Mbecker

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Hello there Mbecker, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page and experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Coolness - you have copied my standard greeting and greeted at least one other user. Keep up the great work! :) --mav

Hi there. Great to see you're meeting and greeting, but are User talk:4656, User talk:202519688 all called "Parallax"? I think you may have forgotten to change the name part of the greeting... ;-) -- Tarquin

Hi - I understand your concern about pages that redirct to people's user pages (such as Lee Daniel Crocker), but please do not add comments to them as it stops the redirects from working. These pages take up very little space, and are necessary because a lot of pages point to them - usually talk pages signed before the "User:" namespace was created. If you want to raise the matter with someone, you should probably add a comment to the Wikipedia:Village pump --Camembert

A response for you is at my talk page. --mav

Did *you* get permission to put them here? I just took what you uploaded, which was in some format no one recognized, looked at it in khexedit, figured out it's an uncompressed pixelmap, changed the unknown header to PPM, and compressed to PNG. -phma

Why should Cops be deleted? Koyaanis Qatsi 07:04 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think I understand you. Would you want every page mentioned on Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages deleted also? Koyaanis Qatsi

Adding to what Koyaanis Qatsi has said, just because there are now currently no links to the page doesn't mean there won't be any in the future. And, in my opinion there undoubtably will be. Also I expect there are other books/films out there called Cops that could be put there in the future and perhaps also there should be a link to an article about the meaning of the word cop (either in Wikipedia or Wiktionary) as it is a slang term and I'd guess many people with English as a second language who learnt English from a non-American source mightn't have heard the term. On just the first line of the 'A' section of Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages, eight of the eighteen links point to pages with only 2 articles listed on them but I think a lot of people would argue that they shouldn't be deleted. -- Ams80 13:24 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

RE question about March 2003.
RobLa creates these redirects so that the current month link goes somewhere. This is a content-oriented approach; since the events for March 2003 are still on Current events it makes sense to redirect March 2003 to Current events until the end of March. Then the redirect will become its own page with all the archived current events for March. --mav 01:37 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

My preferences are set so that links aren't underlined, so it's not possible to tell the difference between red text and links to non-existent articles. Could you use a different way of highlighting? (like bold and italic, eg). Might save a bit of confusion from people reading your page... :) Martin 20:07 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I made it that way on purpose. I think it draws the eye of a real Wikidedian :) MB 20:48 15 May 2003 (UTC)

I was messing around with color on my user page, and I wanted to see if I could change the color of one of the links on my page. You see, it is a link to an internal page, but wikipedia gives it the color of an external link. I found out that it is really easy to do this in a bit of a funky way with the </nowiki> flag. Here is an example: [http://home.i1.net/~dwolfe/hexmixer/ hEx MiXeR] and here is the code: <nowiki>[http://home.i1.net/~dwolfe/hexmixer/ hEx MiXeR]
MB 19:02 15 May 2003 (UTC)

Looks like it's not just the color flag that you can mess with. I changed the font on my userpage too. I will be messing around and seeing what types of neat stuff I can put in the wiki. Check out my page to see what I am up to :). MB 19:13 15 May 2003 (UTC)

Do you really have to modify the standard font choices? Changing the colour might be ok, but why have you made your user page appear in Courier? We should sternly discourage the use of different fonts. It's not neat - it's vulgar and does not add anything. Cgs

What is wrong with personal style when it comes to personal pages? MB 19:22 15 May 2003 (UTC)

Personal pages are fine - I just have nightmares of Wikipedia becoming like the internet in the mid 90's - all flashing text and scrolling banners and shit. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Cgs

Well then we need to decide what is acceptable, and what is not, and then decide how to enforce it. 1) Change the wiki source to disallow resricted formating changes, or 2) Just make policies. MB 19:33 15 May 2003 (UTC)

You're free to design your user page however you want, but you should note two things: 1) The developers are currently discussing ways to entirely get rid of HTML in Wikipedia. Support for some features of HTML will probably be disabled at some point. 2) Many users, including myself, have the "Underline links" user preference disabled. If I visit your user page with these settings, it is impossible to distinguish between differently colored links and differently colored text. I have to move my mouse over the text "Michael Becker" to see whether it is a link. Very bad design. --Eloquence 23:20 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Mbecker's response to my similar comment above was "I made it that way on purpose". I plan to make it a better way in an equally purposeful manner, since I feel this is insufficient reason to inconvenience others. :) Martin 23:46 15 May 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I've had a sudden attack of live and let live feelings, so I won't revert if you stick the red links back in. But green still looks nicer! :) Martin 00:03 16 May 2003 (UTC)

First rule of UI design: Nobody reads the manual! :)
Thanks for fixing. And thanks also for keeping your markup green. And much thanks for fixing the clitoris image - nice trick with the nails! :) Martin

Like you're doing with Futurama Please tell me all similar effots you've done with categorizing topics. user_talk:hfastedge

I think you're going a bit over the top with the disambiguation thing. We only need to disambiguate when there is something else to disambiguate from. -- Oliver P. 01:09 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks much for the tip! RK 00:16 21 May 2003 (UTC)

How did you get a figure of 222? My user contributions page lists only 180. CGS 21:44 21 May 2003 (UTC).

Actually, I think it's spelled more like "Capiche?" or something like that. Italian (and Romance languages in general) have a pretty severe lack of 'k's, mostly. -- John Owens 20:09 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Your clitoris image looks good to me. I guess you should mention it on one of the talk pages, just in case. I'm glad that we've got something productive out of all that arguing! :) Martin ---

Michael, we like many of your contributions and are glad to have you as wikiholic - let us know: where did your clitoris image go? There are many places on the web for content like the instructions in the old fisting page or your pictures, and we adult vikings like to see them (an enzyclopedia is not the right place) - To ban us you need the support of a colleague of mine - say hallo to the professors of your university (colleagues of mine)

one of the vikings - Viking 19:13 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Wapcaplet certainly isn't Viking - indeed, he seconded your call for a ban. Evercat 20:03 30 May 2003 (UTC)

And your latest addition is not funny. :-P Evercat 20:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Heh. Viking is (in my opinion) probably just a single individual. In any event, check out the history of my talk page. Why would I waste time arguing with myself? Finally, I saw your edits to your whiteboard because I regularly check Special:Recentchanges as I do quite a bit of vandalism reversion and it often shows up there first. I knew you'd been discussing Viking and wondered if your edit was about that, so I had a look. Anyway, it's alright, I'm not offended. Evercat 20:28 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Mystery solved - it was User:Kils and some people he knew. There's some talk on the mailing list. Evercat 20:06 31 May 2003 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:Wikipedia and Religion. --Dante Alighieri 08:57 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hallo Michael: I appologize to you if you felt insulted. I did not mean it that way. You have great pages. If I can be of help to you as a professor anytime, let me know - Uwe ("sailor") Kils 13:48 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Re: the Viking situation. Glad to contribute my opinion on the situation. I had no idea I was under any suspicion of actually being Viking }:-) Anyhow, hopefully the situation has resolved itself. -- Wapcaplet 15:19 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban signed in users. What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban anonymous vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Votes for deletion for more than a week, protect pages when asked to, and help keep the few protected pages there are, among them the precious Main Page, up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information at Wikipedia:Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun! --Eloquence 18:46 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Reverting edits is a lot easier if you check a user's contributions list ("User contributions" on the user page) and click the rollback link. It is only available if the edit is still the most recent one, and you cannot accidentally rollback twice. --Eloquence 20:36 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Did you and I talk about Micheal problems on another page at some time not long ago? Or am I thinking of someone else? Senility has obviously set in, I can't remember. No matter, I just dropped by to say that your edit summary just now - fixed spelling error by Michael. Checked validity of everything he added - is a really good idea. That makes life so much easier for people cleaning up after the factually-challenged one, and also avoids any risk of your edit getting caught in the crossfire. Hey - you know this stuff already, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Cheers -- Tannin

Welcome to the Friends of Michael :-) -- JeLuF 20:25 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Heya,

I think you've done an excellent job as a sysop so far, and I'm telling you this to get you to do some work for me :-). I'll be gone for four days starting Wednesday, and it would be nice if someone could keep the list of "new pages" on the Main Page up to date in that period. What this basically means is checking Special:Newpages once a day and adding four to five links to articles that already look good. Would you do this for me while I'm gone? I'll do an example update in a few minutes. --Eloquence 22:18 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Argh, look what you've started! :-) Evercat 22:34 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Banning user accounts and seeing users' IPs is restricted to developers only at this point. Since this is just more idiot vandalism I've gone ahead and banned that account. --Brion 05:23 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

meta:Wikipedia:RainCloud doesn't exist.
meta:bans is the meandering thoughts of a reprobate and has no official status
Have you seen wikipedia:accuracy dispute?

Martin

Smaller done (lavender_small.jpg) ¿Is enough or you need smaller yet? Guillermo 15:12 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That is a good size :-). I tried to favor the creation of m:wiki:raincloud; but it didnot work :-( you are welcome to give it a try :-). WikiLove User:anthere

I did an article text search on "8217" to find all the Microsoft-generated cruft (apostrophes first; there are 413 articles with this type of apostrophe in it, and hopefully that will be the largest count I get). I'm planning on doing double quotes, dashes etc. later.

It keeps me occupied. ;-) - Hephaestos 02:16 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

thanks for the advice. Will know now :-) Ant

Re question on my talk page - Like I tried to report back, I changed that image inadvertently (clicked on a wrong link). Thanks for changing it back, I couldn't figure out how to do it. Enough already. Espen

I like my version better, without the Wikipedia: namespace visible -- Rotem Dan 19:48 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please read my comments on Talk:Main Page -- Rotem Dan 19:51 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, I changed the voting list in takepage of inheritance (object-oriented programming) so that the course of further contributions can be clear. -- Taku 03:44 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up about Inheritance etc... Mintguy

Hey, Mbecker, I'll bet you want to talk me through the creation of a bot or two, don't you? Also, do you have AIM? --Dante Alighieri 20:57 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake, User:Bender isn't operational yet. ;) --Dante Alighieri 21:03 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't know Python, but I am interested in learning. It's been one of those things that I was going to get around to at some time or other. Let's talk over AIM, it's faster. ;) Check here for my AIM name. --Dante Alighieri 21:18 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

er...sorry. I usually try to think of using the full sig on user talk page. Not often on article or meta talk page, as I consider answers and comments are likely to be put there. I put my name by hands for uneasyness to do the thild on my keyboard. No, I wont use an official short name for I specifically asked some users not to call me ant. So, I do not sign in the same way in all places. Did you have something to tell me ? :-) user:Anthere

Re: Wikipedia:Favorite pages of banned users - I did notice this. Good idea! Most of us who have been here a while have a pretty easy time spotting Michael's edits, but this will definitely be quite useful. If only all vandals were as consistent as he is :) -- Wapcaplet 23:31 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

MB, it seems the content disclaimer has sorted itself out. I still think a couple of examples would be useful, but otherwise I think it covers the consensus position quite nicely. --Robert Merkel 00:45 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

con·sen·sus Audio pronunciation of consensus ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kn-snss) n.

1. An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole: “Among political women... there is a clear consensus about the problems women candidates have traditionally faced” (Wendy Kaminer). See Usage Note at redundancy. 2. General agreement or accord: government by consensus.

There is no consensus about what to do. Don't pretend that there is. Thanks. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi 00:49 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Subpages are definitely out. Mintguy 15:12 10 Jun 2003 (UTC) See Wikipedia:Do not use subpages Mintguy 15:27 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Fair enough. Well then, I don't see any compromise. MB 15:36 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think, and hope, Taku wil buy my argument about genetic algorithms. BTW have you looked at subprogram. It's a disaster. I didn't want to get involved in another dispute with Taku but it's a right mess because Taku decided that everthing that resembled a subroutine should all be on the same page. At one point it even said something like "an abstract method was a subprogram without any code in it." Also I rarely contribute to articles about software on Wikipedia, I get enough of that in my day job. I made an exception and I wish I hadn't. Mintguy 15:53 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Re: Subprogram. It isn't a proper term. At least not since the 1950s. But as I said above I don't want to get into another conflict. Mintguy

Wrongbros probably is not Michael, but is adding some articles regarding a record label that might not exist, see Messed Up Wreckords and the associated talk page. -- JeLuF

Hi there. Whilst I agree that QEII made an interpretation of the facts, but it remains a fact that this was her response to a request made direct to her by some Rastafarians when she visited Jamaica. I think "In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain refused to make a public apology for the long history of slavery under the British Empire on the basis that it was legal." is a fair summary of her response. So I don't really see where the problem of this arises. I might think that her argument is specious particularly in light of the legal and political chicanery which Edward Coke involved himself, but this is not what I say - I leave the reader to make whatever inference they feel the evidence warrants. Harry Potter 00:35 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please don't give three sided football any legitimacy by adding stuff about "London Psychogeographic Association" into the football article. As far as I can work out the London Psychogeographic Association, only exists as a concept in a few pataphysic artists heads. Take a look at http://www.deepdisc.com/space1999/archive/11.html to get some idea and then read Luther Blissett Mintguy 08:07 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This is the whole point - is is deliberatly hard to understand in order to confuse. At its heart the concept of three-sided football is absurd. There are some facts, some pseudo-facts, and some fantasy all mixed in together. They call it pataphysics some might call it art, but I call it nonsense. Luther Blissett never organised and games. The AAA doesn't exist. It is a name invented for the sake of art as the ostensible organisers of an art exhibition called space1999. At least that's the best that I can make of it. Mintguy

Mintguy seems very bold in making assertions about things which they clearly know nothing about. Space 1999, Tendays that shoke the universe was a "Festival of independent and community-based space exploration" held in London, Earth from June 18th 27th 1999. It included a conference, performance, astral travel, music, film, discussion and training. The festival explored "the new possibilities that open up when we form autonomous communities in outer space". In fact the Association of Autonomous Astronauts was an world organisation with events in Italy, Austria as well as London, with branches in New Zealand as well as across Europe. The idea that Space 1999 was an "art exhibition" is what we call Absurdist. Harry Potter 11:13 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Mbecker. I've seen a lot of your edits here and there and generally, as far as I recall, there are generally pretty good and make Wikipedia better. :) However, today I've seen you adding redundant links to the bottom of articles (usually in the See also:) sections. They are generally links to subjects which are covered in the main article, which usually have a link to the subject already. While I don't think there is any formal style guideline on this, redudant links in articles are generally discouraged (I know, I've had several of my own mistaken redundant links reverted). Therefore, you might want to reconsider creating the redundant links as they are already covered in the articles (and might just be reverted). :) —Frecklefoot 13:56 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for my WikiLove flower! Angela 12:20 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Actually, Impeccability was perfectly accurate. I assume you deleted it because you weren't familiar with it? Would you mind terribly if I undeleted it? -- Someone else 21:29 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Why are you guys giving this man the time of day? Isn't he the infamous Michael?