Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:49, 15 November 2011

Fraudulent royals

Are you planning on removing “fantasy” titles from all people you don’t regard as royalty? - dwc lr (talk) 18:51, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

So many pretenders have been written up on Misplaced Pages as if they were regnant. I'm sure Mohammed El Senussi would make a fine king, crown prince, or whatever for Libya. But as of now, he is, as you must know, not king. We went through all this with the Habsburgs already. Kauffner (talk) 19:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I amazed you get that impression! What because they use titles and are attributed this creates the impression they are ruling? I am well aware Crown Prince Mohammed is not King of Libya, calling him Crown Prince is hardly going to give the impression he is. Crown Prince or just Prince is how he refers to himself or others refer to him, I don't see what your problem is in according titles to people when its a very common practice. - dwc lr (talk) 19:28, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

What exactly is a common practice? If the sources mention that the pretender claims this or that title, that's not a basis to present the claim as factual. With Nicholas, the sources hardly ever even mention the title that you are pushing. So you do not follow the "common practice" standard yourself. To say this guy is a crown prince is incorrect, common practice or not. Certainly the article can state that he is sometimes described as a crown prince. Kauffner (talk) 21:36, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

If you look for mentions of how Nicholas Romanovich you will see that he is commonly referred to as Prince Nicholas Romanoff/Romanov/Russia so why say ‘sometimes’ when in fact its more likely ‘overwhelmingly’ is more likely the case. Bizarrely the three articles you edited, Duke of Anjou, Prince Nicholas Romanovich and Crown Prince of Libya are three claimants where relatives dispute their rights to the headship of the those family’s so one has to be careful here. To me with Prince Louis Alphonse you adding to the article “He is sometimes referred to as Duke of Anjou” implies that his rival has a more legitimate right to that title. So one has to be careful about NPOV and probably also BLP issues. - dwc lr (talk) 22:04, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

'Fantasy' titles need to be clearly shown as such, and Kauffner's edit was correct. We don't call Franz, Duke of Bavaria King Francis either. Dougweller (talk) 13:06, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

You guys better move that article, Duke of Bavaria! More like Herr Herzog von Bayern surely! And tell where is any pretender called King? Certainly none discussed here so really I don't know what your on about. - dwc lr (talk) 15:26, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

If you treat "crown prince", "prince of Russia", or "duke of Anjou" as titles of nobility, it implies that nobility can be bestowed by the pretender. This is the prerogative of a king. To ignore the fact that the authorities in each of countries don't accept any of this is to mislead the reader. Kauffner (talk) 16:26, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I think if you want to move royalty articles you should got through WP:RM as they are most likely to be controversial and against WP:NCNT. - dwc lr (talk) 14:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

You are creating rules for me to follow? Go make rules for someone else. Kauffner (talk) 08:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't make rules but you have put Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia‎ through a RM. But its well established NCROY applies to non reigning and reigning royalty despite what you have claimed over at Prince Nicholas Romanovich's article. - dwc lr (talk) 13:30, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

What if I name my cat king of Swaziland? Does NCROY apply? Kauffner (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion contested: Nicholas Romanov (disambiguation)

Hello Kauffner. I am just letting you know that I contested the speedy deletion of Nicholas Romanov (disambiguation), a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Not an uncontroversial move, use requested moves instead. Thank you. Steven Zhang 01:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I really have no idea why anyone would object to this one. A fan of the pretender? Or possibly the fitness guru, although he isn't even listed? Anyway, I guess it's not my problem anymore. Kauffner (talk) 02:46, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Roman Warm Period

Thank you for greatly improving this article which I created. SmokeyTheCat 09:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Prinz v. Hannover surname

I see you put Debrett's peerage & baronetage 2008, p 117 as the reference for Prince Ernst August's legal name (Prinz v. Hannover). However when I search the book nothing comes up for this and its not on his entry on page 117. What exactly does the book about his legal name being Prinz von Hannover? Thanks. - dwc lr (talk) 00:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't make any claims about what his "legal name" is. Handbuch des Adels gives him as Ernst August Prinz v. Hannover (Vol. 100, p. 38, 1991). I assume that is his legal name. Kauffner (talk) 01:32, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

You cited Debretts in the article. Handbuch lists the head with his title after his name, the king of Spain is listed as Juan Carlos Konig v Spanien. Nothing about names. - dwc lr (talk) 01:40, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

His father is given as Ernst August Christian Georg Prinz v. Hannover, v. Großbritannien u. Irland, Herzog zu Braunschweig u. ..... I interpret this as name-comma-title format, which would mean "Prinz v. Hannover" is his surname. You know the naming law. It would be extraordinary if this family was granted an exception. Adels gives Juan Carlos as Juan Carlos I. Kg v. Spanien, so not the same style at all. Kauffner (talk) 02:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Invite

Please accept this invite to join the Conservatism WikiProject, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to conservatism broadly construed. – Lionel 01:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Your page is protected

Hi. Because your user page has been the victim of a spate of vandalism, I have semi-protected it so that only logged-in autoconfirmed users (such as you) can edit it. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Rosetta Barnstar
	For the quality of your translation. Hackerrye (talk) 13:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Vietnamese names

Hi I noticed you moved the pages to plain titles. That's OK but can you please also ensure that you correct the links in the templates in Category:Vietnam district templates? Oh and please move the provinces to xxx Province, the standard is to capitalize the province name. I can't help thinking though that your time would be better spent actually expanding the district articles!!♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm going through the districts, giving each one a few minutes and fixing as many problems as I can. As far as the provinces go, I put a message about them on WP:VIET a while back. I try to follow the style of the Vietnam News Agency (basically AP style). It is the primary news source for Vietnam and they seem to have to have put some thought into these issues. Kauffner (talk) 16:27, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

You opened an RM for a bunch of these awhile ago at Talk:Cần Thơ, which was closed as no consensus, then you went ahead and moved them yourself. Did something happen after this move closure that you felt made it ok to go ahead and move them? thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I moved a lot stuff at that time and I'm sorry I didn't pay attention to which titles were on the list. The articles been where they are for quite a while now, so the moves were obviously not too controversial. I don't have authority to move any of this stuff. I just put in a G6 request and see what happens. The vote at the Can Tho RM was 6-5 in favor of the move. Petty much everything Vietnam is now at non-diacritical titles. There are no English-language references that use Vietnamese diacritics. Britannica, National Geographic, AP, The New York Times and every other published source you can think of strips them off. Kauffner (talk) 23:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

"Ireland" articles naming; centralised discussion

Please note that the ArbCom sanction on centralised discussion is still in effect. Regards, Bastun 09:03, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe Ireland (country) would get more support. GoodDay (talk) 13:31, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Dmcq said he would oppose "country". So that idea is not off to a good start. There was somebody who wanted "state". Perhaps that's a more promising route. To me, the proposed name is "Ireland", followed by a few extra characters to keep the computer happy. The problem reminds of this highly amusing essay. I am hoping that the RFC I just posted will bring in a broader range of opinion. You wanted to ban discussion before, but now you support a page move? In any case, I won't have much time for this stuff in the next few days, so I delegate Tara to you. Kauffner (talk) 14:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I supported a ban in 2009, but I didn't in 2011. GoodDay (talk) 18:28, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 7 November2011

• Special report: A post-mortem on the Indian Education Program pilot

• News and notes: Wikimedia Norway awarded, Halloween on the Main Page, Wikimedia UK recognised

• In the news: The Economist assays the encyclopaedia's challenges, Jimbo speaks on net future, and an inclusionist alternative emerges.

• Discussion report: Special report on the ArbCom Elections steering RfC

• WikiProject report: Booting up with WikiProject Computer Science

• Featured content: Slow week for Featured content

• Arbitration report: Δ saga returns to arbitration, while the Abortion case stalls for another week

• Technology report: Full steam ahead on Visual Editor, the avoidance of lock-breaking and 1.18b1 release

Milan Jurcina

The 'alt name=' field on the info box was added to the sandbox for {{ Infobox ice hockey player }}, but I'm not an admin so we'll have to wait for someone else to make the change.  Once they do, the alt name will automatically appear in the Infobox.
Didn't mean to revert you, just saw afterwards that you had posted; sorry about that!  ttyl — Who R you? Talk 12:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Whatever you want the box to say is fine with me. I didn't know about the sandbox, so I assumed "alt title" was a mistake. No other argument has a space in it, so I doubt it will be adopted in the exact form you have proposed. Kauffner (talk) 13:17, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I left a note on the talk page asking that, if a different parameter name than "alt name" was used, they update Marek Zidlicky and Milan Jurcina, so hopefully that'll happen if they do change it; but it's on my watchlist so I'll try to make sure I adjust for any changes made.  And if the changes don't get made I'll hard-code something else manually in the article. — Who R you? Talk 13:58, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Timisoara

You should check out Talk:Timişoara#Requested_move, where the use of a newly invented diacritic has been proposed. Kauffner (talk) 14:13, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Re: Timisoara — I did the full Google check (which I'll leave it to you to look at and figure out the table logic for future need; but by all means if there's any part of it you're unsure of, don't hesitate to ask; one never knows how much users know about wikitables, etc).  Most of the long code is just the cut & paste of the url code in the first part of a standard link format; check out the Milan Jurcina conversation on my talk page which includes (near the bottom) the logic used in the Google queries (since it's kind of hard to decipher out of these cryptic Google urls).  The results are:

So it looks to me like an iffy fight.  Generally speaking I don't see much issue with the names of foreign people/places being spelled with diacritics if they are WP:Notable in English RS while remaining in those foreign places/languages.  Of course once the predominant English spelling in English RS becomes Anglicized (i.e. Cologne or Ho Chi Min), then we should list it in the form that most readers will recognize and expect it (i.e. follow WP Policy); but, honestly, for places like Timisoara, I doubt many readers are ever going to see the article (other than thru Random or if it succeeds in becoming an GA/FA).

On some levels I agree with you on the issue about S-Comma being unsupported by XP and that being an issue, but it also wouldn't surprise me if XP were obsolete (in the sense of few users still running it) before 10 people are likely to read this particular article.  And of course, policy consensus (what there is/was) is all based on most common English spelling in English sources, and in this case it's arguable that the foreign (currently with the cedilla) is surprisingly common; so then the argument becomes should it be spelled with a "ș" or a "ş"; which is getting awful close to "How many fairies can dance on the head of a pin?" in terms of irrelevance.  One thing I didn't look at is how many other articles link to the one in question which might have some influence, but I doubt it in this case.  And personally I'd expect that in 5-years, the S-Comma will likely be more common and the majority of (then current) sources could have "ș" as the new more common foreign spelling so there's probably no harm in en.WP leading the crowd in this instance.  But if your hearts still set on this being wrong, I'll try to work w/you to find other sources or play devil's advocate to flesh out your arguments for completely dropping the diacritics (which I do agree is simply the most English spelling, but of course the RS dictate that, now we wikipedians).

Just to let you know, I'm looking at starting a WikiProject to centralize discussion on these article naming/English issues; it's currently in my Userspace at User:Who R you?/WikiProject English; feel free to check it out/add your thoughts if you're interested (I'll cut & paste when I move it to WP space and leave all talk page stuff behind so don't worry about form/edit history/etc at this point if you've any suggestions/thoughts), but, of course, most of the people unhappy with the diacritics are focused on people (particularly sports and most popularly hockey people) with few editors, including myself, taking much issue with diacritics on names of foreign people/places in foreign lands (which is, I take it, the issue you come across most often); but I think everyone is dead-set on adhering to WP Policy regarding Use English/most common English name in English sources regardless of other factors, in every case the RS are generally the guide for all decisions; but maybe we can work collectively to see that those guidelines are consistently adhered to.  LMK here/there/wherever if there's anything else.  ttyl — Who R you? Talk 05:07, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

On Google News, there are tens of thousands of examples of "Timisoara" without a diacritic, and one or two English-language examples with a diacritic. So I don't think it's really a close call. But don't it as a favor to me. I just thought you might be interested. Kauffner (talk) 06:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

• That's why I did the above table (although the queries are obviously only doing a small sample for some reason; but (theoretically) the ratios should be similar.  If we just query "Timisoara" alone Google will still return "Timişoara" and "Timișoara", just further back in the list; try "Timisoara" and go to page 10 and you'll see hits with the cedilla; similarly if you query "Timişoara" the hits include "Timisoara".  Thus the complicated queries of "Timişoara -Timișoara -Timisoara" and "Timisoara -Timişoara -Timișoara" where the minus excludes the English form or the diacritic forms; if you compare these the ratios aren't that good.

And then the rest of the stuff is try to split out English versus foreign language hits (if it contains words like "the", "and", "can", "will", "was", "would", "should", "could", "might" then you can be pretty sure it's an English article; if it doesn't include any of these, it probably isn't).  But that's the problem with a Google search, it works hard to give you matches that are even close to what you've looking for, which is great, expect when you only want to count something really specific.

Just the straight news hits don't seem to support English form; "Timisoara -Timişoara -Timișoara" => 1,110 hits, "Timișoara -Timisoara -Timişoara" => 105 hits, "Timişoara -Timișoara -Timisoara" => 1,120 hits (but I can't tell what's English and what's foreign language hits).  I just figured with you having said somewhere else that you thought 10% hits with diacritics was high meant in this case (where it's close to 50/50 but English/foreign hasn't been taken into account), that this was then beyond your threshold.

At this point I'd very much like to concentrate on the blatantly wrong titles (such as with Marek Zidlicky where all English sources had dropped the diacritics).  But let me know when you come across others, there's a page called "Articles", in the WikiProject startup I mentioned, to add links to any obviously wrong names, or RM discussions, and hopefully we can all be aware of them at the appropriate time.  I generally don't check the RM list only because all my time's spent trying to figure out these stats or create this project, but afterwards I hope to pay attention to the RM board again to be sure and oppose any wrong moves. — Who R you? Talk 07:22, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Your qualifiers are letting through a lot of non-English usage. If you look at the "English" Google News hits with diacritics, they are mostly non-English. On a separate issue, it looks like you are trying to maximize the number of hits, which I don't think is the right approach. I try to get the number of hits to be something reasonable, say 5,000 or less. Google's software doesn't actually count up to 6 million (or even to 300,000), so those kind of numbers are just wild guesses. You can fiddle with qualifiers, start dates, and end dates to get a result number in the right neighborhood. Kauffner (talk) 13:56, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I didn't see (either I missed it or my watchlist didn't show it ) your comment above, I figured you had just dropped the question.  This Timisoara one was just one that didn't strike me as one to fight for; (not that I might not have been totally wrong, which has been known to happen on occasion).  The other ones on the list look like reasonable candidates for a move to me though.  I just mentioned to Dolovis, at the bottom of this section on my talk page, that I think you should probably do an RM or two; although I did ask for his agreement so I'll leave it to you if you want to hold off for him to reply to that aspect (I should learn to stay out of the middle of things; either that or just make the decision(s) for myself and stop asking people to agree; oh well).  Anyways, if you decide to RM 1 or 2 instead of waiting then obviously I should take the heat if there is any.  Just make sure the sources back you up before you nominate (nobody needs another screw-up like me with Bellière).  ttyl — Who R you? Talk 03:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
P.S.  And I'll remove and re-watch your page in case it was the system and not me; so I certainly hope I should see your messages.

Why don't you...

have a mop yet? Seems like you'd make a great admin. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 00:07, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the flattery. I never applied or anything like that. I'm sure it would be controversial. Kauffner (talk) 04:58, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for helping me with better organize the request to get the Republic of China move approved! Although I read Misplaced Pages daily, my Misplaced Pages editing ability isn't what it should be, so it's great to have someone reformat my mistakes! Crispus (talk) 08:26, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Happy to be of help. 18:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 November 2011

• News and notes: ArbCom nominations open, participation grants finalized, survey results on perceptions on Misplaced Pages released

• In the news: Fundraising vs ads redux, WikiConference India nigh, a world lit up with articles

• WikiProject report: Having a Conference with WikiProject India

• Featured content: Writing featured content: Advice from Sturmvogel 66; Sports, sports, sports!

• Arbitration report: Abortion and Betacommand 3 in evidence phase, three case requests outstanding

• Technology report: Coding Challenge results; Wikimedians to wait and see if Athena really does represent "wisdom, courage and inspiration"

Cyrhus,etc

Why is this being moved? The RM was on Cyrrhus, Syria, which was resolved a couple of days ago. And where's the discussion disappeared to? Moonraker12 (talk) 12:49, 15 November 2011 (UTC)