User talk:Kalki

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User talk:Kalki/2003 : Song lyrics - Julian of Norwich

User talk:Kalki/2004 : Administrator nomination - Hegel - Links within quotes - Category options - Television shows - Dialog styles - Kalki : origins and uses of the name - Bolding of parts of quotes - lynx template - Reduced activity likely from me - Automagical Namespace Supression - "Title entries" - Not-so-speedy deletions - General format question - Logo - Quote of the day - UVa website on Prem Rawat - Categories - Wikimedia Commons - Removal of genuine quotes from Prem Rawat - Google - Benn of Woodrow Wilson fame - Stubs + expand - choosing of my inclination - Use of colons in section headers - LotR quote of the day - Categories

User talk:Kalki/2005 : Wikiquote Maintenance - Removal of Notices from some Talk pages - Current events - Automated quote of the day - Newbie request & question - Yet another vandal - Newbie, again - Persistent Daniel Aubrey - List of films caching spam - Interested in becoming a Sysop - Imperfection vs. Incomprehension - Azerbaijani proverbs - Bureaucrat - Recovered/Recentchanges - A note of appreciation to all the new administrators - College pranksters? - Reirom VfD - IP lookups - Lynx change - Wikiquote:Issues - Block-compress errors log - Kudos for DeJong - Protection from move - Pirates - RfA Thanks - Thanks - Hello? - Wiki reps - Thanks! - Unable Log in

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QOTD

Hi. A while ago, you thought about a new system for QOTD which would have more community participation. I have asked both on the relevant talk page and on the Village Pump if there is anything new happening about it, but you must not have noticed it. I would greatly appreciate it if it was possible to re-open the discussion on this, and think about a new method for QOTD selection. Thanks in advance, MosheZadka 06:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the system, and your votes! MosheZadka 08:05, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Abortion

Well, Hello Kalki, I have currently no idea which version is better, but in general it is a good idea before a massive change to build a consensus to the change. Not only with approval in silence but if possible, clear supprt.

Anyway if you convinces the former version was better, you could wait for other editors, or just report it on WQ:VP, when your version was reverted. I wonder what made you so hurry. Anyway I protected the page and would like to keep it so for 24 hours to promote discussion on the talk. In my opinion, "revert to revert" is not so much productive and not matchs you a good editor. Thank you for your attention. --Aphaia 21:43, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

VfD

Hello Kalki, there are some disputes on VfD, and as for Dr.Crane and Jokes, it is obvious no one (except one as for Dr.Crane) supports to merely keep them, but because of lack of consensus, I am personally afraid we cannot take any action. If I recally correctly, you haven't shown your opinions about them. Would you like to share your idea, please? --Aphaia 29 June 2005 23:55 (UTC)

Thanks! --Aphaia 30 June 2005 01:08 (UTC)

Invatation to help identify problems, suggest solutions, debate, & vote!

• I was going to invite others to look at my analysis anyways, but Aphaia has suggested this:

• "I would like you to consider if it is a good idea to invite other editors to read through over 100K talk. In my opinion, it is a sort of burden and shut out most of editors. And I suspect who is now interested in this issue. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 05:10 (UTC)" [1], and I shall do as asked.

• You are invited by me, Kalki, to look at my analysis at: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Abortion#Analysis_and_proposed_solutions and see if all the problems are identified, and if not, add one or two. Also, please notice that you can post your proposed solutions below. Afterwards, we can briefly discuss and then vote on different ideas. Don't worry: I addressed all concerns, but if you don't believe me, check it out. Sorry for the length, but many people had many problems.

• In conclusion, I have done all the research: Read my analysis, debate it, vote on it, and accept the vote -even if it goes against you; All will be well. Take my word for it. Have a nice day.--GordonWattsDotCom 5 July 2005 05:55 (UTC)

Re: Sysop nomination

You are now a sysop— welcome to the ranks of Wikiquote administrators. Your services to the project have already been extensive, as a few others have already noted, and I expect you will make very good use of the additional abilities. We seem to have a pretty good spanning of the globe with our sysops now, and hopefully this will help us keep many of the vandals from making very much of a mess before they are blocked. ~ Kalki 05:59, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I will try to take great care as I am learning the ropes of administration. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:46, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Changing username

Hello Kalki, perhaps you could test the new Changing_username feature on me? My username is some strange artifact that was not mine originally... And I have way less than 5000 edits, less than 500 in fact. Do you see any problem with this, or would it be OK for you to do it? Sams 10:37, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to change my account name to "iddo999". Thank you very much. Sams 10:57, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Worked fine it seems, thank you:) Iddo999 11:15, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, the capital letter at start is not a big deal, but it was nice to test. BTW I asked on irc on #wikimedia for a steward to do it (because perhaps I'd also want to change username for he.wikiquote), before I asked you, but they said that the local bureaucrat has to do it. As for re-creating the sams account, if I understood correctly the sams user/talk pages exist with redirect to my new account, but the sams account itself has been deleted, therefore if someone creates this account then he would have those user/talk redirect pages until he changes them... Works ok as it is, but it doesn't seem like a big deal to me either way, just that re-creating an account adds redundant data to the database, and I assume that no one would re-create an account with this name anyway. We could to leave it as it is so that we can wait and see if someone tries it, it's good to try to learn stuff from this first username change experiment:) Iddo999 11:47, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, infinite block is a good idea too:) Better than re-creating an account, I think... Iddo999 12:06, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, folks, would you like to discuss int on WQ:VP]? After changing username, re-create (and if necessary, blocking) seems to be the better way, because even after user name is changed, redirect from the former one to the newer one remains with many links from his or her former signature to the newer user page. Preventing potential impersonification, re-creating account and blocking would be better for us. --Aphaia 12:17, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

images village pump discussion

Could you please comment at Wikiquote:Village_pump#Images on whether we should proceed with disabling uploads? Seems to me that deriving images from wikimedia commons is appropriate for wikiquote, because have no need for fair use images, and so disabling has several practical advantages. iddo999 22:10, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Ingmar Bergman "see also"

Kalki, could you explain why you moved the Ingmar Bergman "see also" for The Seventh Seal back to the top, given that we've been bring such older practices into line with current practice on both Wikiquote and Wikipedia? If it's to make it more visible, perhaps we can achieve this and also make the overall display parallel his other works by following another practice that I've seen in use: add a section for each quoted work, and place the link just under the appropriate heading for works with their own articles. In any case, I'd still like to have the standard "See also" where people can expect to find it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:01, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Sydsvenska dates in Ingmar Bergman

Per the "Blenda" query at Talk:Ingmar Bergman, do you happen to have specific dates for the Sydsvenska issues whose quotes you added? Alternatively, do you have a source for the English translations that might be investigated for its source? Please respond at Talk:IB if you do; presumably it will help "Blenda" fetch the original Swedish. Thanks a bunch! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:03, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

August 6th QOTD

I thought it was pretty clear which quote had the most support for today, and am rather distressed that you decided to use your preferred quote instead of the consensus candidate. If the new process is not to be a complete sham, the community consensus should prevail over one admin's preferences. 121a0012 04:18, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I realized that the entry for the Eisenhower quote was late, and if anyone had objected to its use in the couple of hours before the deadline, I would have deferred on that account, because I do think the TCP quote is a good one; but I thought the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb was clearly a more notable event to commemorate than the birthday of Jon Postel, if a significant enough quote could be found. I didn't think the Dr. Strangelove quote was appropriate. There are many times already I have deferred to the clearly indicated preferences, even though they were not mine; this was a last minute decision, and I agree there is room for debate and further refinement of the selection processes. ~ Kalki 04:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I only had a few very rushed minutes to respond earlier to your comments, and missed some typos that I just fixed. I also have only a few minutes now, and had only a few minutes to make the final QotD selection for today— I simply made a snap judgment upon the matter. I had thought the Postel quote a good one, and still do, and would like to use it sooner than his next birthday, if possible. ~ Kalki 08:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I think you have missed the point. Either there is a process by which quotations are chosen, or it's up to the whim of an individual admin. You can't have it both ways. It's clear that you've already pissed off Jeff by your actions today. We have few enough editors on WQ as it is; to simply say "no, my opinion is more important than the community consensus" is liable to drive even more people away. Maybe you want your own private sandbox, but that's not what WQ is for. I would call it "abuse of admin discretion". 121a0012 16:42, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not exactly "pissed off". I removed my post-6-August votes because I take wiki voting very seriously, and don't believe it should be ignored without an objectively compelling reason that one can reasonably expect a consensus to support, and even then such dismissals are controversial. However, I also understand that we're experimenting with QotD voting, the very few participants thus far leave an opportunity for considerable personal judgment, and Kalki deserves some consideration for having slaved over this stuff for at least as long as I've been on Wikiquote. My participation was more of a lark that this incident has simply made insufficiently interesting for me to remain involved in — for now. I was content with Kalki choosing quotes for the time being; I'll be content to wait for everyone to develop and shake out the system. (I expect that answer satisfies no one but me, but that's where I'm at.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I believe that it is generally a wise and prudent policy to "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.", but while nearly always being liberal in what I accept from others, I also believe that there are occasions when it can be appropriate to be radical in what you do— but it is often likely to be controversial, and sometimes even dangerous. I knew that I might be doing something that would be controversial in my decision yesterday, but honestly did believe that had more time been available for consideration, the consensus would have likely favored the new addition.

I have actually been quite pleased and relieved to fade more and more into the background here, and not remain quite so dominantly involved as I formerly was. I also have become quite a bit busier with my work on other things, and am very glad that there are now several admins with generally a much higher level of involvement than mine. The project has become much busier now, but at the beginning of the year, and indeed for much of the time since becoming an admin in January 2004 I had been doing a great deal of the general upkeep without any other admins involved.

Since the new selection system for QotD which I created has begun to be developed, I no longer feel absolutely impelled to even provide suggestions, if there are quotes available for a day that I feel deserve at least a "3". I do believe that as the system matures there will eventually be dozens of high quality candidates for each day, rather than merely the one or two ideas that are often all that have been suggested for some days.

I still usually devote at least an hour each day, and often quite a bit more, to seeking candidates for the quotes of the day, thus far usually limiting myself for days of the upcoming week, and developing pages for people that we do not yet have pages for. Prior to having other admins around the time I spent monitoring the project and working upon things for it had been at a much higher level; I tried to personally monitor it most of the day, and still do, but with less a sense of a need to do so.

Back in January, when Maveric149 initially made the very extensive and significant contribution of creating pages where the Quote of the Day could be updated automatically with quotes selected in advance, I immediately saw that this provided a means for more people to become involved in the selection process, rather than have a single admin making the decisions, and made comments regarding that idea. I soon realized that my initial ideas would likely be far too complicated and burdensome in many ways, and eventually came up with the general idea of the system of pages for each month that is now being developed. I was busy enough with other things that implementing this idea never reached a sufficient level of urgency until MosheZadka's prompting finally motivated me to create the first page to begin developing the procedures in June.

I have usually referred to the current system as a "ranking" one, rather than a "voting" one, because in using it as a gauge of indications for making selections I have not employed any precise mathematical calculations based on either "averages" or "total points" because I believe that would impel far more burdensome and complicated considerations and arrangements on everyone's part, and believe that there are not yet enough people involved to warrant anything like that. Even if there were, either of these methods has it's drawbacks, and could conceivably produce very absurd results that please very few. Thus far the quotes that rank highly enough in someone's opinion to be given at least a "4" or many 3s have usually been those that I have most focused upon, and believe that this is a generally good guideline for anyone who becomes involved in the selection processes. I noted from the beginning that I believed final selections should always be the responsibility of administrators, and not absolutely tied to the rankings of suggestions. Though I believe that any clear preferences indicated by the rankings should generally be followed, I could conceive of many circumstances where this would not be the case, and always thought that last minute changes should be allowed for many reasons, including response to newsworthy events, such as the death of notable people.

"TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." ~ Jon Postel

For August 6th I had been quite pleased with this leading candidate and had looked forward to using it, but seeking to have a better alternative than the Dr. Strangelove quote to commemorate the Hiroshima bombing, I was prompted to do a bit more searching. Coming across the Eisenhower quote which I was already familiar with, it struck me as a very good candidate, that I initially intended to simply post as a future alternative. Late in the day, however, I suddenly realized that it was actually the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and this prompted me to give it much stronger consideration. Had it been the 59th anniversary, or the 61st, I very probably would not have been impelled to make so bold a decision, but such is the power of the "decades" upon the mind, that I thought this was clearly both a notable enough event, and a rare enough anniversary that it shouldn't be skipped without comment. It appears that others think I was mistaken in that belief.

This is not a case where I rejected a quote of which I disapproved, for one that I preferred, but a case where I truly thought the circumstances were significant enough to make a decision that I was very uncomfortable with— to neglect the current standings, of a quote I myself thought very good, and to give preference to a very late entry. Being the only person thus far involved in making the final selections, I noted that I was not adamant in my own resolve to stick with this decision, and that if anyone objected in the admittedly short time before the deadline I left it open for others to rescind my choice. I noted in the comment when I posted that it was a "late entry: any admin can change this to TPC [sic] quote before 0000UT if they wish" . I actually had been in such a rush at the time, that I forgot to apply the standard protection to the page, and anyone could have actually edited it until about an hour after the deadline, when I had a few minutes to make contact again, through a Wi-fi connection, and noticed my oversight.

I do not think it likely that matters of potential controversy will ever become a daily or even a weekly problem, but some level of conflict or ambiguity might easily be expected to occur once or twice a month. If people believe that I have been truly irresponsible in making the particular decision that I did, based on my own snap judgment of the relative importance of events commemorated, a move to the forming of a selection "committee" of an odd number of admins (at least 3) might be in order. This group could be responsible for make the final decisions on matters when there are cases that are clearly very close, or when potentially strong candidates relating to significant events are suggested by anyone at a very late stage. If sufficient contact could not be made on a late suggestion, the existing preference would be used.

I would like to remain a person involved in this, but would be ready to resign from making further selections, if that were to become the consensus view on things. In any event, I believe MosheZadka, whose activity in the project has been extensive, and whose preferences seem to diverge greatly from my own in many regards would be good candidate to counterpoint many of my views.

I believe that JeffQ who remains one of the most significantly involved contributors to the project, would be another excellent candidate, if he wishes to accept the task.

I also wish to note that even before posting it, I realized that the quote that I selected might be assumed by some to indicate a "pacifist" social agenda on my part. Though I don't approve of needless animosities, and much prefer peaceful and rational resolutions of disputes, I am not a pacifist. I also very much realize that the conditions of war are usually not very conducive to rational and entirely well reflected measures on anyone's part; and for that reason, as well as many others, the initiation of active hostilities should generally be avoided. In the conditions of war that existed at the time, the decisions that were made by the top political leaders involved are not entirely surprising, and no doubt seemed to themselves, and to many others to this day, to have been entirely justified. I do however agree with Eisenhower and some other major military leaders of that time, that the dropping the atomic bomb was not a military or strategic necessity, and that at the time there even were any top people in the military who thought this to be the case is a relatively little known fact that I believed deserved a place of note on this particular anniversary.

Decisions that are not merely mechanical ones are always complex. Stated or unstated, it is a fact that there are always far more things involved in any decision than can be stated, and often many more things to take into consideration than can be made immediately apparent to everyone.

In writing the above comment, I just realized that though I had intended to spend some time today simply collecting more quotes on Hiroshima and other subjects, my decision yesterday has impelled me to spend quite a bit of time making the basis of my decision more plain, and offering ideas for further refinement of the processes by which quotes are selected. I have been, and remain, an advocate of openness and flexibility in many matters, and seek to avoid the laying down of too rigid a structure at any level. I do not expect the processes in selecting the QotD to be perfected in the next few days or weeks, but in the months ahead I think a generally satisfactory system can be devised. ~ Kalki

Shift to August 9th

I have just placed the Jon Postel quote as a candidate for the 9th at Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/August#9 in this form:

The following quotation was not selected on the 6th, which caused some controversy. I am placing it here, as the leading candidate on this date prior to this deals with nuclear weapons, which relates to the quote which I judged more topical on that date. As JeffQ has already made the point that tying quotes to events upon dates should not be taken as an absolute, a point with which I agree, I am placing it here, to hopefully compensate for what some have taken to have been an improper action on my part. ~ Kalki 12:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

"TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." ~ Jonathan B. Postel, RFC 793, entire text of section 2.10

PREVIOUS RANKINGS: FOR THE 6th:

• 3 121a0012 03:35, August 2, 2005 (UTC) (this one would also be worth a four if I had more than one to give)
• 4 121a0012 04:11, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
• 4 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:42, 2 August 2005 (UTC) (hell, I'll give it a four -- it is the founding principle of the internet, at the lowest layers as well as at the human layer)
• 3 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:37, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• 3 Kalki 22:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

RANKINGS FOR THE 9th: (if people want to register any changes in their rankings)

• 4 Kalki 12:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC) I believe that it is an EXCELLENT quote, and was an excellent proposal for the 6th, "In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior." is another similar statement by Postel that I agree with; applying such ideas in general to life, but not necessarily as absolutes is a very wise policy, and I believe it wiser to be nearly always be liberal in "accepting" things than to nearly always be conservative in "doing" things.

OK, I give up

There is simply no point in participating in the QOTD "process" as it presently stands. I'll just crawl back into my hole and not bother the great elevated minds at work. 121a0012 01:46, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

purge

hi, I'm Avichai from the HE:WQ. We have a "Quote of the day" too, but because we are still little, and because the " 0:00 UTC" is 3 am in israel, we usually refresh the quote at 11:00 or later. now, MosheZ pointed me to the "purge" link you have and I've wanted to put the same link in our site but then I've had another idea. could you purge our main page in the same link that you purge yours? I mean that in one click (yours) yours and ours main pages will be refreshed. is it possiable? anyway this is our link, and I'm sorry for the poor english. thanks Avichai 20:32, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Maverick149 did all of the original "automation" setup here for Quote of the Day links back in January, and I am not sure about the purge functions that might be involved. Setting up a "purge link" should work on any page one wishes it to, but I did not set up any "automatic" purge to operate here and rarely do a manual purge myself. I don't see that it would be necessary or useful to link the purge of a page on the Hebrew Wikiquote to one here, and a setting up at least one page with such a "purge link" on the Hebrew project would probably be sufficient. ~ Kalki 22:04, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

quotation about truth

I've just read All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own., Richard Francis Burton. In the past, I had read a bigger quotation attributed to Plutarch, something like truth was a mirror in heaven, the mirror shattered falling on earth, and each one who finds a little bit that mirrors his beliefs, thinks that this is the whole truth. I did a google search and I found this quotation also attributed to Epicure and quoted as a persian fable. Do you have any idea about Burton's source? Thanks! Matia.gr 12:36, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Though the metaphor has been used many times, and probably has its roots among the ancient philosophers (such as Epicurus, whom Plutarch might have referred to), Burton's poetic phrasing of it is original to him. Besides "broken mirrors", and "facets of a great jewel" one of the most ancient of the metaphors emphasizing a reality filled with "fragmentary glimpses of the whole" were those of India referring to "the net of Indra":

In the Heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact IS everything else. "In every particle of dust, there are present Buddhas without number." ~ Sir Charles Eliot

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. in accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net's every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite ~ The Avatamsaka Sutra as quoted in Hua-Yen Buddhism : The Jewel Net Of Indra (1977) by Francis H. Cook

For further info on the net of Indra metaphor, see also: Determinism in the Eastern tradition at Wikipedia, and:

http://www.heartspace.org/misc/IndraNet.html

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/CommunitySupport/NCC/SC3META.html

http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/saf/networks/networking-networkers/indras-net.html

These are just a few sites I googled in order to give fuller context to ancient metaphor of the net of Indra. ~ Kalki 22:35, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

RfA

Kalki, Please support my request for adminship on en.Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/GordonWattsDotCom

Thx.--GordonWattsDotCom 15:03, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Template:Wikipedia

hi Kalki . could you please replace the image:Wikipedia.png by image:Wikipedia-logo.png or image:Wikipedia-logo-en.png, and delete image:Wikipedia.png afterwards? It's because the last second are from the commons and local copies should be deleted; see here, Schaengel89 18:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I won't have the time today, but will get to this tomorrow. ~ Kalki 22:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

This has been deleted; I had thought I might need to trace down many links prior to deleting it, but no pages linked there and deletion was a simple matter. ~ Kalki 14:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Your QOTD votes/submissions

It seems fairly hypocritical of you that you give other people's suggestions low votes of 1 or 2 with the reasoning being that there is "no clear correlation with the date," when the MAJORITY of your submissions suffer that same defecit (yet you give them a 3.) It seems a transparent attempt to discredit other people's suggestions in order to get your own approved.

The proposed policy of generally correlating the suggestions with the date is one that has been in play since June when the current system of making proposals was begun. Since that time I believe nearly all of my own proposals have had some correlation with the date or current events, and I had been strongly inclined to correlate quotes to the dates and current events long before that, when I was the only person involved in selecting them.

I believe that I have given a few submissions of others that had no correlation to the date a 3 or even a 4 (or considered them worthy of such, and like many which do have such correlation I have not added an explicit ranking of my own). If I give a quotation a 1 it is not merely because it has no correlation to the date: it is because I honestly don't think it very worthy of attention. If I give a quote a 2 it is one that I consider good enough that I might give a 3 if it did have some correlation, and if I give it a 3 it is one that I perhaps could give a 4 if this were so.

I generally prefer quotes relating to a persons birth date to those related only by a death date, and would much prefer those of great quality with immediate relevance to BOTH historical and current events, but I realize that this is just an ideal situation, and one cannot depend upon finding such quotations with regularity. ~ Kalki 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Redlinks in "New pages"

Kalki, I don't know what your schedule is on updating "New pages", but I thought I'd point out that in less than 48 hours, one of the current ones, Status Quo, stands a good chance of being deleted. I thought you might want to do another update before we get a red link in this rather visible list. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I've no real schedule for it... and any administrator is welcome to change them at any time, but I will get to this tonight or tomorrow. ~ Kalki 00:48, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Jerry Siegel

Hi, Kalki. Thanks a lot for Siegel. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 01:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I was pleased to add him, and I wish that I had the time to add more people than I have been lately. There are quite a few people that I have been gradually collecting and organizing material on (in my own text files), but his addition was as someone prompted by your recent proposal to quote something about Superman to honor Siegel's birthday. I ended up opting for something from Superman: The Movie such as you first suggested, but at least we have a base to build upon for more Siegel quotes. ~ Kalki 05:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Interested in being an admin?

Nice work on the Led Zeppelin page, among many others — you've contributed much good work over the months you have been here. If you have any interest in being an admin I will put your name up on the Wikiquote:Requests for adminship page. I usually like to get some sense of whether someone wants it or not. There aren't any actual duties involved beyond that of any other user, but one can revert vandalism a little easier, edit protected pages, and block any vandal that is being a persistent nuisance. ~ Kalki 14:53, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• Sure, I'd be happy to act as an admin. I've enjoyed working on the site ever since I've found it. I feel that I'm still learning all the nuances of how everything works, but I do feel that I can contribute. Even now, I feel a bit of a sense of ownership and try to keep the pages clean and free of vandalism. I'd be honored.UDScott 15:32, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate your note of appreciation

I appreciate your note of appreciation. One of the things I like about wikis in general is that people can contribute only as they have time and interest. My problem is really one of personal expectations, which I'm badly failing right now (and not just on Wikiquote and Wikipedia). I'm sorry my self-dissatisfaction bled over into my RFA vote on UDScott, but I felt it necessary to point out a bit of hypocrisy with my concern about maintenance work, which usually is a factor for adding sysops. I am very worried that we are getting further behind on such matters, and we don't have enough folks participating in maintenance to avoid significant impact when folks take time off, as they ought to be able to do whenever they wish. But I don't really see a solution to this in the near future. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Move logo to commons?

Hi, Kalki. Would you mind uploading Image:Logo134BrackettsJUL2c-150.png to Commons, so we can delete it here? You've licensed it under GFDL anyway, so it should not be a problem. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:22, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Bakunin

• Sorry for my edit. I hadn't noticed there was an interwiki link already! Xosé 17:29, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey

I don't want to come off as pushy or over-eager or anything, but I was wondering whether you'd made a decision on my RFA, as in, whether to extend it or what. Nobody's voted since the 10th, and so I was just kinda wondering what the process was with RfA's here. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 05:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I honestly was expecting that it would probably be extended or closed without consensus because of the (perfectly valid) issues Jeff raised. I'm happy to see that it wasn't though! Now, off to get to work! Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 23:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

68.170.86.111 (talk • contribs • global edits • page moves • block user • block log)

Hi Kalki, can you help me with something? This IP keeps vandalizing Star Fox: Assault and undoing my reverts, claiming he/she is "Reverting vandalism". When I post warnings to the IP's talk page, they blank them and repost them to my talk page, stating that I am the one vandalizing. Would you mind blocking them for 24 hours or so? -- Jaxl 00:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Kalki, I've taken care of this with a 1-week block for repeated vandalism, blanking talk-page warnings, and posting false accusations, after verifying Jaxl's complaint. I'll post a notice to this effect as well on the IP talk page. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

List or themes - a lot of themes missing

Hello Kalki I turn to you because when I contributed to Wikiquote you were very active and you're still listed as administrator. I quit Wikiquote as a contributor because I find it much too frustrating how easy it is to delete somebody else's work. Now I'm about to stop using Wikiquote as a user, too, because the list of themes keeps gettin cut. I don't know if that's on purpose or not, but at the moment there is 2 themes under K and 2 under L. When I go back to an older version there were 14 themes under L. => Is there no possibility to generate the list of themes from the pages about themes that actually exist? Best wishes :-) sunny

List of themes was a manually maintained list page, and these have become of decreasing importance here, with category options available for each page. Category:Themes is now probably a more useful place to look for theme pages. ~ Kalki 00:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you :-) ~ sunny

Danny blocking Nnimrodd

Kalki, I just noticed an anomaly in the block log. It claims Danny blocked User:Nnimrodd indefinitely for "self serving nonsense by known troll", which is not backed up by Nnimrodd's 3 rather inocuous edits. What I find really puzzling is that I've never heard of "Danny" before, and he certainly didn't go through WQ:RFA since I've been here, nor is he listed there. I see that you'd had a conversation with this Danny 2 years ago. As our only bureaucrat, could you shed some light on this situation? (I've also posted a note to User talk:Danny about this.) Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Danny is one of the trusted stewards for all the Wikimedia projects, and I assume his block was precautionary based on the user's behavior elsewhere. The software itself has been developed to make many forms of vandalism harder, which saves us a great deal of trouble, but there were a few times early on where I encountered project hopping vandals, and decisions to block by the stewards and developers can definitely make many of our own problems simpler, even when they might seem over-zealous from our limited perspectives. ~ Kalki 18:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I can speak a bit to this: In addition to being a steward, Danny is an employee of the Foundation; he takes his orders directly from Jimbo, and handles the vast majority of the inquiries that come in to the Foundation office. There are many occasions where he has to implement a cross-project decision on behalf of the Foundation. w:WP:OFFICE will shed a lot more light on what role Danny plays.

I was around when the blocks were made (Nnimrodd was blocked on every project where he was found); Danny was making an all call for project admins to enforce the ban, and was blocking wherever he could find the person. Had he not already made the block, I would have. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 19:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I suppose Danny did so on behalf of the Foundation, and convince he is trustworthy but it is currently just my assumption. It would be an idea to ask Danny or other folks to leave a remark clearlyif they act on behalf of the Foundation.

Another thought: for transparency, we can add a remark to our WQ:BP on those who may act on behalf of the Foundation / be allowed to make such an action by their own discretion. As for ban enforcement, I'm not sure if it is an unproblematic idea but aware some insist such enforcement is useful or sometimes necessary. At any rate, if there is possibility such enforcement is accepted, we are better to mention such possibility on our policy clearly. --Aphaia 10:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Quote of the day problem

Kalki and Essjay, please advise and/or take action on the following problem.

I noticed that the 29 March quote of the day is not displaying on Main Page. Clicking on its red link, I found that Essjay had deleted Wikiquote:Quote of the day/March 29, 2006 without explanation. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with this Kalki-composed page, so I restored it. However, this didn't restore the quote to the main page, even after I did six forced-reloads. Could you folks try to get this very visible aspect of the main page working, and settle whatever the problem may have been that inspired the deletion? Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

From User talk:Jeffq:

Oops, that was my mistake; I've been working on cleaning out the old QOTD archives for some time, and seeing the QOTD page pop up on my watchlist today reminded me I hadn't finished. Basically, I've been doing wholesale deletes of the individual-day pages, as they are archived in a monthly archive (we discussed doing so, I believe it was on the QOTD page, but may be mistaken). Anyhow, when I was going through March (2004, 2005, 2006) I accidentally deleted todays; to be truthful, I wasn't even thinking that there would be one transcluded onto QOTD. I'll get it taken care of. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 08:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I've finished deleting all the old ones, and did subst: on the archive for March (except today, of course). In future, I'll wait for the end of the month, go through and subst: the archive page, then delete the individual day pages. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 09:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

Hi Kalki, thank you for supporting my RfA! I look forward to working with you and the rest of the sysops here. -- Robert 00:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Ignorance is bliss

An anonymous user apparently read the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Misquotes for comic effect and took exception to your statement that Alexander Pope said "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise". (In fact, they created a Quotation Chalkboard article, based on an suggested [and redlinked] article title from the discussion, where they raised the question of its origin.) LrdChaos VFD'd the new article and moved the question to the reference desk. I did some research on this, only to find Thomas Gray saying this in his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College", while Pope said something similar ("The bliss of man … Is not to act or think beyond mankind") in his Eassy on Man. If you know about an earlier or more specific Pope use of this expression, please let us know at WQ:RD. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

This might be entirely an error on my part. I had long thought that Pope had said this, but apparently was wrong. I will look for more material, but do not have any immedieately on hand supporting or explaining my previous belief. ~ Kalki 13:47, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

QotD state

I just finished watching Good Night, and Good Luck., and felt that Edward R. Murrow's quote about the "speed of communication" was an especially appropriate one for Wikiquote (and Wikipedia), so I decided to nominate/support it for the quote of the day for 25 April, his birthday. It's been a while since I participated in QotD, so I pretended complete ignorance and tried to figure out how to do this. I ran into two problems:

1. The current Main Page link goes to Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December. Based on the (necessarily brief) text, I assumed it would go to Wikiquote:Quote of the day/April.
2. Once I got to April, I found no information on how to format a nomination or vote. Nor were there any nominations active for April from which I could deduce the format. As far as a newbie could tell, it looks like just an archive. I added the Murrow quote to the 25 April section in what I hope is a reasonable form.

Has everyone else abandoned this project? I hate to see that you are the only one still committed to it, especially given the flack you've taken over the past year (some of which was inspired or at least abetted by my own brief participation). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:10, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I did fix the Main page problem — thanks for noting it. I don't feel I've taken a great deal of flack, but I did tend to refrain from making suggestions for a while and tried to more often simply select among the choices others had made, but activity from the few others regularly involved gradually diminished and I was back to making selections entirely on my own again, at least for a while. I plan to change the structure on all the pages so that the previously chosen quotes come before the suggestions for a date, but will probably do that gradually in coming months. I don't have much time for a fuller response today, but I do think the Murrow quote is a very good one. ~ Kalki 22:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

New page cycle

I noticed that you just updated the New Pages section of the Main Page after only 3 days of the last updated set. (I missed this convenient opportunity to review and possibly edit the listed articles, as I've occasionally done in the past.) Are you planning a faster regular cycle than the usual 2-3 weeks? I want to know mainly so I can pace my work. (You set your own pace; I'll just follow.) Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:19, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

There never really has been any schedule for these changes, and I only have done them when I've happened to think of it, but it would be a good idea to update them at least once a week, now that things are moving faster here. I will try to do that henceforth, though any of the admins are welcome to make changes as well. ~ Kalki 01:23, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that I'm perfectly willing to let you shoulder this burden. I'm finding that, after VfD maintenance, reference desk research and other source work, welcome patrol, article reformatting and categorizing, answering questions in VP, policy pages, and 700+ article talk pages, and my pathetic attempts at policy revision, I have little time left for actually creating and verifying quote articles. (To say nothing of my increasing work on Wikipedia.) I'm unemployed and still can't seem to find enough time to do everything I want to here. I don't know how other people manage it! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:28, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

How to get make MediaWiki settings active

Kalki, do you know if there's anything special we have to do to make some MediaWiki changes active? I'm having a problem with MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels, which I set nearly a month ago.

Back story: in my crusade for better sourcing, I've been adding references with the recommended <ref> and <references> tags, according to the latest MediaWiki changes and meta/WP policy. However, the instructions at meta:Cite/Cite.php and in w:Wikipedia:Footnotes differ in that Meta has ugly "number.number" backlinks in the footnotes for multiple citations in the text, while WP uses the more elegant "letter". (Compare our Laurence J. Peter's references with WP's Pale Blue Dot references.) The single letter is simpler and avoids both confusion between the footnumbering and the unnecessary repetition of the footnumber itself.

Readers of neither instruction page above provided any help whatsoever in directing me how to configure a project to accomplish this, nor could I find any documentation for the various settings. However, I eventually figured out how to use the info in meta:Cite/Cite.php#Customization to locate wikipedia:MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels, which has a set of letters that are apparently used in place of automated decimal numbering of the default configuation. That's where I got the (shorter) Wikiquote version from.

The changes didn't immediately take effect. I suspected it might require a server reboot, but after at least two major incidents of Wikiquote availability problems in the past few weeks (which I thought might have required reboots), nothing has changed here. I was hoping you might have some insight into this. If not, I guess I can ask Brion, but I'm timid about bothering developers. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Butting in, as I am oft to do, let me look around a bit and see if there are some other minor changes that have to be made to activate this. It's not uncommon for a change on one page to require a change in the call function on another page. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 20:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think I've worked it out. Take a look at Laurence_J._Peter as well as User:Essjay/Sandbox and see if this was what you wanted. What I did was to change MediaWiki:Cite references link many format from $2 to $3, per the syle on Wikipedia. I believe it's fixed the problem. Also, your tag should be <ref name="multiple">, instead of <ref name="pq"/>. If this wasn't what you wanted, just revert and tell me to go bother someone else. ;-) Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 20:29, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Essjay's responses above might provide what you sought. I confess that I really am not very familiar with many of the technical issues of the software, and I find working with even basic html code rather tedious, let alone the php and other auxiliary options available.
I recognize the need for the footnote format in Wikipedia, where the narrative flow of articles requires it, but in Wikiquote I strongly prefer that the citation of sources, ISBNs and sometimes urls and other links to be directly beneath the individual quotations, or beneath the individual headings of works that have been given their own sections. I feel this is much more convenient, and provides far less chance of confusion than adding references for quotes to the bottom of a page.

Also, as discussed very early in the formation of Wikiquote, while citing chapter numbers are usually helpful, there are often various editions of works and page numbers have limited usefulness, and are probably most appropriate for magazine articles; where I have provided them or retained them on pages, I have often enclosed them in "<!-- -->" bracketts to hide them and keep the appearance of the page less cluttered, but still providing a way for quick access to the additional information for anyone who looks at the editing level of the page.

There are some interesting formatting ideas being presented on a few of the newer pages, but thus far, I feel much more comfortable with the existing formats. In the Laurence J. Peter article I would much prefer the creation of a section heading for Peter's Quotations (1993) with perhaps the full title, ISBN and other relevant links directly below that:
Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977) ISBN 0688032176 - Paperback: ISBN 0688119093
rather than separate footnote citations of the work for each quote. I won't do such editing at this point, as the page is currently being used as an example of other alternatives. ~ Kalki 21:08, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

My two main concerns about references are making accuracy checking easier, yet avoiding too much clutter. One serious problem we have with heading-based sources is that people throw stuff under the heading without providing any useful means to verify the information short of reading the entire work. This effectively prevents any reasonable accuracy checks — who's going to read a book just to confirm a single quote, or even ten quotes? (I've done it a few times, and I don't plan to make it a regular practice.) Page numbers are typically the minimum useful specification, but they require editions, preferably with page counts (so that someone with a different edition can estimate where to look in theirs). It's horribly messy to put this information in a heading. Alternatives are to (A) add it to the source line (which in current practice often gets repeated for each and every quote, which is absurd); (B) place a full source line under the heading (used in some places, but not especially satisfying); or (C) use wiki footnotes in a references section.

I chose the last for Peter's quotes when I found myself searching for his quotes in the cited work. (It's actually a collection of quotes from many people — all totally unsourced, of course. At least his self-quotations can be given this provisional source.) My goal was to split all this article's quotes into sourced and attributed, based on the only source I had available. I was anticipating future sources for others. I probably should have placed all of them into a subheading as suggested. Even if I had, though, I would still want to include the page numbers to make verifying quotes easier.

This problem is hardly unique to people quotes. We don't even have a means to identify sourced vs. attributed quotes for TV shows and films at the moment, as I've mentioned elsewhere. Wiki footnotes/references can help, but the main issue is just to get the sources, however they're formatted. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

Thanks for the support of my RfA. I appreciate the vote of confidence, and am looking forward to helping out as a sysop. —LrdChaos 21:43, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Invitation to Be Nominated as an Administrator

I received today your note on my talk page. I thank you and accept the nomination for sysop. Best wishes. InvisibleSun 23:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Blocking vandal 69.121.174.85

I see you got there before I could put a warning on the talk page ;). Are there any warning templates for vandals like those on Wikipedia? Tamino 15:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Currently the only functional template warnings here (that I am aware of), are those on Category:User warning templates. I usually only use {{test}} and {{test2}} , though I often append additional comments when I use these; there was also a vandal template someone started in February based on a Wikipedia format, but never made entirely functional. ~ Kalki 20:27, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible impersonation in user name

I was just going through the new users list when I noticed a new user with a name very similar to yours (the difference being an "n" on the end of their username). They haven't yet made any contributions, but it might be worth keeping a close eye on them for a little while. —LrdChaos 14:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. ~ Kalki 20:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

I've read your note that I am now a sysop and am grateful for your support on my behalf. InvisibleSun 05:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Adding dates/works to Quotes of the Day

With the current QotD from Robert Owen about an imminent time of enlightenment, I found myself curious about when he wrote this. As it appears to be from A New View of Society (1813-1816), its current citation seems rather ironic if not downright cynical. It also made me consider whether we should include the source and date of these quotes-of-the-day. Unintentional irony would probably not be a frequent issue, but a better reason would be to emphasize our desire to source quotes. Just a thought. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:52, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Dates redirected to QotD

I just noticed your excellent idea of redirecting dates to the appropriate QotD month page. Of course, the Mediawiki software doesn't yet allow redirects to target an internal anchor, like a heading for the day of the month. This gave me a further idea: might we create individual QotD pages for each dates and transclude them on the month page? This would accomplish three things:

1. Allow us to present a meaningful date page for Wikiquote — daily quotes former and future — as you intended (although not the whole month).
2. Provide a reasonably-sized article for QotD review and suggestion editing, especially given that we have several years' track record now. (Both 1 & 2 strike me as more in keeping with the principle of least astonishment for wiki links.)
3. Still provide a means to review and edit the whole month (using links provided via the Main Page, as we currently do), via transclusions (just like the current WQ:VFDA, although without the massive load delay with only a maximum of 31 entries).

The minor disadvantage of not jumping from a link like March 4 to the full-month QotD could be offset by providing previous- and next-day links, or even a calendar, like WP does.

What do you think about this? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I had thought that in the years ahead, as the suggestions grow, there would eventually be advantages to creating separate pages for each date, but I don't see that there is a need as yet. I do think the redirect idea is good at present (and it was prompted by the red links you had added to the Patsy Kensit page) but even that will take a bit of work, and I doubt if I will have the time to work extensively on it for at least a few weeks. I also have a few ideas of making "Year pages" for the year parts of the dates, where significant quotes from that year, or about that year could be gathered, perhaps redirected to "century pages" for the older dates, but this too will take a bit of work, and is a secondary level of priority for me, until the redirects for the days are created. I have a few other ideas I've been meaning to get around to developing, and hope to find the time to present in the weeks ahead. ~ Kalki 04:22, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about time-consuming work; I'd be happy to execute whatever is decided. I'm very good at doing brainless repetitive things. (It's the hard analysis and decision-making — like reviewing, revising, and advertising the speedy-deletion policy update — I'm having problems with these days. Boring stuff I can do while I'm watching programs or listening to my audiobooks for quotes. That's how I converted all the VFDA stuff.) I can easily create the other 365 month-date links. I just don't want to edit these pages twice in a short time.

I'd also be happy to convert the month pages into tranclusions of day pages, but if we go this route, it should be done before the date redirects are created so their targets are in place. Since editing a page through a transcluded entry looks just like editing a page section (except for the lack of "(section)" next to the title), converting a month at a time won't present any noticeable difference for readers or editors during the transition.

Let me know which boring tasks you'd like me to attack. The sooner, the better, too, as I'm right in the middle of watching 110 episodes of Babylon 5, so I have weeks of repetitive-task time available. (Not that B5 isn't engaging; I just can't keep my mind on only 1 thing at a time lately. In fact, I'm watching Beyond Tomorrow, grabbing my email, and checking my auction sales while I write this.) ~ Jeff Q (talk), puTting tHe cAFFeINe down now, 07:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

If you want to take on the task, it would probably be goood to start with June: I just updated the June proposals page to the current format, but if the specific date pages are created as suggestion pages, rather than redirects, I believe that the month-pages should simply become a record of the past selections, with a link below them to the proposal pages (labeled something like "Proposals", "Suggestions" or "Suggest more quotes for this day") linking to specific "date" pages. These too could have a record at the top of selections for that date in past years, followed by suggestions for the current or future years. Otherwise there would be 2 places to make the suggestions for each date, and probably some confusion and duplications of effort. ~ Kalki 22:28, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. This have given me a lot to think about. I've created User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: June to demonstrate my basic approach. I think I'll create a User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: July to explore your idea. I have some thoughts on how we can use either to try to prevent confusion and ensure folks edit only the proper suggestion sections. I'll get back to you soon on this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:08, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've now completed first drafts of three experimental versions of a new QotD month page:

• May: former QotDs in date articles; users edit month page to add suggestions
• June: former QotDs & suggestions in date subpages (requires redirected date articles)
• NoRemember: former QotDs & suggestions in date articles, but structured to encourage editing only of the suggestion sections (full-article editing is easy, but takes 2 clicks)

Since it took a bit of work to structure this last one initially, I made up a month of only 3 days, using one of Piers Anthony's whimsical month names. Also, I used May instead of July because I only now noticed that it hasn't been converted to the newer format yet. Note that wherever I used a page ending in "Month Date" (as opposed to just "Date"), it is a placeholder for a date article (i.e., in the main namespace). In other words, what you see when you look at User:Jeffq/Experiments/May 20 or User:Jeffq/Experiments/NoRemember 1 will be the actual date article, like March 4, in the live version.

I invite you to play around with the look and feel of these three systems and tell me what you think. (By the way, you might be amused to know that I was listening to my newly purchased Aerial by Kate Bush while I completed the May version, based on your recommendations. For the format, that is, not for the album, although I'm sure you'd recommend the album, too. I sure do!) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:02, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Another note: one reason I favor the latter two methods is that the month pages, if edited directly, provide no place for a user to squeeze in a suggestion in the wrong place. The transcluded date entries are all on consecutive lines, so practically no one will miss the point that the quotes are not in the month article and that they should follow THE INSTRUCTIONS IN CAPITAL LETTERS RIGHT NEXT TO EACH DAY'S ENTRY. Of course, nothing is foolproof, but I think the system is fairly clear. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I've scanned your work a bit, but I've not yet had the time today to fully review all the differences in the options you've presented, nor to develop any suggestions about them, and probably won't until perhaps sometime tomorrow; I'll only be able to occasionally check in here a few minutes at a time until then. ~ Kalki 22:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

After examining things, and thinking upon them for a while, I believe that the third option you have developed is probably best, though I don't care much for the bright yellow, and feel a muted blue color scheme to match the logo would be better, if one is used.

On the subject of Kate Bush: I'm glad you like Aerial. I have it playing on iTunes as I type, and bought several copies on CD for myself and a few other people as soon as it was released. Its good to hear new compositions by her after all these years. ~ Kalki 15:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, Kalki. I must have missed when you posted the above comment; otherwise I would have responded right away. I have no idea why I picked the yellow — I think I was in a hurry. I've added three different pastel blues to the dates; let me know if any of these (or some other one) suits you. Meanwhile, I will read up on QotD to make sure I understand all the formatting issues. Once I'm sure I know what I'm doing, I can start creating date pages from the month pages. Once that's done, I can revise the month pages to use the new system, starting with next month and working forward to finish with this month, so there'll be plenty of time to review and fix any problems that come up. If you have a different approach, or any other suggestions, let me know. I won't start the page creation until I've checked with you again. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

While studying the existing formats (old and new), I've been making some notes to myself, and decided to create another set of experiment pages, with User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: March at the top, to see how various tweaks might look. (One important one was to use the wiki DL format for existing quotes as a possible trade-off for reducing the mass bolding and still presenting a variety of quote styles elegantly. All the old quotes are legitimate; the suggestions are a mix of real nominations and faked-up data. I haven't yet added notes to describe some of the subtle differences each page, though.) Feel free to take a look, comment on its talk page, and even add days with your own variations. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

The newest options seem the best thus far; the main reason that I began using bolding on these month pages was simply to make the choices that had been used more noticably distinct from the suggestions, especially where there are many of them, which I think should remain without bolding until chosen. ~ Kalki 01:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Here are the differences between the dates:

• March 1-3
  • Past quotes: not bolded (relying on layout for emphasis; avoiding "bolding headache for long quotes" (not that I'm trying to sell it, eh?)
  • Suggestions: horizontal rules between quotes, which are bolded

• March 4-6
  • Past quotes: bolding from original; apparently usually bold, but exceptions for long passages (bolding helps offset from votes and comments that are left in place)
  • Suggestions: no lines between quotes, which are bolded

• March 7
  • Past quotes: same as March 4-6
  • Suggestions: unbolded but bulleted quotes, with votes double-bulleted

• March 1, 4, 7: sources, justification follow the tilde (~)
• March 2 & 5: sources, justification are indented under the quote
• March 3 & 6: sources, justification are bulleted under the quote, just like a vote

Please let me know which specific date formatting (or which specific elements of any of them) you prefer. I have a few questions to ask, as well:

• Do you have a preference for how you'd like the justification for past quotes formatted? There are some variations (see June 1 (indented), June 30 (after the tilde, even if lengthy), June 19 (bulleted and/or indented)). If we can settle on one form, I can convert them as I create the pages. Or not.

• Do you want to retain old votes and/or commentary for past quotes? Since these date pages are going to be in article positions, it seems weird (at least to this wikian) to have user names & dated stuff in article-like sections. On the other hand, the suggestions just underneath them, also on the date pages, must have dated votes. Perhaps I'm just being "anal".

• While I'm at it, I thought I might change statements like "date of birth" to "born June 1, 1837". With the current number of quotes, this shouldn't add even a minute to each date page to my conversion effort, and is more accurate and informative (though obviously not essential). I'd be happy to do it, but as you're currently the only person selecting and "installing" QotDs, I wouldn't want to commit you to this "feature" for future quotes without your approval. What do you think about it?

As soon as we can settle these questions, I can start the page creation. I think the dates will take me 1-2 weeks, depending on how much time I can devote to it. The months are easy after that, so I'll do one first to see and test the results, then finish them in a quick session after any issues are worked out. I await your thoughts, answers, and decisions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I think old votes and commentary should be retained, and the old votes bulleted, but such records could perhaps become "hidden" with "<!-- -->" marks, and some commentary might simply be indented. The more elaborate "born June 1, 1837" might be good for chosen quotes, if you want to begin doing that, but that degree of specificity shouldn't be required for the suggestions. I also think lines should be retained between the suggestions, as one of the simplest ways of separating them, and that they should not be in bold. With lines separating the suggestions I also generally prefer they be unbulleted, and votes be single bulleted, but I know this goes somewhat against habit here, and don't insist on this where bullets and double bullets have been used. ~ Kalki 11:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I concur with the following:

• Retain past-quote votes.
• Indent past-quote commentary.
• Add specific dates to past-quote inclusion explanations where appropriate, but not to suggestions (but see below).
• Add lines between suggested quotes.
• Don't bullet or bold suggested quotes.
• Bullet votes. (I'll probably regularize them to singles so that discussions can be sub-bulleted.)

I'm not arguing for any policy on these issues, but just hope that participants will pick all this formatting up by osmosis. I have one final list of observations and questions:

• Pardon my nitpick, but "born" should not be capitalized, as it's not the start of a sentence. I'll probably re-case stuff like this when copying.
• I'm not sure what to do about the date formatting. One of the reasons to create month-date articles was to enable the use of date formatting for quote sources, a long unaddressed problem. But March 4 will look like March 4 on its own page, which would be a little weird. (I've updated User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: March/8 to simulate this.) The way I see it, we could:
  1. Live with the odd bolding.
  2. Ordain a date format for month-date pages. (It's not a very Wikimedia-friendly thing to do, but it would apply only to these pages, not articles in general.)
  3. Rephrase it to "born this day in 1941".
  4. Just stay with the current "date of birth".

  Let me know which you prefer. Again, since you're maintaining this project, I'll bow to your decision.

• I really don't like all that bolding in the past quotes. You seem to be uncomfortable with it for long tracts, too, as shown in User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: March/7. Can we leave it unadorned, as it is when featured on Main Page? After all, the DL offset format gives each quote plenty of visual separation, most quotees will be visually distinct from their quotes because of the their wiki links, quoted works will also usually have links and also be italicized, contextual info (like birthdates) will be in parentheses, commentary would be indented, and old votes either bulleted, commented out, or archived. (See below.) On the other hand, if we're going to have a lot of commentary and/or visible votes, perhaps the bolding is necessary. Right now, that doesn't seem to be the case, but I could see it happening. I've raised my objections, but I'll go with your decision.
• I'm rather bothered by having old votes forever included on month-date articles. On the other hand, if we find them valuable or even necessary, it seems wrong to comment them out. Maybe we could archive old votes either in an /archive or perhaps the Talk: page? (Both seem to be appropriate, as we archive old data that is no longer essential except for historical record, and we use talk pages for discussions that lead to content, which these votes certainly are.) I'll let you decide: bullet it, comment it out, /archive it, or Talk: it.

Once you've weighed in on these final questions, unless you ask more of your own, I'll start copying the material to month-date pages without further discussion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:21, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I can agree that the bolding that occurs with the years is sufficient in the new format, and that the record of votes need not be retained in presenting the past quotes. I still might be inclined to credit the proposer with a comment, either open or hidden, but you need not bother about that at this time, and can leave things entirely blank. That seems to about wrap it up on the formatting issues for now, thanks for all the proposals, and the technical layout you've done. When completed it will be good to have the date links to proposals available, (and date formats customizable by each user as they are on Wikipedia; I myself have long been inclined to use the year-month-date format when possible, and the date-month-year format when a more generally familiar format seems appropriate, as in posting things for others.) ~ Kalki 19:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll lose the votes and bullet the proposer (where available). Without the votes, I think it'll be better to bullet, not indent, the commentary, just as we would a source line for quotes elsewhere. (I think this will look more elegant than a mix of bullet and indenting.) If I read you right, you're not specifically choosing what to do with linked dates that show up as bold in their own articles, so I'll go with using the links to provide the user preferences and live with the bolding; we can always change it later if it's not satisfactory. I had a last-minute realization that I hadn't provided a suitable example of unbolded past-quote with commentary, so I created User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: March/9 (out of the real May 1). But I'll go ahead and start on the dates in a few hours. By the way, I agree with you on dates, preferring ISO "YYYY-MM-DD" for source date links, and "D M YYYY" for reader-friendly text. (It conflicts with my U.S. education, but I've never forgiven my country for failing to adopt the metric system or to toss out the confusing 12-hour time system, either. Being a military brat, I find HH:MM and D-M-YYYY quite comfortable.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Walt Whitman and Baseball

After doing a little Googling on the quote, it all seems to point to one source: Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906), vol. IV, p.508, for an entry dated April 7, 1889. The quote, however, is different:

"I said: 'Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!' He was hilarious: 'That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well--it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere--belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.'"

Here are some links for the same:

1) The Linguist

2) Classical Poetry Forum

3) Fifty Years, Fifty States

4) Whitman Archive

Some of these sources mention the particular quote you're looking for on the Whitman page. Other sources give the above quote. It's possible, I suppose, that finding the actual book might supply both quotes from the same entry. InvisibleSun 02:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info; it did add to the material that I already had found, and some of the information available has now been posted to the Walt Whitman page. I had initially forgotten to do so a few days ago, having become caught up in editing the Leaves of Grass page. ~ Kalki 07:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Bolding...

You left a message on my IP address regarding the bolding of certain quotes over others. I do apologize as I didn't realize I was not signed in at the time. My thoughts on it are very simple. Who decides what is bolded and what is not? For instance if you say one thing is an especially important quote and I disagree...an edit war ensues with one or both of us being blocked. And for instance if each editor is to determine what should and should not be bolded...how do we stop the entire quote list from being bolded as time goes by? I think its an inherently POV practice. I will however refrain from removing them based on my own thoughts as wikiquote/wikipedia is about more than my own thoughts. Batman2005 21:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This is not Wikipedia, where for very good reasons an encyclopedic Neutral Point of View is adamantly promoted in the creation of articles, and where most statements originate with the editors and should be carefully framed within NPOV guidelines. Here we are all selecting and posting statements of various points of view that we for some reason find notable. While we share the ideal that the project as a whole should not embrace any definite POV on most issues, as I have emphasized on a few occasions previously, unlike the ideal composing of encyclopedia articles the act of quoting itself is inherently a POV process, and we are all engaged in varying degrees in determining what is included here on the pages, and what is not, and all are to some extent exercising our points of view, and unlike the creation of encyclopedia articles we are not as absolutely compelled to restrain them in the quotes we choose to add, or those we choose to emphasize in some way.

There are very many quotes here, that I don't find all that notable, but if someone does, and no one else objects, they remain. The same is true of the works and authors that we include: if they do not pass consensus criteria for notability they are deleted. Somewhat surprisingly with many editors coming here from Wikipedia, bolding practices here have thus far only rarely been an issue of contention.The few occasions it has been an issue it has usually been raised by people who feel nothing should be bolded at all, but that so far has not been a dominant consensus here, and I have occasionally emphasized that, especially on the larger pages, I find the total lack of bolding to be very aesthetically unappealing and bland. I have never attempted to ignore, deny, or equivocate about the fact that to any human being, there are many quotations and statements that are inherently more notable than others, and that this is a place where we are gathering and sifting them in various ways, according to our various interests and inclinations, and I have always asserted that bolding is and should remain an option available for people who are interested in developing the presentations we are engaged in creating here on the various pages. ~ Kalki 21:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Kalki Please, I hope you don't think I was challenging you or anything of the sort with my comment. I was simply providing my reasoning for initially deleting the bolding. I accept it as common practice and actually thank you for bringing it to my attention respectfully rather than in a way less cordially. I too agree that all the quotes being or "normal text" is very bland! Again, I hope you don't think I was challenging you or anything of the sort, just merely stating the reasons for my previous actions! Batman2005 04:04, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

No offense was taken; I merely sought to make as clear as possible some of the points that I had made a few times before, about why I feel bolding is a very good and useful option here, especially on longer pages. I hope you like the project, and appreciate that formatting ideas are still being experimented with by at least a few people here; but the idea of leaving pages devoid of emphasis options is one that I personally dislike rather strongly. ~ Kalki 19:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, I frequently would look at this page as I find quotations to be quite addictive and enjoy reading what more eloquent people have said. It's only now that I got around to creating a log in. Batman2005 03:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Personal attack user names

As I was posting welcomes to new users, I noticed one called Mattbarnesisgay (talk · contributions), whose only editing was to vandalize, and whose name was clearly intended to attack someone name Matt Barnes. LrdChaos blocked this user per WP:BP, but the name remains an implicit attack on this person. I see that w:Wikipedia:Username has a process to change inappropriate usernames for active editors, but doesn't seem to consider the case whether the username was manifestly created by an inveterate vandal who has subsequently been blocked indefinitely per policy. (I can't believe this hasn't happened hundreds of times before on WP.) As a bureaucrat with the authority to do a name change, do you know how we can deal with this? We apparently can't delete it, but we can change it to something innocuous. But what would that be, considering we're unlikely even to get any meaningful input from a vandal? (WP policy says to discuss the name change on the user's talk page, so they should be able to participate if they wish to, even though blocked.) Should we take a month to review this, per WP policy about infrequently editors, or only a day or two, per WP policy about uncontroversial name changes? I have no idea how to proceed. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

What a great coincidence! I have just made a proposal on Wikipedia to warehouse offensive usernames - see [2]. There I have suggested changing offensive usernames to a series of numbered accounts prefaced by a "￥" (which comes near the end of all characters in the Wiki alphabetization scheme).

By the way, I came here because I am a Wikipedia admin, and I've recently changed my username there to counter the trend of vandals digging for personal info on admins in order to disrupt their non-wiki lives. I'd like to make the same change here - can you change me to User:BD2412? Cheers! BD2412 T 22:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Thus far there seems to be no definite policy or measures on eliminating these and keeping them blocked from re-creation at Wikipedia, and it seems we will just have to accept them as a bit of dross in the project for now. ~ Kalki 20:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That turned out to be the general sentiment of the debate on Wikipedia as well. Thank for the change! BD2412 T 20:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Starting the QotD conversion

I've begun creating month-date articles. Because of the particulars of how I'm mass-editing, I'm creating them one date instead of one month at a time; i.e., Jan 1, Feb 1, Mar 1, …, then onto the 2s, etc. I put an {{inuse}} message in place so people don't start using these articles before we're ready for them (one hopes). Within an hour I'd already gained a non-fan — see Mr. Satan666 (talk · contributions). Oh, well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Once again I am in a bit of a rush and won't be able to respond fully to any of the above concerns until tommorow. Just making this brief jot to make plain I'm not ignoring anyone, I just have to be off rather quickly now. I will respond to the above tomorrow. ~ Kalki 22:43, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

No hurry on my stuff; it can all wait. On the QotD updates, at of this posting, I'm just over 10% done (days 1-3 for each month). You can observe my progress by the blue links in the table at User:Jeffq/Sandbox.

I ran into an interesting thing you did that doesn't fit well into the new scheme but seems like it ought to have some representation somewhere. January 2 included the following item:

Other previous "Quotes of the Day" by Asimov (date of birth):

2004 February 22 : The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~ Isaac Asimov

Many other QotDs by a person will already be shown in the standard past-quotes section by virtue of their birth, death, or other significant date. But since quotes might appear on any date, and more than one day could be significant for a person (or work or other entity), it might be a good idea to have something noting these combined QotD selections. It might be another QotD page (or pages), or perhaps a note in the article of the quotee. But for now, I'll leave out items like this that don't relate specifically to the article's date. (We can review this before the actual conversion, since the originals are still in place in the QotD month pages.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the progress you made with the date pages, I was pleased, but to simplify things a little, before you proceed much further, I think that I should update all the months pages to the newer format where past QOTDs are above the suggestions, and I will attempt to get this finished within the next day. ~ Kalki 19:56, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That would help, but don't feel obligated to do so. I've gotten a pretty good system going now, where it only takes me about half an hour for 12 month-dates, including the transposing. (I'll take it in whatever form I get it.) One thing that I haven't done yet that will require a second pass is to grab the older past-QotDs that aren't currently in the month pages. However, it seems like this could easily wait until after the conversion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:57, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Question?

Mind if I ask you a joke? Wazzawazzawaz 02:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Well? Wazzawazzawaz 02:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I ask you a question on your talk page and you answer in mine. If you dont know, I tell you. It's a joke because the answer is funny. And dont worry, its clean. Wazzawazzawaz 02:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

So, want to hear it? Wazzawazzawaz 02:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Yo man, cool down. I'm not trying to cause any problems. I just want to ask your premission before telling you a joke. Think of it as a way to brighten up your day :) Wazzawazzawaz 02:34, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Well here it is:

Q: How do you kill 40,000 flies at once?

A: Hit an Ethiopian over the head with a shovel!

Tell me what you think and Happy editing. Wazzawazzawaz 02:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Heads Up

There was just a user created called "Riley on Rails." Possible WoW creation. Wazzawazzawaz 02:57, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Jokes are finished.

Ya, I'm done with the jokes. Plus, I all ready added a quote out of a book about spies I, have on my desk. Wazzawazzawaz 03:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)