User talk:MacGyverMagic/Archive 1

The following talk pages are archived, please don't change them. If you want to pick up the subject again, please go to my talk page.

Camphor

It was a very minor change, only one word. You can see what changes have been made to a page by clicking on "page history". Then to show the difference between two versions of a page click the boxes of those version (this requires a Javascript enabled browser). My change was from "medicinal use of camphor is disparaged" to "medicinal use of camphor is discouraged", because I thought the latter sounded better. Incidentally, I wrote the majority of the camphor page, thanks for adding the information box to it. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask on my talk page. Maximus Rex 20:13, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)~

Nice job!

Nice job on Sodium chloride. I didn't have time for the work when I saw the article last week. Thanks! Elf | Talk 01:40, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Of course!!!

Dear Mac: Of course that it was my pleasure to welcome you. Unlike many here (wikipedia) I believe this is a good opportunity to share friendship among people of different countries and races\religions.

Feel free to add any teen idols you know of, no matter where thy cme from or if they are only famous in one small country. One of the reasons I created the list is the lack of old people (even here in the States) about these young trailblazers who get wide media attention. So anyone, even teen idols who are known only by, say Qatari girls (and Qatar is a very small country!) qualifies to be in the list.

Thanks for your message and God bless you!

Sincerely yours, Antonio La Diva de Paris Martin

User subpages

I don't know whether there's a better way to do it, but what I did was to first create the link on my main user page, such as [[User:Elf/Whatever]], save the page, then click on the link--just like for any nonexistent link, an editable page pops up. :-) Elf | Talk 21:34, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

WikiMagic descriptions

Hello! I note that you propose on User:MacGyverMagic/WikiMagic that:

As little exposure as possible will be performed, while giving out entertaining info on effects.

As a reader (I'm not a magician, nor contributor to Magic pages), I'd quite like to be able to read on Wikipedia "the secret" behind certain tricks. Preferably it would have a spoiler warning, like {{msg:spoiler}}, though perhaps a custom spoiler message would be more appropriate. — Matt 16:38, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hello. I read about your WikiMagic project on the announcements page and thought I'd come see what it was about. While I'm not a professional magician, I am a member of a magicians' club and enjoy performing illusions to people on informal occasions. I just wanted to briefly express my opinion on the concept of exposure of "secrets" behind various effects. I understand that many sites online disclose the methods behind many different illusions and this information is readily available in books and other media, but I'd still hate to see Wikipedia become a host of a long list of magic effects and their methods. Without getting into a lengthy discussion, there are many reasons why "the secrets" shouldn't be revealed, and those reasons are for the good of both the magicians and the spectators. I think a list of articles describing the effect and history of several different illusions would be encyclopedic and interesting, and I'd be glad to help contribute to such a project, but I personally feel that this is not the area to be revealing how tricks work. Even if a "spoiler" type message (not {{msg:spoiler}}, by the way, which warns of "plot details") was included, I can't think of a single person who would stop there and not read on to find out how the illusion is accomplished — human curiosity is too strong. This is all solely my opinion, but I would urge you to search for some sort of consensus among Wikipedians regarding the issue of exposure of methods before posting any such information on articles. Others may come to a different conclusion than I, but I believe any decision like that should be made after getting community input. As a side note, the existing trick articles I found do disclose the illusions in quite some detail. Thanks for starting the project, and feel free to hop over to my talk page with any questions or comments.  — Jrdioko (Talk) 03:14, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

I disagree with the common belief that exposure destroys the illusion. This may be the case with amateur magicians operating purely mechanical tricks, but a true magician and company use their acting skills, commanding stage presence and showmanship to convince even those who think they know the secret to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the fantasy. That's why I included bits of exposure on the magic page -- not to be a spoilsport, but teach an understanding of human cognition and visual perception. If you limit the descriptions of tricks to what the audience sees, then you'll only get the 1-3 sentence teaser that you see in magic catalogues. If you include the principles (not the plans) and history of how tricks and illusions were invented, then you might get something like Jim Steinmeyer's book, Hiding the elephant: how magicians invented the impossible and learned to disappear (Carroll & Graf, 2003), which doesn't completely completely expose any illusions that are currently being performed. GUllman 03:21, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I see what you are saying and maybe I wrote my previous comment too quickly without being clear about all the issues involved. I agree completely that a magician is characterized by his performing skills and ability to guide the audience (no matter how big or small) by his words, actions, and presence. I don't completely believe, however, that a good magician can always make every spectator forget the principles that they already know and focus on the effect itself under every situation. I believe that especially close-up magic, for example, a levitation or particular card effect, is destroyed by audience members knowing the workings of the particular illusion. A powerful performer can direct some, but there will always be those who simply want to see how the trick is done or those who would have appreciated the effect more if they didn't know "the secret." However, these are all my personal opinions and consensus is what matters on the Wikipedia, so if others agree descriptions of the principles is best, that's what should be done. I just wanted to explain my particular point of view for others to consider when making these decisions. Again, I completely understand what you are saying and the idea that magic truly is an art based on performance rather than simply mechanical devices and slight of hand used to deceive. However, I still think that the majority of people who would read Wikipedia articles about magic (especially considering that the information is available to anyone online by a simple search) would be looking for secrets rather than researching detailed information related to human cognition.  – Jrdioko (Talk) 01:44, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

In response to MGM's initial comment on my talk page, I'm afraid I've been too busy with school lately to devote much time to creating well-written Wikipedia articles about magic, and it will likely remain that way for the next month or so. I'd be happy to work on a WikiMagic project in the future, but I can't do anything like that right now. One last thing... I'd suggest that this question of exposure be raised somewhere else (the WikiMagic talk page I assume) so that others can comment and state their views and some sort of decision can be made and policy stated on the project page. Everyone is going to have widely differing views on the subject, and I see many edit wars and reverts happening on magic articles if it's not clear how much exposure is too much or too little. Thanks for the invitation and for starting this project.  – Jrdioko (Talk) 01:44, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

---

Hi, MacGyverMagic. I notice on your magic project page that you are thinking on merging all the stubs about individual magic tricks into one large article (if I understood correctly). Let me share something of my experience with a similar situation in my early days here on wikipedia (very nearly precisely one year ago). User Rotem Dan (who has since mostly migrated to the Hebrew wikipedia) and I worked on a project of his to improve coverage of logical fallacies here on wikipedia.

I was worried that the prevalence of very stubby definitions of particular logical fallacies would be unseemly. I was reassured by an old hand that it would be a purely temporary condition, and that merging them into one huge article would be counterproductive, as it would discourage folks from adding information. A stubby article begs contributors to add to it. But a long article, even if woefully inadequate and sparsely informed, usually presents a slightly less inviting target for improvement. His sentiments have, in my opinion, borne out. The originally stubby articles have bloomed, some more than others, in a way I did not foresee, and which might not have occurred at all, if true to my inclination I had merged them then. So I think I would recommend that you live with a little discomfort temporarily, in the interests of an eventual better result. This advice of course comes with no guarantees, nor obligations to follow it. -- Cimon 20:21, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Weather lore

Hi MGM - Weather lore has been tweaked a bit; some reformatting, some additional information, some dewikification. I took your comments into consideration, and hope that you find the changes adequate for approval.

I see we have a minor philosophy difference about wikilinks. I come from the camp that believes "the more the better." One never knows what it is that will serve as a jumping-off point for the interested reader, or what terms one assumes to be understood are in fact not. I look forward to the day when every single word is a link to a dicdef, a synonym/antonym/homonym/heteronym list, a translation list, and an article. I think I will be very old before I see that, but then again, you never know. That would, in any case, be the ultimate for me in information access. Denni 01:19, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

Number of edits

There is currently no easy way to determine how many edits a user has. To determine how many edits you have click on "my contributions" and set the number of edits to 500, then copy and paste the contents of the list into a text editor that can count the number of lines. As of writing you have 245 edits. Maximus Rex 15:09, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

List of magicians

The reason why I reverted the anon was because he is a known vandal, none of whose edits I trust. RickK 14:51, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Go ahead with the changes, I have no problem with that. RickK 01:49, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Replied to your question about Joe Labero on my talk page. -- Jao 23:04, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

(copied from Jao's talk page for my own convenience) Yes, he's a Swedish magician, from Alvesta, and his stage name comes from his real name LArs BEngt ROland JOhansson. And well, apart from having seen him on stage twice, I really don't know much more than you. If you are interested in writing an article, please go ahead and do so. There is a "history" at the website of his show that looks quite comprehensive. It also states that he has won two Merlin awards, and my never having heard of this award probably answers the question of whether I'm knowledgeable on the subject. =) -- Jao 23:03, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

---

Excuse the revert on VfD (it's on dialup, and it's a little easier for me), but the deletion was speedy anyway. You can list speedy-delete type stuff on Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. Thanks :) Dysprosia 09:49, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Generation Terrorists

Hi MacGyver, I was trying to include to include a link to a larger image that the one in the albumbox as it is one of the Manic Street Preacher iconic images, but couldn't work out how to do it!!! Any help or suggestions would be gratefully received. It probably very very simple and I'm just being thick.Scraggy4 21:35, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Cloudless Sulphur

Hey MGM, you have left the {{msg:inuse}} up for three days now at Cloudless Sulphur. Are you still working on it?

Also, be careful: The "similar species", "flight", and "habitat" sections are verbatim copies from enature.com, and the range info was copied verbatim from yet some other source (forgot which one, though). The anon user is bordering on a copyvio here...

Good luck with your rewrite! (And thanks for doing it!) Lupo 08:25, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

>Also, this weekend was my birthday, ...

Oh! Somewhat belatedly: congratulations! (And now all together: "Happy birthday to you..." :-) As to the copyvio: just watch out and rephrase where necessary. It's not a wholesale copy, just a few sentencess here and there, so I think paraphrasing is good enough and a listing at Copyright problems is not needed. Lupo 09:54, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Looking for Wikipedia pages

I'm looking for the page that directs the "Did You Know?" section on the front page. Who decides what we see there?

I also want to know if there's a New pages patrol, just like the RC patrol.

Anyone with info please contact me hear or at my talk page. MGM 10:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Template:Did you know is shown in the main page, and Wikipedia:Recent additions is the history thereof. The rules are in the corresponding talk page MediaWiki talk:Did you know. Wikipedia:New pages patrol is for the new pages patrol, but it's rather quiet over there. -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:01, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi MGM, I copied the above from the village pump in case you hadn't seen it yet. You might find the Wikipedia:Editing the Main Page helpful as well. Angela. 06:41, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

beta Systemic Bias section

Hi, if you wish to help contribute to a beta version of a Wikipedia page section designed to counter-act Wikipedia's systematic bias, please sign the bottom of this section on the Village pump - Wikipedia:Village_pump#Systemic_bias_in_Wikipedia. If not, no worries.--Xed 03:23, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

beta Systemic Bias section opened

See User:Xed/CROSSBOW. Please feel free to add to the discussion. --Xed 12:57, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Human

What do you mean by "more spiritual POV added to the article"? How would you do that? How about some of the alternatives suggested in Talk:Human? ---Rednblu 20:34, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Summoning you to Human for a meeting. Could you possibly put Human on your watchlist for a while? Tom 21:02, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Upsala Nya Tidning

That was quick! "Well-known around the world ..."? Go ahead, tease small country nationals, I don't mind. :-) (You're Dutch, I see, so there are more of you. The Swedes just hit the 9 million threshold a month or two ago.) UnT's stuffy editorials seem to get somewhat quoted by other media here, so it might as well have its own page, I guess. There's a List of Swedish newspapers, where UnT is one of the minority of blue links, and even a Category:Swedish Newspapers, which I just inserted it in. I suppose I'll dig out the circulation figures and the year it started and maybe the self-proclaimed political profile. It won't be much of an epic, but then the "big" Swedish morning papers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, have pretty short entries (appropriately so), and this one ought by rights to be a little shorter still. Anyway, thanks for responding. --Bishonen 19:57, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ruben Gomez

I agree with you, the article Ruben Gomez does need some cleaning. I've made an attempt, check it out and let me know what you think. I've made the attempt of organizing the format before but, User MusicCitizen always reverts it. User:Marine 69-71

Current Events page

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant to do was to just remove the bold formatting from "Legionnaires' disease", though I reverted some other edits of yours in the process (then I did some copyediting a few minutes later). I removed the bold formatting because, as I understand it, it's not used on the Current Events page. Bolding is used in regular articles to emphasize important terms. On Template:In the news (which shows up on the Main Page and summarizes selected stories from the Current Events page related to recently updated articles), bolding is used to emphasize the most important related article. Mateo SA | talk 23:26, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

James Lawson

Some POV comments in the James Lawson article:

"the leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the US civil rights movement"

"His admission into the previously all-white Divinity School was considered a daringly liberal act"

"That, of course, took great discipline."

"any challenge to the racist mores of the South carried with it a high risk to their personal safety."

"in the much more hostile environment there"

"Despite the great loss"

I'm not saying it's not well-written, it's just rife with a POV. RickK 18:36, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Bookmark table and borders

Hi MacGyverMagic, thanks for the nice comment about User:Benc/Bookmarks. You are certainly welcome to make your own modified copy of it, if you like. To copy it, all you have to do is:

1. View the source of User:Benc/Bookmarks
2. Copy the entire source (highlight everything and press Ctrl-C)
3. Create a new user subpage in your user space (e.g., User:MacGyverMagic/Bookmarks)
4. Paste the source into your subpage (Ctrl-V)

Warning: the source code isn't pretty by any means. ;-) Modifying it to use your own favorite bookmarks might not be a piece of cake.

Your other question was about how I made the box around the "Older discussions are located in the archive" message. This is accomplished using a combination of HTML tables and CSS. CSS is a formatting language for that allows you to make borders, change backgrounds, etc. From the source of User talk:Benc:

{| align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="border:solid silver 1px;background:#f9f9f9;margin-left:8px;"
| Older discussions are <br> located in the '''[[/Archive|archive]]'''. 
|-
|style="text-align:right"|—[[User:Benc|Benc]]
|}

This wiki markup defines a table that is right-aligned. The style="..." part is CSS. Hope this answers your questions. :-) • Benc • 23:05, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Dhabawallah

In Dhabawallah, you wrote that people in the system get "paid about 4000 rupees (which equals around 50 British pounds)." But over what time period is this? Per hour? Per day? Per month? The answer dramatically affects interpretation. - RedWordSmith 12:33, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Not sure. I'll go back to my source and check. In the mean time, I won't mind some Indian wikipedians to give the article a once over. :)[[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 14:30, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Also about Dhabawallah: it wasn't me that changed the spelling. I just did some copyediting (correcting capitalization and such). An anonymous user did the spelling change to the title. Sorry! - Chazzoz 02:08, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

WikiMagic

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't aware that a magic trick could be copyrighted; that's a bizarre idea to me. Obviously we can't infringe on these (or other) copyrights. I think that for tricks we can expose we should just put a little spoiler warning in ahead of it for people who want to maintain the mystery. —Rory ☺ 20:15, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Certainly mention the copyright law in relation to magic if you feel you know it well enough (or are willing to research it). —Rory ☺ 20:57, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Table

Well, I didn't actually make the table (looks like it was User:Phil Boswell), I just made a minor edit to the section, but you can read this: Wikipedia:How to use tables. Everyking 16:07, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

WP:TSCOTW

I took it away because I had added {{COTWs}} which is a template with links to all the COTWS. JOHN COLLISON | (Ludraman) 18:44, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism

At any time you can list someone's edits on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress and ask for them to be blocked there. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 20:35, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

WP:LCOTW

Interested? JOHN COLLISON | (Ludraman) 21:05, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Me and Kevin Bacon

How am I only three degrees from Kevin Bacon? Well, one of my professors at college was friends at Wellesley College with Nora Ephron. She wrote Sleepless in Seattle, which stars Tom Hanks, who was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon. But now that I think about it, I'm only two degrees removed. I once wrote Alan Alda a letter and he wrote me back, Alda was in The Object of My Affection with Jennifer Aniston, whose co-star in Picture Perfect was . . . Kevin Bacon. Glad someone finally asked! (Oh, love your handle. My mother and I were big MacGyver fans--though not to the degree of Patty and Selma Bouvier.) Ave atque vale! PedanticallySpeaking 15:18, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)