User talk:Taxman/Archive2

Block of anon user

Good 1 week block. Nice to see an admin taking a strong stand against vandals. None of that 24 hour block or "well he needs to be warned fifty time AGAIN" (like they are entitled to some kind of due process or that they forgot that vandalims is wrong...") Good job. You're on my list of good admins now :)Later.Gator (talk) 17:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Well I'm all for due process, and warnings first are very good because sometimes they do work. But once warned, when an editor shows obvious intent to cause problems, we don't need them. I do prefer a recent test4 before blocking for a long time though, unless it's really obvious. I agree in general we are way to lenient with people that are not helping the project. It's not that hard to play by the rules. - Taxman ^Talk 17:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Well said. See you around.Gator (talk) 17:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. If you remind me after you have about three months of editing experience and do some content creation (maybe I missed it in your vandal fighting work though) I'll nominate you for adminship. If you're willing to fix up our legal articles that would be great, but any topic you have good references for or are willing to research would be good too. Those are my personal preferences for admin candidates, and many share them, but you may get nominated and be successful without that. - Taxman ^Talk 17:52, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Hey

Taxman, are you back now? :-) --HappyCamper 15:53, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes and no. Moreso, I figured I'd just be honest that I never managed to completely give up the addiction. :) But yeah, I'll pretty much be here but just avoid getting involved in things that will take major amounts of time. Thanks for noticing - Taxman ^Talk 13:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay :-) Nice having you around! --HappyCamper 01:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the b'day greetings. :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Citations

I think we agree: Citation and trustworthiness

Ok thanks, but I'm confused why you're telling me this. - Taxman ^Talk 18:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

US taxation

Here's what you have to do. You have to read what I post to see the sources cited. Since they're cited, they also stay. Also, I am adding to the article. Your disagreement of the cited sources doesn't make it any less an add. It just becomes your PoV. Don't delete my valuable additions just because they don't agree with yours. If you do so, you will be blocked.--bb69 18:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)BB69

The sources you "cited" don't support your position. To proceed, you need to find sources that do. The 1040 instructions are not where the law is and staking your position on what the 1040 forms don't say is laughable. - Taxman ^Talk

Incorrect. The sources I cited do support my position. They will be posted. You haven't proved anything contrary, which is typical. --bb69 18:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)BB69 ^Talk

Apparently you aren't able to or are unwilling to understand basic argumentative structure. Your the main topic of your edits are not supported by any reliable sources, your edits just refer to non definitive sources on related matters. It's classic red herring logical fallacy. Please find reliable references to back your position or you will be blocked from editing. - Taxman ^Talk 18:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It is you who aren't able to or are willing to understand basic argumentative structure. All of my topics and edits are support by reliable sources and my edits refer to definitive source on related matters. Again, just because you don't agree, doesn't make them wrong. You are about to be blocked from editing if you keep this up.bb69 19:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)BB69^Talk

The sun is made of paper mache. Prove it isn't... go on, prove it! (and no citing to scientists, because they're all part of a conspiracy to convince us otherwise, so they can keep all that paper mache for themselves). Well, since you can't prove to my satisfaction that the sun isn't made of paper, I'm going to go ahead and put that in the Sun article. BD2412 T 18:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I've never brought one, but I've commented in a few - I believe that it would not be inappropriate in this case, but I fear that it would quickly devolve into the subject trying to "prove" his beliefs. BD2412 T 18:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Well it's fairly obvious he isn't even trying to actually prove his case, so I believe the process would be pretty successful. His version of "proving" is readily seen to be flawed. It takes some time to start and RfC, so I'll make one last attempt to reason, then we'll go that route. - Taxman ^Talk 18:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed - I can think of a few other editors who will join us in certifying the dispute. BD2412 T 18:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Is BB69 the only one, or are there more that should be looked at? BB69 just happens to be the one I've run into this time. - Taxman ^Talk 18:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

There have been others, but they have generally been anons. Of course, BB69 may have been responsible for some of it, but we don't even need to go there for purposes of an RfC. BD2412 T 19:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I have already found reliable sources that support my position. I have posted them all over discussion pages and on the articles. Look around a little bit more. I will feel free to edit articles as I see they need when they are incorrect and adding when I see needed. Don't talk about violating commen sense when you're a victim of it. I've already been through this sort of talk with Wikipedia and they agree with me. Your modes of tactic are unacceptable and I will also purse dispute resolution as I have in the past and stopped types like you. I'd rather you just pay attention and discuss things with me first. --bb69 19:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)bb69 ^Talk

BB69, your "reliable sources" amount to gematria - you take individual words, pick out definitions of those words from cases that have nothing to do with the point at hand, and then cite those definitions as Gospel to demonstrate that the words of the Constitution and the tax code mean something other than the obvious meaning which the courts have discerned. You also misunderstand the role of the courts, which is to interpret the law - where a word is subject to multiple interpretations, it is the function of the courts to determine which interpretation was intended by the lawmakers. This interpretation is presumed correct unless and until the legislature changes the law to express a differing intent. BD2412 T 19:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

BD2412 , if you think my reliable sources amount to gematria you should check out your own. I take words that have been discussed in cases, no matter if the case was about it, it covered the topic that I mentioned. It's not my fault if you don't understand that the Constitution said no direct taxes and that you don't understand what that means. I have tried to spell it out for you to no avail. You misunderstand that the courts can sometimes misinterpret the law and not even allow law in some cases. The Constitution is the ultimate law of the land and if the courts do not adhere to it, they do not supercede it still. The law has never changed, only the courts sometimes do. bb69 16:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)BB69

Well BB69, I've taken your response to mean that you're not willing to be reasonable and work with other editors. It's obvious enough that the sources you cite don't back up your position that I have a hard time believing that you believe what you are writing. Your citations are irrelevant to the points you are trying to make with your edits. So I've created an RFC on the matter. Please respond there, and stop disrupting. - Taxman ^Talk 20:20, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Taxman, then you've assumed wrong. It means I am willing to be reasonable and work with other editors. It's obvious you don't understand and don't agree with the sources that I cite backing up my position. All my citations are relavant to the points I'm making with my edits, you just don't happen to agree with them and never source anything yourself on your views. This shows me exactly where you're coming from. I have already responded in the RFC on the matter. I have also requested mediation with your disruptions.bb69 16:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)BB69

Reallize that the RFC is demonstrating a consensus against your actions, so if you continue to add material that is not supported by reliable sources, it will be seen as disruption and you can be blocked from editing for it. To avoid that, make sure your sources actually back your edits, as it seems is possible that you have done in this edit. If you have in fact done that in this case, please continue that. Do reallize however that you haven't established how the material in that edit is relevant or important for the article. I so far have not taken a position on the material in the article and I'm not saying I don't agree with your sources. What I'm saying is that your edits were not backed up by them or any others, and the other parties to the RFC agree. Your response to the RFC simply repeated your earlier demonstrably false statements. - Taxman ^Talk 17:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

A consensus against my actions do not make them wrong. It just states that many people disagree. The RFC is there to have someone take another look at all the actions. As always, I will continue to add material that is supported by reliable sources, so, no disruption. I don't see how I have to state the relevancy to that add as it is a direct quote from a court case having to do with income tax. I don't see many adds establishing the relevancy of their adds, so there should not be a double standard. I will continue to say that all my edits are backed up if the other parties think differently they will have to show me. That's what a discussion is for. And if they do that, they will also have to show me where every singl edit also show relevancy. My response to the RFC states accurate statements. Should it come down to the proof of every single edit that everyone has made, it will be a mountain of information and many pages long. Right now, I will let my text on talk pages serve as proof backing up what I have said on the RFC page. bb69 17:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)BB69

No, but it does indicate the likelihood is that you are wrong. I would also recommend you stop claiming your edits had sources to back your claims as it's easy to demonstrate that is false. That is the central problem here. And because you have disrupted and you are the one making claims contrary to established understanding, you do bear additional burden to back up your edits. Again, bold claims require greater evidence. The RFC does establish a consensus that you have violated Wikipedia policy and does support actions against further policy violations by you. - Taxman ^Talk 18:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, so the BB69 RFC has established that lots of people think BB69's edits don't make sense, and that no one but BB69 himself thinks they do. OK, so now what is the next step? I do hope that procedures like this will simplify our work of writing an encyclopedia... I would certainly like to learn how to deal effectively with such disruptive editing in other areas.... --Macrakis 05:07, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

As I outlined in the RFC, BB69 (and any sockpuppets or anonymous IP's he edits under) carries a greater burden to establish the veracity of his edits. For starters his edits can be reverted if they look fishy, and he must present clearer evidence that the edits are correct and relevant. The RFC has been successful in gathering comments from qualified editors to establish that BB69's edits are not appropriate. It is my understanding of the blocking policy that edits that continue defy the consensus established in the RFC would qualify for blocking under the disruption criteria of the blocking policy. That block should be listed at the Administrator's noticeboard for review. If challenged, the next step would be to proceed to request arbitration. My guess is this case is so obvious that an arbitration case would be rejected instead with the advice to simply block the user if the behavior continues. A same overall approach would be my advice for similar situations: 1) try to resolve the situation on the user's talk page by pointing to relevant policy, 2) establish consensus in an RFC, 3) enforce the RFC, and finally 4) take it to arbcom if need be. So you could definitely help in this case by watching out for suspicious edits by BB69 or anonymous IP's related to this issue and reverting them if need be. Unless I'm missing some edits he seems to have currently gotten the point that his edits aren't acceptable and has resorted instead to arguing incessantly. That's fine as long as articles aren't suffering, though eventually arguing without improving articles is itself a block-able issue. - Taxman ^Talk 14:48, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Find-A-Grave links

I was here to read what was going on today with our mutual "friend" User:BB69 and I noticed your link to Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people. User:UninvitedCompany has placed comments at WP:AN/I and at Wikipedia talk:Find-A-Grave famous people raising the question whether the links to findagrave.com should be deleted from articles. If you have an interest, you may want to participate in the discussion.

And something does need to be done about the stream of tax protester changes; it is very draining. -- DS1953 19:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I just have the template up, I think having the famous people graves bit in there at all is odd. It's not related to the missing encyclopedia articles project. - Taxman ^Talk 19:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The relationship to the missing encyclopedia articles is that there are many individuals listed that are missing articles here. IMO it is very pertinent to filling in those gaps. Doc

Yeah, upon looking more closely it's just being used as a list of possibly needed biographies. But then it's name is odd (implying we're trying to find the graves), and I think it would be an improvement to simply include it in the missing biographies. But if having it separate is an advantage, so be it. It's not a big problem, so I won't worry about it. - Taxman ^Talk 17:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

205.189.150.1

Well done. Glad to see an admin who believes that a"final" warning is a final warning and stops cutting so much slack for people who seeks to destroy our hard work. THANK YOU!Gator (talk) 18:09, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Hindi vocal samples

Hi. I might give it a try though I don't have a great voice. deeptrivia (talk) 01:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey that would still be great. It may spur someone that does have a voice actor's quality voice to do them later. But anything is better than me, an American native learner trying to pronounce the syllabary. :) - Taxman ^Talk 13:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I can make wav files with the software I have. Is that okay? deeptrivia (talk) 03:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually I figured out I can make ogg files too. I'll be doing that. I'll record everything on one file, and send it to you to see. If it's fine, I can split it into files for individual letters. deeptrivia (talk) 03:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The vocal samples (the whole alphabet in one file) is here. Please tell me what to do next. Thanks. deeptrivia (talk) 03:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning

Hi Taxman, I'm sad at the comments you made on MediaWiki talk:Copyrightwarning - I don't feel it was necessary for you to accuse me of bad faith. I admit that it's a rather silly thing to get in a fuss about. Cheers, Talrias (t | e | c) 15:33, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Then you should have stepped back and left it alone before you did it. You did edit war on the page with no evidence to back your position. It's better to think before editing and if you're editing emotionally, simply not do it. - Taxman ^Talk 15:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

You're probably right. I was just annoyed at some of the incorrect comments made on the talk page (which seemed to persuade you to weigh in on their behalf). My apologies for my conduct. Talrias (t | e | c) 15:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Taxman in exile

Hello, Taxman. Are you in fact User:Taxman in exile? I didn't see anything about it on your userpage, and so it made me suspicious. Just making sure, Blackcap (talk) ^{(vandalfighters, take a look)} 01:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, God, I'm sorry, I didn't check the page history. O.K., I see that it's you. Sorry for the bother, Blackcap (talk) ^{(vandalfighters, take a look)} 01:50, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

No problem, thanks for checking. :) I should note it on my userpage, I just didn't yet. - Taxman ^Talk 08:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Taxman, I just recognized, what a great job my nickname-collegue at en:WP is doing. In German Wikipedia I'm far away from becoming admin, but I'll try not to let your nick down there. Just wanted to say Hi and hope we can get along well. So long de:Benutzer:Taxman --84.57.255.155 23:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Hallo, that's pretty funny. If I knew any German at all, I'd ask you what your price for relinquishing your user name would be. I've been using Taxman as a username for years. Wouldn't you just rather have the German equivalent anyway? :) In any case, just spend some time getting familiar with the important policies and do the name proud. - Taxman ^Talk 01:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, the German equivalent would be the German word for "steersman", and thats defenately not what I want to express. And as I'm also using this nick on the internet for some eight years now, I wouldn't sell it anyway :D. After all, I wont edit in en:WP with this acc, and your edits in de:WP are probably easy to detect *g*. TheGermanTaxman --160.62.4.10 13:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates

Thanks for correcting the snafu on the talk page. A silent edit conflict meant that I was completely unaware that I had obliterated others' comments. It was completely unintentional. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I of course figured that, but man it was odd. Silently merging is probably a good software feature. Silently replacing is a problem. - Taxman ^Talk 17:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, thank you anyway. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

From fair Italy

Dear Taxman,

I just translated your Italian User Page... and welcomed in your Italian user talk. If you wish you can read some instructions for non italian speakers/writers. Happy wikiing in it.wiki too. εいぷしろんΔでるたωおめが

WP:V citations

You may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Citation format poll: Format of citations and WP:V examples, and WP:FN. (SEWilco 16:49, 14 December 2005 (UTC))

Yeah, I saw it, but would you just back off and calm down? The general point is good and obvious, but you're obscuring the issue by your methods. Just step back, and it will probably help make it more likely common sense will win out in the end. - Taxman ^Talk 17:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Common sense was doing fine until the ArbComm lost theirs. Ignoring those who rule doesn't seem like a good idea. (SEWilco 03:45, 15 December 2005 (UTC))

Well no, you can't ignore arbcom, but you can avoid escalating it. I haven't read a lick of the case nor the evidence (and hopefully I never will. I stay as far away from those as I can.), but I do know you can't make it in front of arbcom for always editing politely and with common sense. So while it's always possible they're all off their rocker, it's more likely not. You might as well self assess and see where your actions are contributing to the problem, even if you're not 100% culpable. Being gracious in admitting fault and backing off attack mode can go a long way. - Taxman ^Talk 04:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

WP:FARC

Thanks for the kind words, but I think I have an uphill battle with Roy Orbison. To be honest, it is not great, but is much better than it was. On the other hand, I think Behistun Inscription is entirely fine.

Given the reactions of others, I think my finger must be completely off the pulse here. As for listing Christmas the week before Christmas...-- ALoan (Talk) 02:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Well no, I think we have just gotten a sudden change in what people want for FA's from a bunch of people that showed up at FARC but don't seem to participate much in FAC. It comes and goes I guess. As long as it is in the name of better articles I'll live with it. - Taxman ^Talk 13:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I take your point about improving featured articles. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, listing an article on FARC rarely results in it being improved. It is a bit like voters on FAC spending their time objecting due to minor points they have identified rather than just dealing with those points themselves. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:49, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

In some cases I simply know nothing about the topic and the given issue is something I can't fix, and that is of course true for others. But on anything else that most people could fix, you're right. The only thing we can do there is encourage people to take action instead of just complaining. Try bringing it up on the talk page. Eventually we can shift the culture to improving what can be improved instead of a bare remove vote. - Taxman ^Talk 14:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Malwa FA nomination

Hi Taxman! I've modified the lead a bit to address your concerns, and have also commented on the nomination page. Please check that out. By the way, I'm planning to do the Hindi vocal samples immediately after returning from a short vacation, on the 27th. Cheers :) deeptrivia (talk) 03:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'll go look and comment at the FAC entry. - Taxman ^Talk 13:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Peer Review of Cheers

Just so you know, I tried to address your comments on Cheers peer review! Thanks for a look-over, and any additional comments would be helpful! Thanks. Staxringold 03:57, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again! Made some more touch-ups, and after a little more Peer Reviewing I think I'll take a shot at FA. I'll post again to request your support when I do. :D Staxringold 22:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Parsi disambiguation

I think your suggestion is good, although what of Pakistani Parsis then? Not to mention desis and NRI's around the world of Parsi extraction. Although, I don't have a better suggestion, and think that your suggested title would be a vast improvement on the current situation! In other words, I was just nit picking and the desi/NRI issue can easily be put under the Indian umbrella... and I don't think Parsis in Karachi would be terribly offended - but when it comes to those two countries... Khirad^talk 07:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

BD2412's RFA

Thanks for not avoiding giving a me too vote in my RfA, Taxman - I'll do my best as an admin to help make the dream of Wikipedia into a reality! bd2412 T 22:01, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Taxman and BD2412, some names of possible admins (I have not further investigated) include AlanBarrett, Hike395, and ElfGuy. --Ancheta Wis 20:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Point was you need to get them to agree, nominate them, and have them be successful :) But that's the easier part sometimes, as you've alread identified them. I don't know any of them, so you'll have to do the nominating. - Taxman ^Talk 21:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I sent them talk messages. The probability of success is about 1/3. Who knows? I made them no promises, but promised to work with them on a good-faith effort if they were interested. That appears to be the limit of my responsiveness, as my crystal ball is currently clouded. And the fickleness of human nature makes this somewhat iffy. My strategy would be use the current sequence of actions which were templated by BD2412's nomination of me last 23 Dec. But if each of them required a different set of actions to somehow set the RFA's in motion, then I understand that I would be the one with the responsibility to husband-along the nomination. However, these actions were undertaken with somewhat rapid response; there might well be other more appropriate names for whom the process might better succeed. I am not willing to subject anyone whom I moot for RFA to humiliation. --Ancheta Wis 21:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Correct name for an individual retirement "account" really is "account"

Dear Taxman: One hates to nit pick, but in the article on Individual Retirement Accounts, the statement that the "umbrella" term for the concept is legally Individual Retirement Arrangement instead of account is simply incorrect. The individual retirement account was created by amendments to the Internal Revenue Code made by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which enacted (among other things) Internal Revenue Code sections 219 and 408 relating to IRAs. Subsection (a) of section 408 defines the term "individual retirement account" and subsection (b) defines the term "individual retirement annuity." An individual retirement account and an individual retirement annuity are two different but related legal concepts under the Internal Revenue Code, and both terms are directly from the statute itself.

IR "accounts" and IR "annuities" are collectively referred to as "individual retirement plans". See Internal Revenue Code section 7701(a)(37).

From a technical legal standpoint, it is in my opinion incorrect to say that the use of the word "account" is incorrect, as account is the term actually used in the law itself. (I just don't want to make the change myself, at least not without first explaining it.)

In an unrelated matter, I was very impressed with the way all the editors handled the BB69 controversy. I'm a new kid on the block and although I know I was hard on BB69 at times, I really was doing a lot of "holding back" and just watching everybody else work and trying to learn how Wikipedians handle that sort of thing. It was pretty interesting.

Because of your interest in taxes I am almost surely gonna be asking for your advice from time to time. Yours, Famspear 00:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's quite interesting. The term arrangement is prominently used in publication 590 and I could swear I've seen that in the code too. I checked § 7701. I don't really know how to follow all that, but § 408 is pretty clear. Clearly that is evidence that "account" is acceptable, and looking at p590 they eventually use the term too, so that certainly warrants a change to the article. I don't really claim an expertise in tax matters as I'm not an attorney, but I happen to know what I'm talking about in some areas that I've researched carefully. In any case you cought an error of mine and that's what this is all about. People like you that are willing and able to do proper research are very valuable to Wikipedia, so don't worry about nitpicking. Checking facts like that is the only way Wikipedia can become reliable. So change away, no reason to be hesitant as long as you have solid references to back it up.

As for BB69, it looks like we've been fairly successful, and though it won't work in all cases, the same general method used there should work most of the time. Steadfastly insisting on following our key policies is important, and following dispute resolution if need be should work most of the time. - Taxman ^Talk 00:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Taxman: I know you're right about the term "arrangement." It's also a "term of art" and it appears in many places in subsections (d), (k), (l), and (p) of section 408 for sure. I know that whole section deals with IRAs of one kind or another, but I just have to tread lightly whenever I get into the area of IRAs or anything to do with retirement plans, employee benefits, etc., as it's such a mine field and not an area in which I practice. I can't "talk" about the area too much; I always have to look everything up. Anyway, I'll make an appropriate change to the article soon. Thanks for your input. Famspear 03:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Taxman: I just added some more information to the article on IRAs about the term "arrangement," which I found also appears in certain Treasury regs (and, as you pointed out, in IRS Pub. 590). The fact that the term is used in a formal Treasury regulation (not just in an IRS publication) shows you were right about the term being used as an "umbrella" term. Therefore, my statement that "arrangement" is not an umbrella term was wrong. Instead, I should have said that the term is just not used that way in the statute itself (where the term is used in a more limited sense). Oh, I just love to split those legal hairs! Famspear 16:35, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hindu-Arabic numerals

Hi! User:RN moved the article to Arabic numerals despite 28 votes favoring the title "Hindu-Arabic numerals" and only 17 favoring "Arabic numerals." He argues that if we don't count voters with less that 150 (or sth like that) edits, only 56% voters "support changing the title to Hindu-Arabic numerals", while at least 60% support votes are required. However, it was agreed between all parties in the beginning of the vote that the proposal is to move the article to "Arabic numerals" from "Hindu-Arabic numerals." It was also agreed (though I thought it was very unfair) that:

• Those opposing the move have the advantage that it won't be moved unless there's a 60% majority
• Those supporting the move have the advantage that the person proposing the move can do the *short* opening statement.
• For all the rest of the voting procedure both parties are equal. (quoting Francis Schonken from 21:04, 18 December 2005 (UTC))

I would definitely have preferred it the other way round, since I think an opening statement makes a HUGE difference, since many people just read the opening statement and understandably don't bother with the discussion below the votes. The present situation was accepted with the agreement that the article will be moved to "Arabic numerals" only if more than 60% voters favored that title. Thus, only 40% oppose votes were sufficient to retain the title "Hindu-Arabic numerals." In the present situation (with over 60% voters opposing the change), I find the move to "Arabic numerals" ridiculous, besides being completely unjust and unfair. Your comments will be appreciated. deeptrivia (talk) 05:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok I set up what I think is the best way forward. It's ok to have the article where it is at until a consensus can be reached. See the talk page. - Taxman ^Talk 16:35, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Taxman! I have put my reasons yet again, on the page you created. However, I'll be surprised if those favoring "Arabic numerals" will do the same, now that they've got what they've wanted by hook or crook. See for example, User_talk:Deeptrivia#Clarifying. I am sure of winning an RfC or an RfAr on this issue, but I don't have the time, energy, or inclination for the same. Thanks a lot for your support, and I hope to collaborate with you on more constructive things in future. deeptrivia (talk) 17:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

See it doesn't need to go that far. This is an official, properly structure requested move. The consensus it establishes (if any) will be followed. Just work within it and even people with different views should be able to agree on the outcome or at least how it was reached. - Taxman ^Talk 18:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Cold fusion

You can count on my support re: dispute at Cold fusion. - FrancisTyers 15:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm coming to this fresh. As you say, there are so many edits, can you point to the "old" version that was good? William M. Connolley 17:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC).

I haven't done the looking for that yet, but I think it may be sometime in August of this year. - Taxman ^Talk 18:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Parsi disambig

I've followed your (and Khirad's) suggestion to resolve the disambig Parsi, but rather than move it to another page (as you asked, what title would it have?), I've simply applied a little wordplay at the top to reference the alternate meanings.

Better now? :) -- Fullstop 20:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Dear Taxman, Happy New Year to you and thanks for your help with India related articles. --ΜみゅーιいおたĿːtalk 08:03, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, and happy new year to you too. :) - Taxman ^Talk 12:54, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Wish you and your family a happy New Year!!! [With due apologies as I can't resist this: And collect more taxes] :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:06, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Ha, thanks. Happy new year to you too. - Taxman ^Talk 13:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Blocking of User:StephenBengHo

Thanks. You saved me the trouble. It went on far too long. -- Longhair 13:24, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

If you can find specific justification, the block can be extended. Of course coming back and repeating the same behavior warrants a longer block next time. - Taxman ^Talk 13:32, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

University of Michigan

The article has recently been nominated to appear on the main page. Nevertheless, there are several issues that I am trying to resolve, including the fact that there are not enough "negatives" mentioned concerning U-M. There are some things in the works on the article's talk page, including hazing and "town and gown" issues. You once mentioned something about the university administration's being indifferent to student needs and concerns. Is there a source talking about that? Personally, during my times at U-M I didn't really pay attention to such issues (I could be described as one of the apathetic types on a campus where activists can be seen everywhere). Pentawing 23:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's the most important of the criticisms, but I have heard it. I can't even begin to think of where to find a source for something like that. Perhaps some of the Princeton Review or US News and World Report discussions would include something on the administration. Or maybe it's really no different that other universities and is just idle complaining. More concrete would be citing complaints about such high tuition and tuition increases while the endowment expanded so much. Though I'm not sure there's a prominent source for that. More important I think would be to not make as many things such an obvious positive comment, like top this and over x that. I actually thought UM didn't do too bad at that now, but maybe we're just so used to it that we just buy the U's propaganda. See my comments at Talk:Michigan State University. That article has been drastically improved along those lines and people there thought UM was biased the same way. The UM article is justified in reporting a high quality because there are objective measures of that. It just shouldn't go farther. - Taxman ^Talk 23:30, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

So the article as is has no further problems? My concern is that someone might complain of NPOV problems once the article gets on the main page (for January 11). Of course, there is an anon who seems to have problems when any such positive information is removed from the article (he left such a message on the talk page which you responded to). Pentawing 17:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Cold Fusion Page Edits

Please stop removing the current "External Links" from the Cold Fusion article. These external links have been in place for months and months without any controversy and are unrelated to the other controversy regarding the editing and content of the page. The external links are provided for information purposes for people looking for more information regarding cold fusion. There is no rational for removing informative links. Thank you. Rock nj 03:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikinews link

I've fixed the link on your Wikinews user page. I hope you don't mind. --Chiacomo ^talk 23:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Heh, no, that's fine, thanks. - Taxman ^Talk 00:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Taxman, thank you very much for your answer on currency notation.

Well you're welcome, though I answer a lot of questions and I can't think of one on notation. But glad you got your answer. - Taxman ^Talk 21:43, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

OpenBSD

I've fiddled a bit with an alternative structure for the article here, trying to split it sort of by subject (openness/licensing/security/etc) and hopefully make it follow a bit better. Do you think this is any better, or a better idea at least? I know it's still a bit thin (or non-existent) in some areas but I do plan to fix them :-). I've also made a few minor changes to fix some of the worst short sentences and prose problems, but I'm not entirely sure I wholly understand what is bad. I know it isn't brilliant, and some parts may be worse than others, but on the whole it doesn't seem any worse to me than other articles, so I'd appreciate any further comments you might have. NicM 16:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC).

Yes that represents some advantages and improvements, but unfortunately it's still too long even without the criticism section. Try to merge and summarize some sections. The history may be a bit too short now, while others have gotten too long. I think the article has got to mention Theo's abrasiveness at least in a sentence or two. That's practically the best known thing about the project after security. - Taxman ^Talk 16:54, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, I will mention criticism of Theo in the Criticism section (or what will probably become part of another section, maybe Uses and criticism), but I'm having a hard job working out what else to merge/remove. When you say summarise, do you think summary style would be appropriate, particularly to move the subsections of the security section into an article, say "OpenBSD security features", or would it be better just to find text to drop? I've deleted the Hackathons section, and will merge it into Hackathon after this version of the article is finished, and am wavering on whether to just delete the Ports and packages section. NicM 17:47, 7 January 2006 (UTC).

Generally summary style is better if you have detailed information on a subject that is too long for the main article, especially if it is accurate sourced info. The ports and packages seems a key facet of the OS so don't delete it all, just make it shorter if need be. - Taxman ^Talk 18:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I've split the security section off summary style, merged some other sections and shortened some of the text, and added some stuff about Theo in the history bit and criticism of OpenBSD under Uses. I wonder if you would care to take another look and let me know what you think. NicM 12:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC).

Yes, that is much better. It's more logically structured, better writing, and less undue attention to less important topics. Though now you have room for a slightly expanded description of the security features. I think that is justified by the project's focus on security. Maybe on the range of expanding the last paragraph on features to about twice it's length, giving some context on priv sep, etc. And of course now you'll have to get consensus for your version. - Taxman ^Talk 17:51, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, great, thanks. I've added a little more on privsep and I'll take another look at that paragraph later. I'm going to post a note on the talk page and if nobody complains in a couple of days I'll change the real article. NicM 18:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC).

I've made the changes to the real article now, if you care to take another look sometime. In any case, thanks for your help. NicM 18:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC).

Risk limitation vs. risk transfer

Dear Taxman, you deleted my edit on risk limitation in the article on Risk Management, saying that risk limitation is a form of risk transfer. Would you care to comment on the following example? If I never carry around more than 50 bob, my risk of loss when being mugged is not just generally reduced, but limited to 50 bob. Where should the risk have been transferred to in this case? Actuary 12:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

No, that's different than what I removed. The above is risk reduction as it is generally classified. The example you put in the article was about insurance which is transfer. I recommend spending some time with a risk management textbook. - Taxman ^Talk 13:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Biodiesel citation

OK, I have cited the recent changes that I had made on the biodiesel discussion page. Is there any other place where I should note these citations for future reference? Thanks for the advice and thanks for asking me before you reverted the edits (Im new to the process).

I left a response on your talk page and the biodiesel talk page which I don't normally do but I thought it would help you. - Taxman ^Talk 13:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Block User:198.150.36.49

Taxman,

I appreciate your strong stand against vandals. Please help ban IP address 198.150.36.49 . I noticed that you have delt with this address in the past however its user is back vandalizing important pages such pages as "Andrew Jackson" and "Cheif Justice of the United States". Please help.

Thanks

Have a look at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. That is the best place to list user's or IP addresses that are vandalizing. But blocking is meant to prevent vandalism, not punish. So particularly read and follow #2 before listing there or asking for a block. Not only will that page get a faster response for you, but if you follow the guidelines, it will be more helpful. - Taxman ^Talk 13:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

RFA thanks

Hi. Thanks for your vote on my RFA... & your support during the voting. William M. Connolley 20:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC).

No problem. The voice of reason has got to be supported. :) And wow, with 129, you must be busy. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Cheers

Hi! I don't mean to intrude, but I noticed you have made some edits to the Cheers article in the past! I've given the article a serious reworking and I hope it can garner your support on it's FAC. Thanks again! Staxringold 01:56, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll have a look in a bit. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments! I added a second ref for the Long attempted suicide, and I really have looked for print sources (without success). Any further advice would be appreciated, or of course your support! :) Staxringold 18:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The article has undergone some nice POV touching up and added some technical information (the lead was also switched to be more useful to a completely uninformed reader), any chance I can get your comment turned into a support? :) Staxringold 23:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, for whatever reason I can't put a finger on it's still just ok. A good article just not one I'm ready to support. Don't worry about a comment. It won't keep the article from being featured with other's support. - Taxman ^Talk 14:04, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah well, thanks in any case. I've added a great printed source, Toasting Cheers, to confirm and add data by the way. I'm mostly trying to hedge up support as Monicasdude appears to be taking his usual route with FACs of giant complaints and then never posting if his issues are dealt with. Staxringold 23:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

What you do in that case is simply respond to each in good faith so that anyone looking them over (including Raul654 who makes the final call) can decide for themselves. Also try asking on Monicasdude's talk page. If they don't respond after a couple days you can note that in the nomination to show you've done your best. What I see in the article now is that it feels less well organized. For ex, the section headings don't match ideally with what is in each section. - Taxman ^Talk 23:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I've tried to respond to everyone as much as possible. I would really appreciate (like a copyedit) a short review of where you think the flow breaks apart so I can improve it! Thanks! Staxringold 00:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

BSD

I'm planning to install BSD on my system. Since there are three versions: Open, Net and Free, which one would be more suited to desktop use? What are there any advt/disadvt of the three? Thanks, =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well what they say is true, OpenBSD focuses on security and isn't terribly user friendly, but the docs are so good that if you want to learn you can. I've never used NetBSD much, but those that do, love it. I've run FreeBSD a lot (off and on since 3.4), and my take is that it is the most suited to the desktop, but still not as much as Linux. FreeBSD's handbook is also very good, so you can learn all the basics from it. My best advice though is to try installing them all even if only for a couple days to get a feel for them. I think you'll really like them as it is really nice to have such a cohesive system, but they don't have quite the momentum Linux does, so they are less polished in some ways though more in others. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll try FreeBSD and ping you if I have any issues. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:28, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I recommend downloading a copy of the handbook in compressed text form (it fits on a floppy if you have one) so you can refer to it as needed. As one whole text file you can search through it really easily in a text editor for any word you want. Here's the link. That should get you most everything you need, but wierd hardware issues can always come up. So yeah, let me know if you need anything and have fun. There's certainly something entertaining on a primal geek level about recompiling and upgrading your operating system while you're using it. - Taxman ^Talk 17:32, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Berumen

There's nothing more to my vote, I don't know this guy from Adam. User:Zoe|^(talk) 23:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but point being your comment was we shouldn't delete just because he asks. I agree, but there are more reasons not to have the article. Not the least of which is there is so little verifiable information about him. - Taxman ^Talk 23:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

email

Did you get my email? I sent it via the 'email this user' feature. :) --mav 05:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and I responded. Sorry, I don't always check that email every day. - Taxman ^Talk 05:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

On the Mono Edits.

Not sure if I have to reply on your page or on mine:

Thanks for the comments Taxman. Although I have documented this in other places, the situation basically became problematic because this person removed the comments from the talk page and avoided the discussion while at the same time removing the text that was there.

I agree that I should not write about my personal involvement on the page, but in this case I was just restoring text that was there before but that this person decided should not be there (see the discussion on Talk:Mono development platform)

I do not want to get into personal details, but the guy seems to be genuinely antagonistic to all things related to Mono. See the history of edits that he has done to the Portable.Net page, he seems very upset.

- Miguel.de.Icaza

I've moved my reply to your talk page to keep it consistent. I didn't reallize you did both, which is also fine. - Taxman ^Talk 18:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Garry Kasparov

In the talk page of the above article, I have inserted a quotation from the autobiography of Garry Kasparov: Unlimited Challenge, ISBN 0-00-637358-5 regarding how he solved a chess problem before he knew how to play the game. This answers a request for citation in the beginning of the article. Sincerely, Sir48 22:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

That's great. More is always helpful if you can verify more facts in the article from that source. Thanks a lot. - Taxman ^Talk 21:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

PII FAC

Hi Taxman - I just wanna make clear away from the FAC page that I added the Ceylon, Burma notes as you suggested. Bhutan and Nepal are already there. Thanks for your advice. Rama's Arrow 21:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll have a look, and I'll follow the fac page. - Taxman ^Talk 21:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

RE: Requests for rollback poll

You mentioned the validity of a poll whose threshold for promotion was not stated up front was suspect. However, the page clearly states that it is up to the BCrats discretion if the person requesting it would be given it. Assuming good faith, I assume you weren't questioning the BCrats' decision making abilities, were you? Thanks. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi you're really stretching it there. I was referring about promoting a proposal where the promotion criteria were not spelled out and nothing more. The proposal being successfully turned into a process is a completely separate thing from the day to day use of the process. - Taxman ^Talk 19:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it. I was just making sure, since the page states, "After four days, a bureaucrat will grant the rollback permission if he/she is satisfied that the user will not misuse rollback." So I was just curious. Thanks again. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Now I understand the confusion. I made my comment more clear I was referring to the promotion of the proposal itself. Sorry bout that. - Taxman ^Talk 20:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, sorry for all the confusion. It just struck me as when when I read that the first time. I was like, "What? It says how promotions would be handled right on the proposed policy page." Thanks for the explanation. See you around, my friend. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Anon IP causing issues

Hi Taxman, There's someone from 67.174.232.187 that's causing a lot of problems on a few articles (Bharatanatyam, Tamil language, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Kannada language and the like).

I have replied on the talk page to a lot of his queries, but this person seems to have something personal against the Tamil language. Could you please help? Thanks. - Cribananda 05:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. - Cribananda 05:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

No problem, but if I'm not around, follow the procedures at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism and someone will take care of it. Generally explicit warnings are needed, but I used my discretion that this one was obvious enough. - Taxman ^Talk 05:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

chek out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:67.174.232.187 67.174.232.187 07:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

RFR poll

Hi Taxman, in response to "Also besides the link to Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges that I saw everywhere, nowhere did I see mention that there was an ongoing vote.", I announced the RFR poll on the Village pump policy page, the village pump proposals page, and the admins' noticeboard, as well as adding links to {{cent}} (the centralised discussions template), the top of the recent changes text, and the Community Portal. It was definitely well announced. :) Talrias (t | e | c) 11:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Me again. :) Regarding your comments about ease of removing the privilege, the change you suggest is already part of the proposal. From the removal procedure: "In the case that the rollback tool is being misused, a bureaucrat may, at his/her discretion, remove the rollback ability." Talrias (t | e | c) 22:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

How's the text "Egregious misusers of rollback may have their privileges immediately revoked by a bureaucrat, at the bureaucrat's discretion. After the privileges have been revoked, the bureaucrat should note the action taken on the bureaucrat's noticeboard."? Talrias (t | e | c) 00:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes that works well. Also the adjustment to "again misusing" makes it clearer there's no abuse tolerated after the first warning. As I said in the poll, the easier it is to take away, the less risk there is in giving it out. Which of course means the tool is more helpful and hopefully less abuse. - Taxman ^Talk 14:20, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

That's great, I'm fine with all your suggestions. Those were my original intent anyway, I guess when writing it down I just forgot to include explicitly that kind of wording. If you like, please go ahead and clarify any section you think is unclear about this. :) Talrias (t | e | c) 14:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok I've done that. I think it was a minor change but made clear what you were thinking anyway hopefully. - Taxman ^Talk 14:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Taxman, that is indeed what I had in mind. Would you consider moving your comments to the appropriate section on the poll to reflect your latest comments? Talrias (t | e | c) 14:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I was in process but had some other things to do. Patience my friend. :) - Taxman ^Talk 15:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Talrias (t | e | c) 15:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ramacharitamanasa

Actually the difference between "Hindi" and "Sanskrit" with reference to these proper nouns is rather hazy. Pronounciations are exactly the same anyway, so if there's a convention that more "Hindi"-ish words do not have to end in an 'a', I am not aware of it. I basically followed rules on Wikipedia:WikiProject Hinduism. deeptrivia (talk) 18:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Well I'll defer to you of course, but in everything I've learned in Hindi, in almost all cases you don't pronounce the final a, as in you don't say dasa for दस you say das, and that is the way it is normally transliterated, without the final a. Unless of course the word is like देना, but that's a different a and रामचरितमानस doesn't have that. - Taxman ^Talk 18:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

RfA

Hi Taxman, thank you for your vote on my RfA. I am not sure which of the concerns you are going by (or it may be all fof them), but I have posted a comment on my RfA in a bid to clear things up. I hope youwilltake the time to read it,and perhaps to reconsider your vote. If there are still concerns, please let meknow what they are via my talk page and I'll do my best to assuage them. Regards, Proto t c 23:12, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Thakore

As it it a rare treat, I'm delighted to see proof that someone appreciates my first go at such an undeservedly impopular Wiki-subject. By the way, Mr. Admin, is there any way (or could it conceivalbly be created) to see -as an various websites- how many readers consulted a page, perhaps a more significant -and at times more uplifting- measure then the contributors (often including a good deal of edit warfare in various degrees of severity)?

There's no viewing stats kept per article because it became clear long ago that would just be way too costly on storage and processing. We're perpetually underfunded for the hardware we need to just keep up with demand. I guess the reward has to be in just getting accurate information out there that will be free. - Taxman ^Talk 03:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully you don't mind I went ahead to make some use of your fine suggestion to consult Platt (I didn't think of using this site, though I once bookmarked it before I became a Wikipedian, and didn't know it was public domain), even if it's a bit outdated here and there. I marked it as stub (that system doesn't strike me as very effective in practice: the tag apparently attracts almost no serious content contributions, rather useless bickering) because I knew I would return to it, so I made some other additions as well, and structured it. The divinity was unknown to me, the Rajput class I read about but never properly explained. Will you try your hand at the reamining uses mentioned in Platt?

Of course I don't mind you used it, that was what I put it there for. You may want to go format the sources as at WP:CITE though. Platts was actually written in 1888 or something like that so it's long passed into public domain. - Taxman ^Talk 03:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

As for the alternative forms of Indian titles, that's rather a lost cause: even within Hindi (and often other languages are also in the mix) there often are non-homophonic variations (e.g. Raja has variations Rana, Raol, Rawal, Rawat), and the spelling used in various sources, even the better ones, simply is NOT standardized, not even for a single princely state's ruler, not even during the colonial era. So I simply followed RoyalArk (often the best-informed site on titles). If you have a taste for it, you could wade trough over 500 pages in the princely states site and mark the forms used (if you do, why not keep notes to add a list of known thakores ?) so as to determine whether most are in the west (probobly mainly Gujarat) but even with a number (far from complete, probably) and proportion this would not take into account the greatly different weight: possibly many tiny Gujarati thikanas would fit into a few geater ones elsewhere Fastifex 10:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

For further fixes to the article I'm going to have to leave that in your capable hands. I've now mentioned everything I know about the topic. Yes the stub marking system probably doesn't in itself solve much but at least it acknowledges we know it's a work in progess and ideally draws some new users in that can help. Anyway thanks for the response and keep up the good work. - Taxman ^Talk 03:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Michigan State Capitol

Thanks for your input on the above article. I have modified the tree part per your request. Thanks. Jtmichcock 18:59, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Algal cultivation for the production of biodiesel

hi Taxman

I posted an article under the discussion section for biodiesel. I'm just writing in reply to your comments.

Well, this is the main article about biodiesel. It's not appropriate to go into a detailed discussion in the article about biodiesel production from algae because there is so much else that needs to be covered.

This is why i didn't post it in the article, but on the discussion page. I think that it's a little bit short to dismiss the most efficient, environmentally-friendly, and economic means of producing biodiesel, as not being appropriate in an article about biodiesel

There's only so much room on the page. Ideally main articles on a topic should be around 30kb of text with further detail in subarticles as per Wikipedia:Summary style. I'm not arguing with you, just pointing out long standing consensus about the best way to write articles. An article has to be balanced based on importance of each subtopic. There are many facets to the biodiesel subject and making the bse oil from just one of the possible sources can't have undue coverage in the main overview article. - Taxman ^Talk 03:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Further detail could be covered in an article dedicated to the topic such as Algal biodiesel.

-An article about "algal" biodiesel, or soy-biodiesel, or mustard-biodiesel, wasn't really my point. For the most part, by the time it's biodiesel, it doesn't really matter what it was made from,(obviously you'll have slightly different levels of oxygen content, and variations in gel point), but it's still biodiesel. You could make a seperate article about the different types of biodiesel, but its seems that that would be more to the point on a page about biodiesel. My point is more towards the fact that the majority of biodiesel is based on some type of "vegetable" oil, and that biodiesel produced from algae not only has the highest yields, but, aside from the reclemation of waste products, is the only biodiesel by which you can honestly claim its environmental benefits(most of the positive numbers for CO2, NOX, etc, aren't based on a full life-cycle estimate) as I'm sure you know. It's like the push for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, hydrogen is extremly clean. Where do you get it? Well you produce the hydrogen using a coal or nuclear power plants.

But remember Wikipedia is a place centered around collaboratively building reference material, not to discuss how to's.

I didn't mean is as a discussion of a how-to, but more towards pointing out a hole in the information. Detailed enough information on any subject can amount to a "how-to", and i don't think that trying to prevent an article, or information that gets accumulated from reaching that level is a good thing. Part of the best aspect of an encyclopedia, or learning, is that it exposes you to things you didn't know before, and gives you new directions in which to go. Trying to keep reference matireals, or links to other information too strictly tight just makes your information incomplete and lacking.

Of course we want to include all relevant, important encyclopedic information. So I agree with what you're saying there. But it's long ago been decided there are some things Wikipedia is not and instead should be housed at other Wikimedia projects. Howto's are one such thing and should be at Wikibooks. - Taxman ^Talk 03:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. And we need your help. [wikimediafoundation.org]

I'm also not sure why you left a long list of questions and also a long list of links. If you already have the links, why are you posting them for us if they don't have your answers?

I posted the questions, on a discussion page, because they are the questions that need to be answered for the efficient production of biodiesel. In any detailed discussion about biodiesel, and i hope an encylopedic entry is intended to be detailed, I can't see them not coming up. I never said that the links didn't have the answers, a few of the questions i've found some answers to, and as i do i post them so that others have them too, but there are more answers, and more people out there who know the answers.

But to answer your overall question, it is not yet publicly known if there's going to be a cost efficient way to produce oil from algae. The current research into it seems to be being done by private companies that are trying to commericallize the method so they're not releasing details in order to try to gain a competitive advantage. So basically most of your questions are not publicly known.

I did know that, and i've been coming up against that the more people i talk to. The real impression i get is that oil-rich algae is being produced successfully for the production of biodiesel, but as you said, privatly, and that the focus is more on setting up a system,(genetically engineered strains that can be patented, expensive photobioreactor systems, etc) that prevents just anyone from being able to do it once they go public. But i'm hoping that by asking the question, and by gathering enough information and making it available, people will see that the only real hang-up to producing biodiesel from algae seems to be what strain to use, and a system that works with that strain.

-Daemon

Well someone that could corner an efficient method of doing it would have quite the gold mine of course. But wikipedia isn't the place to produce primary research. We report only on what is known. I commend your efforts to dig up information about it and anything that is published already and relevant we can include. The rest should be done elsewhere. Keep in touch with the various biodiesel groups and you'll find there are plenty of people that are doing research on it and there is probably enough public research already out that no one group is going to be able to control the production. So please contribute to Wikipedia according to it's project goals and use other outlets for other types of work. But thanks for the links. When I can get around to it I have a ton more that I'm planning to use for a ground up rewrite. - Taxman ^Talk 03:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Biodiesel outline

You had an outline laying around in main article space. I've userfied it for you at User:Taxman/Biodiesel outline in case you need it, because otherwise it was going to end up being deleted. Seeya. --Cyde Weys 04:28, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Raney nickel FAC

I took me some time to get around them, but I think I've addressed the concerns you had about this article. It would be nice if you could comment on them in the nomination page. Thanks a bunch. -- Rune Welsh | τたうαあるふぁλらむだκかっぱ 04:06, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

The Federal Reserve System and the US Dollar

Dear Taxman:

Recalling the BB69 matter back in December, a somewhat interesting discourse (with, shall we say, some "similarities") has been developing with an editor named "Xode" at the discussion page Talk:United States Dollar at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_dollar#Article_neutrality_and_factuality_dispute

under the heading for Factuality Dispute. I am in no way comparing Xode's conduct to the outrageous behavior of BB69. The similarity lies in part in the way certain editors seem to be on a "mission" to educate everyone on what they perceive as some great injustice and, I argue, want to use Wikipedia as a soapbox as part of that mission. When you see the materials Xode is promoting regarding the Federal Reserve and the banking system and compare them to the tax protester rhetoric, I think you'll know exactly what is going on. Your input on that Talk page would bring a lot to the table! Xode's User Talk page is interesting too. Yours, Famspear 22:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Remarkable similarity, I would agree. It seems like you're doing just fine handling it, so the only thing I thought was needed was to welcome the user and point out the policies. He/she can't follow them if they don't know them. - Taxman ^Talk 23:38, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Dear Taxman - Belated thanks! Yours, Famspear 17:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Comments regarding The Wind Waker

Thanks for your comments at the FAC submission of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I wanted to reply to this without cluttering up the nomination:

I do wonder why people choose to spend so much time on topics like these when there are so many basic topics we have next to nothing on.

I'll be the first to admit that CVG articles aren't the most important topics to be covered in an encyclopedia. At the risk of making a generalization, quite a few editors interested in video games aren't very good writers. There are many CVG articles that are very poorly written, too detailed, or only of interest to other gamers. Partially due to this, I've found that CVG articles often get the short stick here at Wikipedia when it comes to respect. One reason I spend time on articles like The Wind Waker is to try to show other Wikipedians that CVG articles can be well-written and (hopefully) an interesting read, even for non-gamers. The second reason is simply that I enjoy video games. Wikipedia is a hobby for me, not work, and writing about something that I find fun or interesting makes it the more enjoyable for me.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading the Wind Waker article, and thanks again for your input. --Pagrashtak 02:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

My RFA

Hi Taxman/Archive2, thanks for participating in my RfA discussion. Unfortunately, my fellow Wikipedians have decided at this time that I am not suitable to take on this additional responsibility, as the RfA failed with a result of 66/27/5 (71.0% support). If you voted in support of my request, thank you! If you decided to oppose me at this time, then I hope that if I do choose to reapply in the future, the effort I will make in the meantime to improve and expand my contributions to Wikipedia may persuade you to reconsider your position. All the best, Proto t c 10:46, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

1.0 Collaboration of the Week

Hi, I noticed you signed up as a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. Recently, a 1.0 Collaboration of the Week was created to work on essential topics that are in need of improvement, which will ultimately go in a release version of Wikipedia. You can help by voting, contributing to an article, or simply making a comment. Thank you for your support. :) Gflores ^Talk 08:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Where?

Hi, you thanked me for my contribution where? Cygnus_hansa 13:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Hindi. The link was in the section title, thus the subject of my comment. :) - Taxman ^Talk 13:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Hindi

Oh, so you were talking about Hindi article! Thanks for appreciating and for the link. I am myself a native Hindi speaker (+ linguistics scholar). I am also planning to put up certain features that I have added here to Sanskrit and devanagari too. Cygnus_hansa 17:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Most excellent, that article has been needing a linguist very familiar with the language able to fix it up. It's particularly in need of some discussion of the current thinking from experts on the history, development, and dialects. As only a learner I'm hardly qualified to do more than comment on what I see and read. - Taxman ^Talk 17:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Katie Holmes

Greetings! You have edited the Katie Holmes page in the past. I've completely reworked the article and have posted it on WP:PR in the hopes of advancing it to WP:FAC. I would be grateful for your comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Katie Holmes/archive1. PedanticallySpeaking 18:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Undelete Template:User USA Police State now!

the consensus was a "strong keep". This is an abuse of your admin powers. --Revolución (talk) 18:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Kindly use some civility, assume good faith, and relax. It clearly met the speedy deletion criteria so it is far from an abuse. I've restored it now, but please consider focusing on building an encyclopedia, not wasting time promoting divisiveness. - Taxman ^Talk 19:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Gandhi PR

Hi Taxman - whenever convenient, I hope you can have a look at the Mahatma Gandhi article and visit the Wikipedia:Peer review/Mahatma Gandhi/archive1. We are working to address some serious issues with the article that are threatening its FA status. I value your advice a good deal. Rama's Arrow 04:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Rama's Arrow 21:51, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

AfD commentary

Please spend some time understanding the relevant policies before voting. That comment is out of line. If you don't agree with my comments, then criticize my comments, not me personally. Don't assume bad faith on my part. It's not that hard to be civil. | Klaw ¡digame! 16:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not assuming bad faith, it's assuming you don't know. It wasn't meant to be incivil, so I apologize if you felt offended. Not knowing isn't fatal, it's just not helpful. Your vote and reasoning was very far out of the well accepted understanding of the policy. So I meant it literally. More people need to spend more time understanding the policies, and if they did, the project would run more smoothly. Again, sorry. - Taxman ^Talk 17:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that response. In all likelihood you did not understand my meaning, and I will take partial responsibility for not being clear. I didn't spell out my reasoning fully because others on the page had made the points I would have made.

Your assumption is incorrect; I understand the policy fully and cite sources or references for just about every substantive edit I make these days, but again, two people (or nine) can interpret an official policy differently. WP:NOR focuses on theories and interpretations, not on hard facts (see this section, for example). Is a map with accurate road lengths sufficient to meet the prohibition in the top section on "unpublished data?" I can see arguments both ways on that one. I take the view that it is sufficient, especially in light of the policy's focus on theories rather than data.

As for your comments to me, you might rethink your tone. Your comments to me on the AfD page would have been adequate without the line I quoted above, so there was no reason for you to go that extra mile and deliver a verbal slap. I understand none was intended, but I hope you can see why I saw it as one. If you thought I whiffed on the policy, then either ask me to clarify my reasoning, or cite sections of the policy that refute my points. | Klaw ¡digame! 17:13, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Katie Holmes

Thank you very much for your help with this article. I've nominated it as a FAC and would appreciate your comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Katie Holmes. PedanticallySpeaking 16:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Lothal

Hi Taxman - I'm preparing Lothal for FAC - it is almost ready. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could pay a visit and let me know if the article needs improvement on any point. You are a master analyzer of FAs (really). Thanks, Rama's Arrow 14:35, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Taxman - thanks for your great analysis! I've made a detailed reply to your points on the page, and I want to add some points later. I will have fully incorporated your suggestions (adding more technical info and evidence), but I have found only one source with such detail regarding Lothal anywhere. Lothal per se is not a centre of any debate today. Rama's Arrow 17:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your comment on political userboxes - I believe there's been a rule change, and I will take my POV userboxes down, but after some time. Thanks for your concern and compliments! Rama's Arrow 17:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hindi and Indo-Aryan

Hi, thanks for your audiofile on Hindi--it is 99 % correct. ( /ri/ vowel is missing) I would have made a better file but I have no microphone in my computer. As you are an admin, I request you to please insert some additional characters in the Insertbox in the edit page: r, h, t, d, m, n: each with a dot immediately below it. These are used for IAST transliteration of retroflex vowels & consonants in all Indo-Aryan languages like Sanskrit and Hindi. Its too inconvenient to search for these characters in another page and copy and paste them again. After all, you have a flood of god-knows-what characters in the insert-box, you can easily afford to bring in a few more. All articles related to India require them desparately. I dont know why you people reverted the earlier scheme which classified the inserbox characters as french, german, mathematics, IPA, etc.Cygnus_hansa 20:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

That actually requires developer rights and skills I don't have. Those different pages with several hundred extra characters were really nice and I wanted to have them too, but I guess that caused some unintended problems, and some people complained about the extra kb of dl for every edit. I think enough people liked it that they may bring it back if it is fixable. Sorry I don't know where to point you to to get more info except asking at the technical page of the Village Pump. You should have good results there. And please do encourage those that are able to make it available at least as some sort of user preference. As to the audio file, I didn't record that, User:Deeptrivia did, and he is a native speaker. I meant to have him record a few of the missing sounds like /ri/ and the extra sounds such as those you mention above and even re-record a few that aren't as clear. In fact, I'll go do that now. - Taxman ^Talk 20:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Userpage "doodling"

I posted the following bit in the MfD debate on God of War's little subpage, and thought I'd post it here too, in case you'd like to discuss further. Best wishes, Xoloz 21:06, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I responded there, hope you don't mind that I removed the duplication. - Taxman ^Talk 21:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Hindi Grammar

Actually you are correct. The verb table I have written is only for a few common tenses and aspects which show concordance with English. There are many more kinds of aspects in Hindi, which I myself cannot name, because in school we are taught only synonyms and antonyms and idioms in the name of Hindi grammar.Cygnus_hansa 01:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Meta:Babel

I Have dropped you a reaction on m:Meta:Babel#Terror on Czech part of Wikipedia continues. -- Vít Zvánovec 11:46, 23 February 2006 (UTC) Again. -- Vít Zvánovec 22:33, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

help requested

Hi Taxman - if/when you have time, please have a look at Wikipedia:Defense of content - its a bunch of new ideas I'm pushing to protect quality of Wikipedia articles in face of vandalism. Rama's Arrow 21:24, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I also drop you a ...

First, thx for your engagement on the terroristic page [here]. Sure, it is not ease to understand that. For you knowledge: in last approximately three weeks there were three admins who asked to be desysoped on the czech wiki (one of them: me) and there were two members of the arbitrage commission who resigned their function. Other admins are in a vacation or something like this. So, as I wrote to Anthere, there is a very serious situation in the czech wiki. The man with whom you have been corresponding up to now (V9t Zv8novec) is not the only one, there are more, and the problem is, that they are organized and try to monitore all what here happens. Nevertheless, thx for your try to help. 217.83.109.171 23:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC) - - - sorry, here my sign: -jkb- 23:46, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

FAC advice

Taxman, I'd just like to thank you for your article on FAC advice. It's given me some good ideas on what to work on for an article I'm interested in. I feel like I can really take action on your advice, which isn't true of a lot of the guidelines for wiki articles I've seen, so thanks! Makemi 19:16, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Glad it helped. If there was anything particularly unclear, or you thought could be better explained, let me know. It's possible I've been doing the FAC thing long enough that I don't know what's not clear to someone that hasn't. - Taxman ^Talk 03:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

User:AKS74 and other matters

A new user, AKS74, has recently vandalized the University of Michigan article, which I reverted. Though I sent a harshly worded warning (I don't know if that was appropriate, but with vandals I am not taking chances), the fact that the user's first edits were vandalism doesn't bode well for me. Hence, I was wondering if you, or another administrator, would mind monitoring this user and/or give advice on how to handle a potential problem user (along the lines of "Willy on Wheels").

A second item concerns a message you sent some time ago concerning my interest in adminship. Though I wasn't able to respond immediately (I apologize for that), I have come to the conclusion that I am not ready at this time. Not only do I have other important things outside Wikipedia (which limits the amount of time I can spend here), but I also have several articles (two U.S. city articles, three planet articles) that I want to get to FA. By being an admin, I feel that my abilities to commit to those projects will be greatly diminished. Nevertheless, when the time is appropriate, I will signal my interest in being an admin. Thanks for the suggestion though. Pentawing^Talk 21:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

You did fine, though we try to make the first warning as pleasant as possible. Generally I try to ask them to make positive contributions instead. Funny enough people making stupid edits at first may be worthwile editors if they want to. But I'm also not against quickly blocking those causing damage. If you warn them and they repeat the vandalism that's clear blocking territory. If you want, the quickest way to get a response is to list it on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. If they vandalize after a warning they'll get a block pretty quick. As for that specific user, unless I'm missing something they stopped pretty quick after the warning so there's nothing to worry about with that one.

And I commend you for focusing on articles, you certainly don't need to be an admin, but you also don't need to spend much time on admin functions either. Basically it would allow quicker reverting of vandalism and blocking if that's all you wanted. But hey also let me know, and don't sweat it if you don't want it. We need article writers too. - Taxman ^Talk 03:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Lothal FAC

Hi Taxman - Lothal is FAC! Please give an up-or-down vote at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Lothal. Thanks for all your help and advice! Rama's Arrow 15:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Biased Admin

I was just informed that there's another ON issue on Wiki. My first reaction was, "oh no, here we go again." But upon further investigation, it is clear to me that you judge content based on a bias, not on the quality of the content. The one that jumped out at me the most was the booting article. A lesser version of that article has been linked on wiki forever (formerly in the bootstap wiki I believe). No one has ever had an issue with it. We (I'm an O-nerd admin) got the author to clean up the article, add to it, and post it on ON. He then updated the wiki link to his new, better article, which you removed ... ok, fine, maybe you didn't like it. But then I look at the other external links that are allowed to remain and it is more than obvious that you care nothing about content, and only about your personal vendetta with Uriah923. It's as good if not better than the other links provided that are allowed to stay. I just think it's sad. I was at least partially on your side before with the old O-nerd issues, but now you're putting personal feelings in the way of good information. If you have to remove the hard work of others to feel good, go ahead. Despite all your suspicions, there is no SEO campaign by ON via wiki. Give it up man, it's just not true. I'm not denying the issues of the past, but that is nowhere near the case now. If you can honestly say that the ON article you deleted from the Booting article is of lesser value than the other external links, then that's fine and I accept that disagreement though I still think you're wrong and should consider deleting the other links as well. If that's not the case though, I'm loosing faith in you man. No hard feelings. I just ask you to judge ON authors by their content, and not by your past issues with Uriah923. I'm sure that's too much to ask though. Your obsession with a past issue seems too much for you to forget. I'm not looking for a debate, conversation, deal or anything like that. Wiki is your land. I'm just stating that I think you're going too far, that's all. Good luck with whatever it is you do. MarkMcB 01:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

There were countless polite requests for this issue to have ended in a better manner. The extraordinary amount of time that was and is being wasted on the issue is detrimental to the project. There's no huge gain to a Wikipedia article to have external links. What articles need are the highest quality references such as textbooks, journal articles, highly regarded whitepapers, rfc's etc. Yes we know having links from Wikipedia is very valuable because of our pagerank, but that's not what we're here for, and we're probably going to have to get tighter about it. - Taxman ^Talk 03:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I understand what happened in the past and I understand why it was wrong. Now let's discuss today. Today ON has an improved version of an article that was cited on wiki when it was lesser without issue. After the improvement, the only thing on wiki that changes is the link and you remove it. Doesn't that seem odd to you? I feel like you're judging me and the authors on my site because of the actions of one individual. That'd be like you going to jail forever because your brother is a murderer. You're punishing my authors because you don't like Uriah923. I wish you'd just say, "I, Taxman, am willing to judge the entire content of a site and all of its authors because I dislike one person." What if wiki had a rogue admin? Should the world dismiss its content??? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. All I'd like to see from you is some consistency. You target ON articles, not poor external links like you claim. Many of the authors for my site spend a lot of time and effort working on their articles and I know them to be better than the average wiki external link. I just can't understand why you can't allow people (non-ONs) to post links to our site if they deem them useful. If you or wiki is sooooo concerned with SEO and PageRank, then why don't you implement no follow attributes on your links and make them useless for Google credit? I get severely irritated when I read how you dismiss content as SEO with no explanation other than "once upon a time I had this problem with Uriah923." Continue your crusade if you must, but just know that you're only discriminating against the authors of ON who are the same people who enjoy contributing to sites like wiki. And please, give up on the SEO argument. Nearly all of our visibility comes from when our articles are posted on sites like Slashdot or other high traffic/high visibility sites. I personally keep track of our traffic and I've never seen a trend or spike on ON that was related to wiki. We'll do fine with or without wiki links, but that's of no concern to me. My concern is that you are deciding which links should or should not stay simply by a domain name. You owe the wiki community more thought than that as an admin. If you don't like external links, then please get to deleting. I've seen a lot of non "textbooks, journal articles, highly regarded whitepapers, rfc's etc" cited in wiki articles. But we all know that's not what you've been looking for in your recent delete-spree ... you're looking for "ON.com". MarkMcB 06:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I can't fix everything on this site; I can only work on what I see and promote best practices. Again, what we need are reliable references, and yes in this case I feel it is better to not reward a site where someone has acted so irresponsibly; we don't need external links, they're just a non-critical extra. If the links to your site weren't so important, then why are we even spending time on this issue? - Taxman ^Talk 13:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh ... my ... gosh!!! I give up man. You win whatever game you're playing. No matter how many times I tell you I don't care about the links, you're going to fall back on your conspiracy theory. While we're at it, I'll just assume that the only reason you ever worked on wiki was to gain admin right for for self-gratification and bragging rights with your peers because apparently there's no way that anything done on wiki is for the good of the group. Perhaps you didn't read what I wrote: I don't care if you take off our links ... just stop being a biased admin!!! If what you are preaching is true, then you've got a lot of work to do. It just seems funny to me that you've got the time to delete the ON links, but not the others that are in the same article. ---- So, let's drop that one, you win your power-trip game. Please answer this, why do you get to say, "we don't need external links?" If they're not needed/useful, then why are they even allowed on wiki? It would seem that many disagree with you. Also, I'm curious what you're going to do in a year or so when someone throws up a wiki page for ON because it's become a popular site. It's bound to happen as our growth has been steady since day 1. Every other site similar to ours has a wiki page I've noticed. I can only assume you'd delete one entitled ON, regardless of who writes it with a note saying, "this is clearly SEO." What will be your justification then? In more general terms, are you ever going to let go of the past? MarkMcB 14:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I could respond further, but for the most part I'll just stand on the basis of what I've already said, and let the manner of your comments strengthen my points for me. As to our articles on websites, everyone wants one about theirs so it's not surprising we have too many--it's a significant unfortunate bias in our coverage, among others. If and when ON has a verifiable popularity/importance to warrant inclusion of an article on it, that wouldn't be the end of the world, but it still wouldn't justify having lots of links from our articles to ON. - Taxman ^Talk 15:23, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Manner? If you mean frustrated, then you're right on. I'm frustrated because I don't like you labeling the anything related to ON as "spam." If you had an issue with Uriah923, then please label it as "Uriah923 spam." I get extremely irritated when I watch you go around claiming that ON is on some sort of wiki SEO campaign. It seems very much like slander to me. I guess the root of my frustration is that you blame ON for your problems. At one point in time that may have been at least somewhat true, but it certainly is not anymore. I'd be quite satisfied if you simply stopped citing "ON spam" when you remove a link to ON. All you're doing is building an unwarranted bias against my site. Like I've said before, I don't care how many (if any) links to ON are on wiki. I do, however, care when you toss around the name of my site (or "ON") as if it's some sort of spammer's haven. If nothing else, do me a favor and be more specific in your accusations and actions when you leave your little notes in the edit summaries. I respect your intentions as a wiki admin, but I think you're letting emotions bleed over into just arbitration. If your issue is with Uriah923, then please cite this in your actions and don't discredit my work and the work of the patrons of my site. MarkMcB 22:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Now that's fair enough, I can change that, but I'd rather that I'll never have to again. As founder of the site I would again recommend you strongly encourage Uriah923 to drop the issue as it is giving your site a bad name. For what it's worth it wasn't to connect the whole site to it, but simply as the simplest descriptive term of the promotional efforts being done in the name of the site. - Taxman ^Talk 00:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Great. If possible, could you contact me via the email address on the bottom of ON. I'm unaware of how Uriah923 ties into the recent deletions and email would probably be a better forum (unless you want to make your talk page even longer). I'm willing to do whatever is necessary, but I'm admittedly ignorant to a certain degree on what exactly the current issues with Uriah923 are and how to recognize them. MarkMcB 00:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

No major need. It's really simple. Just ask him in the strongest words possible to stop trying to use Wikipedia to promote your site. That includes linking to it, asking people to consider links to it, and complaining when the links are removed and the site is put on the blacklist due to his efforts. His activities aren't good for your site or ours. - Taxman ^Talk 13:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

You're asking me to scold him when I have no proof (which is what I wanted to discuss via email). Needless to say, I'd like to have some proof of the alleged promotions. As far as I can tell (and I'm no wiki expert), he hasn't posted any links to ON. Is there some forum where he's asking others to do his work? Perhaps I'm missing them. I'm sure you understand that all I want is a solid case before I go accusing him of wrongdoing. The initial issue seemed cut and dry, but I don't see the basis against him on this one. And I think the reason he's complaining about the link removals is because he watches you like you watch him. Let's face it, neither of you trust the other, and both of you seem to freak out anytime the other does anything related to ON. Anyway, that's irrelevant. I would simply like any info you can give me on how I should show that he is doing things in a manner that's not acceptable for wiki. Thanks! MarkMcB 17:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Hindi Vocal Samples.

Hey Taxman, sorry for the late response. Yeah, I guess I missed ri, and probably the voice quality isn't all that good either. I'll try doing it again soon. Thanks! deeptrivia (talk) 04:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Well you don't have to do it if you don't, recruit someone else if you want, but thanks for creating them, they're just fine. You don't have to do it all over too since they just need to be chopped up anyway. The phrases in List of common phrases in various languages would be good to have too if you're willing. - Taxman ^Talk 04:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

And while we're at it, can you tell me what मितूवा might mean? I can't remember the rest of the sentence it was in and I'm not sure if the spelling is right (I can't tell by sound the difference between the t's and d's and long and short vowels all the time yet), but I've heard it in a few film songs and I can't find it in my dictionary. - Taxman ^Talk 04:56, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Split infinitive

Talk:Split_infinitive

Someone more skillful than I (er.. than me?) please tidy up my thoughts, please.

There was a request for references to be cited. In the above split infinitives debate, the address: http://courses.lib.odu.edu/engl/jbing/544--infinitive.html may help someone very keen to follow up the thread thoroughly..

That is a good start. It's not a highly reliable reference of it's own but it does cite some that appear to be, so it could be very helpful in improving the reliability of our article. Thank you very much. Why not get an account here, and get ahold of some of the source listed at that link and start contributing. It's pretty addictive. - Taxman ^Talk 19:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair use images

Hello. I'm trying to get an article up to FA status, and I noticed you were an individual heavily involved in the process. I read through your FA guide, and I would like to ask you a question. What exactly is the problem with fair use images. And if using them, is there some sort of criteria. You mentioned it in the FA advice you wrote, yet I'm still having a problem understanding the problem. Perhaps you could further explain. Pepsidrinka 19:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

There's a few problems, the biggest one being they're not free. We are the free encyclopedia, with the goal of describing all encyclopedia knowledge. We're not the fair use encyclopedia. The next problem is people rarely properly apply the fair use rules and use correct fair use rationale. In using a fair use image we're publishing someone else's copyrighted work and benefiting from that. But even with 100% correctly applied fair use rationale, the image is not free to use for all purposes. A teacher wishing to use a Wikipedia article in class, or someone wishing to use it in a corporate presentation, or whatever other purpose free information can be put to is probably not covered by the fair use rationale that Wikipedia is claiming, as the rationale only apply to Wikipedia's use of the image. So they must strip out the fair use images and be left with a lesser article and/or face the liability of violating copyright. Now to be fair a lot of people don't respect copyright, but when we hold ourselves out as the promoters of free information, we should follow what we promote. You may also wish to get User:Carnildo's views on it as he is very good at patrolling for fair use problems, and he may have a different view than I. In the end my guideline says free images are preferred, but properly tagged fair use images are allowed, which I believe is the situation. I think in the long run we'd be better off if they weren't allowed, but I don't get the final say. :) - Taxman ^Talk 20:19, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Provided some references.

I've installed some references in my last two edits in the free will entry.[1][2] Two of the sources are (1) a college philosophy textbook and (2) Tom Morris, Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale and has published extensively, including haven written the user-friendly Philosophy for Dummies book. I'm glad your stopping by for WP:CITE. Too many times I've seen editors ignore the policy even when it comes to challenged material. --Wade A. Tisthammer 20:50, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the addition. I can't say I'm enthusiastic about the status of Philosophy for dummies as a Wikipedia:Reliable references though. Ideally more and higher quality sources would be used, but again thanks for the efforts. They are a step in the right direction. - Taxman ^Talk 04:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for your kind words on my talk page. I'm glad that I managed to put across my thoughts on the "lucky" (as you say, it's all luck) million. It's the project as a whole that I'm interested in. Thanks again! :) Nach0king 09:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome, rock on, and make the most of your 15 minutes! Did you end up with any media appearances yet? - Taxman ^Talk 21:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:FARC

No, I disagree with you (politely). Please read the nomination of Matthew Brettingham's FARC. [3]. While Tony has removed his oppose vote, since I nominated the others, there is a growing clamour on FAC these days for numerous references, and a uniformity of style and prose and certain personal information. Because the subjects I write about are often long dead and/or lesser known I am unable to conform to that. So the pages I have edited will eventually be FARCd, I am just nominating them before some-one else does - a simple solution, then all the FAs can be uniformly full of "compelling prose" and numerous references on well known figures. Giano | talk 15:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I did read the nomination. But that seems like something more worth discussing with the nominator and the commenter. I know his comments were too harsh, and even innapropriate, but in human interaction that's going to happen. The nominator appears a little inexperienced, so some discussion with her would be warranted. I saw none on her talk page. Even after all that the article that you reacted to the situation on is a clear keep. Nominating all the others is really just clogging up the process and not helpful. Please remove them and just discuss the issue so we can effect positive change.

What is happening at least as far as the referencing issue, is standards are being raised. That should happen in this project as we strive to have more and more reliable material. You wrote the articles and presumably have access to the sources you used. You are in the ideal position to cite any particularly important points in the article to the best available source. If you prioritized the top 5-10 facts in the or each article for importance and/or potential contentiousness, and cited those, that would be all that is needed to fully comply with current standards. Is it easy, no? Does it make the project that much stronger, absolutely. If you're willing to do that, I'll go and point out the points that could use them. - Taxman ^Talk 21:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• Please do not trouble yourself. I have no intention at all (as I have said) of going back re-reading books I've already listed to comply with constantly changing regulations. If I did that, next month something else would arise, and the month after that, and again - No a clean break is better. Let future FAs be just an assembly of facts already on the internet that can be easily checked by those interested. I never go back. I never look back! Giano | talk 23:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• I can understand your bitterness due to the comments made, but not your opposition to improving articles. So the standards are raising--that's a good thing--not a reason to not improve articles. And inline citations don't have to be the cesspool of low quality sources that you seem to be thinking of. Anyway work on contributions you do enjoy and we'll be at a better place in the end anyway. - Taxman ^Talk 04:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:FAC and WP:FARC

Hi, Taxman. I'm having trouble understanding why Geogre chooses to post this eloquent argument about Tony1's copyediting FAC objections on my talkpage and there only; I suppose he simply doesn't want to offend. (And yet, in a double impulse, he does post it.) Anyway, I thought you might be interested in reading it. Bishonen | ノート 16:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC).

Hmm, I'll try to read it in a minute, you might notice I'm a little flooded at the moment, but thanks for pointing it out. Haven't run into you in a while :), hope you're well. - Taxman ^Talk 21:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Having read it, it is interesting. I agree with some of the points he has and certainly disagree with others (especially the economics, but that's tangential anyway). But that's how the game works, if there were no differences of opinion we'd have a completed project already, and a very boring and factually incorrect one at that. I'd just ask if he's ok moving it to the FAC criteria talk page or somewhere more appropriate for getting some use out of it for having discussions that can improve how we work here instead of a lonely comment on your talk page. - Taxman ^Talk 22:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Not that lonely! Bish's talk page has the 6th most traffic of any user talk page - official! - and only missed the top 5 by less than 0.1% (one post in over 1000)! -- ALoan (Talk) 23:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello good sir! What prompted your arrival here? And lonely more referred to not being connected to the pages that it might be more relevant on. And no thank you sir, I'll keep my space here quieter if at all possible. - Taxman ^Talk 04:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Essentially, the comment has such a pointed reference to Tony1, and the horrors that arose when Tony went up for RFA are so well documented, that I felt like posting it anywhere but as commisseration was going to generate another round of hurt feelings and high heat. I don't feel like playing at avoiding the overly sensitive or being diplomatic when such diplomacy would be one-sided only. I also don't think that it would do much more than be a figurehead argument. Enough people object to narrow cossetting of FA's into style sheets and corporate boredom, but few people want to express it in as ... forceful... a way as I did that I'd just be used as a battering ram. If I were going to draft a version of my comments for wider consumption, I would argue that applying any single style sheet to a large document (and Wikipedia is a huge one) is folly, that style sheets are products of corporations that require ease of reading as a top concern, that style sheets invariably fail to achieve ease of reading, that conformity of prose style is boring, and finally that authors attempt a type of music with their writing (whether the music is cacophonous or euphonous), and applying an alien grid onto writing blindly destroys the readability.

As for the Marxist part of my rant, I figured that people wouldn't agree, but if I'm even slightly right, the copy editor who crows about his job is someone co-opted by a capitalist system and mistaking training for thinking. We all want clarity and conciseness, but many of us rely on the reading to find it, not the search and replace Polyphemus grope of a style sheet. Geogre 00:21, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I still think it would be better said in a more relevant place, but since I more disagree with the thrust of the way you've written it above, do what you like. :) Some consistency is beneficial, and some important composition guidelines should be encouraged. Overdoing it is not the greatest idea, and it does seem some of that is going on too. Other than that, I haven't dug into Tony's comments, nor am do I feel qualified to add a significantly useful point to the debate. - Taxman ^Talk 04:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Spoken Hindi article

I have created a spoken Hindi article on Hindi wiki. It is about Indo-European language family. Those interested, especially the foreigners learning Hindi, may wish to look at the page and listen to the spoken article here : hi:हिन्द-यूरोपीय भाषा-परिवार. Please tell me if you face any problem. Cygnus_hansa 17:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

That's very awesome, thanks for making it and letting me know. Maybe I'll start a word for word English translation both as an exercise and as a further learning tool. Wikibooks seems like an ideal place for that. In the same vein, commons really needs Hindi phrase samples. I'll see if I can find the place where that is coordinated again if you're willing, and want to beat Deeptrivia to doing the Hindi phrases in List of common phrases in various languages. - Taxman ^Talk 21:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for encouragement. Of course I am willing to help!Cygnus_hansa 22:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Request for arbitration

I have listed a request for arbitration in which you are an involved party here. uriah923^(talk) 20:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Obviously I'd rather you wouldn't have since more wasted time on a settled issue is not helpful for the project. We'll see how it goes. - Taxman ^Talk 21:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Copperchair

Hey- you know the fifth ban on Copperchair was 'sposed to be for a year, not a week, right? --maru (talk) contribs 00:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I covered that in my post on the adminstrators noticeboard about the issue. Nothing required a year. - Taxman ^Talk 04:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I've unprotected it (because, to be completely honest, I had forgotten about it... I meant to unprotect it when the March 1 block expired). I've also replied at WP:AN and on the talk page in question. Feel free to delete my comment now. Have a nice day. — Mar. 7, '06 [21:32] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

Proposal for compromise

Ok, let's try to end all of this. I understand you want the blacklisting to stay because it saves you time (i.e, you won't have to check up on me or the two IPs from which I contribute). So, how about we compromise?

My part

• Swear to a permanent ON gag order: no talking about ON or its content on any talk page or article other than my user page (including making suggestions for links or adding commented-out links, etc.)
• Concede all links you already removed.
• Voluntarily remove any remaining ON links (other than my user page).

Your part

• Concede the blacklisting.

This is a big sacrifice for me because I sincerely believe that the links were valuable and that I have the right to suggest links even to sites with which I am affiliated. It is a sacrifice for you because you run the risk of me breaking my promise. I get what I want, which is the door left open for ON content to be included on WP if it is ever found worthy through the normal, NPOV, non-me means. You get what you want which is the removal of all ON links and a gag order on me.

You may say that this has been tried before, but the key difference is that this time it's permanent, clear and voluntary. Last time, some ambiguous blanket statements were barked out, I dropped the issue (eventually), and then Redwolf24 came along and lifted some restrictions - all of which led to me feeling justified in pursuing link-by-suggestion. This time, I voluntarily submit to a gag order and the removal of all non-user page links (even though I feel both are unjustified) for the sake of the whitelisting. That's about as big of a compromise as you could expect or want. I hope you'll give it some serious thought as it presents a quick end to all of the arguing and a long term solution with which both of us can live. uriah923^(talk) 23:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

It's rather disingenuous to offer this now, don't you think, after you've one more time chosen specifically to waste everyone's time on an issue that had already been clearly decided? Interesting timing considering that your arbcom request isn't looking good and there's a stronger consensus to keep the site on the blacklist. Not that I alone could even take the site off the list, as it appears several other people believe it should stay. Lets see, you've shown desire and willingness to break previous agreements, ignore nearly unanimous opposition to your actions, use anonymous IP's to add your links, and you've added some very disingenuous comments to your user page, and completely misrepresented the situation on meta. Don't you think it's funny that nearly without fail everyone that reviews the situation sides against your actions? I fully believe in assuming good faith, but once someone has completely removed all reasons to do so as you have done with this specific topic, it would reckless to keep assuming it. External links, while having some value, simply aren't valuable enough to justify the damage in this case. It would be much better to simply end the issue and it appears that has more or less been done, and this is already ended. - Taxman ^Talk 15:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Disingenuous? The proposal for compromise is real and sincere. What's disingenuous is refusing to assume good faith or to see the merits/logic of a situation or argument because you seem to have everyone convinced I'm a linkspammer (something that still has no foundation).

I've not misrepresented anything anywhere; my comments on the arbcom request and the whitelisting request are valid, justified and logical. However, as we fail to see eye to eye, I thought a compromise was in order. If you refuse, then I guess it's back to endless arguing... uriah923^(talk) 17:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully this "endless arguing" will be done at meta, since, as was pointed out in the arbcom request, Wikipedia has no power over the blacklist. TheJabberwock 00:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for bringing attention to the ON problem; hopefully it's been killed once and for all. I thought I'd give you this invitation:

Hello, Taxman. Thanks for your help removing linkspam from Wikipedia! If you're interested, come visit us at WikiProject Spam and help fight linkspammers on Wikipedia.

Kennedy-Thorndike

Please read the references, the experiment is covered by reference 5. I cover the mathematical reasoning. Could you please check? Ati3414 23:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Then cite the actual source. Your mathematical reasoning is not suitable as a reference. In fact it should not be considered at all unless it is seriously trivial, and then it shouldn't be cited, just explained on the talk page if need be. You need to cite third party, Wikipedia:Reliable references as you have been asked a number of times. In this case a peer reviewed, respected journal would be what we're looking for. - Taxman ^Talk 23:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, so I did it. So people will have to fork over minimum 30$ to find out what went on. I think wiki is broken (from many points of view). But so be it. Ati3414 23:41, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Well you can either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Thanks for being reasonable and citing other sources. Lots of people have access to those and can check them. If you have insights into how Wikipedia is broken there are lots of people including me that would like to see if there is a way to fix it. I can direct you to the right places to discuss getting changes made. But ignoring multiple requests to adjust your actions is not the way, and will in fact lend much less weight to your position. The way Wikipedia works has been hammered out by adjustments from many people, making it unlikely that you are correct if everyone is opposing you. Of course they could all be wrong, but that would be able to be born out by looking at the situation logically if you can remove the emotions from the issue and state your case clearly. - Taxman ^Talk 00:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, here are a few:

1. There is no way of adding extensive calculations to clarify a point. Having a part of the server assigned as a repository would solve this.

2. Editing by committee doesn't work. You need senior editors, knowledgeable in the subject matter.

3. You need editors assigned per subject. The current situation allows any administrator to make decisions on any subject, whether they know it or not.

You mention that there is a body that discusses these improvements, I would be very interested in getting connected.

As an aside, can you explain why you reverted my additions again? Ati3414 00:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

1) The reason we don't do that is our policy against original research. WP is not the place for refereeing specific claims or verifying calculations. That is why the NOR policy and the verifiablility policy together require citing only third party published research, etc. Have another read through those. For truly trivial things the talk pages work fine.

2) This whole site disproves that point. Editing by committe works remarkably well up to a point. We do however need senior, knowledgeable editors even though we have a lot of them already. If they work within the rules the results are typically very good. There are a number of systems in proposal stage like Wikipedia:Stable versions m:article validation and Wikipedia:Scientific peer review that seem to be good solutions to improving the problems you seem to be referring to.

3) See Wikipedia:Administrators. We just have access to some extra technical tools and generally have experience enforcing Wikipedia policy. We are not empowered to make specific topical decisions. The most we do is listen to and enforce consensus. That's not always perfect, but it is better than the alternative of no enforcement.

4) There's not a body really besides the Foundation board of directors, these things are discussed by all Wikipedians. The way it works is proposals are made and if they gain a lot of support they can be implimented. That can be tedious, but overall it's not doing too bad. Besides policy proposals, these things are discussed on the talk pages of the policies such as those I pointed you to. Overall the issue so far is much more that you haven't looked into how things really work here. You'll have to do much more of that before you can know how it is broken.

5) I didn't revert you, I moved it to a more appropriate place as I explained in the edit summary and on the talk page. Please use the talk page before simply replacing your edit back to the same problem you had added before. It's that type of thing that is making things difficult for you. If you add the page to your watchlist, and checked it, you would have seen my edit to the talk page. You should have then discussed there before reverting back to your position. I reasoned why my edits were justified, you need to do the same. Please use that talk page for more. - Taxman ^Talk 01:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Ati3414 02:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Re: Peer Review/History of Puerto Rico

Thank you for your comments regarding history of Puerto Rico. I have added a bit of information to the lead paragraphs per your suggestions. Once again thank you very much. Joelito 00:08, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Can I interest you...?

Hi, Taxman. If you're at leisure, I wonder if you might be interested in taking a look at my S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897, that I just listed on FAC, especially the referencing. I don't know if you remember we had a set-to about references earlier—probably not. But this is how I like them. Having a notes and a references section may seem like a heavy or pedantic system (and on Saffron it sure is—they have achieved a frightening combination of the worst features of all possible systems), but IMO it's the best way of leaving the text as clean and light as possible, with not too many superscribed note numbers, and with consecutive note numbers. I live with all sorts of footnote systems in my job and have never seen the weird jumping-about note numbers anywhere but at Wikipedia—I find them very odd and distracting. Another advantage of the way I do it in that article seems to me to be that the list of references gets to be alphabetical. Grubbing about for one particular reference in a non-alphabetical combined "Notes and references" list becomes inconvenient in proportion as the list becomes long, and they do seem to be getting longer and longer lately. Anyway, don't put yourself out or anything, but I'd be very glad to know what you think. (I realize you can't actually check most of the references; I'm trying to persuade somebody/some people from the Swedish Wikipedian's Noticeboard to do that.) Bishonen | ノート 01:19, 19 March 2006 (UTC).

Are you just asking if I like the way you did the referencing? In fact I do, as the alphabetical references section is nice. But I'm not overly stressed about the format of the citations as long as it is done thoroughly. Clearly that was done there and the article is great of course. Maybe see if your ideas can't get merged into the cite.php system. As far as checking them, you're right, I don't know Swedish—I've got a few languages on my learning list ahead of it. After Hindi I figure I'll polish my Spanish then dabble in Mandarin, but maybe Arabic first :). But do you mean you want some Swedish speakers to check each citation to each source or what? - Taxman ^Talk 04:53, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Heh, thanks. :-) I was thinking of a Swedish speaker doing a spot check, more like. Say getting Lindström's book out of the library and looking up my citations. That would be the ambitious way, and is a lot to ask of people, but anybody who had the language could check out the online Swedish Balloon Association page with Andrée's practice flights, and the Grenna Museum Andrée bio, in a few minutes. User:Uppland is on it — probably the ambitious version, if I know him — but I don't know when he'll have the time. Truthfully, those few English-language sources I've scared up are pretty worthless. Bishonen | ノート 06:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC).

Hindi

Hi, recently I have been making a lot of articles in Hindi. In fact, nowadays I am almost the only one on Hindi wiki who is writing anything. The Indo-European languages articles is actually the only spoken article in Hindi. Most of the articles in Hindi are a few lines stubs--hence unsuitable for spoken article. Still I could suggest you some relatively longer articles (all made by me) from which you can suggest :

1. Harry Potter hi:हैरी पॉटर
2. Jesus Christ hi:ईसा मसीह
3. Latin hi:लातिनी
4. French language hi:फ़्रांसिसी भाषा
5. Jerusalem hi:येरुशलम
6. Kashmir hi:कश्मीर
7. Hinduism hi:हिन्दू धर्म

Please give me your suggestions soon. Cygnus_hansa 21:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Kashmir looks like a great one. Not too much specialized vocab, good basic geography topic, etc. It is unfortunate that Hindi hasn't attracted more contributors, I've been thinking of asking at the Indian Wikipedian's noticeboard for ideas on what can be done to encourage more participation there from new Wikipedians and current ones. I'm not yet able to contribute much there and it may be a while before I can. - Taxman ^Talk 21:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on Kashmir. But it might tale me sometime. Cygnus_hansa 22:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

The three admin tools I use the most are the rollback button, the ability to delete articles, and the ability to see deleted pages. Blocking is not one of the tools I've used very much, and I've agreed not to block anyone for at least a year after I get admin privileges. Could you reconsider your opposition to my RfA? --Carnildo 04:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, as I respect your contributions, and obviously many other people do too given that they are willing support you despite your actions, but misusing admin tools is something we can't be lenient about. I appreciate your commitment, but you should have thought about that before you blocked two admins that hadn't done anything. And it's not about just blocking—it's about the other tools too. - Taxman ^Talk 12:57, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hindi wiki spoken article

I have made the spoken version of Kashmir article on Hindi wikipedia, after improving it. You may listen it at hi:कश्मीर.Cygnus_hansa 18:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

That's awesome thanks. I'll listen to it tonight. I've never understood why the spoken template didn't link to the specific oldid of the article that the spoken version was based on. It was the latest one here I take it? - Taxman ^Talk 19:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I had copied the template from English wiki, and now I have corrected it.Cygnus_hansa 07:36, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hindi Grammar

Could you please invoke or request some bot which can convert the html characters of the devanagari script into the proper devanagari script at the hindi grammar page and the Hindi page?Cygnus_hansa 20:07, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't have anything to do with the bots, but User:Curps is the one that runs a bot that does that. I've asked him to do it and hopefully he'll be able to get to it soon. - Taxman ^Talk 21:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

RfC

I agree. My only hesitation is that, for users who mean well, an RfC can be hurtful, and for those who don't mean well (i.e. trolls), it gives them another platform. I've therefore left a note on User talk:-Lumière to see whether we can resolve things between us. If nothing constructive comes of the approach, I'll either look for an uninvolved admin to start issuing blocks or go ahead with the RfC. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Meta adminship request

Procedures at meta requests for adminship call for mentioning here that I am applying for adminship with my meta account, m:User:Taxman. So there you go. - Taxman ^Talk 01:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Taxman, and thank you for taking time to vote on my RfA. I understand that my last 6000+ edits were not sufficient to convince you that edits like some of my early ones would never be repeated again, but I sincerely hope that at some point I would be able to convince you of my transformation. Looking forward to working with you in future. Regards, deeptrivia (talk) 03:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It'll take some more time, at least as much as the original, and probably a specific apology. Basically some way to know it wont be repeated. I know it's frustrating, but edits alone likely won't do it. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Peer review Kolkata

Hi! A request has been made for peer review of Kolkata. Could you please help improving the article? Thanks.--Dwaipayanc 11:00, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll have a look in a bit. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Keratoconus

Hello again. I thought I would drop by to let you know that a good number of improvements have been now actioned on the Keratoconus article. Temporary account's comments have been addressed to his satisfaction, and there remain now just a few minor issues on Talk:Keratoconus about other items for inclusion. As regards your comments on the FAC page, I have endeavoured to improve the flow of the text, and combine or expand the shorter paragraphs. The worst remaining offender in this regard is the Contact lenses section, which still has a number of short paragraphs. My difficulty here has been expanding them meaningfully while not upsetting the balance of coverage, or joining sections that are not directly related. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I'm of the view that the readability of this section is not adversely affected. If you feel differently, or you have further comments on how to improve the article, they would be very welcome. Regards, --BillC 11:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks pretty good, I'll adjust my comments there to support. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Hindi Grammar

Please see the Hindi grammar article now. I have made the pronunciation transliterations and a bit more additions. Please tell me what else would you like on this page. As for the links that you sent me earlier, I am unable to download any corpus free of charge.Cygnus_hansa 13:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It looks good. My only worry is that to be complete, it is quite long and leans towards some things more suited to a textbook than an encyclopedia. But that's not a huge problem. I'll leave more specific things on the talk page if I see them. Bummer on the corpus, I thought you might be able to get summary statistics through your university, but I'll see if I can't figure out something here. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

My RfA recently closed and it was a success, passing at 84-02-00. I would like to thank you for taking the time to weigh in and on your subsequent support. And I know it's quite cliche, but if you ever need any assistance and/or want another opinion on something, grab a Pepsi and don't hesitate to drop me a line on my talk page. Thanks again. Pepsidrinka 05:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. - Taxman ^Talk 13:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

It's here!!!

Dear Taxman:

And it's here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Announcing my CS 492 term-end paper: On Wikipedia — the Technology, the People, the Unfinished Work. File:Wikipedia.pdf

Thank you for all the kind help you have lent me during the paper-writing process!!!

Long live Wikipedia!!!

Shuo Xiang 22:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Hindi Swadesh list

Hi Taxman,

You think this list is not "suitable for Wikipedia". I respectfully don't agree with you. Here are some reasons, among others, why I created this page :

• I first created it in the French Wiki, where there was nothing, neither in Wikipedia nor in Wiktionary
• The Wiktionary list does not include romanization of the words, which could be useful to non-Hindi speakers (could be fixed by adding a new column including this information, however less readable than a dedicated page)
• Wiktionary gives a raw list, and does not include any reference to books and websites.
• More people use Wikipedia than Wiktionary; as an evidence, you fixed Wiktionary list after having fixed Wikipedia's one.

So, the discussion is open ... Croquant 09:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh and I missed that your response was on the talk page there too. I'll copy mine there and I'd prefer further discussion be there. - Taxman ^Talk 15:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary can and probably should include transliterations. Some of the Swadesh lists there do, it's just not well coordinated yet. Wiktionary can and should include references. I'm going to add my references there when I'm done. External links are fine as far as I know also. And yes, Wikipedia gets more traffic than any of our other projects, but that doesn't mean we should include everything that is supposed to be only in those projects. What Wikipedia is not specifically defines things that should not be here including word definitions. That especially applies to vocabulary translation lists. So again, I'm not saying it wasn't good work, this just isn't the place for it. And at first I didn't see the list creatd here, I just saw the link you added in Hindi to it, which I would have seen had you added a link to Wiktionary instead. I've gone through and checked every word against at least one other dictionary, so as I get time I'll put them all in the Wiktionary pages. Once it is fully transwikied there the article here should be deleted. Sorry, just focus on what each project is for. Wiktionary is even better, because there a full definition of the Hindi word can be included in every language's Wiktionary. So the English can have an English definition, the French can have a French definition, etc. - Taxman ^Talk 13:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

FYI: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tax Honesty Movement

Please opine! Cheers! bd2412 T 14:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Buy Term and invest the difference

Taxman thank you for all your updates. I appreciate you NPOV approach and look to your comments for moderation. I've made some significant updates to Buy term and Invest the difference and hope you have the opportunity to review it.

Ken

Enquiry on FA policy

Hi,

I wanted your suggestion regarding Featured Article Candidate policy since you seem to be quite active in these. I am currently working on Indian Institutes of Technology and am working hard to get an Featured Article status for it. Unfortunately, even before I could start a Peer Review, an anonymous IP nominated it as FAC. Needless to say in the shabby form it was then, the nomination failed miserably. Now I have organized a Peer Review of the article and got some suggestions for improvements that I implemented. I wanted to know how soon can I again put a request as FAC without getting oppositions like "This is too soon".

I would also appreciate if you can give your comments on it at the Peer Review Page of the article.

Thanks,

-Ambuj Saxena (talk) 15:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

As a procedural issue, simply explaining that an anon nominated it when it wasn't ready would cover the issue of re-nominating too soon. But the article has a bit more to go before it is ready, so nominating is not likely to be successful yet. I will try to detail the issues I see on the peer review page. - Taxman ^Talk 16:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and the wonderful edits at the page. The edits were overall good, but the edit about Illumination festival changes the meaning of the sentence and makes it misleading. Although Diwali is a festival of lights (and Illumination festival is celebrated on that day), the Illumination festival is unique to IIT Kharagpur (celebrated nowhere else). I have rephrased it to make the meaning clear. Waiting for your comments in Peer Review. Hopefully with your help, it will achieve FA status soon. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 17:36, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you.....?

I've just come over here for a private winge and moan. Do you ever get seriously agitated by being told what is wrong by a bunch who never seem to write a proper article? Good, I feel better for saying that - I'll get back to my writing. Giano | talk 16:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Venting is good—in moderation at least.:) - Taxman ^Talk 23:23, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Verify the phonography cylinder 'plug in' models.

Moved to Talk:Phonograph cylinder because I don't have any involvement with those topics. - Taxman ^Talk 12:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Humphrey Bogart references

Hello, "Taxman" --

This is a message from Andrew Szanton, a freelance writer and editor. I think it's fair to say that I provided the first major draft of the Humphrey Bogart article several years ago, although obviously it's been much edited and supplemented since.

I believe you posted a message saying that featured articles should make their sources clear.

If you want to know what sources I used, several of them were Lauren Bacall's memoir, "By Myself," Stephen Bogart's book about his father, "Bogart: In Search of My Father" and Katharine Hepburn's book "The Making of the African Queen." I also found useful an old profile of Bogart published in Time Magazine, which had some direct quotes from Bogart; I could probably find the date of that piece if you wanted it.

If you get this message and have any reply, could you e-mail me at aszantonATrcn.com ?

Thanks, Andrew Szanton aszantonATrcn.com

That's excellent, thanks for the reply. Yes, ideally I'd like all the information you can gather about those sources, and better yet, an appraisal of how the current status of the article is in terms of those sources. Basically, is the current articlce accurate, and would those sources serve as good references for it? I've munged your email so you don't get a lot of spam, Wikipedia pages get trawled by spambots all the time, but I will try to email you to. - Taxman ^Talk 17:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Old Swiss Confederacy

Could you address my main point - that the article is not comprehensive and baldy structured? Lack of inline citation is just a minor issue.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 16:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I had not responded before (though I did now) because I simply feel the article is good enough. If it was the worst FA out there, I'd be more inclined to drop it, but it is far from it. - Taxman ^Talk 17:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Version 1.0 "Release Version Qualifying"

Hi, I'm interested in your feedback on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Qualifying. It's essentially an idea to use a process similar to WP:FAC to identify and handle articles and lists that would go in a release version. Maurreen 19:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

SEO

I don't know if you know about User:GraemeL/Watchlist; I think you might find it useful. A question came up about whether links with "http://" removed - e.g., "spamsite.com" - would help a SEO campaign. If so, what about "spamsite DOT com"? Thanks, TheJabberwock 04:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Please respond here. TheJabberwock 04:12, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you know the answer? TheJabberwʘck 00:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

WP 1.0

I thought since you are interested in this project you might be interested to see a CD version of en now exists see Wikipedia:Wikipedia-CD/Download & 2006 WP CD Selection. This is being discussed on the 1.0 project pages but progress breeds enthusiasm so I thought I would let you know. --BozMo talk 09:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Free Images

Hi,

I recently read that if any image is free, it should be preferably be uploaded to wiki-commons so that other wiki projects can also use it. Since I didn't knew this earlier, I added a lot of free images about Indian Institutes of Technology to English Wikipedia itself. Now I feel that it would have been better if they were uploaded in commons. What is the correct procedure that I should follow so that the images get shifted to commons (obviously without getting duplicated). Thanks, -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 09:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, you just need to upload them to commons and then delete the ones here. Let me know and I can delete them for you if you need me to. - Taxman ^Talk 11:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for the reply. Please delete the following Images from English Wikipedia (all of them are uploaded by me).

1. Image:BSBE IITK.JPG
2. Image:IIT Bombay Main Building.jpg
3. Image:IIT KGP Main Building.JPG
4. Image:IIT Location.PNG
5. Image:IIT Organization Structure.PNG
6. Image:IITM Library.JPG
7. Image:IITM swimming pool.jpg
8. Image:Illumination festival.JPG
9. Image:Inter IIT.jpg
10. Image:Southern Lab IIT Kanpur.JPG
11. Image:VGSOM_IITKGP.jpg

The files have been copied at Wikimedia Commons so these may now be deleted. I will also appreciate if you can delete Image:IIT Location.JPG. This is in IFD (nominated by me) as it was obsoleted by Image:IIT Location.PNG. Although its still some time before the IFD gets a week old, since its made by me only, I think it can be done in good faith. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 14:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

They're all deleted. Hope you didn't miss copying any! And that didn't need IFD, it met the speedy criteria. - Taxman ^Talk 15:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again. I didn't miss any. This was pretty clear as the IIT article still appears with all the images (even after forcing the browser to refresh cache). From now on I will take care that I upload things at proper place the first time itself. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

RfC

FYI, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/-Lumière SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Help for vandalism

Hi, User:207.63.41.121 (contribs) is continuing to vandalize pages even after repeated warnings. Can you help. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 14:16, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

That's common with dynamic IP addresses, it's probably not the same person each time, and they've stopped after your last warning, so it's not ready for a block yet. In general if you want the quickest response to vandalism list them at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism as I may not always be active. But the guidelines call for not listing until a user or IP has vandalized after a recent warning unless you can demonstrate it is a static IP. - Taxman ^Talk 15:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Some advice needed for dealing with another user

Knowing that you are an admin, I was wondering if you (or any other admin) can help me out on this.

Recently, I have gotten into an argument with Wxyzdan over various content and formatting issues regarding the WXYZ-TV article. Though I believe I have tried to be as accomodating as possible, the user seems to be, in my view, confrontational and at times have accused me of being closed-minded and "possessive". I don't know whether I should respond to his comments for it seems that one false move on my part could drive him away from Wikipedia. At the moment, I am not requesting for mediation or arbitration; instead, I am trying to see if there is a means of diffusing the situation before it gets out of control. The user's comments are on my talk page under DMA (which he removed from his own talk page under an IP address). Also, if you have anything to say on this matter, can you post on my talk page so that I could easily be made aware of it? Thanks. Pentawing^Talk 00:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I'll probably not worry about that article for now. Pentawing^Talk 05:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Siege of the Alcázar

You left an interesting comment at Siege of the Alcázar... I think some images would add a lot to that article! To help people get "in touch" with locally available required photos, I've proposed creating categories like Category:Requested photographs in Castile-La Mancha rather than the generic and not especially helpful Category:Requested photographs used at the moment. However, the talk page I posted on has been pretty slow... if you would like to make a suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Requested pictures#Subcategorizing Category:Wikipedia requested photographs that would be appreciated :-) TheGrappler 16:31, 15 April 2006 (UTC)