Greetings! While reviewing the assessment change log for Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports, I noticed that you created the article Béziers-Agde-Vias Airport. You contribution to improving Wikipedia's collection of airport articles is greatly appreciated. If at all interested, I'd like to extend an invitation to join the project. You can join by simply adding your name to the list of participants. If not interested, please disregard this message. Thanks! thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 19:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for e-mailing me the copy - it was a very interesting read. Sorry about not getting back sooner but I've been pretty snowed under with the work recently. Keresaspa 15:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's seems to be no reason why Category:Castles in France could not be recreated, to hold real castles, and only real castles. I do not understand the CFD discussion to preclude this. Angus McLellan (Talk) 10:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Angus McLellan's analysis. I think my only contribution to this was to enact the decision of the Category discussion in line with its closure; I don't have any particular view on the issue, but if you do get problems with people claiming recreation of deleted category, then you may wish to drop by Deletion review where these things are discussed. Also, a small technical hint: if you link a category [[Category:Foo]], then it does not show but does put the talk page in the category. What you need to do is place a colon inside the brackets: [[:Category:Foo]]. This appears as Category:Foo. Sam Blacketer 10:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would not advise recreating it as "castles", on the whole. The ambiguities around castle/chateau are too well known. I think castle should be "fortified chateau" in most contexts on WP, so the List should go to this title, and a Category:Fortified French chateaux created which is a sub-cat of Castles by country, & of Chateaux of France. Johnbod 13:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I abstained on the discussion - my sole contribution to the debate was to comment that the correct plural of château is châteaux, and not châteaus. If you wish to overturn the decision, then you are welcome to bring it up at Deletion Review. However, feel free wish to create a category structure such as the above-mentioned Category:Fortified French châteaux, to hold "real" castles, as opposed to buildings that would be called "manor houses" or "stately homes", were they in Britain. Bluap 14:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To User:Angusmclellan, User:Cool Cat, User:Jamie Mercer, User:Bluap, User:Postlebury, User:LukeHoC, User:Johnbod, User:Sam Blacketer

I'm writing to you because you contributed to the discussion on Category:Castles in France, which resulted in the category being deleted, or redirected articles in that category. This decision, as I hope to show, was wrong and needs to be reversed. Please take the time to read the following and respond.

Firstly, I should say that I did not take part in the discussion because I did not know it was taking place. (I was actually in France following the presidential election campaign and, ironically, taking photos of French castles!)

My reasons for questioning the decision are:

1. As far as I can discover, the debate was not advertised on the Wikipedia:WikiProject France page, so that editors with a declared interest in topics related to France could be aware of it.

2. Similarly, no mention was made on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Castles page.

It would have been sensible to at least mention the proposal in these projects and to seek advice.

3. The problem identified is very real. The French word château does not translate easily into English. It can mean a castle (in the usual English understanding of the word - a medieval, military defensive structure). It can mean palace/stately home/ mansion (and in fact, English speakers will frequently use the word château with that meaning). It can mean a vineyard, with or without a castle or palace attached. And, even more confusingly, the thousands of water towers in France are named château d'eau.

4. Even the French sometimes need clarification. In recent years, French language guide books have often described castles as châteaux-forts to distinguish them from the palaces.

5. Some months ago I came across a page in Wikipedia called List of castles in France ([original]). This made the mistake of including article links solely because of the word château in the title; in fact only about half of the list were real castles - the rest were palaces etc and even some vineyards. I set about revising the list and along with other editors we managed to get the page as it appears now. We have gone on to add dozens more articles, particularly by translating pages from the French Wikipedia. All of these articles were categorised as Castles in France; any then categorised under Châteaux in France were moved over to Castles in France. The Châteaux in France category was left to be just for French palaces etc (i.e. what we as English speakers would call châteaux).

6. The Category:Castles by country lists 56 sub-categories and many of these are further divided (e.g. Castles in the United Kingdom is divided into Castles in England, Castles in Scotland, etc). The only country without a category concentrating on castles is France and this is a serious oversight. Anyone looking for details of castles in France now has to wade through a category that is not dedicated to castles!

7. The problems you identified with the original Category:Châteaux in France are real and need to be sorted, but this has been made worse by now lumping in all of the castle articles. Château de Puivert, for example, does not belong in the same category as Palace of Versailles, any more than Conisbrough Castle belongs with Buckingham Palace.

I would be interested in your comments, particularly on how to give French castles the same category status as castles in Denmark, Spain, England and other countries. I have to say, the only way I can see that happening is to reinsate the Castles in France category as it was and for some work to be done on where the real problem lies - in the Châteaux in France category. Emeraude 10:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It can be renamed back. I would recommend summarizing your argument before starting a {{cfr}}. -- Cat ^chi? 16:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's listed at DRV. Just needed to go after the comment marker thing. The template doesn't work perfectly anyway, but no worries. All ok now. Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand. If the issue is just moving all the articles in one category to a new category, then AWB does that very simply. If the decision is to reverse the merger, then it is more difficult but still possible: If you follow this link you will see all the changes made. Copying the text of the page, stripping out all the extraneous detail other than the names of the pages which were changed, will give a list which can be pasted into AWB. Then set AWB to replace Category:Châteaux in France with the name of the newly demerged category. Sam Blacketer 12:05, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just don't agree with your statements about English usage: most English people and books call Versailles a palace. Just about every English school-kid knows that in a French town, the castle will be signposted "Au Chateau". As you ought to know better than most any dividing line is in any case much less clear than in England - fortification continued later, and many more French castles have their original roof-line etc, which I think for many people is a factor in how they think of the buildings. There will be no difficulty finding the French ones in the category; if you massage the code it will appear in the correct place in the "castles in " sequence. Johnbod 15:23, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The new name will appear in the "Castles in ..." category & it is possible to make it appear where "Castles in France" would appear. I'm not very good on these sort-codes myself, but many people know how to do this. Johnbod 16:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget you can use [1] to find old copies of pages, including PDF files if you're lucky. I updated a dead link to [2], not sure if there's any more to update in the article though. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 18:12, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that - I wasn't aware of it. Emeraude (talk) 11:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

HI any chance you could use your great translation skills and help expand some of the commune stubs on here? E.g Communes of the Yvelines department? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly glad you noticed, its shocking the state on them at present. Hope you won't let the fact that the vast majority of them are sub-standard put you off from at least expanding one or two of them along with the chateaus! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If only we could have a thousand editors like you to translate from french!!! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't there a category for chateaus or castles in france or something? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wow thats insanely ridiciulous. What kind of numbskull thought of that???? It never ceases to amaze me what happends on here. A fortified what??? So you're saying that castles have been merged into the one. Cringe cringe. I've always thought of a chateau as a stately home or rather more a palace rather than a formal castle or something. I can't believe it was moved without consulting the projects. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree with you. Clearly you know about the castle/chateau thing as much as anybody on wikipedia given your substantial work in this area. I would urge that it is brought up at categories for discussion and differentiated.Regards ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

		Home-Made Barnstar
		As promised! "For ye who do a lot of work in difficult areas and do it well".JaneVannin (talk) 20:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Couldn't give you the French barnstar for all the work on Chateaus, tempted as I was, as you already have it. So I thought that this rare Home Made barnstar would make for a nice change. JaneVannin (talk) 20:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching those. I'll get to fixing them as soon as I can - however it may take a little time, as I'm a bit tied up at the moment in real life, I'm afraid. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 14:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How recent? I was '06 - there's a possibility I might know her. (You can e-mail me about it if you prefer - I have a link on my userpage.) --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 14:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if I know anyone who lives in Roanoke. Possible, though - I'll check into it. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 18:41, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't ring a bell, sorry. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 18:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Emeraude-Steve, I want to transmit my best wishes to you for the Holydays. Joyeux Noël, Jean Fex (talk) 15:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Rollback you did Here did not have a valid reason. What the hell has hackers rewording the parliment got to do with a bloody wikipedia article. I changed them because females can hack. And you revert it and place the most confusing edit summary ever "Yes, females can hack, but hackers can't reword Acts of Prliament and neither can you". I might not be able to change the acts of parlament. But i can at least change a bloody article on wikipedia. Next time think before you revert. Kind Regards Arctic Fox 21:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Actually, there was an excellent reason to revert your edits and I'm sorry you did not understand it. You had changed the wording within a quoted section of an Act of Parliament. You cannot do that. No editor on Wikipedia can change anything that is a direct quote from a source (unless it is misquoted)! For your information, in Acts of Parliament "he" is used to include "she" (and "they"), something I had previously explained when reverting a similar edit on 17 November 2008, so it's not sexist and does not assume or imply that women cannot hack. Emeraude (talk) 13:05, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, yes please!! - if you have any photographs (especially of locks) I'm know that La Nouvelle branch and Locks on the Canal du Midi would be exceedingly grateful (as would I). I too have been somewhat bitten by the Languedoc bug and we spend our Septembers in Bize-Minervois - as a competent stalker could probably tell from the radius of the locations of the photographs I've taken! We spend a lot of time on the Thames when we're in England so it is unsurprising that we're drawn towards the canals when we're in France although we have yet to take a holiday afloat down there - and unlikely to change that any time soon with the state on the pound against the Euro... Kind regards, Nancy ^talk 18:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have already made a list... Emeraude (talk) 18:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, you can write shorter links to entries in this database, using the Référence number, like

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/merimee_fr?ACTION=RETROUVER&REQ=((PA00110281):REF).

Regards, — M-le-mot-dit (T) 19:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. Emeraude (talk) 12:58, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Though this might not seem to be a big deal to some people, those same people would have allowed this article to wallow in its poor state. You demonstrate a fine eye for editing that, since you are doing it on such a minor article, I can only assume that you do everywhere.

		The Editor's Barnstar
		For a fine eye to copyediting and just plain good writing, I award you this Editor's Barnstar. HuskyHuskie (talk) 16:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the award. I have to say that I do not go looking for such articles, but every now and then when I click on Random article up comes some US village/town/city where the section on demographics (itself a lousy word!) is worded identically. I presume that someone at some point wrote the section for one place and it has cut and pasted across the whole of Wikipedia, without any thought. So I alter them as you've seen. I think it's for the better and it seems you agree. But not everyone does. I once almost got into an editing war with someone who thought the changes were wrong and he reverted them. I re-edited, one change at a time and explainibng why each ws correct. No good - total intransigence. (See Ismay, Montana) Oh well....

Again, thanks for the award - it's much appreciated. Emeraude (talk) 11:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like there's no more cause for Dismay over Ismay, ay? HuskyHuskie (talk) 23:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Courcelles (talk) 02:53, 17 June 2010 (UTC) [reply]

		The WikiProject Barnstar
		I am delighted to present you with this WikiProject Barnstar in recognition of your extensive contributions to the Military history WikiProject, as evidenced by your being nominated for the 2010 "Military historian of the Year" award. We're grateful for your help, and look forward to seeing more of your excellent work in the coming year. Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your military history newsletter – Volume LVIII, December 2010 From the editors • "Military Historian of the Year" • Discussions • The month's new featured and A-class content • Review awards Contest results • A-class medal recipients • bahamut teaches us proper usage of "Jargon and acronyms" To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here. BrownBot (talk) 20:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]