User talk:TimVickers/archive 6

Archive 6

Thanks!

Howdy TimVickers, thanks for participating in my request for adminship. I am happy to say it was successful, 55/0/0, and I am looking forward to getting to work. Thanks for your vote of confidence. By all means, feel free to check in on my work to come. Suggestions and advice are always appreciated.

--TeaDrinker 06:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Homotopy groups of spheres

Thanks for your recent attempt to cast a layman's eye on Homotopy groups of spheres. Such interest is vital to our efforts, since we want to see how well we can serve a non-specialist audience.

Given the highly technical nature of the topic, what helps best is comments on the talk page rather than direct edits. For example, you tried to say something about dimension, but the net result was a technical mess.

Perhaps it will help if I explain why. A circle is a 1-sphere, S¹, which a topologist calls 1-dimensional. The sum-of-squares equation in a Euclidean plane, which is a 2-dimensional space, does give a circle; but we can have a circle in 3-dimensional space also. A spherical surface is a 2-sphere, S², which a topologist calls 2-dimensional. The sum-of-squares equation in a Euclidean 3-space, which is a 3-dimensional space, does give a spherical surface; but we can have a spherical surface in higher dimensional spaces as well. We have found from prior feedback that we need to tread carefully, because non-specialists can easily misunderstand. For example, a solid ball is not a sphere. You may find it helpful to read the "Background" section on n-spheres.

Please do continue to help us with your comments. --KSmrq^T 23:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

re: invite

I have accepted your WP:RfA invitation, and answered the questions here. Thanks for the kind words.

Also, as far as your [joke] question: "What might the main thermodynamic determinants be for an observation of GC-bias in a DNA-small molecule interaction?" The primary reason for this is that the energy required for unstacking the GC base pairs is significantly less than AT base pairs. It simply costs less energetically to open the intercalation cavity. Cheers! Dr. Cash 09:08, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, unfortunately, that RfA didn't exactly go quite well. I wasn't too concerned about the opposition regarding the Fark edits, since that was quite a while ago and, in the end, the entire section I was removing information from was deleted anyway; maybe in retrospect, I was a little too bold, but I was also dealing with some rather immature people who were vandalising my user page (not talk page) as well. But there were two other incidents raised by other editors which I am a bit more concerned about, although they were still somewhat isolated incidents and not representative of the vast majority of my edits on wikipedia. I think I just need some more time between that so as to build up more trust amongst the community, so I'll probably try again sometime in the spring. But I certainly am not going anywhere; I'll still continue to be active in GA and the Pharmacology project, and just go from there. Most of what I do now doesn't even require admin powers anyway, though it would make things easier.

In retrospect, now might now have been the best time to do this anyway. I'm actually getting ready to move across the country to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to begin a new position at the University of Pittsburgh. So maybe a couple of more months is just what I need before going for another WP:RfA. Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 05:06, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

RfA for Canadian Paul

Four years ago this day, a foreigner was voted by the community to serve a land that he loved. Today, a new foreigner humbly accepts the charge and support of serving a community that he loves. Hopefully, he won't disappoint. Thank you for participating in my RfA, which passed with a vote of (47/0/1). The trust bestowed upon me by the community is one of the most touching honours that I have ever received, and I vow not to let you down. Whether you have suggestions for ways in which I could improve, a request for assistance or just need someone to listen, my talk page and my email are always open. I pledge to do what I can to help this project, in the words of a man who needs no introduction, "make the internet not suck." A special thank you goes out to Tim Vickers for nominating me. Cheers, CP 22:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Medicine Projects

Tim, I don't think anyone has brought this conversation to your attention? [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

GA review for history of evolutionary thought

By all means take your time. History of evolutionary thought is clearly improving as a result of the review process. Since I think this topic is important enough that it should eventually have an FA class article, the more improvement the better. The truth is that half the reason for nominating an article for GA (or even FA for that matter) is to attract the attention of good editors who will end up improving it either by reviewing or editing.Rusty Cashman (talk) 22:57, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

the mysteries of ife

Sad to say, if I di dnot have some masochistic streak, I would have left Wikipedia long ago. But .... perhaps naively .... I sometimes have a small hope that out of the most inane conversations a good idea for improving an article may arise. But i think I am ready to go to bed now!Slrubenstein | Talk 00:46, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, it figures. And I almost thought I had converted him! Slrubenstein | Talk 19:50, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Twelve Tears Article

I am hear to argue my case for the Twelve Tears article. I believe that they are a band worthy and notable enough to be put in wikipedia. The article that I submitted was for them wasn't though. I was just creating a stub page for the band with something written on it because a friend of mine couldn't figure out how to create articles and they were going to come in and write the actual article after I had created the page. Can you please undelete the article so that it can be edited by the appropriate person. Or should I just have my friend come in and create the article himself? Thank you for your time. sacred cows make the best hamburgers (talk) 00:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes I read that before I stared the article and Twelve Tears qualifies to be an article on the basis that there have been newspaper articles published on them and that they are a prominent part of the rock music scene in the Virgin Islands and probably the only rock band in the islands of St. John and St. Thomas whose music is written and performed by young highschool age musicians. All other performing rock bands in the area are comprised of older people. Apart from being an integral part of the music scene there they also stand out on there own as a rock band. The music is utterly amazing and cutting edge. Please put the article back up and I will have my friend put in the actual article for a band that well deserves to be on this site. Thank you again. sacred cows make the best hamburgers (talk) 01:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

RFA

Yeah, I'd be willing to do that - it might be a while before I figure out who to nominate though. Thanks for nominating me by the way (missed you in my "mass talkspam" since I was just going down the list of votes)—Random832 15:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Personal discussion moved

TimVickers, if you are moving Fyslee's reply to Peter's comment, you should probably also move the original comment as well. Otherwise, it might be best to leave Fyslee's response in the context of Peter's comment, and suggest beneath it that they continue the discussion in User_talkspace if they would like to do so. Antelan ^talk 20:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I got your reply. I think what you did works just fine. Thanks, Antelan ^talk 20:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Enzyme status

Hi Tim,

I have to dart off to my class right now, and I daresay I won't be able to get back to the enzymes until next week sometime, since my family's arriving tomorrow and I've lots to prepare for! I did manage to finish most of EC 1, 4, 5, and 6, though, and a few articles here and there on EC 2 and 3. I hope you don't mind, I took your name in vain today a few times, to mollify people who did not warm immediately to the enzymes; small-molecule types, no doubt. ;) Hoping your Thanksgiving is wonderful, Willow (talk) 22:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

PS. If you could spruce up xanthan lyase, I'd be much obliged to you; thanks! :) Ta for now, Willow (talk) 22:32, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Admin

Hi Tim, I am ready to apply for my mop. What do I need to do exactly? Thanks again,

--DO11.10 (talk) 22:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

She--DO11.10 (talk) 23:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again for the nomination Tim, I am honored! I have completed the questions and accepted the nomination, as instructed. Anything else?--DO11.10 (talk) 19:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Why?

Why do the vandals always insist that the reverters are the ones that need to get a life? Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 01:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

A stunning example of irony. David D. (Talk) 06:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your vote

Thank you for participating in my RfA, which passed with a vote of (53/0/1). As a token of my appreciation, please accept this bowl of tzatziki. I feel honored to be trusted by so many of you. Wikipedia is such a large community, that my acceptance in the face of such large numbers truly is humbling. I will use my new tools to continue the tasks for which you entrusted them to me. Gratefully, EncycloPetey (talk) 18:34, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

For the reverts. :) Acalamari 20:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no objection to your semi-protection of my user page. Thanks for it. :) Acalamari 21:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Request

Hello Tim. I wonder if you would be interested in reviewing something for me. Are you familiar with Neal D. Barnard? An interesting guy. Anyway, if you have a look at his article, you will notice there is an editor by the name of NealBarnard (talk · contribs) who has been editing it, with the obvious WP:COI implications. Anyway, I tried to re-write the article and balance the controversial nature of some of his activism with WP:BLP considerations. I think I have been fair, but its difficult to tell sometimes. Dr Barnard has some issues with my rewrite oh his bio and, since we have been discussing it by email, he sent me a document listing his issues point by point. He doesn't wish the contents to be made public, but I was hoping a few admins with experience in the research/AR field might have a look at his issues, and my responses, and offer their thoughts. If you are interested, drop me an email and I'll forward the document onto you. If not, don't worry, and have a good Thanksgiving. Rockpocket 08:42, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Xenobiotic metabolism

This would make a great addition to DYK, you know. (hint, hint :) It's just under a thousand words—maybe more of your thesis would like to make it onto WP? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

?

You're acting very oddly today: You've just reverted two separate edits on Homeopathy, saying they were the phrasing of the Lancet, but neither references the Lancet, and it seems unlikely that both would have the same statement applying to them. Have you been hacked? Adam Cuerden ^talk 04:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Help!

Hello Tim. I created the article Aeropyrum pernix. I am not a biologist. Can you please help me to expand the article? Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 05:00, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your contributions. You really did a great job. Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 08:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Aeropyrum pernix

Hello Tim. Can you please explain the meaning of the following:

"The type strain is Aeropyrum pernix K1, JCM 9820, Japan Collection of Microorganisms, The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako-shi, Saitama, Japan."

What is 'type strain'? Can I include the above statement in the article? I nominated the article for DYK. They are asking me to expand the article. Can you help me? Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 05:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Regards, 02:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Masterpiece2000 (talk • contribs)

DYK

On 26 November, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Xenobiotic metabolism, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--WjBscribe 11:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Hepatitis B

Hi Tim, good news, we got Hepatitis B virus rated as a GA, which I'm pleased about. Just waiting now for someone to pick Rotavirus from the list. I am working now on Herpes simplex virus and Hepatitis C virus but progress is slow as usual. Thanks for the help with the writing and tweaking all the figures. All the bestGrahamColm^Talk 19:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tim, sorry to be a pain! I have made a new version of Image:HBV genome.png, but the old one remains stuck in the article. When you click on the old one the new one appears. (I flushed my cache, didn't help). I don't know how to fix it. Do you? Best wishes. GrahamColm^Talk 19:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

DO11.10

I was going to say that I was named after the greatest, most awesomely useful transgenic mouse ever... but then I might be a little biased :-) --DO11.10 (talk) 22:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Those were great!! Ah, scientists after my own heart... I really felt his pain when the smallpox guy had to give up his collection to the CDC. --DO11.10 (talk) 01:26, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Special thanks to you for nominating me! I will try to make you proud (or at least not regret it <grin>).--DO11.10 (talk) 22:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy edit

You reverted my edit with "No, this has been discussed at length before - see Talk:Homeopathy/Archive 19" Perhaps you could be a tad more specific -- it's a long page. I, on the other hand, did read through the citation that purports to back up the original statement, and made the change I did. Maybe I went way wrong, and need a learning experience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Friarslantern (talk • contribs) 21:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_19#Directly_opposed_to_what.3F

and

Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_19#Third_para.2C_first_sentence

Out of curiosity, which of the three references supporting this sentence did you read? Tim Vickers (talk) 21:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I will read up on these. To answer your question, I read both articles cited in the section you reverted. There are two references there, I'm not sure which would be the third (?) Friarslantern (talk) 22:25, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Ullman sockery

Heya... you asserted on the checkuser request that Lozier11 was registered after Ullman's block. This isn't accurate. If you check the logs for the sock account it was registered 6Sep2007, but it made no edits until today's revert. I still find it suspicious, of course. Cheers, Skinwalker (talk) 00:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

EMBO Encounters article

I read the article. It looked good! Hopefully it will help bring more interest to Wikipedia from the scientific community. Looking at all the new articles from ProteinBoxBot, there's a lot of work to be done.... Cheers. Forluvoft (talk) 00:43, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Research

I just sent you an e-mail about an interview for my thesis research. Let me know if you're interested in participating--I'd love to talk with you!

Jkomoros (talk) 17:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous 3RR at Homeopathy

This edit is against the consensus and is POV. And besides, it's crap. Can you help out? I'm not going to risk a 3RR block over this. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

unprotection of Homopathy

Go on. I tend to be more willing to protect controversial articles than uncontroversial ones, and there was a short period where it looked like it could be getting bad. Adam Cuerden ^talk 22:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

In the "You don't see that everyday" department

WP:RFA is empty! I think you cleaned out every possible candidate in a few weeks; it's your fault :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:33, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Fork substitution

As a previously interested party, I draw your attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Rhodesia&oldid=175026836#More_irrational_reverts and I seek your acquiescence in the edit I propose.

You may also wish to comment here, if you choose: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Alice.S&oldid=175027524#Edit_war Alice.S 11:00, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Triple crown

I, Durova, am pleased to bestow this triple crown upon Tim Vickers for outstanding content contributions to important articles. Thank you for building a better encyclopedia. Durova^Charge! 19:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Your Majesty, I was especially impressed to see where you concentrated your energies. Special thanks for directing your focus toward imporant high level articles. Durova^Charge! 19:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Astrovirus and Astroviridae

Dear Tim, I want to merge these but I need some guidance from you. Best wishes, Graham. --GrahamColm^Talk 18:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: Favour

Hey. Once again, thank you for nominating me. To be honest, you already nominated most of the people that first came to my mind to nominate for adminship! Haha. But I will definitely keep an eye out for potential admins, both in my own admin work and my regular encyclopedia building. Being an admin for only a day has exposed me to so many people who are active in the tedious tasks of things like nominating pages for speedy deletion. I'm sure with a little more experience, I'll be able to identify those who meet the "requirements" (so to speak) for becoming admins, and I'll gladly nominate and/or coach them to assist with your goals. I like the bar that you've set for me: three in a month. I'll do my best to meet it. Cheers, CP 05:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I haven't forgot about this. I've identified three that I think would be good, I've just got to check their contributions before I ask them if they'd be interested. Cheers, CP 23:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide

Is there (or will there be) a separate article on NADP? Your comments re: the GA nom imply that there will be, but I don't see any indication in the article itself that such a page exists. If NAD & NADP will be treated on separate article pages, that fact should be made prominently and repeatedly clear. If there will be a single article, then it should treat all aspects of both compounds. --EncycloPetey 21:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I think the new version of the article should pass GA and is very close to qualifying for FA status. However, I will not (in fairness) be reviewing the article this time around, since I have now contributed significantly to the article. --EncycloPetey 18:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

EMBO article

Excellent to see your work, and that of the WikiProject, recognized by EMBO. I also like how they say how people can sign-up and help. [2] --Aude (talk) 01:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Mitochondrion

Surely, Dr. Vickers. I removed the section in question because it was unscientific. The fact that mitochondria have 70S ribosomes is not evidence for endosymbiotic theory; it is merely a sensible result of the theory. Indeed, mitochondria are similar to bacteria, thus it it sensible that bacterial ribosomes are more befitting of them. The evolution of 70S ribosomes in mitochondria thus could have been possible without endosymbiosis ever occurring.

Someone already reworded the section; I'll let you decide its destiny...I'm no doctor! Enz1 01:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, leave it as it is then. The problem is that the majority of people reading this define "evidence" as either experimental data or statistically significant relationships. This particular factoid is a supposition that remains irrelevant to proving the theory. I don't see how my initial argument is wrong, either. Enz1 01:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

DNA

dear tim, if you think the links are inappropriate feel free to delete, i am not interested in spamming, or any kind of promotion, i just want the wikipedians a good user experience. any ways i apologise that you found the links inappropriate. sorry. by the way i am a Biotechnologist from india.and u? Shekharsuman 18:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

ok thats cool,Nice to meet you Dr vickers, hope to meet u some time in my next trip to US, :-) Shekharsuman 18:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Influenza

Hi Tim, visitation seems an odd word to use. Why not just use tourism? --GrahamColm^Talk 18:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for changes to "Evolution"

Hey, I'm a relatively new user and I noticed that you have done quite a bit of work on the Evolution article, so I thought I'd suggest my ideas to you because I am busy with some other personal Wikipedia projects at the moment.
I think that the Evolution article is getting too long and I would like to suggest making seperate pages for the "Mechanisms" and "Outcomes" sections. I think this would be fairly easy to do. (I would do it myself, but...well I already said that I'm kind of occupied for the moment.)
Also, if you could possibly expand the section on "Applications in Technology," I would appreciate it. I was wondering what other applications that evolution has in technology and I figured that you would know where to look better than I do. Thanks. Thingg (talk) 03:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: hey thanks for letting me know so fast, and I'll have to agree with that consensus. Still, there must be a way we could make the article a little smaller; its a beast right now (<104 kb). ~Thingg —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thingg (talk • contribs) 04:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy....again

I made this reversion. I read the article, and the authors in a background statement said that homeopathy "seems implausible." Which set them up for their analysis. At the end they concluded that Homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo effect, which makes homeopathy implausible. Oh well. I do get tired of selective interpretation of scientific articles. Now I need to drink again. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 07:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

History of evolutionary thought FAC

I have just nominated History of evolutionary thought for FA. Your participation in the processs would be very welcome. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

E-mail proposal

Hi. Nice to see you helping out at the policy proposal on privacy of emails that was started in response to the User:Durova incident in which critical evidence needed for the community to evaluate admin behaviors was repeatedly deleted and oversighted (forcing people to go to Wikipedia Review to read a version identical to that which Newyorkbrad said was valid) while User:!!'s subsequent selective quotation and summarizing was allowed to stand. It is a shame to see the same back-room canvasing uncovered in the e-mail used to push though a poorly thought out proposal, but with you involved I am hopeful sanity will win the day. For an example of the commonsense more-transparent behaviors that are in fact the community norm I show you from [3]:

"Perhaps it's a good idea to forward or post the emails? Initially, Scott sent Adam a 'legal threat' by email. Then Adam posted it on the Cuba talk page. Then I lobbied successfully to get Scott blocked indefinitely. So, the Sgrayban case demonstrated that WP:NLT applies not just to the Wikipedia namespace but also to Wikipedia email. 172 | Talk 06:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

If you want, you can go ahead and forward them to my account, and I'll review them to see if I can make a case for an indefinite block based on the emails. 172 | Talk 06:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)"

The whole "quoting email" thing is a misunderstanding, anyway. Privacy is about privacy of information, not the specific formatting of that information. Sometimes the fact that an email was sent at all is private. Sometimes, only some specific fact is private, like a real life name or a password. The most superficial look at the redaction of classified papers will show that what is private/secret varies widely from the fact that something even exists to a mere redacted number.

Anyway, I'm trying to be on a wiki-break, so don't bother responding to me personally; but I hope you find this useful in thinking about what guidelines are best for wikipedia. Thank you for everything you have done for wikipedia. You are an inspiration. And now back to non-wikipedia activities! WAS 4.250 (talk) 14:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help

Yeah, I did notice all the refs. That seems to happen with articles like that. I've seen the same thing happen with the video game console articles (yeah, I'm interested in them. **hangs head**). Also, I don't have any problem with articles being that size, I'm just trying to look out for those Wikipedians that still have dial-up connections. (Yeah, I still remember those days. Whoever made the comment about "the good old days" obviously did not live in them...) So yeah, thanks for the help. Now I'll stop clogging up your talk page with my wandering, irrelevent comments....Thingg (talk) 16:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

Hello, TimVickers, and thank you for welcoming me to Wikipedia! Although I do have to warn you that I was originally an uncyclopedian. --Deepraine (talk) 17:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Relax, writing something funny actually takes more effort than mere editing. That and I use these pages too much myself to try and stick in anything. After all, professors tend to have a poor sense of humor when it comes to research projects. --Deepraine (talk) 21:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

--Deepraine (talk) 22:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Amusing blog

I just loved this quote: Why should these homeopaths be worried about declining income? Wouldn't diluting their income make it stronger, according to homeopathic principles?OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Troublesome voter

I may need help dealing with this case: User_talk:EncycloPetey#Transhumanist_RfA_.26_Uncivility if the individual will not desist. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I have tried several times to activate my user e-mail, but have yet to successfully receive a message. I am getting Wiktionary mail just fine, and through two of the lists I subcribe to, but not from Wikipedia or from a friend who has been trying to send to me. I'm not sure if the failures are related. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Please try sending a message once more. I might have finally tracked down the problem. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the test worked this time, thanks. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

A question

Hi, Tim. This is just to let you know. I got this message from Coren_bot: [4]. The text was copied from a Pfam mirror page [5] per this talk at MCB page [6]. I left a notice to user Coren with explanation. One possible complication here is that Pfam and InterPro abstracts are often identical (and we are not taking anything from SMART or Prosite). I thought that we could copy any content that appears as an integral part of Pfam entries, as in this mirror [7]. Perhaps, we should include automatically an acknowledgement to Pfam and/or InterPro or personally to Alex Bateman (he was main developer of both databases) in each article? I am not quite sure.Biophys (talk) 18:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Draft on homeopathy potency scales

I welcome any comments at User:Filll/homeopathyscales. Bear in mind that this is a very early very rough draft. Thanks.--Filll (talk) 18:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Rfa

Just wanted to let you know I admire your cool headed replies on Elonka's Rfa. In spite of the baiting going on there, you're managing not to get pulled in. Good job. Jeffpw (talk) 22:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Rumors

Tom Cruise, eh? Well, I'd rather that the rumors were about me and Brad Pitt, but I could probably handle it being Tom Cruise. He does seem like the easier target, too.  ;) Could we compromise maybe, and spread rumors that I'm sleeping with both of them?  ;) You know, consensus and all that!  :) --Elonka 22:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Tom Cruise isn't where the link goes... :) Tim Vickers 23:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Your comment

I was posting the "be civil" comment to be ironic, considering she has been nothing close to civil in her other interactions with people who edit articles she has been working on, but your comment is noted :) I do suggest that you get the full story, though, before judging me too swiftly. Justinm1978 (talk) 00:06, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nellie Pratt Russell - you closed?

That was awfully quick, considering that it was open for less than 12 hours. Since I must now do them individually, must they be considered "Second Nominations" if I put them up again? Justinm1978 (talk) 02:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

"More notable" doesn't mean that it will still pass WP:NOTABLE, and you still didn't answer when I do them individually that I'll have to list it as a second nomination or not. Justinm1978 (talk) 02:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Time

Hi Tim, it is Sunday morning and I am perfectly sober. As I always am when editing. Please read User talk:Tqbf and see if you think it is all reasonable. The user is not contributing positively to Elonka's RfA, as the nominator you should concerned about that. The user pretended to quote me, then refused to acknowledge this. This is a serious issue, if he had not added his drunken disclaimer I would take it further. Regards, cygnis insignis 04:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

NAD

Hey Tim. Care for some SVG? :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 19:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. I'll see if I can get to the others between today and tomorrow, and then actually read the article so I can comment at FAC. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 22:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Have a look?

[8]. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism with citations; that's a good one :-) [9] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, Tito and Joel already got there. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:01, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

My user page

Hello TimVickers, I thought I'd mention that you can unprotect my user page now please. I know I could do it myself, but I felt it would be more courteous to ask you to do it, as you were the one who semi-protected it. Thanks! Acalamari 19:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

That's fine; thanks for both the initial protection, and now the unprotection. :) Acalamari 20:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Chromosome

Well, I want to make a small edit more, and add some more refs, but I'll get back to that tomorrow as it's pretty late here. Thanks for asking. Macdonald-ross (talk) 23:40, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

And, next morning, I'm with it now! Thank you for the info and corrections. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Checked further, and noted that WP does not have articles on these topics: Bacterial chromosomes, Archaean chromosomes, Archaean genetics, Prokaryote chromosomes or genetics (though WP does have a short but good article on Prokaryotes; also the article on Bacterial genetics is pretty thin. I conclude that this area needs beefing up!

Surely the term 'virus chromosome' should never be used?! I've checked with the excellent Virus article, and they use the traditional and correct term 'virus genome'. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Finally, I checked with articles Plastid, Mitochondria and Mitochondrial genome, and see they all use the term 'genome', and that there is no suggestion that they have 'chromosomes'. So may we at least get rid of that usage on the Chromosome article? Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:22, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, I'm quite stunned by the new stuff on organelle nucleoids... it seems they each use different proteins for binding and regulating DNA. That'll be a tough one for evolutionary theorists to interpret! Thank you for introducing me to a whole new world. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

NAD+

hi Tim, overall, I would like to recommend some re-grouping of the page.

• The lead text is already an informative paragraph about TWO chemicals instead of just the one. As such, it isn't the summary of the article about NAD+. ref: wp:lead
• The four major sections (2/3/4/5/6) for as a non-biologist (but chemical) are not logical: I don't see the logic sequence and their interdependency. Also here I would think combining of several sections in to chem+phys/metabolism/pharmaceutical seems appropriate.

If you care for support, I can give it a try? Wim van Dorst (Talk) 18:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC).

ps. Nearly all of the peerreviewer script found issues still remain. I recommend User:AndyZ/peerreviewer for your perusal. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 19:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC).

ArbCom

A request for an ArbCom hearing over WP:NOR was recently begun [10]. You aren't one of the named parties and neither am I but I remember that you had some WP:OWN issues with that policy in the past, which is one of the issues with this request, so I thought I'd let you know about it if you wanted to comment. Cla68 (talk) 03:01, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I've not been following this dispute and have always ignored the primary/secondary source distinction whenever it appeared in the policy. I can't add much to this discussion. Tim Vickers (talk) 03:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

What to do next?

Mid-year I initiated the article "Last Common Ancestor." Several months later a contributor to "Most Recent Common Ancestor" stopped by and deleted 3/4 of LCA . Then he went to its links and replaced them with links to his MRCA. He is not all bad, during our lengthy discussion he gave me a link to the original article, can be accessed here.

So far I have not undeleted his deletes. I am not up on the ins and outs of Wiki editing, so I am sitting tight, looking for some advice. First, would you review the original article for the features Wilipedia is interested in? Do you think it passes? Second, I *believe* in the end his assertion is that the originator of a species cannot be called the last common ancestor of the species. So if you would, check out the discussion page and see if this is actually his key assertion and could it be correct and the article deleted. Finally give me your suggestions as to how to proceed next.

If you can only accomplish one of those tasks, please make it the last one! As I said I am not on sure ground here. Maybe the best place for you to reply is here but maybe the article talk page is better. I guess if I knew, I would not be asking for your help! Tom Schmal (talk) 04:15, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0 Project

I am hoping that you may know more about WP 1.0 than I do, 'cause I know next to nothing on the matter. All I know is that the top third of the Talk:Johnny Cash page is now filled with information about the project. I know that it was not this way a few days ago, because I have been doing a lot of editing work on that page this week. At any rate, to make a long story short, is there a way to limit that information? Has the template been changed recently? I am all at sea here. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 17:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I thank you for your response, and your action on this matter. I will watch for responses on the 1.0 talk page, and hope someone figures out what went wrong. I decided to go ahead and leave a message with the project editor who placed the template in the first place, so he may be able to figure it out himself. Thanks again for your time. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 19:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Thank you for voting in my RfA, which passed with 24 support, 3 oppose, and 3 neutral. I promise to work my hardest to improve the Wiki with my new tools.

--Michael Greiner 18:56, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Ownership issues

Ironic that you should have asked me about that last night. This diff happened about 3 hours later, followed by Talk:Animal_testing#Editing. I'm not expecting you to do anything abut it, SV is well-known for this, but the timing was too good not to mention. All the best Tim Vickers (talk) 15:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Unbelievable. I guess we're supposed to feel fortunate that she deigns to allow us to edit her wiki. Cla68 (talk) 00:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Elonka's RfA

Just wanted to say that it was an honor to nominate Elonka alongside you and Alison. Thanks. Acalamari 02:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

ROFL

this diff is hilarious. Horologium (talk) 03:03, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy AGAIN

I don't want to get into an edit war AGAIN. However an anonymous editor has made changes that were resolved a week ago. That word "seems" keeps coming up. I'm almost ready to find a replacement article, but it clearly states it's supposition is that homeopathy "seems" to be scientifically implausible. Then it concludes that it is. People quote mine left and right. Just like the Creationists!!!!! LOL. Well, if you can help out. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 06:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Request for Arbitration

Hi, not sure if you would care to comment or not, but COgden has filed a Request for Arbitration here. Your name was mentioned by Cla68 as somebody else that may have comments, and I didn't see that you'd recieved notice, so thought I'd mention it. There is also a relate RfC on COgden himself [here if you'd care to leave any additional comments. wbfergus ^Talk 12:29, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but no thanks

In regard to this warning, I've already been warned, archived the warning and my response to it here, and taken the article off my watchlist as I have no desire to get involved in this sort of nastiness. So I hope you won't get upset that I am about to remove your warning from my talk page. Thanks! Curious Blue (talk) 17:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I find your even-handedness by warning the other party as well admirable and it helps restore my faith in Wikipedia processes. Curious Blue (talk) 18:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

You got a Christmas card! → → →

Wishing you and yours the very best of the holiday season. May the coming year bring you peace, joy, health and happiness. God bless us, every one! Jeffpw (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your note on my talkpage. :) Rray (talk) 02:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you as well

A little thank you from me as well. :) It's very good to be under a doctor's orders to give myself permission to take a rest. ;) Bon voyage and have a very happy holidays, Willow (talk) 14:47, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

A little help please?

Check out NEWENTRY, but before you delete it, check out the NCBI links. Looks like some sort of bizarre hack by NCBI... AndrewGNF (talk) 21:46, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, someone else got it. Guess other admins are really on top of those CSDs. Anyway, nice gene, huh? AndrewGNF (talk) 22:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

FAC for NAD

I've been keeping an eye on the FAC. Unfortunately, I don't have time currently to really examine the latest version or make careful comments, and probably won't before next weekend. I had intended to do some serious article writing today, but ended up embroiled in a dispute that killed the entire afternoon :( --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your message. I dont feel you should have to share the responsibility of Elonka or anyone else's adminship. That is just wrong. People should be responsible for what they do. I dont agree with the outcome ofcourse but this website is dysfunctional to a certain extent, as is everything else we see in life. I doubt I'll be contacting you for anything that she does but I'll let you know if I need help in any case. However, again its my opinion that its not right for you to feel that you have to jump in her conflicts and sort them out. Thats her job, not yours. Ofcourse if you want to do that, thats up to you. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 18:06, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Virus

Dear Tim, we want to change the name of the article to Viruses [11] , (we already have the plural Bacteria. would this be a problem?--GrahamColm^Talk 21:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[excuse me butting in]. I refer to Tim's previous edict at Talk:Bacteria#Move to 'bacteria' where he said

I think we just have to ask ourselves "What are people going to type into a search engine"? I think "bacteria" is going to be overwhelmingly the most common word.

The same is not true of "virus". People say "you have a virus", they don't say "you have a bacterium". In fact, I guess many people don't know the singular for bacteria. Nor will they know that one virus particle is a virion.

Looking at the discussion on Talk:Introduction to virus, there appears to be at technical reason behind the request. This can be solved. Lots of similar templates take optional parameters that let you vary the text/links. You can make a request on the template talk page. Colin°^Talk 23:09, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

3RR

If you add that again, you may be reported for 3RR. Please read the policy carefully, as you've almost certainly violated it already. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 00:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Fortunately for Slim and Crum, tag-teaming isn't, apparently, against policy. Cla68 (talk) 00:37, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

What is this about? Tim, the ultimate collaborative editor, violate 3RR? Where? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

(Replying for Tim) Animal testing. Cla68 (talk) 00:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Plesae see the revision history at Animal testing and the talk age discussion Talk:Animal_testing#Suffering. I don't think I did violate the policy, since all I did was add a new source each time one was requested. If anybody wants to make a report about this at An/I though, I would be interested to see what the community thinks about this. Tim Vickers (talk) 00:41, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I see now. Well, AN/I isn't terribly useful in situations like this, and I suspect that a 3RR notice on your talk page will generate sufficient attention to remedy the matter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I already reported it to ANI link. It may not, as you say, be very useful but it hopefully will bring more attention to the situation. Cla68 (talk) 01:11, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Diffs are always helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Done. Cla68 (talk) 01:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually SlimVirgin is correct, she said, if he does it again..., so as he rv'd 3X... — Rlevse • Talk • 01:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I read (above), " ... as you've almost certainly violated it already". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Feedback on Homeopathy subhead

Hi, Tim. I wonder if you could stop by Talk: Homeopathy and throw your vote in to either preserve the sub-head "Medical analyses and criticism" or use what I propose, just "Medical analysis." OrangeMarlin thought you'd have some interest in sharing your two cents. Naturezak (talk) 04:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Genetic pollution is a regular "Scientific term"

Hi there. These large scale edits you are making to promote the activist term "genetic pollution' are a serious NPOV problem. Can we resolve this through discussion? Tim Vickers (talk) 05:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tim, Genetic pollution is a regular "Scientific term", find out....., start from here this version of the article [12], edits from here on just desecrate the article and are nothing but vandalism, mass slashing of article to 2 or 3 lines and wanting to erase it completely by merging it with Introgression etc.

Improve the article if you can in time, thanks.

Examples of usage of term "Genetic pollution"

• “Although wolves and dogs have always lived in close contact in Italy and have presumably mated in the past, the newly worrisome element, in Dr. Boitani's opinion, is the increasing disparity in numbers, which suggests that interbreeding will become fairly common. As a result, genetic pollution of the wolf gene pool might reach irreversible levels, he warned. By hybridization, dogs can easily absorb the wolf genes and destroy the wolf, as it is, he said. The wolf might survive as a more doglike animal, better adapted to living close to people, he said, but it would not be what we today call a wolf.” from Italy's Wild Dog Winning Darwinian Battle, By Philip M. Boffey, Published: December 13, 1983, THE NEW YORK TIMES. Accessed 16 December 2007
• Butler D. (1994). Bid to protect wolves from genetic pollution. Nature 370: 497

Atulsnischal (talk) 13:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC) Atulsnischal (talk) 17:45, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of the Glisodin content submissions

Recent content I submitted was removed by you due to "adding inappropriate external links." Now that I understand the connection between external links and spam, I am in good faith trying again. I remain confident that with an improved internal link structure, the integrity of the information I am supplying remains intact. All the assertions being made are based on sound clinical research, and all are accessible from a variety of sources. Please understand that my resubmission is not a stubborn attempt to challenge the editors, but rather an effort to share this intelligence with the best of intentions. If I am not following S.O.P. I apologize and ask for your kind guidance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cavemanlawyer15 (talk • contribs) 20:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Metabolism - Photosynthesis

Hi Tim, in case you haven't noticed yet, the question has come up on Talk:Metabolism whether the photosynthesis light reaction is correctly sorted under catabolism. I was wondering if you'd want to comment and/or if we should consider giving the electron transfer phosphorylations (oxidative phosphorylation, photophosphorylation) their own section rather than putting them in with catabolism. Thanks! - tameeria (talk) 22:00, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Evolution

Help. I reverted some POV edits, then I noticed that the article was messed up (prior to me I think). References, templates, lots of stuff is missing. HELP. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. Someone figured it out. I'm just trying to figure out why Twinkle removed stuff. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

NOR/PSTS issue relating to science

Hi TimVickers. I think we've interacted briefly in the past. I'm a librarian and attorney with a scientist (biologist) partner and a lot of science/tech experience, so I occasionally work on science articles; I work fairly often on scientist biography. As a scientist I hope you will be able to shed some light on an issue that I'm having (and that Wikipedia is having).

I've gotten drawn into ongoing arguments over WP:NOR particularly the primary/secondary/tertiary sources discussion. One of the problems I've seen has been, occasionally, editors arguing that one can't cite to the original paper or the peer-reviewed literature because it is a primary source. While we want to avoid original research (and synthesizing claims drawn from the primary literature, aka peer-reviewed scientific journal articles), I'm uncomfortable with the categorical placement of peer-reviewed scientific literature into "primary source". I am MOSTLY uncomfortable with it because the policies discussing primary/secondary/tertiary repeatedly preference "secondary literature". (I am ALSO somewhat uncomfortable with it because it suggests something about the various disciplines that I'm not wholly sure I agree with; but that's a much more minor concern that probably has more to do with my personal ideas.)

If you look at WP:EVALUATE (the version I'm looking at is this one) Viriditas has drawn up a nice chart that illustrates what I believe these policies/guidelines are trying to do. The science section makes me very uncomfortable, in conjunction with the definitions of primary/secondary above and the policy at WP:NOR that preferences secondary over primary. Please see what you think.

Cheers, Lquilter (talk) 15:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Image:NADNADH.png

Thanks for creating that image, it looks great! I don't know if you have noticed, but apparently you forgot to include the copyright info and the image is currently under threat of deletion. Just to let you know. --Itub (talk) 09:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Added tag. Tim Vickers (talk) 10:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

When I saw this thread I created this svg. I can change fonts or colors if you like. I won't put it in the article unless you feel it is improvement (I am not sure it is at 250px) Cheers and good luck with the FAC. —Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 11:02, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Wishing you the very best for the season - Guettarda 05:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics

Hello TimVickers. I nominated Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics for DYK. However, it was not selected. What went wrong? I mean, even the biography of crickters like Frank Pitcher appear in the DYK section and the article on one of the top research institutes in the World doesn't appear in the DYK section! Who makes these selections? Can you explain it to me? Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 08:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas! Well, the article Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics was selected for DYK! Masterpiece2000 (talk) 14:02, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

League of Copyeditors roll call

Greetings from the League of Copyeditors. Your name is listed on our members page, but we are unsure how many of the people listed there are still active contributors to the League's activities. If you are still interested in participating in the work of the League, please follow the instructions at the members page to add your name to the active members list. Once you have done that, you might want to familiarise yourself with the new requests system, which has replaced the old /proofreading subpage. As the old system is now deprecated, the main efforts of the League should be to clear the substantial backlog which still exists there. The League's services are in as high demand as ever, as evinced by the increasing backlog on our requests pages, both old and new. While FA and GA reviewers regularly praise the League's contributions to reviewed articles, we remain perennially understaffed. Fulfilling requests to polish the prose of Wikipedia's highest-profile articles is a way that editors can make a very noticeable difference to the appearance of the encyclopedia. On behalf of the League, if you do consider yourself to have left, I hope you will consider rejoining; if you consider yourself inactive, I hope you will consider returning to respond to just one request per week, or as many as you can manage. Merry Christmas and happy editing, The League of Copyeditors.

Melon‑Bot (STOP!) 17:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Nucleotide

Hi, looking at your image (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Nucleotides_v2.png) on the Nucleotide article, I was confused. I've laid out my confusion on the discussion page for the image, maybe you could have a look. 138.38.217.149 (talk) 18:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations on NAD+

Well done on the NAD+ article. There's an FA for you now! Wim van Dorst (Talk) 23:04, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I know I never got to commenting at FAC... sorry, I owe you a review :) Well done, Dr. FA Machine! Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:21, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

YAY! --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:23, 1 January 2008 (UTC) Sorry for not noticing this sooner.

Introduction to evolution

I'm hoping that you will be able to help out at Introduction to evolution. I know that you worked with Willow and others on Evolution. I believe that these introductory pages are extremely important for Wikipedia as the main pages can sometimes be dense for the lay reader (Introduction to general relativity was a lifesaver for me!). I've been working with the editors at IE over the past few months in an on-again, off-again way in a sort of review capacity, but I mostly provide a prose and organization check. I was wondering if you would be willing to provide an outside scientific accuracy check. Awadewit | talk 20:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do, Tim! I just gave it a cursory review, but I doubt my expertise and wonder whether I was too demanding for an introductory article aimed at high-school students. It's clear that the authors have lavished a lot of care and thought to the article, and made clear strategic choices on the writing and referencing. I think you would bring a better, more balanced and broader perspective than I can. Happy New Year, and hoping your travels went well, Willow (talk) 19:58, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Best wishes

Dear Tim, I will be working at the hospital over the New Year's celebrations, so may I wish you now all the very best for 2008 and thank you for all your kindness and support. Graham. --GrahamColm^Talk 23:17, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Request

Hi Tim, how are you? I hope your holidays have gone well. I just wanted to know if you could take a look at Domestic sheep for me, I've been doing a lot of work on it lately. this section in particular is pretty slim. Many thanks and best wishes, VanTucky ^talk 21:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Tim, hope your holiday is going well. Also note, I now GA nom'd it. I'd very much welcome your reviewing expertise as well! VanTucky ^talk 22:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Hadn't seen you around my Watchlist in a while; I hope you enjoyed the holiday season. Here's hoping 2008 will bring many more FAs :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tim!

Just seen the reference by Alun to me from last November; I am interested mainly in the Francis Crick article and helping John Schmidt to improve on it (it's already pretty good) and same for Maurice Wilkins one of these days! Incidentally I am the pround father of a Cambridge son Year 4 doing a Masters NatSci and a Bristolian daughter studying Animal Behaviour and Welfare. You might like to try Seweryn Chomet at KCL for a non-copyright image of REF by the way. Martin P. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.108.7.114 (talk) 20:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

A request for your consideration regarding CAT:AOTR

...My guinea pigs and the "A"s through "S"s having felt this message was OK to go forward with (or at least not complained bitterly to me about it :) ), today it's the turn of the "T"s through "Z"s (and beyond, apparently)! I'm hoping that more of you chaps/chapettes will point to their own criteria instead of mine :)... it's flattering but a bit scary! :) Also, you may want to check back to the table periodically, someone later than you in the alphabet may have come up with a nifty new idea. ++Lar: t/c 20:54, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Orthomolecular psychiatry

Hi Tim,

I was wondering if we could get your friendly admin's eye over on Orthomolecular psychiatry. There's an ongoing disagreement on whether the Current research section is WP:OR/WP:SYNTH or not, and there's a basic disagreement that isn't changing. It's extensively documented on the talk page (now VERY long!); there was a RFC that didn't work (not sure why, could have been my fault and given the quick pace of editing I didn't think it worth re-filing) and lots of typing, but no real movement forward.

Please let me know if you'd like more details, or just pop a new section in on Talk:Orthomolecular psychiatry. We're expecting your comment (in the sense that we've agreed to ask you for an opinion as an admin and long-term editor, not that we rudely insist upon it - think of it more as a 'please come help', but said with these eyes) though we also agree that yours is not necessarily the final word, just one way of trying to work this out.

Discussion has been admirably civil, but lengthy. I suggested you as a potential candidate to ask due to your edits to pyroluria a while back - you would have encountered Alterrabe (sp) on that page as well.

Thanks,

WLU (talk) 16:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Tim,

I inadvertently undid the changes you made to the section on celiac disease and schizophrenia. I don't understand the rational for minimizing the flaws with the studies that found no link, but would be happy to hear your thinking.

And thank you for your additions to the copper discussion.--Alterrabe (talk) 20:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

How would "these rare patients" strike you? "Unusual patients" can sound cruel in the given context.--Alterrabe (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

wikipedia weekly interview

Hi there Tim, I was wondering if you would be interested in coming on Wikipedia Weekly podcast to do an interview? I was tipped off by user:WillowW that you might be a really interesting person to talk to. I try to mix up the experiences and backgrounds of interviewees (to show the diversity of people involved in WP) so to have someone from a science background (and from scotland too) would be great.

Some things we could potentially discuss are:

• The FA process for science articles [[Metabolism]] and [[Evolution]] especially.
• ProteinBoxBot and the Rfam database.
• the Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject and its publicity in the American Chemical Society Chemical Biology.

If you are interested, we record via Skype so you would need that and a headset microphone. Thursday-Sunday are good days for me, as I am in Australia we would have to coordinate timezones...

Please leave me a message on my talkpage. Best, Witty Lama 09:45, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Great, Well, my username is wittylama on skype. add me there. give me some times that are good for you over the next week and I'll see what matches up. I generally prefer thursday or friday as I don't work then. Best,

Witty Lama 07:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Sunday morning (my time) is good. I'm not entirely sure what the time difference between wherever you are and Sydney is - and i'm too tired now to do the backwards-counting - but I would have a preference for midday Sunday. That would put it at 7-8pm Saturday going on your calculations? Is that ok? Please add me on Skype to get this show on the road :-) Witty Lama 12:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't see any Skype invite from you... I searched for "tim vickers" in Skype and found about 6 people with that name. What's your Skypename? Witty Lama 03:07, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I've now added you with a request too. Hopefully you see that... I'll see you in about 14 hours. Witty Lama 11:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You'll see that the ep. is now live. Here's a userbox for your troubles!

This user was a guest on Episode 40 of Wikipedia Weekly. You can listen here.

Best, Witty Lama 11:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Metabolism

Hi there! I was checking the metabolism category and noticed that your sandbox is listed there. Guess you forgot to remove the category tag from the article you pasted there. Just letting you know. Cheers! RIP-Acer (talk) 17:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Have you been following the homeopathy article recently? I was wondering because I think it's time to start getting it to FA status and ending the disputes. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 19:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

WDM, the Homeopathy article is starting to stabilize. But just a thought, will an FAC cause it blow up again? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It's only natural that it will stabilize after a long time being protected. Editors generally get bored with it when they can't make edits. It should be unprotected and if after a few weeks there are no edit wars, then we can say it's stable. I think that if it's unprotected, within a few hours it will be edit warred over. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 19:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You can't up a protected article up for FA, if you want to experiment request unprotection and see what happens. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

What I mean is that we should work on resolving disputes and then go from there, before we nominate FA. The article itself needs to be unprotected for at least a few weeks and without edit warring before it's really stable anyway. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 01:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I would be concerned that FAC will cause a holy war there. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:19, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I am as well. I didn't know it was protected. I have proposed several times that we let the pro-homeopathy editors create their own version of a NPOV article and then compare them after they have had a few months to work on it, and then if it is not really NPOV, try to help them understand why. --Filll (talk) 01:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

details of microscope cutaway picture?

Hi Tim!

I was going to surprise you today with a microscope model, but it proved to be surprisingly hard to find a good model at Google Images. Either they show me the outside, or the optical train separated from the microscope, but never the twain seem to meet. :( Should I be looking somewhere else for a good model picture?

Also, I wasn't sure whether you wanted a reflected-light or transmitted-light scope, and whether a normal or inverted set-up. Any clues to your wishes for the article, whether ravenous ("I want ALL of them!"), sympathetic ("Choose the one you find prettiest") or practical ("A normal transmitted-light microscope would help the reader most"), would be most welcome. :) Cheery cheerio, off to dinner and knitting, Willow (talk) 22:08, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks, you are right that a normal upright transmitted-light microscope would help the reader most, since this is probably what they will come across in school and university. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Evo article

I too am at a loss. I was really clueless with the anthropomorphisms comment??? His comment to you was stranger "no the mechanism is spontaneous mutation. natural selection is the result". Slrubenstein rightly pointed out the error in some of his posits but then agreed with others which I still don't quite get. Further communication will hopefully make things clearer. GetAgrippa (talk) 01:59, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge question

I'm a novice when it comes to microbiology, but I'm thinking that (at least) a merge of Flora (microbiology) and Gut flora needs to be done. Gut flora seems to be the colloquial term for digestive flora. Correct? Hope you're well, VanTucky 03:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Article on Dr. Samuel Wood needs help.

If you have expertise, Samuel H. Wood needs help. CM (talk) 19:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Deleting homeopathy from mainstream articles

There is a principle of one-way linking for fringe topics that prevents soapboxing. The idea is that if an idea is notable, we can discuss it in its relevant article. So if a homeopathic remedy is notable, it should be discussed in an article about the homeopathic remedy. However, homeopathy is rarely relevant outside the world of homeopathic medicine: most mainstream sources ignore it when describing plants or chemicals. Therefore, we should not be in the business of advertising homeopathy at those mainstream articles. Undue weight sometimes means no weight at all. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

The issue is that homeopathic remedies rarely contain the substances they claim to use. It is only on the say-so of the homeopaths that substances are used in their remedies. This is far different than an herbalist or a folk medicine practioner or even a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine using the actual substance. Those are actual, verifiable, documented uses of the substance: their efficacy is beside the point. The homeopathist does not verifiably use any substance except for water, parafin, alcohol, and other solvents without solute. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Signpost interview

Hey Tim! I'm writing up the Signpost's WikiProject Report on the Molecular and Cellular Biology project, which I've noticed you coordinate. So, I'm going to ask you a few questions concerning the project :)

1. Q: What is the best way for users unfamiliar with molecular and cellular biology topics or new to Wikipedia to get involved in the project?

   A:

2. Q: What are some of the departments or sections of the project?

   A:

3. Q: What are some of the project's most recent achievements?

   A:

4. Q: Are there currently any ongoing discussions concerning project issues or articles within the project's scope?

   A:

Thanks, and cheers! :) ( arky ) 04:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary header

It's clear nothing I did was wanted or constructive because the owners of the article are having a private conversation. I'm sure you won't bother to tell anyone who mocked, insulted and degraded me the same thing-as apparently days of making fun of another editor and owning articles is standard operating procedure on Wikipedia. Nor did anyone bother to tell anyone it's a Wikipedia article. But I am calm. I get messages, even if I'm slow at it. The article is owned. And not by me. --Amaltheus (talk) 07:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Moving the sandbox

Oh no, I knew I didn't want to do this :-) We've hit cross purposes and now there are a number of redirects. You are right. It shouldn't have been in main space. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:46, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I hope this helps move things forward. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Tim --- that was not meant to be an insult. I strongly feel the intro fills a need and they are written with dramatic differences in expectations of prior scientific knowledge. Suggesting a merge --- apples and oranges. I do agree we are being pushed into too much detail; but changing a word from large to big does not solve that problem. Have you ever seen such a mine field; everywhere I step shit blows up!!!!! --Random Replicator (talk) 03:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Yea probably kicked back laughing ...... The FA guys gonna read all the endless rants that don't have anything to do with the article itself --- and flunk it ... hell probably take away the GA as punitive damage to all the endless nonsense. I think I have a Corona left... Cheers! --Random Replicator (talk) 04:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

History of evolutionary thought

I am thinking of putting history of evolutionary thought through FAC for a 2nd time. I would like to know if you have any issues with the article that have not been addressed or if there are any other improvements you think need to be made. Your input would be very much valued and if you want to leave any comments on the article talk page or on mine they would be appreciated. Thanks. Rusty Cashman (talk) 17:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Very Classy

Hi Tim:

How unexpected and refreshing to find William Shakespeare quoted on the AN/I page.

Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 23:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for review

Tim: Thanks for your contributions to the OPV AIDS article; this is a contentious topic, with many strong points-of-view -- but hopefully the attention you have already given will help to ameliorate matters.

Over the past few days, I have had the occasion to run through a bunch of the molecular/cellular biology pages, as I was trying to refresh my memory about ATP metabolism, the Krebs cycle, RNA-synthesis pathways, etc. Wikipedia really has developed into quite a useful resource in this regard, as one tries to muddle through the more turgid text of peer-reviewed papers but can't quite remember all those details from lectures years ago -- and one's old texts are at least partly out-of-date. In particular, I find the internal hyperlinks, as well as the reference ones, to be particularly helpful. Theophilus Reed (talk) 18:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Question

Check out this edit. Seems kosher, but there's no source and I'm unsure if "hypoxic insult" is the correct term. Thanks, VanTucky 19:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a million Tim! VanTucky 20:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, thanks again for all the attention. I'm considering taking it to FA soon, but I'm a little hesitant bc I haven't personally nominated at FA before. Any advice for the article before I do? VanTucky 23:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

OPV AIDS hypothesis

Hi TimVickers, thanks for editing at OPV AIDS - things have been a mess there for a long time - deeply ignorant editors, including myself, leaving the 1959 "AIDS death" in a part of the disproof, Rolling Stone paying $1,000,000 in damages rather than $1, obsolete "clean vaccine" announcements (Hooper hypothsisied that the vaccine may have been produced in Africa in his 1999 book) used similarly. Your not recognising "The specific populations were the first in the world to experience HIV-1 infections and AIDS some five years later." as very related to "64% of the earliest recorded AIDS cases (through 1980) from Africa come from the same towns and villages where CHAT was fed, as do over 80% of Africa's earliest HIV-positive blood samples." ("The River" Hooper) suggests that you too are unfamilar with the basics of the hypothesis.

The other worrying aspect is that if you look at the details of the claims of refutation the amount of "Spin" in this topic is amazing - Hahn says that the location of the Ptt chimps shows OPV AIDS is incorrect but does not allow for movement of infected chimps - just movement of infected human. (Hooper shows cited presence of Ptt chimp at LindiCamp). And we have Brian Martin's published material on suppression. "Contested testimony in scientific disputes: the case of the origins of AIDS",The Skeptic, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2007, pp. 52-58.", "Investigating the origin of AIDS: some ethical dimensions, Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 29, No. 4, August 2003, pp. 253-256.", "The Politics of a Scientific Meeting: the Origin-of-AIDS Debate at the Royal Society", Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 20, No. 2, September 2001, pp. 119-130 , "Political refutation of a scientific theory: the case of polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS", Health Care Analysis, Vol. 6, 1998, pp. 175-179. etc etc http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/ provides a bibliography.

So if the article just stays at the level of article headlines we have a very clear total rejection by weighty sources. If we include the content of articles (excepting the phylogenetic material here) and the reasonable/logical replies to the content from Hooper et al we may end up with a different article. Which may have real world implications for some involved editors - see the behavior/pressure tactics used by some in this debate as reported by Hooper. Theophillus also has pointed towards something related. Still I'm sure you'll take the sources as you find them. SmithBlue (talk) 01:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

While I am thrilled to have an experinced biology knowlegable editor working on OPV AIDS it is also very important that its done well - please take your time, get enough rest and know that Wikipedia will probably still be here to edit next week. SmithBlue (talk) 04:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I feel especially bad about this

[13]--Filll (talk) 03:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

bravo

Tim, just wanted to say nice job on that Wikipedia Weekly interview. You're an excellent ambassador for the MCB project. If I may offer one minor comment on (not surprisingly) PBB. The key impact of PBB that I would emphasize would not be in all the information that it provides, but rather that it provides a credible stub to attract new content and ideally a whole army of new contributors. All the database content is just a means to an end, and I hope it is all eventually diluted away or even removed by contributions from human editors. Anyway, I know we're all on the same page looking from slightly different angles, so it's a minor comment on an excellent portrayal of what we're all about. Bravo... AndrewGNF (talk) 18:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

That was really nice; I listened to it twice already. :) I agree, you did an excellent job as ambassador and I think you came across very well to the listeners. I had to smile when you seemed at a loss after Witty lama asked about Featured Articles from the MCB WikiProject; quite a dilemma for a self-effacing editor! "Quick, think: which one did I not write?" ;) I was a little embarrassed myself to be mentioned, but at least it's good motivation for me to finish off those remaining proteases and nucleases and whatnot. I still owe you a microscope model, too, but it's proving rather hard to do it as nicely as I wanted; and I got distracted into crafting a gift. Oh well, no rest for the wicked, and well done once again :) Willow (talk) 21:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, for what it's worth Willow, you absolutely deserved the mention in Tim's overview of MCB. No question. PBB would have gladly traded air time to highlight more of your contributions... AndrewGNF (talk) 22:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Exhilirating bedtime reading :-) A "couple" of FAs: Category:FA-Class MCB articles :-) Trust people to act sensibly ... alphabet soup! You never mentioned Loki! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Fascinating stuff! I often wish I had time to learn everything. :) I have all sorts of questions now... I think you did an excellent job of sparking listeners' curiosity. Awadewit | talk 15:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I listened to the podcast and it was quite interesting. Great job! Thanks a lot for mentioning the proposed collaboration between wikipedia and ACS Chemical Biology. I'll definitely put in concrete ideas this weekend. This work week has been crazy for me. Just a minor point... starting the ACS WIKI was inaccurately attributed to me. It was actually there when I joined the ACS and mainly through the efforts of Evelyn Jabri and Sarah Tegen. All in all a great listen and a proud moment for the MCB Wikiproject. Thaks again Antorjal (talk) 16:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

RNA interference

Hey, Tim, how is this FAR doing? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The definition of irony

Re: this remark, people who are quick to accuse Hilary Koprowski of being responsible for the HIV/AIDS epidemic are apparently quite touchy when the documented unintended consequences of their own actions are mentioned. MastCell ^Talk 22:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Removal of the gallery on Bicolor cat

As you requested, I started the discussion. However, I would like to invite you to review User:TMursch's contributions, as they seem to be mostly unconstructive edits to me. If you feel my assessment is incorrect, please feel free to let me know as well. Have a good day!--Ramdrake (talk) 21:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Admin Advice

Quick question, Tim, if you have a chance. I have reverted the removal of the pseudoscience box on the homeopathy twice thus far. I know that it will probably be removed again. Does this qualify as reverting vandalism or something of the like since it's removal is clearly against consensus? Thanks in advance. Btw, check this out and weigh in if you want. Baegis (talk) 23:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Any interest in helping out?

I'd like to calm things down since it's in pass territory, but Awadewit is on break. If you can lend a hand over the hump, I'd be grateful. [14] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, Tim; I hope things will eventually settle down so you can do some work on it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Good stuff. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Cross-posted from SandyGeorgia's page

Tim I would agree with you that we are contending during the FA with many forces that are pushing the article out of the realm of an introductory article, and "threatening to hold their breaths and turn blue" if we do not give in. And so we give in, over and over, and sophistication creep sets in. And there are still many dark hints about reems of other horrendous errors that are impossible to find, and doom the article to failure:[15] What I hope emerges from the discussion is some community agreement and mandate about the need for introductory articles, and what introductory articles are by necessity; they are not sophisticated. And we need to keep that in mind and reject all comments to the contrary, with no exceptions. Comments?--Filll (talk) 22:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Help with a goniometer animation

Hi Tim,

That was awful how things went awry at Introduction to evolution, no? I noticed it only after the time-bombs went off, and then it seemed too late to have any hope of restoring serenity. Sometimes I really don't understand people. :P

I've been trying to clear out my "to do" list in 2008, one item of which is to bring X-ray crystallography to Featured Article status — contrary to my userbox, I have to stop knitting sometime. ;) I just made an animation that tries to illustrate the motions of a four-circle goniometer; unfortunately, the file is rather large and, somehow, I sense it could and should be simplified. Can you think of how to clarify it, shorten it or otherwise improve it? A different perspective perhaps? Maybe get rid of the shadows? Eliminate the part where the detector is moved back and forth? Maybe don't make full circles of the degrees of freedom, just rock back and forth? I feel frustrated with myself that I can't just see how to make it better. :P Any advice from you would be very welcome. Willow (talk) 14:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There was a very difficult situation that developed and so unpleasant that I and Awadewit and several others basically backed away from the article. Eventually it reached the breaking point for Random Replicator, unfortunately. I do understand more about this but that is not for this venue.--Filll (talk) 22:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Your tone

Hi Tim,

I think the tone of your messages is counter-productive. If you want to edit Wikipedia, you need to learn to focus on the message, not the messenger. To say that I am "useful to have around" is insulting and childish. Please try to be friendly and collaborative, and we will all win. Thanks, Crum375 (talk) 03:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Animal testing

A request for mediation has been filed here. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 03:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind note

Tim — Thank you for your kind words. Do you think it might serve as an essay on Introduction to... articles? Would such an effort help the cause? If such an essay were to come to pass, I'd be soliciting some help, and your name, among other habitues of Filll's page comes to mind. Good hearing from you again; it's been too long since either of us has reached out. Take care. Gosgood (talk) 17:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks. I haven't really any great interest in the subject, I'm afraid, but there was an NYT article on factory farming that I thought might be useful there and then I just followed the links... I do worry about when and where primary sources are to be used, so I thought I'd chip in. Relata refero (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

DOI help

Tim, I'm trying to help Fainites (talk · contribs) clean up the refs on Reactive attachment disorder, which have inconsistent formatting. We're both having problems getting the DOIs right (for example, here). Do you have time to take a look? I'll also post to Eubulides and Colin to see who gets there first. Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for mediation accepted

A Request for Mediation to which you were are a party has been accepted. You can find more information on the case subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Animal testing. For the Mediation Committee, WjBscribe 00:30, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management.
If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

Your note

I am a relative newcomer to AT myself, and have no familiarity with any RfCs. Crum375 (talk) 21:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: Hi there

That's, uh, a very fine question. The RFC bot nixes RFC tags once the RFC expires (heh, I used "RFC" four times in a single sentence!), so I suppose what you could do is trawl backwards through the talk page history in an attempt to find such tagging. Also, RFCs tend to have "RFC" in the section title, so that may help you as well. MessedRocker (talk) (write these articles) 23:01, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't find any RFCbot edits as per this link. There looks to be 3 bots that did edit the talk page (Sine, Tawker and Hagerman). R. Baley (talk) 23:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD closure

Hi TimV. Could I pester you to revisit Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/I Voted for Kodos. You removed the AfD tag from the band's article but not the individual albums (which, presumably, are notable if the band is notable – if they are non-notable they need to be nominated separately, I would say). Thanks so much. --Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 19:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

French places

DId you not read the notice at the top of my page?? Infoboxes will be added once the articles are set up. INfo can be transalted from the official websites on each of the at a later date. Use your head. This is wiki. Articles won't remain "useless stubs" forever. They are here to build up into full articles. This is the most efficient way to get them up and running of which I see precious few other people bothering. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to wikipedia? Does Deforestation in Brazil and Abbas Kiarostami look like unreferenced uselessness to you? ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The French wikipedia and Dutch wikipedia links are indication for starters ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:29, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Ottrott the other day which needs some references also . Hopefully they can all develop quickly into at least this. i would probably be asking somebody to do the same if I saw new pages like this but trust my experience on this. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if you are aware but the infoboxes can be copied from French wikipedia in seconds. It is easier to do it this way ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Next stage will be to develop them like Sainte-Sabine-Born, one of the places you highlighted within seconds and later translated from french on various sites ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 21:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

OK no probs. You had every right to be concerned. I'm always chasing people up myself who seem to be creating useless articles. I wouldn't normally ever even think of creating an unreferenced articles but the sheer amount of re dlinks is so overwhelming that , well five a minute is the best solution I think -I may be wrong but to get them started. Then basically I or any number of editors from WP :French communes can begin working through each of the departments ensure everyone has an infobox and is referenced and hopefully those french linguists can do wonders!!! I just added an infobox to Saint-Vincent-de-Barbeyrargues -i;ll reference that and add a bit tomorrow and if there are images available or whatever it makes a difference. I won't feel pressured to complete the lot over night it may be a month or two before they are all at the minimum required level but I really appreciate people seeing the idea that it is to build upon. Best regards ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^$1,000,000? 22:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC) Cheers buddy I thought I'd added the archived link earlier. The last few I've started have had infboxes. I can do this at about a rate of one minute and will try to start them all like this if I can. Depends on whether there are 400 or so to do or not for each one. Regards amigo ♦ King of Baldness ♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Cheers amigo. Saludos! ♦ King of Baldness ♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Rochechinard is a bit better isn't it as a start ♦ King of Baldness ♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:36, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

See what I mean now I'm getting criticised for adding the infoboxes. Man why do I bother!!!! ♦ King of Baldness ♦ ^$1,000,000? 18:03, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Black The Ripper

Why is my contribution innapropriate? There are many articles about artists, and thats what I was creating, you have no good reason for deleting it Gonzalez8 (talk) 21:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Deletion Review for Simon Dodsworth

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Simon Dodsworth. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this article, speedy-deleted it, or were otherwise interested in the article, you might want to participate in the deletion review:

My comment: four versus three, without any serious consideration of the academic (as versus the dogmatic) comments, constitutes an absolute for deletion of an article? What a pity people like yourself couldn't put your efforts into creative rather than destructive work. More and more people on Wikipedia need to assume good faith towards other users - you know, like the fellow who commenced that article, don't you think? David Lauder (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

If this article is acceptable for wikipedia what is to stop every geneologist to upload their files here? David D. (Talk) 21:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"Every genealogist" is not proposing that so you digress. Lets face it, what is to stop every stupid pop star or skateboard rider who has ever got a mention somewhere having an article on Wikipedia? Could one ask: did you manage to read the Keep comments, or did you find them worthless? David Lauder (talk) 09:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You say that ""Every genealogist" is not proposing that so you digress" but the point is that it sets up the precedent. And I agree, wikipedia should not have every "stupid pop star or skateboard rider". Another example of a bad precedent.

As for the keep arguments. I did not find them worthless but I found them less than convincing. Was there some specific plan you had for this article. for example, what will be linking to it, is it part of a planned series? Or will it just stand alone as an orphan? David D. (Talk) 15:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I did not write it so trying to remember exact content is not easy, but I seem to recall that both his children and grandchildren were quite notable, one of them being a Judge of Admiralty and another a noted Yorkshire poet. I thought this was a relatively interesting article for the century concerned and that was why I ploughed in and tidied it up. David Lauder (talk) 16:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I just checked and his son was Matthew Dodsworth, whose son was Roger Dodsworth. The latter is certainly a good article for wikipedia, but even the Matthew Dodsworth one seems a little light. Being the grandfather of Roger Dodsworth seems to be the chain that has led to Simon Dodsworth's article being created and does not appear to justify inclusion. If this kind of exercise in geneology is worthwhile then I would say keep but I think this is a bad precedent. A potential solution might be to write a geneology section in the Roger Dodsworth article to include both Matthew and Simon? David D. (Talk) 17:05, 4 February 2008 (UTC) I'm going to paste this discussion to the Simon Dodsworth deletion review where it is more appropriate.

Thanks!!

Thanks for my first Barnstar! I'm not sure what it's for but it feels good!

I do like it here. I have been a faithful wikipedia user for a long time now and am really excited about this new wiki-relationship. I knew it was possible to edit pages but I didn't realize the full extent of the wiki community until I noticed a mis-spelled word, created an account and read more about the community. The policies (five pillars etc) and ideology of the community have really piqued my interest. I'm now all of a sudden thinking of all the articles I have been dissatisfied with in the past and feel quite empowered by the idea of working to fix articles like that instead of just going elsewhere to do my own research.

Anyways... that's part of the reason why I'm happy to be here :)

Thanks again for the welcome and the barnstar.

Cheers, Treesoulja (talk) 02:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Miller (Yuba City)

Could you clarify why you closed this AfD after it was open for less than twenty-four hours? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 07:19, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

My initial reaction was that he probably was notable, since I find that there's usually a fair bit of material available about mayors of cities that size. Upon a little more digging, however, I'm not sure that he is. I think mayors of cities that size might be bigger deals in Canada (where I've lived my entire life) than they are in the states, where most of them seem to be part-timers. I'd still have preferred seeing it go to term - I think it was too early for a WP:SNOW - but agree that the end result was probably the right one. No harm done, and thanks for your response. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 18:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Advice?

Plucked your name from wp:editor assistance as someone i've seen talk a good deal of sense without being bitey. I realize you're busy, but luckily there's no rush answering this whatsoever. What does or should Wikipedia or experienced editors do when they keep coming across an editor who makes significant valuable contributions to the place, but who never uses edit summaries (4 in the last 500 edits, 2 uncivil-ish) or talk pages, often makes simple errors, sometimes makes large formatting changes worthy of discussion, seems to always revert at least once when reverted, and has a talk page which seems consist solely of a slow steady trickle of etiquette templates that are acknowledged by archiving only? I'm not in a dispute, just observing, so dispute resolution is out, and anyway my impression of RFC is that it is in practice much more serious than is warranted here. Is that correct? Do you have any advice for me were my account true? 86.44.6.14 (talk) 15:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC) Alright, although etiquette warnings have had no effect on the editing practice described. Thanks though. 86.44.6.14 (talk) 00:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Need genetic expertise

I do not know if this is outside your purview or not, but you might look at the arguments on the talk page [16]. I think this might have been a concept that creationists hijacked, but deserves a serious article of its own on WP, if it is as reasonable as the anon makes it sound. If this is a bit outside your area of expertise who might be good to look at it?--Filll (talk) 21:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Language of flowers

Hi Tim, thanks for your note (I actually found the page through your contribs which I noticed this morning at Human). I remember reading someting on color and Tussie-Mussies a few months back, but not were I read it. Drat. Ceoil (talk) 22:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 22:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC), note User:Thatcher is the clerk, not me, I'm just opening for him. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

What does that mean?

The response of Archtransit to the concerns raised in this RfC is unacceptable. He has been completely unwilling to discuss his past mistakes and offer any assurance that he will begin to listen to others, so that these mistakes will not be repeated. Frankly, I find his comments to be verging on the bizarre. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Some say I discuss too much. You seem to say I am unwilling to discuss. How to please both groups?

I separated the complaint into 10 or so items. Isn't this discussion? For those that seem to say I discuss too much, I formulated a revised, shortened, compromise RFC that took much of the RFC so that I could say "I accept, I agree" or something similar with little comment. The shortened RFC had language that said something along the lines of what you wrote which was "listen to others, so that these mistakes will not be repeated" Archtransit (talk) 23:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You mean your sarcastic response of "Even in the case of a vandal blanking out the main page, I will seek consultation from a panel of administrators and respected editors and not act without it."? Tim Vickers (talk) 23:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It is not sarcastic. I intend to consult for all blocks, even if I think there is no chance that anyone would disagree. Vandals usually don't get to the main page but I can think of 2 ways to do so. I won't say how to prevent others from getting ideas. This is my commitment to use the tools in the near term. Archtransit (talk) 01:17, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Rotavirus

Hi Tim, would you have time to take another look at the article. I plan to take it to FAC around the 9th or 10th of March and I'm trying to gather as much input as I can. Best wishes, Graham. --GrahamColm^Talk 20:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Admin abuse

What I really want to see is the technical ability to grant "blocker", "deleter", and "protector" rights separately, and just have "administrator" mean the combination of the three. This would allow greater access to the tools, more focused "requests for tool X" discussions, and the ability to remove abused tools from administrators without completely desysopping them. I was actually planning on proposing this after this RfA if it were successful, so that people couldn't accuse me of having a conflict of interest. For example, "You're only proposing this so you can get around people not wanting you to be an administrator." —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:31, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

In other words, I would be more lenient about giving up just one of the tools, especially if the tools were easier to obtain. However, there had better be a very good reason if I am to give up all three. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Genes/proteins

Are genes always italicized and proteins capitalized??? [17] Should that be added to MEDMOS? [18] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the organism. Scientist who use C. elegans do not capitalise for proteins, at least they used not to. See this archived version of the MCB Project talk page for more information and some good resources. David D. (Talk) 03:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, David. That helps, but I'm not a biologist. I need the Dummies 101 answer to whether we need to add something to WP:ITALICS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:50, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

oh, for gosh sakes, and now that I've linked it, it's already there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:51, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I love the way problems solve themselves if I ignore them for five minutes. :) Tim Vickers (talk) 03:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I should learn that trick.  :/ SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:56, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Image for Alpha Kappa Alpha

Thanks, Tim for the image cropping! miranda 08:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello

You recently posted on my Talk page (here) regarding the Law in Star Trek AfD, and re-reading my response it comes across as rather pompous, for which I apologise. Anyway, I was following some of the links, and came across this remark, which seems rather relevant and I commend to you as a good idea.

PS: there are free barnstars being handed out if you take an interest in separating the warring parties in List of massacres! See: [19] and here's the proof! --Major Bonkers (talk) 13:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello!

Thanks for the welcome! I will be frequenting the FAQs and have read the links you sent me-- I may still be posting some ridculously simple questions. Glad to be part of this wonderful enterprise.Frankceo (talk) 22:25, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Frowning kitties

Hi hope you don't mind but I nabbed your kitty image -the frowning cat I thought would make a good sidekick to Mr Bigglesworth. Thats my kind of humour. I'll get back to the French communes this coming week I've had a few days off and today have been doing something rather different with the Hollywood A-listers! I haven't given up but thought I was entitled to a short break. Hope you are well Regards ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 14:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

LOL ah yes. Now a part of SPECTRE. Hope you aren't too distraught. Incidentally "Mrs Bigglesworth" belongs to User:FayssalF the bureacrat. Saludos! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I added a note to it to save serious reaction lol! -I think he looks a bit like that goon Tim Vincent. Anyway I;ve continued with the communes today but if you see my editing history I do rather more than creating lame stubs!!! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 23:06, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

RFA thanks

.: RFA thanks :.

Thanks for supporting me! My RfA passed with a final tally of 5 neutrals, 1 oppose and 148 supports, a turnout I couldn't have dreamed of. I'm going to do everything I can to help out the community, help with sysop tasks, and of course, contribute to the encyclopedia. If you ever need a hand with something, feel free to give a shout! Cheers! Master of Puppets Call me MoP!☺ 17:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

RNA interference

No one has entered a compelling reason on the FAR to defeature this, but it has a couple of uncited paragraphs. Would you be interested in taking those on? If so, I'd probably enter a Keep on the FAR, since no one has given us anything to work with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:54, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

You fixed a FAR in an hour and half? Good gosh :-) Going to look now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I just added some references, I'd like to do more but I've got quite a bit on my plate at the moment. :( Tim Vickers (talk) 22:57, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that plate is keeping you from what you do so well. Anyway, RNA is close enough for a Keep, so it can wait. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

BTW, ArbCom decision. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

About your comment

Hello again. I'd like to let you know that upon further reflection, I'm not going to have a set percentage of votes required to remove my adminship. I've laid out my criteria at User:Remember the dot/Recall and I will add myself to Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall if I am made an administrator. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 04:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Recent deletion

Hi. You deleted Ron Paul/Newsletters sandbox as a test page. It was actually a proposal for the article being discussed in talk. Bartleby (talk) 02:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Looking at what happened it seems someone moved and emptied the page before the deletion. I didn't realize that had happened - sorry for the trouble. Bartleby (talk) 02:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Moved to proper location for tests: User:Bartleby/Newsletters sandbox. John J. Bulten (talk) 17:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

RfA count

It makes no difference, but there's one neutral for RTD's RfA. I guess it isn't getting counted because all the strikes messed up the numbering for whatever counts it. Enigma (talk) 17:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The bot is still not recognizing the neutral, but whatever. Makes no difference to anything. By the way, could you fix something? On [20], by step III, the "r" in "monitor" is off. Enigma (talk) 23:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

One of my favorite pictures

Thank you for participating in my RfA! It was closed as successful with 74 supporting, 3 opposing, and 1 neutral. I will do my best to live up to the trust that you have placed in me. —Remember the dot (talk) 18:48, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks...

for the wise words, and for all your help. It's much appreciated Tim. VanTucky 19:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

I appreciate your assistance on my draft. Hopefully as it grinds along, we will end up with a useful accessible article.--Filll (talk) 19:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Reflection removal (viper pic)

Hi, can you tell me what you did to remove the reflection in Image:West African Gaboon Viper.JPG, as I'd like to do something similar to Image:128763115 a1b78f9cde o.jpg. Thanks! Samsara (talk • contribs) 20:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Cricetulodon

Beautiful, thanks! -Yupik (talk) 23:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

AbendZeitung (Munich)

The intro has been edited and is now fine, but I really can't believe I've been an ex-pat so long that for example, the following sentence is actually correct in English: Regular Kolumen write currently Munich Mayor Christian Ude, moderator Juergen fly, health expert Hademar bank Hofer, comedian Django Asül and film critic Ponkie. Daily appears in the local section of the newspaper a drawing of Franziska Bilek. After the intro, the rest of it is a machine translation. -Yupik (talk) 23:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd recommend it be stubbified and then put up for translation at WP:TRANSLATION. BTW, if you're at all interested, we could always use more of your help at WP:PNT, as we have a serious backlog of articles there. -Yupik (talk) 23:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! :D -Yupik (talk) 23:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

And that should be Wikipedia:Translation. -Yupik (talk) 23:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Shanty Choirs

Hum, sorry about vasting your time. I can't see any lists of Shanty Choirs and others singing shanties, perhaps that would be important enough to keep? I do feel Storm Weather Shanty Choir deserve some more mention then just a foot note in the article of one of shanties but I see now that what I feel don't matter in this case :/ I'm reading up on Wikipedia:FIRST right now :) Anyways, if you have any comment on the shanty performers/choir list idèa I'd be greatefull, thanks in advance :) Luredreier 21:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Time

Just so you know:

Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete. Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and consider notifying the page's creator.

My computer is overheating a bit right now so I keep crashing :/ Didn't have time to write much in the article itself... Both my last message and this one is about the Storm Weather Shanty Choir

Luredreier 21:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Closing AfDs

Please make sure to close open AfD discussions when speedily deleting an article marked with an AfD tag. I've closed this one for you. Thanks! ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

FPC

Hi Tim,

Can I just offer you an apology for some of the comments made by some editors on your FPC nom West African Gaboon Viper. They were clearly out of line, but unfortunately ill-advised comments are sometimes made there. I noticed that you informally withdrew the nomination, so I have now officially closed it.

FWIW it's a very good image, but perhaps outside quality requirements. Please try not to take it personally (I know firsthand that can be difficult!), and do feel welcome to participate at FPC again.

Cheers, --jjron (talk) 11:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Song Thrush

I dropped by as I have been coordinating many of the WP bird articles and tried to address (hopefully successfully) the two points made. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Vitamin Shoppe deletion

I am a fairly new member of Wikipedia. Since I have only created about one or two other articles, I would've rather appreciated some tips/help on how to create an article for the Vitamin Shoppe rather than you just up and deleting it! I purposefully left the "stub" mark so that others may edit/add to it. I have no interest in the Vitamin Shoppe other than it's my roommate's favorite store. I am not an employee there, do not have a financial interest in the company or any other such connection. Thank you.

Californiadude99 (talk) 01:03, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

GA review of Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Tim, you do realize that the article is a quick-fail right? It's got at least ten {{fact}} tags and an {{unreferenced-section}} banner. VanTucky 01:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's very kind of you to be that accommodating Tim, but it's a little unnecessary in my book. Nominators don't get to pick and choose their reviewers, and it doesn't really matter who reviews it if the article is a quick fail. I don't think it should get special treatment just because of the subject matter. If you don't feel comfortable quick failing it, I'd be happy to step up to the plate (or assist with a full review, if you prefer). Good luck, VanTucky 21:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Image help

Hey, Tim; I don't know anything about images, but from some of your other work, I've gleaned that you know how to crop images ??? The image at Simon Baron-Cohen (submitted by Zeraeph) is about half columns, half person. Are we allowed to, and are you able to, crop it in half horizontally so it's only him, not columns? I don't know what "awaiting GFDL confirmation" means and what the free status of the image is; I just noticed as I'm getting ready to do some POV and WP:PEACOCKery work on that article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much; you're a gem!! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Simonbc crop.jpg

Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading Image:Simonbc crop.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 20:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Wonderful :-) There were problems with the original, so you get the notice. Sorry :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC) I don't know anything about this, but I'll go leave a question at the copyright questions page to see if someone can fix it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the trouble, Tim; ugh, this is why I stay away from images.[21] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:38, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Whew. Well, it was very nice of you to do it for me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

SPECTRE efficiency

Wow the efficiency is raising some eyebrows huh? Did anybody ever doubt how efficient SPECTRE was at "eliminating" red links?? If you could provide them with the link to the past discussion - I don;t want to have to explain again!! Thanks ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 00:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

OK prime example. A typical "directorial" stub like Albas, Lot. Now see this, the French equivalent and tell me wikipedia wouldn't benefit from 30,000 new articles in english like this ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 00:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

LOL! All that stands in the way is a lot of hard work by a number of people and some French speaking english people to help translate them. I;m convinced if an article like that can be written on a town with 500 people like that then we can certainly ensure that every one of these stubs has at least some value. We can't hide these places, and dismiss them as inadequate. That just shows systematic bias. Even when I see pictures of these places I think wow, I didn;t realise it looked like that!!! You picture some hamlet of two houses in the countryside, a farmer who smells rank of cheese and a topless sunbather lying on the road causing an accident by two crazy French drivers sporting moustaches and called Pierre driving Renaults. Then they get out and inspect the damage and you realise its like being on the set of Poirot (who is Belgian actually, like Dr. Evil) himself but you see the point! Is that an accurate description SPECTRE thinks to the contrary, Adios y Buenos Noches ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 01:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a humungous coincidence, but todays featured picture is Poirot David Suchet himself!!!!!!!!! LOL!!! I also happened to come across a picture of Andy Peters wearing misted up shades. See this. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 00:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Thanks for the welcome. I see you're an admin and are prolly able to do things most users can't. Jason (talk) 19:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Verifiability

I am really torn about WP:SPS etc. On one hand, they are valuable in some contexts. On the other hand, I can see how overuse in some situations can lead to a problem. If I want to show what kind of a flake X is, it is good to be able to refer to something X has written about Y. Now X is not necessarily a good source for Y, but they are a good source for what X thinks about Y. On the other hand, if this is done in an unbalanced way, we can have entire articles which are sourced only to nonsensical sources. --Filll (talk) 18:39, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

My verifiability comment

Maybe you are right. I am not committed to my suggestion, it was just an idea. I'd like to know what others think but you make a good point and if you stick with it or others agree I won't argue against you. That said, perhaps one could consider my suggestionj a necessary, but not sufficient, ground for inclusion... Slrubenstein | Talk 20:28, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

A cheery gift — and fun project?

Hey Tim,

It seems like you've had a hard week, so I thought I should do something nice for you to cheer you up. Since it's been, ummm, only two months since Christmas, I think it's not too late to give you some nice gift, something hypnotizingly beautiful that we might be able to work on together. ;) Please be patient with me, and please correct any gross errors I make; I can feel my brain expanding as I learn about all this stuff, but it might not expand fast enough... :P I probably won't start on it for a few days yet, either, while I absorb all these new things. :) Nickeled but not dimed, 19:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

In the beginning there was sockpuppetry

Sounds interesting, though I'm not certain how effective it would be—perhaps multiple IPs or all that—hasn't that been tried before? In any case, I'm still not around much; I'm sure you can give Alison (talk · contribs) a nudge when someone with magnifier privileges is required :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 22:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

And, thank you for reinstating the semi—that was close ;) I was sure I'd be home by the time it expired, but... not. Hope everything's going well on your end, Fvasconcellos (t·c) 22:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Image:Allosteric v by S curve.png

A tag has been placed on Image:Allosteric v by S curve.png requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image is redundant copy (all pixels the same or scaled down) of an image in the same file format, which is on Wikipedia (not on Commons), and all inward links have been updated.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[ Talk:Image:Allosteric v by S curve.png|the talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Hennessey, Patrick (talk) 02:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Sonar device

Hi Tim, do you have a source saying that the sonar device was "ultrasonic"? Crum375 (talk) 01:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Crum375 (talk) 01:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Rhabdo

Thanks for your help with the last few issues, Tim. Nice one. JFW | T@lk 21:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Ref to Great Ape rights law in Ethics

I agree with Crum375. A major issue is that the laws on animal testing by representative governments can be used as a metric of the majority ethics on animal testing. The lead of the ethics section puts forth the majority view on ethics. This caveat is an important exception. Most of the world does not perform invasive testing on Great Apes, or allow it.m OTOH, I thought Crum375's revert was an excessive use of reversion when simply correcting the reference would have been adequate (and I further disagree that the reference does not support the statement),--Animalresearcher (talk) 00:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi!

Just dropping in to say hello. :) How have things been? – ClockworkSoul 17:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I wrote part of a program to do it by hand, but when the number of pages under our banner increased by an order of magnitude it broke my logic. I'll have to write something anew when I have a little more time. Part of the problem is that we can no longer fit all of the articles on a single page, so I'll have to teach the software to do some kind of yet-to-be-determined wizardry. – ClockworkSoul 17:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Song Thrush

Many thanks! Jimfbleak (talk) 18:49, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Your note

I am not sure if I am the right person to ask. I am still kind of new in this article, and I don't get a sense of NPOV stability there yet. Crum375 (talk) 00:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Signpost Dispatch

From Marskell: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-25/Dispatches at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-25. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Interview of sorts

I am planning on writing a paper for Wikimania 2008 on "online collaborative writing" and I was wondering if I could "interview" you over email about your experiences writing on Wikipedia. I'm trying to collect as many perspectives as possible. I would really appreciate it! Awadewit | talk 01:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy AGAIN

We have an anonymous vandal trying to push a POV (which I happen to like, but it's not acceptable). I've reverted him twice, but I don't want to get shot in the crossfire. See this 3RR report. Thanks.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

re:Sheep

That's hilarious. I've infected your mind with completely unnecessary detail about sheep - success is mine! As a side note: have you seen this business about "expert withdrawal"? Think you might want to chime if you haven't... VanTucky 19:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Animal testing as a GA

Hi Tim. I, personally, think the article is as as good as it has ever been and suitable for GA. However, I'm not overly familiar with the GA review process and past experience of editors reactions to these sorts of articles tend to fall into two groups: too scientific and not enough about AR, or too much AR not not enough science. Few people seem to appreciate the need for balance. Still, its worth a try. Rockpocket 23:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathic dilutions

Hello Tim:

If you have a few minutes to spare some time, will you please take a look at this page for me?

User talk:Wanderer57/Homeopathic dilutions

The starting point was the question from Raymond Arritt, at the top of the page. I was drafting an answer but realized I was making it up in too large a degree.

I'm just wondering if there are any mistakes in what I've written, so far as it goes. Or if you have any suggestion of a better approach. The end result I have in mind, though I'm nowhere near it, is to explain dilutions without bringing in the idea of a gram-mole.

There's no urgency here.

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 06:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Havok article

Duh, I forgot I can see the deleted articles myself now! I agree, that doesn't really look salvageable... Still, thanks for userfying it for him. Hopefully it was just a squall, not a hurricane. --barneca (talk) 00:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Next time you speedily delete, why not check to see if there is a discussion already on-going about it. Robin48gx (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC) from the rules:

Any editor who is not the creator of a page may 
remove a speedy tag from it. The creator may not do this. 
A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should 
instead add hangon to the page, and explain the rationale
on the page's discussion page.

Tim have a look at WP:INSPECTOR Wikipedia appears to be ignoring an underground social phenomena by censoring these rigs, and just recently a large internationa list of these rigs was removed too. Well its your wiki, apparently. The 'elite admin clubs' wiki that is. Less and less to do with being a peoples encyclopedia it would appear. Robin48gx (talk) 19:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Sheepish over GLO1 mistake?

Hi Tim,

I had a few quick questions about lactoylglutathione lyase, do you mind helping me? First, enzymatic activity was a redlink that I redirected to enzyme kinetics; can you think of a better link? Second and more importantly, I wasn't sure which carbon to call C₁ and which C₂? In lone methylglyoxal, I'd say the methylated carbonyl carbon should be C₁, since the methyl group is heavier than the hydrogen on the other carbon. That's what I've done so far in the article. On the other hand, once the glutathione moiety binds, then the methyl carbon is wimpier than the sulfur, making it C₂. The Himo and Siegbahn reference discussing the reaction mechanism use C₁ for the S-linked carbon, agreeing with the latter reasoning and disagreeing with what I've done so far. I'm tempted to switch over, but I wanted to figure it out with you together. :) Reply as soon as you can, Willow (talk) 20:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey Tim, I added a few more things over there, which you might want to check for accuracy? I'll be leaving soon for my sister's, so I won't be able to work on the article much for the next week, perhaps longer, depending on how efficiently things go. Her wedding is less than five months away, and she scarcely has anything prepared! :P When I come back, I'm also committed to helping with action potential — for which I should be committed ;), although it will bring back a flood of happy memories. I'm not sure if you'll have time, but it'd be really nice to come home to a fuller and better lactoylglutathione lyase. :) Hoping all's well with Loki and your sweetly inhibited enzyme, Willow (talk) 18:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Your notes

Thanks for the encouragement and advice. Crum375 (talk) 22:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I am gradually working my way through the these related articles. I'll do my best to highlight clear problems that I come across. Crum375 (talk) 00:57, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Reference formatter

Thanks! --LasseFolkersen (talk) 16:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

RfA

Hi Tim!

Haven't seen you in a while. I remember what you told me shortly after I got my +sysop. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten it. Actually, I've been waiting to get a feel of being an admin myself, to establish my credibility before I go and nominate someone.

I've approached Benjah-bmm27 (talk · contribs) (see [22]), and he has expressed interest. I see some work for me ahead - writing the nomination, etc. If you are familiar with Ben's work, would you like to write a co-nom for him as well? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 16:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Animal testing

Hey, I've been reading Animal testing in preparation for the GA review, but I just noticed that the article is still technically the subject of mediation. Do you honestly think it's stable enough for GA. My gut says any article that is being mediated still is not, but I'll take your word on whether the mediation discussion is still up in the air. VanTucky 22:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Tim, obviously it's fine for a review. I'll get on it! VanTucky 01:08, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Natalizumab

Hi Tim,

I'm very out of my depth on this, and I think even a simple MOS reorder is out of my grasp. Natalizumab is a pretty messy page, I don't deal much with drugs so and am not familiar. Could you have a look? I'm having an edit, but it looks quite spammy in a very odd way. I get that it seems to be well reviewed and effective, the tone is very apologetic/histrionic. WLU (talk) 17:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

crap, that means I'm going to get an edit conflict when I save. I may over-write and try to re-integrate, or I may move to a sandbox. Thanks! WLU (talk) 17:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tim......I have just noticed, and I am very unhappy with the wholesale edits that WLU has made in Natalizumab, for reasons explained on the Discussion page, including concerns expressed by others several months prior as to the lop-sided nature of the page. I refer to the Deletion of whole Sections, allegedly in the interests of "formatting", as well as the annotation of his Edits in the Wiki-History. Well, WLU has referenced you as someone he consulted, and I would ask that you look at the Discussion page to see what we both have to say.io-io (talk) 00:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I saw your comment and it is really just a repat of WLU's claims pf "spam" quotations. I have answered it on the Discussion page - where perhaps he should have raised his issues first. If you do't want toget into this, I understand. It was just my work that he obliterated without any notice and with fake edit descriptions.io-io (talk) 00:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well user JWF a.k.a. Wolff has weighed-in, and after some "exchanges" there seems to be agreement that the Natalizumab page can substantially revert to reveal the former content. However before working on the page, I notice that you made several revisions, possibly minor, and I wanted to ask you if there are things you would like to see or not like to see. I have explained by point-of-view that the page should contain contemporary information, and not a media re-hash, on the Talk page. I have also described the unique circumstances to the drug there; reasons for which I do not think that standard Wiki format for pharmaceuticals need rigorously apply....please review and comment, unless of course you feel you have said all you wanted to say. Thanks You.io-io (talk) 00:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Systems biology images

Thanks for checking and updating the Metabolic Network Model for Escherichia coli image in the Escherichia coli article. Last year I uploaded a serie of images about systems biology to commons, see here and they haven't been used eversince. That's why I have been implementing some of them today, allthough this is way out of my own field. Now I would like to ask you, if you know some more use in Wikipedia for those excellent systems biology illustrations. Thank. -- Mdd (talk) 18:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll post a notice about them at the Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Mdd (talk) 18:28, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Copying your Quick Links

Hi Tim, I'd like to copy the useful set of Quick Links on your userspace page to my userspace page. I'd reformat them (eventually) and credit you if you'd like. Just trying to prevent re-inventing the wheel. Delimitation (talk) 20:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Tim! Delimitation (talk) 21:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

okay to move discussion?

Can I move this discussion over to the PBB talk page? If I understand it correctly, I think it will be an easy change to make from the PBB perspective. May not rise to the level of an official GSoC project, but something we slide in on the side... AndrewGNF (talk) 22:40, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Vandal

Hi Tim, I figured I'd message you about this vandal(s) since you left a final warning message on their talk page just last month - there is still vandalism coming from this shared account - is it frequent enough to block or report? ~ Ciar ~ _{(Talk to me!)} 19:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks ~ you're fast :o) ~ Ciar ~ _{(Talk to me!)} 19:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

check me?

I hope I have this calculation about right: [23]. What do you think? Did I get this correct?--Filll (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Otto Warburg.jpg

Thank you for uploading Image:Otto Warburg.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale provided for using this image under "fair use" may not meet the criteria required by Wikipedia:Non-free content. This can be corrected by going to the image description page and add or clarify the reason why the image qualifies for fair use. Adding and completing one of the templates available from Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy. Please be aware that a fair use rationale is not the same as an image copyright tag; descriptions for images used under the fair use policy require both a copyright tag and a fair use rationale.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it might be deleted by adminstrator within a few days in accordance with our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions, please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 15:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Mesosomes

The picture of the day image looks like the one you edited but has not been edited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Prokaryote_cell_diagram.svg Also, the same EM tissue chemical fixation procedures are used today as when mesosomes were part of the gram-negative bacteria. Thank you for addressing this inaccuracy. --207.62.177.231 (talk) 00:38, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Rotavirus

... is at FAC. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:36, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Tim

I was banned because I added this in the lead.

Pharmacists should also be aware that the data assessing the efficacy of homeopathy are mixed—there are rigorous, reproducible studies that show homeopathy is effective,39,42-44 and equally scientifically sound studies that show it is not.270.107.246.88 (talk)

This is writen in the same source with this sentence Johnson T, Boon H (2007). "Where does homeopathy fit in pharmacy practice?". American journal of pharmaceutical education 71 (1): 7. PMID 17429507..

This is a system of medicine that has been in widespread use for the last 200 years, the theory of which is diametrically opposed to modern pharmaceutical knowledge and theories

Now Rubin says that this is no reliable source. Is this true?--70.107.246.88 (talk) 19:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem lies in the mechanism, we all agree that the placebo effect is genuine and we all agree that homeopathic remedies will produce a placebo effect. The difficulty comes from ascribing any specific effects to these preparations. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:39, 11 March 2008

(UTC)

The writers of the study you quote dont say that though. So why dont you use what they write.: Is nt more honnest? Pharmacists should also be aware that the data assessing the efficacy of homeopathy are mixed—there are rigorous, reproducible studies that show homeopathy is effective,39,42-44 and equally scientifically sound studies that show it is not.--70.107.246.88 (talk) 19:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You either trust and report the sources you are citing or not. This could be original research not what the sources say though. Less promising does not mean "claims ....are unsupported"...--70.107.246.88 (talk) 20:00, 11 March 2008 (UTCID

it has the same meaning ? --70.107.246.88 (talk) 20:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Stifle's Barnstar

Ask on ANI for somebody to delete, oversight and then salt your userpage.

I choked on my own spit, I was laughing so hard Tanthalas39 (talk) 21:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

:) Tim Vickers (talk) 21:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Lamb image

I'm not quite sure what you changed, but it looks good to me. You should probably overwrite the old photo with the new one though. Thanks Tim, VanTucky 21:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Wiki-stalking

Tim, greetings. There are one or more anonymous editors who are following me around and deleting my contributions, sometimes with substantiation (which I then honor!) but more often without it (just to UNDO what I did). To avoid edit warring, is it possible for you to limit editing on select homeopathic related articles (or even a large number of them) to those editors who are not anonymous? I'm referring to articles on Royal S. Copeland, James Manby Gully, and Memory of water, though you may wish to protect more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DanaUllman (talk • contribs) 22:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Dana has been editing at least one of those pages without reference to the talk page (and with what appears to be an inaccurate edit summary in this case), for example here[24]. See the Talk:James Manby Gully page under the heading "Gully's use of homeopathy AND water-cure". This may be why edits were reverted. I found this user talk page because I was wondering why the protection tag had been applied, by the way. Brunton (talk) 00:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

FYI, most if not all these anons were editing from open proxies (TOR) and have been now blocked. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Jossi, I've let Dana know. Tim Vickers (talk) 00:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanx...it is good to know that my instincts are right and that I'm not being paranoid (in other words, I was being followed). DanaUllman^Talk 00:44, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

You alive?

I haven't seen you around for awhile, then all of a sudden, you're protecting articles, editing Homeopathy, and being your old self. Well, welcome back! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

CAS and Wikipedia

I've added a link to this to the old discussion here, in case you want to restart that. Carcharoth (talk) 18:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Igor

Just wondering if you happened to see the Igor update I posted to WP:MCB talk? – ClockworkSoul 19:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The only features list is what I've posted on the MCB talk page so far. I'm a bit frustrated with trying to get the page update post to work, so I think I'll take a break and whip up an Igor information page right now. – ClockworkSoul 20:37, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Take a look here. I hope this clarifies things a bit! Cheers! – ClockworkSoul 21:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

RfA

Hi Tim. I respect your opposition to my RfA and I'm not here to woo your vote; more to understand what experience you think I'm missing. I expanded the Tahquitz article some time ago (most of my meat-and-potatoes additions were done in November 2006), so it's interesting you chose that one to comment on. Here are a few other articles I have expanded. Realize that I tend to do huge edits; where other people use ten edits I use one, making use of the "show preview" button to keep the article's history uncluttered.

Homolovi Park, Kip's Landing, Col. Donop

I don't expect you to analyze each one, I would really just like to know what experience you think I'm missing. Is it a matter of scope? Quality? Article class? I appreciate your comments. If it's a matter of quantity, I could expand that list above, but it shows more of the same. I'm getting thwacked on my "lack" of projectspace edits, when I don't think people are realizing my editcount is highly compressed.

ALSO - disclaimer. I am *not* trying to WP:CANVASS; you represent the sole person I have contacted in this manner. Again, I am not out to change your opinion, but rather have you expand your opinion so I can learn from it. If this post is in some way unethical or against policy, please notify me immediately and I will strike it. Tanthalas39 (talk) 23:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance

This Arbitration case is closed and the final decision has been published at the link above. PHG (talk · contribs) is prohibited from editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year. He is permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion. PHG is reminded that in contributing to Wikipedia (including his talkpage contributions, contributions in other subject-matter areas, and contributions after the one-year editing restriction has expired), it is important that all sourced edits must fairly and accurately reflect the content of the cited work taken as a whole. PHG is also reminded that Wikipedia is a collaborative project and it is essential that all editors work towards compromise and a neutral point of view in a good-faith fashion. When one editor finds themselves at odds with most other editors on a topic, it can be disruptive to continue repeating the same argument. After suggestions have been properly considered and debated, and possible options considered, if a consensus is clear, the collegial and cooperative thing to do is to acknowledge the consensus, and move on to other debates.

PHG is encouraged to continue contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in other ways, including by suggesting topics for articles, making well-sourced suggestions on talkpages, and continuing to contribute free-content images to Wikimedia Commons.

For the Arbitration committee, Thatcher 01:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Richard Dawkins FA

Hello TimVickers. How are you? I have nominated the article Richard Dawkins for the FA status. You are a biochemist and you can make constructive contributions for the article. Please help. Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 03:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Dr.Jhingaadey

Just out of curiousity, why did you add Template:User Alt Acct Master to this userpage? He was blocked as a sock of a blocked user, so the use of his account doesn't exactly seem to be in a manner permitted by policy. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

re:2nd RFA

Of course Tim, I'd be honored (once again). I am waiting the full six months though. Hey, and Animal testing is next on my list. Thanks for everything, VanTucky 02:16, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It's been nearly six months

How do you think I've turned out since your little nomination spree for the never materialising IP article creation? –– Lid^(Talk) 11:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Off the top of my head no sadly. –– Lid^(Talk) 00:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Klaus Kronenberg page

Hi Tim,

I was working on this page which had a lot of content deleted due to copyrights. I did use one page as a guideline for some of the information - however I changed the sentences and wrote most of the content from my own personal knowledge - Isn't that alright? I really don't feel as though it was copyright infringement - can you help me out? Thanks for your time Efeinberg (talk) 19:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I thought I had done that well enough - If I end up replacing the information, I will make the sure the sentences are substantially different. Thanks again Efeinberg (talk) 19:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

VanTucky

Maybe if we really work at it, we can get him to give in before the six months are up! dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 23:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Animal testing

I'm guessing you missed the note at the end of the review; can you please place "done notes" and comments below the review rather than inside it? I hate to be picky, but they're hard to, well...pick out. I don't want to miss anything. Thanks Tim, VanTucky 00:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for correcting my article on cells! Ohsowskisc (talk) 03:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

DOI redundancy?

Thanks for letting me know. I'm not sure I agree that the DOI is redundant though. My institution's subscription does not include PubMed, so a DOI is very useful as it takes me (95% of the time) to the version of the article I can access. For those with other subscriptions, of course, the reverse is true. I can't see that it causes a problem having the links there, but it does offer a distinct advantage to me and others in my situation. What do you think? Verisimilus T 09:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The DOI should ideally replace the URL, as a DOI is stable whereas URLs are notoriously succeptible to change. However, I 'm note really comfortable with the bot removing the URL parameter, as there is always a tiny chance the system may select the wrong DOI - so it's best to leave the URL as a back up (which a human editor can remove if they see fit). Verisimilus T 16:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

We may only be 0.01% of the readership of the article, but I bet we account for a far higher proportion of those who actually look at the references list - and are generally in a better position to make valuable edits. As I see it, anything that makes the lives of knowledgeable contributors easier is likely to encourage more participation in the project and the betterance of Wikipedia. Therefore I'm very much in favour of having both PMID and DOI links - you've still not quite convinced me what problem this causes. Most DOIs also direct to a free abstract, and as PMIDs are not used in any journals I've seen (DOIs being given if anything), I suspect that if we had to decide between the two, DOIs would win out (but I hope not to initiate a long, tedious and unenlightening fight between the two!). And further, the abstracts of articles are often of little use, as the information backed up by the source may be within the full text, and it's usually risky to trust an abstract too far anyway.

To return to the issue at hand, I'd be very happy to make any amendments to the functioning of DOIbot, if they can be readily translated into a (codeable) logic. As you say, both a URL and permanent link are unnecessary, except where the URL points to a (non-permanent) free version of the text. Should the bot remove the url parameter where this points to a PMID, replacing it with a pmid?

Verisimilus T 23:19, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tim, I'd like to second V's comments here. DOIs are universally more useful to me than PMIDs; if I had my way, all URLs will be replaced with DOIs. Most library services work very well with DOIs, even where we do not have subscriptions. I've been actively searching and adding DOIs for the Chemistry articles we have. I have not found PMIDs to be of any use, apart from free full text published under NIH though. I further agree with V that while the readers who use DOIs are but a small fraction of WP's readership, they are the ones who need it the most. Do try it, and see if it's helpful for you! For my library, repliacing replace http://dx.doi.org/(DOI) with http://dx.doi.org.libproxy1.(institution).edu.xx/{DOI} will take me directly to the page I want. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 00:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Tim (-: Verisimilus T 11:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Evolutionary history of life

thanks for posting a vandalism warning on the talk page for the IP thats responsible! i'd just corrected it and was heading over when i found you'd saved me some time. thanks! :D

O keyes (talk) 01:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletionpedia

Hello Tim, I've added another comment at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Deletionpedia and removed your resolved tag, since I don't see it as an issue that asks for resolution, but rather as a general notice and the tag would discourage taking notice. Bets regards, Tikiwont (talk) 11:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Please put this on the Talk:Homeopathy Page and mention it is posted by me

Done. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Mesosome

Thanks for the hints in the German Wikipedia. I have now more or less translated your article to de:Mesosom, except that I wrote "probably an artifact" since you wrote in en:Mesosome that some researchers think it might not be. Thanks again de:user:dietzel65 aka --Dietzel65 (talk) 16:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

RFA thanks

		Thanks for the support
		Thanks for your support on my request for adminship, which passed 92/2/2. I'll learn the ways of the mop, and be sure to live up to the expectations of the community. Sorry, I'm not a sockpuppet, but, I won't block you unless you actually deserve it ;) ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 04:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Karyotype

This article has been seriously disrupted, so much so that I don't see how to get it back into shape. Could you spare time to look at it, and/or find someone able to fix it. I spent ages on Karyotype and whilst I'm used to the common or garden Vandal, this seems something else! Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC) Thank you. That was quite interesting! Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

New postings

Hi there, I am new to Wikipedia (although admit to having read numerous articles over the past couple of years). I attemped to add some information to the neural stem cell page yesterday, but only detect that the change has been made on my computer (ie. when on any other computer the site appears as it was). Does it take some time for the change to be approved, has it been deleted? I am just curious how this all works and did not detect any information on the help pages etc. Thanks Kristy1980 (talk) 23:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Genetics

... is at WP:FAC; we never see you there anymore :-( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Greetings

Thanks for the welcoming. You are really fast. By the way what is the difference between this group and the genetics wikipedia group. They are so alike that I joined both.--Juthani1 (talk) 03:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

    Thanks--Juthani1 (talk) 03:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch

Oh snap, the DEA is an admin

ASIMO I would like to thank you for your participation in my recent RfA, which I'm very glad to say was successful at 81/7/0. Some of the very best that Wikipedia has to offer came out to support or oppose me and the kind words from all the editors has really given me confidence to be an admin and I can't wait to start. I will take the advice of the opposes and not jump into any content disputes immediately. As well, I will try to add more content myself. Anyways, in thanks for participating in my RfA, here's your very own personal humanoid robot. Enjoy! --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk - Contribs) 13:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

OM talkpage

There was a bit too much bold in my comment, which made it an eyesore. For the sake of aesthetics, I've removed some bolding. If you feel this is uncorrect, or unfair, let me know, and I'll put it back in.--Alterrabe (talk) 16:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes

HI Tim hope you are well -its gone really cold in the UK hasn't it. I feel like snow is coming!! You;ll be pleased to know we are now monitoring the french communes on whether they have infoboxes at Wikipedia:WikiProject French communes/Status so eventually ALL will be checked to ensure it has an infobox. I'm not working entirely on it but I am adding many when I have time. See A-F on Communes of the Yvelines department -most have images too! After this it would be nice to see them all translated and brought up to a B status ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:25, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Happy First Day of Spring!

Happy First Day of Spring!

A Beautiful Cherry Tree in Spring Bloom

Theres nothing like seeing a field full of spring flowers.

Just wishing you a wonderful First Day of Spring {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}! ~~~~

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere and are entering the season of Autumn not Spring then I wish you a happy First Day of Autumn {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}!
To spread this message to others, add {{subst:First Day Of Spring}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Tim Vickers; I would like you to email me at thegoodjob@hotmail.com I would like to edit the Compost Tea page but because I am disabled typing is a onerous task and I do not wish to spend a lot of time making entries only to have them disallowed based on someone's opinion not backed by true or apparent fact. One example is that the way all of the trials were conducted which show the survival of E-coli in CT involve the innoculation of e-coli and do not consider the full microbial consortia. If I don't hear from you shortly I'll try phoning you. Tim Wilson —Preceding unsigned comment added by Titelryzhomer (talk • contribs) 00:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Couple of things

First, I'll get to passing Animal testing today. Sorry for the wait, I haven't been as quick at my GA reviews as I used to be. One other thing, I've semi-officially decided that Chicken will be my next endeavor (or endeavour, if you like). One basic preliminary question which I think you could answer better than I could (and one which most of the books I bought didn't comprehensively answer) is the taxonomy of the bird. Many give Gallus gallus, but several also go with Gallus gallus domesticus or just Gallus domesticus. Do you know which is the current favorite in scientific circles, or where the best place to find out is? Thanks a million Tim, VanTucky 21:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! If this is true, we may want to correct Red Junglefowl (the parent species) then. VanTucky 22:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I just passed Animal testing, congrats. Also, I put it in the Biology subsection at WP:GA. Feel free to move it if you want. VanTucky 23:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Physalin

I was wondering if your scientific resources could help reference this stub? I'd appreciate if you could take a look at it.--BirgitteSB 23:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick work!--BirgitteSB 23:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

AMA and nutritional interventions

I'm not sure that Pauling's pet therapy of greatly supraphysiological doses of IV Vitamin C could be characterized as a "nutritional intervention." Besides whatever beneficial effects it has on collagen, Vitamin C also somehow affects enzymes that regulate hydrogen peroxide.--Alterrabe (talk) 10:42, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't argue with the AMA's definition. However, Linus Pauling was advocating ascorbate dosages of 10 grams, if I'm not mistaken intravenously, and there has been talking of going as high as 50 grams. These are dosages so many orders of magnitude greater than the RDA of 60 mg orally, that, I feel that, while it would be logically correct, and WP:RS to go along with the AMA's terminology, might be confusing to readers unfamiliar with the minutiae of the debate. Incidentally, are you aware of Szent-Györgyi's investigation of cancer as an electronic phenomenon involving electron shells and oxidation, and Warburg's theories about cellular respiration and cancer?--Alterrabe (talk) 17:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Linus Pauling's claims about ascorbate were not exactly at the "fringe" (sic) of the topic, which the insistence on "nutritional medicine" obscures. There are some interesting ideas among Alt.med practitioners about what causes the mutations you mention. [25]--Alterrabe (talk) 17:43, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered appearing on this show?

[26]. I did last night and it was fun. You can do it with just a microphone and speakers and free software (a headset costs about 10 or 15 dollars at Walmart). Alternatively, if someone participating is a Skype subscriber (like me), a regular phone can suffice.--Filll (talk) 16:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Adminship

You once asked me to let you know if I ever changed my mind [27].--BirgitteSB 17:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

• Tim please see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BirgitteSB, if you would you like to second the nomination please feel welcome to do so. I was thinking this at the same time you were, you just beat me to the question by a little bit. Jeepday (talk) 01:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Account merger

As an admin with accounts on multiple projects, this may interest you: wikt:Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Admin Notice: Special:MergeAccount. You'll never have to create a new account on another WM project again, just log in. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:23, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting

I can't believe you asked this question. I was thinking that he is a member of Stormfront. Maybe you were serious? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 05:40, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you realize the same tendentious and racist philosophy is being pushed at Race and intelligence. I'm trying to stay in fun articles, but you cannot believe how science is being twisted here, and I cannot stand aside. It's frustrating. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 16:52, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

My comments on User:Orangemarlin's talkpage

I appreciate your concern, and do not normally respond so strongly to other editors. But in this case:

• I posted an item on Talk:Permian–Triassic extinction event to explain my reasons and to give Orangemarlin or anyone else who had concerns a chance to air them.
• The first time I reinstated some of my contributions I added "see Talk" page to the description of the edit - to no avail.
• The purpose of reverting is to undo vandalism. As you kindly pointed out in another Talk page, I am a serious palaeontology editor and therefore an implied accusation of vandalism is highly offensive.
• I have suffered twice before from abuses of reversion (see Talk:Dinosaur/Archive_7 and my Talk page. It's not going to happen again.

Please do not take the uncompromising tone of my comments personally. I know from the very little we've had to do with each other that you're a reasonable person. Unfortunately I also know that others are less reasonable, and what little experience I've had of dealing with them suggests the best way is show them up front where the line in the sand is. Philcha (talk) 21:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Rarely do I reply to this kind of personal attack, but I'm bored, it's a Friday, and I just had a nice lunch:

• I don't do talk pages of tendentious postings. You take forever to make a point, and I guess I don't care.
• So? See above.
• So, you're a serious editor, and I'm not. Thanks.
• Your first link had nothing to do with me. However, amusing to see that at least 5 different "serious" dinosaur editors think you need to chill out and read Wikipedia manual of styles. In the second one, you are engaging in a fairly uncivil attack with a respected admin and editor. I think you should be blocked for personal attacks, uncivil editing, and possibly tendentious editing. I won't mention the poor writing skills, because we deal with that through allowing editors to help each other, which is not your MO. So, I'm really done here. Tim, do whatever you want, you're much nicer than I'll ever be. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Pyroluria

Dr. Vickers, Hoffer, Pfeiffer and perhaps Osmond described an inherited tendency to have abnormal levels of a pyrole they called the mauve factor and then kryptopyrole in one's urine. High levels of this compound, they reported, were associated with psychotic states, they later claimed this can be reverted by adding B6 and Zinc, which Kp tends to bind to, resulting in B6 and Zinc deficiencies.--Alterrabe (talk) 19:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Would you agree that they can be described as "purported inherited conditions."--Alterrabe (talk) 21:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly

Thanks for expressing an interest in coming along to the next conversation - if you click above you'll see that we've confirmed a new date and time, and have also created a new 'confirmed participants' section (sorry about the extra hoops to jump through - but hopefully it'll help us figure out if 'everyone's here'!) - if you do happen to be free at the suggested time, that's great! - I'll create the 'room' about 30mins early, as usual, and please do pop in as soon as possible so we can iron out the inevitable technical problems in time for a prompt-ish start! thanks, and I look forward to chatting tomorrow! best, Privatemusings (talk) 22:30, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

mediation request

Tim, would you consider mediation a series of disputes at Race and Intelligence -[28]? A number of people think we need mediation and I trust your understanding both of science and of Wikipedia policies. If you are willing the first place to look is an RFC made by Jagz [29]; most responses agreed that the article is in violation of NPOV. The article has had some level of protection for a very long time.

You should know that I believe that Jagz is a racist POV-pushing troll who will do anything to disrupt progreess on the article; he has not agree to mediation and I am sure will object to any mediator. But everyone else on the talk page I think is receptive, although of course unclear about the progress.

You may wish to view my above comment about Jagz to be one of the conflicts that needs to be mediated. I will abide by anything you say. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

If I might comment. Why don't we indef Jagz for a whole host of issues, including being a racist troll. Would that be easier than arbitration or mediation? The article is pseudoscience, and the consensus is (consensus ignoring the rantings of Jagz) that it is pseudoscience, so honestly it's one tendentious editor who's keeping it from becoming an NPOV article. But if we need the mediation to indef him, then that's the way it should be. I have no clue why he's been given this much tolerance. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

A belated thanks for posting the link. I respect your choice. For what it is wirth, I think you would make a great mediator - I do not mean just in reference to the R&I article, but in general. This may be a burden you do not wish ever to take up. I am just saying, you would be good at it, that's all. Best, Slrubenstein | Talk 09:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Human

An editor has nominated Human, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Human and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 02:01, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Thank you Tim that was very nice, if you need help with any thing to do with martial arts just get touch cheers --Diamonddannyboy (talk) 20:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

We once tried something similar to that, and the user ended up just edit warring on the draft article.. it was an interesting phenomenon. Come to think of it I don't recall why that was a problem at all. Hmm. Cowman109^Talk 02:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, we have his IP already, but the issue is his IP is on a range used by too many people to make a range block feasible. But yeah I'll probably try making a draft version of the page again in the near future.. Cowman109^Talk 03:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Image:GeeseFlyingOxford20050326_CopyrightKaihsuTai_modified.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:GeeseFlyingOxford20050326_CopyrightKaihsuTai_modified.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Nv8200p talk 02:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Revert?

Hi Tim,

Could you revert for me? I'm pretty sure this isn't the case. I'm not allowed to edit the page due to an Arb outcome. WLU (talk) 16:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Also barred from this revert. Por favor? WLU (talk) 16:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Autism

Tim, thanks for the action on autism. I just left a message at the Med Project talk page, because a lot of the autism articles are getting hit due to the CNN.com special this week. I'm afraid Eubulides has his hands full, and I can barely keep up. Also, per your feedback here, do you have time to look at this? Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Action potential

Holding Wikipedia:Featured article review/Action potential at almost two months; is there anything you can add, or do to help jumpstart it? Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:54, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim; I was afraid it was out of your range, but I thought I'd try. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I know; it's actually really bad, but FAR is on hold because Willow was willing to take it on. I'm worried about how bad it is. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:54, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Seen from the right perspective, nothing is truly bad. ;) We all have to hope for the possibility of redemption, no? I'm going to fix this, and any help you two could give along the way would be most welcome. :) Ta ta for tonight, Willow (talk) 22:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your help, Tim! :) The article is coming along well, methinks, but at this point, I think I can safely say that we won't finish it by tonight. :( I was hoping for a miracle since, after all, it is the feast day of St. Izzy, the patron saint of the Internet and one of the first encyclopedians. ;) Oh well, perhaps we'll obtain grace in another way; the Powers That Be might overlook our lapses, for instance. ;) Willow (talk) 20:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Controversy. using a figure from a free abstract

Hi, is it possible (in terms of copyright/copyleft) to include such picture as hardbit (not link) into the wiki article?

• wiki article: EcoRII#Mode_of_action

• picture: three

• it comes from the free abstract:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/bichaw/2007/46/i39/abs/bi701123u.html

• in PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17845057

Cheers, Redeemer079 talk 19:09, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Evolution

I sincerely apologize for wheel warring with you on Evolution. I briefly skimmed the talk page for discussion about the /draft_article, but I completely missed the reference to the AN discussion. Regardless, I strongly feel that fully locking down this article is the worst possible solution. It appeases the vandals and defeats the purpose of a wiki. There are bots that can be employed to auto-revert mass changes. The kind of changes that are being done are pretty easy to spot and have a bot revert. I've also watchlisted the article and I'm ready and willing to deal with any vandals personally. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Evolution

I read your problem with evolution, and I was wondering if there is a way to restrict new editors from editing controversial articles untill a number of edits have been achived. For example 50 or 100 edits before one can tacle an article that is under such protection. If we do something like that new sockpuppets and meatpuppets will not be born. New editors will still be able to contribute to the articles, but they will have to add their contribution to the talk page and have an establish editor add that information to the article once a consensus is reached. We sort of do it now on a few controversial articles. When a POV pusher comes around with only edits to one or two articles we are a bit like Ivan The Great with them, until they build trust with established editors. They tend to give up, because they realize they cannot get their ways. Anyway just an alternative solution to what you are proposing at ANI. But I do not know if wiki is set up this way, may need to do some programming to adjust it. Anyway what do you think of my suggestion? Igor Berger (talk) 16:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

If you move Talk:Evolution/draft article to Evolution/draft article the SineBot won't edit it.--Otterathome (talk) 11:42, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Just wondering why you gave the Evolution vandal the name User:Tile join, when there are earlier accounts that committed the same vandalism - Electric free (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log).--Otterathome (talk) 17:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the Award

Thank you very much for the Newcomers Award! --Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 17:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Possibly useful reference

Hi Tim,

The following reference may be useful on Orthomolecular medicine and related pages:

Coulter I, Hardy M, Shekelle P, et al. Effect of the Supplemental Use of Antioxidants Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Coenzyme Q10 for the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment Number 75. (Prepared by Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-97-0001.) AHRQ Publication No. 04-E003. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. August 2003.

Happy editing. Abecedare (talk) 03:26, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Software used for images?

Hi Tim,

I am wondering if you would mind telling me what program you used to make your ribosome images? I really like the aesthetic look of the structures. As an example, I am referring to 'Image:10 large subunit.gif'. Thank you for your help! --chodges (talk) 17:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Orthomolecular medicine lead

Hi, Thanks, your changes were fine with me also. I do think one part of the sentence is still a bit awkward and will put a small suggestion on the talk page. Ward20 (talk) 20:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Changed my mind. The wording I had in mind didn't look better. If I come up with something I will post it on the talk page. Ward20 (talk) 20:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

MEDMOS

Please weigh in here if you have a chance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Why Is This A Surprise?

lol. Why is my age such a surprise? I'll take down the age, but maybe I'll leave my birthdate, and any ill-meaning bozo will have to sit there and calculate my age, if they would really like to know, which I doubt they'd want to,lol.. Again, thanks for the award!--Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 18:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Meglania thanks you! :-D

Thanks for editing that bit of Megalania. I was unsure wether or not it was too opinionated and felt sort of uneasy about it, so thanks for editing. It feels like I can't do a thing on Wikipedia now... if you do somthing bold it gets deleted... if you do somthing not bold it gets questioned, then deleted. :-( But thanks again my friend. Spykeesam (talk) 21:46, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot dude! Spykeesam (talk) 22:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Rotavirus

Hey, Tim, if you get a moment, have a look at Talk:Rotavirus; it's been a while since I've seen such an unproductive issue to fret over :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The orthomolecular Catch-22

You may know that Linus Pauling, Abram Hoffer, and others have indicated that they do not think their ideas got a fair shake. Be that as it may, and allegations of foul play do not prove it, no editor can explain their claims without using language that would skirt the boundaries of normal wikipedia editing manners in less contentious topics. One ought to be civil, but one can't hold it against editors that they explain their subject's beliefs.--Alterrabe (talk) 18:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Not in the least!--Alterrabe (talk) 20:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Tim,

I've run across a link which I believe would greatly contribute to the article on orthomolecular medicine. But I'm not sure if it fits the criteria for inclusion to wikipedia. I'll email you the url, and await your judgment.--Alterrabe (talk) 11:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Evolution vandal

I think you kind of let the vandal win with that protection. They've been at it for over a year now. Maybe it is a religious group doing it.--Otterathome (talk) 00:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems you have recently deleted my edit regarding mutation, which simply stated facts and cited a legitimate source. The fact that it points out evidence contrary to evoutionary theory is not a violation of neutrality. Unconditional support of this theory (on the part of the few individuals who run Wikipedia as a whole) is as much of a neutrality violation as presenting evidence that happens to discourage it. Do not blindly call someone with a differing opinion who presents objective facts a "vandal". Of course, since I am not one of the few who control the site, I have no power, but I kindly ask for a fair chance to display facts, and for less discrimination of objectors to Darwin's yet-unproven theory. --[[User:Thebestlaidplans|Thebestlaidplans]

The title of this section was not referring to you. --Aunt Entropy (talk) 21:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Tim, please let me delete this. Puhlease!!! I have a tough week. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I would just like to say thanks for reverting the vandalism on my user talk page!. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 19:28, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Virus

Yeah, sorry for what happened back there. I did revert, but the IP reverted it back. -- Buffalosoldier92 (talk) 13:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Question for you...

I would like to write an article about K12 Inc., an education company. However, would that be considered advertising? What are the chances of it being deleted?

And remember: Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 15:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Image:Chronic HBV v2.png

A tag has been placed on Image:Chronic HBV v2.png requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I8 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is available as a bit-for-bit identical copy on the Wikimedia Commons under the same name, or all references to the image on Wikipedia have been updated to point to the title used at Commons.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[ Talk:Image:Chronic HBV v2.png|the talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. Sdrtirs (talk) 01:08, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Rosalind Franklin image

Hi Tim, I remember a little while ago you were looking for a free image of Franklin for some purpose that escapes my memory. Last month someone uploaded a PD image of Franklin from the NIH archives to the commons, commons:Image:Rosalind Franklin.jpg. I've looked into it and although most of the NIH images of Franklin here do not appear to be free, this image does indeed seem to have been released into the public domain by the NIH, the only use of it I can find of it by the NIH is here, the NIH do not make reference to it being copyright at all (while all of the other images they use are attributed). The NIH does indeed release to the public domain. As far as I can tell this image is therefore free because it doesn't state otherwise. Any good? Alun (talk) 12:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

RFA redux time?

Since my first RFA ended on the 13th of November, I figure it's been long enough to try again. What do you think? Also, FYI, I went through admin coaching with Acalamari, and promised him and AGK/Anthony they could co-nom. Let me know, VanTucky 19:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Please tell me when you've created the page, TimVickers: then I can add my co-nomination to it before it goes live. Thanks. Acalamari 01:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much Tim, for everything. VanTucky 19:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Darwin Papers Released

• Charles Darwin's theory of evolution drafts go online

Which wiki site could this go on? I'm sure it could be mentioned in Darwin's article.--Otterathome (talk) 00:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kumioko

Hi Tim, just wanted to let you know that I responded to your oppose on this RfA, and it sparked a brief discussion that you might find interesting. Thanks, Darkspots (talk) 13:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

MY RFA

Thanks, I'll try and bear that in mind while I lick my wounds from the thourough lashing I've received.:-)--Kumioko (talk) 16:49, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Question.

How can you edit Evolution, but I cannot? Thanks. Yhvh777 (talk) 04:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Small request

Hey, Tim. Can you help me out by taking a look at some of Sebright (chicken)? Specifically, in the Characteristics section there are some journal cites that I want to make sure I did correctly, and if you could perhaps add a sentence explaining the mechanism which the journal cites study (I don't quite get it), I would really appreciate it. Afterwards I'll probably put it up for GA. Thanks again for the nomination, VanTucky 21:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a million Tim, I appreciate you lending your expertise. Now if only ten of your colleagues would do the same... ;) VanTucky 19:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

lupus

rv?--WLU (talk) 01:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face :)

We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet for auld lang syne? :)

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry girl's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion
An' fellow mortal!

Dear Tim,

I know you'd be going outside your comfort-zone, but I dearly need your help with action potential. Won't you be so kind as to give it a look-see and maybe give us some advice and help? I daresay it'll be more fun for you than whacking vandals. The article is still rather ghastly in its wording and I honestly don't know if I can bring it up to Sandy's standards without you. My courage is drooping, especially when I consider the long, twilit road still ahead. :( Anyway, I hope you can come and help; thanks, Tim! :)

Great chieftain o' the wiki-race, aboon them a' ye tak yer place! ;) Willow (talk) 19:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

PS. I hope everything's going well with your newly shy enzyme. :)

My standards? Heck, I can do MoS fixes and ref cleanup anytime the text is finished; not a problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:00, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a nice offer, Sandy! I've already fixed the dashes and most of the references, and we're working on the abc-123 thing; but I'm sure that the article still has many peccadillos. As you say, though, we should agree on the text, before we get too finicky about the MoS compliance. :) Willow (talk) 20:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Honest sonsie face

Hey Tim,

Thanks for your help the other day with action potential! :) I'm not sure if you're keeping abreast of its FAR, but your opinion carries a great deal of weight there. If you feel that the article is worth retaining as an Featured article, now would be a good time to change your vote from Remove to something more positive. But I'd welcome your sincerest opinion and advice, no matter how critical, as I hope you know. :) Willow (talk) 19:05, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Is a self-published book written by internationally recognised experts an acceptable source for Wikipedia?

Hi Tim, at last I've managed to get my Wikipedia account sorted and so I can actually sign my posts. I've recently made a couple of edits to the evolution draft document, one of which you undid, explaining that the source was a self published book (the field guide to genetic programming). I've read the pointer you provided on reliable sources, and I generally agree with what's there. However, the documents also states an ecception: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." I believe we can claim this for the "field guide". I have published over 240 peer reviewed papers in conferences and journals, plus a highly cited book (Foundations of Genetic Programming, published by Springer, 2002). I'm also an associate editor of three international journals. The second author and third authors have similar experiences. Please, check our CV at the very beginning of the "field guide" book or simply look at our contributions to genetic programming at http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~wbl/biblio/gp-html/index.html The reason why we went self publishing is simply to generously donate our knowledge to science free of charge. The book is Creative Commons Licenced. Essentially we had the same objectives of the wikipedia. We want to reach people.

Riccardopoli (talk) 18:41, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy

I'm not sure I want to get deeply involved. I dipped a toe in the water in February, but withdrew because the editing seemed very aggressive. But I'll certainly take a look at the magic section — it sounds too interesting to miss. :-) SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 17:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

User:SlimVirgin

Believe me, I was quite serious in my attempt to know a list of her current and past sockpuppets. Thanks for your help, MoonGlare (talk) 20:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

YouTube: Benefits of Antioxidants

We are currently in the process of creating a number of health videos and we are wondering why this video keeps getting pulled off of wikipedia? I came to find out last time that Somno could not even watch the video that we published, please see below.

If this is considered spam or advertising please tell us how, so that we may change the scripts of our future videos.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

We are thankful for your constant work monitoring wikipedia from spam and solicitations. However we feel that our video regarding the health benefits of antioxidants is good non-bias helpful health information. Would you please take a minute to watch the video in its entirety and let us know how or why it is not suitable for wikipedia.

YouTube: Benefits of Antioxidants Thanks! StayHealthyTV (talk) 16:19, 14 April 2008 (UTC) OK, I will watch it when I edit from somewhere that doesn't have Youtube blocked. Somno (talk) 01:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC) Hi Somno, I just wanted to follow up to see if the video meets your approval and if you agree that we are not 'spamming' the wiki. Please let us know when you have a chance to approve the video. Thanks! Hi Somno, we never heard back from you regarding the video so we reposted it. If you still feel this is a problem please review the video and tell us what you would like to see changed with future videos so that it is not considered 'spam'. We feel that using YouTube is a great medium to provide health advice to our ADD generation. Thanks again for your time and help with this matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by StayHealthyTV (talk • contribs) 19:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

StayHealthyTV (talk) 22:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Animal testing

Is [30] a useful reference for your Animal testing article?--Filll (talk) 11:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Please move the Universe?

Not an impossible request for you, methinks. ; User:Anubad95 just moved Universe to something else; could you please move it back and erase the fact it was ever moved? People are so silly sometimes! Thanks! :) Willow (talk) 05:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Dealt with before I came to it. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

POV?

How is mentioning that there are alternative views to an old earth theory inserting POV? Rather, prohibiting any references to alternative views to earth's age and origin is forcing a certain POV. Wikipedia is not censored. I find it very ironic that I was accused of editing with POV and did not even mention in the article what the alternative views are, just that they exist.--Urban Rose 22:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Earth

There is a huge difference between believing in creationism and believing that the earth is flat. Maybe in your opinion, there is no difference, but there are a great deal of scientists today who believe in intelligent design, while I do not believe that there are any scientists who believe today that the world is flat. Also, your definition of what qualifies as reliable sources is questionable. I personally do not believe that dating methods that give billion year-old ages are generally very reliable, as from what I have read, scientists who get such measurements often use dating methods that are known to be inaccurate simply because they yield million or billion year-old dates.--Urban Rose 22:26, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Creationism

I will read the book, but that is just the opinion of one author.--Urban Rose 22:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

One thing that I should point out

When you mention my use of weasel words, the use of the word "some" only would have been a weasel word if I had used it in the context of stating that "some people believe in _" and inserting my personal belief. In the context I was not really using weasel words.--Urban Rose 22:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Reliable sources

So what your saying is that no scientific publishings regarding the age and origin of the Earth that provide evidence that is contrary to the big band theoryfact or to the theoryfact that the earth is billions of years old are reliable? And that this is simply by coincidence and not because of what evidence they contain? So any source I find regarding earth's age and origin that provides scientific evidence that is contrary to what is listed in the article's current sources will immediately be removed as "unreliable sources"?--Urban Rose 23:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You're needed

Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/AIDS requires someone of your knowledge-level involved with both the article, AIDS, and the FAR. It's disappointing that an article of this level of importance is falling apart. Not badly, but enough to be delisted. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Your turn. I'm beat! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The various meta-analyses of homeopathy

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Tim, perhaps you may want to add your thoughts here. [31] In addition to proposing reference to and description of more meta-analysis published in RS journals, Arion's assertion that Brunton was quote-mining and only providing a partial quote by Linde is revealing. I hope that you can help us move towards consensus. DanaUllmanTalk 01:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Revealing about Arion and those who repeat it, perhaps. We were discussing Linde 1997. The passages that Arion objected to my having omitted were about the editorial accompanying the 2005 Shang paper. Not only is this not the paper we were discussing, the editorial in question is not even referred to in the article. It is not "quote-mining" to omit passages that are irrelevant. Brunton (talk) 09:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC) Actually, it IS quote-mining when you provide a quote from an author that is the exact opposite of the primary meaning and intention of the author. Let me ask you, then, what was the primary message of the Linde letter to the editor? DanaUllmanTalk 18:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC) The "primary intention" of the paper was to make some fairly specific criticisms of the Shang paper and some rather broader criticisms of the accompanying editorial; however, we were discussing neither on the homeopathy talk page. The sentence I quoted does not, as you and Arion seem to be claiming, say anything particularly negative about homoeopathy; it just makes a specific statement about a paper we were considering, which is precisely relevant to the weight that should be given to that paper. In any case, I'm not quite sure how a sentence which, perhaps, implies that homoeopathy is not proven is "the exact opposite of the primary meaning and intention" of a letter that states, in its lead paragraph, that the authors "agree that homoeopathy is highly implausible and that the evidence from placebo-controlled trials is not robust". But that's beside the point. I was making a point about Linde 1997, not about homoeopathy in general, and the passages that Arion objected to my omitting were not relevant to that paper, or to any other paper we were discussing. I would suggest that Tim's talk page is not an appropriate venue for further discussion of this. Brunton (talk) 08:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC) Actually, my invitation to Tim to comment is perfectly appropriate, especially in the light of the fact that Tim has made more edits to the homeopathy article than anyone else. Because of Tim's participation in the homeopathy article, I want to alert him to the Lancet's editorial in response to the 3rd trial Dr David Reilly's team had conducted on the treatment of people with various allergy disoorders and found significant results each time, December 10, 1994, p. 1585. The editorial asserts, "They (Reilly, et al) invite us to choose between two interpretations of this activity: either there is something amiss with the clinical trial as conventionally conducted (theirs was done with exceptional rigour); or the effects of the homoeopathic immunotherapy differ from those of placebo." The editorial further says, "carefully done work of this sort should not be denied the attention of Lancet readers." In the article by Reilly, he says, "Either answer suggested by the evidence to date--homoeopathy works, or the clinical trial does not--is equally challenging to current medicine science." Later on, he concludes, "Our results lead us to conclude that homoeopathy differs from placebo in an inexplicable but reproducible way." (p. 1606) It seems a bit odd that the Reilly research is not mentioned at all in the homeopathy article. Tim, as you may know, many editors seem a bit "allergic" to proposals from me. Perhaps a proposal from you would achieve faster consensus? DanaUllmanTalk 16:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC) Individual clinical trials are less important to this article than meta-analyses that combine such trials to achieve greater statistical power and make sure local bias from individual research groups is controlled for. Relying on the meta-analyses also avoids the danger that editors might pick out positive trials, and ignore negative ones (or vice versa), since meta-analyses give a rigorous and expert assessment of all the evidence. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC) Yes, I understand that, but the reference to the above Reilly studies is that this was their 3rd of four studies on allergic disorders...and this Lancet article IS a meta-analysis of his first 3 studies, totaling 202 patients. And when you consider what the Lancet editorial said about this work, it IS notable. It may be controversial as to whether the BROAD field of homeopathic research is positive, negative, or mixed, but it is not controversial that there is a body of evidence showing efficacy in the treatment of respiratory allergies. THAT is my point here...and it should be noted that the Shang review of research mysteriously makes no reference to the body of work by Reilly (I file this one under "how convenient"). In addition to these points, there are several RS meta-analyses which are presently discussed on the Talk page which are not a part of the article. I cannot help but sense that many editors here only want the "negative" meta-analyses referenced and discussed in the article. I hope that you will help be one of the editors who wants reference to other RS meta-analsyes. DanaUllmanTalk 20:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC) A clinical trial with a grand total of 24 patients and then scraping together data from a set of similarly tiny trials? I'm not surprised others working in the field ignored it, I certainly would. Try looking at trials on the same topic using reasonable numbers of participants eg [[ PMID 11872551]]. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC) Tim, in due respect, the Lancet published this study of 24 subjects because the researchers also conducted a meta-analysis of the 2 other studies (one of which was published in the Lancet with 144 subjects), and in total over 200 subjects. Did you know that, and if so, I'm unclear why you ignored it? Do you still think that it is not worthy, especially in the light of the accompanied editorial in the Lancet? This body of research is even more significant when you consider that this group of researchers published a FOURTH (!) study (in the BMJ!) on allergic rhinitis. Because I cannot bring anything to the Talk page or to the Article, I will be curious if you are really interested in maintaining NPOV and notable RS research or if you instead want to keep research that might have found a positive result out of wikipedia. I look forward to watching what you choose to do or how you respond. By the way, the father of American homeopathy, Constantine Hering, MD, was initially a skeptic of homeopathy and was asked by a publisher to write a book critical of homeopathy. In his research and then from his experiences, he became a homeopath and a leader in the field. I'm wondering which skeptics today may follow a similar path. DanaUllmanTalk 04:25, 30 April 2008 (UTC) Hey, I just realized that I am not clear of what is meant by a "topic ban." I assume that it means that I cannot comment on Article pages or on Talk pages of articles that relate with homeopathy. Do Talk pages of users count in the topic ban? DanaUllmanTalk 04:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC) Thanx for the clarification at my Talk page. Contrary to some editors' opinion, I do not pester. Hopefully, I raise good questions, like the above. I'm not expecting an answer to it tonight and will look forward to your thoughts some time in the near future. Sweet dreams... DanaUllmanTalk 04:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC) Tim, please read this[32] --Enric Naval (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC) The good news here is that Enric now knows about this important body of research and this notable Lancet editorial. Will he or you bring it to the homeopathy article? By the way, I have no problem if you also referenced the Lewith study of 202 patients, though you will also need to acknowledge that this was not a real replication. Amongst its many differences, it only allowed 3 (!) doses of a medicine during a 4-month period. THAT was not the protocol used by Reilly, and his letter to the editor is notable in this drama. If you need the specific references, just ask. It will be curious to watch this. I sincerely hope that you take the high road. No wonder you guys want me blocked. DanaUllmanTalk 02:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC) "However, suggesting specific edits would not be acceptable under the current restrictions, since this would be editing by proxy"[33]. 6 hours and 10 minutes to break the ban restrictions after they were made clear on an arbitration case page. Impressive. The fact that Dana adds a bad faith assumption at the end makes it even worse (we don't want you blocked, Dana, we want you to start respecting wikipedia policies and stop disrupting the pages by pushing studies) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:59, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

What is Pathophysiology?

In terms of these medical articles, what exactly do we mean by "pathophysiology." For example, for the AIDS article, is the pathophysiology the progression of the HIV infection (which can occur prior to the actual manifestation of AIDS), or is the pathophysiology the discussion of AIDS as a disease, so it we would assume that that HIV has done its thing, so now we discuss the opportunistic infections and tumors? I wish we could just combine the virus and the disease into one article. I wouldn't have to ask this question. I want to clean up the Pathophysiology section of AIDS, but I'm not sure which way to go. Any ideas? I'd ask at WP:MEDMOS, but I get confusing answers. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:53, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

How I said it

Yeah, after re-reading it it does seem to be insulting, which was not my intent. In my defense, note the posting time.

Thanks for the kudos. Graft | talk 15:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

New Project

Myself and several other editors have been compiling a list of very active editors who would likely be available to help new editors in the event they have questions or concerns. As the list grew and the table became more detailed, it was determined that the best way to complete the table was to ask each potential candidate to fill in their own information, if they so desire. This list is sorted geographically in order to provide a better estimate as to whether the listed editor is likely to be active.

If you consider yourself a very active Wikipedian who is willing to help newcomers, please either complete your information in the table or add your entry. If you do not want to be on the list, either remove your name or just disregard this message and your entry will be removed within 48 hours. The table can be found at User:Useight/Highly Active, as it has yet to have been moved into the Wikipedia namespace. Thank you for your help. Useight (talk) 04:32, 4 May 2008 (UTC)