User talk:Geometry guy/Archive 8

Missing you, and favour

Animation of planetary motion

Hey G-guy,

Happy New Year! I feel a little down that we haven't been speaking lately, although I want you to know that I've been thinking of you, and smiling as I do. :) I miss your Swedish princess pictures and I really hope your holidays were as wonderful and happy as you deserve. :)

Personally, I've been in a little bit of a funk lately, although I'm not sure exactly why. I enjoy being here, and I really like the people I hang with, but I feel all too often like I'm stupid and useless, like I can't help anyone and nothing I do ever gets finished. :( I think it comes from being overly distract-able and under-critical. :( I've made a list for myself of stuff I want to accomplish this year on my user page, so hopefully I'll be able to remember what I want to do and to stay on track. :P

Right now I'm working on improving the articles about planetary motion, and I've been teaching myself Blender, which is a simply amazing piece of open-source software. I made the animation at the left using it, and now I'd really appreciate any advice you have on how to improve it, whether it be colors or lighting or whatever. So far, I've chosen to mimick natural conditions; the light emanates from the central sun. But that makes it seem dark on the whole. Anyway, I plan on replicating/modifying this image for other articles in celestial mechanics, such as Newton's theorem of revolving orbits and Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector; if we can fix the bugs now, that would be great! :)

A little down right now, but warmly affectionate towards thee, Willow (talk) 10:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. Blender also looks to be well-suited for Soddy's hexlet and all the orthogonal coordinates! :)

Happy New Year to you too Geometry girl! This is a low time of year, not helped by truly dreary weather (for me, today, especially), but your message brightened my day. I have missed you too, muchly :)

But enough of this introspection Willow! You criticise yourself multiply, and then say you are under-critical? Hmmm...

I was struck particularly by "nothing I ever do gets finished". Then Wikipedia is the perfect place, because on Wikipedia, nothing ever gets finished, but many many articles have been truly graced by having Willow pass through and add a bit of her magic touch.

Blender seems to be really cool, and an easy download using Synaptic on Ubuntu, so I've installed it and might have a play later on. I have some suggestions for your image. The new one is better in some ways but was making my eyes go bleary, so I've switched back to the old one for the time being: it was a bit flickery. Can you control the speed of the orbital motion? If so, please make it slower. Also, I think it is a good idea to exaggerated the ellipticity, but think you've done it too much: planets don't really swoop round the sun at perihelion like that; comets do. Lightening the image was a good idea, but the lighter side/darker side was kind of cool too. Can you compromise? To be ultra cute, you could add a background of tiny stars, but here I'm just being (as you say) playful! Geometry guy 18:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. I visited your user page and notice you are using {{hat}} and {{hab}}. There may be better options (or those templates could be customized so they don't automatically read "The following is an archived debate. Please do not modify it.") I'll check it out if you would like.

Now I'm feeling radiant; two such nice letters back-to-back! :) I was feeling blue when I wrote you — it was quite late, and I get moody and broody when the vampires are out ;w — but I have also truly been feeling down lately for no good reason; hearing your voice again is a great restorative. :)

I'll slow down the animation for sure, but I think I need to keep the eccentricity for a few reasons. I want to use this as the basis for improving Newton's theorem of revolving orbits, which if you recall was a little gift to you this past summer? I'd also thought of animating a gradually precessing orbit, for which Cronholm did such a good picture, and the Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector of yore. In all those cases, it'd probably be easier to visualize the essentials if the orbit is clearly elliptical. Not by coincidence, the eccentricity here is the same as that binary pulsar PSR B1913+16 that's mentioned in the Kepler problem in general relativity, even if the animation isn't quite right for that.

A secondary reason for me to keep the eccentricity at 0.6 is that I'm scared of the work. ;) I would have to recalculate the radial and angular time dependence from the eccentric anomaly again, and then type them in one-by-one into the Blender animation. BTW, here's how I made this one: I animated the radial motion first, then "parented" that animation to a rotational animation of an Empty; there are forty frames altogether (41, if you count the last one, which is the same as the first). Can you maybe figure out how to do Python scripting with Blender? If so, I might not need to type everything in, and we could do even more frames with no chance of mistakes. Ta ta and la la, Willow (talk) 19:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. (a little while later) Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to change the speed. :P I'm using GIMP and managed to set the time between frames when not otherwise specified, but nothing changed. I'll read up on it and try to figure it out. I think now would be a good time to go shoe-shopping, though! :) Willow (talk) 20:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Enjoy the shoe-shopping. I'm too tired to figure out Python scripting, or how to reduce the speed, but some editors who watch this page might know. Good luck, anyway, I sent you an email. Geometry guy 22:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh G-guy, thank you so much! I was delighted to find that you had made me a new template, which led me to your e-mail and — I was moved to happy tears. I'm not as you imagined, sad to say, but I almost wish that I were. :) A letter to be treasured; the world is luminous because it is filled by people like you.

The British spellings are a funny story! :D I always liked them when I was young, since they seemed older and more elegant to me, but my junior-high English teachers wouldn't allow it and graded me rather harshly. :( Recently, though, there was a battle royal over which type of English to use on Mary Wollstonecraft, which I tried to mediate; my efforts were rather silly and came to naught in themselves, but everything turned out wonderfully in the end and I overcame my inhibitions. :) I'll still write my articles in American English, but now and then I indulge myself in feeling "elegant" when Talking to my friends here. :) It's all in good fun.

Don't worry about the Python or the animation speed, those will come in the fullness of time, I'm sure; but what do you think of these shoes in red? ;) I can't really afford to buy them, and I don't really have a reason to, but they're cute, aren't they? Willow (talk) 13:37, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

A nice balance of cute, sexy and stylish, I'd say. It depends on the shade of red though: not too bright would be my taste. Sorry to take so long to answer your wonderful message: I wanted to get the revamp of the GAR process sorted so I could relax, and that was a lot of work. I'm very glad you are who you are, and you are very special to me. The spellings story is funny indeed and am glad you enjoy the elegance of English English! As for the new template, I needn't have created it, as there already exists {{hidden begin}} and {{hidden end}}, which are much more flexible. Geometry guy 19:48, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I just (somewhat randomly) figured out how to see the shoes in red: nice! Go for it, I say: let me know if you need a sub :) Geometry guy 01:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Goodness me, I've been grumpy recently, at Talk:Universe among other places: I do hope you'll forgive me. I've just noticed how much Universe has improved since the GAR in early November, where I wrote "Far from being punished, this article will benefit from the improvements it needs to be sure of a successful GAN." Well, from what I can see in the edit history, this has come to pass thanks to the determined efforts of one of Wikipedia's best editors. Geometry guy 16:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you've been grumpy; I just logged in and had a good laugh over your sleep-reading at Universe! It might take me a few minutes to think of a witty reply that articulates the impish smile across my face right now. ;) I agree that the lead is too leaden, too heavy with earth; we need some celestial fire (or at least some spritely copy-editing) to put it to rights. ;) Give me a bit of time, though; it's a busy day for me! :) By the by, I may soon have another Blender image for you, the toroidal isosurfaces of the toroidal coordinates, although it's not turning out as I imagined it; I'm desperate to find someone who actually knows how to work Blender. :( Weird things happen when I try to do ordinary things. My hands are flying trying out all the possibilities to fix things, but I'm flying as blindly as another chiropter. ;) Willow (talk) 18:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. Yielding to the temptation of curiosity, I also happened to look over some academic publications lately, which made me realize how infinitesimal my knowledge of general relativity and non-Euclidean geometry is, no matter how hard-won and how proud I was of it. It's at once humbling and awe-inspiring to see how vast and deep the ocean I'm sailing over in my little cat-boat, and heartening to know that someone is plumbing its depths. :) Willow (talk) 18:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Thought you might :) Exponential growth of knowledge, my dear, both a joy and a curse: each question we answer opens our eyes to hundreds of others. No one can possibly grasp all of it. Even those who plumb the depths do so in a very few isolated parts of this ocean, and with a plumb line of very limited length: in fact the deeper you want to probe, the thinner you must make your line. As for grumpiness, my excuse is that I spent most of yesterday in Template Purgatory: why does substitution have to happen before expansion of includeonly's? It is so counterintuitive and difficult to work with. The worst of my frustration was probably taken out on Tim Tebow, where the poor editors received a rather merciless critique of their hard work. Geometry guy 20:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Images and tori

Top view of an equatorial sundial on midsummer's day in Aberdeen, where the sun rises and sets at roughly 3am and 9pm, respectively. The gnomon in the middle is aligned with the Pole Star, which makes its shadow move uniformly around the circular dial.

Cross-section of three toroidal isosurfaces from toroidal coordinates, with τ equal to 0.5 (blue), 1.0 (green) and 2.0 (red). As τ increases, the isosurfaces converge on the ring made by rotating the foci about the vertical axis.

I've been a little slow in sprucing up the universe, but I have two new Blender pictures that I would love your opinion about. The upper one is meant to illustrate sundials, although maybe I should show the dial tilted on the ground and explain about the celestial North Pole? I wasn't sure about the numering, either. The lower image is a prototype of coordinate isosurfaces that I want to illustrate the various three-dimensional orthogonal coordinate systems with, in the hopes of bringing them up to Good Article status. :) If you like this one, it wouldn't be that hard to make them for prolate spheroidal coordinates and all those. Do you like the cross-section — maybe I should take a smaller slice from the pie and change the camera angle? ;) I'm a little unhappy with the shading, too. :( Willow (talk) 18:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree in both cases that a different angle would be more interesting. Also the sundial one is rather dark and colour saturated for my taste. I understand your concerns about the toriodal one: I think a slightly smaller slice might look better. It also could be made a bit more complicated. If you are illustrating a family of tori (e.g. in the Hopf fibration) a fourth torus between green and blue might create a stronger impression. If instead you are illustrating a coordinate system, some other coordinate lines might help. Just a general impression... Geometry guy 20:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

It was nice to meet up in the universe, no? :) Thanks for cluing me into the Hopf fibration, which seems really cool; I'd never heard of it before. I don't fully understand the mapping to nested tori just yet; my first mental picture was a set of infinitesimal Tissot indicatrices, one at each point of latitude/longitude (circles plastered on the 2-sphere).

I was intending the image for the toroidal coordinates article, and had originally thought of introducing the orthogonal surfaces into the same image. But somehow I couldn't find a good way of doing that. If you see one on the web somewhere, please let me know! :) Willow (talk) 21:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it was, even though my contribution was inconsequential. If I had more time, I might have tried a rewrite of the lead, but such an approach would have been contrary to the current mood of the page: a more incremental approach appears to be delivering precious fruit! If you like Hopf fibration, but want to understand more and see more of the beautiness in it (actually I know for sure you do!), try Villarceau circles: they relate the circles of the Hopf fibration to the nested tori you see. (With many thanks to KSmrq, for drawing my attention to this.) Geometry guy 22:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I think I understand about the Hopf fibration, at least a little bit! :) I could do the complex math, and thought it was a nifty coincidence, but I didn't really see it until I read about the quaternions further on in the article — so beautiful. :) I think I also see the nested tori as well; can I check with you? Rotating about the symmetry axis of the torus corresponds to the fiber coordinate λ, whereas moving on the perpendicular cross-sectional circle of the torus (the one rotated about the symmetry axis) corresponds to moving on a circle of latitude on the 2-sphere? That's why they're nested, right? As you increase or decrease in latitude from the equator, the latitude circles (and the corresponding cross-sectional torus circles) get smaller. Would that mean that the nested tori fill space twice over, corresponding to the two circles of latitude with the same radius? I didn't really see the connection to the Villarceau circles; maybe they fit in somehow? Anyway, sorry for all the distracted questions; the Hopf fibration was a nice and strangely appropriate break from all the fiber-art editing I did today ;) Willow (talk) 21:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It is beautiful indeed, but even more beautiful than you imagine. The cross-sectional circles are not involved in the Hopf fibration: if they were, the Hopf fibration would not be smooth as the radii of these circles shrank to zero. Instead it is the Villarceau circles that matter. You have to make a choice: do you prefer a left-handed or right-handed twist? Pick one of the two Villarceau circles in a slice and rotate it around the torus: you will get a foliation of the torus (just like the keyrings picture). Do this for every nested torus. Now the beauty is that as nested tori shrink around a limiting circle, the Villarceau circles become more and more slanted, and converge on the limiting circle. This confirms that the Hopf fibration is smooth. Geometry guy 00:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Twice as slow OK?

Meah, now I'm really confused. :( You need to realize that my understanding is like the rational numbers: everywhere dense and of negligible measure. Can I try again?

To me, it would seem that the nested tori are parameterized by the latitude on the unit sphere, is that right? Each torus would seem to correspond to all possible values of λ and longitude, with moving the Villarceau circle around the torus being like changing λ, and moving around the circumference of the V-circle like changing longitude. The only degree of freedom left would seem to be latitude, so moving between nested tori would seem to be like changing the latitude. Did I at least understand that part?

The real mystery for me is how to connect the latitude with the nested tori and get the slanted Villarceau circles as images of the circles of latitude. For example, where do the tori for ±90°, ±45°, and 0° fit into the nest of tori? Here's what I had been thinking. I'm not sure if this true, but my intuition had told me that bipolar coordinates are like a stereographic projection of the unit sphere from a point on its equator; the North and South Poles go to the two foci and the circles of latitude correspond to circles about those foci? Rotating (as with λ) produces the toroidal coordinates and what I thought was the Hopf fibration. But that can't be right, since that would make the isosurface for a fixed λ and latitude into one of those cross-sectional circles?  :( Maybe the solution has something to do with changing the angle of the Villarceau cutting plane? But that would seem to make too many degrees of freedom? Lost and sorry for being dense, Willow (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

You have great intuition, Willow: you should have been a geometer. I like the idea that bipolar coordinates are what polar coordinates look like in a different stereoprojection. The main thing that's preventing you from seeing the full picture is that you have the toroidal coordinates the wrong way round: changing the fiber coordinate λ corresponds to moving around the circumference of a V-circle, whereas changing longitude corresponds to moving the V-circle around a fixed torus.

You are absolutely right that the only degree of freedom left is latitude and changing the latitude changes the torus. Hence there are nested tori parameterized by latitude. The north and south poles are special because there is no longitude parameter here: instead of a torus, there is a single circle. One of these circles is the degenerate torus where the radius shrinks to zero. The other circle doesn't look like a circle: it is the straight vertical axis of revolution in your picture, which is the circle through the point at infinity of S³. I hope my explanation is a bit clearer this time. Geometry guy 18:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. I made a new version of the Kepler orbit. I like the speed and lighting better; I back-lighted the dark face of the planet ever so faintly. :) But I'm wondering if the rotation of the central star is too distracting? Willow (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It is looking good. I think the speed is about right on average, but I still think a slightly less eccentric ellipse would work better, speed-wise. I agree that the central star rotation is unnecessary. Geometry guy 18:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good article reassessment

The "How to list an article here." instructions will need updating too. Dihydrogen Monoxide 22:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I think they have been updated at WP:GAR (it may be a cache issue: try clearing your cache and reloading). Let me know which if there are still problems. Geometry guy 23:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Carl Friedrich Gauss

• Carl Friedrich Gauss lost its FA star. I'm dying to work on it. Must -- call --- Wiki --- Anon ---. :-) Ling.Nut (talk) 12:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review Automation

Hi, I nominated U2 for a peer review 12 hours ago, and the main Peer Review page hasn't been updated. Is this a problem with the automation or something I did wrong? Many thanks. Wikipedia brown (talk) 17:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The page has updated now. In case you made this happen, thanks! Wikipedia brown (talk) 18:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

You did everything right. It appears that the bot is not updating the list at the moment, so I added the article manually. Geometry guy 18:36, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

This was my fault; there was an bug in the handling of categories with a slash, like GAR/34, which caused some problems. I need to work on implementing a sort of backup system to check to see that the PR list is being updated.

By the way, let me know when you are ready for GAR/34. It is being updated already, but the code to sort it backwards is only half done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm ready for GAR/34 now: CF template in place. Geometry guy 06:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Sandy Georgia

I didn't know she was allowed vacations. As much as you guys are paid for this work....  ;) Anyways, I do have a bone to chew with you. Why did you delist Herpes zoster? I read no discussion, except with maybe 3 people. Since I got it to GA, then watched it get totally messed up by a couple of tendentious editors, I never knew it was up for delisting, I can't find a more detailed discussion of the matter, can I ask why you chose to do so? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I didn't want to delist it either, and tried my best to encourage fixes. See the article history for the link to the GAR discussion. All the best, Geometry guy 00:10, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes Wikipedia is the most frustrating thing ever. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I hope something helpful came out of the GAR discussion and process anyway. Good luck with the article. Geometry guy 02:08, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Moon-Sea ?

But how did the moon become associated with the sea? (Is this an unscientific question?) Awadewit | talk 01:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Gravity. The moon pulls on the earth, but it also pulls on the oceans around the earth, and the sea is free to move and change shape in response to this pull. The closer the water is to the moon, the stronger the pull (Newton's inverse square law of gravity). The water on the side of the earth facing the moon gets pulled towards the moon more strongly than the water on the opposite side. Consequently the surface of the oceans has an elliptical shape compared to the surface of the earth. Geometry guy 02:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

So, long, long, ago, the moon floated by the earth and was sucked in by the earth's gravity? Then, the oceans pulled on it and it pulled on the oceans, resulting the situation we have today? Awadewit | talk 02:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

More or less, but our current understanding is slightly less romantic than this: long long ago, another lump of rock was indeed sucked in by the earth's gravity, but it smashed into the earth and split it in two. These two pieces did not escape each other's gravity. They were both spinning, but one (the earth) was much bigger than the other, and so the smaller one started to orbit around the bigger one (actually the earth and the moon both orbit around their common center of mass). The bigger earth had much more water, so as it cooled, oceans formed, and the rest is prehistory, as you describe. Geometry guy 02:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

For a more accurate explanation, see giant impact hypothesis. Geometry guy 02:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Is the article supposed to sound more convincing than it does? :) Awadewit | talk 02:41, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. This is the most widely accepted theory: see Moon#Formation. However, my explanation in terms of oceans was wrong. It was the right idea (tidal forces), but the wrong details. Again, see Moon#Two sides of the Moon. Geometry guy 02:46, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, the most widely accepted theory can still be short on evidence, right? It can just be the best theory we have at the time? I'm just saying, the page was unconvincing to a lay reader. I'll read Moon next. Awadewit | talk 02:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Very sadly (for me, as you are such enjoyable company) you may not find me awake when you are done: the small hours are already starting to become less than wee over here. Happy reading! Geometry guy 02:54, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

'Tis fine. I'll assemble a list of questions for your morning cup o' coffee. :) Awadewit | talk 03:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Odex's actions against file-sharing

You recently closed the GA reassessment request for Odex's actions against file-sharing with result "no action, but recommend renomination". However, we have not come to a consensus on whether the inclusion of the screenshot is inappropriate. How should consensus regarding this issue be determined? Filing an RFC would be making a mountain out of a molehill and possibly generating Wikidrama. Should I simply leave the image there, renominate the article and hope the nominator does not comment about it? --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, leave the image there and renominate would be my suggestion. The article just needs a GA review by a third party. If the previous reviewer decides to take up the article again, please let me know, and I will politely suggest that this is a conflict of interest according to the GAN guidelines. Geometry guy 14:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. I spotted a few issues with the prose; the article needs a copy-edit before being renominated. What should I do if the reviewer does mention the image? Remove it? --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that's rather unlikely, but let me know if it happens. Good luck. Geometry guy 18:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Interstate 70 in Utah

Per your suggestion, I have expanded the lead paragraph to insure it has a summary of all sections. Thank you for your input and for being a good referee. Davemeistermoab (talk) 15:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. Good luck with the nom. Geometry guy 17:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Math help?

Hi G-guy, I'd love your help with a geometry problem that has been occupying me lately. It's not directly relevant to Wikipedia, though, so I sent it to you by e-mail, so as not to burden your Talk page. Thanks in advance for your help and ideas! :) Willow (talk) 21:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look. Meanwhile, do you fancy joining The FA-Team? It would be a shame to only have four. See Mike's workshop for the serious background to this lighthearted idea. Geometry guy 21:52, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure, although I'm not sure if I have any special skills that can help the FA-Team or if I fit the mold of an action hero. ;) What would my super-power be? Let's see — empathy, healing and, oh yes, a special ray of treacly poetry that encases her opponents in sugar. ;) I did enjoy reading up about the original A-Team; I sort of knew who Mr. T was, but I didn't know the back-story to the series. :)

Thanks so much for your kind congratulations on the FA! Awadewit did the lioness' share of the work, though. I started working on it to thank her for all her help with the Encyclopædia Britannica and also because I liked her and sensed that she would be fun to work with; but 16kb later, I kind of reached the limits of my expertise and she had to take over. :( Still, it was fun and I learned a lot; it was also beautiful watching the article grow into its own, like watching my flowers unfold. :)

I made two new animations for Newton's theorem of revolving orbits, which are in that gallery on my Talk page? I'm too tired to explain them now or to put them in the article, but I know you'll see how they work without explanations. I hope you like them, but if you had any suggestions for improving them, that'd be great, too. Sweet dreams to us both, Willow (talk) 04:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Horrors

Umm, I think I made two basic math mistakes at Newton's theorem of revolving orbits, but I don't want to change them until you double-check it. First, I think there should be a sign change in front of the added terms to the potential and force; I unfortunately wrote

$m{\frac {d^{2}r}{dt^{2}}}=F(r)-{\frac {L^{2}}{mr^{3}}}$

when I think I should've written

$m{\frac {d^{2}r}{dt^{2}}}=F(r)+{\frac {L^{2}}{mr^{3}}}$

whcih changes the fundamental result of the whole article. :P

The second mistake (I suspect) was that I might've confused harmonics and subharmonics? If you look at the animation, the green planet is moving three times as fast around the circle, which means k=3; but lower down, I say that same type of orbit illustrates a subharmonic with k=1/3.

Sigh — she can count stitches, but she can't fake addition and multiplication. :( Trying hard to keep up but forever messing up, Willow (talk) 11:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I did actually fix those errors and spruced the article up a bit, but I would still be awfully grateful if you would look over the math for me. Did you like the cyan circles, or are they distracting? Off to make dinner; it's been a long day for us both, no? Ta ta, Willow (talk) 22:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Hope dinner was nice. Thanks so much for your understanding. Geometry guy 23:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The cyan circles look great. I would remove the red planet instead: it is not needed now because the circles illustrate the radial motion. Geometry guy 10:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I found the source of my error! The Whittaker source had an unusual definition of "central force", being positive if it pulls inwards towards smaller r, rather than outwards towards larger r. The minus sign turned me about, and then I was careless in my math. :( Oh well, all's well, etc. :) Willow (talk) 20:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Good article reassessment: Content Dispute reason for closure?

Hi, just wondering:

• How you would come to the conclusion that a GAR would be useful in a content dispute?
• Why would a content dispute be used as a reason for unilaterally closing a GAR without considering the merits of the GAR?
• Did you read the "delist" vote by User Cirt who also brought up an additional criteria #5 as a concern?
• What,if any, process is available if I feel your pre-emptive closure of the reassessment is not appropriate?
• Do you have some type of special authority to preemptively close a GAR and if so may I reopen it if I disagree with your "content dispute" rationale? Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 03:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I replied at WT:GAR. Geometry guy 11:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Call me a jerk...

...or a saint, or whatever, but my most immediate thought is the locus of why we're talking. Wolfkeeper is freaking out; don't know why, but it seems to be the main reason LEAD is flaring. I have tried to reach out to him at User_talk:Wolfkeeper#Hi_Wolfkeeper, and you might do the same.

Thanks for thinking of me! I'll process everything in the morning and respond better. Marskell (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

G'Guy, your response (2:21, 21 January 2008) was exactly what I'd hoped for. Easy-going, "here's some ideas", talk to me. Thank you for that! I was trying. Unfortunately, the editor in question is still spiking every conversation on my (immediate) watchlist with crazy stuff.

I really do need to sleep. Wolfkeeper will probably be blocked by morning (?). Or not. If not, you can post what's up? on my talk and I'll post to AN, when I can. Marskell (talk) 22:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Me too, but things seem to have settled down, and others (e.g. Carl) will keep an eye-out. Geometry guy 23:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I read my comments to Wolfkeeper again and I sounded like I was talking to a newbie rather than a long-term editor. I apologized for being patronizing.

Where's the "FA-Team list!"?

Also, we can certainly tweak wording on LEAD. I was just very much opposed to dropping "article" from that particular sentence. There are other sentences in there that are quite old, as well. Marskell (talk) 08:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I saw your note, but maybe the last sentence is not needed. Anyway, I hope User:Geometry guy/The FA-Team generates a smile. Geometry guy 08:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Ha! Who gets to pity the fools? Marskell (talk) 18:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I dunno, but don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Geometry guy 19:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

GA fails

I was just poking about on some older articles and found that you failed two articles GA. The fails were based on a vote counting, in some cases after a long period of no comments. I would greatly appreciate it if you would contact the people involved in these cases to see if they were simply unaware of the postings. I was, and as a result, NIF was removed from GA. Maury (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi thanks for commenting here. I am strongly against basing GAR decisions on vote counting, and hope I have never done that. GAR nominations and outcomes should be reported on the article talk page: it is not normal to notify individuals. If there has been some failure in process here, please elaborate. Geometry guy 22:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is any official failure here, just a sort of slipping under the radar thing. NIF was up on GAR for reasons I felt were fairly specious (too long caption?!). The discussion went on for a few days and then petered out. Months later you failed it due to a count and unanswered issues. I would have been happy to address the "issues", had I been aware of them. Maury (talk) 22:58, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The reasons for listing may have been specious, but the discussion was productive. At GAR, articles are judged against the criteria, not against the reasons proposed by nominators. This did not slip under the radar: I don't do that, especially with science based articles, which are widely misunderstood on WP and I like to support them as far as I possibly can. I did not delist it due to a count. I followed the discussion, and when I archived, I took account of the weight of argument and the state of the article at the time, assessing both in the light of the good article criteria.

I'm really tired right now, so please ignore the following as you wish: it seems to me you stopped watching the GAR discussion at the end of August; further comments were received in September, no fixes were made to the article, and the discussion was closed in early October. The talk page was fully notified. If you were unaware of what was happening, then it was because you failed to watch relevant pages. Raising this with me now is unnecessary and unhelpful. I recommended renomination: if you believe the article is now GA standard, please renominate it. Geometry guy 23:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

(undent) it seems to me you stopped watching the GAR discussion at the end of August Well everyone stopped watching it; the conversation just petered out. The talk page was fully notified Sure, but because of the several month delay, it was well off my watchlist. And everyone else's I'd suspect. In that case a post on the user's own talk pages, which puts up a big yellow flag on the home page, really doesn't seem like too much to ask. Maury (talk) 22:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Several month delay? The entire discussion lasted barely a month and a half! And it hardly petered out either: it fell silent for about two weeks, and then there was new and helpful discussion.

You took the article off your watchlist, so you didn't care about it enough. Then you expect me to go searching through discussions and histories to find out who should have been watching the article but wasn't, and add comments to all of their talk pages? And, to top it all, you think this is not too much to ask of a volunteer?

Archiving GARs is a tedious chore, so in short, yes, it is too much to ask GAR archivists to chase up editors who can't even be bothered to keep the article on their watchlist.

I have no idea why you think it is a good idea to annoy me with this now. I suggest you apologize or drop the subject. Geometry guy 23:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You took the article off your watchlist

I did nothing of the sort, nor did I imply such. I have created hundreds (probably thousands) of articles, edited a larger number, and made well over ten thousand real mainspace edits in total. As a result, my watchlist rarely shows details longer than half a day. The edits in question were literally pages and pages back in the list. I simply did not see them.

And, to top it all, you think this is not too much to ask of a volunteer?

We're all volunteers, so that's a moot point. And no, I don't think it's too much to ask. I do it all the time; on the order of once a month I post messages to user's talk page in an effort to draw them back into conversations I believe they may have missed. It takes a maybe 60 seconds.

If you think archiving GA/GAR is so taxing (in spite of automating it), let me assure that that actually using the GA/GAR system is far more work. It can take weeks to get an article though GA, only to have it removed because one reader lists it on GAR, and for whatever reason and it slips through the cracks. Avoiding this possibility should be front and center in the process. All I'm asking is that you consider posting a message to users in the cases where it appears this may have occurred, and you're complaining about this "tedious chore"?

I really cannot understand your "annoy"ance. I have re-read the thread several times now and I fail to see anything even remotely contentious in my statements. I'm certainly not going to apologize for making a suggestion, especially when I am the injured party. You failed the article in question while admitting that "some of the arguments are contested and not many reviewers have contributed". That sounds like a tremendously strong argument not to fail it, but whatever.

But now that it has been failed, getting it re-listed is going to take days of work again. And you're complaining about this "tedious chore" while putting words in my mouth and asking for an apology? Are you kidding?

Maury (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was actually! I was trying to match your hyperbole ("vote counting", "months later", "everyone stopped watching it", "several months later" etc.)

Watchlist: I'm talking about watching the article, not the GAR discussion. When the discussion was closed the talk page of the article would have gone to the top of your watchlist, if, as you claim, you were watching it. It would not have been "well off your watchlist... and everyone else's".

Archiving: the automation did not exist at the time, and even now it only shaves a couple of minutes off the archiving time of about 10 minutes per article. Archivists often archive 3-4 GAR discussions at a time, and at busy periods there are many articles per week to archive at GAR.

GA: no need to complain to me about how complicated GA is. I know and agree. But if you don't like it, don't use it. It's only a green dot.

You failed the article... I did not fail the article: I archived the discussion and acted on the consensus. It didn't slip through the cracks: it manifestly failed to meet the GA criteria. "Issues" were raised with citing reliable sources right at the beginning of the GAR in late August, and were raised again on 14th and 22nd September. In early October, after a month and half at GAR, these issues still had not been addressed.

Now if you are the injured party, please instead allow me to apologize and drop the subject. Geometry guy 09:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. I've just realized that the new system I have introduced at GAR renders most of this discussion even more moot: it is now possible to watchlist an individual GAR discussion instead of the whole page. This means the discussion will go to the top of your watchlist every time a new comment is added. So for example, you would have immediately seen the comments added on 14th and 22nd September. Geometry guy 10:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Tiramisu ;)

Ah, the good, sweet life we lead :)

“ If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended: that you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear; and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream. Good swain, do not reprehend — if you pardon, we will mend. ”

A little note of good cheer to remind you that we are all but shadows here, and the worst slings and arrows of outrageous comments pass right through us airy nothings. Remembering our friend Cronholm, we may Talk here in a quiet starlit garden, pause to listen to the nightingale and the piper far away, and wander off to find them in greener swards. I would not have thee take things too seriously and become bound. ;) Willow (talk) 15:00, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

“ But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end. :) ”

What a wonderful and eloquent pick-me-up. Thank you so much Willow. I agree entirely with what you say about comments passing through us and not taking things too seriously: one of my favourite essays puts it more bluntly! I think what really got me down yesterday was what happened to Wikidudeman. It is when I see valuable Wikipedians under attack for no good reason that I am most likely to be outraged. For my own sake it is easier to be relaxed. Geometry guy 18:15, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Opus Dei controversy section

If the main problem is a structure prone to being interpreted as a "set em up and knock em down", may I propose that we invert the order of the critical and supporting views. Please check this private fork = Opus Dei controversy section where I propose a new ordering. I hope this satisfies all parties. :) Thanks for your help. Marax (talk) 08:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Great. I'll take a look. Geometry guy 10:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Mēnin aeide, thea...

Second draft of BS. ;)

“ Sing, goddess — sing the rage of Achilles Peliades,
which brought pain and destruction to the Achaeans,
damning the souls of their brave heroes to Hell
and leaving their bodies as dog-meat and bird-pickings. ”

I've always wanted to translate that! :D Sappho is by far my favourite poet, but Homer is still amazing; his words taste as sweet as cinnamon toast. :)

I wouldn't worry about Dr. MM; I think he just wanted to vent his grief at his hard work being dinged? Inconsiderate and self-centered, to be sure, but I don't think he meant any slight towards you or your time per se.

Now I hope to engage your mind more agreeably! What do you think of the draft at the right? It's not a long-lost Mondrian, but rather a geometrical representation of the Brent-Salamin algorithm for calculating pi. I want to try it out on you to see if it's intelligible to math wizards; it's going to another math wizard, so I think we can assume a pretty high level of comprehension and background knowledge. On the other hand, that means we have to make it that much more elegant. :) Willow (talk) 20:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I surely overreacted and am not bothered anymore. I thought about removing my reply, but decided that sometimes it is better to let others know how annoyed you were initially. But maybe I should just have stormed around my flat quoting Homer: it is a wonderful outlet! Anyway, as for the image: I can see it is very clever, but it is too clever for me. I see two difficulties in illustrating an algorithm: the first is knowing where to start and in what order to process the image; the second is seeing why the algorithm produces the desired answer (in this case, pi). In this case, I am not sure whether the black square is describing the initial value of root two, or the construction of the geometric mean, and after that I am lost. Even though I have not been able to put a lot of time into it, I think you are much cleverer than I am. Geometry guy 21:03, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. With admin hat, these files are getting rather long: 2.27MB, this one, although the rotating pi is very pretty!

Oh dear, I was afraid of that. :( Not of me being cleverer than you — which we both know is bogus, Mr. Dual Overhead-Cam Intake Manifold ;) — but of the diagram being too obscure even for math wizards. It's like knowing the answer to the riddle in advance, unfortunately. The y-axis is the vertical red line, whereas the middle black line is the x-axis. The diameters of the green, yellow, red, etc. circles represent the ever-halving value of 1/p, with the diameter of the green one being one. The radius of the rose circle is likewise one, which sets the initial value of a₀=l on the x-axis. The initial value of b₀ = 1/sqrt(2) on the x-axis is given by the inscribed square, as you guessed. The tangent circle between the two gives the position of a₁ on the x-axis,, while b₁ is determined from that white tangent to the circle at roughly 10°, by the power of a point theorem b₁² = a₀b₀. The value of t₀ is 1/4, which is the diameter of the red circle at the left and the height of its tangent crossbar above the x-axis. The difference t₀ - t₁ is determined by the grey circle, which is symmetric about a₁, rests on the value of 1/p₀ = 1 (green circle diameter) at its bottom and which intersects the x-axis at a₀ and b₀, on the right and left, respectively. By the power of a point theorem, the product of the vertical chords t₀ - t₁ and 1/p₀ equals the product of the horizontal chords (a₀ - b₀)²/4, as it should by the B-S algorithm. The difference t₀ - t₁ equals the height of that thin blue bar running horizontally; the top of the blue bar is tangent to the grey circle. To find pi, we draw the purple circle tangent to the horizontal bar at 1/4 and intersecting the upper corners of the blue bar, which reaches from a₁ across to the y-axis (the vertical red line). Again by the power of a point trick, we have π_n t_n = a_n+1²; the estimate of π equals the vertical distance from the top of the blue bar to the bottom of the purple circle. Repeat with a₁, b₁, and 1/p₁ (the yellow circle diameter) to find t₂ and π₂, etc. Ta da! Magic.... :)

The only problem is that I'd really like to use something like this for that refined purpose we spoke of. At least, I've always had the impression that math wizards enjoyed little puzzles about beautiful things, nothing too obvious. I also kind of liked the Mondrian look. Is there any way we can salvage this, maybe by color-coding the parts in order of their use or by making them overlap differently, or by using arrows or by more animation or something? I spent most of yesterday and today working on it, so I'll confess that I'm a little too enchanted by my own magic and loath to part with it. :( I can definitely make it smaller at least! Willow (talk) 22:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I have to run home soon, and I've lots to do tonight, so I'm sorry if I won't be able to reply right away! Willow (talk) 22:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I still don't completely get it, even having the riddle explained. However, for the purpose intended, it may be a good thing that the riddle is so impressive. I can think of a couple of suggestions. Move the green yellow red starting point to the left, and put the rose disk on the right. The green yellow red stuff should be outside the purple circle too, since it isn't connected. This should create space for a clearer indication how the purple circle is constructed: I still haven't understood that point. Geometry guy 22:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Please let me try again — see the image above? The x- and y-axes are in red, and the radius of the small purple circle is 1/4. The large purple circle is symmetrical about the black vertical line x=a, and is tangent to the purple horizontal line y=1/4 (the one on top); the large purple circle is defined by three points: (a, 1/4), (0, 1/4-t) and (2a, 1/4-t). By the power of a point theorem, a² = tπ in the large purple circle, right? The bottom point of the circle — where it's tangent to the purple slab — is (a, 1/4 - t - π), if that's helpful, although I find the geometry much more intuitive.

To find a_n+1, we just draw the circle centered on the x-axis that's tangent to a_n and b_n, like the yellow one above. The center of that tangent circle is x=a_n+1. To find b_n+1, we draw the yellow tangent chord from the origin to that circle; then by the power of a point theorem, b_n+1² = a_nb_n. Iterate as libidum, until you reach the limit a, which is the arithmetic-geometric mean of a₀=1 and b₀ = 1/sqrt(2).

To find the 1/p_n, we just keep subdividing the grey circles, since 1/p_n = 1/2ⁿ.

To find the t_n+1, we once again use the power of a point trick. Construct a blue circle that is symmetrical about the black vertical line x=a_n+1, tangent to the grey horizontal line y=1/p_n, and that intersects the x-axis at x=b_n and x=a_n. Denote the height of that circle above the x-axis (i.e., its highest y value) as t_n - t_n+1; the blue rectangle is that high and 2a in width. Then, by that trick, we have

$\left(t_{n}-t_{n+1}\right)\cdot {\frac {1}{p_{n}}}={\frac {\left(a_{n}-b_{n}\right)^{2}}{4}}=\left(a_{n}-a_{n+1}\right)^{2}$

which is one of the Brent-Salamin iteration formulae. The intersection point of the two chords is x= a_n+1. The lefthand product is of the vertical lengths above and below the intersection, whereas the righthand product is the symmetrical lengths to the left and right of the intersection. Does that make sense? By stacking up these corrections Δt_n, we arrive at the final value t = 1/4 - Σ Δt_n. which is shown by a green bar. Then we get the golden π from t and a, as mentioned above.

So, do you think it's a good riddle for a math wizard or is it hopelessly obscure? I really want it to be delightful, not vexing or stupid. Any advice from a real-world mathematician would be welcome; I don't really have many people I can talk to about this. :) Con affetto, Geometry girl (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It is definitely better. I still find it hard to follow, and the colours are a bit too dark to read now. I think it is a matter of math wizard taste. It isn't hopelessly obscure, but it is kind of complicated. Many math wizards favour elegance and simplicity, but others find the beauty in complexity and cunning cleverness. This clearly fits the latter paradigm, but not the former. Geometry guy 09:57, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't think I've much hope to do any better. :( I know how to multiply two lengths geometrically in flat space, but to be elegant and simple, well, I think that the known laws of geometry will change before that happens. ;) Really, if something better occurs to you, please let me know, even if it's just a hunch that you think I should try out. I'd really like to do this one nicely, something I could be proud of and that would charm its recipient(s) no end.

BTW, nice answers! Serenity and humor are their own rewards, no? I never knew that you knew Homer, too — what a wonderful surprise! :) We'll have to drop each other some choice snippets now and then to make each other smile, some αγλαα αποινα that escape the barrier of our teeth. ;) I was working a little on a rather nasty Latin poem last night; if perchance you enjoy Latin, that poem might be better than Homer for venting when you're mad. Homer's verses are too — elegant for real wrath, don't you think? Anyway, going home soon, but I wanted to say hey, Willow (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Serenity and humour, indeed yes, although I have a long way to go before I come close to your serenity. Instead, I think I will keep in mind the option to post serene replies with a subtly-placed wikilink to Catullus 16 :). That really made me laugh and the notes you added are wonderful: they have transformed the article from something suitable only for giggles in the schoolroom to an insightful window onto this type of latin poetry. It is so typical of you to reveal some charm and beauty even in a crude poem. Your notes suggest to me that both the literal and rough translation need a bit of work. Maybe I will see if I can contribute...

As for Homer, alas my greek is extremely rusty, but I do have fond memories of reading about wine-dark seas and rosy-fingered dawns.

Finally, the math thing: I remain more impressed than ever, Geometry girl, and am sure the recepient(s) will be charmed. If I have any further suggestions I'll let you know. Geometry guy 12:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

FA-Team

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		I love the FA-team thing. Very funny. Don't ask me to join, but do have this barnstar. AndyJones (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Glad to make someone laugh! I enjoyed creating it... Geometry guy 21:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Spelling

Could you fix the spelling of "foundation" at [1]. A bit more documentation would also help. Thanks and happy editing, Geometry guy 23:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

The documentation is already more than I had originally intended to write. What parts do you find it lacking? — Dispenser 01:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't sure whether to type in a URL or an article title. Something like "Enter the article title in the box above" would be useful. Or an example. Geometry guy 10:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Added a JavaScript handler that will convert URL to the wikistring equivalence. If its still an issue I'll add an example. — Dispenser 16:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Peer review archive tidy

Hi there, and of course I would be happy to write a little bot script to do what you request - shouldn't be too difficult. But let me be sure I'm absolutely clear at what you want:

1. A list is created of all subpages of Wikipedia:Peer review
2. A filter pass removes all pages which contain "/Archive", "/archive", or other common archiving formats, in their title. Subpages like Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated are also removed.
3. Each page (of title format Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename is moved to Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename/Archive N, where N is the smallest integer for which Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename/Archive N does not exist
4. Any links to Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename in the template namespace are edited to point instead to Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename/Archive N
5. Any links to Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename from other namespaces are edited to point instead to Wikipedia:Peer review/articlename/Archive N

It is particularly important to decide at this stage the naming convention for the archives. In looking at the list of subpages, I can see that the vast majority have not been archived, and those that have use all sorts of formats (I can see "Attempt 1" and "Attempt 2", "Archive 1", "archive1", "Archive1", "Cannabis (drug)" and "Cannabis (drug) 2", and probably a variety of other styles). I recommend that the style "/Archive N" be adopted, as it is the syntax accepted by {{archive box}}, and the most popular format. There are not that many archives which will need to be moved. Will it be necessary or helpful to delete the redirects once the move is complete? Happy‑melon 15:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, my API query indicates there are 6370 subpages of Wikipedia:Peer review which may be affected, of which 943 contain "/Archive" or "/archive". We should definitely get this right from the word go!! Happy‑melon 17:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, we have to get this right. In particular, it would be good to take the opportunity to ensure that all the archive pages are in the same format. I take your point that "/Archive N" is the most natural choice; however, I think we should stick with the format used by GimmeBot, namely "/archiveN" (lower case a, no space). This is also the format used in the peer review instructions. There is no particular need to follow the archive box format.

The approach I originally had in mind was to generate the list of peer review pages by parsing the chronological archives, starting from the bottom of Wikipedia:Peer_review/Archive_1 moving up through Wikipedia:Peer_review/Archive 2, Wikipedia:Peer_review/Archive 3, Wikipedia:Peer_review/December 2004, Wikipedia:Peer_review/January 2005, ... and so on up to the top of Wikipedia:Peer_review/January 2008. Then only eliminate pages containing /archiveN. The remaining pages would then be processed in chronological order.

However, this is more complicated than your method, and approximately the same effect could be achieved by using your method, but only eliminating, in step 2, the /archiveN subpages, and the pages known not to be peer reviews (such as /Automated and its subpages, and the chronological archives). Then sort the list so that pages of the form /Archive N, /Attempt N appear first, in increasing order of N. Processing this list in order would (approximately) place the oldest reviews in /archive1, followed by /archive2, and so on.

This process may not be able to sort out examples like "Cannabis (drug) 2", but this set is probably quite small, and could be handled manually.

I don't understand why you distinguish between template and non-template space for fixing links.

Concerning deletion of redirects: I think it would be helpful to leave redirects on Wikipedia:Peer review/ARTICLENAME, but pages of the form Wikipedia/Peer review/ARTICLENAME/Attempt N could be deleted. Geometry guy 18:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Vis templates, I was simply thinking that any transcluded links are likely to come from transcluded pages in the template namespace. Just a minor semantic thing - the net effect is to change all incoming links to the new page. I think I would try and sort all the unarchived ones first, then try and deal with the archived ones in "standard" archive format, leaving the messy ones to do by hand. If we've decided to use "/archiveN" format then I can get going on this. Happy‑melon 14:49, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, but any chance you could try and deal with "standard" archived ones before unarchived ones? Its a relatively minor thing, but it would be nice to preserve chronological order as much as possible in the archive numbering. In any case, many thanks for being willing to do this. Geometry guy 15:12, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I actually realised that that would be necessary when fixing a bug in my filtering code, so I will indeed work on those reviews archived under wierd formats first. Happy‑melon 16:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

In fixing my predictably wobbly first move, I notice that WP:FAC uses the "Archive N" format. Forgive me if I appear to be pushing a personal preference here, but I do simply think that this style is better looking and more widely standardised across Wikipedia. Note that it is also the style recommended by WP:ARCHIVE. Thoughts? Happy‑melon 17:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Really? I see a variety of formats at FAC. I don't care myself: I'm just going by what GimmeBot does: see this diff at PR and this diff at FAC. Geometry guy 17:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I expected the FAC archives to be standardised - the first one I had to fix manually was Wikipedia:Peer review/1997 Pacific hurricane season/archive2, whereupon I noticed Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1997 Pacific hurricane season/Archive 1 and Archive 2, and assumed they must all be like that. But I guess enough beating around the bush: my personal preference would be for "Archive N". Do you mind if I do that :D? I know it's a purely cosmetic thing, but I just think that it looks better. Sorry to be so awkward... Happy‑melon 17:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it looks better too, but the standard at FAC is "archiveN": see the {{FAC-instructions}} for nominators. It is also the standard at WP:FAR. PR doesn't have to follow these, I guess, but we need to check that it won't confuse GimmeBot if we adopt a different format. So I guess my post bush-beating would be: if its okay with Gimmetrow to do it your way at PR, then it's okay with me, and I will do "automated archiving from the get-go" on that basis. Geometry guy 18:02, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll ask Gimmetrow. Thanks :D Happy‑melon 18:06, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

(←) It seems that Gimmetrow is equally hostile to either approach and unwilling to discuss the issue further, so if you are willing to go ahead with this, please use whichever format you prefer. However, if you go for "Archive N", please fix "archiveN" pages last, as these are likely to be the most recent. Geometry guy 23:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

In the absence of anything constructive from Gimmetrow (although of course he's entitled to his opinion), Sandy's request has swayed me. "archiveN" it is. This is going to take a while though :D; Gimmetrow is right about one thing: it is a slightly insane task! Unquestionably necessary though. Happy‑melon 18:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that's great. I will implement the templates on that basis. Geometry guy 19:03, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for peer review

Hi, I saw your name on the wikipedia:peer review volunteer page. I'm currently working on a science article called the Kardashev Scale, the page has gone through a lot of changes in the last 3 months, some of them reverts that I wish to overturn. I've sent out some notices to people who have worked on the page previously but I'm having problems getting open opinions and feedback. Their ideas about what they want the article to be about and look like are pretty set. I need outside opinion.

In my opinion the Kardashev scale has 3 primary interests:

• 1) A benchmark used by Seti scientists in there search for extraterrestrials
• 2) A catch-all vocabulary term for a scale used by scientists, in classifying advanced civilizations. This has important implications when speculating on sociological structures of advanced civilizations. But also, it is a necessary analysis when talking what about clues might be left behind or generated by alien species; which then might lead the the discovery of extraterrestrials.
• 3) Because it is can be used for the speculation of advanced civilizations it is a magnet for those interested in science fiction. Not many science fiction writers actually talk about the scale or the power generated by fiction species in power(WATTS) terms, but science fiction enthusiasts are interested in the Kardashev Scale.

My primary goals are in advancing the content area of number 2 and diminishing the fictional content. After all, it is a scientific not a fictional topic. My secondary goals are to find and add published content on the extension of the scale. The feedback I have gotten is pretty much divided between goals 1 or 3. And I don't want to create a editing war!

So please read the article and the discussion page and tell me what you think!!

• 1)Is the article presently fine the way it is?
• 2)After you read it, did you get the impression that it was a science article or a science fiction article?
• 3)Was it too long, too short, easy to understand?
• 4)Was the article interesting, was it boring, did it feel jumbled or was it concise?
• 5)What do you think might be needed to be added to this article, what do you think needs to be edited out?

Thx--Sparkygravity (talk) 18:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Bad news

I'm sorry to say that the sysops say the toolserver is down for an unknown amount of time. They have run into a bug in the database software that is preventing it from running. I'm sure that getting it back is a priority, but there is no ETA for it. The question in the meantime is how to handle the pages that are supposed to be updated from it. I can write a script to get some category data (but not the 'member since' dates) another way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

That is bad news. I did one manual edit to GAR yesterday, but haven't been keeping track of Peer review. A script to get category data would help. We already know the dates of articles which were in the category a day or two ago, so you could simply keep track of when your script first sees an article in a category. This would give us a timestamp accurate to within an hour, which is good enough for our purposes, I think. Geometry guy 10:47, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Good news

I was happy to see that the api now is able to return the timestamps when categories were added to the database. That means I don't need the toolserver database at all to get the same functionality as before. I wrote a script to download category info from the API and ran it. You can see the results on the peer review page. I also turned on the categories you listed on my talk page, all for namespace 4. Please let me know if you see any problems. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

That's good. There appears to be something wrong with the ordering, though. It is easiest to see on the shorter GAR category: see the latest auto-update. Geometry guy 17:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I remembered to fix the sorting only after the first run. I uploaded everything again, so it should be fixed now. [2]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Looking at User:VeblenBot/C/GAR/34, I think there may be an issue in the format template. The next to last line is blank. It corresponds to an archive page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:31, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a deliberate patch to avoid listing the archive page on the archive page itself, but I didn't work out how to get rid of the blank line on VeblenBot's page. A better solution would be to have some way of not placing the archive page in the category to start with. If you have any ideas, please let me know. Geometry guy 17:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. Could you start up User:VeblenBot/C/GAR/35? Thanks. Geometry guy 17:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

GAR/35 is turned on and uploaded. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Peterborough local elections

I don't think you should have been so quick to close this GAR Geometry Guy. I hope the same issues do not recur if renominated, as I stand by my earlier comments. Chrisieboy (talk) 13:31, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The GAR was initiated because the article was failed when it might better have been put on hold. The original reviewer has now agreed to put the article on hold and appears to look favourably upon listing the article as GA. I closed the GAR in order to allow for this rereview to happen.

I'm not sure why my help in mediating between the parties here merits criticism instead of thanks, but I would note that (i) I raised issues about the broadness/focus of the article which haven't been addressed, and (ii) if the new review does not take place as agreed at the GAR or if you disagree with the outcome, there is nothing to prevent you bringing the article to GAR again. Geometry guy 14:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Please do not take my remarks as criticism, that is not the spirit in which they were intended. Cheers, Chrisieboy (talk) 14:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate that. Good luck with the article! Geometry guy 14:29, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Articlehistory there is totally messed up and returned an error, no oldid, incorrect parameters, etc. Can you sort it out and inform Auawise on how to enter ah? Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I filled out the AH for the recent GAR, but Auawise changed the result from "not listed" to "on hold": an understandable mistake, because that's what the GAR recommended, even though the formal outcome was "not listed". As for the oldid, I don't do them anymore, that's bot work :-) To be precise, see Gimmetrow's comment: as long as you provide a timestamp (e.g., using five tildes), a bot can get the oldid later. Geometry guy 17:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, so I'll revert to your version, and add oldid. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I already restored my version, so there is no article history error now, but you are welcome to add an oldid if you wish. Geometry guy 17:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

"Done"

Thanks for changing the image icons to Done. on some articles I'd sent for Peer Review. I actually had wanted to get around to doing that, so what you are doing is very helpful to the project. Cirt (talk) 03:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I very much appreciate you taking the time and trouble to comment here. It turns out that the "Done" issue at PR is not as serious as I thought it was, but still, for people with slow connections, these templates are a pain! Geometry guy 21:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks also for tidying up an article history after I archived a batch of peer reviews. I was sorry to have to close all those discussions, but the PR page is desperately busy now, and gets close to breaking point regularly. Geometry guy 19:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

No worries. Cirt (talk) 09:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Template limits

Yep, I hit the limit at 100 back then, and have been manually processing templates for general relativity ever since. Thanks for telling me about the new pre-processor! --Markus Poessel (talk) 15:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Slackers CDs and Games Peer Review

I noticed you archived the Slackers CDs and Games peer review, but nobody reviewed it, so I'm wondering how do I get it peer reviewed? Me5000 (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

There were no comments for two weeks: experience suggests that no further comments will be forthcoming. This article is really short and probably not ready for peer review yet: see the guidelines at the top of the peer review page for other suggestions. Geometry guy 21:45, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Boolean algebras

I was pleasantly surprised to see you on the list at BATF. I didn't realize discussion was ongoing on one of the Boolean algebras pages; see Talk:Boolean logic for that, and for some background about the established participants. In the end, it will require everyone who already has been involved with the Boolean algebra articles to compromise to find a solution, and having some mediating voices will help. I started an outline on WT:BATF that I hope will draw comments and get the ball rolling. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It is good that you are doing this. I hope I will have time to make some helpful comments. I signed up because I got interested in the whole Boolean algebra issue last summer, so if you want to get some idea of my perspective, see Talk:Boolean algebra (structure)/Archive 3. Anyway, as a result, I know some of the participants and opinions involved, and realised that more mediating voices might be valuable! Geometry guy 18:58, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

AFD/SEW discussion

Hi GG,

Regards this comment, I'm not trying to be duplicitous and don't see it as quote mining. Reading the whole of Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia, I still see it as a grey area on whether SEW is exclusively about language. The use of 'for example', suggests that the list of possible users is not a comprehensive one. If Simple wiki is meant to be exclusively linguistically simple but cover the same content to the same depth, then a clarification on that page would be valuable. It's just my opinion based on my reading of the page. If I am reading it incorrectly, either I'm stupid, which I doubt : ), or there's wiggle room. The statements "Its articles are intended to be less complex..." and "In general, Simple English articles are simplifications of the most important points in existing articles...: suggest that SEW is not mere linguistic simplification, it's conceptual as well. If the purpose of SEW has always been merely linguistic simplification, then the page could be clearer on this point. If you are certain about the SEW existing exclusively for linguistic variation, I have no problem with editing the page to reflect this, and it should in fact be done if the consensus is Simple is linguistic only (I've left a comment regards this here). I've never edited SEW or looked at the website itself, so if you've expertise in this area, I'm happy to bow to it. WLU (talk) 17:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I did not mean to suggest your were being duplicitous: apologies. However, rather than asking me or enwiki what SEW is all about, I suggest checking out SEW itself: Simple English Wikipedia. I will comment further at Wikipedia_talk:Simple_English_Wikipedia. Geometry guy 18:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I read the Simple's front page and didn't find it explicit enough (for me, but I could be a thicky). Possibly it's because it's been obvious before what it's for, and now that there's a variety of intro articles on En.wiki and discussion of some sort of policy or guideline, the gaps or lack of distinctions between SEW and intros are appearing. Note that I've also spammed the discussion here, if you hadn't already seen it. WLU (talk) 20:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea. The SEW front page is no help: above, I wikilinked instead Simple:Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia, which is. Geometry guy 21:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Archimedes on the Main Page! :)

Isn't it great that Archimedes is on the Main Page? It was reading his article (in another encyclopedia, when I was little) that got me interested in geometry and math. I would open it up and just stare at the sphere, cylinder and cone; then looking up their articles, their surface area and volume formulae got stuck in my head; and then...

I added a little animation to Apollonius' problem in honor of the day. I'm not very good at this Blender animation thing, so I can't make things appear and disappear; instead, I have to move them into position from off-stage. ;) I didn't finish the solution — do you think I should? Also, I got only four solutions? I suspect, to get the other four, you've got to make the yellow circle wrap around the point at infinity, or else switch the y-order of the red and blue lines somehow? but I don't see how to do that. :( Oh well, merry meet, merry part and merry meet again at infinity, Willow (talk) 19:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. The riddle is away to its new home so, whatever its failings, I hope it gets a warm welcome.

PPS. In honor of Mother Earth, there's also this image. Sweet dreams on Archimedes' day, Willow (talk) 20:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It sure is, and cute animation! It adds to the drama having the actors Exit, bearing messages :)

I think that when two of the circles touch, four of the solutions degenerate into two, so there are only six solutions. The two you are missing are the lines tangent to the green circle and parallel to the other two lines. This smells of Lie sphere geometry to me (but why is it a redlink?).

In other FA news, Introduction to evolution got promoted to FA while at AfD, which I thought was kind of fun :) Geometry guy 21:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

So glad that you liked it! :) Thanks for explaining the missing solutions, although I now realize that the trick of expanding or shrinking the radii to get a tangency doesn't always work. How do you shrink/expand a line to keep it in contact with the separating circles? As an aside, I've heard of Sophus Lie, but I know basically nothing about him or his sphere. :P

On a whim, I worked a little more on Apollonius' problem today. I hope you like it, too. If you could help me understand the Gergonne solution described at MathWorld or on the Spanish interwiki, that'd be great; but if you don't have time, that's OK, too. I'm sure that some angel will whisper the answer in my ear if I just stare at it long enough. :) Either that, or she'll whisper, "Willow, you should clean your kitties' litterbox tonight." ;) Willow (talk) 20:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

PR getting very full

VeblenBot is leaving very full messages for PR - could it be the new template at the top of each peer review request? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

No, it was already getting pretty full anyway. The new template adds about 50 bytes per page, and the new header information (the links) adds about 650 bytes per page. So with 100 peer reviews, these together add an additional 70KB, which is not small, but it isn't that large either. Cutting out the watchlisting links would reduce this to about 50KB. Let me know what you think. Geometry guy 10:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed this until now. I am fine with the template as it currently exists. I archived a bunch of requests earlier today, so that should help too. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice work. You've cut the post-expand size down to 1.36MB, which is great. Geometry guy 20:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Peer review archiving again

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MelonBot 5. Gimmetrow 02:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll comment a bit later. Geometry guy 10:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this what admins do?

• ..and I was thinking of becoming one... well, not to do penny-ante stuff like this:
• Ling.Nut (talk) 11:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

  The ANI thread was pretty entertaining - although perhaps not entirely fun for you, despite your witty comments. Personally, I don't pay much attention to ANI: it is not the kind of thing that I can help with. As far as I see it, there's no guideline that says you can't redirect your user talk page: it is just unorthodox, and someone, somewhere is just not going to like it. Thanks for pointing out the FA tips. That was a big laugh! And believe me, I see people doing it, even at GA level! Oh well: keep enjoying RL and getting a better perspective on this crazy place. Geometry guy 21:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Many things to many people etc.

Thanks for your kind words about my essay. As for "Introduction to...", we'll see how things turn out at Wikipedia_talk:Make_technical_articles_accessible and beyond... --Markus Poessel (talk) 17:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Atom

The Atom article is right in the middle of a peer review and was receiving many useful comments. It is unclear to me why you have transferred the contents into an archive file while it is still active on the PR page. It seems very unhelpful.—RJH (talk) 21:22, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

From now on all peer reviews are going to be stored in archive files: the advantage of these files is that they provide a permanent link, and hence avoid the need to move pages and fix links, which is a huge waste of editor time. All current peer reviews are transcluded from archive pages, and soon this will be happen automatically from the very start of the peer review. This particular peer review was converted from a transclusion to a link (not by me!) simply because it is getting very long, and there is a 2MB limit on the amount of text which can be transcluded onto the peer review page. Whoever did it was being extremely helpful, because the peer review page was about to crash! Anyway, the peer review is open, so please keep discussing and enjoying the peer review process! Geometry guy 22:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I see. Wouldn't it make sense then to at least retain the article link in the title and the original poster's comments? The reader who is still interested can then go to the archive page.—RJH (talk) 20:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea, and I like what you have done at Atom (apart from the horizontal rule, which is a peer review separator). Exactly how this "pre-archiving" is done is in a state of flux at the moment, as the machinery behind the automation of the peer review page is undergoing some changes. But I will bear in mind your comment when adapting the "pre-archiving" to these changes. Geometry guy 20:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I've implemented the changes. How does it look now? Geometry guy 10:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a result, but..

...not via the method I wanted. What I'd like is to be able to manipulate the whole table on one page. If you look at the coding for the rest of it, the parameters allow select bits to be shown or not shown depending on which are activated. (I've ported it over from the original one on MilHist, which has now been redone, so it's more difficult to extrapolate a proper coding.) My point is that I'd like to be able to simply write {{WPFILMS Announcements|peerreviewonly=yes}} and have it render only that portion of the template. I don't want to be hunting around for separate transclusions, because when I update the announcements I'd rather do it in one go. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to have a look, and if you have any further ideas, I'd be most grateful. Thanks again, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 10:57, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

If you really want all the data on one page, you could do something like User:Geometry guy/Misc2. By default this supplies the current general announcements, but e.g. {{User:Geometry guy/Misc2|data=FAC}} provides the featured article candidates data instead:

User:Geometry guy/Misc2.

This can then be transcluded into the WPFILMS Announcements template at the appropriate place and used anywhere else where you want to get hold of this data. For instance, several pages transclude WP:WikiProject Films/Peer review/Announce, which means this data has to be kept in sync with the data at WPFILMS Announcements. Solution: put data in one place, and get it from there wherever else it is needed. Geometry guy 11:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

In reality, the transclusions really only go to two useful places - the announcement template itself (which is placed on several pages) and the WP:PR footer. That's really it. The rest is legacy archival stuff that doesn't really count. My point is that I don't want to hunt and peck to update each one - I want a clearing house stop to update all of the fields in one go. Splintering the template into a lot of shards is about as inefficient as just manually updating each instance instead of transcluding. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 11:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

User:Geometry guy/Misc2 is exactly such a clearing house! Check it out. :-) Geometry guy 11:39, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

My apologies - I misunderstood! I'm gonna try to get some sleep if my mind will allow it, but I promise to give a good test drive to it tomorrow. :) Many thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 12:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Area

Hey, can you go and take a look at the introduction to area? There have been a few changes recently, including my attempt to make it more clear and correct, but my math is math for engineers - we don't get into picky details about definitions. Thanks, Argyriou (talk) 17:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I made a couple of tweaks. Geometry guy 10:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

PR stats

Gguy, since you've gotten involved at PR, do you know who used to update the PR column at WP:FAS and why s/he stopped? Would you be able to add that number each month, or do you know who can? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Allen3 used to do that, but has quit his involvement in the PR process. I'm not exactly sure what this statistic is reporting. If it is the number of peer reviews on the peer review page on the first day of the month, it should be quite easy to generate it automatically. If it is the total number of peer reviews which have taken place in a month, I'm not sure how to work it out. You could ask User:Ruhrfisch, whose been around at PR far longer than I have, and is an extremely helpful editor. Geometry guy 10:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what it was or why it's there; I'll point Ruhrfisch this direction. Thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I just counted the number of semi-automated peer reviews I ran for the past few months yesterday (see here). For October there were 158, November had 166, December had 156, and January will have 180 (have to do one more as AZPR, then make the Febraury page).

If anything, I think the semi automated PR count tends to be a little low. Sometimes other people run the script and leave it in the main PR, or someone will explicitly say they do not want the script run or that they have already run it themselves (so I do not). I also have to skip incomplete requests (red links) so if they turn blue on completion later and get archived by someone else, I may miss them.

So thinking of all that, the FAS stats of 164 for October seems OK (i.e. there were 6 requests I did not catch). November's 149 vs my 166 is odd though. I checked his contributions and Allen3 was still doing PR work through all of November part of December and did the FAS update Dec. 1 diff. I also checked the dates of the first and last semi auto PRs in the archive and they are Nov 1 and Nov 30. See Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/November 2007.

I know December had at least one request to skip the script and there was at least one red link I did not remove (I try to leave a note that they should finish the request in the next 2 days - if they do not, I just delete it), but I am not sure if I caught it as a blue link. Could the bot count PR requests? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Unless someone has an idea what to do with that number or how to maintain it, I'll eventually ask Raul if he wants to drop it; I update the rest of the chart, but don't know what to do with that no. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:13, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

(See I told you Ruhrfisch is an amazing editor!) I agree that there is no point in listing this stat at WP:FAS. I think it would be a good idea for peer review to keep track of nomination and reviewing statistics, but it doesn't make sense to fold this in with FA statistics. I'll ask Carl about the kind of PR data he can supply via VeblenBot. Geometry guy 22:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I left a query for Raul654 about whether he wants to continue to carry the number (yes, I already knew of the wonders of Ruhrfisch :-). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hard to know what to say after the kind comments above (thanks, but all I did was look at a number in the TOC for each month's archive). My guess is that the PR number may be useful as a sort of "leading indicator" for FAC. If so, and if the bot can count PR requests each month, then that would be useful. I can try looking at the two months we are missing numbers for if they are needed - could also ask Allen3 how he kept track for help resolving the Nov. discrepancy. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I looked at WP:FAS again and at the bottom under Key it says Peer reviews this month - to December 2004, the # of entries on Wikipedia:Peer review which were submitted after the start of the month and are still on the list on the date in question; from December 2004, the number of entries contained in that month's archive. So I am now thinking in November that perhaps a few PR requests were closed without archiving and that is why the number is less than the semi-automated PR stat. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC)