User talk:Dilidor

Agatha Christie

Welcome to Wikipedia! Good work at Agatha Christie! CorinneSD (talk) 00:23, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

A beer for you!

For your work on Blackbeard. Cheers!  :) —This lousy T-shirt— (talk) 20:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

File:Xmas Ornament.jpg

To You and Yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:56, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Thomas Cromwell

Hello. I've reverted a lot of your edits to Thomas Cromwell. The article is not the best-written on Wikipedia, but your changes in general were not improvements. Most of them seem to have been imposing an idiosyncratic style that is not based on Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Newspaper style deprecates commas, but academic style does not. Wikipedia is an academic publication, not a newspaper. There is nothing wrong with starting a sentence with a dependent clause: "Once, upon a time, . . . ." is good English. A couple of times your edit summaries referred to split infinitives where there were none. I see that other editors have taken you to task on this page for this kind of aggressive imposition of a personal style. Please make yourself familiar with Wikipedia's MOS, and make sure your edits follow its guidance. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 16:34, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing me toward the Manual of Style. I will look forward to your demonstrating exactly what portions of my edits were "not based on" its tenets.

It really would be far more helpful and constructive in the future if you were to merely alter individual edits, rather than wholesale reverting an entire article. This would demonstrate any possible deviations from the Manual of Style, and would also open the door to constructive dialog concerning areas of disagreement, such as correct use of commas.

Finally, please do remember that even the Manual of Style is open to debate and revision.

Dilidor (talk) 18:09, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I did not revert your changes wholesale, but carefully reviewed each one (or each set), reverting only those that I found unconstructive or incorrect. The burden of justifying changes (other than reversions) lies with the person who originates them, in this case, yourself, so I don't plan on demonstrating anything, at this point. If you want to argue on the Talk page for certain changes, I'll be happy to consider them there, and respond as I think appropriate.

I don't regard the MOS as the be-all and end-all of good style, but if you take issue with anything in there, it's up to you to propose changes and persuade others to accept them before you start imposing your idiosyncratic style on articles. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 18:29, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I am adding

the “then” back into Giordano Bruno because the Copernican model of the solar system is no longer novel, but it was “then,” so it needs to be there. Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 15:12, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The word "novel" means new. It is self-evident from context that the idea was new when it was first put forward, not that it is new today. Nevertheless, it makes little difference to reinsert it.

Dilidor (talk) 15:38, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

1689 not 1776

The New Englanders were annoyed with being placed together and administered under another layer of government. So the union, such as it was, stopped with the overthrow of Andros in 1689. It's hard to prove a negative. The confusion may have started in the summary paragraph above which conflated the end of the Glorious Revolution, nearly a century earlier with the start of the American Revolution. While the New Englanders occasionally cooperated, they were never united except for this brief period. Also, it was to Englands advantage NOT to deal with anything united. It might give the 13 colonies ideas, which happened anyway, as it turned out. The NE confederation was a short term aberration. Please answer on my talk page. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 16:27, 25 October 2016 (UTC) Student7 (talk) 16:27, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Excellent points, and thanks for the clarification. I completely missed the significance of the date, but I agree that there was no unified political entity--at any time, actually, apart from the one that was forced upon them by the Brits, an "aberration," as you point out. I've reworded the opening in order to make this more clear.

Dilidor (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

"Poor writing"?

[1] Thanks for your efforts to copyedit but there's no need to insult me like that, mate. Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  12:32, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

My apologies. It was a hasty summary without thought; didn't intend any form of judgment. If I could change an edit's summary, I would happily take more time to summarize my changes, rather than my regrettable laziness. Again, my apologies.

Dilidor (talk) 15:33, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this Dilidor, I appreciate that very much. No offence taken. All the best, —  Cliftonian (talk)  16:24, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Merry, merry!

From the icy Canajian north; to you and yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:08, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Adjectival phrase in History of Massachusetts

You reverted my change to Massachusetts Bay Colony. I'd defend my change; the current construct implies that "April 1630" (which is essentially a noun) is modified by the adjectival phrase "sometimes known as the Winthrop Fleet." Semantically nonsense, but that's the syntax of it, IMO. Still, I don't care enough to fight over it.

It's a lovely article, by the way - although I wonder why it attracts so many vandals - but it does contain several examples of adjectival phrases set adrift from their nouns and attached to another, for example "several European explorers charted the area, including Samuel de Champlain and John Smith". Of course the sense is clear but it creates a tiny jag in my reading. David Brooks (talk) 18:45, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree that it was a very small nit to pick at, and I wouldn't care enough to do battle, either. I debated whether it was even worthwhile reverting, but my editorial OCD dominated once again.

There are several widespread writing peccadillos which I habitually correct, including beginning a sentence with a dependent clause, and splitting a noun from its verb by interrupting with something extraneous. The classic example of the latter is found in every mainstream obit ever written: "John Smith, who invented fire and the wheel and wrote Shakespeare's better plays and walked on water but never drank any, died."

The "Winthrop Fleet" info scarcely fell into that "interruptive clause" category, and it really wasn't particularly disruptive to the flow. But, as I said, editorial OCD. Dilidor (talk) 12:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I recognize the syndrome :-) David Brooks (talk) 19:01, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Cotton Mather

Hi. Thanks for your edits. "Use of spectral evidence" does not appear to be particularly confusing. Please take your concerns to the article talk page to raise any questions you have or to seek consensus rather than threaten to unilaterally delete important and very germane text. Yours, Quis separabit? 12:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I was not threatening to delete anything, merely suggesting that the witchcraft section should be more heavily edited. I have no intention of doing it myself, so perhaps I will indeed make the suggestion on the talk page. The topic is certainly germane to the life of Cotton, but it does not necessarily require or even deserve such an in-depth discussion; the article is about Cotton, not about the trials.Dilidor (talk) 12:23, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced Comma?

MOS:NUM shows that a comma is needed after the year when a date is written month - day - year. You removed the comma after the year 1781 in the following sentence - "The surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, marked the end of major fighting in North America." Would you please cite the Wikipedia guideline that shows a comma after the year when a date is written "month - day - year" is wrong? Jerry Stockton (talk) 23:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Rhode Island People

Thank you very kindly for the barnstar award for articles concerning the people of Rhode Island. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to look through and improve so many of them. I have done little active writing in the past few years, but Rhode Island is always very near and dear to my heart. The writing isn't of great interest to me, but the historical accuracy is. I'm doing other projects right now, but hope to return to the people of Rhode Island. My big goal is the Roger Williams article. I've already spent a bit of time perusing the two-volume set of Williams's correspondence, and know that that work will alter many of the other articles I've already put into play. It's nice to have someone else with interest in Rhode Island in the neighborhood! Warmest regards.Sarnold17 (talk) 11:47, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• You're very welcome. I, too, have an interest in Williams and anything else RI-related, as I live there. I do strive for historical accuracy, but writing and style are an involuntary compulsion, and I mentally edit absolutely everything I read—including billboards and junk mail. So I guess we make a good team. I'm presently slogging through S.G. Arnold's second volume, as well as Bloudy Tenent. I just finished Hall's book on the Antinomian Controversy, as I prefer to stay as close as possible to original sources. I'm trying to get a better understanding of the issues involved in that mess, but they are so subtle and slippery that it's taking some time. But ultimately I'd like to add a little more theological precision to your otherwise outstanding article on that sad event. —Dilidor (talk) 12:10, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Wow; kudos to you for tackling Bloudy Tenent. I've contemplated reading several of the early historical accounts, such as Gorton's Simplicities Defence and John Clarke's Ill News from New England but I just can't see the payoff to working my way through any of these classics. If I could get heavily annotated editions that offered plenty of historical context that might be different. Williams's correspondence, at least, is in bite-sized chunks, and what I've read of it has been fairly easy to understand; the editing really helps with historical context. One thing that has stymied me in the Rhode Island articles is a good contemporary history of the state. S. G. Arnold's history is over 150 years old, and Bicknell's five-voume set is 100 years old. I haven't been able to find anything online about the Rhode Island Royal Charter other than those two sources, so the wikipedia article on the subject has been rightfully flagged for the pitiful lack of sourcing. At least the Antinomian Controversy has many current sources, and I've read Hall's account as well as many others, and the many biographies of Anne Hutchinson offer a take on the issue. When I introduced the article on the Antinomian Controversy, it met with a good amount of fanfare, but I was not able to get it to good status. One of my personal limitations is letting go of someone else's words, as I'm afraid to lose the historical slant that those words convey. Doing that article, though, got me into many of the leading Puritan ministers of the day, and I had great fun researching them, particularly John Cotton. Anyway, perhaps your interest in Rhode Island will help lure me back into working on these wikipedia articles. There are many I'd love to write--like about the Brown brothers, and the slave ship Sally, and the list goes on and on.Sarnold17 (talk) 21:32, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
• I've found a few through interlibrary loan: Constitution and Charter, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, prepared by Robert F. Burns, Secretary of State, 1981; The famous old charter of Rhode Island, granted by King Charles II., in 1663 etc., by I.H. Cady, 1842 [an entire 8 pages long! plus library use only]; A lively experiment: reflections on the Charter of 1663, etc., by the Rhode Island 1663 Colonial Charter Commission, 2013. I've ordered the two that are available for loan; there are several others that are "library use only," but it looks like they might be the only useful resources. The Robert Burns one is only 77 pages, and the essay collection (Reflections) is 24. I've a strong suspicion that Arnold and Bicknell are the primary sources, as this is a somewhat esoteric topic. But I'll see what those titles have to offer and will add in anything useful to your article on the Charter. I will also give some thought to how to make it better; the RI Charter is a genuinely significant document in American history, and there ought to be some way to convey that in the article.

Pequot people

Hi - Thanks for your interest in the Pequot people article. Editors can argue over many nuances, but I think my changes did improve this article. Let's discuss on the Talk page of that article if you have specific issues with what I edited or added.Parkwells (talk) 16:46, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

• There were numerous issues, including what I deemed a racial slur. I have repaired the grammar and syntax issues, and smoothed over the unnecessary racial detail. All your additional information is still there. —Dilidor (talk) 10:11, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 20

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Commas and dates

Per MOS:DATEFORMAT, "A comma follows the year unless followed by other punctuation" when using MDY format. And MOS:COMMA says "Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation." Please don't remove commas that follow those rules, as you did in Stamp Act 1765. Chris the speller ^yack 15:09, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

• Kindly refer to the Talk page, where I have addressed this issue. Your edits are incorrect; unfortunately, your rationale is correct—which is to say that the problem lies with the style guide. It needs to be corrected. I will leave your incorrect punctuation as-is for the time being, as it's not worth my while to fight over misplaced commas. But understand quite clearly that your punctuational edits are wrong. —Dilidor (talk) 18:46, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Groton (city), Connecticut

Hi there, I'm sorry about this edit you had to revert. Since it's not an improvement, I'll stop editing the headers in this manner. The last thing I want to do is make extra work for other editors. Cmr08 (talk) 02:46, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Which/That Confusion

Hi, you just reverted my change of several instances of “which” to “that” States Declaration of Independence: Difference between revisions that are in keeping with proper grammatical use. One description of this usage is provided by the | Chicago Manual of Style: Which vs. That, but you can find many other references. Please explain why you think my edits are incorrect. Thanks — Andy Anderson 12:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

That is restrictive; which is non-restrictive. If you read back through those sentences, you'll find that the which is non-restrictive. I cannot link to CMS, as it requires a membership, and I don't have my hard copy at hand, so I cannot offer citation from that source. But regardless of any style guides, it's a grammatical issue. —Dilidor (talk) 13:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Exactly — in each of these cases, the dependent clause is restrictive, so “that” should be used:

• “The best-known version of the Declaration is a signed copy that is popularly regarded as the official document” — the dependent clause “popularly regarded as the official document” applies only to this particular version of the Declaration and helps distinguish it from the other signed copies of the Declaration;
• “Congress passed a resolution on May 10 that had been promoted by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee” — the dependent clause “had been promoted by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee” is required to distinguish this “resolution on May 10”;
• “the committee discussed the general outline that the document should follow” — the dependent clause “the document should follow” is necessary to indicate what the “general outline” refers to.

In any case, “which” should include a comma before it. I will allow that in the first case what may be a more important distinguishing characteristic is that the document is visible at the National Archives, so how about this: “The best-known version of the Declaration is a signed copy that is displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and which is popularly regarded as the official document.” — Andy Anderson 15:52, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

"The best-known version of the Declaration is a signed copy...." There is only one signed copy; there is no need to restrict which signed copy. That is the sense in which "that" is restricting the meaning. If there were two signed copies, one might want to restrict the reader's understanding of which signed copy was being referred to: "The best-known version is the signed copy that hangs in the National Archives." "Which" is merely expanding upon the information concerning the only signed copy. —Dilidor (talk) 16:48, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

You are incorrect, there are multiple signed copies: [2] — Andy Anderson 17:34, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

No comma is required before "which" because there is no new subject, nor is it a separate clause. Your understanding of clauses is inaccurate; "popularly regarded as the official document" is not a dependent clause at all, it is part of the same clause. —Dilidor (talk) 16:48, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Again, you are incorrect — quoting from the Chicago Manual of Style page linked above (which you *do* have access to, it’s open): “Use ‘which’ plus commas to set off nonrestrictive (unnecessary) clauses”. — Andy Anderson 17:34, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

This is my final response to this topic, because it is clear that you do not grasp some very basic concepts. The phrases which you are referring to as dependent clauses are not clauses at all—dependent or otherwise. Without this basic foundation, the conversation is hopeless. —Dilidor (talk) 18:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Your revert on the "Thirteen Colonies"

Hi,Dilidor, I see no indication in the "Population" section that the "colonial population" did not include blacks. If I read you right, you are under the impression that the colonial population included only white settlers from Europe or their descendants. The given citation of Perkins does refer to the "demographic experience" (whatever that means) of blacks, in contradistinction to that of the white majority of the population. If your interpretation of the demonym "colonial population" in the article includes only whites, then that should be alluded to in the text, since there is nothing there now that suggests such an interpretation. It is not intuitively understood by a reader that only whites are referred to, and the text you want discriminates against the black portion of the population, as if they don't count. Carlstak (talk) 17:13, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Immigrate/emigrate

Hello, Dilidor; I thought I was doing the correct thing by changing the word emigrate to immigrate. Here's what I found online:

"Emigrate means to leave one's country to live in another. Immigrate is to come into another country to live permanently. Migrate is to move, like bird in the winter. The choice between emigrate,immigrate, and migrate depends on the sentence's point of view."

When we talk about leaving England, we are emigrating from there; when we are talking about coming to New England, we are immigrating to there. Is this not correct? I felt I was correct in making the edit to the William Arnold (settler) article. Please give me your thoughts.

BTW, it was great to have you go through all of the articles that I worked on, and make edits and corrections. I hope to get back into wikipedia again soon. I was just talking to someone the other day about my desire to do the article on Roger Williams, but the literature is immense. The cornerstones of such an undertaking will be his recent biography (2012) and the two-volume set of his correspondence which is a GOLDMINE of Rhode Island history. Warmest regards.Sarnold17 (talk) 15:08, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi there, Sarnold17. Very nice to start my week with a note from you.

Regarding "emigrate," as your quotation mentions, it is determined by the context. As I recall, the sentences involved were discussing the person's life in England, whence he emigrated elsewhere. If those sentences had been discussing what was happening in America at the time when someone moved here, it would then be immigrated, as the person would have been moving into rather than out of the context. That's why I short-handed my explanation for one of my changes re: the prefix im- vs. em-.

I greatly appreciate all the work that you've done on all the RI history. As a native, I am very interested in all details of RI, particularly during the Colonial and Revolutionary times. Unfortunately, all I have time for at present is to do copy editing; I'd like to sit down someday with books at hand and do some in-depth writing and adding to existing articles. I do hope that you'll be able to do that yourself soon, as I'd welcome anything you have to add to the material on Williams.

What are the titles of the recent bio and collected letters? I definitely want to read those. —Dilidor (talk) 10:24, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello once again, Dilidor

The correspondence of Roger Williams is found in the following source: The Correspondence of Roger Williams. Vol. 1: 1629-1653. Vol. 2: 1654-1682 ed. by Glenn W. LaFantasie. (1988) 867 pp. The recent book on Williams, which I have sitting next to me as I write, is Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul/ Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry, published in 2012. I used this book to add material to the wikipedia article on Sir Edward Coke, who was Williams's mentor, and surrogate father, in England. As for the correspondence, I was able to get it on interlibrary loan (not easy, and it took a long time to get), and had it sitting in my living room for about four weeks. An absolute goldmine, particularly concerning interactions with my ancestor William Arnold, with whom Williams did not see eye to eye (Williams, the preacher and dreamer; Arnold the unabashed publican, interested in little other than land acquisition). The literature is so immense on Williams, that I just cannot see myself undertaking a rewrite of his wikipedia article (which is GREATLY needed). I have other projects I am currently passionate about, and am not willing to put my life on hold to do Williams research, though it continues to greatly interest me. I will likely get back into wikipedia with some simple articles at some point in time, but not yet. Some things have changed since I took a break, and I'll have to do some re-learning. It's great to have a chat, and I appreciate your interest in Rhode Island history. So with that said, let me share a little story with you. I fell in love with Rhode Island as a small child, going to visit my grandparents in Oaklawn every summer. Then I became interested in genealogy in the late 1960s, and began visiting RI to do research in the early 70s. Well, in my 65-year affiliation with Rhode Island, I never once visited the Gilbert Stuart birthplace in N. Kingstown. So, last April, while on a research trip with my wife, we visited that site. It was early in the season, and we were the only visitors at the time. The tour guide was not the regular person, but was filling in. But the guy LOVED Rhode Island history, making the entire visit an electric experience for me. Our tour was a 50-minute conversation for me, and then after the tour we stayed and just chatted for another half hour or so. This guy and I exchanged little tidbits of Rhode Island history that no one on earth would know, unless they were true affecionados (sp?) of the subject. One of us would ask the question "who was it that did such and such" and the other would have the answer. This was just one of those great, and unexpected, life experiences. So, enough rambling. I'm glad that you have enough interest in the subject to make your way through most of the articles I've worked on. The work was pretty lonely while I was doing it, but that didn't seem to matter too much. Cheers.Sarnold17 (talk) 01:04, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Not "nothing"

Hello Dilidor. Happy Monday to you. I wish you'd look again at my edit to Mark Twain, which you reverted with an unusual summary: "accomplished nothing". As a self-described professional editor, you likely will be aware that book titles are normally italicized while parenthetical qualifiers such as "(book)" are not. Compare:

• Christian Science (book) [my edit]
• Christian Science (book) [your reversion].

Do you see what I mean? It's roughly analogous to another entry in that section: "Mark Twain's Library of Humor (anthology)". "Anthology" isn't italicized because it isn't part of the title. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose that my edit accomplished little: cities won't crumble, asteroids won't strike the Earth, and not a single Wikipedia reader will be the wiser for it. Nevertheless, it was consistent with a convention that is widely accepted both on and off Wikipedia, and that's hardly "nothing". I trust you'll either gently explain how I've missed something that should be blindingly obvious or just go ahead and self-revert. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 15:47, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Apologies—I hadn't noticed the italics, and it appeared that you were merely repeating the link. I've reverted. —Dilidor (talk) 16:04, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Connecticut River changes

I really have an issue with swapping "Natives" with "American Indians". "Natives" is much more accurate. Columbus' error in calling the natives "indians" is something we should not be propagating. They are not, and never were, indians.- Denimadept (talk) 01:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Denimadept. I recognize those facts, but it becomes a problem very quickly as we go through the river's history, because in one generation, everybody involved is a native. The only time period where the indigenous people groups can be accurately distinguished as "natives" vs. "non-natives" is during the first generation, when the settlers were arriving from Europe. Their children were born here, and were therefore every bit as "native" as the tribal children. The entire world at that time referred to those indigenous tribes as "Indians," regardless of its erroneous etymology, so it is just simpler to use the terminology which the people involved used. That is a policy in other areas of Wikipedia articles; I've seen great debate, for example, concerning the term "Patriots" for those involved on the American side of the Revolutionary War—and consensus is always to use the terminology that was common in the time period. —Dilidor (talk) 10:02, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I know the Canadians like "Natives," but it sounds wrong in American English. Just think what the usage implies for nativists. SillyBear (talk) 10:08, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Dilidor No argument, really, but you leave us with no options. They're no "Indians", and they're only "natives" until the Europeans have been around for 20 years. What's better? Calling them by their tribe name doesn't work, as we're trying to be all-inclusive. - Denimadept (talk) 03:20, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

My point is that the simplest method is to use the terminology of the time period being discussed. When discussing the French and Indian War, for example, we should simply use the labels and terminology that were used at the time. This is what I mentioned above concerning "Patriots" vs. "Loyalists" during the American Revolutionary War. If you look through the talk page on the Revolution, you'll find some heated debate because the word "patriot" is loaded with significance and might be offensive to some. But it was the term used at the time of the context, so that's what we use.

My suggestion would be that we use "Indian" when discussing the Connecticut River Valley in Colonial times. Then, when discussing its history in 20th Century and later, feel free to use the term "Native American" in that context. It's still a ludicrous term, and I find it offensive because I am a native American with entirely the same rights to the land as someone whose predecessors were here a trifle farther back in time than mine were—in fact, it's every bit as false an etymology as calling the tribes Indians, and just as offensive—but it fits with the historical timeframe, so I won't change it. In the modern context, that is. —Dilidor (talk) 10:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Thirteen colonies...

Please read WP:BRD, which outlines the proper course of action. You were bold, I reverted, now we discuss on the appropriate talk page. Just dismissing a book as "no-reliable" w/o any evidence for that is not the way to go. Please refer to WP:RS and explain on the talk page why you think that source is unreliable. Moreover, introducing unsourced claims is a direct violation of WP:V. Please refrain from doing that. Thanks. Kleuske (talk) 11:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Tom Waits genre

Hi, I am inviting past editors of the Tom Waits article to contribute to the discussion at Talk:Tom_Waits#Genres. I am in dispute with User:TheOldJacobite, who has reverted even my sourced changes and ignored my appeals to discuss the issue. Please express your opinion on the issue if it interests you.--MASHAUNIX 18:04, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Fauna - Connecticut

Hi Dilidor.

Are we looking at the same thing re Connecticut fauna?

I have just checked and every one of the see also articles definitely does exist and so does the main article. The text is an almost direct lift from the biodiversity section.

I will restore the article to my version but want you to have a chance to have another look first, or am I missing something?

Eno Lirpa (talk) 12:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Eno Lirpa. The links to which I was referring are the ones in the citations—all dead links, making the citations of no value. Perhaps this is the case on the fauna page, as well, but duplicating the problem on the CT page does not resolve it. Further, I also don't see much value in a list of how many endangered species there are in the state. It seems a better idea to repair and expand on the fauna page first, then transpose some of that to the CT page. −Dilidor (talk) 13:14, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Happy Halloween

MrBill3 has given you some caramel and a candy apple! Caramel and candy-coated apples are fun Halloween treats, and promote WikiLove on Halloween. Hopefully these have made your Halloween (and the preceding days) much sweeter. Happy Halloween! '"On Psych, A USA Network TV series Episode 8, The Tao of Gus, Season 6, Shawn refers to pumpkins as "Halloween Apples" because he thinks all round fruits are a type of apple. Wow, just wow. Your work on Bigfoot was fantastic. A quick read of your talk page reveals that you have an exceptional command of the English language. Thanks for your contributions If Trick-or-treaters come your way, add {{subst:Halloween apples}} to their talkpage with a spoooooky message!

Pompano Beach Mound

Greetings. I have added some content to the above linked article. It is only a few sentences. My writing may not show the skill with prose you have demonstrated. If you could take a moment to look it over, the encyclopedia might be improved. Best. MrBill3 (talk) 15:50, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Edit war warning

Your recent editing history at Samson shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Jytdog (talk) 17:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Edit warring Sutherland Springs church shooting

Reversion of the same material 3 times:

• one
• two
• three

Required talk-page warning. Use the article's talk page to get consensus. -- GreenC 17:39, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Piers Morgan

You may be interested in the discussion at Talk:Sutherland Springs church shooting#Reactions - Piers Morgan. WWGB (talk) 04:21, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Using your edits in an edit-war report on Jytdog

Hello. I have used your edits on the article Samson to support my case for temporarily blocking user Jytdog for his disruptive persistent editing, as I agree with your edits on the article and believe that Jytdog's edits are damaging to Wikipedia. If you have any objections to that, please let me know, and I will remove them as soon as you do so.^Ol^Ja 23:51, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Charles Morgan (businessman)

Hi Dilidor:

I noticed your edit of the Charles Morgan article, and I hope you are willing to help me. I have been wanting to expand this page for a few years, and now I have the knowledge to expand and rewrite the article. I need at least one fresh set of eyes to look at organization, substance and style.

The Charles Morgan article has the potential to be either GA or even FA. Do you have any interest? cheers, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 19:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Oldsanfelipe. I'd be happy to do a pass-through in interests of style and such. I'm not sure which page you're referring to, however—the ship or the man. I have a personal interest in the old ship and would love to see that article strengthened, but I'd still be happy to look over other pages, as needed. Please let me know when you've completed. —Dilidor (talk) 19:33, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Great. The link is in the subject header. This may not be finished until early 2018. I have not done much reading about his railroad holdings. I have created a few articles about ships from the Morgan fleet: Columbia (1835 steamboat) and New York (1837 steamboat). I will take a look at the article about the ship. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 19:49, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I hope this does not dampen your interest, but Charles Morgan (businessman) of the Morgan Line and Morgan City, LA fame is not associated with Charles_W._Morgan_(ship), the 1841 whaler. The two Charles Morgans were born a year apart. Charles Morgan (businessman) was born in CT and did business in NYC; Charles Wald Morgan was born in PA and did business in New Bedford, MA. This makes sense because New Bedford, MA was a famous whaling port. I already changed the blue link from Charles_W._Morgan_(ship) to Charles Morgan (businessman) to a DAB link. Here is a link to the Charles Wald Morgan Papers: [3]. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 20:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for all that great info! I also did not know about the museum in New Bedford—another thing for my "I hope to do this one day" list… in the "…but I probably never will" sub-category. Interesting similarities twixt the two men, though, one going from CT to NYC, the other crossing paths in the opposite direction. Makes me want to know more about both men, so I'll hopefully edit your Morgan today. —Dilidor (talk) 11:00, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Please monitor and protect the Mangalore article from Vandalism

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George Washington's Farewell Address

Hi, Dilidor. Twice you have deleted my entry on the page dedicated to George Washington's Farewell Address. The subject of the entries was a documentary, now in post-production, which focuses on analyzing the Farewell Address itself. You claim it to be "self-advertising" and while I make no attempt to hide the fact that I am the filmmaker, I do have a question for you: how do you define the difference between "informing the public" and "self-advertising"? I have provided the IMDb site to show the documentary is legitimate as well as a link to a college news site which profiles me as a filmmaker currently in the process of crafting the documentary. Please clarify this for me so that I can understand your mindset as well was what I would have to do in order to simply inform the general public of the documentary's existence on the very page that its subject is covered. I thank you for your time and patience in answering this for me. Professor Icon (talk) 21:16, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Greetings, Professor Icon. When your documentary is readily available to the public, then I would recommend listing it in the "See Also" section at the bottom of the article. Informing the reader that you're making a documentary is equivalent to adding a sub-section to tell the reader that you're presently writing a book on the topic, or even a sub-section to discuss the relative merits of one historian's book versus another historian's book. These would not add anything to the reader's knowledge or understanding of the article's topic. Also, you can always create a new article about the documentary itself—once it's available to the public, of course. Hope that clarifies. —Dilidor (talk) 11:18, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

It does clarify things. Thank you very much. Professor Icon (talk) 13:36, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Learning from others

Dear @Dilidor:, as we constitute a dedicated community of knowledge seekers that grows and becomes stronger by constantly learning from each other despite all the differences in opinion and perspectives, I would like to respectfully ask you to kindly share your reasoning insights that made you to deduce that,

"most of forensics was unsupported and incomprehensible horseshit and was therefore deleted"

— Dilidor

and proceed with deletion of the Forensics section in Doppelgänger's article. For your convenience, I took the liberty to recreate it:

Forensics section

The concepts of facial familiarity and similarity of people are of practical importance for criminologists due to the instances of wrongful convictions based on eyewitness testimony. In one case, a person spent 17 years behind bars persistently denying any involvement with the crime he was accused of. Eventually, he was released after a doppelganger sharing not only a striking resemblance, but also the same name, was located. Increased reliance on video surveillance while dealing with offenses ranging from traffic infractions to bank robberies leads to situations when people are connected to events by images. Steve Tom of the TV series Major Crimes was issued a red-light camera ticket in Culver City, California despite denying being there at the time. Mike Rowe of the TV show Somebody's Gotta Do It was linked to a bank heist in Medford, Oregon and had to respond on his Facebook page. However, the forensic research suggested that the issue of full facial familiarity after being approached with the 8 metric dimensions methodology remained unproven, and that the statistical likeness to find two exact looking persons under these conditions is less than one in a trillion.

Thank you in advance, --Taterian (talk) 03:30, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Dear @Dilidor:, I take your silence as a tacit acknowledgement that you had made an honest mistake in your assessment as we editors may all do at times. No harm done as one can easily restore the section in question due to the wonderful go-back-in-time feature of wiki technology. With best wishes, --Taterian (talk) 03:09, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Seasons' Greetings

...to you and yours, from the Great White North! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 15:58, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Self-published

You removed a {{self-published inline}} tag relating to a book published via vanity press XLibris. Why, please? Guy (Help!) 00:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Please put the note in references, not 10 million times throughout the articles. —Dilidor (talk) 12:33, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Mayflower

The only deliberate change I was making was to add {{self-published inline}} for the XLibris book - and yes, this should go inside the ref tags, I don't know what went wrong as the regex is supposed to do exactly that. Anything else was AWB, so I will check your comments and feed them back to the AWB team. Guy (Help!) 12:59, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

JzG: I realize that you want to draw the reader's attention to the fact that a source which is cited repeatedly throughout the article is actually self-published—but the problem with these 2 articles is that the goddam source is cited repeatedly throughout the articles! There has got to be a better method than repeating the template every single paragraph! Please—desist from reverting and find a better solution. —Dilidor (talk) 21:20, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The real problem is that it should be using a standard referencing scheme where the ref tag just cites the page, so the book is only listed once, but I don't have any experience with those. And there's also the fact that when virtually an entire article is drawn from dozens of references to a self-published book, there is probably something wrong. Guy (Help!) 23:15, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The Modern Flags Section of New England Flags

Hello, Dilidor, I understand that my changes to the last section weren't to your satisfaction, and I do agree with your decision to roll them back. However, that paragraph simply doesn't flow in its current state. It jumps from the story about Ebinger's presentation to the NEGC to the appearance of the flag back to the story of Ebinger's copyright scheme and the NEGC once more. One sentence in particular rubs me wrong, "It was copyrighted by Ebinger in 1965,[15] and the NEGC adopted the design without realizing that it was under copyright.". It states twice the flag was under copyright, having already said so. There are very rather small issues I have with how it's written, but seeing as you like how it is and I'm not too great at English (nor any other language, for that matter), I would like to ask if you would be willing to work with me in some capacity to spruce up the modern-flags section. Thanks, clinically lazy (talk) 02:45, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Greetings clinically lazy. I have made another pass on that section in an attempt to make it read better. If you have suggestions on how to improve it further, I'm glad to work on it. The fact is, though, that I don't see much point to that sub-section in the first place. The stuff about copyright issues goes nowhere and has no bearing on the article, and I think it would be better to trim out that facet altogether, cut the block quote entirely (esp. since it merely reiterates what's been stated), stay focused on the NEGC flag, and move it as a single paragraph into the body of the article someplace. The graphic is nice, of course, and deserves to be retained. For the time being, however, I've not made any drastic cuts. —Dilidor (talk) 11:16, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Commas after MDY-formatted dates that include a year

Hello,

I notice that you reverted some edits that I did to the Myles Standish page. In retrospect, I can see that I did put in a few too many commas, and will re-evaluate going forward.

However, there is one that you removed that I disagree with, which is the comma after the year in the date of death in the "Last years" section

I can see in another section of your talk page that another user had the same situation on a different page, and your reply to that user indicated that the Wikipedia style guide is wrong. However, if that is true, then the Chicago Manual of Style, heading "6.38: Commas with dates" is also wrong.

CMS requires a subscription, so of course I will not post the relevant content. That said, the examples given do indeed put a comma after the year in the case of an MDY date that occurs mid-sentence.

I can find several other respected, non-subscription resources online, including APA Style, that back this up:

http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/when-use-comma.aspx

and several others, which I will not post here in the interest of keeping things tidy.

I cannot, however, find a single authoritative source that indicates a comma should not be used in that situation.

I therefore believe Wikipedia's style guide (and thus that particular edit of mine) to be correct and done in good faith. And I agree with the other reversions and improvements you have made to the article. We are on the same team in wanting to make Wikipedia a better place.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter, as small as it is. Sincerely, 1980fast (talk) 23:02, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

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Commas

Hello.

Have you read WP:Copyedit#Punctuation?

You should. Those commas are not misplaced, they are required.

Regards

HandsomeFella (talk) 12:22, 22 January 2018 (UTC)