User talk:Mike Schwartz

Hi there. Welcome to Wikipedia. Thanks for your contributions to Rice University and other pages. When you get a chance, drop us a note at Wikipedia:New user log to introduce yourself.

You can sign your name on talk pages by using " ~~~ " for your username and " ~~~~ " for your username and a timestamp.
The Wikipedia Tutorial is a good easy-to-follow guide to editing Wikipedia.
Welcome is another good place to start.
Wikipedia:How does one edit a page gives editing help.
Wikipedia:Manual of Style gives formatting info.
Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines tell about the principles we operate on. It's important, but don't try to read it all now.
Wikipedia:Help covers a broad range of useful topics.
Wikipedia:Help desk is a good place to ask questions.
Wikipedia:Show preview explains how to double-check your edits before saving.

You should also feel free to drop me a question on my talk page.

Happy editing, LUDRAMAN | T 17:06, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I finally saw [/read] this today. More later... if time permits. Mike Schwartz 18:57, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I decided to add a personal subpage sandbox page - at User talk:Mike Schwartz/subpage/sandbox ; (is this going to work?) Mike Schwartz (talk) 00:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

useful links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_page

deleted old section [from 00:39, 17 July 2007 (UTC)]

[archived it first - "sorta"]

Haim Yosef Zadok

Hi. Thanks for spotting that syntax error. Also, if you see an obvious thing like that in the future, feel free to be bold and fix it yourself. Worse comes to worst, it can always be reverted per WP:BRD. Cheers. -- Nudve (talk) 03:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

umm, OK. I guess if I change "grant granting" to "begin granting", then someone can still tweak it (fix it) (repair it) later, "if" appropriate. ["such as", to change it to just "grant"] Thank you. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 21:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

thanks for pointing the error. i actually deleted that reference, and put in a new one... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Veryhuman (talk • contribs) 21:25, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

re: oops

i imagine the change was made by 'veryhuman' b/c he has both the before and after part. No idea what went on there. At any rate, I put the citation back. Lihaas (talk) 21:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

idea for an edit, but first: any comments?

Note for someone (CALR?) (should it be copied / moved to the User talk page User_talk:CALR? -- or perhaps to the Talk:Mathematics "discussion" page?) (Actually, replying / answering here would seem OK to me...) This sentence:

Finally, information theory is concerned with the amount of data that can be 
stored on a given medium, and hence concepts such as compression and entropy.

appears to have been introduced here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mathematics&diff=65060026&oldid=65058680 My suggestion is: to change

and hence concepts such as

to [something like]

and hence deals with concepts such as

Sorry if I have made a mistake here by failing to "Be Bold" and just go and do the edit first ("and ask questions later"). Today I was inclined to err on the side of being cautious (and also maybe apologetic - - "just in case"). Mike Schwartz (talk) 18:10, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[archive of] "road not taken" diatribe

I was going to put this on the Talk page for Wayne_Dolcefino, but it seemed so long, and the possible comments so unlikely to be surprising, that I just decided to "Be Bold" and make the edit. However, having put some time in to writing this, I didn't want to get rid of it completely. So, for your reading enjoyment, here it is:

ambiguity (also, missing period)

In the article, Wayne_Dolcefino, this sentence: "A $5.5 million verdict for libel (Sylvester Turner v. KTRK Television; 1996) was subsequently overturned by a court of appeals and upheld by the Texas Supreme Court" appears. For one thing, it has a missing period at the end; but while we are fixing that, I would also suggest that we resolve the ambiguity. What does

"[...] and upheld by the Texas Supreme Court"

mean? By the default rules that are simply grammatical rules, the subject of the sentence ("$5.5 million verdict for libel") would also be the default, at least, for the antecedent of the ("implied") [zero-words-long] pronoun that is the suject for the verb "upheld" (as well as for the verb "was overturned", earlier, which is the main verb of that sentence). So (if you got through all that and are still awake here), that would imply that it means

"[...] and it [the $5.5 million verdict for libel] was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court."

But I mean, come on, I don't think that is what was intended. I am not a lawyer, but that doesn't seem to fit in very well with the context (the paragraph it occurs in). It is preceded by a sentence saying "Dolcefino and his employer have been the target of various lawsuits.". That would normally require some word such as "however", if the writer were intentionally going on to discuss a case where "Dolcefino and his employer" had ended up [when all the smoke cleared] actually losing a given case.

So it is pretty likely that the intent of

"[...] and upheld by the Texas Supreme Court"

was to tell us that the overturning -- that is, the action by the appeals court -- was later "upheld" by the Texas Supreme Court. But in that case, say that! Say what it "should" say. For example, say

"[...] whose decision was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court."

Make it unambiguous -- even though the "context" analysis (see above) is already possible, and (with some logic) could serve to indicate to us what it [probably] "should" say. IMHO this is a good general principle of the careful use of language - write what you mean, clearly, so that no Wayne Dolcefino-style investigative sleuthing is needed to determine what was meant. Before I fix this, does anyone have any comments? --Mike Schwartz (talk) 21:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IP Vandal

Hello, Mike Schwartz. You have new messages at Arakunem's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

OK - thank you. (do I reply here, or on your talk page?) I guess, the vandalism that I found, was "before" [the other vandalism that led to] the warning. (I didn't check the exact sequence...)
PS: While I was waiting for your reply, I found some other vandalism and reverted it; (there was a very easy one-click "un-do" link). HOWEVER, I did not know how to add a warning [yet another] (one of many!) to the talk page of the (IP address) user who had done some damage (see User_talk:63.194.36.11). Please feel free to do so, if/as appropriate.
Thanks, --Mike Schwartz (talk) 21:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox Former Country

Hi Mike,

I left Wikipedia a few months ago and only saw your message after an email led me back to the site. So before I go again, some quick answers to your questions:

year_start / year_end - these variables must be separate from the date and must be entered without wikilinking. As it says in the instructions, these variables are responsible for the placement of the article into a range of categories (e.g. "1806 disestablishments"). Entering these years in any other way breaks the code.

viewing old versions of the template in action - when you view an old version of a page, it uses the current versions of any templates involved. To view the page with the older version of the template, you must save an earlier version of the template somewhere else and then modify the old version of the article so that it refers to the modified template. A messy job.

Good luck. 52 Pickup (talk) 20:12, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]