User talk:Olivier/Archives 2004

List of Cambodia-related topics

FYI, I just created List of Cambodia-related topics, please feel free to add/delete. Thanks. Fuzheado 04:40, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

wow, cool! olivier 09:28, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject French départements

Hi Olivier. Thanks for the feedback on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French départements. I've inserted a table for Ain on Wikipedia:WikiProject French départements and would like your feedback. Thanks, snoyes 14:32, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please help with Chinese mandatory military service information verification

Hi! If you have time please check Conscription and help me to verify this information: China (People's Republic of China, PRC) has mandatory military service both for men and women. Women go to the army for 2 months and learn to fire guns. Information updated: as of 2003 with some information not updated since 1990s, unofficial source. Thank you with best wishes for PEACE PROFOUND, .^.. Optim 22:40, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC) .^..

Translation check

'salut Olivier. You don't by any chance know whether "professeus" is an old-french form of "professeur". (I was translating the title of a book by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin on that page). --snoyes 07:19, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It really looks like a typo to me, especially since (1) the French language used at the time of Brillat-Savarin was very modernized already and almost identical to today's (2) the rest of the title is not in old-french (3) I've never heard of "professeus". olivier 07:29, Jan 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll have a closer look at the title. --snoyes 07:30, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yikes!

Good lord Olivier, you are going to pass me up soon! :) [1] --mav 07:54, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully not!!!!! :-) olivier 07:56, Jan 25, 2004 (UTC)

I see you changed municipality to commune in La Baule-Escoublac. Is it really a commune? Do you mean community? A commune would be some sort of social collective like a kibbutz perhaps. Also the last sentence about animations does not make sense, do you know what the author meant? --Bob Palin 15:51, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I looked up commune and now see that it is probably correct but what about the last sentence?

It looks like the author means that some activities/animations, like regional products markets, or fairs, are organized once in a while in the city. olivier 19:34, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)

Re: your question about removing the French links on the French communes with Robbot: I checked, and I found that the problem is that those were linked as "fr:Commune De..." while the actual page was at "fr:Commune de...". Because of this, the French page was not found, and therefore subsequently removed. Knowing the problem now, I will go over these and add and correct the links. Thanks for keeping an eye on my bot! Andre Engels 10:31, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Great, thanks! olivier 10:53, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

FISC

Olivier,
Just wanted to let you know that I expanded the article on the American Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to which you contributed a while ago. Thought you might be interested. --Xinoph 04:45, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

Opéra National de Lyon

Hi Olivier, I am working on opera houses at the moment. Alas, I have been unable to find any information on the Web in English on Opéra National de Lyon. Can you help out if you have a moment? Even just a few lines on the history of the building would be wonderful. Merci, -- Viajero 10:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Olivier le nettoyeur

Thanks for cleaning up my contributions - good work! ;-) -- ChrisO 17:09, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Haha. In fact, thanks for your great contributions! olivier 17:11, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Oliver,

Greetings. I am a bit new to this wiki thing and I have a question for you regarding your latest changes to the PanGu story.

1) You say more wikification is needed... exactly what do you mean? Is there a recommended format page for Chinese Pinyin? Please send me a link if there is; I have not seen it.

2) The tables I added originally were based on a generic dictionary scheme used on the web for Chinese/Pinyin; i.e. not wiki only. Your particular method of rearranging the data has the following characteristics: a) names that are neither Pinyin or Chinese are now primary links b) an additional delimiter ";" is added to the characters c) the word "pinyin" is duplicated in every single usage d) documentation titles (which vary in English) are used as links

Owing to the spelling challenges in converging ancient data, it seems worth the effort to understand your changes for future use. Again, I am new to this but I have more content and want to understand how others might change it before adding more.

I thank you for you patience in considering my comments.

mamgeorge

Olivier,

I stand corrected. I saw the Chinese format page and have a better understanding of what you were trying to accomplish.

I thank you for the modifications to my contribution.

Please note that in changes such as this: Shu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: xu2 zheng3) Should probably be: Xu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: xu2 zheng3, Shu Zheng)

I do not know what romanization Shu Zeng is

Thank You,

--Mamgeorge 16:43, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! First of all, welcome to wikipedia, and thanks for your contributions. Regarding your initial question about the standards for Pinyin and other China-related things, I understand from your second message that you have probably found by now the workpage Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles. The List of China-related topics might give you some links to page of potential interest to you as well. In fact, some of these workpages are the result of considerable debates among Wikipedians. Nevertheless, some of them are still works in progress, and you are welcome to bring your contributions to the discussion pages of these workpages if you are interested.

Regarding the mention "more wikification is needed", I actually meant that I had done some work in the direction of [Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles], but that I had left before completing the job, and that anyone interested was welcome to do it.

I agree with your way of writing Xu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: xu2 zheng3, Shu Zheng).

Please do not hesitate to let me know if you think that I can be of help with finding your way within Wikipedia in the future. olivier 22:18, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Taurus (constellation) move

Hi Olivier. Small notice about how to move a page properly: I noticed a message on the Village pump about a move of the page Taurus to Taurus (constellation). It seems you just cut the content of the Taurus page and pasted it to Taurus (constellation). Unfortunately, this way you loose all the edit history of the page and the talk page with history. If you look at the menue on the left, you will see an option "Move this page". Using this option, you can move a page including all the history and the talk page to a new location, and a redirect from the old location is automatically created. This is the preferred way to move a page. Also, the destination of the move has to be an empty page. If there is already a page at the destination, you cannot move the page, and an administrator has to delete the target page so the source page can be moved. Anyway, I fixed the move, so Taurus (constellation) now has the correct edit history and the talk page. Please don't see this message as a critic, just a hint about a Wikipedia feature. Thanks also for creating the disambiguity page text, nicely done. Happy editing -- Chris 73 | Talk 03:08, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I actually know about the "move page" feature, which I have used on many occasions. In this specific case, I just forgot about the loss of the discussion page and did the cut-and-paste that you are mentioning. Thanks for fixing this. olivier 03:16, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

All right, there was apparently no discussion page, but you are right anyway, the history ended up being misplaced by my move. olivier 03:19, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

No problem. Are you the Olivier with 30728 (!!!) edits and #4 on the english wikipedia? Most impressive! -- Chris 73 | Talk 03:47, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently Wikipedia does not permit several users to have the same user name. So, yes, it's me. Quite hard to imagine that my edits add up to such a figure, though. (By the way, #1 and #2 are bots). olivier 06:33, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Man, do I feel like preaching to the pope now ... just tried to help a novice user with a wiki feature, and then this ... Anyway, no harm done. My respect and best regards, Chris 73 | Talk 07:23, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My respects for your patience for explaining things in such details to other users! You were right anyway, I should have followed the procedure you are describing. There is no Papal Infallibility in Wikipedia :-) olivier 07:29, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Bar

Are you planning to do a duke of Bar or Duchy of Bar article? If so you are saving me some work, and here is a link. If not, well... i'll do it sooner or later. Cheers, MvHG 14:22, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed you did. Any plans for other duchies? MG

What I did is just include some 1911 content into a new article. This article is far from being perfect, so you are more than welcome to improve it. No plans for other duchies at the moment. Cheers! olivier 14:32, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

List of universities in Russia

Hi Oliver,

You created a new entry (List of universities in Russia) and added a few links to it from various places. You need to be aware of the differences in the Russian educational system which may create problems with the term University. The majority of xUSSR educational institutions are not Universities in the US sence. They used to be called Institute of this or that technology. They usually offer M.S. and Ph.D. equivalents in a single field only, usually technology. For example there is Institute of Railroad Transportation, offering M.S. and Ph.D. in Mech. Eng. for Railroads (yes, M.S. is THAT specific). Probably 90% or more of all University-level education is carried out in places like that. The schools were renamed Universities recently, but they still remain Institutes of Technology.

I think a disclaimer like the one above should be placed on the page or an article should be named differently.

Gene s

I just want to correct Gene s's statement. Institutes were not simply renamed. Some of them were actually converted into the Universities (so, if a new name includes University, it is indeed a university. The ones that could not obtain a university status either became academies, or maintained the institute status (some of them may have technical university in the title, but it would not be the same as university).--Ezhiki 16:49, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

I suggest we move this discussion to Talk:List of universities in Russia Gene s 07:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re John Dos Passos - While properly, in another language outside of English, his name would be spelled with a small "d". However, spelling is how it is on your birth certificate, right or wrong, and John Dos Passos was with a capital D and he signed his letters that way. Thanks. JillandJack 15:00, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC) See : [2]

Whatever you say. Thanks. olivier 15:08, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

- By the way, you might consider doing a clean page move next time, because your cut and paste ends up losing the whole page history. Thanks. olivier 15:10, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Le corbusier

Hi, I saw that you have rollbacked an anonymous contribution to Le Corbusier. In my opinion it is a valid contribution of a list of important buildings by him( one or two I don't know). Could you please cite your reasons for the rolback so that I can act accordingly- either restore or leave it as it is? KRS 07:36, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hello?!?!?!?! I RESTORED the list that the anonymous user had erased, not the opposite. Please re-check the article history. Besides, most of the buildings listed there had been my additions! olivier 07:42, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Terribly sorry! So stupid of me! (I blame the automatic edit summary:-)KRS 07:54, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Haha. No problem! Cheers. olivier 08:00, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Beaucaire

Are you from Beaucaire? I think you might like how I have expanded your stub. — Chameleon 15:59, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Size matters

Even Geneva has less than a fifth of a million inhabitants. That's something fifty times less than London or Paris! Geneva is a borderline city. I'd be more inclined to call it a large town. Anyway, 'town' includes cities, so it was correct the way I had it. 'Cities and towns' insists a bit too much on the cities for a list of fairly small places. 'Settlements' would be a good neutral term. However, I shan't change your last edit. — Chameleon 19:40, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You seem to be battling for the distinction between "city" and "town", and I have seen several of your edits along this line. The problem is that you are usually not explaining your edits in a very satisfying manner, and that may, depending on the mood of the reader, be quite frustrating. For instance your edit of "Rhone River" seemed very Beaucaire-centric to me... (independently of the fact that you might have been right, or that I could be somewhat Notre-Dame des Pommiers-centric sometimes). So I went on and looked at city and town in wikipedia, and did not find any good explanation to your moves, and even that Galax, Virginia is a city of 6,837 inhabitants. Obviously, one of the "problems" stems from the fact that France is not an English-speaking country and that settlements are not assigned a "town" or "city" status by any administrative authority, thus leaving it to us to decide whether a place falls into one category or the other. So, what you just told me sounds good, and I didn't know for instance that 'town' includes cities. Why don't you go ahead and correct the first line of the "city" and "town" articles accordingly? I guess that it would help. Hey, by the way, I am waiting for the Tartarin and Eglise Sainte-Marthe pictures!!! Cheers. olivier 00:14, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's annoying when I see a list of villages, small towns, and perhaps one small city… under the heading Cities!. I'm not sure whether it's a Gallicism/Hispanicism etc (ville, ciudad, etc not possessing the same nuances) or an Americanism (as now explained in the City article). All I know is that it is completely, utterly and obviously wrong! Any list including a single village or small town cannot be headed 'Cities' and needs to be renamed to 'Towns', 'Settlements', 'Towns & Cities' or the like.

You have to understand that I understood the old list for the Rhône as:

Villes énormes au bord du Rhône :

Sion (Valais, Suisse)
Genève (Suisse)
Lyon
Avignon
Beaucaire
Tarascon
Arles

… and that I was changing it to Villes au bord du Rhône.

Anyway, I have now added a picture of the church. — Chameleon 11:24, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Helpful explanation! and thanks for the great pictures!!! olivier 03:19, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

De rien. Unfortunately I'm back in Valencia now, and I've given the digital camera back to my girlfriend, so no photos for a while. — Chameleon 07:53, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hi Olivier, I noticed you had added some info about the Dukes of Austria to the Habsburg page...well I was thinking of making a separate page for them, to include the earlier margraves and dukes, and later the archdukes as well. It's a pretty big list. However, the dates (and some of the names) differ from what you posted, so I was wondering where you found that info? (Austrian, Holy Roman Empire, and Habsburg history are not my strong points!) Adam Bishop 02:06, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

chinese mythology

hi, i was wondering where stuff like 封神榜 and 白蛇傳 would fit in chinese mythology or chinese literature. Thanx a lot Wareware 07:25, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions for place names in China

Hi Olivier:

If you have time, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese). We need help in hammering out a sensible set of naming conventions for Chinese place names.

A table summarizing the tentative conventions in use is at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)#Summary.

Thanks. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 14:24, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Imperial Guardian Lions

Pix layout is now a mess on my screen and browser (1280w by 1024h, Safari on Mac)! Images are orphaned off the bottom. Do you want to fix or should I? I could make a floating gallery (see Shanghai#Architecture) - but this definitely needs fixing. Answer here, I will watch. Leonard G. 04:26, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Huh! Thanks for the feedback. I changed the layout because the former one really did not look good on my small screen with IE. After my change, it looked fine with my setup. If you know of a way to solve the problem occuring with setups like yours, like for instance the gallery in the Shanghai article, than please go ahead and just do it. Thanks! olivier 04:35, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Will do - we will have a Gallery of Imperial Lions - that way I can add some Ming dynansty standing lions from the Sacred Tombs Walk. (But not right away - I have to keep my day job!) Leonard G. 04:39, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sounds great! olivier 04:40, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Kei Ling Ha Lo Wai - please help

Oliver,

Kei Ling Ha Lo Wai needs clean up. Its a short stub which mentions Ma On Shan Country Park. However its sufficiently confused that I, with no knowledge of Hong Kong, can't unscramble it. Now you created Ma On Shan Country Park, so I wonder if you could help out? Should only take a few minutes of your time. Thanks! --Cje 17:04, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, I improved it a bit, and removed the cleanup notice. olivier 17:46, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Olivier! --Cje 20:06, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Chinese provinces

Hi Olivier,

Thanks for your praise and encouragement on my talk page. :)

Right now I'm going by the "official sorting order" that the Chinese government uses, that is, Beijing > Tianjin > Hebei > Shanxi > Inner Mongolia > Liaoning > Jilin > Heilongjiang > Shanghai > Jiangsu > Zhejiang. So Guangdong is about 8 provinces away... But rest assured, I will get to it, before Sichuan or Shaanxi, at least. ;)

Oh, and if you have time, please come and take a look at Wikipedia:Chinese wikipedians' notice board (WP:ZHWNB). I set it up yesterday and it's my hope that it'll eventually develop into a focal point for China-related announcements, discussions, and all sorts of other cool and useful things. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 02:27, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Doge's palace, Venice

Hi, I'd kindly like to ask where you have the "designed by Giovanni and Bartolomeo Buon" from. Jcr2 22:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, I have edited this article 2 years ago. I basically only did some minor editing to the article. As far as I can remember, I had not double-checked the information "designed by Giovanni and Bartolomeo Buon", which had been posted by an earlier contributor. By looking at the history, and the redirect history, the earliest occurence of this information that I can find is Feb 25, 2002 (Conversion script), in the "Doges Palace" article. This artccle was then pasted into Doge's Palace and made into a redirect. Hope that helps... olivier 03:04, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

French communes

The answer is on my talk page, now. _R_ 14:32, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

An impressive body of work

For contributing such a large body of work without sacrificing quality, I, ClockworkTroll, award you the **Tireless Contributor Barnstar**.

ClockworkTroll 18:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

WOW! thanks! i put it on my user page! olivier 05:13, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

China Collaboration of the Week

You showed interest in taking part in China-related topic development. I have just set up a China Collaboration of the Week. Please add one, or several, nomination(s) and tell others about it. You may access it via the COTW page at Wikipedia:China-related topics notice board/ZHCOTW or through the shortcut WP:ZHCOTW. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 11:22, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Time project

Hi, I've set up a new template for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Time. I'm leaving a note out of courtesy for the participants of Wikipedia:WikiProject Years since it is a descendant of Time. Any suggestions welcome, I haven't got a plan yet for the project. Thanks --FrankP 12:33, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Liens interlangues sur les Templates/modèles

Il ne faut surtout pas faire de liens interlangues entre les modèles, sinon tous les articles liant ce modèle donnent comme article correspondant dans l'autre langue la page du modèle.

Cf. Template:Infobox Arrondissement et fr:Modèle:Tableau arrondissement

Résultat : tous les articles d'arrondissements français avaient comme lien interlangue Template:Infobox Arrondissement. :o)

fr:User Talk:Hégésippe Cormier Hégésippe Cormier 15:15, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh! interessant, merci! olivier 15:17, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Article licensing

Hi, I've started the Free the Rambot Articles Project which has the goals of getting users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to...

...all U.S. state, county, and city articles...
...all articles...

using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) version 1.0 and 2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to the GFDL (which every contribution made to Wikipedia is licensed under), but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles (See the Multi-licensing Guide for more information). Since you are among the top 10 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. So far over 90% of people who have responded have done this.

Nutshell: Wikipedia articles can be shared with any other GFDL project but open/free projects using the incompatible Creative Commons Licenses (e.g. WikiTravel) can't use our stuff and we can't use theirs. It is important to us that other free projects can use our stuff. So we use their licenses too.

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template (or {{MultiLicensePD}} for public domain) into their user page, but there are other templates for other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} with {{MultiLicensePD}}. If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know at my talk page what you think. It's important to know, even if you choose to do anything so I don't keep asking. -- Ram-Man 16:31, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Rennes-le-Chateau

For your information, Paul Smith has performed radical edits on other "Priory of Sion" related articles in the past. He apparently is upset that Wikipedia includes any information about the topic that don't exactly agree with his. While I have always basically taken the same stance he does towards those stories (i.e., they are a hoax), and I greatly appreciate the research he has done, I think he needs to do better at collaborating on Wikipedia articles.

I've made some suggestions in Talk:Rennes-le-Château on what might be done. Gwimpey 20:48, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. olivier 09:47, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

China-geo-stub

{{China-geo-stub}} is a regional subset of geo stub. Where possible, stubs in {{geo-stub}} category are being moved to appropriate regional categories. Please do not duplicate stubs. --Viriditas | Talk 01:19, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Actually, I just realized that this subset exists, and I am using it now. olivier 01:23, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Aloha. --Viriditas | Talk 01:27, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Communes of the Calvados département

Olivier, please see Talk:Communes of the Calvados département. You worked on the main entry earlier. It needs work, and you may be best placed to get some French Wiki people to do something. I suggest that the HTML needs re-working, too. Thanks, Peter Ellis 01:02, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC).