User talk:Montrealais/Talk archive 1

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Welcome

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need any questions answered about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

I assume that you are another Canadian who has joined us. If so please sign in at Wikipedians/Canada, or, if you feel it better reflects your sentiments, you can always start Wikipedians/Quebec. Either way your perspective will be appreciated. Eclecticology

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Canada

Thank you for taking on some of the Canada articles; I've been trying to flesh them out, but lack good reference books, and Canadian history isn't covered well in US schools. Vicki Rosenzweig

So they say :) You're welcome, and thank you and the rest of you for the welcome. - montréalais

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Sandman

Thanks for the Sandman collection pages edits, nice idea, makes it easier to read through them in sequence :). I see you were tripped up by the World's / Worlds' thing too, though. I shall write to Neil Gaiman and berate him for causing such confusion. =) --AW

I always like adding such things to lists that can be read through in sequence :) --montrealais

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Bowser

You seem to be responsible for the article Bowser (Nintendo character) (correct title) but there is also Bowser (Nintendo Character) by an anonymous contributor. I found this as I was trying to conform the titles to the naming convention. Perhaps you know enough about the subject to reconcile the texts. Eclecticology 20:03 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)

I know next to nothing about Nintendo, but Bowser (Nintendo character) is a revised edition of Bowser (Nintendo Character). I have set the latter to redirect. -montrealais

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Misc I

Just thought i'd let you know I responded to your comment on my talk page over there. Cya! --AW

Thanks for filling in some of my articles. I intend to fill them out more, but was interested jumping in and getting started contributing to Wikipedia. I want to put some more thought into these articles before adding more, but I didn't want to leave them blank - I realize it is not a Dictionary and I thought these deserved Wikipedia entries. --Jim

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Civil union

Please double-check my edits to civil union and gay marriage -- I need help to ensure that my bias doesn't affect my objectivity. (If you can't tell my bias from my edits, then I guess I'm doing okay ;) --Ed Poor

The only edits I saw from you in those two articles seem quite factual. --mtlais

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Nineteen Eighty-Four

Help me out again: is it okay to add "(or 1984)" to the Orwell novel? --Ed Poor 21:31 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Well, I say and maintain that it is supposed to be spelled out in letters, regardless of what those illiterates at Cliffs Notes do. But there's no reason why we couldn't add that as an alternative to the real, just, and true proper spelling. (Pedantic much, Matt? ;)) - user:Montrealais

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Same-sex marriage

Hey, speaking of pedantic, how about my change to the "same-sex marriage" definition? So far, no one has suggested a union of three-of-the-same-gender, so I thought it made sense to specify two partners. What do you think? Is this better, worse, or what? --Ed Poor

I think "both" did the trick, but I have made a minor correction and I think it's OK. - Mtlais

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The Quebec débâcle

Suggest you read the QUEBEC talk page and stop submitting your misleading statements. Suggest you first consult a few Constitutional experts. McGill has several....DW

Which statement of mine do you contend was misleading? To the contrary, your statement was downright un-NPOV. - Montrealais

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"Hey, relax. Breathe. Calm down." -- Thanks for your concern. But I've been doing that with Ed for something like a year now. Time to vent.  :-)

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Non-sexist language

Sorry, I had seen it but I didnot find time to answer to your comment on Talk:Non-sexist language until today. I left you a message there, if you have time to drop by, I would be glad user:anthere

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Admiring the cat

What! You have a life besides the Wiki? For shame. :) Sorry, I didn't sleep well and am a bit bitchy this morning. --mav

Tsk. You can make up for it by admiring my cat. (He's the cute black-and-white short-haired one in the lower photo on that page.) His name is Zazou and he wuvs you. - Montréalais

LOL - he is pretty darn cute. One of my cats looks very similar to the long hair on the same page (except my cat doesn't have a dark splotch on her nose). Her name is Mougie and she is a moody bitch -- but my partner and I love her and our other two cats just the same. --mav

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City names

Re: city names. See http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-September/004552.html -- Zoe

Right, which is what I said:

What, as far as I can see, has NOT been decided on yet, is whether American and Canadian cities get their State/Province addition even in absence of any necessity for disambiguation.

In other words, it's not yet necessary to move Canadian cities around. The mention of the special case of Canadian cities - what that meant was that if (say) Sydney had to be disambiguated, it would go to Sydney, Nova Scotia, not Sydney, Canada. -- Montréalais

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nospam-period-net

The period vs. dot trick is cool; another I like is writing "dot" .dot. which, if converted by a bot, results in something@something...com, which of course bounces & sometimes crashes things.  :-) --KQ 02:36 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

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wikiaddiction

Yikes! 71 after only a couple months. Pace yourself the Wiki ain't going anywhere. ;-) --mav

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Gay Wiccans

I'm not the only gay Wiccan on wikipedia? Will wonders never cease. Blessed be! (And come to me....meow.) ;) -EB-

LOL! You're lucky the boyf and I have an open relationship ;) - Montréalais

Yeah, but you're not exactly around the corner either. ;) (Check out the listing of Easter Bradford ((Not my user page)) to see me...) -EB-

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Canadian provinces and territories

Sorry, but the intent or purpose of italicizing the territories wasn't clear from the context. Perhaps a note to that effect might help the reader.
I don't know who did it but someone has put Newfoundland as the 12th province to be admited; tough to do when there are only ten. Eclecticology

Newfoundland was the 12th province or territory to be admitted. Check Canadian Confederation for the list. Nunavut was the 13th and Alberta and Saskatchewan are tied for 10th. - Montréalais

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Current events

Please consider following the steps at Wikipedia:Current events on Main Page to get stuff on the Main Page. Harry Hay needs to be added to Current events and Recent celebrity deaths. --The Cunctator

Thank you for the info. I had added other events to Talk:Main Page before, such as the stabbing of Bertrand Delanoë and the Queen's visit to Canada, and in fact asked if that was the proper place to do so and was told it was. But I will follow the procedure you mention. - Montréalais

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French regents

Hi, Montrealais. Do you really want to include regents as successors to monarchs? France has had female regents, but they were regents for an actual king. France has never had a queen regnant. -- Someone else 04:12 Nov 17, 2002 (UTC)

That's why they're in brackets. - Montréalais

Yes. It seems confusing to me in what sense they "succeeded" (they shouldn't be on a "List of Monarchs" either, though I suppose a "List of People who held power in France" would be extremely contentious.) The parentheses, though, do make it clear that something is amiss, but I was hoping to come up with something more explicit, and that would indicate that John I, for example, was actually king of France, even though he's in parentheses, but that Catherine de' Medici was never a monarch. -- Someone else

I am certainly not an expert in French history, and if you want to remove the assorted regents, you're welcome to do so. - Montréalais

How do you think this looks? An improvement or a debasement?

Preceded by: (Marie de Medici, regent following Henry IV's reign )

List of French monarchs

Succeeded by: (Anne of Austria, regent for Louis XIII)

-- Someone else

I think that makes it quite clear. - Montréalais

Excellent! I shall make it so! -- Someone else

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Genitive

Hey, I changed all the pages that were linked to genitive to link to genitive case. We probably don't need that redirect anymore. --Dante Alighieri

I understood it to be better to leave redirects (someone will write an article some day and link it to genitive, then she'll see that doesn't exist, she'll find genitive case and make a redirect, etc, in saecula saeculorum...) - Montréalais

Makes sense I suppose... well, at least it's clean for the moment... now if only someone would go through and make sure that ablative case, accusative case, locative case, etc. were all linked up.... ;) --Dante Alighieri

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"Stray"

Have you ever heard of a gay slang word called stray? I think somebody is playing a joke on us by trying to legitimize an ideosyncratic term. --mav

I have never heard such a term. - Montréalais

That reminds me of the boner: A virgin forest is one where the hand of man has never set foot! -phma

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Constellation disambiguation

Just saw your question over on my talk page about disambiguation. Sorry it took so long for me to see it, I've been off of Wikipedia for the past couple weeks as it's end-of-term crunch time for me right now (just one more week to go :). Anyway, I think that most of the mythological/astronomical articles deserve a full scale disambiguation; both the astronomical entities and the mythological characters have a lot of information to be told, and labelling one or the other as the "more important" one is entirely too subjective IMO (some people might say "astronomical bodies are of little relevance to us since they're so distant while human history is what we're all about", whereas others might say "you want to relegate entire worlds to footnotes subordinate to bits of old fiction from one small corner of ours?"). I suppose the two wikiprojects could ensure that there are cross-links, with every astronomical object named after a mythological thing having a link back to the myth article and every such myth article having a note at the bottom along the lines of "the moon Europa is named after her". Bryan 20:34 Dec 8, 2002 (UTC)

Kay, that works. If you like, I'll get to work on the constellations, and someone else can do the mythology. - Montréalais

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Wikibio format and Canadian prime ministers

Mon could you not change the "(born month and day/year)" in articles please - they are in the Wikipedia Manual of Style and are meant to be like that. Thank you. -- Paul Melville Austin

Any edits I've made are not systematic. Can you please give me an example of a wrong edit I've made so I'll know what not to do? - Montréalais

I noticed it in some of the articles on Canadian PM's you did - just thought i would give you a heads up sorry if you took offence

No offence taken. Will you please give me a specific? - Montréalais

Brian Mulroney (i changed it since), John Turner and Kim Campbell

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Cajun

In my early days in Wikipedia I really made a fool of myself about the Cajun article (see Talk:Cajun) and I haven't had the heart to go back sense, but it really does need a lot of work. Ortolan88

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Santiago de Compostela

Could you possibly find time to do the St. James article, tying it to Santiago/Sandiego de Compostella/Campostella and getting in the "field of stars" bit and coquille Saint-Jacques connection and Jacob/Iago derivation? I'd be very grateful if you would. -- isis 07:51 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

I would if I knew the first thing about any of it :) - Montréalais

C'mon, now: You just edited the article on the place, and you're into linguistics -- it's right up your alley, and I'm sure there's more info all over the Internet. All we need is a longish stub to anchor the Mary I of England link to the apostle who's the patron saint of Spain. Pretty please? -- isis 08:01 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

I really don't know anything about either saint. IANAC. If someone started the saint (Santiago de Compostela is St. James the Great, right?) I would follow with the trappings you mentioned, but until that's there I'm pretty much useless. - Montréalais

I didn't even know that name for him. Okay, there's a stub there now, in case you feel tempted. -- isis 08:44 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

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Prince William

Prince William is Prince William of Wales, Harry is Prince Harry of Wales. Not Prince of Wales, but a prince of Wales by virtue of being the son of the Prince of Wales. There was a long long discussion on correct titles. I checked with Buckingham Palace and that is their surnames. We all agreed to use that format and never use royal surnames as headings, because most royals worldwide do not have surnames. JTD 00:17 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)

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Breakup of U.S. plan to invade Iraq

Too much text

Montrealais, I think you're becoming obsessed. Do all of these long, dense paragraphs repeating the same thing in so many different articles really add to the 'pedia? -- Zoe

Um, can you tell me exactly what you're referring to? I assume the child articles from Support and opposition for the U.S. plan to invade Iraq? If so, please put your mind at ease. I just wanted to get the text out of there. I'll be pruning what I did, and you and everyone else, of course, are welcome to help.

For example, I already removed a huge chunk of text from American government position on war on Iraq relating to Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council; I had thought it was a good presentation thereof, but in retrospect I see a lot of it is not immediately relevant, so that its presence in the UN Security Council and the Iraq war is sufficient.

If something else, would you please specify? - Montréalais

Well, The UN Security Council and the Iraq war -- the transcript seems excessive, besides the fact the article runs to 16 paragraphs.

I put it there because, as I say, it was originally at Support and opposition for the U.S. plan to invade Iraq. If you don't like it, edit it yourself or take it up with the person who originally wrote it; I thought it presumptuous to break up the article but to delete material originally in it at the same time. - Montréalais

How to break up an article

Montrealais please when you break-up articles mention where you got the text from in the first edit that creates the new daughter article? Otherwise the edit history indicate that you, and you alone are responsible for authoring the first version of the daughter article which is neither nice to other contributors or legal per the GNU FDL. I know you didn't mean to step on any toes but please do this in the future - you should also mention the source of the text in an edit summary for a new edit to each article. --mav

I'm sorry. I'll add appropriate comments to the relevant Talk pages. - Montréalais

I have a better idea. I'll copy the text, delete the daughter article and then recreate the article with the copied text but with the correct attribution in the first edit summary. Good, bad - what do you think? --mav

That sounds fine. I've made some changes to the text, but they're minor (wikification, headings, typos, etc.) - Montréalais

All done. Hack away. :-) --mav