User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2008/June

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Contents

Greenbox

There's been a Complete rewrite of section 4 (greenbox) of the MOSNUM in the last few days. Could you give feedback and vote?

While your at it, check out the bluebox and purplebox proposals.

Thanks. Headbomb (ταλκ · κοντριβς) 02:34, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Many editors at MOSNUM are now:
  • users that are active in the binary prefix war
  • anonymous accounts
  • accounts accussed of sockpuppetry
  • accounts that were not mature at their first MOSNUM contribution
I do not think my opinion is important anymore. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 10:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That is exactly why your opinion is important. Headbomb (ταλκ · κοντριβς) 12:49, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse,
Just chiming in with Headbomb, if the likes of these new users, socks & anons are given a fair hearing over at WT:MOSNUM, how could your opinion not be important? Come on back. What's needed is interest from real editors, if none of us show interest how could we complain about what "consensus" ends up being reached over there?
JIMp talk·cont 23:48, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Your opinion is valued Lightmouse. Please come back. Thunderbird2 (talk) 12:14, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the positive sentiments. My views are well known, I am against anything that could be interpreted by readers as meaning that SI units are not permitted, even if only in secondary position. Mosnum is a bit better now that one of the sockpuppets has gone and one of the sockpuppet masters has gone. The presence of proposal text on the policy page is wrong and is an indication that things are still unhealthy. I think mosnum is still too weird for me.
I suspect mosnum will continue to be weird as long as it is dominated by those involved in the bit/byte prefix war. Lightmouse (talk) 13:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe that the proposal is on the verge of being uploaded. Last chance to weight in if you feel like it. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Uploading the rewrite (June 7th). 01:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

could you please do me a favor?

Hello,

I am a master student at the Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Currently I am wrapping up my master thesis titled “Can Wikipedia be used for knowledge service?” In order to validate the knowledge evolution maps of identified users in Wikipedia, I need your help. I have generated a knowledge evolution map to denote your knowledge activities in Wikipedia according to your inputs including the creation and modification of contents in Wikipedia, and I need you to validate whether the generated knowledge evolution map matches the knowledge that you perceive you own it. Could you please do me a favor?

  1. I will send you a URL link to a webpage on which your knowledge evolution map displays. Please assign the topic (concept) in the map to a certain cluster on the map according to the relationship between the topic and clusters in your cognition, or you can assign it to ‘none of above’ if there is no suitable cluster.
  2. I will also send a questionnaire to you. The questions are related to my research topic, and I need your viewpoints about these questions.

The deadline of my thesis defense is set by the end of June, 2008. There is no much time left for me to wrap up the thesis. If you can help me, please reply this message. I will send you the URL link of the first part once I receive your response. The completion of my thesis heavily relies much on your generous help.

Sincerely

JnWtalk 07:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your offer but no thank you. I am sure you will find somebody else for your interesting study. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 07:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Hectares

Lightmouse, what is the problem with hectares. You seem to be on a mission to remove them from WP articles, without any explanation. Here is one example.Bleakcomb (talk) 11:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It is easier for ordinary people to understand 10 square kilometres than 1,000 hectares. It is an attempt to make the article easier for ordinary people. You will see this same value used in Mirash open-cast coal mine:
  • The two mines cover a working surface area of 10 km2 and, if all the external dump sites from 1956-1991 are included, the mine will cover a total surface area of 11 km2.
I hope that helps. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 11:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Not really. What evidence do you have to support your claim that is easier for ordinary people to understand? Or are you referring to yourself. Please can you stop making these type of edits ie replacing hectares with square kilometres unless there is a good reason. Let me state it plainly. Hectares are an accepted and widely used unit of measurement for land area in metricated countries (countries where metric units are actually used, not just in name only). There has been a previous movement to remove hectares from Wikipedia articles and it has caused widespread damage to those articles. Vandalism is too strong a description but they were certainly unhelpful edits. Bleakcomb (talk) 11:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It is sometimes useful to look at the inverse problem i.e. is the use of 10 square kilometres as you see in Mirash open-cast coal mine wrong? Lightmouse (talk) 12:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't regard it as the inverse problem, rather a different issue and I will get to that later. I should clarify. The example you gave, Mirash open-cast coal mine, is not an example of the type of edit I have the greatest disagreement with. The largest problem I have with the removal of hectare is where acres are the primary unit. I believe in this case that in metricated countries the hectare is usually the unit that would be expected to be used in conversion, not square kilometres. Bleakcomb (talk) 12:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah. I did not understand that the two articles were different in that respect. There are two mine articles and each of them quotes an area of 10 square kilometres. As I understand it, you disagree with metric readers seeing '10 square kilometres' when it is associated with acres and not otherwise. Have I understood you correctly? Lightmouse (talk) 12:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. I am not sure what you mean when you say " and not otherwise". I disagree with edits that change the converted units from hectares to square kilometres (or other metric units) where acres are the primary unit, unless there is a good reason. Bleakcomb (talk) 12:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that is yet another point. I still have not quite understood the first point about the presence or absence of acres. Let me try again. As I understand it, you do not mind Mirash mine saying '10 km²' but you object to the Salt Mine article saying '10 km²' because it is next to an acre value. Is that the point? Lightmouse (talk) 12:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

What? My concern is not the text in the Mirash mine article. Please, drop it. I disagree with edits that change the converted units from hectares to square kilometres (or other metric units) where acres are the primary unit, unless there is a good reason. Bleakcomb (talk) 12:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand why the other unit matters. As with languages, unit conversions are not required to be a word-for-word translation, otherwise the translation of "60 L fuel tank" would have to be "63 quart fuel tank". However, I do not want to upset you so if you do not want square kilometres in the Salt Mine article, feel free to remove them. Lightmouse (talk) 12:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe it is what metric users expect to see. If land area is given in acres we expect to see hectares as the conversion. Square miles to square kilometres is probably ok. I don't understand the langauge/fuel tank analogy and don't think I need to. My concern is not only with Salt Mine article, it is all the similar edits that you make. I have a mind to go along behind you and revert all your similar changes, but I thought we could come to a better understanding before that. Not only that, I have asked you to explain why you make these changes and you haven't answered. Later. Bleakcomb (talk) 13:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I cannot understand why you regard '10 km²' as acceptable in one mine article but not acceptable in another just because it is next to acre. If you want to ban square kilometres from the one, then it would be consistent to ban square kilometres from the other. I do not think stalking an editor to revert edits is a good idea and it is not nice to threaten it. If you would like to discuss this issue further, I would be happy to do so. Perhaps you might feel less upset after a cup of tea. Lightmouse (talk) 13:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
May I chip in here? I had the SI system drummed into my head as a child and have used metric units all my life. As an adult I work as a scientist who deals with all manner of different units.
I know how far I would have to walk to travel 1 km and that gives me a pretty good feel for area measured in square kilometres. But a hectare? Without looking it up I know that it is a unit of area that is larger than 1 square metre. I'm fairly sure (but not certain) that it is greater than 1000 square metres and less than 1 square kilometre. That narrows down the uncertainty to a mere 3 orders of magnitude.
In a nutshell: I prefer to see articles in units that I understand (km2.).
Thunderbird2 (talk) 15:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I wonder how many Wikipedia readers know:
A: intuitively how big a kilometre is
B: intuitively how big a hectare is
C: how many hectares per square km?
My guess is group A is much larger than group B, and the difference between B and C is small. I have no evidence for this, but it seems common sense. This supports the views of Lightmouse and Thunderbird2. --Dr Greg (talk) 17:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I didn't know, it is a weird 100meter square, and 1% of a square kilometer. (probably) Standard usage is to go to the larger measure once you exceed 10, 1000 hectares is not a useful measure , ( who can visualize 1000 of anything?) readers who know will convert to a kilometer based measure anyway since they know how big a kilometer square is

Greg L RFC

I moved your comment to an "Inside view" section, as it says on Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct#RfC_guidelines, so it's not really applicable anymore. — Omegatron (talk) 00:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have struck it out. I hope that is fine. Lightmouse (talk) 00:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That's fine, though I think you can remove it altogether to keep things clean. Or move to the talk page above Greg's response. — Omegatron (talk) 00:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Your bot is damaging articles

Please go to Template_talk:Convert#Your_bot_is_damaging_articles where the bot edit was discussed. Lightmouse (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Please see additional comment there on this same topic. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)