User talk:Paul Drye

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Hi, Paul, loved your History of Scotland stuff. I'll get the History of England crosslinked asap. Keep up the great work! sjc

Nice write up of The Clash, too. And Talking Heads. GWO

You have a flaw in your write-up of IKBrunel, in the section on the Thames Tunnel. "Isambard spent nearly" -- nearly what? 17 minutes to fix it? What took ya so long? :-)

That is a nice Talking Heads writeup. I can see your background in writing. Adding it to Brilliant prose. :-) --Koyaanis Qatsi

what's "too many" history books? can I have any discards?--MichaelTinkler

Just adding my words of admiration on the Scotland history article. I'd love to see more on William Wallace and Robert Bruce, and on the Picts. -- BryceHarrington

Nice spot on the Dunwich Horror, Paul. It must have been some other horror writer (maybe August Derleth?) that did the story about the Cthulhu tunnels from Walberswick to Dunwich. sjc

Paul, shouldn't the entry be under Walter Scott? --MichaelTinkler

I've been going solely on the basis of "What is he most commonly known as?" Winston Churchill is popularly "Winston Churchill", despite being a "Sir", so his entry is without a title. On the other hand no-one calls Sir Walter Scott "Walter Scott", probably since that's a relatively common name; so "Sir Walter Scott" it is.

I'm operating on the theory that I want to pander to what people are likeliest to type in some article that mentions him, oblivious of what decision I may have made in naming my article. If necessary, it's complete replacements of names: "Duke of Marlborough" instead of John Churchill, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" (when I get around to him) instead of Charles III. All on the basis of popular usage...it seems to me to be the most logical and, more importantly, effective way of filing, seeing as Wiki frees us of alphabetical ordering and the limitations of paper. --PaulDrye

that's reasonable enough. We aren't bound by page-flipping searches, after all. It takes some getting used to, though! --MichaelTinkler

I did have the Thomas More entry linked to as Sir Thomas More, on the same reasoning, but that decision was vetoed. it does, however, present something of a problem for people who are alive and are knighted; for instance I would not expect to link to [[Sir Alec Guinness]] or [[Sir Paul McCartney]] though those may be the most common references a century from now. --Koyaanis Qatsi

While I see the problem, I don't think we should be apologizing for not being able to predict the future :) We can cross that bridge when we pass water under it. What was the reasoning behind the veto? --PaulDrye

Good point in re: the future. All those calls to the Psychic Friends Network just aren't panning out. ;-) I don't know why it was moved; I don't remember any discussion of it. I'm not broken up over it; it's just something I noticed. Which reminds me to check that all of the links are now to the article rather than the redirect. --Koyaanis Qatsi

I would point out on the issue of Thomas More that a rather large body of those who actually know his name refer to him as Saint Thomas More. --MichaelTinkler

I suppose it's more a matter of culture than anything; titles are "identifiers" in British culture. To Americans, they are just information about a person and/or his accomplishments. We would never think to title an article "Dr. Albert Einstein", so why "Sir Alec Guinness"? He is, and always was, Alec Guinness. It so happens that he was later knighted, which fact should certainly be included in the article. But that's not who he was. Of course, that distinction doesn't work as well for hereditary titles that really are like identities (Lord Byron), or for simple names that can only be disambiguated by titles (Pope Gregory). --LDC

Which brings us back to "Sir Walter Scott" -- British, far more popular and talked about in the 19th century (when -- horrors! -- one DID NOT drop the title) than in the 20th, and with a moderately ambiguous name. My experience is that the "Sir" is practically part of his one-word name: "Sirwalterscott", so pronounced by my English professors. Rather like "Sirwalterraleigh", now that I think about it. Maybe it's just the Walters. All I can say is "Thank God his name isn't James". As far as I can tell, every third male in 18th century Scotland had that as a first name....PaulDrye

Good points which bring us back to the problem of whether to title or not to title, and (in this case) which one to choose if there are several. Perhaps we should hash out a voluntary policy on it. --Koyaanis Qatsi

Paul, I looove the rework of Prussia! Thank you sooo much! (oh -- didn't mean to be so soppy -- haven't had my caffeine yet.) -- JHK

Thanks for the welcome and the kind words! After scanning this page I relize that I'm going to have to look in to your Lovecraft stuff...

Oh, and thanks for the help with the Hoss/Hess thing! -- Dr.scientist

Sheesh, Paul...I said I'd be back to fix it -- I just didn't realize all the links would break if I copied and pasted from a much better version. Sorry I messed it up, but it was unintiontional and could hardly have been worse than the mess I was attempting to fix. Besides, in the meantime, I've found two web sites on Prussian history (one the lecture notes from a German history course) that say the Original Prussians were Slavic peoples eliminated byt the Teutonic Knights.

Anyway, thanks for fixing the page -- how did you do it? JHK

Thanks, Paul -- I thought it was me, because I did try to remove Helga's stuff and replace it with version 20. What is the best way to do a reversion? Go to the desired page and view source, then copy? Any advice would be welcome. Thanks! JHK

Thanks again. Your sanity is very important to me, as it provides very nice articles and re-writes! JHK ---

Hey Paul -- it's just that feudal in this sense is kinda meaningless -- you're really talking about noble rank, not feudal rank. King is theoretically higher than Duke (although not in practice throughout the middle ages and much of the early modern period....).There was never a feudal system per se -- just variations of normal feudal contracts that changed over time and place. In fact, there are very good historical arguments for banning the terms feudal and feudalism. I don't buy into that kind of extreme view, but am very aware of the fact that the idea of feudalism has been badly taught for decades, and think that we should do everything we can to use the term carefully and as accurately as possible. I'll try to get to editing feudalism soon.JHK

I already hit Prussia -- does it work for you? JHK

Kewl! and thanks for being nice to me! <feeling sorry for myself today> :-) JHK

Hi Paul, I just noticed the way you've been adding historical events to year entries, by searching through Wikipedia articles for mentions of years. Very cool! --LMS

Hey, Paul-I like your chronological annals style, myself. I was reading something this weekend that made me think that maybe working on chronology for a while might help me see wikipedia's place in informationdom more clearly! --MichaelTinkler

Hi Paul -- just wanted to say thank you! JHK

for your lovely work on things of dubious Germanicity (it's been a long day!)

You know, I had never bothered to check Google. You're right! The only references to Old Prussi Land or Alt Prussi Land are Helga's own sites (and one link to her site). --MichaelTinkler

Thanks for pointing out the ATT article I've folded my AT and T information into it and redirected.

Paul, I am going to remove your redirect; there are (to my knowledge) at least 3 Penlee Houses in Cornwall, and there is at least 1 in Plymouth, Devon. None of them are as significant as the one in Penzance, but I am striving to keep this as unambiguous as possible. There may also be other Penlee Houses worldwide which are significant... There is no major hassle with having a disambiguated name, it is just a bit tiresome to reference. The search engine will still find it. We maybe need a set of Wikipedia standards for this like we are starting to work up in History for systems of nomenclature. sjc

(response to reply to comments in talk:sjc): Paul, The Eden Project, Cornwall is a good example of where disambiguation is v. important; your comments about Penlee House are quite accurate, as far as I can see at the moment, but cross-referencing is only marginally more difficult if a fully qualified name is given, and has a by-product advantage in that it ensures that the correct cross reference is given; a cross reference to Henry IV is different to a cross-reference to Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. And there are bl**dy hundreds of 'em (well, quite a few...). And as for towns of Newport, it's going to be a real nightmare.

Tory - Removing corrupt from C18 politics! Patronage and nepotism were rife, rotten boroughs etc.

Why can't words like Quiver, Quintuplet and so on stay in Wikipedia?

Why can't Wikipedia also serve as dictionary?

Well, because it just isn't. See What Wikipedia is not - it's not a dictionary. I'm sure there could be a good entry for Quiver or Dionne Quintuplets or so forth, but it needs to be more than a 'definition'--MichaelTinkler

But don't dictionary-like entries provide a start for encyclopedia entries? --Seb

No, not really, or at least not often. When you've said what a Quimby is, there aren't a lot of places to go. Role of the Quimby in 20th history, perhaps? -- GWO

The Page should not be deleted only noted with a text like "need more writing" -- Peder Persson

I disagree, Peder. In the cases where an entry could conceivably become an actual encyclopedia article, I left it alone -- for example, Quail, which could contain an article one day, Ddroar's sad attempt to the contrary. The ones I deleted are, in my judgement, never going to be expandable in that manner. They are too general.

I would be happy if you proved me wrong by going ahead and writing proper articles for the ones I deleted. -- Paul Drye

Hey now, there's no need to make newcommers feel unwelcome by labeling their first contributions "sad attempts". Otherwise, we'll send people away who write articles like adhesive. --Stephen Gilbert

Paul: you misunderstand me. I'm not criticizing your editing; I agree with your choice of removals, actually. What I was criticizing was your labeling ddroar's first contributions as "sad attempts" instead of giving him some constructive criticism. But, as I was writing that comment, you went to his page and offered such criticism. So... well, ... um, good. :-) --Stephen Gilbert

I think the redirecting instead of deleting is so much better in so many ways. It serves the same purpose as a deletion, but contributes so much more. --TheCunctator

Paul, in case I haven't said so lately, thank you for being you (i.e., for not being, say, an irredentist Old Prussi-phile). --MichaelTinkler

Hi Paul -- I missed the latest round of Old Prussi land stuff -- what happened?? JHK

Hi there - sorry I amputated the second half of your wonderful History of Scotland article --Dweir.

It did it again! Argh, Wikipedia's getting on my nerves. Sorry... Dweir

I'm confused Mr. Drye. I'm a post-grad Sociology, Ethnic Studies and Communications major. My emphasis has always been religion and diestic theory. Further, as a writer you might appreciate the fact that I too must pay the bills and work as a manager for a medium sized printing concern in Seattle. What I don't get is why you removed my addendums. If there is a policy at Wikipedia I'm unaware of, or some protocol I have violated please let me know. Thanks, H.W. Clihor.

I revived your addendums and placed them at Situational Dynamics. I'd love to hear more about that topic. --Ed Poor

Wonderful article at Behistun Inscription, Paul. --Koyaanis Qatsi

Ditto for Ibn Battuta (!) - MMGB

Hi Paul! just wanted to check in and see how things are going...If I'm going to be back, I figure I should at least try to foster a more friendly community! Hope your holidays were happy!! JHK

Mucho thanks for dealing with the vandal last night. Without (I hope) raising renewed accusations that there is some kind of "insider cabal agenda", I have to say that I wonder if it might not be wise in the future to have a way for a (largish) group of pre-authorized "regulars" to easily and quickly put into place a 24-hour ip-number-based editing ban. I mean, you had to waste a lot of time on this vandal, it would have been nice if you could have just zipped him up for awhile. --Jimbo Wales

Ahhh, it wasn't that big a deal. I was actually just sitting near the computer reading when it was happening, so it wasn't too hard to get my browser to refresh automatically, and glance up every now and then. When the vandal changed it, I had copied the URL for editing one "good" version; paste that in, press the "save" button, and revert. Took about one second each time :) -- Paul Drye

Ain't Wikipedia great, Paul? --MichaelTinkler

Hey Paul, what do you think about idea of adding History -- Military history ... etc links in the top of page, as in battle of Adowa and First Italo-Abyssinian War? szopen

I noticed you were having a little trouble with the way we silly English feel we must "translate" names,

Well, ekhm, i am aware that this is English-language encyclopedia and names should be translated into English names, when available. I just have no idea how some battles and wars are called in English, and i am sometimes just guessing. Site you provided will be most helpfull. Do you know, BTW, any site which could provide some other medieval terms? I believe that i am quite familiar with Polish terms (although i am not, nor i am pretending to be, historian) - but whenever i try to write in English i am stopped almost immedietely by my lacks in such vocabulary. szopen

Hello there. I was moving content from wikipedian's old user pages to the correct user namespace. It appears that your old user page still has content on it -- I wouldn't dream of deleting this material and redirecting that page and its talk to your new user page and new talk. So if you have a moment, could you do this? Or if you really don't care either way just say so here and I will make the needed changes (so that your old user page does not show up as a regular wikipedia article). Cheers! --maveric149

Hello there. May I point you back to Talk:Ibn Battuta for my reason for extending particular thanks for this article? --Alan Peakall 17:52 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)

Paul! Welcome back. :-) --KQ

Hi there. Good catch on "Urbain Le Verrier", but when moving a page please use the "move page" function (in the side bar), not copy&paste. cheers -- Tarquin 21:24 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

moved Scots-Irish to Scotch-Irish; new Scots-Irish; removed usage note. i'm both, afaik it's neither archaic nor offensive. talk:Scots-Irish. Badanedwa 02:27, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

Data Management Wiki Committee[edit]

Thank you for your contribution to one, or more, articles that are now organized under Data management.

Because of your previous intrest, you are recieving an invitation to become a founding member of the Data Management Wiki Committee.

The members, of course, will form and solidify the purpose, rules, officers, etc. but my idea (to kick things off) is to establish a group of us who will take responsiblity to see that the ideas of Data management are promoted and well represented in Wikipedia articles.

If you are willing to join the committee, please go to Category_talk:Data_management and indicate your acceptance of this invitation by placing your three tilde characters in the list.

KeyStroke 01:07, 2004 Sep 25 (UTC)

GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars[edit]

Thanks for the additional information you added to the page. Who better to contribute to an article about a book than one of its authors? Seanr451 09:21, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Al-Idrisi[edit]

Heló Paul, I saw your remark at Talk:Idrisi. Would you please take a look at Talk:Idrisi. Hope you know better who worked at this article. Regards Gangleri 22:16, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Would you mind calling a newspaper reporter?[edit]

Hi Paul, I'm Curtis Krueger, a reporter with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, (which you can see at www.sptimes.com). I am writing a story about Wikipedia and would like to talk to some Wikipedians about why they like to contribute their time to this project. I got your name from a list of most active Wikipedians. I am hoping to speak to people either today (Thursday Oct. 14) or tomorrow. You can email me at krueger@sptimes.com or call toll-free at 1-(800) 333-7505 ext. 8232.

  Also, I posted a similar note on Village Pump, under news.
  Thanks!
  Curtis Krueger
  St. Petersburg Times

Article Licensing[edit]

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 2000 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)

Your old User page[edit]

The original version of your User page, with complete history, is available at User:Paul Drye/Old. It's your call whether to keep it or ditch it. Noel (talk) 22:37, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How odd, I've just put another one with history at User:Paul Drye/old. You have two old userpages, I think there's a joke in there somewhere. --fvw * 12:01, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

Vasco da Gama[edit]

An article that you've edited before (Vasco da Gama) is nominated for Article Improvement Drive. If you want go there and vote. Thanks. Gameiro 02:58, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Henry the Navigator[edit]

An article that you've edited before (Henry the Navigator) is nominated for Biography Collaboration of the Week. If you want go there and vote. Thanks. Gameiro 20:44, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Canada[edit]

Hi there! I'd like to invite you to explore Wikimedia Canada, and create a list of people interested in forming a local chapter for our nation. A local chapter will help promote and improve the organization, within our great nation. We'd also like to encourage everyone to suggest projects for our national chapter to participate in. Hope to see you there!--DarkEvil 15:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Frys and Chocolate[edit]

I noticed on the Talk:Chocolate web page you mentioned that you planned to do some research on Joseph Fry (this was probably years ago). I've recently been revamping the Joseph Fry page and renamed it to Fry Family (Chocolate). I've come to the conclusion that there are entirely too many Joseph Frys out there :-). --Erp 05:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

watermelon[edit]

Hello nice to meet you.

It is correct that the information was duplicated by content, and merged into a "table" called "regional trivia". Then, it is possible to make the article much shorter! (once it is stripped off bits of regional information).

I believe that it i makes sense to move the information (not to remove) into a "regional trivia" table. By the way i am not in a hurry to do it.

Just "southern" attributes concern north americans most likely. It is called the "english edition", not the "north american" edition.

The information that "watermelons are a common symbol of matsuri" is not without relevance. The country of japan (matsuri) uses to host US defence, and trade i guess 20 billions annually with the USA. I do not see any anchor to remove this information, it has more relevance than information about socialism (this can be merged into "discriminatory imaghe usage").

regards alex 14:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Music[edit]

Hey. I'm doing a survey to find the most liked songs of all time. So far I have over 300 songs in the list. I was hoping that you would be willing to contribute your top ten. For more information and some of the minor rules check out my user page first. Rock on! RENTASTRAWBERRY ^{FOR LET?} röck 03:48, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

United Nations Article[edit]

Hi Paul,

I saw that you were one of the first contributors to Wikipedia's article on the United Nations, so am contacting you about a primary source I am trying to track down.

In the first paragraph, the article states that the UN describes itself as a "global association of governments facilitating co-operation in international law, international security, economic development and social equity."

Would you by any chance know exactly who or what stated this? If not, any ideas on how I can find out?

thank you so much for your time and help, Jayne email: jyj2084@yahoo.com

--Jengajenga20 14:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Irish History[edit]

You seem like you have a lot a knowledge with respect Irish history so maybe you would like to comment on the historic basis of this term here Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-12-02 IRA 'Volunteer' usage —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DownDaRoad (talk • contribs) 00:30, 8 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Your user page[edit]

I found your old user page while checking out some old deleted contributions. I have history merged it, so that all edits are in one place. Hope you don't mind. Graham87 10:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your old account[edit]

Hi Paul, while I was going through some old edits, I discovered an old account of yours, PaulDrye (talk · contribs), that you had used before starting this one. Therefore your first edit was not in September 2001, as it says on your user page, but rather on 1 August 2001. Since you abandoned the PaulDrye account before the changeover to MediaWiki in 2002, it was not registered in the Wikipedia database, even though several of its edits survive today. Therefore I've created the account to stop malcontents wreaking havoc with it, and moved some old user page history to User:PaulDrye, where it belonged in the first place. Hope you don't mind. Graham87 03:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Creation of eclipse article[edit]

Created the Eclipse Page Great work!!!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.17.54.255 (talk) 02:06, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open![edit]

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Danzig" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Danzig. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 28#Danzig until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. b uidhe 06:17, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]