User talk:Trilobite

Thanks for your vote of confidence!

Hi Trilobite, Thank you for your vote at my nomination. Your support means a lot to me and I look forward to helping out as an admin. Cheers, BanyanTree 03:40, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Talk:An Garda Síochána

I have been reformatting the requested moves vote to make it easier to read. Because you expressed you opinion before the formal WP:RM request I have not added your name to the Talk:An Garda Síochána#Requested move vote. If you wish to vote then please do so. Philip Baird Shearer 13:47, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for drawing my attention to the vote. — Trilobite 18:12, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

English, English, English...

Hi again Trilobite:

Just a grammatical doubt... is it the same to say "it's a city belonging to that country" and "it's a city located in that country"???

Regards. --Waninoco 20:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Most of the time those two would mean just about the same thing, however I think if you're writing an article or something the second one is better, simply because the first is about possession and the second is about location. The first one would be okay in, for example, "Ceuta is a city belonging to Spain," when it's outside of the main part of the country, but it would sound a bit odd to say "Paris is a city belonging to France." Also, the located bit isn't really needed. I think "Geneva is a city in Switzerland" sounds best. This is just the reaction of a standard native speaker of course—I'm no grammar expert. Other people might have a different opinion on this. — Trilobite 18:12, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't resist throwing in some pedantry here. Native speakers are the de facto grammar experts. I think you made your case more clear than any grammar expert could do, because writing well is all about native speaker's intuitions (note that all three options are perfectly grammatical).

Thanks for your email by the way — I didn't reply because we agree on the matter. See you around! — mark ✎ 18:33, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Mark, I appreciate the pedantry! As a non-linguist who's interested in linguistics and such, whenever I hear someone talking about people using "bad grammar" I feel a strong urge to tie them up and lecture them on my opinions of prescription and description, and now here I am telling someone to consult a grammar expert if they want a proper answer! Native speakers are indeed the grammar experts. Thank you for reminding me of this! — Trilobite 18:50, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help. I agree with mark and I think that you English-speakers not only are de facto grammar experts (and even de iure), but also you must be it. I recommend you to read this article I found time ago at Newsweek Magazine's website: Not the Queen's English. Hasta la vista and thank you again! --Waninoco 19:57, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Welcome me? =)

Hi. I'm a new comer... and found my way here through some Welcoming Committee page. Will you welcome me and find my way around here. Didn't know where and how to ask so I wrote it here. Well? --Jack in the box 14:02, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! I've put some links you might find useful on your talk page. — Trilobite 16:05, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest. I really need to ask few questions probably won't be found through help or faq pages. Can I email you or pm you? — Jack in the box 13:36, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well usually on Wikipedia just about all discussion is carried out on talk pages and user talk pages like this one, so to send me or anyone else a message you just put it on their talk page and a notice will appear when they next load a wiki page to tell them they have new messages. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them - you just need to leave a message here like you just have. — Trilobite 13:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

About the MEP-subs

Hi Trilobyte,

I have seen that you apparently created many MEP pages, apparently using a robot, very nice indeed. If your robot can also update pages which have not been changed since your robot created them in the first place, it will be very easy to extend the MEP stubs to have more information.

E.g. a page like the one of Pilar del Castillo Vera should be possible to create fully automatically if you use the data which I retrieved from the EP using a script.

The only exception of that would be for the information if the MEP was elected for the first time or if the MEP was already MEP in a previous term, but at least for the last two terms this is also possible to get.

It's best if you can email me using my wikipedia account's email and I can give you the data or/and the script. --NoSoftwarePatents 01:09, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message, it's got me thinking. The MEP stubs weren't created with a robot, but manually, making extensive use of copy and paste, browser tabs, and other such helpful facilities. I gave up about halfway through and I still intend to finish the job one of these days. I don't know much about operating bots on Wikipedia (except that other people have made really great use of them) but I'd be happy to work with you to improve the MEP pages. The MEP database on the European Parliament's site is a useful resource, and if you've developed a script to pull information off it we have the potential to do a really good job of the pages. How about this for a proposal: If I work out a standard template for a basic MEP stub with fields that can be filled in using data from the EP website, your script could presumably produce all the several hundred articles which I would be happy to add to Wikipedia manually, which wouldn't take too much time and would allow for manual tweaks. Since I don't know much about using robots to do these things I'd be grateful for your feedback. It would be great if we could get something like this working. Putting the pages together is the labour-intensive part, and if you've got a script that can do this we are most of the way there already. Your example page is pretty close to what I have in mind, but I would like to have a think about the ideal format before we go ahead and create all the pages. What do you think? — Trilobite 02:08, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've put some rough ideas about what I'd like to see for the pages at User:Trilobite/MEP script. It would be good to hear what you think. — Trilobite 02:45, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've done some big updates and and fixes now, and the new uploaded source is (at least from my persprective) much better now. I've changed it to fit what you edited manually mostly, I think it's at about 90% of I could do. Have a look at your User:Trilobite/MEP script page for the details. --NoSoftwarePatents 07:17, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories

What are all of those "User" categories you're creating? RickK 08:40, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

They're part of this scheme to allow people to find users who speak certain languages. There are quite a few users in the categories for the bigger languages, but it seemed worth laying the foundations for all languages with Wikipedias having more than 100 articles so that people didn't come along and implement them in a haphazard non-standard way, and I was just finishing that task off. My apologies if I am flooding Special:Newpages or something. It's all done now. — Trilobite 08:48, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks. RickK 08:49, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my duff re-direct

Hi Trilobite - thanks for fixing my wakefield regional council link - I couldn't work out how to do it - thanks again Brookie 19:34, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It still isn't working for me. I think they have turned off interwiki redirects after French wikipedians and others used to arrive at the village pump complaining that their user pages had been redirected to that particular notorious picture on en: and they had no obvious way of fixing it. — Trilobite 11:47, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Babel

Whysome version of ISO 639. —msh210 16:03, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about that. As I said, I won't take it out if you add it in again. — Trilobite 16:12, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Updates to the MEP script finished

Hi Trilobite, I just wanted to put a quick notice here that I have now updated User:Trilobite/MEP script to make sure that you see it. I'm just putting this here as kind of "redirect" which we can delete. --NoSoftwarePatents 07:24, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been keeping an eye on the page - some good updates. Slowly but surely I am getting there with uploading the individual articles. Thanks for all your work. — Trilobite 16:12, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for supporting my nomination on RfA, it failed because of Wikipedia's minority rule system, although I thought 21/8 support was sufficient. It was also cut short by 12 hours. But your vote of confidence is greatly appreciated, now let's build an encyclopedia! --Bjarki 13:52, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry the nomination failed. I think some people feel that en: is somehow the only Wikipedia that matters, and extensive admin experience in another language doesn't count for much. Hopefully you will be renominated sometime. — Trilobite 17:50, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah! I see the cabal has now relented and decided to enforce their own rules! Congratulations! — Trilobite 12:56, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Adminship nomination

Hey. I noticed your username popping up a lot over the course of my editing and I'd say you do a pretty good job. I always thought you were an admin and for some reason I decided to read your user page and was surpised to find that you're not an admin. In my opinion you're due for a nomination. Have you ever been nominated? If you are interested I'd like to nominate you. I'm relatively new here (22 days) so I've never nominated anyone before. I just think you'd be a great admin. — oo64eva (AJ) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 08:57, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind comments. I haven't been nominated before but I'd be very happy to accept adminship if it was offered. Thanks for offering to nominate me! — Trilobite 09:11, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I am going to generate your nomination here Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Trilobite. It should be done in a half hour or so as I am going to research your contributions a bit more. Many people dislike the RfA process because it can almost seem like a court room where they are being judged. Don't worry though, you should do fine. — oo64eva (AJ) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 09:18, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I guess this is where people find out if they've made any enemies! — Trilobite 09:19, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay it's all set. Head over to your nomination and accept. You know the drill. Oh, and good luck! — oo64eva (AJ) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 10:15, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)