User talk:Mack2

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[edit] Greetings

July 10, 2006. I'm a fairly new Wikipedian. I welcome comments and advice about any of the Wikipedia entries I have made or the topics I have made them on.--Mack2 20:47, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments, Exchanges

[edit] Baseball jargon

I felt my edit was justified in regards to A.A. Many MLB players are alcoholics, or recoverign alcoholics, and to remove this would be akin to ignoring the Black Sox scandal. Please, revert your edit or explain why you don't think it belongs. Hockeyalltheway25 20:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

AA is not a baseball term, doesn't refer to the game. The fact that MLB players may be alcoholics doesn't make alcoholism a baseball phenomenon or AA a baseball-specific term, any more than the fact that many baseball players might have various injuries or disabilities makes a list of injuries and disabilities part of the game, or the fact that many players use chewing tobacco or chew gum or spit a lot means that terms referring to tobacco or gum or spitting should be in a glossary about baseball.--Mack2 04:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re Re Demography of Soviet Union

I'm too busy now, working on all pending tasks before I go on Wikibreak, hence the late reply. As I said, I don't plan to work on a section of the article Demographics of the Soviet Union in the foreseen future, I did, however, leave an extended reply on its Talk Page. But probably I'll hardly be able to do so next time. However, when I see the section to be in NPOV, I'll certainly remove the tag. I can't even understand, how it can be called neutral now, while missing inf. on, e.g., such essential for population dynamics parameters, as population growth and birth rate, overviewing almost exclusively death rate. Cmapm 07:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

cmapm, Thank you for your response to my comment, which was posted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cmapm. I will find a way to put up both birth and death series for the 1960s-1990 for USSR as a whole. As I mentioned, I am not familiar with tables functions but imagine this can be done via shipping an excel file. The reason for the focus on the mortality side was because that was the unusual feature at the time. In post-Soviet Russia, there has also been great focus on the fertility declines and the concern about "depopulation," but this is an issue in many Western European countries now also. I won't get much unto this aspect because it's an issue mainly in post-Soviet period.

This is also a very busy time for me and I may not get to this for several weeks but I will try.--Mack2 14:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:Tools/Editing tools#From tables. There's a utility that converts CSV to Wiki table syntax (I haven't tried it yet, but it should help). heqs 16:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I will check that out in due course. Damn busy time, but I do want to put up the long data series in an efficient form

[edit] Dungan

Hey Mack2. Thanks for your edit on Dungan. However, I reverted it, since both those pages were already linked from elsewhere in the article. The See Also section is usually for articles which may be somewhat related to the topic of the article and/or interesting to the reader for further exploration, but didn't need to be linked from within the body of the article itself. Also. Links to versions of the same article in another language appear in the left sidebar when you're viewing the page; they're usually grouped together near the bottom when you're editing it. Cheers. cab 15:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, but to be honest the English-language articles are much more confusing than they ought to be, and that's why I deliberately provided the seemingly redundant cross-links. There are separate articles on Hui and on Dungan, but these are just two names for the same ethnic group. I think these articles ought to be consolidated. It is misleading to say that Dungans are the name used in the (former) Soviet Union to describe a group of Chinese Muslims, for example, since the name "Dungan" is also used by Uighur and other Turkic peoples in both Xinjiang and in Kyrgyzstan and in Russia to refer to the "Hui."

I'm not skilled enough to do a consolidation, but I feel there needs to be a consolidation both in substance and the cross-links to avoid the wrong implication. Perhaps you can take it on? Thanks.--Mack2 16:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Later: I copied this exchange also to the Discussion on the Dungan article. Thanks again.--Mack2 16:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allow me

I, Irpen, hereby give you this Exceptional Newcomer Award for jumping right in and making great contibutions to several article devoted to the History of the USSR. Please keep up the good work! --Irpen 22:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, thank you! I am trying not to stray too far from things that I have done some actual research/writing on in the past. I am continually impressed by how much is here on Wikipedia. I'm trying to stay off of battle grounds, but I don't always know where they (or the land mines) are. But I enjoy being able to contribute. What a surprise to receive your award. Thanks again.--Mack2 00:12, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, an entire history, and particularly of the USSR is a huge minefield and battlegrounds are so big that they even overlap. Anyway, may I ask you to check the Ukrainization article I mostly wrote. It needs work but the article's talk page discussions are hot and, mostly, IMO over nothing. It was frivolously tagged too. Anyway, if you have time to read it and its talk and have a thing or two to say there, feel free! Your input would be welcome! Cheers, --Irpen 05:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Irpen, I'm on vacation way down east in Maine, and have limited log-in time for the next week or so. I will look at that article when I get a chance to digest both it and the commentary.--Mack2 12:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Government of Ukraine

Hi Mack2, please do not take personally your disagreement with Sasha re the Government of Ukraine article. Your participation is very much appreciated. As a relatively new editor, you might not yet be used to the lack of elaboration in people's reactionw caused, mainly, by the lack of time. I am sure, you deleted the NBU from the page unintentionally and, I think, Sasha's idea to add NISS to the presidential rather than the government article is a good compromise.

For more, please see this discussion at my talk as well as Sasha's response at talk:Gov of UA.

Thanks again for your contributions and interest in this narrow sector of WP. We all appreciate your input. --Irpen 00:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful intervention, Irpen. I added a comment to the discussion, and accepted Sasha's friendly suggestion. --Mack2 05:04, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

Thank you for your contributions to wikipedia.

Please don't add multiple links to a website into many articles. It is considered spam in wikipedia and usually reverted on sight, especially if these are links to a personal site. While you may think that this webpage is useful, please kep in mind that the goal of wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia, with its own articles, not a web directory. `'mikka (t) 17:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Thank you. Point well taken. I am still new here and learning the protocols. I was only trying to link to an academic website that happens to provide potential missing information (gaps) about government bodies in Central East Europe and Eurasia. I'll watch my step on this kind of thing in future. Thanks again.--Mack2 19:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • In most cases there is no big reason to add links for artiles on general topics: people can use google themselves. On the other hand, you may (actually have to) add links to reputable sources of information you add to wikipedia. Jus in case you didn't know, below is the syntax of making inline references. `'mikka (t) 20:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Very educational! I've been doing my best to add inline references when I add material to sites. I see people using different conventions, however, sometimes with "notes" and sometimes with "references" (which is what I use). And when they do bibliographic citations, the systems used are not standard. I guess Wikipedia is trying to get more citations, and I think that's very good. But as for standardized format, it may be asking a bit too much with so many thousands of contributors.--Mack2 20:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good edits!

On Education in the Soviet Union, if you aren't a member already, please consider joining WPSU :) - FrancisTyers · 15:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I may join the group. Right now I am spending too much of my time on this fascinating project! But there are some areas where I think I can contribute.--Mack2 16:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of baseball jargon

I see that you practically own the baseball jargon page. You're definitely contributing a ton of information there. I'm just asking you to leave out the span html tags since they're unneeded and just take up space and mess up the editing remarks. Thanks! Bigtoe 03:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your thanks. I had that one still in my buffer because I had written it while you were removing all the tags. I should have removed the tag. Somebody else inserted all those tags about a week ago. I don't understand what they were supposed to do. But I do see some possible (negative) changes with the tags missing. Some of the internal links within that article that I think were working before aren't now. In a couple of cases I can't figure out why (maybe because there was some sort of redirect or reword or a compound header). Though some of those seemingly dead links are due to some of the contributors putting in phantom links -- links to nowhwere since the destination word or phrase isn't in the List, and the creator of the link didn't take the time to provide the missing material.

BIGTOE PLEASE NOTE: It took me an hour to fix links that seem to me were broken because of your changing the set-up. If somebody comes in to restore it the way it was, please don't revert it.

I've added quite a number of those missing target words recently but I don't feel obligated to provide them all. Sometimes people put in useless links. It's annoying on Wikipedia to read paragraphs in which every other word is linked to something. I could write a letter to my mother about my dirty laundry and if I put in links to every second word it might look like a secret or perhaps just an important message of some kind, when in fact it's just meaningless scrawl.

It has been fun (too much fun!) adding material to this article. But I'm rather a late-comer to it and don't claim major credit. I've tried to bring in more illustrations of usage, more cross-links within this article and to relevant details in baseball statistics section, and more entries for some of the newer lingo that doesn't show up on most other lists of baseball terms. Of course every broadcast game or Baseball Tonight show brings forward more sports cliches, some of which need to be added. Thanks again.--Mack2 03:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't gone through every edit, but I noticed you have put a lot of time into cleaning up this article lately. Seems to jump around on my watchlist every few hours. Just wanted to give you a shout-out for the effort. Let me know when you get to the end and I can help you go back through and review it. Happy editing. -- dakern74 (talk) 03:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Baseball/Baseball intro

I reverted your contribution to the intro page inasmuch as I think it to be inappropriately specific for the lead to the general baseball portal (as, similarly, it would be for the lead to baseball, in view not only of the especial nature of the jargon but also in view of its rather tangential relevance to the broader main topic), even as such a paragraph (with, I imagine, a {{main}} to List of baseball jargon, on which you appear to be doing great and copious work) would be wholly fine at History of baseball in the United States, although one would imagine a more encyclopedic tone might be there preferred. In any event, should you disagree with my reversion, I'd welcome our discussing the issue at Portal talk:Baseball/Baseball intro; feel free, also, to leave me a note at my talk should you think me to be altogether crazy... :) Joe 06:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't been around WP very long but what I've witnessed plenty of is simple reversion with no effort to accommodate. You were kind enough to write this note. I assume that in additon to being "encyclopedic" in tone, a good substantive article also ought to have sources cited in the text when appropriate? So many WP articles have a very scanty (or no) list of sources and often these seem tacked on and not connected to the substantive discussion when citations would seem warranted. Thank you.Mack2 06:38, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I once more reverted your addition. Please consider that the portal intro is not unlike the lead section to baseball, and it is altogether inappropriate that one append the minutiae of a nation-specific culture to such intro; footnotes, of course, are also disfavored in portal space (toward which see, inter al., WP:PORTAL and WP:PG, the promulgation of which one might observe from a perusal of the sundry WP:P/D). The introduction serves to explain the sport generally and the rules of such sport in specific; your additions of jargon are much too specific for a general introduction and also suffer from geographic bias. To be sure, I don't mean to denigrate your contributions, but I think perhaps you might do well to entertain the idea that portal space is, in many ways, different from mainspace—in view of the presence of {{Browsebar}} supra to the body of the main page, many new users happen upon portals apropos of subjects of which they're unaware, and their joining the project often entails from their learning passim in portal space. There are, of course, no binding decisions here, and the fact of a precedent's being well-settled does not oblige one to comport his editing with such precedent (one also adduces WP:IAR); of the many, many portals here, though, none, AFAIK, employs footnotes in the intro, and so if you think such footnoting (or, for that matter, such specificity as you've added) to be preferable, you might want to raise the issue at Wikipedia talk:Portal, in order that a meta-discussion might be had. Joe 16:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information about regulations for portal space. I did note that there were no footnotes for anything in that article. Is that a rule for portal space? Or do we accept what's there as gospel without the need for citations? In general my impression of WP in my nearly two months of serious participation is that throughout the space there is remarkably little documentation and citation on points of fact that in some case might be disputed or the source for which is not obvious. On the pages where I've done the most serious posting (though the list of baseball jargon may be an exception), I've sought to offer citations to literature or other sources and have found that sometimes my contributions are virtually the only ones that are documented at all. This makes the "encyclopedia" a lot less useful for readers, and also casts doubt on the credibility of many of the contributions.Mack2 04:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Citations certainly belong in articles, such as that–Baseball–to which the portal intro links; they are not, though, used in portal space, inasmuch as such space serves only to introduce readers to mainspace pages in which citations should appear. :) Joe 19:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Runs Against Average proposed deletion

Glad you agree with me about this. Please go to the deletion article and add your delete vote at the bottom of the discussion. Thanks! Hayford Peirce 17:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] One-child policy

your amendement seems to embellish the negative social impact over this policy.You r not chinese,you cann't understand the meaning.--Ksyrie 07:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Check the notes of 32,33,34,35,37,38,39,40 before you made the conclusion that I am just making speculation.All the matters I had stated here are verifiable.--Ksyrie 07:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You are wrong. I am trying to reduce the implication that there is a negative social impact. I am not Chinese. But I do know a lot about China, have visited there numerous times (including to some remote areas), and have written/published about China's population. My goal is to correct the poor writing, and also some of the bogus issues that seem to be raised that take the reader off of the main topic.

That's what you want reducing negative social impact,there are indeed the negative social impact,it is not I want to produce some ones.You seems not very familiar with the wiki rules.Wiki is a place to cite different sources with any point of view.And for your qualification,I means,you do had right to say something about the chinese population,but you donn't have right to persuade others to believe your POV,when I can cite the reliabe sources.--Ksyrie 21:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

No, you don't seem to be aware that in order for an article to be balanced, it's necessary to add alternative points of view. Whether others are 'persuaded' by one position or another is up to them. My effort here has been to focus on verifiable facts, including adding several citations to demographic research on this topic.--Mack2 (talk) 15:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk: Baseball Prospectus

Just wanted to ask you to clarify your comment on the Baseball Prospectus talk page -- I wasn't exactly sure what you meant. (I left the question on the talk page, so you can respond there) Thanks! -- Amazins490 (talk) 20:16, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Demographic analysis

Per your contributions to Demography, there is a new article, Demographic analysis, that may benefit from review since speedy delete was denied. -- Jreferee T/C 19:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Gary King (political scientist)

Hi. Regarding your recent edit to Talk:Gary King (political scientist), I just want to note that stub tags, unlike WikiProject banners, should be placed in the article itself, not on the talk page. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:31, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip.--Mack2 16:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FYI

This is a minor edit ;). BTW, if you have any relation to Nate Silver, I'd love to know about it; the site has somewhat inspired me to run my own collection of data mining on elections in an Excel environment. The Evil Spartan (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 538

I just wanted to say, great work on the FiveThirtyEight article. I zoomed by it a week or so ago and made some little edits here and there, but it looks like you have really sunk your teeth into it. Thanks for all your work! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Your comment is much appreciated.--Mack2 (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] fertility category

You've popped several pages to the top of my watchlist by adding them to the category "fertility". I'm curious what criteria you are using to add this category.

According to Wiktionary, fertility can refer to one of two meanings:

1. the condition, or the degree of being fertile (able to become pregnant)
2. the birthrate of a population

I'm confused by some of your article choices; I don't immediately see how pregnancy test or gestational age are related to either definition. Many of the other choices seem very broad, and I'm afraid you'll add the "fertility" category to all 62 articles in Category:Fertility medicine or everything in the 24 subcategories of Category:Human reproduction. Knowing what criteria you are using would be reassuring. Lyrl^Talk _C 20:28, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I work in the field of demography (one of my fields). Fertility broadly defined includes the process of fertility and fertilization (and infertility as well as health conditions that affect fecundity and fertility); fertility regulation (including timing, abstinence, and voluntary limitations on fertility via abortion or other methods); fertility control (societal and government regulation of birth rates); and methods of measurement of fertility rates (not just "the" birthrate, since there are numerous ways in which fertility is measured; "fertility" is one of the major subfields of demographic research).--Mack2 (talk) 20:33, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

If I can add to this: by definition, it includes sexual reproduction.--Mack2 (talk) 20:38, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Finally, regarding "gestational age," this age is sometimes a factor in defining whether the outcome of a pregnancy is to be classified formally as a live birth, (spontaneous) abortion, stillbirth, or infant death. Hence it also may affect official statistics on birth rates.--Mack2 (talk) 20:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Please stop adding category fertility to articles that are already in subcategories of fertility. Note that category:human reproduction is already a subcategory of category:fertility, so category:fertility medicine and category:birth control and everything in them are already categorized in fertility. Please check whether something is in a subcategory (or subsubcategory) etc. before categorizing. Thanks. Zodon (talk) 21:44, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to stop putting anything in fertility related categories. That way I won't be miscategorizing by not checking all the subcategories. It was apparent to me, however, that many of the articles that I categorized were either very narrowly categorized or were not categorized at all within any fertility subcategory. I also have a feeling that, from other lexicographic experience, when things are in subcategories of main categories when they perhaps should have been in the main instead, users just don't find them unless they somehow know the "code" or the sequences by which things were initially categorized. Sort of like our intelligence agencies not putting 2 and 2 together because critical information that might have allowed them to develop a coherent picture of, say, a threat, was buried within files that did not -- on their surface -- contain relevant labels, or that were based on different axes -- e.g., geographic vs. technological. I have a colleague who has shown how much the initial or overall lexicographic system matters to being able to put 2 + 2 together readily (in his case with an illustration based on comparing the LC classification with the Dewey Decimal). But that's a subject of another debate, I suppose.--Mack2 (talk) 23:00, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

It's true articles can get "buried" in multiple subcategories and make navigation difficult. It's also true that a category with hundreds of articles is very difficult to navigate. Keeping category size at a reasonably small level while restricting subcategories to navigable numbers is a balancing act, and certainly rearranging article categorization and category trees is a part of improving Wikipedia. I could be persuaded to support a rearrangement of the fertility category and subcategories, but am opposed to having the fertility category contain hundreds of articles. Does that make sense? Lyrl^Talk _C 23:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense. I respect your idea of avoiding an overly large number of subcategories. I guess what I'm suggesting is that there could, in principle, be several root or master categories, each of which might be a subcategory of the other(s). By what principle would priority be given to one rather than the other as the root or master? I suppose in the instant case, thinking as a "demographer" and of "fertility" as one of the three major subfields of that discipline (alongside mortality and migration -- there are many other "subspecialties" such as nuptiality, labor force, education, formal demography, etc.), I looked at these articles in a certain way, and was marshalling articles under the category "fertility" that I thought belonged there but had not obviously been tagged that way yet. Though no doubt I was careless in not checking to see what was in the available subcategories, at least one "virtue" of putting them where I did was that they were more visible and they were at least ordered in one important sense: by alphabetical order.--Mack2 (talk) 01:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does have a guideline regarding when having an article in both a parent and a child category is encouraged and discouraged: Wikipedia:Categorization and subcategories.

Alphabetical listings can be useful for browsing, and Wikipedia has them to some extent: Portal:Contents/Quick index

It would be neat if Wikipedia has a feature of "view list of all articles X subcats down" on category pages. That would allow those interested in more specific topics to keep the narrowness of subcats, but allow those interesting more in browsing (or not sure where their article is categorized) to choose to see larger lists. Would you be interested in proposing that at the village pump? Lyrl^Talk _C 01:41, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. That would be a good feature. After reading the guideline it seems to me that the conditions under which an item should be placed both in the subcategory and in the root are almost always true. That is because the subcategories are never exhaustive, and in many cases cannot even be close to exhaustive because our knowledge or the dimensions of understanding are always expanding. It's not like even baseball (to take one topic on which I post), in which a category "Baseball positions" would be broken into one subcategory for each of the 9 defensive positions on a team. In the case of less well defined categories, it might even be a service to readers/users to provide both the subcategory and main category listings, precisely to facilitate browsing.--Mack2 (talk) 02:08, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I was browsing some more and wanted link here also, as I find the picture useful: Wikipedia:Categorization#Categories do not form a tree. That same artile (not in the section I linked to, but above and below) says "In the "vertical" dimension, Wikipedia is more frugal, placing articles only in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in" and "do not place an article directly into a category if it belongs more appropriately in one of its subcategories" with few exceptions. It's interesting that one guideline page implies duplicate categorization is rarely allowed, while the other implies its often allowed. Not much help, I suppose, but I found it interesting. Lyrl^Talk _C 02:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the choice between the two approaches is stylistic -- a matter of taste. Some people like to look inside boxes with labels on them, others like to scan and skim. My wife falls into the first group. I fall into the second. This plays out in interesting ways. Take, for example, a trip to the library to locate a book. She would go to the catalogue (online, perhaps), look up the call number, find directions to the section of the stacks that contains that number, walk step by step from one end of that shelf down the row until she finds the book. Logical and efficient. I would go to the catalogue and look up the call number, then rush to ths middle of the row containing my target book, assess how close I am (too far to the right, too far to the left?), then move to a further approximation of where my book is located, and ultimately find it by iterating these moves. Who gets there first? I do 75% of the time, but I also spend a lot more energy in the process. I like the serendipity of my approach. That's probably why I don't think too much of the subcategory approach; in fact, those subcategories are often almost empty and it's not an efficient way to look for things when I can learn a lot more -- more quickly -- by scanning an alpha list in the root category.--Mack2 (talk) 02:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Also consider that it is usually easier for a tool to remove structure (e.g. show a flattened view of a category), but harder for them to add structure (e.g., put items in appropriate sub categories). Don't want categories too narrow, but better to have an item in a subcategory, rather than duplicating it in all the supercategories, since the duplication could easily be automated (e.g. as suggested above) but removing all the duplicates is much harder to automate.

The category mechanism could certainly benefit from some tools to make it easier to find what is a subcategory of what. Tools to make it easier to find articles in subcategories of a category would also help. Of course whole books/careers have been spent on that sort of problem. But making some of those tools more readily available to wikipedia browsers might help. Zodon (talk) 04:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Another thought - categorization is not the only navigation aid around. Lists are another way of giving a width view of a particular topic, e.g. see Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Fertility may be too broad a topic for a useful list, but maybe something more focused with relation to fertility and demographics. Zodon (talk) 04:10, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have some experience with a couple of lists/glossaries on WP, e.g., List of baseball jargon and English language idioms derived from baseball. Both of those use alphabetical ordering, as probably the most practical method of organization -- in a very flat list. As you suggest, putting things into categories, and being able to see what's in a category, could be made easier if WP used different technology. For example, if there were a "drag and drop" capability one could take the large number of items in the root and then sort and drop them into appropriate subcategories. And if it were possible to "mouse over" a category and see a list of items inside rather than having to bring up a whole new page, then it would be easier to scan the subcategories. I don't know if that sort of technology is even being considered. In its absence I suspect the intensive use of subcategories either among writers or among users of WP will tend to be limited to the most dedicated participants (and ones with a bit more time on their hands than the average user).--Mack2 (talk) 07:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)