User talk:Andrwsc

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HKG 1964

Hi! The link HKG for the year 1964 does no work. {{flagIOC|HKG|1964 Summer}} = Hong Kong but the page Hong Kong at the 1964 Summer Olympics exists. Can you please repair this? Kind regards Doma-w (talk) 02:37, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed Template:Country IOC alias HKG had been broken. The irony is that I am currently working from Hong Kong! — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 02:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

LOL! Many thanks for your help and kind regards from Vienna to Hong Kong Doma-w (talk) 03:08, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Country data Zululand flag

User:east718 suggested I ask you about this. I'm trying to get Image:KwaZulu flag 1985.svg removed from the edit protected Template:Country data Zululand. This flag was not the flag of Zululand (~1816-1897). It was the flag of the KwaZulu Bantustan from 1985 to 1994 (as noted in that article). A cursory webs search does not reveal a flag for Zululand and the current polity, KwaZulu-Natal, does not yet have an official flag. Thanks. — AjaxSmack 20:40, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:NIC

Instead of showing the flag and the country name, Template:flag for "Nicaragua" only shows the image name and the country name. This appears to be fine for most other countries.

Nicaragua

All of these templates appear to be protected against editing by mortals such as myself. –BozoTheScary (talk) 23:11, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind. As you can see above, it's been fixed by someone. –BozoTheScary (talk) 19:39, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted articles by Aaron Pryor fan

Please don't delete articles about fighhters that are listed here: Boxing_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics_-_Qualification I believe that's all correct.German.Knowitall (talk) 00:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Banning policy: Any edits made in defiance of a ban may be reverted to enforce the ban, regardless of the merits of the edits themselves and It is not possible to revert newly created pages, as there is nothing to revert to. Such pages may be speedily deleted. Although these edits (made by a sockpuppet of banned User:Vintagekits) are "correct", they must be deleted per policy. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 05:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand, I'd like to rephrase it. The man's contributions were perfectly ok, he's by no means a vandal and his site should be restored. My impression is that he isn't a native English speaker, therefore was only technically not in line with regulations. Where do I have to go to make this point?German.Knowitall (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He most certainly is an English speaker — he lives in Ireland. He has been banned from Wikipedia by the community for long-term abuse, not just any simple technicality. None of his edits are permissible anymore, regardless of their merit. This is Wikipedia policy; you would need to go to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), perhaps, to get consensus for change. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:38, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not banned, I have an indef block! GK - I have backed up all my edits that this - how should I put it - person - has either detailed or oversighted so I will email them to you.--John Duddy Fan (talk) 16:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vintagekits, WP:TER is quite explicit that you and David Lauder are listed under "Community Ban". This is permanent, unlike your previous "indefinite" blocks. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:50, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thats not my understanding of it.--John Duddy Fan (talk) 16:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What is your understanding? That it's acceptable to start a new sockpuppet every other day and continue to edit with it until it is blocked, then move on to the next one? Sorry, you are not permitted to edit under any circumstances, and all your contributions will be deleted or reverted without any other justification necessary. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Grand, I was xausing zero disruption when I was blocked so as far as I am concerned its invalid. I back up all my work so will just pass it on for someoneelse to add anyway.--John Duddy Fan (talk) 17:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely last post from me on the subject, I do not know any other user here personally and therefore cannot evaluate this case. BUT even though the anglosaxon wikipedia seems to be well run generally speaking there have been on occasion erratic decisions in the past, i.e. an article from me was deleted, I was informed that it would be deleted as irrelevant but noone ever explained this to me. 6 months later I found that somebody else had written about the same person with fewer sources, nobody complained this time. ??? So strange things do happen, even though it's rare around here (In Germany it's much worse).I have seen several articles by Aaron Pryor fan, they were all ok, may be he should have put the sources in a link, but he is certainly constructive. Now you've pointed out that he has had other names in the past, well, that doesn't prove he has bad intentions. My point is vandals act differently, you think in terms of regulations and technicalities, I see it from a user's perspective. Peace.German.Knowitall (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree that Vintagekits' contributions in boxing (as Aaron Pryor Fan, Michael Gomez Fan, or any of his other sockpuppets) are otherwise worthwhile additions to the encyclopedia, but their content is not why they were deleted. They were deleted in enforcement of his community ban. See Wikipedia:Banning policy#Enforcement by reverting edits for more information. I agree that at first it seems counter-productive to delete any "good" content, even from banned editors, but my experience is that the policy is sound. What good is a community ban if it is not enforced? Vintagekits has already had more lives on Wikipedia than your average cat (who has nine), yet still fragrantly ignored our core policies — and still continues to ignore them by his use of sockpuppets to evade his ban. There is no room in this community of volunteers for anybody who does not abide by our core policies. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Olypic

I came across a category Olypic XXX and thought I might as well expunge all 'olypics' while I was at it, and didn't notice the 'sic'. Well spotted. -- roundhouse0 (talk) 16:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, no worries. I'm moving that list towards featured list status, so I'm very conscious of every tiny detail. My understanding is that if a source has a spelling mistake, the MOS allows the mistake to be noted on Wikipedia with [sic], so that's what I did. Thanks — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Post

See my newest post on my talk page. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Movement of Hong Kong Olympic pages

Looking at the past discussion you cite, I do not actually see much direct discussion on the case of Hong Kong (and Macau). I would just like to point out that the Chinese case should be handled with extra care in reference to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Political_NPOV. Calling the "PRC" as merely "China" would not have been acceptable (and that is also the reason why the People's Republic of China article is not at China). For cases pertaining to HK and Macau, the existing preference is to use the official designated name when participating in international events. So if Taiwan is referred to as "Chinese Taipei", than "Hong Kong, China" and "Macau, China" should be used as well.--Huaiwei (talk) 22:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I agree. That previous discussion was long, but involved a couple of dozen countries, so not a lot of attention was focused on each individual one. I admit that Hong Kong, China at the 2004 Summer Olympics is not completely unwieldy, so I don't want to dismiss that out of hand. I am convinced that the top-level summary article for each nation (i.e. Hong Kong at the Olympics, still a crappy stub right now) needs to have an all-inclusive name for all appearances, so I don't think that specific article ought to have ", China" in the name. I'm also concerned that we start down the path of wholesale renaming for POV correctness. People's Republic of China at the 1984 Summer Olympics and United States of America at the 2004 Summer Olympics are somewhat awkward; Czech and Slovak Federative Republic at the 1992 Winter Olympics or United Republic of Tanzania at the 2000 Summer Olympics are outright goofy, yet all would comply with an "IOC naming only rule". — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:50, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I personally do not feel that we need to trot down the path of "full compliance" in all cases. There are only a few exceptions to the rule in wikipedia when it comes to country names, and I can cite Ireland/Republic of Ireland as another example. Each is accompanied by serious political issues, and exceptions has been agreed upon after years of debate in respect of NPOV. Until the term "United States" is considered too POV to be acceptable, I do not see it as a comparable issue to cite. Ditto to the rest. And since we are on this topic, I would say that it is a matter of time before we end up having to rename all the "China" articles into the full "People's Republic of China" name. You will be surprised how many articles on the PRC are indeed named by that!--Huaiwei (talk) 23:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I fear, and as I noted in that WikiProject discussion from ~18 months ago, I would accept "PR China" if it came to that. Maybe something like [[People's Republic of China at the 2008 Summer Olympics|PR China]] generated from template output, for example. Results tables get fugly quickly if the nation names are too long. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can fully understand your concern over unweldy long titles. Perhaps some code magic can give users the option of displaying an abbreviated format in specific circumstances? If this could be solved, we can then cautiously impliment this in Chinese-related articles. The entire hierachy of articles in Category:China at the Olympics needs to be reorganised to make clear distinctions between the "China" of pre 1950 which participated in the games as one team, and that of post 1950 as effectively "two Chinas" under different teams.--Huaiwei (talk) 17:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, let me see what I can work out. I had been thinking for a while about how to merge the template system used specifically for {{flagIOC}} et. al. with the standard flag template system used by everything else, and that may be the opportunity to "fix" this. The latter has the concept of both an alias and a shortname alias attached to each country, so that you can do things like {{flag|Ireland}} and {{flag|China}} and have the wikilink point to the "full" name. The same concept might be useful here. I can understand the desire for target article names like People's Republic of China at the 2008 Summer Olympics, but I am also quite certain that many, many results tables would have layout problems if we used the "long names" for the display part of the wikilink too. The display part really needs to be something simple, like "CHN" when called by {{flagIOCathlete}} (as it does now) and "PR China" (perhaps) when called by {{flagIOCmedalist}}. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the attempt. Wish I can help more, but I am no code wizard! As for the long-form name linking example, I wonder if it can work with dynamic name templates like the ones we have just implimented? Alternatively, is it better if we have this: inserting {{flagIOC|CHN}} shows "People's Republic of China" or "China, People's Republic of" or "China (People's Republic of)", etc, etc and produces a link to the full "People's Republic of China" article, while {{flagIOC|CHN|short}} shows "China, PR" or "PR China" or "P.R. China" etc, etc while still linking to the "People's Republic of China" article? Of couse this can also be switched to use {{flagIOC|CHN|long}} instead if there are far more instances where the abbreviated name is used.--Huaiwei (talk) 19:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE:FlagIOC template changes

I was not 100% certain that the variable name feature will work properly in all circumstances, so I have refrained from unleashing it on other templates for now. I was not sure how the name paramter should work and removed it temporary (which invited reactions such as User_talk:Doma-w#Re:HKG) with intentions to work on it later. I arent sure if this counted as "intentional" or "an oversight"--Huaiwei (talk) 22:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, but I think your last revision works as expected, so I think it's ok to "go live" with the change in all flagIOCtemplates. As an aside, I originally consciously decided not to code it this way, as I feared abuse of its usage for certain nations, and I felt we should have consistency. However, since Pandora's box has been opened, so to speak, it will be useful to use it for cases like Gold Coast, British Guiana, etc. Thanks — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reassurance. I am absolutely no expert in horrible looking wikicodes, so that was quite a morale boost. And come to think of it, it did cross my mind why this feature didnt exist in the first place when it was already applied to flags. Guess I have the answer now. Please do highlight to me potential areas of abuse, if any, least I step on a minefield unintentionally.--Huaiwei (talk) 22:44, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At the risk of WP:BEANS, the specific motivation was because of a long-standing edit war about Great Britain. Some of us, who spend the majority of our wiki-time perusing the old official reports and spend significant editing time on Olympic-related articles, assert that the United Kingdom team is simply called "Great Britain" in an Olympic context, but others (esp. editors with a strong UK bias but not necessarily "Olympic-aware") insist on "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" for 1924 onwards and "Great Britain and Ireland" up to 1920 per the official name of the country ("United Kingdom of Great Britain and ..."). — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah I see. I wonder if there is also an issue with the "Ireland" name (as I cited above)?--Huaiwei (talk) 23:08, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen any comments about Ireland at the Olympics and the individual per-Games pages. I don't think there is any issue there. My perception about the ones that may be contentious:

Koreas (we use South Korea at the Olympics and North Korea at the Olympics to match the main article names, despite the use of "Korea" and "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" respectively by the IOC)
Palestine
China (as you point out)
Myanmar (currently a major dispute over the main article name, now Burma. For the Olympics, we follow the IOC naming, using Burma for 1948–1988 and Myanmar since then, similar to the way we handle other name changes, such as Ceylon→Sri Lanka, etc.)
Timor-Leste (ditto)
FYR Macedonia (per WP:MOSMAC, we don't use just "Macedonia", but we also don't use "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" either, as it is unwieldy in results tables. I'm sure someone will soon object to the abbreviation in the article name...)

— Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the issue of Ireland has not creeped into this arena yet, lets just leave it at that. I arent gonna stir any hornet's nest! As for the other cases, I personally feel that the Chinese and Korean issues will need a fair level of additional work, together with that of Macedonia (or whatever long-drawn-name they prefer to call it). I was previously involved in the Burma/Myanmar naming debate, so I don't think I can comment on it without sounding biased. That said, since IOC usage is the general preference here, it more or less answers straight forward cases like that of Timor-Leste (and Ivory Coast too)...and that extends to Palestine as well.--Huaiwei (talk) 17:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome

Welcome to the Unionist Cabal, Andrwsc. Now all you need is to piss off one of the other side and you can be part of the Republican Cabal too. You should be aware that "uninvolved" admins are only welcome to comment on The Troubles as long as they agree with the complainant, but you don't have to worry about that anymore, because you now have the distinction of being an "involved" admin. Congratulations. Anything you do or say will henceforth be an act of admin abuse driven by your support of "terrorists" or "colonial murderers". If you are listed at WP:RECALL, now might be the time to think again. Rockpocket 23:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

I managed to survive after wasting hundreds of hours trying to broker a consensus solution on Talk:Northern Ireland and Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Northern Ireland flag usage, and I think I managed to piss off both sides on that case! — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please would you add User:Vintagekits to Wikipedia:List of banned users. - Kittybrewster ☎ 10:56, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be more appropriate for one of the admins actually involved in the arbitration case to do that, thanks. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE:Olympic page renaming

Hah no problem, although of course I then start wondering to what extent we would create distinct templates for each IOC code. How tedious it would be having to create a template for each distinct IOC code, some of which were in existance for just one event. Also, I noticed we have a template for "ROC" (As the Republic of China) and "TPE" (as Chinese Taipei) but no "TWN" (as Taiwan) although it was used in 1964 and 1968. I suppose the current trend is to (generally) create a seperate template for each code only when a different name is also applied? How about the case of the Netherlands, btw? Was the name "Holland" ever officially used by the IOC?--Huaiwei (talk) 18:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yeah, we have consensus on WP:OLY (somewhere in the archives) to only use the standard codes. As I wrote on List of IOC country codes, there was a plentiful amount of pre-standard codes. However, I think it would be downright confusing to try to use them on results pages (e.g. who would recognize "SUA" or "EUA" for the United States?) One of my "to do list" tasks was to update all the individual per-nation per-Games pages (e.g. United States at the 1960 Summer Olympics) to add explanatory footnotes for the actual code used at the Games in question. All of those ~3000 pages need an update to use proper references anyway, so it would be useful to tackle those two jobs at the same time. And to answer your last question, the official Games reports used "Holland" 18 times in the 40 appearances of the nation (summer/winter combined), but for the last time at the 1984 Winter Olympics. We agreed to use Netherlands and NED for all Wikipedia pages though! Now that Template:Country IOC alias NED could be used to selectively return "Holland" or "Netherlands" on a per-Games basis, it's possible to directly match the official report usage for each Games, but I'll have a stroke if someone actually made that change. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a point of order

If a sentence includes the words "anti-Scrotum prejudice" it's likely it isn't meant to be taken that seriously. However my second sentence was. I can point you to hundreds upon hundreds of unencyclopedic images that currently are in use only in userspace, and there has never been an attempt to delete all those en masse, and I doubt there ever will be. Therefore it is not the fact that the images are taking up this purported oh-so-valuable room in imagespace, but a dislike of what these particular images are being used for. Therefore if you object to the userpage, MFD is the correct venue for any such discussion in my opinion. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 15:27, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]