Years ago, i got stuck in my brain the idea that there's something wrong about modern English singling out the first-person singular pronoun to be spelled with a capital letter. So i spell it without the capital -- except at the beginning of a sentence, or when i'm not the sole author. If you follow my example, native speakers will just figure you're ignorant of the basics.

Hello Jerzy, welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. You can learn more on the how to edit page. The naming conventions and style guide pages are also useful. There is a sandbox which you can use to experiment in.

If you have any questions, see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. Angela 07:19, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If you've noticed weirdness in the form of links that include the words "as of", may i recommend reading Wikipedia:As of.

Some interaction regarding it follows:

...[re Innocence Project ]... I restored the "as of 2003" link; its purpose is not widely understood, but it is discussed at length at Wikipedia talk:As of, which is can also be found by looking at the talk page of the Redirect page (instead of just the page redirected to) of any of the "As of ..." links. A little confusing, sorry about that. --Jerzy 06:22, 2003 Dec 17 (UTC)

Sorry again: better yet, Wikipedia:As of; i'm trying to figure out why i didn't lead myself more naturally to that; maybe it was my own fault. --Jerzy

Ah, thanks! Didn't know about that practice. Good idea. Tualha 01:03, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

An alert but confused user took issue with the phrase above (which appears on Jerzy), holding that an apostrophe is required and thus making the word it's. Hopefully i will, unlike Pascal, make it thru the day that it will take before i have time to point out in some detail why the apostrophe is not only unnecessary, but impermissible. Not to mention what is grammatically wrong with that sentence. --Jerzy 13:47, 2003 Nov 2 (UTC)

The rule i did violate calls for writing (outside of titles and direct quotations) in full sentences. (Both of my last two uses of "Not to mention..." are in sentence fragments, rather than in sentences.) I consider that rule important in formal writing (e.g, Wikipedia articles), but dispensible, as long as ambiguity is avoided, in informal writing (e.g. most Wikipedia talk). And violating it can keep the pace up. And draw attention, without extra words, to the relationship between one complete thought and an "afterthought" that could (in theory) have been included in the same sentence with it. Like this fragment, and the two immediately before it, not to mention both of the times i used "Not to mention..." to begin a sentence fragment.

The alert user in question may be confused about the meaning of "it's". One of the most common written-language errors in English is failure to distinguish between two identically pronounced words, namely:

• It's, which is always a contraction for "it is".
• Its, which, with exceptions too rare to mention further, is always a possessive form of the personal pronoun "it".
  

All the personal pronouns lack apostrophes, including

• adjectivial forms such as my, her, and your (and of course the sense of its that started this discussion), and
• noun-like possessive forms, such as mine, hers, and yours (not to mention the other, noun-like sense of its).

By the way, the rule is "the possessives of personal pronouns lack apostrophes", but possessives of non-personal pronouns behave like nouns. Examples are

• everyone's head,
• another's head,
• one's head,
• the other's head, and
• the others' heads.

(It's not that important to ask why those are the rules. I lack formal linguistics training and don't know, beyond "that happens to be how this particular language evolved", but it's worth saying that that's all the justification such a rule needs: this is the way educated English-speakers write when they are striving for clarity, and your best chance of making yourself understood is to avoid the confusion that goes with playing by a different set of language rules. It takes some extra effort, but

• with practice the effort gets less (for instance, if you spell i lowercased, as i do, enough times, it takes no effort at all to remember to do so),
• it seems to involve less effort than ignoring the rules and having confusing meta-discussions to repair the important ambiguities that sometimes are introduced by so-called language errors, and
• it is certainly less alienating than being the occasion for those meta-discussions.)

The other thing that may have confused the alert user is especially confusing in English because we suffix verbs with -ing for two entirely different purposes. The corresponding words in as closely related a language as German are usually (almost always?) distinguishable:

• "Laughing is good.", using a gerund, is Das LachEN stimmt wohl. (Hmm, is the gerund distinguishable from the infinitive in German? I'd translate that back literally as "To laugh does you good."), but
• "A laughing cow...", using a participle, is Ein lachENDes Kuh... (unless i've messed up on the gender)

If you know a foreign language, you may have your own examples. The English gerund form of an verb, which serves the same grammatical roles as a noun, looks, but for syntax and other context, just like the present-participial form of the same verb, which serves the same grammatical roles as an adjective.

I consider this possibility because the desire to put the apostrophe into "its being" may have reflected the idea that the pronoun it needs the auxiliary verb is to connect it to the participial verb being.

(I may get the terminology and the linguistic theory wrong here, so i don't hope for this treatment to be considered authoritative.) IIRC, i was taught 6 tenses (three of them "perfect" in the sense of the action being "perfected", meaning "completed", by the time-frame the sentence applies to.) To the great confusion of non-native speakers, we say "I'm repairing my car" in three senses. I think of one of them as the progressive (is the technical term "imperfect"?) tense: i have a wrench on a bolt, and five minutes ago i disconnected the battery, and in five minutes i'll lift the starter out. All of that is part of what i mean in saying "I'm repairing my car." It's probably the same tense when i say the same words while i'm on the front porch with a cold one in my hand, and the driveway is full of tools and auto parts. But clearly it's a second (or third) tense when, hearing the weather forecast say "cloudy tomorrow, snow the day after", my friend says "Let's go to the movies tomorrow" and i reply, shaking my head, "I'm shopping for snow tires, and restocking my emergency kit." The same tense is used by a high school student who says "I'm going to the U." I think of this usage, of supposed present- (or continued-) action language to describe future action, as a "bootleg future tense"; its odd status is highlighted by the bizarre alternative form "I'm going to go to the U". (In an area where i am even further from being an expert, i won't go into the analogous dialect usage "... fi'nn'a fix ...".)

I mention all of that last 'graph partly bcz i'm unsure whether using the participle as an adjective ("a continuing concern") derives from the "progressive tense". The alternative is that the so-called progressive tense is kind of a quasi-tense that we've ginned up just by using the linking verb "is" and participial adjectives such as "continuing" together often enough. We say say things like "Our concern about this is a continuing one" and then "Our concern about this is continuing" often enough that we perhaps start imagining there is another tense involved. (My understanding is that linguists actually regard such evolution as the way languages gain their valuable complexities, and are much more interested in which usage came first and evolved into the other, than in drawing a line between a tense-like construction and a true tense. So maybe i shouldn't care about the answer to the question i just raised.)

To see that no apostrophe is required or pemitted, parallel "I regretted its being hard for you" with "He appreciated my baking him a cake." (And remember what it's means.)

In the case at hand, BTW, something else should (barring confusion) have tipped off the alert user, if "...it is being..." was the construction they intended. "Not to mention" must be followed by a noun (or a phrase serving the grammatical role of a noun), but "it is being hard..." is a full clause. It is able to stand alone as a sentence, and able to be combined into a larger sentence with a semicolon, a conjunction, or a relative prounoun like "that", but not able to serve the roles of a noun. (Writing "... [n]ot to mention that it's being hard..." is grammatical (except for the sentence fragment; see above), but it's lousy writing, and the alert user would be not only confused but uncharitable in attributing that intent to me.)

In any case, part of my concern is that, as William Safire wrote in his On Language column in the New York Times Sunday magazine section not too long ago (i.e., this year; maybe last month), the use of an adjectivial possessive pronoun before a gerund became standard relatively recently (i.e., well after Gutenberg). IMO that contributes to its being less well understood than other constructions.

I suspect the "possessive before gerund" rule is really aimed against a misleading construction: My mom appreciates my calling her, but she loves me calling her. She even loves me smashing her china. But she hates my smashing her china, and her smashing her (own) china, and i'm not sure whether i said she loves me when it's i or she who's smashing her china. IMO, the grammatical rules are that a noun or nominative pronoun precedes a participle (or should), and an adjective or adjectivial possessive pronoun precedes a gerund (or should). But maybe the usage rule should be

• Avoid the noun- (or nominative-pronoun-) participle construction (in favor of, for instance, participle-noun), since it both is confusing and can be mistaken for the confusing and ambiguous noun-gerund construction;
• conversely, avoid the ambiguous noun- (or nominative-pronoun-) gerund construction, even if you think it is grammatically sound, but
• don't hesitate to use the adjective- (or adjectivial=possesive-pronoun-) gerund construction.

I didn't cite the good WP page i found that comments on Its/It's, but i'll look for it again & add a link here.

I encourage someone better prepared than i to use this for text or ideas in WP article(s); the example of Pascal notwithstanding (i.e. unless someone sends me a round tuit, i may not get around to it for a while), they might do WP a solid by pre-empting me from doing so. [grin]

-- Jerzy 01:20, 2003 Nov 4 (UTC)

I wrote "Like this fragment...", and then, much later, thought long and hard about whether i should instead have begun "As with this fragment". I ended up settling on using "as" rather than "like", but i found it interesting, and in the end illuminating, that i had so much trouble being sure.

The rule in question was "Like is a preposition, and its object must function as a noun; as is a subordinating conjunction, and what follows it must complete the clause by being a subject and a predicate." Superficially, the rule seems complied with: Like is followed by "this fragment", a noun phrase without a predicate. But the fact that "like" follows a period (or full stop) complicates the situation; in fact, i was in the midst of arguing that both my uses of like were in effect parts of an ungainly hypothetical sentence (of around a hundred words), beginning "I consider". In that context, what is like the two fragments has to be "violating [the rule]". And the only relevant way that violating the rule can be like the fragments is if (as my text claims) they all "keep the pace up, and draw attention [in a specified direction]. The fact that i could have said "as this fragment does," refering more explicitly to the parallel action, raises the question of what i was trying to communicate: was i really trying point out the abstract parallel between "violating" and "this fragment", because of what they do? Or was i counting on the reader to supply a missing verb, and interpret what i wrote as they would "like this fragment does"?

I think, on reflection, that comparing the abstraction of "violating" with the concrete fragments that do violate is demanding, and secretly i was counting on the reader to insert the predicate "does" in their own minds - which means i should have used "as" rather than "like". (Of course, constructions like "The balloons rose, as mist in the morning" only sound good in poetry, so in practice the only practical and grammatical approach (without changing the whole shape of the sentence and the fragments following it) is "As this fragment, and the two immediately before it, do...." More to follow (but i think so far so good).

Text i may need to quote further from:

The rule i did violate calls for writing (outside of titles and direct quotations) in full sentences. (Both of my last two uses of "Not to mention..." are in sentence fragments, rather than in sentences.) I consider that rule important in formal writing (e.g, Wikipedia articles), but dispensible, as long as ambiguity is avoided, in informal writing (e.g. most Wikipedia talk). And violating it can keep the pace up. And draw attention, without extra words, to the relationship between one complete thought and an "afterthought" that could (in theory) have been included in the same sentence with it. Like this fragment, and the two immediately before it, not to mention both of the times i used "Not to mention..." to begin a sentence fragment.

I mentioned Blaise Pascal bcz of Pascal's Last Theorem. That is the ironic (and presumably doubly inaccurate) standard name for a conjecture in mathematical number theory; it was formulated long before his time and proven (in the late 20th century) only long after it. Pascal thought (probably mistakenly) that he knew an elegant way to prove this conjecture, and wrote in his copy of a relevant book that its margin was too small to hold the proof. While he probably wrote that more than a day before his death, no proof of it by him has ever been found, he never corrected what he had written, and it seems like a natural parable about taking on responsibilities that take a lot longer than anticipated.

On User talk:203.5.110.252, i wrote in part (about Soviet)

... For the promotion of the terminology of editing (and not to contest your edits at all), i note in finicky fashion that

• when i wrote "in accord to Bolshevik understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory", i probably meant to say "in accord with Bolshevik understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory" (and probably wanted no article between "with" and its object), and
• i'd rather see it said that there's nothing wrong with the grammar tho a slip of the pen made my usage odd and worth changing, and
• tho the result is fine, you effected a subtle change of meaning.

(But on the assumption that i find these a lot more interesting than you, i'll continue at talk user:Jerzy#My Bad Writing rather than here.)...

Some "editology" comments that seemed better taking up space here than there follow now:

It seems to me that all the parts of speech were in a syntactically acceptable relation to one another. It's true that the parts of speech they teach us all in school are not the full story that linguists recognize (there are languages that recognize not just masculine, feminine, and neuter genders, but also invisible gender and so on), and it's reasonable and i think not a violation of linguistics custom to regard, e.g., the distinction between, say, nouns that can and can't be read and told as a part-of-speech distinction. But it seems to me more useful to speak of "in accord to" (my typo) as a usage error than a grammar one.

These particular verbs, prepositions, and nouns are subject to some "rules" (such as "'accord with' and 'according to' but not 'accord to'") that are better understood as reflecting which constructions have familiar interpretations and which are rare enough to be make the ambiguity an effort to resolve.

As to the change of meaning that resulted, within a slip of the pen i wrote (without conscious choice of words) "organized in accord [with] Bolshevik understanding..." rather than "organized according to the Bolshevik understanding..." to imply "organized in a way consistent with the body of different understandings among Bolsheviks" as opposed to "organized as required by the single clearcut Bolshevik understanding".

(Now, of course that may have been naïve of me; the Bolsheviks are famous for emphasizing the "centralism" aspect to the near exclusion of the "democratic" one in "democratic centralism" -- even if

• Dr. Zhivago 's portrayal of contention between the commander and the political officer of Zhivago's guerrilla unit (in the movie at least) and
• his encounter with a locally instituted 10-day week, with various trades each having a different day off (in the novel only)

suggest substantial pluralism in this period.) --Jerzy 07:34, 2003 Oct 29 (UTC)

Jerzy. I pictured "Soviets organised in accord with Bolshevik principles" as the Soviets forming an equal alliance and voluntarily choosing Bolshevik principles. "...according to..." is more neutral. It doesn't seem to indicate who did the organising and how. I'd suggest adding a sentance on that, or clarifying the parenthesis on independent soviets. As far as a plurality of Bolshevik views, I think it would be simpler to pluralise the "principles" or "ideologies" of the Bolsheviks. Pluralism certainly was present, but its a bit confused in the article at the moment. Vi chitaete pa Ruskij? Ya nye ochen chitaete pa Ruskij.

Sorry if i seemed to be questioning yr edit; i was more interested in the existence of the nuances in my own edit -- which escaped me until you drew attention to them by choosing a completely different way from mine, of correcting my mis-chosen preposition. (Mis-chosen or, probably, suited to my first wording of that bullet, and becoming unsuitable when i changed something else w/o changing the preposition (without then proof-reading adequately).

Don't let my musings upset yr plan for the article or related ones; i'm happy to have contributed what i did, and no doubt will be happy to watch it evolve into something probably much better than mine. FWIW, you should know that i reached that page either from a Random Page or by a nearly random wander from something now forgotten; when i got to Soviet, it looked spotty to me (not, e.g., what i assume you would have written), and from J. Reed some 30 years ago, my trick memory (why should anyone recall "Smolny Institute" that long w/o using it?) came up with stuff which i worked into what you found & fixed.

But i lack the depth of knowledge to judge whether you've POVed the level of diversity among the Bolsheviki of that period. And i'm far from any position of ability to judge whether you've "answered" my seeming "complaints" abt the implications of what you editted in. Pls treat it more like a bemused interest in how little changing of my words it took, to replace my nuances with others (whether or not some (not me) might see them as crucial to the subject). (Think of that as why it was on this talk page, rather than yours or the articles', that i continued: i'm talking far more abt how we all use language than abt s- & S- oviets, or the article on them.)

Erm...yeah, good point. Who would delete such a thing? It went through the new transwiki system rather than VfD, which I think I've just proven is a rather bad system. If you look at the Transwiki log, you can see that Smack moved the article to Wiktionary. As this had been done, it makes the article instantly deletable, which I did. This is obviously not a Good Thing. I've undeleted it and, when I'm a bit more awake, I'll rewrite m:transwiki and the Deletion policy to reflect these issues. Sorry for any disturbance this caused you. I don't personally think it should be deleted anyway. Angela. 20:24, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A disambiguation notice at the bottom of the page would probably be a good idea. Angela. 20:36, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I wish I could get clear direction on the ordering of Japanese names. I know that the last name is traditionally put first, but I've always known Haruomi (or Harry) to use that order. I'm in the dark, and you can look at the history and see that I wasn't sure one way or the other. Any advice you have would be great. - sugarfish 05:14, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Jerzy, to keep things nice'n'tidy I like to discuss subjects in one place, so feel free to come on over. --Wernher 05:43, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Jerzy, I forget why I got involved with this one - it's not something I have any expertise on, it just linked to something I was working on and I noticed the duplication and try to sort it out. So I'm very happy for you and Bryan (? - can't go back to check) to manage it between you. Thanks for asking. seglea 19:51, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

moin!, my answer to your posting on de:Benutzer Diskussion:Pit: Yes, I can change it anytime.. so did I, now. Now its Denmark not Danmark. thank you for taking notice! -- pit

for the explanation of moin just click! *g* its a typical greeting in Bremen.. greetings! - pit

You can sign your name with ~~~~. When does his term end? Let's not assume he will complete his term. We dont go to the George W. Bush article adding that "he is the President of the United States until 2005" and change it to 2009 if he gets reelected. That's ridiculous. We just state that he is the president. Unlike other encyclopedias, WP articles can be updated/edited regularly. --Jiang

Reading your comment on Hawaii I wonder what law exists on a federal level that prevents North Dakota from changing its name to Dakota. I couldn't find anything on google. Rmhermen 02:49, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

I just read the act of admision of Hawaii [1] and don't see that it notes a legal opinion in 1961 that would negate deals like that which forced Utah to ban polygamy. I still haven't seen that states don't have the power to change their own names. At worst you would have a situation like Newfoundland where until recently the federal government called it a different name than the provincial government used for itself. Rmhermen 14:12, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

(reply to Jiang)

I owe an apology, as part of a longer response, left over from our discussion about Sen. Akaka, but if i don't get it on here w/in 30 min., i'm not confident of getting it taken care of before the new week.

Tnx again; you are being helpful. --Jerzy 02:12, 2003 Nov 15 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the "VfD" thing. Silly me, probably b/c I'd been away from the computer a while and forgot my normal routine. Not sure to what you're referring w/ the "tilde" comment. I thought it was spelled "tilda," but I can't recall ever doing anything on wikipedia involving the spelling of it. --zandperl 21:38, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Stopped editing as a reasonable hour? As if I'd do thing like that ;) The users you mentioned seem to have made two edits and gone away, but I'll check again later to see if they return. Most vandals do go away quite quickly, so I think you right here not to bother listing them on ViP. Sometimes that encourages them. Angela. 03:03, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Note: User:Jimbo Wales page already says he is the 'Benevolent Dictator' of Wikipedia, so I thought I'd put it in. I have no opinion either way about him, I just thought it would be funnier that way.

--Rfc1394 20:53, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No problem. I agree it's an unusual standard. - Hephaestos 02:53, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

-- Custom messages --

{{msg:disputed}} and {{msg:Disputed}} will produce the same thing. Like with article titles, the first letter of capitalisation doesn't matter, but the capitalisation of the rest of the word does. How do you mean it doesn't work? It seems to work for me:
The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.
Angela. 03:57, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

(Hmm, i must have put a copy here, later, for context, of what i edited into DQ's Talk page:) You wrote on VfD that

'nation-state' means something else.

but it sounds to me like the recent history of how it has been used in List of nation states and Nation state is consistent. (Or did i screw up interpreting the page-histories of the pages and redirect?) I intend, unless someone else starts a discussion of this on Talk:Nation state or somewhere else off VfD, to do so and reference it by responding to you on VfD. I'll undertake that from a library, with The Oxford Companion to Politics (or is it something like "...World Politics of the World "?) at my side. Of course a sketch of the differences you have in mind would be helpful. --Jerzy 16:01, 2003 Dec 13 (UTC)

It seems like a very fuzzy definition indeed. I'm not really sure the word is used in this way or applied to those countries in this way now. I've always seen the word used in the context of historical earlier forms of states. The fuzziness and possible non-NPOV of our definition and how it is being applied concerns me more, though. Daniel Quinlan 22:07, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

This is in response to your message on my user page user talk:rfc1394. (I don't know what the command sequence is to put a username and timestamp on a page yet.) I posted this to talk:jerzy in an attempt to send you mail. I I also realize I think this should be at user talk:Jerzy so it will notify you of my response, so I'll put it there so you'll get mail.

In adding the extra letters, it was my thought that either the original block table should be fully populated, or if it was not, that the pages it links to be properly indexed even if no entries were present. Seeing 'red' on the missing items (pun intentional) items made me consider that this was inadequate. Either a block of entries should be connected together - the way the letter X is - or they should be empty but properly cross-indexed.

If there are no entries for a particular page, the answer is to cross-link to one of the other letters before it that does exist, have it add the empty letters, and link back to that page so that there are no nonexistent links.

Once a two-letter gets 'big enough' to have some entries, then it can be split off into either its own page or its own plus whatever follows it. The question on how big is 'big enough' is arbitrary, but I'd say if an entry has at least 1/2 a page, say ten items or more (unless the items before it have less than ten each) then it's probably time to split it. Also if the page gets above 20 entries then definitely split it (subject to the provision that there be some entries in the letters before it.)

Paul - Rfc1394 - Wed, Dec 17, 2003 13:07 EST / 18:07 UTC(GMT) Update 13:12 EST

(note to someone adding another item, be sure to push the 'Your heading' and 4 - line below yours so the next person coming along will know where to put their remarks. The system will automatically split that part from yours.)

If it's just a cut and paste move that needs fixing, I can do that. If you tell me where it is of course. :) VfD is also a place you can ask for such things. Angela. 23:53, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

Urgh. I shouldn't do these things when I'm tired. They always confuse me. :) Ok, I believe Magneto is now at Magneto and there's nothing at Magneto (engine component). The stuff that was at Magneto before I did anything is at Talk:Magneto/temp. Where should that go? And did I revert Magneto to the right version? Have a look and let me know if there's anything else you need me to do. Angela. 01:07, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying. I haven't merged any histories or deleted anything other than historyless redirects, so can you not just move the pages to wherever it you want them now? Angela. 04:29, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

(Questions re Magneto history-recapitulation are expected here.)

Why do you keep adding == Your Heading Here == to talk pages? --Jiang

J, I suggest you indicate what you do and don't understand about it as a starting point for discussing whatever is on your mind about it. --Jerzy 16:06, 2003 Nov 14 (UTC)

No one else does it... It will get in the way of things if people decide to use the "post a comment" feature. --Jiang 01:01, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Tnx, Jiang; that is even more helpful than your summary at 2003 Nov 14 06:51 EST on Talk:Treaty of London, 1839, saying

(no need to add that; just ask people to use the "post a comment" feature)

which i was already planning to respond to.

I have an opinion abt whether "post a comment" or "Your Heading Here" is more useful, but our respective opinions are far from definitive, and the question is an empirical one. I'm going to start alternating the two approaches (once i've counted up how many of the YHH ones are already out there, and balanced them with PaCs). That will give us two samples that will reflect the biases of the same editor in choosing what to edit, and will reveal which style is more successful in the context that bias.

I don't know how strong your interest is, but of course your doing something similar would test both methods in a different population of talk pages, and help validate the results. More importantly, it would help a lot if you'd hold off reverting further YHHs until we discuss further.

The conflict you perceive between the 2 methods is relevant, but that concern needs to be tempered by the fact that the conflict is not inherant; if either becomes widespread enuf to warrant it, without one disappearing, it's a SMOP to resolve the conflict. I think that for the moment, both practices are so rare in these 150k articles that all we need to worry about is if/when either becomes a lot more frequent. --Jerzy 02:12, 2003 Nov 15 (UTC)

Paul added (probably Wed, Dec 17, 2003 13:07 EST / 18:07 UTC(GMT) Update 13:12 EST) this 'graph:

(note to someone adding another item, be sure to push the 'Your heading' and 4 - line below yours so the next person coming along will know where to put their remarks. The system will automatically split that part from yours.)

But the next colleague who left a note here did not comply. I suspect (partly from the time i spent puzzling over a similar request on Paul-Talk) that that was not just bad luck, and that compliance is likely to be low, at least unless the wording is tuned up and maybe no matter what. But in any case, i'm not looking (on my own talk page, or article-talk page that i follow closely, for a scheme that gets anyone adding to a talk page to keep it perfectly organized. (Obviously: who is as qualified as i, to make it perfect? [wink]) Rather, i hope to ameliorate the disorder, without forcing any colleagues into a strait-jacket.

Multiple colleagues in a single strait-jacket, now there's a pretty picture! --The Masked Grammatical Avenger

Of course the ideal thing for someone leaving a note on a new subject to do is put a heading just above the "YHH" heading, and write between the two headings. But IMO it ain't no big thang.

The page history of Die Walküre is now back with the Die Walküre article and Die Walkure is just a redirect. Angela. 07:41, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Welcome back, Jerzy! Actually I have not done on Russia anything expect putting the texts we composed in. The Estonian Wikipedia is rapidly increasing (with just three very active users, including myself), and I am tracking the recent changes there. Andres 17:38, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(From my page at User Talk:Rfc1394): The "In Use" msg you created is useful in concept, effective in implementation (i.e., eye-catching), and pleasant to look at. I guess that's a hat trick; bravo. --Jerzy 09:12, 2004 Jan 12 (UTC)

My Comment

I wish I could take credit for the 'revised edition' of the Mediawiki:Inuse message  ; I thought of the Inuse message because there were times when I was changing a page which required several minutes to do (for example, check out the List of television stations in USA by Call Sign and if I'm putting all of the entries for, say, California in from the current list by states, that's going to take a while. If someone else comes in and changes the list (for Colorado for example) while I'm doing an edit as well, then my work is wasted or at least I have to now go in and re-edit to include their changes, since the list is in alphabetical order. In this sort of circumstance I don't really want to put a few entries in, save it, then put more in, and so on, I'd prefer to put all of them in as one batch. I'm less likely to items out if I do it that way. (Yes, I wrote that last sentence with the intentionally missing word to see if someone would notice.)

What someone else did was, they came along, rewrote the Inuse message and inserted the banners. A distinct improvement to what I had done and a really great change. I wish I had thought of it.

-- Paul Rfc1394 17:51, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I really have very little clue what a godparent is. I just created that page based on my own understanding of the term, but it if it wrong, edit away. That's the wikipedia way. user:J.J.

I do not know if you are watching Brianism Talk, but it is fair that you should see this: An Open Letter from Rex Mundi, co-founder of Brianism. In view of this, I have changed my vote to Delete. Link has apparently been "e-mailed to participants in the discussion", but not posted on WP by the writer - which is why I am doing it. I also do not see how the writer would have all the e-mail addresses involved. Kind regards, Anjouli 13:56, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I had things come up. Also, I'm not sure what you wanted. I think what you did was fine. Is someone giving you a hard time about it? - UtherSRG 04:54, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

np - UtherSRG 05:03, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi Jerzy. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I have been changing links that point to a redirect so that they avoid the redirect. In this case, it seems that the page Polar coordinates should not be a redirect, but rather a disambiguation page. I'll change all the links back. Maybe you wouldn't mind making it a disambiguation page, as I know nothing of the topic, whereas you do. Best, snoyes 05:10, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)