User talk:Olivier/Archives 2003 2

I've taken out the table on Napoleonic Era and put in this opening: The Napoleonic Era is an period in the History of France. -- it provides a link "up" to the higher topic. I think the drawbacks of the table (ugly markup) outweigh the convenience. But see what you think -- feel free to disagree & restore it :) -- Tarquin 13:20, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think that such historical tables are great, since they really clarify the stages of the history of countries. They have been added to quite a few countries already, like History of Germany, History of Algeria, History of Romania, History of Russia. I am not sure to understand what you mean with "ugly makup". Anyway, I am quite struggling with the periodization of the French History, and have added the table to the First French Empire article, instead of Napoleonic Era, which covers more than France. Any comment welcome! olivier 10:14, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Olivier This User talk:Yanyang1985. I have seen your message about

The reason I add every city with its province is that I am afraid there are two/more than two same named cities in China(I am sure there are.) So I thought maybe I could do some thing to avoid future duplication( I believe wikipedia WILL have entry for everything in this world, someday!). So that is why. What do you think after I have explained, Olivier? Should I add the provinces or should I just leave it what it is? 2:22pm, 26 Aug 2003(GMT)

Your concern is justified, and there has been quite a lot of discussions in Wikipedia around this topic. The concensus today is as follows: we try to keep titles as simple as possible, and their purpose is not to carry information. Now, about the titles for cities:

the format is (city name), (state) for cities in the USA and Canada, for disambiguation reasons AND because it is a common way of referring to cities in these countries
for other countries, it is a case by case situation. Typically, we do not disambiguate upfront, but rather when a naming conflict actually occurs. In addition, when a city is much more famous than other ones of the same name, we use a disambiguation block, and keep the "main" city with the shortest possible title (see examples in Venice and Paris).

I believe that the Chinese cities we are talking about are the famous ones carrying these names. Thus, they probably should have the short title (name only). If other cities with the same name appear, than disambiguation blocks will probably be appropriate. Please feel free to comment and let me know if I can answer other questions. In any case, thanks for your contributions and welcome to Wikipedia! olivier 06:45, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks,Olivier. That answered my question. I also want to ask you about quotes. I just saw you have moved my quotes in Suzhou and Guilin toward the end of the articles. I was thinking the quotes in the beginning of an article could attract people to read more, but I could be wrong. Please tell me more about use of quotes in wikipedia. I appreciate your help. Tim 14:59, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

About Humboldt Universität zu Berlin: for future reference, articles on Wikipedia are supposed to be named in English. The individual who originally moved it to the German name (contributions) is apparently the vandal User:Heine. Cheers, Cyan 20:40, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I had moved the page myself to "Humboldt Universität zu Berlin". For one of the most famous universities in Germany, I have no problem using its German name. Tons of articles in Wikipedia are named in the local language - for your future reference. olivier 04:06, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

For clarity (and for other readers), the chronology of the page's location is:

Heine moves to the German name, 10:18, 30 Aug 2003
Cyan moves it back, 21:11, 30 Aug 2003
Olivier moves to the German name, 10:27, 31 Aug 2003
Cyan moves it back, 16:40, 1 Sep 2003

The references I had in mind are Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) (from User talk:Heine). The phrase "for future reference" wasn't intended in a snide way, and I apologize for its use. Cheers, Cyan 00:18, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I allowed myself link this user page of a born in France user to his french user page for the wikipedians which also can french (ça existe peut-être :-). -- ArnoLagrange 08:10, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)

Hi Olivier. I just tried to send you an email to your hotmail account, but it bounced, saying "mailbox unavailable". Do you have another email address? In case you're wondering, I'm sending out developer contact details to a few active Wikipedians, so that you can contact someone when the server goes down. -- Tim Starling 12:33, Sep 13, 2003 (UTC)

lol. try writing some math articles. not easy... LirQ

(For reference, my initial posting on User talk:Jiang): That's very unusual, but this time I disagree a bit with you. I believe that the president of the PRC should be in the Macau and HK tables. British colonies have the Queen listed in their tables, so why not include the top-level politician in charge of the "mother"-country. olivier 01:02, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Which dependency articles are you talking about? I can't find any. A better question: which dependency articles have country templates applied to them?

I just think it's redundant to list the PRC president in the articles. The PRC president is given no special role or status in the SAR government. Hu is head of state in HK in his role as state president of the PRC, not in right in HK or Macau. We already know that HK is part of the PRC and that the PRC has a president. Who this individual is should be left to the PRC article. I dont see the need to list it in separate places. --Jiang 01:20, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

American Samoa, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Solomon Islands/Temp, Tuvalu, Wales. olivier 01:40, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

American Samoa - badly done; Bush is not "Chief of State". I would drop his name and add in the governor
Andorra - not a dependency; Chirac and Spanish guy are listed because their power as heads of state is granted by the andorran const., not becayse andorra is a dependency of France
Antigua and Barbuda- not a dependency; in each Commonwealth Realm, Queen Elizabeth is queen individually of that realm (i.e., Queen of Canada, etc), not because she is queen of the UK. IF the UK were the abolish its monarchy, she would still be queen of Canada.
Aruba- netherlands and aruba considered separate countries, " The monarch heads the executive branch (regering) of the kingdom and each country individually. "
Australia-same as above; not a dependency, a commonwealth realm
Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Solomon Islands/Temp, Tuvalu - same; not dependencies, "In these states she is officially known as the Monarch of that state, not as the monarch of Great Britain. "
Wales- what's with this one?

Note that Bush is not listed at Puerto Rico.

--Jiang 01:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Why are you fighting over the "dependency" denomination, which, by the way, I did not use? My initial comment was about the appropriateness of having the head of state of the PRC in the HK and Macau tables.

Article 12 of the HK Basic Law states: "The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be a local administrative region of the People's Republic of China, which shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy and come directly under the Central People's Government."

Therefore, by constitution, whoever is at the head of the "Central People's Government" is ultimately head of HK. Interestingly, that's the same situation as with Andorra, dependency consideration aside. Thus, the core of the question seems to be the redundancy thing for a territory that is a dependency of another one, but enjoys a high degree of autonomy.

I admit that the British colonies I was referring to in my initial posting are former ones - so, these examples were not relevant. The only current British colony which has a template applied is Pitcairn Islands, where only the governor is listed - note that this leaves some room for interpretation for all the other colonies' tables, which are yet to be completed. American Samoa would be a couter-example, but you do not like it on grounds that the description of the role of Bush there is incorrect. That does not mean that he should not be listed in the table under his appropriate relationship to the place. In the case of Puerto Rico, as you certainly know, the table has seen substantial remodelling very recently. Therefore, that has not left enough time for the Wikipedia community to reach a stable agreement on the contents of its table. The other US dependencies do not have a table yet. On the other hand, we did not include the Head of the PRC in the tables of the other first-level PRC's political divisions. Same applies for US states, French departements... but these territories do not enjoy "a high degree of autonomy" as HK and Macau do.

Unless we have further evidence that I missed, my conclusion is that the jury is still out for answering the question: "should we include the Head of State of the "mother"-country in the table of territories enjoying a large degree of autonomy?". This being said, if you feel strongly that Hu should leave the table, than feel free to remove him. My opinion at this point is quite neutral, slightly skewed toward the "he should be in the table" side. olivier 03:05, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Note that a broader discussion about this topic might be of interest to the participants of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. olivier 03:12, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I moved it to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries for further discussion. --Jiang

Du Mu as a Chinese word (loan word), shouldn't be written in italic in English? I am not sure, I think every loan word from other language should be written in italic in English, which means all the Chinese in thoes Chinese-related pages should be in italic. Am I right? --Gboy 03:10, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Cambodia[edit]

Hi Olivier, I hope you don't mind but I moved Cambodia/Temp to Talk:Cambodia/Temp because there aren't supposed to be any subpages in the article namespace. Hopefully I fixed all the links to it as well. Angela 22:57, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Fine. I have noticed before that there seem to be such a rule for work-in-progress. Seems a bit akward to me to have such pages in a Talk.../temp, but I don't really mind. olivier 01:21, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Olivier, any chance you can start clicking on "This is a minor edit" for all those years pages? You're filling up the Recent Changes page. RickK 05:40, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Oooops, OK. I did not realize this. Thanks for letting me know! olivier 05:42, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hua to Huaguo
Hi Oliver, the info which was taken out has been merged with the Hephthalite entry both originally started by me when I knew very little about editing :-P I did this because though Hua are Hephthalites, it is fair to make a distinction between these and the Huaguo which the Chinese sources believe to have been their origin. The Hua info better belongs on the Hephthalite page where reference is made to the Chinese belief that they originated from Huaguo. I also mention on the Huaguo page that it is thought by the Chinese to be the origin of the Hephthalite Hua (Hwer). I hope to find info about the establishment of Huaguo and more info about their period in China thus justifying further the distinction. User:Zestauferov

Thanks for the clarification! olivier 02:55, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Please remove insulting comment from User:Cyan Heine 02:55, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

??Which one? Where?? olivier 03:54, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This personal attack is insulting and the purest nonsense: "The individual who originally moved it to the German name (contributions) is apparently the vandal User:Heine. Cheers, Cyan 20:40, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC) "

I cannot add my comment after his, because the page is longer than 32 kb, and the first section is too long. Maybe you should move a part of it to an archive page? -- Heine 05:13, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have moved some of the discussion to archive. The page should be more workable now. olivier 09:01, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I am so sorry. What I wrote in Talk: Sha Tin is not against you. I think you did good work on wiki. You made great contribution on lots of articles. I sincerely apologise for my poor english which makes you feel that I have offended you. Maggiemei.

Mo mantai la! And I apologize for overreacting! olivier 15:01, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I really feel sorry. I am a Wiki newbie. My comment was not against you. I knew that you did a good work on wiki and that's why I wanna share my feelings from what I experienced. I made the previous comment just because I want to know whether you have the same feelings or not. I am always willing to tell you. You may send me email and we can talk about it. Really sorry. Maggiemei

It's OK. I understand now. I normally do not communicate with other Wikipedians by email, but if you feel that you want to share things that you do not feel confortable writing on this page, let me know and I will send you an email. In fact, I am a bit surprised by your feeling that some people may be doing a lot of minor contributions in order to increase the perceived amount of work they do.

As far as I know, no one gets any reward for this. That's also the reason of my comment to Fuzheado, because I am not sure that rewarding people on quantity would be beneficial, and I am interested in his opinion for guiding people who want to do university projects like he does, in the future. Don't get me wrong: I really appreciate what he does, and I think that his students have done very valuable contributions to Wikipedia.

The only reason that I can imagine, why people would want to give the impression of doing a lot of work is in order to get the "administrator" status. But, in order to obtain this status, a contributor needs to receive the positive backing of several existing administrators, who will be reviewing the details of his/her contributions before giving their opinions. Administrators are normally heavy contributors themselves and would probably identify such an attitude in the contribution history of a candidate for the "administrator" status.

If you could give me more details about your negative feeling, that would be helpful, and could maybe help me understand what is happening. Anyway, thanks for your great contributions, and seriously, that would be great to have articles about HK's walled villages and the clans :-) olivier 15:39, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

田汉[edit]

Talk:Tian Han -戴&#30505sv 21:20, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK. olivier 20:30, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's truly amazing how Pierre Berthier helped the English sneek into Les Baux de Provence and steal all their bauxite for 26 years without the French ever knowing it! NightCrawler 20:25, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Uh? sounds kind of interesting. Anything to add about it into either article? olivier 20:30, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. I've not ignored your question, and in fact it is something we're experimenting with right now -- grade by individual, by group, by number of edits, quality of edits, etc? I'll hopefully post some more well-thought-out answers soon, as we're trying different methods with different classes. Fuzheado 05:54, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Monarchs/Presidents?[edit]

What the heck is the "Monarchs/Presidents" section supposed to be for in the year articles? Did they die in that year, were born, became rulers, what? See 1783 --A very confused mav

See the discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Years. Your comments are very welcome! olivier 14:16, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Olivier, you've made redirects for national flower, national tree, etc. So you can answer the first question at Talk:National emblem. Jay 12:27, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I am afraid that I cannot help you much in this quite technical question. I made the redirect because I thought that "national flower" was close enough to "national emblem" to justify the redirect, rather than having no link at all. Also the "national emblem" article already had a list of plants, animals..., not started by myself, when I made the redirect. Bottom line, I did it because I thought it was helpful. If I was wrong, please feel free to modify it. olivier 14:30, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Why move articles out of their /Temp pages when they are far from complete? --Jiang

I think the Nepal article looked good enough to be on its own page, even if it needed more work. I also think that having the article on its article page will attract more attention and edits/improvements. I think that the /temp thing looks really messy and discourages potential contributors. olivier 06:28, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Your opinion is needed at Talk:Chongqing#Move. --Menchi 08:16, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK, I have added my 2 cents. olivier 08:40, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Date format[edit]

Hi Olivier. I see you made some changes to Ikazuchi. Please don't change date formats from British to American or vice versa when they are consistent within an article -- this caused a big argument on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) about six months ago, and resulted in the creation of the "dynamic dates" preferences option, so each user can decide for themselves how they want to see dates presented. -- Arwel 14:45, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We have the "Date format" setting in Preferences. --Menchi 00:08, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for the feedback. olivier 03:37, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the Ezra Pound link: too much rush. Bmills 09:06, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome! olivier 10:51, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hello Olivier. Thanks for fixing some of my bold contributions. A question : Are you sure that ( and ) are necessary around chinese chars ? a+ gbog 18:17, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Welcome. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). You might also be interested in List of China-related topics. olivier 18:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

OK, but what happens if i don't really agree :) (I feel that the real name of Chinese authors is the characters and therefore should be first, and without ( ), but anyway, I'll do as others do...) gbog

If you feel so, you can discuss your opinion in the talk pages of the above mentioned pages. Thanks for the work! olivier 18:38, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, just curious, what is the point of linking to Victoria Park in London, Ontario? That's just a disambiguation page for various cities named Victoria Park; the one in London is actually just a park. Adam Bishop 07:14, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I was actually in the process of building the Victoria Park disambiguation page, and I looked for as many such parks as I could in Wikipedia. In the process, I linked all those that I found. In fact, most of the parks listed on the disambiguation page are actually parks, like the one in Hong Kong, which has its own article. As far as I know, the only city in the list is Victoria Park, Western Australia. I was maybe over-enthusiastic in linking those parks. You can delink if you think it is appropriate. olivier 07:20, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Well, perhaps I was too hasty...I suppose an article could be made about the park in London, it has some interesting history now that I think about it. Sorry :) Adam Bishop 07:24, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No problem! Apparently, creating this disambiguation page was somewhat useful... olivier 07:26, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Olivier, the helipad at Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal is also on a rooftop of the terminal (although only a few floors above sea level). See [1]. So strictly speaking the rooftop helipad on the Peninsula may not be the only one. Hlaw 12:01, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal has an heliport and not an helipad. Anyway, you are right, a small change would be beneficial in the text at Transportation of Hong Kong to explain this. olivier 12:05, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

fixed. olivier 12:34, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Duplicate pics[edit]

The Guangxu and Tongzhi Emperor articles have the same picture (uploaded under different names). Do you know which is which? --Jia ng 12:47, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My Google Image search indicates that it would be Guangxu. olivier 12:52, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)