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Hi. I realized that a while ago, you decided to leave the Wikipedia reference desk because it was "no longer fun". However, I see that you still edit our encyclopedia to some extent. I would cordially invite you to visit today's question I asked (you can't miss it), since it's possible you may have some knowledge of this unusual topic. Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 14:18, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I don't know much about this subject. If it helps, the frequencies of the standard musical scale is given in the graph below:

SteveBaker (talk) 15:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi SteveBaker,

I saw that the Wikipedia Signpost mentioned this today: Semantic MediaWiki. I wanted to point you to it because I remember you've written about the semantic web on the RD various times but I don't remember you having pointed that out before. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'd already seen that project - it'll be interesting to see if Wikipedia picks it up (or at least does something similar). SteveBaker (talk) 14:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, following up your comment regarding the article title of Sega Genesis and Mega Drive, what arbitration methods are available and suitable for something like this? I've had no experience of any of that kind of thing on WP, so thought it best to ask someone in the know. If you'd like to propose it on the discussion there please do, or just let me know and I'll have a go. Cheers, Miremare 16:44, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, I'm no expert.

That said: Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Guide is an overview of the formal processes of mediation. The final resort appears to be the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee - which can resolve disputes - binding all parties to abide by whatever they decide, perhaps resulting in neither side getting what they want! However, that may be rather heavy-handed to start with - so consider Wikipedia:Third opinion or Wikipedia:Requests for comment or Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal (which suggests techniques to help the editors involved to come to agreement between themselves without imposing new opinions). If the parties involved can't even agree on which way to go then you could post informally on: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard - or formally on Wikipedia:Requests for mediation and Wikipedia:Mediation Committee. There are even more possibilities than this if one specific editor is being 'difficult' - you can ask for an editor review...yet more stuff is possible. SteveBaker (talk) 21:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom only rules on conduct issues, not content. Unless there's edit-warring, personal attacks, etc., there's little ArbCom can do, and even then, they can't decide the article name for us. Wikipedia:Third opinion is for when there are only 2 editors in the dispute. Honestly, Wikipedia doesn't have a good dispute resolution process. Try Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard, Wikipedia:Requests for comment, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation or Wikipedia:Mediation Committee. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, the applicable policy is Wikipedia:Article titles. You can also ask at that policy's talk page for guidance. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:41, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the correction. As I said, I'm no expert on this particular corner of Wikipedia's byzantine policy/guideline/cabal stuff! As I understand it, there has been a certain degree of edit-warring over the name change - but the present name came about as a result of a compromise that had a majority !vote - but not what I'd call "consensus". Unfortunately, the compromise does not meet the most basic requirement of Wikipedia:Article titles - which is "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. When this offers multiple possibilities, Wikipedia chooses among them by considering five principles: the ideal article title will resemble titles for similar articles, precisely identify the subject, be short, be natural, and recognizable.". It does not resemble titles for similar articles, it isn't short or natural. Sadly, there does need to be some kind of intervention here because this compromise solution should never have happened. We really need for some higher power to step in, look at all the evidence and say "We're going to choose title 'X' and make title 'Y' be a redirect because 'X and Y' is not acceptable and 'X' is (albeit extremely marginally) better than 'Y'."...and then to lock the article from subsequent page moves. I don't know how to make that happen. SteveBaker (talk) 13:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks both for the replies. I already posted at Wikipedia talk:Article titles and the village pump policy talk page with links to the WT:VG discussion in the hope of getting some new people to comment (it's here in case anyone else is reading!), and while the few new commenters have all been against the new title and there's only two people active supporting it, some others have been quite vehemently "anti-discussion" thinking that it's better to forget about it than to decide between the two. I think this creates the kind of atmosphere where it looks like I'm just trying to piss off the regulars by stirring up trouble where all is otherwise calm, unless a reasonable number of uninvolved people can be got to respond, which seems to be a difficult thing to achieve. FYI there was also an RFC at the article talk page directly after the original move request, and again it only attracted two or three uninvolved people, and then there's the tendency of these things to dissolve into the same old squabbling anyway. I think it's clear there's no consensus for the title as it stands, but I can't see there being one for either of the alternatives now either, so I'm a bit out of ideas. :/ Miremare 02:00, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for what it's worth, I strongly agree that this is worth pursuing. The compromise title is completely unacceptable under Wikipedia:Article titles and the people who agreed on it were clearly in error in doing so - although I certainly recognize that they did this with the best possible intentions as a way to peacefully end a nasty conflict. However, it does need to be fixed. As to which of the two former titles should be chosen, I have no opinion. Wikipedia:Article titles suggests five principles to help you choose: recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. But all of those seem to apply equally to both titles - hence the original difficulty. All that Wikipedia:Article titles has to say on that is that one should attain consensus - but that has clearly failed. It suggests using the Wikipedia:Search engine test to determine the most common usage - but as I understand it, that is in some dispute here. From the perspective of an outsider such as myself, I really don't think it matters which title is chosen. There will be a redirect from the other title - and both names for the console will be mentioned in the very first few words of the article lede. There is no possible confusion or difficulty in readers finding the article or confirming that they have gotten to the correct article, despite the (perhaps) surprising title. Honestly, I think flipping a coin would be the best answer here! SteveBaker (talk) 13:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Within less than a week of the semi-protection tag expiring, the Self-Replicating Machine page has once again been spammed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Self-replicating_machine&action=historysubmit&diff=455804962&oldid=455524260

I suggest we make the semi-protection permanent.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Calcyman (talk • contribs) 15:26, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, that degree of protection was working well. SteveBaker (talk) 00:48, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, SteveBaker. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Feel free to ignore it. It might already be obsolete. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:48, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any inputs you might have at File_talk:Lenna.png#Improper deletion and reduction would be welcome. PAR (talk) 19:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Had to look it up... LOL! --Born2cycle (talk) 19:25, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I serve here merely to disseminate human knowledge - and this way also counts! See also: Carbuncle (gemstone) - kinda contradictory, I always thought! SteveBaker (talk) 19:30, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ha! I was thinking of the gemstone (My only knowledge of the word having come from Sherlock Holmes) and didn't really understand what you meant. I wondered if you meant that the compromise was a distracting temptation like a gemstone. APL (talk) 19:50, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

:-) No, no, I'm pretty sure that I'm referring to the ugly, oozing, painful sore that doesn't heal very quickly, leaves a permanent scar and spreads like wildfire if you don't treat it properly! (Eeek! I've really gotta remember not to look at the photos when reading Wikipedia articles about skin diseases!) SteveBaker (talk) 20:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the answer to the confusion you expressed there is that, unlike a car, in this case cherished childhood memories are at stake. Anything you learned when you were 10 is obvious, and therefore anyone challenging it must have an agenda. (As for me, I was amusing myself with an AppleII and a 286 during that time period.) APL (talk) 19:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had a TRS-80 Model I...so I know where you're coming from. But I restore classic cars too - and I can tell you that "car people" are every bit as fanatical about the cars they drove (or their father/elder brother drove) in their youth as Genesis/MegaDrive owners are. But none the less, we come to agreement pretty quickly. But there is no doubt that this dispute could have been ended much more quickly if the compromise title hadn't come along. SteveBaker (talk) 19:50, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree with your sentiment in this post [1], but I have an honest question that I've been asking a lot and don't want to repeat again on that thread: what evidence do you have that actually supports the idea of the "Mega Drive" as the commonname (not what problems do you have with the evidence for the Genesis)? I feel that I've proven that (a) google scholar and google books produce results for Genesis of, at a minimum, 700% to 1000% more than the Mega Drive; (b) standard google hits produce results of between 49% and over 250% more for Genesis than Mega Drive, (c) sales figures favor the Genesis, (d) the RSs in the article now favor the Genesis; (e) news results favor the Genesis. Sure, people have criticized the methods of each of these, though no one has offered (i) better methods; or (ii) results that show that the Mega Drive is favored in any of these categories.

Perhaps I am not AGFing, but I believe that personal opinions have made people ignore WP policy on naming to justify the title that their nostalgia (or English language insecurities) dictate for them. If we followed policy from the start, this would have been a no-brainer. But I am repeating myself yet again.LedRush (talk) 19:45, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have evidence for either Mega Drive or Sega Genesis as the preferred common name. I actually don't even have a particular preference - other than to reinforce the growing majority. I do know that they were both in very common usage - I'm British, and a computer game programmer (although I've never owned either console). But "Sega Genesis" is definitely something I'd heard of. But for me, it's pretty much a wash which one we choose. It's not necessary to have the 100% perfect choice of those two names for the title. A 60/40 or even a 40/60 choice is perfectly adequate here. Wikipedia is quite clear when you type Mega Drive into the search box and arrive at Sega Genesis that this is a synonym - you get the "(Redirected from...)" thing and (hopefully) a lede sentence that says "The Sega Genesis - also known as the Mega Drive - is a...". Having the 40% perfect choice of the two names doesn't hurt the encyclopedia at all...not in the least. Having the compromise name opens the doors to massive chaos in articles as diverse as the Harry Potter book series, the names of mushrooms and the names of badge-engineered cars. We are not equipped to make that decision - the debate about that belongs on WP:TALK. SteveBaker (talk) 20:02, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your point. My point is about comments you make which seem to indicate that WP:Commonname does not point to any particular article name. You may be concerned about the precedent for "and" titles, but I am more concerned with the precedent for interpreted commonname to mean something other than what it actually says. And while choosing, I would argue that choosing a name that (in your example) comes up 33% less than another (or in my research as listed on the talk page shows, somewhere between 7-15 times less in reliable sources) does hurt the encyclopedia. Obviously, we weight the ills of not following our interpretations of WP policy differently, but I just don't know how people can say that WP:Commonname doesn't point to one article name or another when so much evidence has been given for one name, and literally no evidence (to my knowledge) has been given to support the other.LedRush (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, WP:COMMONNAMES says When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others. - so there is precedent for not choosing the most common if there is some other reason (like geographical coverage or prevalence in reliable sources to use one of the other "fairly common" names instead. I'm not saying that either of those things are true for Mega Drive - but it is certainly OK to pick a "fairly common" name that isn't absolutely the most common. Both Mega Drive and Sega Genesis meet the "fairly common" criteria in my opinion. But I don't know whether the arguments for or against either of the two current titles are dominant. Truly, I think it's a wash. There simply isn't enough evidence on either side to make me a body-and-soul convert to either of those titles. I just want us to be rid of the compromise title, once and for all - for the good of the encyclopedia in general more than for the good of this one article in particular. SteveBaker (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I just don't know where you come up with the idea the evidence is somehow a "wash". There is tons of evidence for the Genesis, verifiable, and literally nothing for the Mega Drive. All the proponents of the other name has done is argue that the evidence for the Genesis might not be as overwhelming as all the evidence suggests it is. If there were problems with the Genesis being the name, that's one thing. But no one has yet made that argument (and prevalence in Reliable Sources is how Commonname directs you to choose the common name...it isn't an argument against the most commonname).LedRush (talk) 20:37, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you may be right - and I did !vote for Sega Genesis so I'm not actually disagreeing with you - I'm just not actively agreeing. But to be honest - I'd rather back away from those arguments and leave them to the long-term editors of the article with their greater subject-matter knowledge. My only concern is to get rid of the compromise title because of the wider implications for Wikipedia's article naming conventions as a whole. If we could only get a simple consensus to defeat the present title and replace it with either of the more obvious titles - then I'd be more than happy to recuse myself from choosing which of them it is - or to stick around and dispassionately examine the evidence from both camps. As far as I'm concerned, both names are common enough to serve as the title and I simply don't care which of the two 'wins' because the consequences of choosing the wrong one are so negligable given how good Wikipedia's redirection system is. SteveBaker (talk) 20:52, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I understand completely. I, however, read Commonname as coming to a very specific conclusion, and will oppose a solution which ignores that.LedRush (talk) 20:54, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again: When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others. - you most certainly don't have to pick the most common name of all if there are 'problems' with that most common of all name. Now, "problems' is a vague thing...but you have to concede that this statement flat out says that being the most common name of all isn't a slam-dunk guarantee that this name must be chosen. Life would be much easier if it were. SteveBaker (talk) 22:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a gurantee, but all parties have agreed that it answers the core questions as well or better than any other name, so I don't know what "problems" there could be. And seeing as there isn't just a significant majority of english language reliable sources calling the console the Genesis, but a staggeringly overwhelming number, we are severely perverting Wikipedia policies by not having "Genesis" in the title. As I've said before, in all the naming disputes I've been a part of, never have I seen a more clear case of what name Commonname points to than this one.LedRush (talk) 22:24, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, SteveBaker. You have new messages at SchuminWeb's talk page.
Message added 14:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

SchuminWeb (Talk) 14:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't been watching the Sega naming debate too closely, but a couple weeks ago I read the following article and found it fascinating:
The Backfire Effect
I think you might like it, too. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2011 November 4#File:Lenna.png. I used your picture, it gets the point across very well, I hope you don't mind. Cheers—Ruud 15:55, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

re:[2] I'm sorry I removed the trolling material. I just couldn't figure out how it was related to improving the article. The section essentially moans about deleting the article because original research says it is not real.[3] The other section I deleted is essentially the same kind of trolling only more vulgar.[4] I don't approve of plastering talk pages with bullshit, it annoys me having to read it. But if you feel we lost something important there I was wrong to remove it. Sorry about that. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that YOU judge this as bullshit - but the guy who posted it evidently didn't. So it's your opinion against his. It's rude to presume that you are in the right to such a degree that nobody else should be allowed to read what he wrote - we don't need you to censor our incoming mail for us! If you delete that material then you are denying the rest of us the right to make up our own minds and either (a) support his view, (b) suggest ways to compromise or (c) point out where he's wrong. As WP:TALK says: "Editing – or even removing – others' comments is sometimes allowed. But you should exercise caution in doing so, and normally stop if there is any objection." - this is a pretty rare thing. If it's bullshit, then other right-thinking editors will agree with you. You say "it annoys me having to read it" - but you had to read it before deleting it - so that's an entirely bogus argument. So, please don't delete other people's post again - except (perhaps) in the most egregious circumstances and only after some discussion on the talk page. SteveBaker (talk) 17:38, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I judge this as bullshit and you objected to it. The content was then restored. This is how the process should work. You don't even have to provide a reason why you want to keep the sections.

• Removal of off-topic, uncivil, unclear, or otherwise distracting material Wikipedia:Refactoring_talk_pages

Sample of material entitled "Article Needs Deletion":

"This article is good in that it shows how scammers can gain $ for idiotic and completely Wrong ideas.. But.. There needs to be clear demarcation about what is real and what is pseudoscience (fantasy-fiction).. This article is TOO NEUTRAL and needs to be clearer about the fringe-fantasy-idiocy aspects of the 'theory'/BS.. As the person says above, Wikipedia is complicit and encouraging FRAUD by publicizing this BS .. MAKE THIS ABSOLUTELY CLEAR or delete the article.. PARTICIPATE IN FRAUD or make ABSOLUTELY CLEAR IT'S FRAUD - only ONE OR THE OTHER"

84.106.26.81 (talk) 18:20, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not in the case of talk pages. They don't work by you deleting other people's comments then the rest of us having to trawl through the history to read them. That's how things work in article space - but not on talk pages. SteveBaker (talk) 18:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Who the heck is Steve Baker?