead and change it back. -- Zoe

Zoe, How does one do a revert on vandalism? Thank you. Christopher Mahan

whats gonna constitute proof? why don't you people go read up on Columbus or leave it to those who have? Why can't a little common sense come into play? The dude was a slave trader. He got rich off slave trading. He slave traded as soon as he got to the New World. He was slavetrading years before he ever thought of sailing west.

Proof would be what it usually is in historical contexts: citations of your sources, preferably primary sources. That is, Columbus's journals are evidence, as are his ships's logs, and records of the Spanish court. An article in a reasonably trustworthy publication (as opposed to, say, the Weekly World News) is a starting point. "My brother said this guy told him this in a bar" is not evidence.

Common sense means, among other things, that if you're telling people to read up on something, and you're using that to back an idea that they/we aren't familiar with, it helps if you say "go read XYZ". Otherwise they'll just go back to what they read before, and not find what you're pointing at. Vicki Rosenzweig

You sound like somebody totally ignorant of the subject. Go to the library and get a damn book on Columbus.

what proof do you want? Im not insulting you. You are insulting me by attacking what I have written without justification. Any iota of attempt on your part to verify this basic fact would reveal that I am correct.

zoe. you havent tried to find any information on the topic.

Well, yes. I just wrote an email about that, in a roundabout way. ;-) --KQ

Its my talk page. I don't want garbage cluttering it.

She has a point ZOe. -Sv

thx! : > Lir 04:12 Oct 20, 2002 (UTC)

I've just seen your change at Academy Award for Best Picture for the movie "Il Postino". In principle I would agree with your change on the basis that the main entry for a movie or book should be in its original language. Some time back, however, I did get some flak about not having titles in English since this is an English language encyclopedia. I didn't feel too much like having a fight about it then, so I just went along. At Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film I made all the links to the English title of the movie where a separate one existed. If you think that we should review this policy, I'll be glad to hear your point of view. Eclecticology 23:49 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

The Postman is a Kevin Costner movie. Il Postino is how the movie was always called, by the Academy Awards organization, in the press, in all of the posters and advertising. I have never seen it called The Postman. -- Zoe

I was basing my approach to this on the IMDb site which shows that "The Postman" was the title for US release; that site also shows a picture of the CD package with both the English and Italian titles. As I said before I'm not averse to having the Italian title as the main entry, and start applying that to all films in other languages.

Well, I don't want to do that as a general rule, but go by what the title was most known as. I'd rather see Life Is Beautiful instead of La Vita è bella, because the first one was the only way it was known in the United States. I guess we're schizophrenic that way. -- Zoe

On the matter of The English Patient, I've always viewed the inclusion of the year in the name as optional but preferable. I know that you showed some concern at that time that all of your efforts would be negated, or that you might have to redo everything. I do change these names when they come up, including fixing the links, but that's no reason to require you to change any good work that you have done. In dealing with the various Academy Award pages I mostly include a disambiguator on a best guess basis; checking everything out at that point would slow things down tremendously. Using the date there optimizes the possibility that the lists and the articles will ultimately match. Eclecticology

I was doing what you were doing originally, and was told to stop it. -- Zoe

It's hard for anybody to win in these situations. Ultimately, the only way that you can proceed is the way you sincerely feel is the best way, especially in some of these disambiguation problems where the result could go either way. Of course, just because somebody tells you to stop doesn't mean you have to agree or go along with that person. The year in the title issue seems fairly harmless. Adding the year doesn't hurt anything, at worst it's useless. I won't take issue if you omit it, but I'll keep adding it when I feel it is the right thing.

The language of the title is probably more tricky. You make a good point about "Life is Beautiful", and it may be impossible to know why it would be treated one way, and "Il Postino" a different way. FWIW the first English languge "The Postman" was made in 1910. A redirect from one to the other will likely be needed.

Anyway I appreciate the amount of work that you have put into these various film articles, and this minor difference over names does not diminish the value of your efforts. Eclecticology

Thanks for sticking up for me. I'm glad it turned out to be a misunderstanding, but I appreciate your effort nonetheless. Ortolan88

Hi Zoe, I've replied on the Ireland talk page. Renata 15:46 Nov 2, 2002 (UTC)

Thanks for filling in the day pages on a regular basis. --mav

whatd larry delete? Lir 23:22 Nov 7, 2002 (UTC)

Zoe! PLease leave other user's own Talk pages alone. Everything on Wikipedia is under the GNU Free Documentation License, but ettiquette has been that user's Talk pages are their "own". We don't want anybody to mess with *your* pages, either. Thanks.

Lir is NOT changing her own Talk page. She's deleting the talk page of an article about the Celtic god Lir. That's an entirely different subject. -- Zoe

Hmm, I'm pretty sure she did also delete her Talk page, and I was referring to that. I guess you were referring to another page (Lir). Sorry if my comments were inappropriate.

Yah, but its all text I put there so....wuts the problem?

Zoe, I'd rather not clutter my own user talk page with this sort of talk. So, I'll reply here on yours, if you like. (Feel free to delete the exchange if you like.) You wrote:

What would you call it when one person, without consulation and without warning, suddenly makes an article disappear? If it's not censorship, it's vandalism. Should we do the same thing with all of the anti-Semitism/Jewish/Jehovah's Witnesses articles that are all the subjects of various disagreements? Or does it only happen when your particular ox is gored? -- Zoe

It's obviously not censorship, because that implies I have some special power on Wikipedia, which I do not. It's also not vandalism, because I did state my reasons, saw from the replies that no one had any good reasons to the contrary, and acted according to my conscience and my understanding of community standards.

I did not always think this way, but I now strongly reject any suggestion that the most productive and knowledgable members of Wikipedia--this seems to include you, but again, I haven't been following Wikipedia that closely lately, so I'll have to take your word for it--need to go out of their way to coddle people who just don't want to play the game we want to play.

I don't want to think that I'm a particularly meaningful poster on the pedia, though I have seen myself in the top ten list of posters for previous months. To say that you don't know me from Adam is rather offensive, however. It seems more to me that that means you're more interested in only dealing with certain posters and don't care about anybody else. -- Zoe

Why should you be offended? It's simply a fact! --Larry Sanger