User talk:David Newton/archive1

Hi, thanks for all the hard work on List of military aircraft of the United States of America! Beware of changing things like "Boeing FB" to just "FB"; Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft) recommends adding the manufacturer name routinely, because at 130K+ articles, we get fair numbers of misleading links. I looked over the list, don't see any falsies, so that's good. BTW, I suggest turning Previous RAF aircraft into a List of aircraft of the RAF that includes both present and past, and is linked from Military aircraft; otherwise readers have to look in multiple places if, as is likely, they're not up on the latest decisions of the MoD (plus you don't have to edit every week just to keep things accurate). Stan 18:01 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Could you check my question at Fleet Air Arm. Thanks Rmhermen 17:19 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I answered your question about Crown copyright on my talk page; let me add here that I understand your concern, and I'm willing to help rewrite the material in question to make its status clearer. --the Epopt 16:45 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for updating The Glorious First of June; it was my first complete article, I'd forgotten the use of present tense - must've seemed like a good idea at the time. :-) Stan 16:07 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I think using "RAF" instead of "British" makes sense - British No. 1 Squadron is pretty weird-looking! So the original proposal to prefix with country name should be modified to say "or organization name, if that is more commonplace". The wikiproject page is really tentative about all this because there were very few articles and thus very little experience to distill; by creating articles and lists and such, you're actually adding to our collective experience base, so you should feel free to add either to the project or to its talk page. We probably want a Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) too, since that makes other editors more aware of how to write free links that are likely to work when the articles are created.

BTW, I took the liberty of creating your user page, makes it easier to link to your talk page. You don't have to do anything with your user page, but it's a convenient place to let people know a little about yourself, your interests, etc. You've clearly become Wikipediholic, might as well go all the way! :-) Stan 14:09 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

On the asserted neutrality declaration of Finland's, it's added to the article on the Continuation War, see: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Continuation_War&diff=1123753&oldid=1123748

I'm not able to indicate any particular source right now, although I do believe to have read it "many" times, and it seemed to come in handy in the actual context on the World War II-article. The significance is for the debate between Finland and Sweden-Britain-USA, aswell as within Finland: Upto the Winter War there was great support for the Scandinavia-leaning neutralist line, after the Winter War that opinion became less influential, but not unimportant. The neutrality-declaration is by me understood as a reverence to that opinion, and to Britain, USA, Sweden and the occupied peoples of Scandinavia. Britain's declaration of War came much later, btw, and is according to my understanding one of many effects of unskilled diplomacy (Finnish diplomacy in this case).

My thought with the wording Finland initially declared neutrality, however with German and Soviet troops on her soil, and well prepared when the Soviet Union attacked on June 25, was/is that the reader him/herself should recognize the hollowness of the 1941 neutrality-declaration (which is a contrast to the situation of 1939).

-- Ruhrjung 16:59 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi David. I hate to be the one to tell you, but BAE SYSTEMS is correct, while BAe Systems is not. I know this because I lived through the 'merger' which was really only a political term since BAe actually bought Marconi Systems. Yeah, we thought the name was stupid for several reasons, but then they forced the crazy CAPITALIZATION on us and even produced a special font to prove their point. Of course, the press never got the name right and nobody else really got it. The reason that it isn't BAe is because they were trying to lose the connotation that it was an acronym (which it no longer is - see what I mean about stupid?!) and then they had to have SYSTEMS too, which was the only part of Marconi's name that they could keep.

Of course, you don't have to believe someone who worked at their Brough plant for 10 years (1990 to 2000)just visit BAESYSTEMS.com. sugarfish 06:47, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi David

I have added some comments about List of aircraft of the RAF to the talk pages, which you might be interested in. Was it your intention to include all aircraft flown by the British miltary? DJ Clayworth 16:51, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Addition to Mahathir bin Mohamad

Hi, on 7 November [1] you added the following text to Mahathir bin Mohamad:

Despite the vehement denials that his comments were anti-Semitic, it is clear that Dr Mohamad is a racist. He shares a myopic view of Judaism that is common enough in the Muslim world to be a serious concern to many non-Muslims. In its most virulent form, it is the direct descendent of Nazi ideology.

With all respect, this text falls way short of Wikipedia's NPOV philosophy. Please refer to Neutral point of view for a better understanding of what this is.

Also, making a signficant change in general to an article, and especially adding a strongly POV text like this, and marking it as a Minor edit is considered a serious breach of Wikiquette; repeated infractions like this can result in a user being permanently banned.

-- Viajero 09:09, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi again,

I realize that indicating the edit as minor was an honest mistake. I've done it myself.

As far as your opinions go, I have no argument with them. However, because we are committed to neutrality, one can't simply state in an article "it is clear that X is a racist." In the text above, you editorialize and that is not encyclopedic. If you want to present this point of view, you have to source it to someone.

I admit it, these are difficult issues to frame. Several weeks ago, someone inserted a number quotes from his October speech into the article. For some reason, they bothered me. Finally, after a week, I read the speech in its entirely and realized that they were taken out of context. So I removed them, and then re-added one that seemed not to suffer in isolation. That is followed by a line or two of world reaction and his later rebutal, solely with the aim of presenting a balanced set of viewpoints. In my opinion, the article as it now stands gives sufficient coverage to Mahathir's antisemitism. However, if you disagree and would like to expand it, we can continue this discussion on Talk:Mahathir bin Mohamad.

-- Viajero 18:55, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is a copy paste from my talk page:

Well, you seem to be correct. I read a history of the US Army Europe, which currently is the same unit as the 7th US Army, and wrote its history in 7th US Army, because they currently are the same thing. Eisenhower was SACEUR, USAREUR did invade Normandy, but 7th US Army didn't. The site I used tends to do that sometimes. Don't worry, my other articles don't have mistakes like that....

in case you don't read it. That's regarding the article I miswrote....

ugen64 23:21, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

Re: my mistake on Type 42 - Apologies. TwoOneTwo 16:38, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

David, if you have a second, could you take a look at the disambig page Leander. I figure this should have a link (or two) to the class(es) of frigate (or is it light-cruiser?) with that name - but I'm not entirely sure the requisite articles exist yet. Thanks in advance. -- Finlay McWalter 18:44, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Now that you've sucked in the basic text for all those carriers, are you going to wiki them, or do you want to coordinate the task? And pics, must have pics... Stan 07:00, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi - good work on adding the tables to standardise the aircraft entries... not sure whether you're intending to come back and clean up after yourself, but entries that already have pictures are being left in a real mess (and occasionally unreadable) by the simple pasting in of the tables. --Rlandmann 12:18, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Is there an explanation anywhere of exactly how these aircraft tables are supposed to be filled in? I notice that most of the specification lines have multiple table cells -- are these supposed to be for different units of measurement? It would be nice to see one that's actually complete to use as a model. —Morven 15:39, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

David

I've just been back to British military history of World War II after a couple of months gap, and you've done a fantastic job. It's now an excellent, nearly complete, article. Much appreciation. DJ Clayworth 19:27, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't suppose you are Judith's husband? Deb 18:40, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have replaced your picture at Image:Usaf-f111.jpg because USAF Museum pictures are NOT public domain, despite the .mil address. Unfortunate but true. See their site for the depressing details. —Morven 16:20, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(re your reply on my talk page) Ah -- then it was OK (given the statement on there). I'd never seen a picture on the USAF site with a USAF museum text on it before. Pictures taken from the USAF Museum site definitely cannot be used on Wikipedia, which is unfortunate. —Morven 20:59, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I happened on this discussion. While the conditions of use at the museum web site are interesting, do note that they may not be legally binding, at least in the US, for if the source material is in the public domain, a scan of it does not create new copyright and the scan is also in the public domain. See the general list of overriding copyrihgt situations at Online service provider law for more information on things people routinely try to block but which they can't actually block. Jamesday 11:02, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi again - since you're among the most prolific contributors of aircraft types around here, I was wondering if you'd help keeping the List of aircraft up-to-date when adding a new type? That list is going to need serious re-organisation soon, but for now it's the most complete list of the aircraft types we've got here... Cheers --Rlandmann 23:31, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

David: Do you realize that if somebody searches for any of your "...in WWI" and "...in WWII" articles by including the phrase "World War I" or "World War II" (spelled out thusly), they WON'T FIND ANY OF THE ARTICLES. I'll leave it to you to consider whether or not abbreviating two one-syllable words even further is worth it or not. Moncrief 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I see you got to adding msg:DANFS before I did! (I was at the library getting more source material) The ship class message idea is cool too, although it may not be desirable for certain large ones like Balao class submarines. Stan 05:59, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

David, what leads you to believe that any Mozilla 3.0 blocking was involved? Any number of problems can result in a very generic error message. --Brion 06:20, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ok, it's probably just the intermittent global problem where it'll reject everything for a minute. Not sure what caused it, but it happened at least once yesterday. --Brion 06:53, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw your RC entry about the NHC putting DANFS online, checked it out a bit. Will be handy for several cases where a ship was missing from hazegray, although from my one test, it looks like NHC entries have more typos. NHC also said they were to be "updating" their entries, which is going to make interesting synchronization issues, since I'll bet they won't keep a log of their changes like we have here. (Maybe I'll send a suggestion!) Stan 13:59, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

David, in your extensive series of articles on current RN ships, e.g. HMS Blah (X23), could you put in a line of text that links back to the generic HMS Blah page? It won't exist for all, of course, but for quite a few it does - and this would help the user who was actually looking for a historic ship rather than the current one. I've done an example for HMS Exeter (D89), but that isn't necessarily the best way of doing it. In that case there is a fair amount of detail in the generic article, though ideally all that will drop away eventually as detailed pages are written for every ship, and the generic just becomes a disambig page. However it may be a while before we get there... seglea 18:55, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC) (not at all an expert in matters naval, just trying to keep the various things that Exeter needs to link to in good shape)

Hi David. You might like adding the following lists to your user page: List of squadrons of the South African Air Force, List of South African Divisions in World War Two. Regards, Elf-friend 20:23, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality: Irish Free State wasn't a country during WWII, Spain was co-opted by Franco and his ties to Hitler, Turkey isn't incontrovertibly European and Andorra is a microstate? jengod 02:40, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

Okay okay. I'll change the text I just wanted to get the Swedish neutrality article in, and that seemed the most "useless fact-y" in the article... jengod 02:48, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

Hi David, Could you do one of your MediaWiki things for the Formidable class battleship sometime? Geoff 03:33, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks very much, David. Geoff

Thanks for wikifying the aircraft table - I'll admit I'm not yet too au fait with the code for these - could you please re-add the spots for the image and the caption?

Secondly, I'd like your input on a standard footer for aircraft as well (inspired by what I've seen you doing with RN ships). --Rlandmann 05:30, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yea nice work with that! Rland added the image stuff back in to so thats fine now as well. Greyengine5 06:16, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ah i wouldnt't going through them all yet. I mean the main advantage is for new tables really, plus for the same work we could add the series/footer idea. Perhaps we could even merge the footer idea to just below the table so people dont have to scroll to the end of the article?

Thanks for the excellent update on British copyright law! Good luck with the USAF Museum. It may help to recall that the GFDL requires author credit, so we are entirely compatible with the GFLD if we offer them that and it helps to raise awareness of them.:)

Do you think we should move the Royal Navy pages to something like Royal Navy (UK)? Are you sure there are no other Royal Navies? Thanks! Mark Richards 20:55, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

--Re you response - fair enough, perhaps a brief note at the top of each Royal Navy page, explaining that it refers to the UK Navy, since it was not immediately apparent to me when I was looking at List of Royal Navy ship names. Mark Richards 21:08, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi David. re grandfather terminology, all I can say is that I've never seen it used, so it must at least be much less common here. jimfbleak 06:28, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Pumpie

I am sorry that I made that comment to Pumpie, even though it was not a violation of Wikiquette. Your comment about me being an "oafish fool," however, is in violation of Wikiquette. I would appreciate it if you refrained from name calling. By the way, I supported your admin nomination since you stood up for pumpie when I was being arrogant. Perl 15:11, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)