User talk:Ser Amantio di Nicolao/Archive 9

Happy New Year

Thanks for that. Well wikipedia is undoubtedly getting better by the day in terms of content. Its just ashame that so many choose to spend their time in useless ANI and squabble discussions rather than contributing to the mainspace as an encyclopedia. As Ali G would say "Keep it real". Stick to what this project is about, neither a law court nor a school playground. If we had 1 million good contributors which wouldn't be impossible we'd get things done rather than relying on the few who do the bulk of the work! Exciting times though. Remember some of those stubs I created on towns in Jordan? Well I noticed a lot of them now have detailed articles on Arabic wikipedia and images too. The number of people using the INternet is expected to double in the next 5-10 years to 2 billion, particularly from the developing world countries. If we make wikipedia as prominent as possible on the search engines by creating more and more content, it can only attract people to whatever language wikipedias they use and encourage people to join us and contribute. I still think one of the most important things we can develop is a highly advanced translation service but there we go, we'll have to make to at present. The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:48, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I;ve bought a Bradt book on Benin BTW. Hopefully I can use it to expand some articles like Parakou. Sound good? The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Well anything's possible. I have to keep reminding myself how huge the scale of this project is, it is an Internet giant and without a doubt will continue to grow into something even larger and hopefully of higher quality. I'd like to see it grow in terms of the number of active editors for sure. It semes however that we are only growing at a rate of about 500,000 articles a year at present on English wikipedia, which is a lot but small in terms of the millions who use wikipedia. I'm estimating that by January 1 2010 we will have roughly 3,220,000 articles at current rate of growth, but if we took advantage of bots who knows. The potential is astounding and we have to take full advantage of it and show what we can achieve together! The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Well we passed 2 million in September 2007. Thats a growth of just 680,000 articles in 15 months. Split 680,000 by 15 and times by 12. Thas a growth of 544,000 articles in a year so I'd estimate around 3,220,000 by this time next year. 3 million mark? Well that is certain this year of course. By ratio evaluation my bald genius head estimates that it will take a further 7 months and 1 day, 13 hours to reach 3 million from 680,000 at current growth (we are not quite there yet) so that would make it about July 2nd 2009 that we pass 3 million. Perhaps it will happen on Independence day huh? The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

And of course providing we get the 1.21 gigawatts required to power the flux capacitor! LOL The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:37, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Man I'm loving my new wah pedal. With the Marshall amp I have it is an amazing sound, it sounds like classic late 60s stuff. I;ve been playing along this morning with Hendrix's Foxy Lady and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood album, incidentally the Texas Flood song is also in the F# blues scale. I consider Hendrix, Vaughan and Clapton as my favourites, but I also like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai for more 80s metal type music. At the moment I have a head full of blues riffs, so its hard to stay away from youtube while I'm on here and concentrate in editing. I love all the early blues stuff too like Robert Johnson, The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I think some of the Nepal Village Development Committee articles still need tagging. The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, early delta blues stuff. So influential, even Eric Clapton cites these sorts of people as strong influences. The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep I'm very fmailiar with songs like "My Mama Don't Allo" The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't no. Sounds like the name of a Clannad song! The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey would you accept File:Cusworth Hall 1.jpg as a featured picture? The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:17, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I know thats what I thought. Thats why I don't take featured content too seriously in terms of "superiority" to other images or work. There are thousands of excellent resourceful articles and images but often they are not "technically perfect" enough to be an FA. When I see a bland featured picture or a really quite unimpressive FA in terms of content I kinda think well its my point of view anyway what represents our best work. For me it is more important that articles are taken to GA. Sometimes the trivial issues with article preventing taking something to FA are not worth bothering with when there are zillions of stubs to build or start or core articles barely beyond stub level The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Urgh I hate January. I'm off to scout around for car insurance now, see you later. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:27, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

LOL Only I could go from editing articles on Bollywood, to Asian Weightlifting, to Namibian roads and railways, to Gambian towns to Swedish television series in just a few hours! The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:34, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

And there was me thinking there were only 12 disciples! The Bald One ^{White cat} 10:51, 4 January 2009 (UTC) Amazing. I uploaded File:Choa Chu Kang library3.jpg and I've spotted a book I own, about the sixth from the top left!! 501 must see destinations. Of all the books and in Singapore too, the chance of that!! The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:20, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I know. Just been looking for some sources for Cambodia and it is undoubtedly getting better. There are some village case studies here for instance that are resourceful enough for full articles. If we could get such material eventually then I am pretty sure we could not only have stubs on villages but actually have full articles on them anywhere. The Fritzbot idea would still be very much desirable if this sort of information was abundant as it will become in the future I think. I had a National Geographic atlas for Christmas and last night I was exmaining it (as I was watching Dirty Harry) (as you do LOL) and i was just thinking how vast some of the world countries are. Democratic Congo and Kazakhstan for instance are enormous countries but we have little coverage of them at present. The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC) I can see what you mean about missing content and quality on articles on rural America. Admittedly over here in the UK we get fed so much about people in Hollywood and coastal California, New York City and politics of D.C. that we forget how vast the United States is and how beautiful many parts of it is in rural America. The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Just two things you;ve said made me wonder if you'd be interested in setting a long term goal to translate Tunis from French wikipedia. It is a core article, that has major historical significance on an African place and is a featured article on French wikipedia. Quite reasonably it could be translated directly into English and be an FA on here. Something to think about perhaps, given your French skills. I would personally be extremely pleased to read the article on French wikipedia in english for sure. It is quite a gem and the good thing is the research looks like it has been done already. The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Brdo Museum too looks extremely good. I may google translate them but I doubt they will be very good translations. The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Prologue of Ohrid

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Speedy deletion of Tremeca

A tag has been placed on Tremeca requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the article or have a copy emailed to you. DougsTech (talk) 02:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Tivulaghju

A tag has been placed on Tivulaghju requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the article or have a copy emailed to you. DougsTech (talk) 02:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Kyrgyzstan

Hey. I started Tyan'-Shan' District and the districts a while back. Check out the image I found and also excitingly there is a Kyrgz wikipedia which has an image of the town! The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks as if it has recently been started, only has 722 articles at present and most of these I think has been started by somebody english speaking but has connections with the country somehow. Given time I'd expect to see it grow from the main cities but its the same with countries like Kazakhstan and Mongolia, the vast majority of the countries are open country and mountains. Can't see too many yurts having internet connections! The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Fascinating part of the world. Not too keen on the food though Besh barmak and curdled yaks milk. Yum. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Funny I was just stubbing a Nepalese monastery when you mentioned that. Oh Nepalese cuisine, southern is likely to be more Indian I think but in many parts I think they share the sort of cuisine with the typical Himilayan region. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Impressive. Over here in terms of the sheer number of takeaways we seem to prefer our native fish and chips, Italian -pizza and pasta, Indian curries, and often Thai and Chinese. Actually down on Broad Street in my town ther eis a "Moonlight Balti" which is runs by Bangladeshis. There are a great number of Pakistanis in the Cardiff area though. I think I recall there being an Indonesian restaurant in Cardiff though, but mostly dominated by Indian cuisine. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:54, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I entered a Tibetan website earlier which had a wine red/burgundy background colour and white text and I thought how good it looked. I've altered my web color setting for the moment and have wikipedia at present in Tibetan Buddhism colours. I have changed the font to a white bold and it looks really cool I think. I doubt I'll keep it like so but it makes reading amazingly different! The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I personally think cologne blue and modern are the best. With Internet settings though I can make things look very different by altering text fonts, size and background colors with different skins. I have been using modern for some weeks now though on normal settings but I felt like a colour change. I find my mind works better with strong and bold colors. Content is obviously of prime importance to me but its nice to have a change every so often. One skin I'dlike to see though it a cool design emulating that of an ancient scroll or encyclopedic page with a yellow scroll/parchment like background for the page. The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:29, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes there ought to be an option for personal modifications like that on the site. Hey Minime is currently on Celebrity Big Brother 2009 (UK) and is tipped to win! The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:35, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

LOL. Davina McCall, her common line is always "Housemates. You are live on Channel 4, please do not swear". With Minime it would be more like "Minime you are live on Channel 4. Please do not hump the Alan Parsons Project mini laser, or any other housemate either". LOL The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:43, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Me neither. The novelty of reality TV wore off back in 2000 after "everybody" started jumping on the bandwagon. The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC) Worse still is why the sort of wanabees that appear on them are considered notable enough for encyclopedia articles. Oh Johhny Balls bla bla bla was the winner of the 84th series of Survivor Planet Vulcan. He won the quadrillion dollar prize money and bought an evil petting zoo and gave nothing to charity. He is currently starring in a shampoo commerical posing with his pet monkey read to be shot into space. Groan groan, you know what I mean! The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC) I found a bank of 700 images on Flickr for Cameroon, one of them is File:LamidoGrandMosque.jpg, P.S. I contacted the Harvard photographer and voila we now have an image of Michael Crichton!. The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Its amazing though what can be found in some areas. You can't find a decent image of a global star like Shania Twain for instant but you can obtain tons of free images on a hospital in a town few will have heard of. This is what makes wikipedia exciting for me, to not only have articles on places in the world people haven't heard of, but to actually have articles on places within these places. Check out User:Dr. Blofeld/Cameroon I'm managing to compile together. The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:22, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I am amazed with what I was able to find on Protestant Hospital of Ngaoundéré. I'll reference it tomorrow. Just shows potentially how much Africa could be developed on here, must be millions of articles potentially. The Bald One ^{White cat} 23:06, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Crzy son of a bitch. Check out [this The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I;ve started and translated most of Carthage National Museum. However one section didn't translate too well. Can you translate the Punic religion section and also any image captions still in French? The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Check out List of nature parks in Germany. Lush isn't it? It took ages starting that! The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

You seem very busy today! The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:34, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Everything all right fella? Still busy at work? The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC) COol, its pretty miserable here today, been raining all day. I've been doing a fair bit of reading away from here. I ought to start trying to learn French, Spanish and Italian better as I know it will be very useful to know in the future, especially on here. Anyway I send a flickr mail to a guy in French to ask permission to use the Benin images. He has agreed but I will have to go on his contacts otherwise the image are protected from saving. He even said he has more photos of Benin that he will upload! I have a 100% success rate with image requests on there. If the commons people weren't so fussy and didn't faff about on every agreement I'd be more willing to upload more and make more agreements. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah but using google translate won't help my speaking of it to people in the outside world! A dream of mine has always been to live down in the Mediterranean. I'd love to live in Italy or Tenerife or something. Ukrainian tractors? Wow now I'd be hard pushed to find something more obscure than that, although I did some work on Guyanan chess the other day which was pretty much up there! The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes you're right about the Italian translation seems pretty good, French is good too. Interestingly the Chinese and Japanese are also very good, in fact I translated information from Chinese for the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Hong Kong the other day. Afraid the German translation is not very good, it seems to get a lot of things in the wrong order. The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Charlie Zelenoff

How did you find out that he was born in 1984? regards--Vintagekits (talk) 21:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Doh, that was my mistake - its the reminants of a copy and paste. cheers--Vintagekits (talk) 21:54, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Sourou-Migan Apithy

Are you still game on Apithy? ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 01:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The image placement in Pungoteague Creek Light

I put this back the way it was, because I don't think a caption is sufficient to warn people off from seeing whatever is in the box as what the text is discussing. "This is not the Pungoteague Creek Light" is going to slip by a lot of people. I think there might be one or two other cases where I did this. I'm not completely happy with the result either, but until someone comes up with a picture of the original (not very likely, alas) I think this is the best route. Mangoe (talk) 17:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Parakou

Check out the images I got from the agreement. Bohicon too which I'll expand next.

Thanks. I couldn't find any freely licensed images on flickr so I had to request them as I badly wanted these images!! You can send a flickr mail to anybody on there if you have an account. If you know users on flickr who have tons of images that are marked as "copyrighted" send them an email saying something like "Hi. I do a lot of work on wikipedia and we are always greatly in need of images for the encyclopedia. I see your images however are marked as copyright. Givenm that the wiki commons can only accept free content would you be willing to permit us to use your images under a Creative COmmons Attribution license? This means your name would always be credited with the image." I have made a number of flickr agreements, however thanks to the laziness of User:Riana my images of Sekondi-Takoradi were deleted and put me off the whole OTRS ticketing thing. Once you receive an email saying "Yes you can use the images" or something forward it to commons permissions. Once the agremeent is made and OTRS ticketed with that flickr user, at a later date you can upload images of theirs further using the official OTRS code. The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I know but note that the images have to belong to the user you make the agreement with, so its best to make agreements with those who have a higher number of photo sets, oftening meaning many places can be killed in one stone so to speak. If the person replies and says yes you can use my images, start uploading them to the commons with {OTRS pending} . Forward you flickr mail to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org but please try to get the flickr perosn to reply saying something like "I grant the permission of wiki to use my images under a Crative Commons 3.0 Attribution license or something. If you can forward such an email like this to the commons it makes it easier for them to believe it. As I said I've had a 100% success rate with flickr contacts, and I've found most people more than willing to help wikipedia with it. However note the commons people can be very picky and treat every agreement rather suspiciously until they can fully confirm it. In my experience they have been very slow to respond and sort out OTRS ticketing and after the Sekindi Ghana agrrement was deleted I got rather annoyed and gave up on making them. If however they would do it efficiently and relatively quickly I'd be willing to make many more flickr agreements rather than just trying to find 2.0 images. The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I know what you mean. Copyright paranoia I think sums up a lot of commons staff. Copyrighted until proven free sort of thing isn't it. Well my images of Eritrea and Trsitan da Cunha etc still remain under OTRS so go for it! Any help you can give also obtaining images for places in Africa or the developing world, even Oceania would be much appreciated. The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes France and Italian communes, same with Germany and Switzerland are of prime importance for transwikiying. Finland and Sweden too need so much improvement in terms of content that can be done by transwiki. Anyway I'm about to ask This flickr user to use her images. This is exactly what I mean about making agreements with prolific image uploaders who are well travelled. 27 countries in Africa alone and over a hundred sets of images for Africa! The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes she has an amazing collection of images form about 6/8 of the world. She has visited an astonishing 122 countries! I've just sent her quite a long flickrmail congratulating her but also requesting use of them. If successful this could be quite an important agreement. She even has like 23 sets of photos of Yemen! IN all honesty there should be a flickr scouting group on here which is dedicated to finding image content and authorising these agremeents. Potentially using a lot of flickr content this encyclopedia would benefit enormously. The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Cheers amigo The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually there is one thing. If you could add "The city is served by ... Airport in the city articles for each of the airports I start. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Phew! Still have a lot to do but I'm tired now after that lot! Time for a walk I thinks. The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you look at that flickr user after? Unfortunately I haven't had a reply yet but I just sent requests to four different flickr users, two of them primarily Mali and the others include Mali and some other places. What I can do is a cut and paste and start sending out tons of flickr requests, I am bound to get some responses. I feel somewhat encouraged by how quickly the commons sorted out my Benin agreement so if they do thinks efficiently I will start asking around. Porentially this could be massive, so I may need to get on good terms with the commons admins and get a bot to transfer many of their images from flickr once the agreements are made The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:54, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Yes to be honest they were intended to be applied to articles manually. There are a lot of articles for France that don't have anything further on French wikipedia and for those it does seem unnecessary as the reader will look forward to seeing something big on French wikipedia and wonder "What happened there?". However there are many articles which have content but these are not always consistant, amking AWB difficult to apply. If I had to choose a country in which you'd use AWB to tag ALL of them I'd pick Germany. For nearly everywhere in Germany there is a lot to transwiki, so I would do Germany or Switzerland (often has good stuff on both German and French wiki). Meanwhile I've just come across the Communes of Mauritania, my next port of call. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Naturally we want all of the communes to develop but there seems to be a number of departments of France particularly in more rural areas that are as stubby as here, I guess its the same even with the United States. Shame we haven't a bot which compares KB on other wikis and applies the tags to those full of content!! Anyway thanks for you help, I'm sure you tagged many which have content on French. But as I was sayong to Tagishimon earlier a perfect example would be Malsch (bei Wiesloch) from German. This is a typical example of content redunduncies. Germany, Austria and Switzerland are what I'd go with for AWB as they seme more consistent. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:20, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC) Bareina looks a good photo? The Bald One ^{White cat} 23:10, 14 January 2009 (UTC) Yes I think it is an excellent contrast between the dark greay almost black sky and the yellow-orange sandy earth. These are the sorts of images I want to see in abundance on here, the sort you see on flickr. Oh that reminds me I need to check my email The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Invitation

Sorry to interrupt you here, Albert. (I don't know how else to contact you.) Anyway, I'd like to invite you to do some web journalist work on another project, www.My-Representative.org. Please share your interest with me. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.234.205.229 (talk) 19:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Labergement-lès-Auxonne

I don't understand why you've tagged the Labergement-lès-Auxonne article with a "Please help expand and improve this article or section by translating from the French Wikipedia into English", when the French article - infobox aside - has no more information than the english article. Translate what? And that being the case, is not your tag unhelpful and a waste of time & space? And if you've blindly tagged tens of hundreds or articles to the same lack of effect? --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I did a quick check of 3 articles; in each case the French articles had as little content as the English. Sorry, I think you;re just littering hundreds of articles with fatuous tags.

You say "But most of the commune articles do need expanding, and this is the quickest way to note it." But most articles in Wikipedia need expanding: putting a tag at the top of the article is not the best way to go about getting expansion done. The primary effect of such a tag is to force the user who wants to read what content there is in the article to have to read past the tag. I urge you to reconsider what you;re doing, and to consider whether you should be removing the tags you have inserted. That, for me, would make wikipedia a better place. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:27, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI, reply at User talk:Dr. Blofeld#Tagging --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:02, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. FWIW, I do accept that your efforts were in good faith and with due diligence; I'm sorry it didn't work out well for me, but would not wish to discourage you. As for the good Doctor, he's evil personified, and so is to be given some latitude :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Were it possible to check the size of the French article, that might help. As for bombardment, I keep myself on the move, dodging from safe house to safe house, and scorn your puny missiles. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:19, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

How about I lend Albert a hi-jacked Kreblakistani nuclear warhead and destroy all the safe houses that exist and leave you starkers in the middle of a field with no warmth or accomodation. Would that really silence you? LOL. The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:41, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You might ask around AWB to find out if there's some sort of extension someone could put together to do something like invoke the FR article for each EN article visited? I suspect (with absolutely no real knowledge of AWB) that that might be possible. I'm with you on the inability to code issue; there's much that I could usefully put bots to, but I'm not inclined to try to get involved with the whole bot request / nned for consensus thing. And I commiserate, from bitter experience, that on wikipedia, every good turn deserves punishment. Why we stick at it, beyond our autistic leanings, is beyond me. Oh, and I've hacked an IRS database to cause them to do an in-depth tax investigation on you. I'm sure that that'll be a far more harrowing experience for you than any number of so-called bunker-busters you may have at your disposal will be for me. Tremble in fear, Albert. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

If you checked them before hand then there shouldn't be a problem Albert with tagging a batch that you know have a lot of content on French wikipedia. The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:06, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Flickr

This is amazing. I;ve got a reply from Grete saying she'd be delighted for wikipedia to use her images. However we need to come to an agreement of how we will go about it. PLease please when you get home from work check out her banks. It will blow your mind trust me. Once you explore the sets within them and then images within them you'll see what a priceless agremeent this could turn out to be. From what I;ve seen there must be tens of thousands of exotic images of 122 countries, everything from towns and villages, mountains, lakes, rivers, wildlife, architecture, museums, national parks, etc etc. This would be massive. She has like a world encyclopedia of images!! She even has like 26 sets of images from Djibouti alone!! The only "negative" thing is that she hasn't uploaded the images in like 3000px they have been uploaded around 800px. The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly and they would never be over 350px in the encyclopedia anyway. I noticed that she also had some images of Tahiti. Actually I think I'll scout around for some images of the some of the Oceania islands and try to make some more agreements. Kiribati etc The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I;ve just sent an email to a guy called jololopy who has around 120 photos of Kiribati so fingers crossed. Have you any Pacific Island requests? OK Kiribati and Norfolk Island will do for now. Around 120 of each. Lets hope we get some replies! The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I have a 95% success rate. Most people are more than willing to help and use wikipedia regularly so don't mind contributing. Actually one user has posted on flickr whow proud he is of his photos being used on wikipedia. My only failure apart from the botched admin job was Central Asia where the guy wanted to help but was unwilling to lease them under a commercial license as he made an income selling his photographs. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:26, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

YES! She has replied saying "Wiki is granted the use of these images under 3.0". This is a wicked development. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I created Attitogon based on her images. Flickr is actually an excellent way of raising awareness of places to add on wikipedia. However I need to wait for me to go on her contact list so I can begin uploading as at present they are protected by "spaceball.gif". Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:16, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Heeeeeelllllllllpppp! The image agremeents are flowing fast and furious now, I've had three emails in three minutes! I now have access to hundreds of uimages of Central Asia, mountain passes of Tajikistan and offers to contribute to wikipedia articles etc!!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I've had two formal permissions now which I;ve forwarded to the commons. I will need a lot of help uploading them for sure, but at present we are having server trouble. I've chatting to Both of them on flickr now, we were discussing West African voodoo a minute ago and with the Central Asia traveller yaks meat and yurts!! Fascinating stuff. The other is for a few stray Mali images which may be useful. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It is a photo of people in Ansongo whihc I started yesterday. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

OK Albert check out Attitogon, These are the first two I uploaded. Kara next Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Kara, Togo images have been added. I'm chuffed with this totally, wait till see her images on flickr when you get home. Seems like our Central Asian guy has an account on here and will upload the images himself. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:01, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

requested advice

About the places listed as Peter Francisco House in the NRHP, you asked me: "Do you think there would be any objection to my creating the article as "Locust Grove (Dillwyn, Virginia)", and making "Peter Francisco House" a redirect?" I think that would be absolutely fine, and would be consistent with our treatment of many other properties that have a common name different than the official NRHP name, which may be outdated or even incorrect and may not reflect the current common and/or local name for a place. I find it always seems to make sense to defer to local editors.

What I do in such cases:

• add the NRHP name as an alternative in the intro text. E.g. Locust Grove, in Dillwyn, Virginia, is .... Also known as Peter Francisco House, the property .... " Or, The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Peter Francisco House in 1972.
• use the NRHP name as the title in the NRHP infobox.
• set up a redirect from the NRHP name to the article. Given that there is a redirect, it is helpful to readers who arrive via the redirect that the Peter Francisco name show up bolded somewhere, to explain to those readers why they got to this page.

Not sure if you do or not, but if you don't want the Peter Francisco House name to show in the infobox temporarily, then you could just leave the infobox out, it is not required (although i think it usually adds to an article, and someone else may well add the NRHP infobox). I just think that if an NRHP infobox is in, then it would be potentially misleading to suggest the NRHP name is something different. It would then still be appropriate to say in the article that the the house was listed on the National Register as Peter Francisco House.

FYI, I notice that the Elkman NRHP generator mentions Locust Grove as another name for the place. So I would have reported the Locust Grove name as an alternative name in the intro to the article, if i had created it. Also you should add to the Locust Grove disambiguation page:

• Locust Grove (Dillwyn, Virginia), listed on the NRHP in Virginia

I guess you know that Virginia properties have their NRHP documents available at VLR site here.

Have fun, and I hope ur relatives enjoy seeing it up on DYK on that day! doncram (talk) 17:00, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good. Glancing at the NRHP doc, it seems to have plenty of bio info about Peter Francisco, so I hope u might add that reference also to the Peter Francisco article and use it to support, perhaps in a few places, what is in the article, justifying removing the annoying-to-me refimprove tag there now. Let me know after u get the Locust Grove article DYK nominated, as I'd like to see if i could help in any way before the DYK day. It seems interesting, i did not know of this person. By the way, I was in a national military museum in Scotland not long ago and was sort of bothered, couldn't put my finger on how its treatment of all sorts of colonial wars in which Scots were involved was bothering me, in some one-sided way, but what was the other side? Then i saw a display including what was called a Tarleton hat, and there was a blurb about Tarleton, all cheery and breezy about him. I.e., no mention of his being infamous as the butcher and/or scourge of the Carolinas. So I could extrapolate that the entire museum was just putting forth a white-washed view glorifying British wars and the Scots' roles in the them. doncram (talk) 17:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

doncram (talk) 17:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Radkau / Sternenfels

Hallo AlbertHerring, thnx for the cats at Radkau. I am looking for an native english speaker havíng a look on Sternenfels. Would be please be so kind? ? BR --Polentario (talk) 21:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

More on flickr

There are many thousands more from all over like this to be uploaded!! Niamtougou has just been added. This makes me very happy, they are missing parts of the jigsaw which I had long thought would be years before we found anything. At least now things are starting so happen with Africa on here which I've long dreamed about. It goes to show that if you put your mind to something you can get results. It makes a huge difference to putitng these places on the map. The people who probably consider them "non notable" they get to realise that these places are actually inhabited and real world every day not just pin points on some google map. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:26, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to bore you with flickr anyway. But when you see the link you'll see how much we can upload you'll see why I'm pleased. Anyway I've off now see ya tomorrow. Just got a Norfolk Island confirmation back too, but we need a team of editors to help make agreements and increase our image content on here on a larger scale. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 23:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Yup I now have Norfolk Island and Kiribati confirmation, just need to be listed on their contacts. Includes a picture of Kiribati's airoport and some lovely sea pictures. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

"I aint flyin on no airplane. I pity the fool" Quite relevant for our NYC crash I think. Wow, super pilot or what. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:27, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I tell you what I'm quite freaked out by some of these places in Togo and Benin. Voodoo is widely practised in these places and I get a strong macabre feeling of death from some places. Check out all the images of Bassar - a sense gives me a horrible feeling about that place, check out the goat sacrifice and houses of the dead. Also check out the image of the fetish market skulls for Lome, really horrid but fascinating at the same time. WHat do you think? Have a look at File:Lome Fetish Market.jpg for instance. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Me neither. I get freaked out too by voodoo and curses and that sort of thing. Perhaps I'll upload some nice photos of Norfolk Island now. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Funnily enough it seems it seems there was a jail on Norfolk where they took many of the convicts. The outer houses ar ein ruins but the main buildings are still in good order. I'll now upload about 50 images of Norfolk island. We only have one or two images at present. There are some nice pictures of the coastline and geese too Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

First set is uploaded Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:28, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

All uploaded now. Heres a select few for you to feast your eyes on. You can always view Category:Norfolk Island in the commons if you want to and the sub categories I've created.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Cové is even more zany than those Togo pictures. The yellow tent car going through the village square is complete madness! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:25, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey thanks my friend! Much appreciated. Yes I just find these sorts of exotic images inspiring. If we can combine these amazing images with information about the world, places we'll never see probably this makes it worthwhile for me! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

More good news. We are free to use all of these!. It has like 111 images of Mali, and tons from places like Hondruras, Guatemala, Sichuan etc. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:20, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

All manual. I'm about to upload Kalabougou and start the article! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It just goes to show what these places are actually like rather than just google maps. But to put things in perspective we only have 64 articles on Malian settlements, google maps have 10,000 and there ar elikely to be many more than this. It wouldn't be impossible to imagine that several thousand of these if not all could quite reasonably have informative encyclopedia articles on them. To me it gives me more encouragement that even the smaller towns and villages are notable. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:24, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Niger's not much better either. Whats even scarier is if you see these two countries on the world map combined they would take up the size of much of Europe and only 64 places in one is pretty poor really. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:43, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at this digital video when you get home of the city they are building east of Cairo here, Madinaty. The "virtual" exploration of the city is exactly what I envisage on here in the future. Someday I hope that we can make navigation on wikipedia possible by a quality 3D composition in which you can explore cities and visit different locations within them and read the articles. Like we have now with the miniatlas but in high quality detail and 3d like this. Google earth and microsoft are already developing 3D but wiki seems to be backwards with things like this. Might take 10-20 years but from what I've seen of documentaries on the future of the internet things will become increasingly virtualised on here by around 2020-2025. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:12, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I can imagine. Something like 2 million expected isn't it? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure it is quite exciting that Bush has gone and in with the new. obama seems like a highly intelligent and likeable individual, a wonderful speaker with great confidence second to none which I think a lot of people in developing world, particular in Africa will also be inspired by and may help to mend peoples perception of the US that was somewhat worsened by Bush. However I think that things will still be very difficult for Obama particularly in the current economic climate as he well acknowledges and I think some people may be expecting miracles and too much of him. Look what happened with Bush though, after 9/11 when everybody was angry with middle-eastern extremism and the "war on terror" seemed completely logical and necessary and saw him become the most popular president in polls didn't it? Then things gradually went downhill and it turned him into a political leader from hell in many peoples views. How stupid Bush may appear, I still think he has been given a dreadfully hard time with things. People may say that he made the decision to invade Iraq for the oil, but it is still true that though that the states were devastated and deeply concerned with 9/11 and the threat to security from extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I honestly believe he was doing what he thought was right at the time although personally I don't trust the guy. However it just went on and on, putting the country into more debt and costing more lives and it just turned into a nightmare. Just imagine you had been in Bush's position, I find it hard to believe that no other leader would have wanted to retaliate after 9/11 and do something to help protect the country. I'm sure Obama will do a great job domestically but I will be very interested to see how he will handle diplomatic affairs and any international intervention that may be required in the future. If another terrorist attack was to occur, which I pray it doesn't, I'd be very interested to see what Obama's answer would be. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:52, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

What do you think? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:02, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I understand completely. I'll check in a mo. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Replied! Phew. How these guys discuss politics every day of their careers beats me. It must be an exhausting job in which you must be completely devoted to. Thats partly why I didn't want complete my course to become a barrister, it is just too demanding day in day out! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Its just Obama's probably the most confident guy I've ever seen in my life. If anybody can pull off Presidency it would seem to be him. He has a lot going for him, people skills for one. I can just see though when he and Gordon Brown meet to discuss things it will be laughable. They are about as different as you can get. Obama is just so laid back and into sports and things, Gordon Brown would seem like Mr. Bean in comparison, no kidding. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, although the euphoria is somewhat being felt even over here!! This morning they've kept playing patriotic Bruce Springsteen songs on the radio and having his speech played in the background. Ah well, anyway you probably want to get away from it now anyway, living and working near the thick of it. No AWB needed at present, today I'm finishing off adding the infoboxes to Egyptian cities which should only take a few more minutes, then I have some stubs on major towns in Democratic Congo to start off and the airports. Perhaps though you could project tag them later. I am still working through the Mexican municipalities but I see that some important things needed doing with Africa first which is taking longer than I thought. I also have an article on a Zangbeto to start later complete with some images I will upload of Grete Howards, a subject that will no doubt baffle you. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Ah I'm OK for now thanks, just stubbing Turkmenistan reserves. I'll be going through DRC gradually and ading missing towns or filling in population data on the main ones but there isn't so many that AWB would be needed. Perhaps when I continue for the transwiki sometime. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:35, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you could figure out why the coordinates are messed up for Kugitangtau Range? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I fixed it thats why!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:14, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Blush blush .. well thankyou. If I can find some sources I think I'll start some articles on Turkmen sheep lol as it seems a cool subject, me loves sheep. Baaaaaaaa! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:22, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Always loved sheep since I was a baby. When I was a baby, summer 1984 or 1985 I think I have some photos somewhere of me running around the fields behind my house with the sheep. I even had sheepy white blond curly hair as a baby too, although I was bald for quite some time! These days there are only occasionally a few cows in the fields on the farm behind during the summer. Shame, although the farms further across the Vale still have many of them and horses too. I remember when I was about 11 I found a ewes skull in one of the fields. It was when I had just been given a metal detector and we were looking for roman coins. It is believed that there is a Roman burial ground in the area. Cold Knap was once a Roman fort. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:36, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

My parents thought Virginia was one of the most beautiful states they have visited in America. They loved the mountains and fields! I forget just how big America is sometimes. Virginia covers 110,785 km2 which is like well over 5 times the size of Wales which to me seems like a a fairly big country! I'm not surprised so much content is missing!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:44, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Just looks lovely. There are just so many different landscapes in America, its amazing. I;m rather moved by how you selected File:BurkesGarden.jpg which strangely looks nearly identical to the actual field I was thinking of that I used to play in as a boy. It looks very much like it indeed, even the trampled down fence!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Somebody is trying to delete my freely licensed Dr. Evil image here. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:24, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Cool. Remember I said about Mali only having 64 places? Well I'v ebeen doing some research and have found a list of 703 communes of Mali and population. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Aarrgh just had connection trouble. One minute it is lightning fast, the next it takes like 5 minute for one edit to go through! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Here is the much awaited Zangbeto. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Didn't like the Zangbeto? Now thats what I call weird!! Anyway today its agriculture and one mission has been accomplished -making a flickr agreement to get hold of some images of Shania Twain! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:35, 22 January 2009 (UTC) Check out Gory Gopela a commune of Mali I just started. Surprised that something could be found on it? I;ve been doing some more research and have found this. Probably about 400 of the communes once started could be written into equally long articles. Good isn't it. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 13:10, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For making Wikipedia easier to navigate by making redirects. Call me Bubba (talk) 02:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Steven Weigang, speedy declined, prodded, deprodded afd

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steven Weigang Dlohcierekim 20:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Hal Roach, Jr.

Wow, you were quick on the draw with the Category additions to Hal Roach, Jr.. It's good to know someone's listening. Skymasterson (talk) 14:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Apithy

Any news on Apithy? Are you still working on him? ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 02:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Lassie TV series Nav Template

I returned the title to "Lassie (1954 TV series)" because there's another template floating around titled simply "Lassie" that includes the Lassie films and other info. ItsLassieTime (talk) 09:08, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Tunis

Hi ALbert, I understand that you may be busy but I've started on translating this. I think I can do a pretty good job in translating using google translate but I would greatly appreciate you working on it with me, perhaps a paragraph or two every other day. It is one of our core articles and was seriously lacking in content. May take a few weeks, I hope to get a few people working on it. Can you try to help out? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, it looks a great article, I've merged the French text and sections in -just needs translating now. Probably would be best for you to translate the history section as in my experience this is the most likely to be misinterpreted but whenever or whatever you do I don't mind as long as we get it into english and do a good job of it eventually. I just want to get right rather than being a flawed translation which others will have toc elanup later if it is to proceed to a higher level. It is after all an FA on French wiki. Hey have you see my recent article Agriculture in Bolivia using LOC and images scrapped from flickr? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:14, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Bolivia is a pretty stunning country. I'll have to visit someday although my sister tells me that the altitude affects practically eveyrbody makes you feel sick living at a changed high altitude for a prolonged period and turns you off your food, leaving you feeling weak especially if you are doing a lot of hiking. Shame those LOC studies are a little dated but it is a start and what the heck we may as well get all existing LOC material onto here if it improves our knowledge base and is public domain. Phew I just realised I am whacked after doing that and starting off Tunis, I've translated Goegraphy and climate so far, if some sentence don't translate well I may leave them out. I think I'll take it easy for the rest of the evening now as I've run out of gas!. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Only one paragraph left to do with Tunis now and a little of the theatre section. It didn't translate too well those parts. Anyway I've done like 95% of the article but if you could spare a few minutes later and sort that out I'd be very grateful! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Cool, its surprising though actually how quickly it can be done, I thought it was going to take me weeks at first. I've found that French seems to translate very well normally on googe translate, more than even Spanish or Italian and probably better than any other. At least thats something I suppose. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

FA article is missing entirely on here! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:05, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes seems like he was expelled from Russia by her in 1732 or was that Anne Tserina?. Super cow I think is an understatement. I've started it anyway Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes of course Tsarina is the word given to a female Tsar I gather. Sorry didn't twig initially. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:50, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you get a chance to do the paragraph? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

OK no worries but I promised I wouldn't let the French text sitting around in the mainspace. If I cut out what needs doind and place it in User:Dr. Blofeld/Translation sandbox, perhaps you could do it for me when you're ready? Its just they had a point about writing it in my sandbox, especially for such a core article that may get a lot of views. Thanks Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:52, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll make a start on some Gabonese deputy assembly politicians now I think Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I iz goin to take it easy for a few days, I'll be back editing properly again in a few days. Take care Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:34, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep me too, I'm shutting off thinking about expanding wiki for a few days as I feel very tired indeed at the moment. Even "robots" which some people probably think I am need a day or two in the sun if that is possible at this time of year!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC) Amazing how Warren Buffett is now "richer" than Bill Gates. When you think how global and essential Microsoft is it seems amazing that anybody could be richer except some oil sheikh or owner in a country (like Mexico). Buffett looks as if he is a massive investor, just imagine all those profits from shares going into your bank account. The good thing is that these people give a lot of their money away to really good causes. I guarantee there are many in the developing world who are obscenely rich and squander as much money as they can and don't give a cent to any of those in need. I remember one of my case studies in uni about the favela neighborhoods in Brazil with the city elite living in gated commuinites with millions and those who can barely survive living next door in the shanty towns. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The youngest looking 82 year old ever? well he was 76 when that photo was taken but I thought he looked about 40!! Is it just me? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't mess with him put it that way. Looks pretty ruthless to me. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Ahh Herring I just lost me info in an edit conflict! Hey incase you were wondering I'm in the middle of filling out our stub categories to rid of the ridiculous Asian building categories. I;ve just about hit 60 with Lebanon I think, thats Philippines, Lebanon and Saudi out of the way. Its actually quite fun doing some google searches and rummaging in the commons to find stuff to create. Interested in helping after your break? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes it can be, but not when it is your good self with a good faith edit! Luckily it wasn't much anyway. I'm taking it as quite a challenge to find buildings to start. Cmabodia next, needs 25 new articles to be viable. Mmm Phnom Penh first I think... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:42, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

See below. So far I've done four. Some of the middle eastern ones in particularly look challenging. Best thing is to look in commons or existing articles on places and try to find landmarks. If we run out of ideas then just try googling things like "Lebanon dam" as I did earlier!! or Kuwait mosque or something. Usually tons of things show up in google searches. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

.

A challenge huh? Heheh. See how resourceful we can be. COuld try looking at the various Maldives travel guides/tourism online, usually have a number of notable places. I actually started a few lighthouses in the Philippines to reach 60! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Always been fascinated with lighthouses since I was a boy reading the Famous Five. That and the rolling green English countryside, scones, ginger beer, lashing of Devon custard and secret airfields. If you could find a database of Canadian lighthouses I'd like to help you. Oh if you are doing Maldives you could start by googel searching Malé like Malé church, Malé hotel etc -see what comes up. Actually just try Maldives church etc -I just found a directory of Maldivian churches Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Urgh looks like a dead site unfortunately. Try Hotels! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC) Well Tunis is done now, so thats one less for you to think about! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Tell you what Yemen has to be one of the most mysterious countries I know of. Check out Ta'izz, Jibla, Sa'dah. When I saw in on a documentary with the search of the Ark of the Covenant the place really was quite something I've never seen. The buildings, the Arabs, it was like a whole different world. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:45, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Aarrggh. There really is nothing worse than logging into wikipedia in good spirits and finding an insulting message. It really aggravates me, more than anything on here when people judge "all of your work or abilities" by a couple of stubs I happened to create. I'm sure you've also felt rather annoyed when apparently "better editors" drop by and do the dirty on your contributions, and inform you of the mistakes and lack of content. Such an air of collaboration and hospitality on this site isn't it!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat}

Its snowing! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC) Well basically it was over this. I was not involved in the initial proposal or argument but as you know i do a lot of work with stub sorting and was asked to close the proposal to organise stubs on opera articles. I weighed up all arguments and despite Kleinzach who was strongly opposed I authorised that the stub templates be created and distributed. I couldn't see any good reason not to create them. Well I administered them to all of the articles like opera-struct-stub french-opera stub etc and thought I'd done a great job with it, unaware the topic has been the subject of much disagreement for many weeks. Then it turns out Kleinzach is going mental because I edited "their" articles and had apparently tagged some rather weak start class articles as stubs which he'd created. A great argument sprang up at Wp:Opera including one editor who labelled me disruptive, evne though I had spent the last two hours doing my best to try to help coordinate the project and stub sort. I believe it was then in response to the over reaction to something which seemd pretty routine and the threat to revert all of my sorting that I named one or two of them who were causing a fuss over it as a"bunch of old farts". Might I point out that there were an equal number of opera editors such as Vociferone who were completely rational and they did not fit that bill. IN the end it was Vociferones and a few others decision to settle it and not revert my help that let to a tiff between the Vocieferone opera camp and the Kleinzach camp. Well thats the gist of it. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Basically I had added stub templates to articles like Benedum Center etc which was met with considerable hostility which seemed a little far-fetched. Does this answer your gossip needs? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks great! Thanks for those uploads. Post office looks a lot better than mine for sure, sure my mum who works there would agree! Well similar to the recent Gabon complaints I guess when you make BOLD moves in the encyclopedia like I do then it is often impossible to avoid any unwanted attention or drama. I always try to be as friendly and as constructive as possible but whenever I get involved in any disputes or drama it is ALWAYS! because other people start complaining or come to criticise me. I'm perfectly happy editing in a nice environment and being on good terms with people, but if people turn up with AFDs or comppaints, threaten to revert etc and start labelling me as somehow disruptive or most recently "unfair" or lazy then you can be damned sure I aint gonna take it well!! The cheek! Anyway LOL... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Its snowing hard and there is like a foot of snow. Its very rare to get snow on the south coast, happens only about once every two years on average. Common up north but winters are usually very mild here. The winter scene outside looks awesome!! It looks like a stereotypical Christmas scene on a postcard!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 10:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to dedicate This one in honor of those who think I am an "unfair" editor who only creates sub stubs! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Just looking through the German archives the potential for coverage just gets mind boggling if we go back into a different time and space. Undoubtedly there are potentially thousands of biographies and articles that could be written on people from a hundreds of different eras that are unkown to "the west" but were important cabinet members or people during their time and place. For instance go back to 18th century Tibet I am willing to bet there are tens of articles that could be written on important monks or abbots which would make fascinating articles. I know we have the main lineage successors started but if you try to get into the time period or place which I think is what wikipedia should strive to do it is astounding what we could do eventually. Thats what makes wikipedia that little more special I think, it is up to us to make these topics notable and present them to "the west". It really affects me when I think how many volumes of books were burned during the Chinese invasion in thousands of monasteries. Monasteries were the centers for information in Tibet. Luckily the Tibetan Museum in India has salvaged some information but in relation to what undounbtedly existed in all the ancient Tibetan manuscriupts and archives it is nothing at all. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes transferring LOC material still needs doing which I'm making another drive to get onto here at the moment. mostly economic-agriculture case studies. My guardian angel Calliopjen1 has done a lot of work on it in the past but still so much needs to be transferred, I believe somewhere there is a taskforce which is monitoring progress; can't remember where though Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Ahh thats 3 or 4 new agriculture articles transferred from LOC today anyway!Just had to revert the Bollywood article again!! I have them on my watchlist as a lot of the main articles as you can imagine get thousands of hits from a lot of Indian users in particular and get lots of shoddy editions several times a day. It really is annoying me now, I'm losing patience with them. I am watching them as a favor for Shshshsh who told us he had left wikipedia. However he still seems to have the time to revert them but not to discuss any ways in which we can stop this cycle. If I take them off my watchlist edit conflicts will still be occuring and the articles will probably not get any better, perhaps worse in the meantime. In all honesty I know very little about the industry from its beginning, sure I know a number of the prominent films and actors but I doubt I could do much to improve it myself and write a better article on it. What would you suggest. I can't see anything happening with the article because User:Shshshsh reverts a lot of additions by others, mostly valid reverts, so the article is basically staying the same and it is full of badly written snappy sentences and in some parts serious generalisations of the industry's success. What would you suggest? Sigh sigh. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Email me if you don't want to reply here. Perhaps I should just take them off my watchlist? P.S did you here about the baby born with 12 fingers and 12 toes? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah its only about 10-15 articles but 5 of the core articles for this subject are really intense virtually edit wars continuously. Given the huge fan base some editors add all sorts of unreferenced POV and then rant on at those who revert them. It is just high maintenance to keep track of them when we have these sorts of editors adding poor revisions of the article. I've lost track of when somebody last added something decent to the articles and it ended up being kept. For instance see the editing history of Shadrukh Khan, and count how many times the word "undo" or "revert£ appears; really awful. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC) What a beast!!. That has to be one of the most lethal looking creatures I've seen, it could probably have strangled a T-Rex. Scary!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes apparently it used to lunch on crocodiles, as you do and could potentially eat a large cow or bison whole! Look forward to seeing those articles started, although my politician to do list is huge and I'm having second thoughts with editors like Everyking around... . Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 09:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

There is one small AWB task that needs doing Category:Municipalities of Zimbabwe needs emptying and relocating to Category:Wards of Zimbabwe. Let me know if you can sort it this evening. Cheers! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 11:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC) OK , amazing I'm just starting the Cercles of Mali, the second level divisions and so far the population total must be passing 2 million. Each Cercle has between 150,000-500,000 people!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I;ve replied email. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:07, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

More good news wwith flickr anyway. I made an agremeent with a German guy who although wouldn't let us use all of his images for fear of somebody profiting from them he allowed me to take a pick and mix of 22 photos from his collection and kindly changed the license of these images to attribution. They are much needed ones of places in Cambodia, Laos, Tibet, Burma and Yunnan, China. I'll show you them once uploaded. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Urgh the guy has changed them to creative commons but has retained non commerical and no derititives unaware we can't accept this. I'm trying to negotitate something now but it may not be good news. This free content thing can be very difficult, his worry is that he won't be able to keep track of who is using his images on the web and is worried about somebody trying to profit them. A number of flickr images have been put out of bounds because of these concerns by people. Most people are happy to have wikipeda use the images but naturally loathe the idea of some for profit site using them to make money at their expense. Shame. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:33, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah its usually the better photographers I have difficulty making flickr agremeents with, and I must admit I can't blame them. They symphasise with the wikipedia project an an encyclopedia and think its great but they dislike its openness and freedom I guess, sometimes I do too when some people abuse it. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Oh hilarious definately. Ha ha, I think not. Then again when you're 12 or 13 it is common for one to anybody as "gay". Hey I've decided to map my own maps for the Cercles of Mali. You can see the example here Tessalit Cercle. Just a case of working out the right area! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I've just made Kayes region maps I'll upload now, replace the cheap looking ones we have at the moment. It will look more consistent that way. I'll do a region at a time, may get it done tonight, depends how I'm feeling! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC) I'll make a note of it thanks, you are welcome to dump any lists in User:Dr. Blofeld/Missing politicians under a country header. Yes its crazy that Tessalit Cercle alone is the larger than Austria or something yet wa smissing entirely, probably because its part of the Sahara Desert and vast. Amazing a number of major towns were missing which actually featured on a basic map of Africa in my atlas!! let alone the more detailed maps! Ansongo was one of them, Britannica had an entry but not us! I'll hve to find some images... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC) In my own view yes certainly, but probably not in Everyking's book. I would probably list the politicians under the assembly or party articles for now, at least then we have the names on here. Then perhaps they can be started if there are any another google hits on them perhaps. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Phew! 49 new maps. Didn't think I'd get it done tonight. Just have to add them to the articles and then... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow thanks!! Never had one of those before. Awesome pic! Thanks! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

My favourite map has to be Timbuktu Cercle. Its probably the length of Calais to Marseilles!! Next stage will be to add commune tables like Kayes Cercle and get the communes onto here. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

LOL I didn't mean now immediately!! I meant thats the next plan with Mali over the next few days and weeks to add them and get them started! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:56, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Rwandan government website I think has some basic details such as birth date etc and there isn't too many of them either. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

ON my travels I came across this user. He has around 1000 images I think of places like Mali, Syria, Uzbekistan etc. ALl of them appear to be attribution only meaning any of them can be uploaded. I've uploaded two already from Bandiagara. I still have all of Grete's images to upload too! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 23:11, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Thanks for that. My brain is too cold and dead today to edit, besides my computer is ultra slow for some reason making it difficult! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 13:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC) Seems we has both had categories deleted today. My god I started Fishing industry in the Maldives the other day which I thought was quite a good start, Now check it out. Unbelievable! So what I said by email rings true clearly here! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Nice! Hey see the snow has hit headline wikipedia news now over here. My parents are going on holiday to Norway at 2 am where they are catching a to Stockholm and then to Bergen but earlier they had to shut both Severn Bridges, and because of the heavy snow in Gloucester they would be unable to go around to cross into England! They are kind a prayin that the severn bridge will be open otherwise they will miss the flight and miss their ship in Bergen! Latest news is that one bridge has now reopened, but who knows what the weather will be like tonight. It hasn't been snowing heavily overnight or today but they is still some snow on the ground, bet it very thick up north. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Britannica to be wikiized

Did you hear that Encyclopedia Britannica has started pinchiung images from our wiki commons to ilustrate its articles to cut costs. Also pretty soon they will allow users to edit their articles like on wikipedia. Have a read of this. Me thinks our Britannica is becoming insanely jealous of our massive wiki, many of our articles kick the socks off Britannica and ar emuch more informative and it is free! Britannica must be finding times tough with the credit crunch as it wasn't too long ago I'm sure they criticised the wiki tecnhnology. I wonder how Britannica will be viwewed online if they make it a wiki. Interesting stuff.. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:53, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah jealousy undoubtedly that they are stuck in the 20th century and as a business are struggling to cope with the concept of "free" and charge $70 a year. The chairman of Britannica even had the cheek to compare us to "American Idol" and them some prestigious singing academy. Then he was moaning that google links to us first. Google search Ming dynasty or something and thousand sof other subjects and it will make Britannica look very sparse indeed. Its just the ignorance of the people who look down on wikipedia because they find it difficult to believe that there are many intelligent every day people that in working together can outdo them big time. I've tried google searching on "core topics" before and wikipedia is always far more informative and most of the time more neutral than Britannica. I think they realise that a lot of intelligent people use wikipedia aside from kids and that probably is harming to them. Admittedly there are still many core subjects on here which should be fuller articles, (Loire River for one) and be more informative than at present and often Britannica does outdo us in some areas but it is only a matter of time before we have all core articles up to scratch and millions of other articles to boot. Of course there are also many embarrassing articles on fictional characters and popular culture and utter rubbish articles that exist but I think that the good content on here outweighs the bad and will increasingly so, My only concern is that as wikipedia develops and gains and gains in value and useage eventually somebody will give in and start profiting directly from it and introduce ads. Hopefully there are enough people who want to keep it free that they will prevent this from ever happening. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:52, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Go for it! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

		The Politician Star
		For all of your excellent work in starting articles on politicians. Mr. Mandela is proud of you! Dr. Blofeld White cat 22:55, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

More good flickr news, I've made an agreement with another Frenchman here. He has agreed that we can upload any of his images. SOme of them are very useful indeed and are of some of the smaller localities in places in Mali and Mauritania which I've recently started and the images will help greatly. I'm just waiting for him list me as a contact and I can begin uploading. I would greatly appreciate your help in the coming weeks in uploading any of these images to the commons, in particularly those attribution images I showed you the other day. There is just so much to upload I don't know if I can do it alone. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Thats a relief, I've been having trouble all day with it too. I thought it was my computer but it seems it is server trouble again - the problem screen just showed up. Anyway enjoy the day if the weather is good. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Let the uploading commence. Cobly etc. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:48, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hey amigo, whenever you feel like AWBing again let me know, I need this project tagged for the articles in Template:Communes of the Kayes Region. Ta Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 00:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC) WOW!! that was quick!! Well its probably best you do a region at a time so I'll let you know when the next one is done. T.L. Miles informs me that he had downloaded all the PDF filmes for the communes of Mali using the source I gave him. What we want soon enough is 703 articles like Gory, Mali and hopefully a lot of them will have lovely images to boot. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 00:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Phew! I've spent much of this evening trying to authorise the flickr agreement. Luckily our good friend Jacques was kind enough to fill out one of the hard legal commons forms which is now required and they now have a lovely ticket on them. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 23:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC) Are you here? See Termit Massif! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 23:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

oh don't worry about it if you don't want to. I've just been web browsing and have found some interesting links that could be used for articles Forestry in Togo and [Togolese Ministry of the Economy. Gazillions of potential this site has, so little time.. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 01:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for those. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:27, 10 February 2009 (UTC) AWB request: Project tag Template:Communes of the Koulikoro Region as you did with Kayes. Cheers Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 00:44, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Denis Diderot

In my collection of quotes on my userpage I have one I cherish by Diderot: "Foreigners, because they never have enough words to express their ideas, often invent remarkable new modes of expression. Poets are all foreigners." Cheers, and happy editing, Kingturtle (talk) 18:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

No content in Category:Education in Macedonia

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Category:Education in Macedonia, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Category:Education in Macedonia has been empty for at least four days, and its only content has been links to parent categories. (CSD C1).

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Category:Education in Macedonia, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 04:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Politician stubs

Hi Albert, Great job on the Malagasy politicians! It is so nice to see people working on these long forgotten areas of stub creation besides myself! Anyway, I am trying to sort politicians by political parties i.e. Category:Members of the African National Congress. Since it seems you created this articles from a template anyway, could you just include a political party category on your next batch? Thanks and again, great work!--TM 21:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

virginia

Yes, you certainly did find a problem, but see my comment at the AfD. I suggest withdrawing it and renominating--individually--the ones I omitted. One really cant just go by the article, but they each need to be checked. My experience is that shortcuts like this tend not to work very well. DGG (talk) 01:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I will follow up on the others, and with the person introducing the articles. My advice is that the safest way upon seeing a batch like this, is to nominate the very worst 2 or 3 and see what happens. WP:PROF is the one of the special notability guidelines with the most universal acceptance. DGG (talk) 04:38, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Yesterday showed that you did not persist in a mistake. I know people around here who would have fought them all to the end. and then complained about it, and then complained about how they were treated, and then held a grudge against me. In the long run, it shouldn't hurt you. DGG (talk) 16:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

AWB Mali

Muchas gracias. Well I haven't started Sikasso Region yet but I could definately use your AWB to sort out the articles in Template:Communes of the Kayes Region. Every stub within it needs to be changed from Mali-geo-stub to Kayes-geo-stub. Do you think you can do this in a few minutes? What have you been up to recently, finished starting those Malagasy politicians? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 09:56, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks good when I meant a few minutes I didn't mean ASAP lol I meant literally the time it would take to do!. Well I'll plough through Sikasso Region now, perhaps I can get in done before this evening and you can get it done together if thats easiest. I took nearly two days off editing but I actually feel better when I'm working hard towards something, when I'm lazy I feel like I'm wasting too much time!. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:38, 12 February 2009 (UTC)