User talk:Lupin/archive2

Crests and shields

Hi. You're doing a fine job with creating all those shields. Could I suggest, though, that in future you name them "XXX shield" instead of "XXX crest", since none of them are crests? Keep up the good work! Marnanel 18:25, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, will do :) Lupin 08:18, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sidney crestshield

Hi, I noticed you're interested in heraldry and Sidney... do you know what the thing on the right of the sidney shield is meant to be? I've only found little bitmaps on the web which are too small to decipher. Any better image or the blazon would be helpful. Cheers, Lupin 09:52, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's argent a bend engrailed sable, impaling or a pheon azure. A pheon is a "broad arrow", the same device that was once printed on prisoners' clothes: perhaps some member of the Sidney family was once in charge of prisons. Marnanel 13:05, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Is there somewhere I can find all these blazons? Lupin 15:35, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not as far as I know, though [CUHAGS http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cuhags/] might be able to help you. The Sidney blazon is mentioned here [1]. If you need a hand searching for a particular blazon I'll try to help as much as I can, though these days I only have access to Google like anyone else.

BTW, when you have a chance, could you perhaps render the University's own arms-- gules, a cross ermine between four lions passant gardant or, and on the cross a closed book fessways gules clasped and garnished gold, the clasps downward? It'd go well on the University's own page, as well as in the corner of Template:University of Cambridge. Marnanel 23:30, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've had a go at this now. I've also been looking for the Caius blazon without joy so far. Any ideas? Lupin 13:02, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

cymbal article

Great work on the cymbal article, it was on my list of things to do when I felt strong enough! Andrewa 05:58, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Lupin 10:24, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pics

Nice pics on Irish theatre and Irish poetry. Bmills 10:28, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Cambridge Shields

A while back I needed to make up a few cambridge university shields for a project I was working on, and only recently went to upload them to Wikipedia. I see you've beaten me to it, however (purely aesthetically) I prefer the look of my shields. I put up a page comparing them, and in each case, I prefer the look of mine.

I don't know much about heraldry, however I find the embossed look much more attractive. I appreciate they're not as 'technically accurate', that's why for each one, I uploaded the un-embossed image with it.

I obviously wasn't going to change all the shields over on the college pages without getting your thoughts first though. --Prisonblues 14:36, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My main query would be the copyright status of your images -- since mine are created from scratch or using public domain resources, I've been able to put them under the GFDL. Do yours use existing material, and if so are they available under a GFDL-compatible license? For example, your shield for the University is identical to the ones on the Cambridge website; my impression is that the University doesn't want (high-resolution) copies of this image widely distributed. Lupin 11:46, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

As I understand it, it's okay to use these images under Fair Use. The situation is extremely complicated, however these are good starting points to look at stuff. For now I've added a full Fair Use notice to the two University images. --Prisonblues

As I understand it, GFDL images are preferred over non-GFDL images (including fair use images) since their use (and, in particular, their reuse) are far less problematic legally. I would favour keeping GFDL images over using fair use images where the choice exists. Of course those GFDL images can be improved upon, but I think replacing them with fair use images would be a retrograde step. Lupin 16:22, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm, I reckon as long as you've clearly linked to the GFDL version in the iamge description, then anyone who is going to be using it for purposes that wouldn't be fair-use, or who isn't in a fair-use jurisdiciton area, can use the GFDL version. I'm not sure though, I'll give it some more thought. In the meantime I might have a go at touching up some of your crests, especially some of your colours --Prisonblues 17:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK. I can send you the SVG sources for the images if you like. Alternatively I could copy the colours from your images myself if you tell me the worst offenders :) Lupin 17:36, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to have a little time available in the next few days, send me (removed address to stop spam) the SVG files and I'll see if I can get them looking special. --212.159.124.175 22:47, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC) (Prisonblues)

I uploaded a tarball. I'd be grateful if you could upload any changes you make. Have fun! Lupin 07:15, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Category:Proofs

You seem to be the person who created this category. Did you have in mind that it would include

articles that embody proofs, or

articles about the concept of proof?

Is it being treated as the latter. It seems like a grossly inappropriate, because highly misleading, name for that. I would expect a category that is to include articles about the concept of proof to be called proof rather than proofs. What do you think? Michael Hardy 21:31, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I had in mind

articles that contain proofs

I don't feel that creating the category lends my opinion more weight than others', though. Lupin 23:15, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Emacs

Hi, I did the image caption. I noticed that emacs was on the list of things which needed caption work and decided to give it a go. The caption docs said that the caption should draw the reader in and do more than simply title the image, hence the lengthy caption. Being new to wikipedia I defer to your judgement, but would like to know what that judgement was. Thanks.--Kop 01:27, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My judgement was that it was telling me too much for such a simple image. I think that for a caption to draw someone in it has to be short and to the point or the boredom factor creeps in - if I want to read a big chunk of text, there's the article right there. Anyway, it is a nice piece of writing and I think that as part of the opening paragraph it does do a good job of enticing people to read further. Lupin 07:39, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ok, that's reasonable, although I'm not sure it entirely jibes with the style guide. If you like the text in the opening paragraph the style guide does say that it can be both there and in the caption. My concern is that the caption that's left is almost exactly the same caption that the Wikipedia:WikiProject Writing Captions people thought needed work. On their list I've removed the strikeouts signifying doneness which I put over emacs when I changed the caption; the ball's back in their court. --Kop 17:41, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Having read the style guide, I think it is far too rigid. If there is a simple image or technical diagram which is pretty self-explanatory I think it should have a correspondingly simple caption, which need not even be a complete sentence if things are clearer that way. Lupin 08:20, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

who are you Lupin?

Hi, I've recently been dobbing about on pages that have some slight conection to Lancaster University and have found that you seem to be a user that has been there first and edited it. Making me wonder if you attend Lancaster Uni, like I do. I see that you have interests in climbing, as do I. Do I know you? Tell us about yourself. User:Soloist

I don't know if you know me - who are you? :-) I've recently left Lancaster, and indeed the UK. (I'm not particularly interested in climbing although I happened to take a photo of a climber). Lupin 20:55, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Never mind, I'm a current student of Lancaster University. Studying Physics. And climbing everything I can find! When did you leave? where are you now Soloist 19:38, 27 Aug 2004 (BST)

I left a fortnight ago - I'm living in Canada at the moment. Lupin 02:02, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I admire your copyediting (as seen on Emacs, you've improved my writing). Aside from re-reading "The Manual of Style" (which I just bought another copy of, it's now in the 4th edition) how can I improve? What's your secret? --Kop 02:57, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. I really don't have a clue how to improve one's copyediting skills. Perhaps reading a lot of well-written material is the key. I've never read the manual of style, myself. Lupin 12:18, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Monopoloy captions

Hi, Lupin, I hope you don't mind I just put the full-sentence Monopoly (game) caption back with explanation on the edit summary. I was trying to provide some context to people who have never seen the game so they'd know more than "in progress," plus trying to comply with guidelines at Wikipedia:Captions, the first of which is that captions should consist of complete sentences. Please edit the caption as you see fit to help it follow the guidelines. Also, please look over the guidelines, and if they need to be revised, please help. Also see Wikipedia_talk:Captions - there are several discussions on particular examples. -- ke4roh 20:27, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

I dispute the usefulness of these guidelines. Maybe I will attempt revision one day, although I feel the tide of opinion is somewhat against my own. I've tried to make your caption directly relevant to the image, which is the biggest failing of many of the captions I've seen which cite the guidelines. (Perhaps it could also be deleted altogether under the "nominative" exception at Wikipedia:Captions#Exceptions to the rules). Lupin 03:09, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I like the Monopoly caption, though I'm still a bit frustrated with the Emacs caption. Any ideas for improving that one? Thanks! -- ke4roh 15:50, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

It's now a full sentence. Lupin 17:22, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! -- ke4roh 18:50, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

I'm curious: what's your opinion on captions? Could the guidelines be made more useful? I must admit I've had quite a time writing captions for subjects of which I knew nothing before reading the article, and with image description pages full of <sarcasm>informative</sarcasm> text like "Camel drinking Coca-Cola," it does challenge me to come up with some more context for the picture. So, I'm trying to improve the background information on images I've contributed and images I wonder about while captioning. -- ke4roh 18:50, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

I haven't devoted much thought to this, so please take this with a pinch of salt. But I would say that if you want to write good captions then you first have to decide what the function of a caption is. IMO, the primary purpose of a caption is to describe the image, by which I mean to give a reasonably detailed account of what the image depicts. Captions may also answer the question "why is this image in this article;" alternatively, this question could be answered in the article. I don't think a hard and fast rule can be given to say which is better, although clearly this question should be answered somewhere unless the answer is blindingly obvious.

Broadly speaking, other information belongs in the article and not in an image caption. I am of the opinion that dogmatic guidelines such as "thou shalt use complete sentences" and "thou shalt not use the verb to be" are unhelpful since every image needs a caption to be tailored to it and not to be constrained by some arbitary set of rules. Lupin 21:55, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you. The opening of Wikipedia:Captions attempts to summarize the purpose of a caption: to tie the image to the article and to provide some context for the picture. It's quite challenging to write a caption that accomplishes those goals and is not a full sentence, and writing a full sentence leads the captioner towards those goals, hence it's the top priority and an easy one to meet. Now what's the difference between these two captions for Image:Emacs.png?

The default splash screen, which greets the user when Emacs is run in a graphical environment.
The default splash screen greets the user when Emacs is run in a graphical environment.

The second is a complete sentence (the first is only a fragment for want of a verb because "greets" is buried in a prepositional phrase), and it's one word and one comma shorter. When I read the first caption, it seems halting and incomplete (though it clearly describes the image and provides some context). The second one delivers a complete thought.

On the requirement for no passive sentences, I had an 8th grade (of 12) English teacher who insisted that we write paragraphs of three or more sentences and at most one of thse sentences could contain a conjugation of "to be." Why? Because "to be" doesn't describe action. Excessive use of "to be" can put the reader to sleep. I occasionally watch scientific NASA films. My chief complaint: "Many passive sentences were constructed." (But wouldn't that be clearer and more interesting if it were "The writers butchered this video with passive verbs throughout the script."

Sometimes a passive sentence is appropriate. In law, the North Carolina government writes, "Each employees hands must be washed with soap and warm water before returning to work." The non-legal writer might be tempted to say "Each employee must wash his or her hands...", but the law is not concerned with who washes, only with the fact that the hands are washed. I have yet to nocice a caption requiring passive voice, though I wouldn't be surprised to see one. Sometimes I edit captions to make them active, but not nearly as often as I'll edit them to make them complete sentences.

Consider the difference between these two captions:

The default splash screen greets the user when Emacs is run in a graphical environment.
The default splash screen greets the user running Emacs in a graphical environment.

In both cases the primary verb is "greets", but the first involves "is" and the second does not. The second also comes up two words shorter and clarifies that the user runs Emacs.

What belongs in the caption versus the article? We went 'round and 'round aobut that with the caption for Image:Spinal_Tap_logo.jpg for heavy metal umlaut. I would add a little extra information to the caption and my text wound up in the article minutes later, with the caption replaced by "Spinal Tap". (It was on the main page that day.) "Spinal Tap" doesn't tell the reader anything more than they can get from looking at the picture, though, so I tried again, and we wound up with the information in both places. It's particularly difficult to write a caption for an image like that because there isn't much context. In that respect, the information in a caption should be context - some more information for the readers about the circumstances of the photo.

The guidelines at Wikipedia:Captions are just that — guidelines. I no more expect to see the perfect caption than I expect to see the perfect article. But that said, I don't see why we shouldn't strive to write better captions. Your thoughts? -- ke4roh 12:09, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Consider the difference between these two captions:

The default splash screen, which greets the user when Emacs is run in a graphical environment.
The default splash screen greets the user when Emacs is run in a graphical environment.

The second is a complete thought, and a complete sentence which reads flowingly, I agree. Its failing is that it makes no direct reference to the image. Without doing so, the potential for reading it as a fact whose spatial proximity to the image is merely coincidental is high. I find this kind of ambiguity infuriating. The subject of a caption should, in the first instance, be the image. Making this tacit assumption on the part of the reader is unjustifiable in most situations, I feel.

I am also not convinced of the ennui induced by the verb "to be". I am completely convinced that sentence constructions whose sole purpose is to avoid using this forbidden verb lead to contortions which are awkward and confusing.

The use of complete sentences should not be a requirement for captions, in my opinion. If there is not enough information available for a caption which has direct relevance to an image, then why not use a simple tag? I agree that in general this is suboptimal, but this is entirely different from saying that a caption which consists of complete sentences is always better than one which doesn't. Less is sometimes more. Lupin 14:49, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I see your points. Our discussion on the first point reduces to a question of how much to trust the reader to interpret and think. At times it can be a tough judgement call. In the more difficult cases, it becomes important to craft the caption to clearly state what is in the picture. I typically trust the reader to expect that at least one of the nouns in the caption would describe the picture. (See for example water skiing.) In the Emacs caption 2 immediately above, the reader must decide if the picture is of a splash screen, a user, or a graphical environment. Perhaps the guidance could be revised to indicate that the caption should clearly refer to the picture. (What do you think of the water skiing caption?)

On contortions to avoid ennui from "to be", Winston Churchill put it nicely (though he was addressing a complaint about prepositions at the ends of sentences): "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." "To be" has its place, and it should be used in some cases. It's not worth contortions to avoid, but it is worth a moment's thought.

Where would a simple tag better suit an image than a full-sentence caption?

Many thanks for the enlightning conversation. -- ke4roh 23:36, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at Ford Mustang. It may be one of those places where a full sentence is overkill, but if we had more information about the various models in the text (e.g. "The 1965 Ford Mustang introduced the whiz-bang super accelerator"), perhaps it wouldn't seem so satisfactory to look at the pictures with those simple tags. (Therein lies the dilemma. If we haven't thought of a good caption, perhaps a short one will do in the meantime, but that short caption could always use some expansion to explain why that particular picture was chosen for the article.) -- ke4roh 23:46, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

My question about your "trusting the reader" to interpret a caption correctly is this: why? When it is so simple (if slightly inelegant on occasion) to avoid this potential source of misunderstanding, is it not better to do so?

As with many things, judgement has to be exercised here. In the case of the Water skiing caption, my personal feeling is that the caption is appropriate, since the connection to the image is plain. Others (who may never have come across water skiing before) may disagree however, in which case the caption should be clarified. Lupin 00:26, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps a new guideline is in order: "The caption should clearly identify the subject of the picture without detailing that which is plain to be seen." I'd put that as number one or two (I lean towards 2, but expect you would prefer 1). In fact, I have a hunch you'd remove the complete sentence guideline entirely, but captions like

Adrian Carmack working on the Baron of Hell. The DOOM monsters were digitized from clay models.

(on Image:Adrian_Carmack.jpg for DOOM) bother me for their choppiness as much as those ambiguous ones bother you. Your thoughts? What's left to resolve? -- ke4roh 13:15, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

I think that given that people seem so fond of guidelines, something like what you suggest is in order. However I would do it like this: the guideline should say "The caption should clearly identify the subject of the picture" and then in the exceptions section point out that things which are obvious even to someone coming to the subject for the first time may be omitted, provided this is not to the detriment of the caption. Otherwise, the guideline itself provides a convenient loophole for those wishing to ignore it. Moreover, I think that "detailing what is plain to be seen" is often precisely what a good caption should do -- a good informative image has an easily identifiable subject, and a good caption should describe the subject of the image.

I agree that "choppy" captions are bad. I would favour replacing the first guideline with one about captions of a certain length flowing off the tongue... but of course that's harder to define, let alone "enforce".

Putting either the "full sentences" guideline or an "anti-choppiness" guideline as the number one priority seems to me to approach the problem backwards - content should rule over style, in the first instance. Stylish captions with obscure or irrelevant content should not be favoured over those with relevant content which are phrased badly; instead, the good content should be rewritten stylishly (but unambiguously), when this is possible. This is my main gripe with this purely stylistic guideline being given so much emphasis. Lupin 13:37, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm thinking about a major refactoring of Wikipedia:Captions to address your concern and make the justifications for each of the guidelines clearer. (I just whipped up the numbered guidelines one day based on all the discussions we'd had until that time, and I was somewhat surprised nobody had any comments about them until yours.) I'm imagining using the TOC box as the numbered list and having a subsection to address each of the guidelines, explain its relevance, and discuss any exceptions to that particular guideline. I'm also inclined to reference the sections of talk pages that generated each guideline. Of course, the refactoring will take a few minutes :-). I also don't want the page to be prohibitively long - just enough to cover the subject.

As for approaching the problem backwards, there is a method to my madness (not to say it's right, just a method). Namely, if people read and follow only one rule, it should be the one most likely to result in a good caption. I would expect people to make the caption describe the picture in the absence of explicit instruction to do so (though some of the captions that otherwise attempt to meet the guidelines don't do that clearly enough). In fact, when I wrote a chapter for a real book, they insisted on exactly two things: captions must be full sentences, and images must be referenced in the body of the work. Everything else was up to the individual authors and editors. It surely generated better captions than no guidance at all. -- ke4roh 01:42, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Template:Oxbridge College Infobox

I see you've found the above. The syntax [[Image:{{{crest}}}.png]] doesn't work, because of the software. [[Image:{{PAEGNAME}} crest.png]] works fine, however.
James F. (talk) 16:44, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK. The problem with the latter is that it entails renaming a whole load of images to fit this arbitrary convention. The current solution seems to work, however. Lupin 16:46, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bug in Ackermann function image

Looks like you uploaded image:Ackermann.png --- in case you hadn't noticed, there is a bug in it --- in the second case statement, it should read if m > 0 and n = 0.. Perhaps it was accidently cropped?

homotopy image

Hi Lupin,

I'm writing the article fr:Homotopie in the French Wikipedia and I was wondering if I could use the image you created.

Thanks in advance, fr:Utilisateur:Deviles.

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 15:31, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)