User talk:J. Noel Chiappa

J. Noel Chiappa

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just hi

thanks for your helpful suggestions. (Did you work at BBN? I did, also from the MIT-enclave tho not a grad of any school with such a pedigree!)

I have a very early draft of the Halting Problem, what is your sense of it thus far? I'm trying to make a more accessible exposition for topics typicslly explained in dry and somewhat cryptic ways, without dumbing down the topic.

So I spose i am asking your opinion as to this style and approach in general ... http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Halting_problem

(I am planning to write a small cluster of related articles : Lambda Calculus, Godel's Incompleteness, Church-Turing thesis, and 'Quining' (self-replicating computer code). The latter provides a rather simple and clear (and referencable) proof-sketch of GIT and CTT. </more-than-you-needed-to-know> Christopher J. Reiss 14:37, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Thanks for your post on my Talk page about my article output

J. Noel, I have responded at quite some length to your post on my Talk page. Please read my response and let me know if you can help. Regards, Milton Beychok 22:34, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

subpages coded in metadata

I think we had a conversation on this topic although I forget where? Anyway, I was just doing some house keeping on the subpages template and noticed that there is a little known feature that remains in there, although not used or sanctioned. I had completely forgotten it was in there. Three fields, tab1, tab2 and tab3 can be used to create an unique subpage tab in any article. This idea did not really progress and I don't recall if any discussions happened or whether the idea was cut off fast. Chris Day (talk) 02:28, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

Hi

I must say Noel its a breath of fresh air having you around (I've noticed you've only being here a month!) Was wondering how the application for becoming a history editor is going? If you get accepted, I'd love to help you out with nominating articles for approval. Richard has written many articles on the early US history and I think many of them could be approved. Since he has been the only active editor in that workgroup he hasn't been able to nominate them himself. Regards, Denis Cavanagh 18:00, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Borderline Personality Disorder

Noel:

Not sure what prompted your comments to Innis. I started this article, and am virtually the only one who has worked on it. There are no edit wars, of any sort, going on as your post would imply. Further, the large delete was appropriate, as the content was unabashedly anecdotal and not citable. --Michael J. Formica 11:04, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

So, Noel, as long as you're checking out dawgs and stuff...

...could you have a read through of Miniature Fox Terrier? Thanks! Aleta Curry 03:07, 13 April 2008 (CDT)

Template Recursion

OK, so what about ways to truncate strings? Has Wiki markup got anything like that?--David Yamakuchi 13:07, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Well, I saw that where you linked me to the MediaWiki docs it says we can't do this, but this[1] is basically what I was talking about _trying_ to do. So,...how dey do dat? (Category:Editorial_Council)

Now, the template that is "called" to produce this, {{Editorial Council}} "calls" another one named {{Community}}, and that one kinda hurts my brain...or at least I'm having trouble seeing how we end up with what we do. Thing is, it's not really what we want for this template, I don't think...it really does look to me as if the author of {{Editorial Council}} didn't intend this to be the result. So now it's maybe really two things I'm asking...

1. how dey do dat?
2. how do we not do the recursion here, and so get the intended results?

Ain't computers fun!? :^) --David Yamakuchi 22:27, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

Metadata hack

Go ahead. I don't own these templates. Any improvements are very welcome. Chris Day 12:27, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

We should definitely start migrating documentation to {{Subpages/Doc}} and similar, I just didn't have time to start that. With regard to the metadata template it could definitely be metadata specific but I'm not sure how much you would save since we still want the tabs at the top of that page too. Or do we? Have a go at it if you wish. Looking at {{Subpages}} documentation with fresh eyes the metadata section should be with the core function at the top. let me know if anything else there makes no sense at all. I wrote that for myself rather than for other users so i expect it looks a little odd in places. Chris Day 12:47, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

abc

Interesting you noted the Fleming problem. I missed it when I passed through. Since this was by the bot this means we have many autobiographies out there that need to be fixed. Chris Day 12:56, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Status works fine with the space. I did that when I was trouble shooting the {{WGTable}} template. It turns out that a space after an article title, before a pipe or bracket, means the status value cannot be read from the metadata template. I just went through the biology bio's and my guess is about 50% were wrong. You're right we do not have a bio cat although I saw someone suggest a biography workgroup which would help for the future. Chris Day 14:04, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Transparency

I changed transparency to a disambig page, and I marked the metadata page as a speedy. I didn't see any need in just deleting it when it will probably do fine in its present incarnation. --Robert W King 10:24, 16 April 2008 (CDT)

Confused students

I've got more than one. In fact, one did an article on Wikipedia by mistake. I'm probably going to submit the page in question for speedy delete on Friday (unless there is a 180 degree turnaround). Hey I noticed you went to Andover. My niece is a junior there. I actually grew up in North Reading. --John J. Dennehy 14:07, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Templates

If you make any changes to templates, can you go to CZ:Templates and make adjustments there? --Robert W King 15:20, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Also, why not just tag obsolete templates for speedydelete? --Robert W King 15:54, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Checklist_ templates

The names have historical significance rather than functional significance. I agree we should change them all to something more logical.

I've been meaning to delete all the obsolete subpage related templates for a while, since they just get in the way. i can barely remember what some of them were for so the sooner we axer the better in my opinion. Chris Day 17:22, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Template:Subpages3

That is just my test article. I need to delete all that now. Just noticed your use of "automagically". Very funny. I think i used magically in there originally as Joe Quick was so surprised that the checklist appeared as if by magic. Your usage is far better. Chris Day 21:19, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Actually it was Aleksander Stos who coined "magic". Chris Day 21:23, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

checklist term; keep or reinvent?

OK, I'm in two minds about this. Since we are talking about a subset of the metadata functionality (the other being management of approval status) maybe we should keep this term? One change that would make sense would be to have the pagename and variant included in the checklist. The only reason they were kept separate is that they were not part of the original checklist. I added those two later and did not want to confuse people who were already familiar with the old checklist. I also want to have the pagename as a distinct entity since it was critical it got filled in. Now we have the automatic error checks and better instructions (not to mention preloaded text for a new metadata page) I think they can all be lumped together.

Back to the name. Possibly we could call it Checklist metadata vs Approval metadata rather than Metadata content? Chris Day 21:48, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

I'll check the forum re: by field. I agree lets mull over the metdata format and nomenclature. If we're going to make changes we might as well make a lot all at once. We can use out recent experience to tighten it up and possibly make it more user friendly. While you're at it, let's think about any major improvements we can make. Your perspective is very different to mine since you are seeing it with fresh eyes. Any other things you can think of while you are at it, besides the by field? Chris Day 22:04, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Editorial Council loop...aka doctor, it hurts when I do this.

I see now that, as you point out, the loop does indeed come from the page being a category, _and_ being in that category...that answers Q#1. Also, I think you answered Q#2 with a form of "doctor, it hurts when I do this....." to which naturally "well, don't do that" is an acceptable answer, but I still suspect we might be able to come up with a work around, what with all you guys are teaching us about templates and such...

BTW, Russell's paradox hurts my head when I think about it too... :-) --David Yamakuchi 23:26, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

Or we could just make a {{Editorial Council Category}} and be done with it...I think...except maybe for the double editing ( {{community}} and {{community without category}} ) if we want to change things later.

You know, it's curious but since you mentioned it, I just now was reading that Russell's solution to his paradox was to create a new level of "category" (tho he called them sets I think) that was "above" the one in question. I guess maybe he was right?

Either way, someone should check the thing (Category:Editorial Council) now that I've tweaked it to see that I didn't break something I just am unaware of...--David Yamakuchi 23:44, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

thanks

Noel, thanks for the link help on Computer Workgroup page. And more generally, for helping out in Computers around here.Pat Palmer 18:49, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

Noel, I think you should concentrate especially on those networking and computer history-related topics. You'll have a unique perspective that should be captured, and I think this is a good place for that. But before you dive in, can you tell me how you think disambiguations should work? For example, search on "apple". It goes to the page of the fruit, which has a disambig at the top, but shouldn't it go straight to the disambig, which then lets one find the fruit? I wanted another opinion before I go and change something like that.Pat Palmer 10:21, 21 April 2008 (CDT)