User talk:MrDarcy/Jan to Nov 2005

Welcome!

Hello, MrDarcy/Jan to Nov 2005, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Alphabetization

Are you sure about alphabetizing under "di Lampedusa" rather than "Lampedusa"? I realize it's all part of his surname, but would have expected him to be alphabetized under "Lampedusa". Pretty certain that's where I've seen his book filed in bookstores (in more than one language). -- Jmabel | Talk 20:26, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Well, all I can say is that I was sure enough to make the change. The English convention is to file "de something" or "di something" under "d," much as it would be for "la something." According to this guy, the convention is the same in Italy. Thanks for the comment (mulţumesc frumos!). MrDarcy 00:04, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cary Grant

Howdy, I just replied on Talk:Cary Grant. Did you read Anglo at Wikipedia? WikiDon

Hey, WikiDon. The Anglo entry here seems ambiguous to me; at best, you can say that there are substantial regional differences in the way "Anglo-American" is used, which I think is still a point for avoiding it. I'll respond fully on the Talk:Cary Grant page.

"Judy, Judy, Judy"

Here is the story that I heard:

Tony Curtis was a huge Cary Grant fan. Grant’s character in “Bringing Up Baby”, Dr. David Huxley, said “Susan, Susan, Susan.” Curtis in getting ready for the part of 'Junior' in “Some Like it Hot” used “Judy, Judy, Judy” as a phonetic technique to work on the accent of Grant. Then George Lindsey as Goober Pyle did it in The Andy Griffith Show, doing Curtis doing Grant.

You'll have to double check, but I think that is what I remember. WikiDon 01:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WikiDon - I didn't originally insert the Judy*3 comment; I just cleaned it up. I used the FAQ link as my source. It mentions the Susan*3 incident, but the click-through page has Grant himself commenting on the Judy*3 myth, and he doesn't mention the Susan story, so I didn't add it. Follow the links and see if you think it merits inclusion. Thanks! | MrDarcy 01:28, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good job on rewriting that little blurb of mine in the Cary Grant article. You improved it significantly, as I figured someone would. I just had to put something in there about it, since I had just written a reference to it in the James Cagney article, because I had just been watching the Yankee Doodle Dandy DVD set, in case nobody could tell. It looks as if "Judy, Judy, Judy" is one of those things that was "almost" said, and was later "re-quoted" because it sounded crisper than the original... like Mae West, who never quite said, "Come up and see me sometime" (to Cary Grant, oddly enough); or Humphrey Bogart, who never quite said, "Play it again, Sam." It's interesting to learn that "Judy, Judy, Judy" apparently started out as a conscious attempt to mimic but not quote Grant, and it took on a life of its own, as these things sometimes do... like Will Jordan's impression of Ed Sullivan saying "really big 'shoe'" which every mimic after that picked up on. That hackneyed impression of "Judy, Judy, Judy" WikiDon referenced here and also on my talk page was actually done by George Lindsey as Goober Pyle, cousin to Gomer Pyle. The joke-within-the-joke there was that Goober's "impression" was in his own voice, not sounding at all like Grant's unique way of saying it if he had actually said it. Wahkeenah 01:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Wahkeenah. I figured it was cleaner to put the link at the bottom with other links, but to tell the whole story right there where you inserted it. As much of a CG fan as I am, I was completely unaware of the Judy*3 myth until you just posted it! | MrDarcy 01:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a copy of Some Like It Hot and have not seen it for ages, but if someone were to watch it and verify that one scene Wikidon brought up, that would be a neat thing to include in the article (if you haven't already), as it would basically round out the entire "Judy*3" legend. Solving mysteries is fun. :) Wahkeenah 01:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC) P.S. I see where soon-to-be Chief Justice Roberts (not to be confused with the dreaded pirate Roberts) includes North by Northwest as a favorite film. They just don't make 'em that way anymore. :)[reply]

Couldn't agree with you more on that. Where are today's Alfred Hitchcocks? You can keep your Tarantinos and your Spike Lees. Even Guy Ritchie, who had some promise, appears to have hit a wall with his latest film. Oh, and I haven't seen Some Like It Hot, so I'm no help there. | MrDarcy 01:54, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The two macho guys (Curtis and Lemmon) in drag is a hoot. Meanwhile, I hope you have seen Yankee Doodle Dandy somewhere along the way. They had a segment in the DVD specials with John Travolta talking about his 5-year friendship with fellow singer-and-dancer James Cagney late in the latter's life, and about how he and a friend watched YDD after 9/11/01 to lift their spirits. The context of the film, early in the dark days of WWII, is tough for us "younger generation" to relate to. 9/11 and its aftermath is maybe just a hint of what it was like in the USA immediately following Pearl Harbor and during 1942. Wahkeenah 02:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How to keep an idiot busy for hours

In the discussion about deleting How to keep an idiot busy for hours, you criticised my comment

" I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on this. A major class of jokes has a good claim on being encyclopedic. Also, I think that you are starting to come way to close to some personal attacks there. --Apyule 08:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)"

as attacking Peter's style rather than the substance of his argument. To make this a nicer place for everyone, I'd like any comments that you have on how you think I could phrase this better. Thanks, Apyule 13:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Apyule, thanks for the note. I wasn't criticizing your phrasing, but felt that you were being overly sensitive as to what constitutes a personal attack. I didn't see anything that Peter wrote that would meet my own personal standards for that; he was emphatic about his point, but what did he write that set off your alarm bells for a possible personal attack? To answer your question, I would either have omitted the last sentence entirely (chastising him for getting close to a personal attack) or have highlighted exactly what he wrote that hit a nerve with you. If that doesn't answer your question, please let me know. Thanks again. | MrDarcy 19:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw your addendum on the page in question. I guess I just don't agree with you that those are personal attacks. They strike me as strong statements of an opinion that is relevant to the discussion. Is the page in question worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia? There is some line below which we won't venture when adding material; some of us would like to set the bar high, and others would like to set it lower. Peter seems to share my own view that allowing silly pages like the "idiot" joke to stay on Wikipedia demean the more serious content on the site. "Shame on you" seems fairly tame to me. | MrDarcy 19:20, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I guess I was just being a little too alarmist. --Apyule 02:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The "How to keep an idiot busy" joke I first heard when I was a young teen, decades ago, and given the times, of course it read "How to keep a 'Polack' busy". Now they might say 'Blonde', or whatever. Another variant on it was telling someone "How do you keep a 'Polack' in suspense?" and when they would say, "How?", of course you wouldn't answer the question, you would just stare back at them in silence. Wahkeenah 01:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My Antonia

Hi, I've been trying to post external links to the editions of My Antonia available from the University of Nebraska Press. That does not seem to be too commercial an activity to me. I am not a representative of the press or trying to sell their products. They seem like useful links. I am trying to figure out how to comment with you (MrDarcy) as well. I hope this works. 129.93.16.140 23:35, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments. I can see that you are posting from an IP address at the University of Nebraska. Is this a coincidence?

If you believe those links have useful information, then use that information to improve the article itself. The links themselves, which point to sales pages for overpriced editions of a book that is widely available for $4-5 new, appear to me to be nothing more than advertising, and that's not appropriate on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not for more details on what's not considered appropriate on the site. | MrDarcy 23:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am happy that we are actually communicating. I am still a little mistified about how this works. I am at the University of Nebraska -- Business Librarian -- and I am intersted in Cather because Nebraska is a center of study for Cather and because Cather is a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame. I guess I just don't read the "What Wikipedia is not" policy on advertising the same way you do. It looks like a link to a page on a high-quality, trade paper back edition is no more commercial than a link to the IMDB entry for a movie.

Let me offer a few suggestions. First, when you post on a Talk page (like this one), always sign your posts by typing four tilde (~) signs. That will automatically insert your name and the date. Second, when you respond to another comment on a Talk page, you can indent your comments by typing a colon (:) - and you can use multiple colons to indent further. (I just did this for you on this page.)

As to the substance of your comment, linking to an individual sales site for any item is discouraged on Wikipedia. The IMDB page for the movie is not commercial in nature; it contains casting information, running time, trivia, memorable quotes, and user reviews - all relevant details about the movie that a Wikipedia user would likely be looking for. In addition, linking to IMDB pages for movies is an accepted practice on Wikipedia. The pages you linked to were primarily commercial in nature; you have some connection to the entity selling the products; and you ignored all of the countless other editions (most of which are far more affordable) available of this book. I hope those comments are somewhat helpful. | MrDarcy 01:18, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to do that business with the tildes but it did not seem to work. I tried a different approach. Clearly, the "scholarly edition" is a value-added edition worthy of a link. I still think that links to the Pages on the Press website are legit. Bob Bolin 01:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, Bob, but these links just do not belong here. You are pushing a commercial product with which you have some connection, and that is inappropriate. You can say "Clearly" all you want but it doesn't change the fact that commercial links are not acceptable on Wikipedia. Please do not add these links again. | MrDarcy 02:27, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I can see that you are set in your opinion which I hold to be wrong. I have tried again one more time. Maybe you will go for that. And I am not, in fact, connected to the Press. Who are you? A Cather scholar I would guess?Bob Bolin 03:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bob, first of all, it is NOT acceptable to edit other users' User pages, like you did to mine to fix a broken link. This is another example of you ignoring Wikipedia policies. I know you didn't mean any harm - the link was, in fact, broken - but the point is that you just don't do certain things around here, and that's one of them.

Second, personal attacks are definitely not appropriate on Wikipedia. You don't agree with what I'm saying; that doesn't justify going after me personally. You don't have to be a Cather scholar to edit pages on Cather or her works here.

Third, you work at the same institution that publishes and profits from the editions you're trying to link to. That is enough of a connection to cause a conflict of interest.

Fourth, I actually ran this whole question by some other users on the Village pump, and the unanimous opinion was that you can't favor one specific edition and you shouldn't link directly to sales pages. So this isn't just my opinion. You have the right to disagree, but you need to accept that what you're trying to do is not appropriate on Wikipedia.

Finally, as for the new text you've added, I think it's useless information - any reader could have guessed all of that information by the date of publication - but I'll leave in the interest of avoiding an edit war. I'm just going to clean the text up a bit. I hope you'll take some time to explore the links to Wikipedia norms and policies that are on your User_talk:Bob_Bolin page. They'll help you avoid future conflicts like this. | MrDarcy 13:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry. I fixed the link because I make a lot of minor corrections in Wikipedia. I did not intend anything personal--and I would not make a personal attack. I admire the work you have done. Those look like useful articles on a range of subjects.

I am happy that you are willing to call a truce. Best wishes, 129.93.16.131 15:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Red and the Black

Very nice rewrite of the article. john k 02:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, John. I really appreciate that you took the time to say so. I just finished the book this morning - always easier to do this when it's all fresh in my mind. | MrDarcy 02:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No problem

Re: [1].

No problem, thanks for reporting it in. -Loren 23:30, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List Of Sports Busts AfD

I was surprised at the AfD debate, since to my mind the list as constructed has deep-running POV problems.

However, I count 5 keep votes (since renaming means keeping). I include Grutness as a keep since he evidently understood the meaning in his second comment and had suggested renaming as his first option anyway. Renaming implies retaining the article. Keep and cleanup is certainly a keep; I don't think they need viewing seperately to other kinds of keep: it's just a suggestion to put a {{cleanup}} on the article.

I count 8 deletes, as the final one is an anon (check the history) with a poor comment and so is discarded.

Numerically, that's 8/13 which is 61% which is below the two-thirds guideline I normally use (and which is fairly common). However, it's close to it, so is there anything in the debate which suggests deleting anyway? Well, there are the bad POV problems, but at least several of the renaming suggestions coupled with the cleanups that were suggested would deal with those: it could be made factual under a better title. So wasn't persuaded to lower the deletion-consensus threshold in this case. You might want to add a cleanup tag or something, though, I should probably have done that, but wasn't sure whether to use {{cleanup-date}} or {{npov}} or something else. It certainly does need a {{verify}} adding.

Anyway, does that clarify my reasoning? -Splash^talk 22:28, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My response lives here: [2] | MrDarcy 00:45, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. Anons are usually discounted just because it's impossible to know whether they are someone in the debate commenting twice, someone who happens to have come across an interesting box on an article, and thought they'd join the fun without any education in wikipolicy (e.g. this particlar one didn't even know how to sign), or a good-faith contributor who happened to find the article. They could also be a hard-banned user for all we know. If the anon had given a properly argued comment rather than just saying "rubbish", I might have treated it differently but only if they were particularly cogent. Personally, I think the page needs to be reworked so fundamentally, it might as well be scrapped and started over. I imagine if the tags you decide to place were not dealt with satisfactorily within a month or two, you could renominate it on that basis. -Splash^talk 00:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is done - 3 tags, and a note on Talk:List Of Sports Busts. And sorry for messing up your Talk page - I didn't realize {{ }} tags would expand regardless of where they lived in the text. | MrDarcy 01:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tilting at windmills

Tilting at windmills primarily refers to Don Quixote, as any Google test will prove. Since you have created a dab page, I have expanded it. --Viriditas | Talk 14:16, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A google test shows that tilting at windmills refers to the primary topic of Don Quixote. [3] FWIW, the comic book authors book shows up in the 13th hit, with Branston in the 17th; the first 12 hits refer to Don Quixote and metaphorical associations of Quixote. In fact, the usage of the term, even in titles of works by other authors refers to Don Quixote. Prior to the dab page, a redirect was used to redirect this sub-topic and to facilitate disambiguation. Wikipedia policy on naming conventions makes it clear that we should use the common name and be precise, so the creation of a dab page was appropriate. --Viriditas | Talk 00:05, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Garcia takes the whip

"Thanks, Mithotyn. I'd love to get your help in keeping an eye out for vandals; there seem to be a couple of knuckleheads who hit this page after each Lions' game. Maybe that'll stop now that he's on the bench." hehe now they're doing it to Garcia, I noticed a vandalism revert that was shortly after last weeks game on his article, the typical "JEFF GARCIA SUCKS ASS!" sort of thing. I wonder what is it with Lions' fans and quarterbacks. I'll keep my eye on both articles even though somebody always beats me to it anyway Mithotyn 22:10, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

regarding your comment on Joey Harrington. Yeah i still have alot to learn about that (Wikipedia standards) but i'm glad we see eye to eye on it, i was afraid it was going to get deleted because it seemed too much like news/current event and didn't have a current event template, and wondered if it should, then decided it probably shouldn't, thanks for fixing that for me i just remember you're supposed to (or should?) link the date but wasen't sure exactly how to do it. I learned something from you today ;) . I am a n00b, but i want to be a good wikipedian, i love this place. Mithotyn 22:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion for AfD bot work

Quick suggestion - when your bot closes the daily Articles_for_Deletion/Log page, could you also have it update the date at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#How_to_list_pages_for_deletion? I'm referring to the part that says "this edit link." Thanks. | MrDarcy (talk) (contribs) 00:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Um... that's already done automatically by the server. That is set by the server clock, which is based in the UTC timezone. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's a lag between those the two events. Twice in the last three days, I've tagged an article for deletion and found that the link on the AfD page itself sent me to the Log that just closed. Anyway, thanks for the reply. | MrDarcy [[User_talk:MrDarcy|(talk)]] [[Special:Contributions/MrDarcy|(contribs)]] 14:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thank you for handling the Ben Franklin vandal. I was about to get into it when you stepped in. Glen Finney 14:59, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. Looks like she gave up right after I issued the second warning. Maybe it was her nap time. | MrDarcy 15:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Impersonator

I just deleted a nonsense stub which was in your name. Deb 18:42, 30 November 2005 (UTC) Oops, sorry, there seem to be a lot of vandals on at the moment - the kids must have just come out of school or something. Deb 18:46, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]