User talk:Derek Ross/2004

2003 talk archive

Lowlands

Hello Derek

Thanks for the additions re the Scottish Lowlands article. I was aware of the northeast but was trying to simplify (or oversimplify?) things. It's good to have someone contribute who's actually lived there!

Bruce, aka Agendum 22:45, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Nice of you to say so, Bruce. In my turn, I'd like to thank you for adding the article. I'm always pleased to see people contributing articles about Scotland and I hope that you continue to do so. Many more are needed. Also, congratulations on deciding to become a "named" editor! I hope that you get as much enjoyment out of contributing to the Wikipedia as I have. -- Derek

Henry George

Hi Derek, I put some minor additions into your article on Henry George. randall_burns@yahoo.com

Feel free Randall. That's what Wikipedia is all about. -- Derek

Laocoon

Hi Derek. With regard to our discussion of the acuity of translations on Laocoon, I just heard the following quote: "Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the least attractive." (from South African poet Roy Campbell) [1]. How true. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:48, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

<grin>, I can't argue with that! -- Derek

Irish Dancing

Hi Derek,

I would like you to consider undoing the changes you made to the irish dancing page. You put everything in the context of "step dancing" and did a re-direct. I have made comments on the step dance talk page as to my concerns. If you do a google search on step dancing it will lead you to pages that discuss "irish dancing". Please consider the other following points:

Dance schools are named Trinity school of Irish Dance, O'Hare school of Irish Dance, World Academy of Irish dance. They teach dance as developed in ireland and still taught there today. The world commission I titled the World Commission of Irish Dancing. I do not know anything about scottish dance traditions, however when I have seen shows where scottish dance is demonstrated it is clearly different from the irish dance that I know. If you will look at the history of the irish dance page, you will observe that much of the content of the page was developed by me, with suggestions from others as to additional materials which could be included. The focus I developed for the page was for irish dance, not dance done in ireland, or dance styles which have roots common to irish dance.

In summary, I really object to the change in focus of the article and the re-direct. Please change it back. Addition of a link to another page with discusses commonalities of irish and scottish dance traditions would be perfectly appropriate, but I am not qualified to write such a page, I am sure others are.

greybeard 16:53, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Scottish dance which is normally demonstrated is Highland dancing, or less commonly, set dancing. Scottish step dancing is rarely demonstrated, since it is social rather than competitive, so you are unlikely to have seen it outside a Scottish ceilidh. However I have certainly attended ceilidhs at which it has taken place, so I can assure you that it exists and that it is fairly similar to Irish step dancing with a more relaxed upper body posture. If, as you are suggesting, you have developed the article to discuss Irish dance used as a technical term for Irish step dancing, then you should remove the discussions of set dancing and other non-step forms from within the article since it leads to confusion about the subject matter of the article. People who are unfamiliar with the technical meaning of the term will think that the article is about all forms of dance in Ireland, or worse will think that step dancing is the only type of dance, danced in Ireland. -- Derek

Thanks for the info on Highland dancing. At competitions, shows and ceili's, the dancers will perform jigs, reels, slipjigs, treble jigs, hornpipes and treble reels as well as set dances. These would all be forms of "step dances". They will also perform "figure" dances with teams of 2,3,4,or 8 dancers on a team. Finally, larger groups of 16 or more dancers will sometimes perform coreography dances and dance dramas (which have a narrated script to describe the action). Each of this would fall under the umbrella of "irish dance". I can imagine that there could be a distinction made in a "step dancing" page that could sort out the differences between Irish and Scottish flavors of step dance. Or separate Irish and Scottish dance pages which both include relevent information on step dancing.

Note that in what you call "figure dances", the team formed by the dancers has a special name: we say that the dancers form a "set" rather than a "team". That is why these types of dance are also known as "set dances". I wouldn't consider set dances as a type of step dance since the figures making up a dance are far more important than the steps (outside the specialised world of competitive dancing at any rate). -- Derek Ross

I did a little research on this and found something that I was not aware of. The clue was in the world of competitive dancing. In Competitive dancing there are "traditional set dances" and "non-traditional set dances". These are strictly solo, hard shoe step dancing. In competitive dancing, figures are something done by "teams". I found sources which discuss the more common usage which you explained above. I will need to think about this for a little while and re-cast the article to highlight the differences. greybeard 02:06, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well there *is* a big difference between competition dancing and social dancing. I realise that you don't get so much social dancing in North America but it forms the majority of the traditional dancing in Scotland and Ireland. In fact it's the type that ordinary people dance rather than trained dancers, so set dances (in the sense that I was using the term) form a much bigger part of everyday dancing than the solo exhibition dances like hornpipes and jigs which form the major part of competitions. -- Derek

With respect to people being confused the term irish dance, is not addressing all forms of dance in Ireland, I think that would be handled by an article titled "Dance in Ireland". I'm sure that polkas are danced at social events in Ireland, but I would not think that anyone would believe that the polka is an "irish" dance. Discussion of dance such as ballet should be properly covered in a Ballet page which addresses the stage of that art form in various areas of the world. Just my thoughts and opinions. Thanks for your time. greybeard 15:50, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Poll

Talk:Atheism/Godvrs.god poll Please come participate Sam Spade 03:54, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hoarding

If the word hoarding is more associated with the fearful response to scarcity, can we move the "sign" meaning to Billboard (advertising)? I won't do this on my own, since I'm American and don't want to impose my brand of English on my 'friends across the pond'. --Uncle Ed 20:45, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A redirect would seem fine to me, Ed. I basically added the extra meaning to make the original author think. I'll do the redirect if you want to avoid accusations of chauvinism. -- Derek

River Tweed

At the moment, the rivers are listed by the nation in which the mouth of the river can be found, placing the Tweed under England. If you can rephrase this in some way so that the Tweed is in Scotland, that's fine, but under current criteria I've had to move it back into England. Warofdreams 18:56, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

First you took Berwick-upon-Tweed; Now you've taken the whole river. :-)

Okay, if that's the criterion that you're using I'll go with it, but it's a bit arbitrary -- why not country where the river rises ? or country containing the majority of the river ? -- plus it means that all the Tweed's Scottish tributaries have suddenly become English rivers too. This is why I prefer talking about Britain when it comes to geographic features rather than England/Scotland/Wales. -- Derek

Pound Sterling

Derek, don't bother trying to fix Yomher's edits to Pound sterling -- he systematically vandalised all the devaluation dates by 10 years, as well as changing Wilson's government to Eden's! I have reverted the entire article. -- Arwel 20:41, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Understood. I spotted the 100 cents but not the date vandalisation (except that it produced the wrong decade for Wilson). Good call on your part. -- Cheers, Derek

Ah yes, I hadn't twigged that it was you who'd changed the government to match the new dates! :) Cheers, Arwel

Talk:Raven paradox

I have replied to your post. Cheers, Cyan 08:19, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Cyan. You've certainly given me a lot to think about. It'll take me a little time to check through the formulae and work out the interpretations in plain English, so I won't give an immediate response. -- Cheers, Derek.

Linguistics

Derek, could you rewrite Stevertigo's piece in colorless green ideas sleep furiously as you did for Chomskybot? Mikkalai 21:20, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with the CGISF article, Mikkalai. It correctly asserts that good syntax does not ensure good semantics. That was not (quite) the case with the Chomskybot article. Why do you think that the CGISF article needs rewriting? -- Derek Ross

Only an intro phrase inserted by Stevertigo, whose English is apparently under the influence of Chinese. "The phrase offered proof that grammar was not the valid structure underlying language (as was thought at the time), rather that words are symbols with associated properties that will not function if they are not properly used". This sentence and the next one in the article are theselves a live proof that correct grammar does not ensure meaningful semantics. :-) I don't dare fixing them myself. Mikkalai 22:19, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Jacobites

Derek, The Stuart motto I mentioned showed their disdain for the authority of Parliment. At the end of the so-called Glorious Revolution Parliment passed the Bill of Rights of 1689 which declared that the king was an official chosen by and subject to Parliment. A power Parliment used in 1701 by passing the Act of Settlement. -- Anon

Ahh, now I understand what you meant in Talk:Jacobitism. Thanks for explaining. If it was clearly worded perhaps you might want to add that to the article. Cheers -- Derek

Thanks for restoring the "pleasant reference to mortality" comment

That was from a portion of the article I contributed and I was a little miffed by having it removed, but didn't want to get into an edit war over it. Thanks for your comments and for toning it down and putting it back.

Not at all. Don't mention it. Your contributions to the Lear article have improved it tremendously and, while your original sentence may not have been strictly NPOV, it was a very nicely worded sentiment. I think that it was quibbling to remove it and that's really why I put it back. However the current result is acceptable. -- Derek

Now, of course, I need to check whether Moriori, who changed the word Cow from capitalized to all-lower-case was correcting a typo in my transcription of the limerick, or officiously correcting Lear's usage. Dpbsmith 20:11, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Must admit that I wondered about that too but unfortunately I don't have a Lear collection to check it in so I just left it. -- Derek

Auld alliance

See Talk:Wars of Scottish Independence. Gdr 14:22, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

Time marches on

It happens to us all, Derek :-) I'm forty - er, fifty-seven, but feel no older than I did thirty years or so ago... apart from a few aches and pains. Anyway, if it was your birthday recently, belated congratulations!

Agendum 20:30, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Agendum! It was actually at the beginning of April but I only noticed that my age was wrong today. I know what you mean about feeling no older than twenty, thirty years ago, though. It's true despite the fact that I now seem to have a woman and various teenagers living with me and continually reminding me that I'm losing my hair, putting on weight, getting dafter, etc., etc. Where did they come from anyway ? -- Derek Ross 04:59, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Featuring "History of Scotland"

Derek, User:Raul654 (who takes care of the featured article of the day on the main page) wants to feature History of Scotland (of which, in the dim bowels of prehistory, you are the primary author). At his request, I've added a bunch of images to it, although I confess I struggled to find decent ones (and ones with decent articles behind them) for several sections. A disproportionate number are my own, born more of desperation than egoism (honest). I'd be very grateful if you could take another glance over the article again - are you happy with the copy, and can you suggest superior substitutions for images (ironically, it was the modern part with which I had the most difficulty). Thanks. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:47, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I saw you starting to add images earlier, Finlay, and I'm quite happy with the result -- they are nice images and nicely sized. Good job, man! Unfortunately I'm in a hotel in Houston at the moment so I'm not well placed to help out. As for the copy, the only thing that really worries me is that there's still a big gap between the early 1300s, and the late 1500s during which several events of interest happened, in particular the disastrous (for the Scots) battle of Flodden. If Raul wants to make this an article of the day, I suppose that I'll have to add something to cover the period. But don't worry about the pictures. They look really good and improve the article no end. Cheers. -- Derek

There's no hurry. If you could fill in the flodden gap once (if) you return from the boiling pit of Texas, that would be great (I'm afraid all those noble but doomed battles are but a blur for me). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:52, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well I don't have access to my history books but I've started on some Internet research instead. It's another two weeks before I head back home, so Wikipedia should benefit from a little more of my activity than it has lately -- at the weekends at any rate. -- Derek

Wealth of Nations

Thankyou for your contribution to the discussion page on Wealth of Nations.

Censorship

I had noticed your comment on Template_talk:Feature regarded the use of the Bulger case in our featured articles. I can understand why someone could object to using it, but I also think that we should never ever self-censor. If we start down that path, we are doomed, IMHO. You just have to observe the US "news" networks to see the end result. I hope you can understand this position, as it seems no one responded to your comments earlier. Burgundavia 21:49, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

We already self-censor pretty continuously (the concept of Featured Article in itself is a form of self-censorship since by definition it excludes the majority of articles) so your hope is very much wishful thinking. I'm quite happy for the article to exist -- it's a good article. I just didn't think that it was very sensitive to put it on the Main page. As for self-censorship and the path it leads to, we can choose to censor significant material in favour of insignificant and become like the tabloids, the US "news" networks or the old Soviet news agencies, or we can choose to censor insignificant material in favour of significant material and become like an encyclopedia. The choice is ours. If we avoid making the choice consciously, censorship will still happen unconsciously because of people's natural fascination with certain subjects at the expense of others. -- Derek

Note

Why did you remove the note on Mary Stuart? She is a well-known actress and people need to be redirected to the name if they go there not expecting to see Mary, Queen of Scots. Mike H 19:30, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)

I've never heard of her or the TV series that she appeared in but I take your word for it that she's a well-known actress in some part of the world. My reason for moving (not removing) the note is that the confusion lies in "Mary Stuart", not in Mary I of Scotland, so I thought that it was more appropriate for the note to appear in an article entitled Mary Stuart than in one entitled "Mary I of Scotland" which is obviously not about an actress. -- Derek

I'll remove her note from Mary I and make a disambig page. Mike H 19:38, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)

That sounds good. Cheers -- Derek

B, Bon and BCPL

Hi Derek, refer the discussions Talk:C programming language#B origin from Wombat encyclopedia and Talk:C programming language#B from Bon or BCPL ? on Talk:C programming language. And lets settle the origin of B. Jay 06:23, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Okay I'll put the reasons for my edits there. -- Derek

Sub bases

I hesitate to comment, but "Since the Cold War Scotland has hosted British and American nuclear submarine bases" perhaps implies present tense; on monday the holy loch looked nice and empty -arrived march 1961, left march 1992 - did the u.s. have another base? Faslane and Coulport still there, sadly. dave souza 21:47, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I realise that the Holy Loch is now empty and, no, the US doesn't have any other submarine bases that I know of but I just wanted some mention of the bases (and the fact that Scotland was very much frontline during the Cold War). Feel free to fix the bad phrasing and clarify things, Dave. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:08, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)

History of Scotland on main page

FYI, History of Scotland will be the front-page article tomorrow (or today, depending on your timezone). It looks pretty good, but it's not too late to get in any little tweaks you think necessary. Also, the text which will denote it on the main page is currently marshalled at Wikipedia:Tomorrow's featured article - tweak that too (but it mustn't get any longer). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:36, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Finlay -- Derek

Alberta

Thanks for your quick-on-the-draw work in nabbing vandals on the Alberta page. It's on my watchlist too, but I have yet to beat you to a goofball. Well done! Denni ☯ 17:19, 2004 Jul 31 (UTC)

Isis

Derek, you've been here long enough to remember User:Isis. I'm slightly concerned about the unattributed photo she added (looong ago) to Holyrood Palace. Was she a photographer or dilligent permission-getter, or is it reasonable to assume this is a copyvio? I have a (larger, gfdl) one of my own that I'm inclined to replace it with (but I can't claim it's half as nice a photo). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:49, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Isis' heart was in the right place and as she had legal training I would expect that she was well aware of copyright issues, so I think that it would be unreasonable to assume that it is a copyright violation. In my opinion, the problem that led to her leaving the wiki stemmed more from an unintended blow to her self-esteem than anything else. In general I thought that she was a good contributor and I was sorry to see her go.

In any case, given the age of the originals, I think that it would be difficult for anyone to validly claim copyright over any contemporary portraits of Mary even if they have been scanned in from a book or copied from another website. I think that it would be safe to leave the current picture in the article but, by all means change it if you're worried.

Oh right, you're talking about a picture of Holyrood Palace -- must pay attention! I don't think that that was a new photo; I would imagine that it was scanned in from a book since Isis was based in the US and hadn't visited Scotland to my knowledge. Probably safest to replace it if there's no declaration of authorship or permission statement. -- Derek

Thanks, will do. Across the road, I've decided that even when it's finished, the Scottish Parliament isn't going to look finished. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:37, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Stone of Scone

The Stone of Scone was moved from Stone of Destiny because it was listed on 'Clean Up' with a request that it be merged with Lia Fáil, an article about another stone which also claims to be the Stone of Destiny. Earlier versions of Stone of Scone also made references to the 'Lia Fáil' and confused the two as being the same stone. The external link from 'Lia Fáil' clearly demonstrates that one is in Ireland and a monolith the other is in Scotland and a square slab.

Following debate on 'Wikipedia Clean Up':--

Fal, Stone of Destiny - Merge the former into the latter. The former says the stone is in Ireland; the latter says it's in Scotland. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:23, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

No need to merge. They are two quite separate stones which some-one confused. Have set up redirects and edited. Stone of Destiny perhaps needs to be renamed Stone of Scone to avoid confusion. Need a British opinion!Giano 13:48, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps Stone of Destiny should be a disambiguation. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 04:45, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

Hence Stone of Destiny now disambuguates. I hope this answers your question? Giano 08:25, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

PS: Do you think the rather odd link (Lia Fail) at Stone of Scone has anything to do with either the Lia Fáil or 'Stone of Scone'? -Makes one pleased to be Italian.

That answers my question, Giano. I was caught a little unawares because I hadn't seen the discussion on Cleanup. Re your PS, we should zap that link. There are more mainstream presentations of the relevant information on that site elsewhere. Cheers -- Derek Ross | Talk

I agree with this you say, but what else could it be called, half the monarchs from Africa to Narnia have been coronated on a sacred stone which could be called the Coronation Stone, I would not be surprised if there are even more 'Stones of Destiny' elsewhere in the world. One option for re-naming the page could be the 'British Stone of Destiny' but would anyone find it? Incidentally I noted the page was originally called the 'Stone of Scone' and had been changed to 'S of D'. On the disambiguation Stone of Destiny I did put the Scottish one first - On a happier note I think Her Britannic Majesty will approve of the new link more than the previous!Giano 22:06, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Developer rights on my own wiki

I'm using MediaWiki to create my own wiki, and I'm wondering how to give myself developer rights. Is there a way for me to do this? If you don't know a way, do you know anyone who would know a way? I've been scouring the docs for the last several weeks to no avail. Your name came up on this page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Developer. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. --JoeyDay 19:58, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

(butting in here, sorry). Joey: there's no such thing, in mediawiki, as "developer rights". That phrase really means "shell access, and a login to the mySQL database". You already have that for your own media wiki installation (otherwise you wouldn't have been able to install it). The shell access lets you run php, mysql, or perl scripts (a bunch of which are shipped with the mediawiki distribution) which directly do stuff to the database. That's why you didn't find it in the docs ('cos it isn't there), and you've essentially had developer rights all along. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:19, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your copyedit on Tolkaappiyam

Thanks. -- Sundar 05:15, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Not at all. Thank you for providing content on an interesting subject of which I was not aware. Cheers -- Derek

"coronated"

While I agree that it may be better to use "crowned" instead of "coronated", it is not true that "coronated is not a real word", Webster 1913 knows all about it. :) --Joy [shallot] 09:48, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well it is a word that you would only ever want to use for humourous effect but you are right. I stand correctated, <grin>. -- Derek

Killian docs

I agree it's not optimal to try and write a document about an ongoing event, and downright silly to try and do one on such a contentious topic, but what are ya gonna do? There ain't no Wikipedia policy against doing recent topics, so people are just going to go for it. I figure the best I can do is try and keep the edit wars down, and try and bang the article into some sort of useful shape. Sigh... Noel 16:05, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, good luck, Noel! You're a braver soul than I! -- Derek

scotland revert

Hi Derek-

My recent revert to the Scotland page wasn't about the word country versus state, a debate about which I don't give a fig, but I just wasn't sure if the anonymous edit was vandalism. In addition to changing "country" to "state", the edit also included the removal of some as far as I can tell unoffensive sentences and some weird de-wiki-linkifications. And since it was anonymous, with no dicussion in the talk page, and no edit summary, I didn't trust it. Take a look at the changes. Are they all kosher? -Lethe | Talk

It is a pretty pointless debate, Lethe. In any case, I checked the changes and I don't see any problem with them. They are trivial pointless changes, even if they do look a little odd but they are not vandalism and I don't think that they were worth reverting. I would have left them myself but whatever... -- Derek

The visit

Thanks for the comment on Visit of King George IV to Scotland. It didn't quite arrive ready formed, but started as a section of George IV which got severely trimmed, presumably by a royalist enthusiast who wanted to focus on matters of state. As it had links to several Scots-related subjects it made sense to finish it and float a separate page, though I was a bit worried it was getting too long. As you'll appreciate it's mostly drawn from Prebble, though I've tried to reach a NPOV. Glad to see the editing has begun.- dave souza 22:41, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

trust you've enjoyed China. Re. the comment on "Isis" above, "it would be difficult for anyone to validly claim copyright over any contemporary portraits of Mary even if they have been scanned in from a book or copied from another website", I'm sore tempted to add images of King George in a kilt (portrait by Wilkie, caricature from a book) but don't want to Copyvio - your thoughts welcome. Re. Alberta, am playing Bob Dylan's "Self portrait" and putting together a page on Calgary, Mull - enjoy.dave souza 19:26, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yep, China is good. The Chinese breakfast is quite something -- very different from what I expected -- and I'm now an expert with chopsticks.

I can't see that there would be a problem with copyright on such an old image, but it's probably best to run it past one of the guys who knows a bit more than I do. I'm sure that if you scour the policy pages you can find something on it. Short of that you can probably bring it up on the village pump or somewhere like that. As for Calgary, I thought that Commissioner Macleod was born in Calgary Bay, so I was interested to see the alternative theory for the origin of the Fort Calgary name. Perhaps the worthy commissioner was actually born somewhere else. Cheers -- Derek

that was quick! re-reading the Copyright FAQ it looks as though 2D images should be OK. Mr. Macleod was apparently born in Scotland but no indication where. Some sites suggested the Calgary House owner was a (distant) relative but the names didn't match so I left that out. The story stuck in my memory from a holiday on Mull a decade ago, the castle and Macleod statue sites (as linked) backed it up. dave souza 21:30, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Jacobite split?

Having merged Jacobite Rebellions (good riddance) into Jacobitism, I'm thinking of adding some more on the poltical/religious aspects and wonder if it would be a good idea to hive off the military aspects, leaving a ruthlessly pruned summary in Jacobitism. The war in Ireland would stand alone, and the other fights could come under Jacobite Risings. This would probably suit categorisation and help keep articles short, but lose the context a bit. Any comments? dave souza 19:26, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that there is a lot in it. Splitting would be good but only if you feel that you have enough material to make two decent articles. The problem with the previous split which you have just fixed was that there was a bunch of duplication between the two articles. I think that even if your new split doesn't have that duplication, the natural wiki process will tend to bring it back in over time unless we keep a close eye on things. Having said that, it does make sense to split the political and the military stuff and you seem to have a good plan in mind, so on balance I would say "go for it". -- Derek

Thanks, this will take a bit of time to get together and I'll perhaps try enlarging the article and see how it goes. The niggle I have is that the Irish war has roots outside the Scottish context, this may work out with links. In the meantime a few other things need attention! dave souza 21:28, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Arbroath

Hello Derek, thanks for the kind word on the Arbroath page - nice to meet someone with a local interest. Twenty years in Arbroath is a long time, is that where you were born? It's likely my grandmother knows your family if you have native relatives.

Oh I have 'commissioned' my photographer brother to get some nice photos of the town to spruce the page up a bit...

Cheers, Aaron (--Air 15:50, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC))

I'm just an incomer from Aberdeenshire. I arrived in my early twenties and have since married into an Arbroath family. Your grandmother might know my mother-in-law Joan Creighton or my late father-in-law Harry Bisset though. I also used to take part in the Abbey Theatre pantomimes. If you attended them at any time between 1982 and 1996, you would probably have seen me without knowing it. I was the chief villain a few times, particularly in the later years. I loved trading insults with the audience. It's just a pity that I never got to win the day!

I'm glad to hear that photos will be taken. I didn't get a digital camera until after I'd left the town in January 2003, otherwise there would be a lot more Angus photos in the Wikipedia. It's a small world though. I have moved to Calgary (pop 1,000,000) and what do I find but that one of my near neighbours (2 or 3 houses up the road) is a 'Red Lichtie' too. Cheers -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:40, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)

Wikierror message

When the server is really busy the following error message can appear

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare memsess_key() in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/MemcachedSessions.php on line 13

-- Derek

Adminship

I have nominated you for adminship. Please accept. uc 22:32, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, please do, so the "greening power of God" (Viriditas was green fire and energy) can flow through your hands into the keyboard and make superb articles at Wikipedia! --user:Ed Poor (deep or sour) 16:21, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm only a little bit back, Derek. Battle of Jena-Auerstedt last night was my first contribution of any substance in ages. I like adding to the 'pedia, but the primary call on my time these days is running a couple of special-purpose wikis here in Australia. I still write heaps, but a good deal of it isn't appropriate to repost here and, in any case, the licences are not compatible (Creative Commons non-commercial vs GFDL). But once in a while, as a sort of busman's holiday, I slip over here and get to write something less specialised, which I always enjoy.

Nice to hear from you. Tannin 09:33, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Congratulations, Derek!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 00:40, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Cecropia. It's nice to get the extra functionality and the community support. Cheers -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:48, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started the Free the Rambot Articles Project which has the goals of getting users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to...

...all U.S. state, county, and city articles...
...all articles...

using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) version 1.0 and 2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to the GFDL (which every contribution made to Wikipedia is licensed under), but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles (See the Multi-licensing Guide for more information). Since you are among the top 1000 most active Wikipedians, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles.

Nutshell: Wikipedia articles can be shared with any other GFDL project but open/free projects using the incompatible Creative Commons Licenses (e.g. WikiTravel) can't use our stuff and we can't use theirs. It is important to us that other free projects can use our stuff. So we use their licenses too.

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template (or {{MultiLicensePD}} for public domain) into their user page, but there are other templates for other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} with {{MultiLicensePD}}. If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know at my talk page what you think. -- Ram-Man 21:15, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Moving the Declaration of Arbroath?

Hi! Thanks for contributing the Declaration of Arbroath, an important document in both Scottish and European history. Shouldn't it rather be in Wikisource though? A historical explanation could be kept in Wikipedia, with a link to the full text of the source in Wikisource. Just a suggestion. -- Somebody who forgot to sign

I suppose that you're right. The fact is that there was no Wikisource when I first added it to the Wikipedia so, at the time, the article space was the correct place to put it but perhaps it is time that it was moved over. Feel free. -- Derek Ross | Talk 23:57, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Venpa

Hi Derek, since you had earlier copyedited Tolkaappiyam, I understand that you've some interest in such articles. Can you have a look at my request (reg adding a citation to my paper) at Talk:Venpa ? -- Sundar 06:35, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Doomsday Argument (many-worlds)

Hi Derek,

I agree that the standard many-worlds interpretation includes the possibility of "worlds" merging into each other as well as diverging from each other. I must admit that I don't hold this view. I believe that the "worlds" are phenomenological streams of consciousness that can only diverge from each other into the future. I don't think that streams of consciousness could merge into each other without contradictions arising within the merged stream. As this is all speculative I guess I can't challenge your editing of the paragraph.

User:John Eastmond 13:20, 3 Dec 2004 (GMT)

I think that I understand what you mean, John but the reason that I would rather go with the standard view is that this topic is already speculative enough without making it seemingly dependent on a minority viewpoint and merged histories does seem to describe the physical reality well, if not the consciousness angle. Getting speculative again, I think that we can even allow many histories to form part of the stream of consciousness without contradiction if we interpret parts of that stream which we experienced but can no longer remember (or otherwise discover with certainty) as consisting of all the histories possible at that time.

If you are interested in some "food for thought" along these lines, I can recommend the novel "Psychohistorical Crisis" by Donald Kingsbury which contains interesting SF speculation on historical information loss. -- Derek Ross | Talk 15:44, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

You're right, it's speculative enough as it is! -- User:John Eastmond

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:34, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

possessive vs contraction it[']s

Ungh, thanks for correcting that. Not sure what happened to my brain there, but let's hope it didn't cause any permanent medical damage. --fvw * 20:19, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

No worries. I'm sure that you'll recover, <grin> -- Derek

Anent outwith

Having stuck my neb into the great outwith debate and made a frivolous mention of arbiters, in penance have had a wordy go at Scots law...a jolly Hogmanay to all! .dave souza 01:22, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

And to you too, Dave. May 2005 bring you all that you could wish. Happy New Year! <Grin>, those of a delicate disposition are advised not to read the following paragraph, very good ! Wikipedia should have more phrases like that ! -- Derek Ross | Talk 21:11, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)