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I noted your interest in the wind turbine photos. Possibly you might have an opinion on Talk:Wind turbine#History photo- which is better for the article?. If not fine, I just wouldn't like the effort expended on retouching the 19th century photo go to waste if it is indeed the better choice I believe it is. Thanks. -J JMesserly (talk) 22:54, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I may try to squeeze File:Wind turbine 1888 Charles Brush.jpg into Wind power in Ohio. --Teratornis (talk) 09:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your contribution at WP:HD#Embedded lists sounds like a pet peeve of mine: That we have no feature to trace who entered a given text. In other words: We're in the Dark Ages regarding the simple question "who wrote this?". I don't fully understand why it is kept so obscure; particularly with copyright and BLP issues, one would assume that we would want this to be transparent. The only concern I have, which keeps me from promoting this, is that I'm afraid it would be often abused: Instead of, as you propose, using it to connect with a certain editor, people might use it to track down editors that added what they don't like. Especially in disputes, we may face a trade off between engaging people and focusing on content (per WP:FOC). — Sebastian 21:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does WikiBlame do what you want? See WP:EIW#HistTools. --Teratornis (talk) 05:26, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! Yes, that does the trick. Implemented quite differently from what I had in mind, but with added benefits. — Sebastian 19:13, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Teratornis has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Teratornis's day! For being a regular guiding voice at the help desk, enjoy being the Star of the day, Teratornis! Cheers, bibliomaniac15 00:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've added them to my secret list. Good picks. bibliomaniac15 00:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, Mr T, this is really quite an honor! Johnfos (talk) 06:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks alot for your great replay on the helpdesk. --Deadly∀ssassin 09:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Helping Hand Barnstar
		For your excellent reply at Wikipedia:Help desk#Terrible use of general questions or subject criteria.... and use of computer technology... - priceless! ukexpat (talk) 20:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi T, thought this one was interesting... [1] Johnfos (talk) 23:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting. It could be an additional reference for Wind power in Germany#Repowering. An example of where the old turbines end up, after being overhauled in a shop, is: Wind power in Ohio#Great Lakes Science Center. The Vestas V27-225kW wind turbine there was originally from a wind farm in Denmark, which repowered to newer wind turbines. The older turbines are smaller, and therefore more suitable to go on public display, and also for use at schools. See:

• Martin, Jeff (2008-10-14). "Schools' wind turbines power learning". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2008-10-18.
• "Wind Energy for Schools Project Locations". Wind Powering America, United States Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Retrieved 2009-01-18.

The older wind farms in California cry out for new wind turbines, as they have a very cluttered appearance with thousands of older, smaller units chockablock in valleys or on hillsides. Side note: I have not started on List of wind turbines on public display yet because I have gotten sidetracked with creating a page on Commons to be like the Editor's index to Wikipedia.

• My interest in wind power led me to notice that we didn't have enough wind power photos.
• I then inventoried what we have by: moving wind power photos from Wikipedia to Commons, uploading more photos from Flickr to Commons, and improving the categorization of these photos on Commons.
• Figuring out how to use Commons was more difficult than necessary because Commons lacks an Editor's index page. The Editor's index to Wikipedia makes it far easier to look up guidelines, procedures, tools, etc.

I may need a few weeks to finish a first draft of an editor's index to Commons. Basically I'm copying the structure from the Editor's index to Wikipedia, and then adapting the parts that apply on Commons, for example where Commons has a policy or guideline page that corresponds to the page on Wikipedia. That way I can lazily re-use the complex existing structure of the Editor's index without having to re-think the whole thing. There are many correspondences between the internal documentation pages on Wikipedia and on Commons. The main difference seems to be that Wikipedia has a much larger set, so the Commons index will not have to be so large initially. Commons seems generally not as well-developed as the English Wikipedia, so I had to copy the latest {{Shortcut}} template over there to make it work. (The commons:Commons:Help desk is also kind of sad, with too many questions going completely unanswered, in contrast to the Help desk here which answers almost every question quickly. Having an index on Commons will make it easier to answer Help desk questions there.) --Teratornis (talk) 23:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear that you are creating a page on Commons to be like the Editor's index to Wikipedia. Am looking forward to List of wind turbines on public display. Johnfos (talk) 00:23, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I keep finding more and more wind turbines on public display. For example:

• File:26 portsmouth abbey.jpg, which I uploaded from a U.S. Government site, and I put it into Portsmouth Abbey School along with technically precise description of the Vestas V47-660kW wind turbine the school installed.
• http://flickr.com/photos/indywriter/2463496391/ Installing a wind turbine @ The Time Factory.
• http://flickr.com/photos/indywriter/2464325612/in/photostream/ Installing a wind turbine @ The Time Factory.

From the first Time Factory image page:

• The turbine also is turning out to be an attraction on its own, Purcell said. "Since we put it up, we've had about 50 people pull into our parking lot and just stare at it," he said.

Of course we need to do something about all that petroleum people are burning up when they drive around to look at wind turbines. Transport in the U.S. is still very, very brown. --Teratornis (talk) 00:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures can improve articles. For example, Wind profile power law had no photo, but I realized File:NASA MOD-0 smoke test 1982 05937L.jpg illustrates it nicely. Wind resource assessment currently has no photo, but I have seen some photos of wind measurement towers on NREL and EERE sites; I may eventually upload one. Uploading photos is a lot more tedious than it needs to be. There are far too many steps, copies and pastes, switches between multiple browser tabs, etc. I've tried using a couple of the tools that purport to make it slightly easier, but they are unreliable and flaky. --Teratornis (talk) 01:41, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think a good photo or two can really add a lot to an article. I've also found the uploading process to be tedious, but would like to see this diagram (about combined output of wind and solar) uploaded one day.

I'm not so keen on large galleries of photos, and feel they will probably end up attracting {Too many photos} tags... Johnfos (talk) 23:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Adding photos is harder than adding text, so I would be surprised to see the photo volume getting generally ahead of the text volume on Wikipedia. (For example, how many new articles have you created, and how many photos have you uploaded? There are more people adding text than photos in the topic area of energy, I think.) But if we get "too many" photos, Commons allows for creating an almost unlimited number of gallery pages and categories, which we can then link from Wikipedia articles with the {{Commons}} and {{Commonscat}} templates. For example, commons:Wind power could expand into more gallery pages for individual wind farms, countries, manufacturers, wind turbine types, etc. It's only a question of more users finding their way to Commons and figuring out what to do. I think the more (useful) wind power images we have, the more things people will find to do with them.

I agree that we need more diagrams, such as a diagram showing global oil discoveries and global oil extraction by year. I would also like to make a free version of a diagram like this:

• http://cleantechlawandbusiness.com/cleanbeta/wp-content/gallery/stuff/windturbineonscalesize.jpg

Someday I should seriously try to learn Inkscape and some plotting tools on WP:HCGWA. Wikipedia is even shorter on diagrams than photos. --Teratornis (talk) 01:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:FAQ Index#SHortcut overload. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:35, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Teratornis, I appreciate your help on the sterile reverts - really nice of ya to take the time. Talked to a couple admins, most seem to think it's kind of an "in crowd" kind slang for reverting an edit without leaving an edit summary or follow up on talk page. No biggie, and I appreciate your efforts! — Ched (talk) 00:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another mystery solved but unfortunately not by your trusty HotForWords (she'd make the Help desk, or just about anything, a whole lot more interesting I think). Not really related, but check out the Editor's index which directly or indirectly answers almost every question about Wikipedia that has an answer in writing (but not for "sterile revert" it seems). I'm working on an Editor's index for Wikimedia Commons because they don't have one yet over there. --Teratornis (talk) 06:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Teratornis. I have been wondering about whether I should say something about this to you. I am worried that sometimes you are not civil on Wikipedia. There are the more obvious cases I have seen on the Help desk and other editors have pointed that out to you, but perhaps what bothers me most is your long rants. By this I mean long off-topic comments. The civility page "in a nutshell" mentions participating in a "considerate way", and I think long comments, and/or ranting comments are not considerate.

I can go through your contributions and provide diffs, but I am hesitant to do so unless you acknowledge there could be a problem and that you are willing to improve. And actually I am afraid (not a good thing surely) to post diffs because I think you may write a long comment concetrating on the specific diffs instead of engaging in conversation about the general problem I perceive.

I think if you want to express views over and over again, for example I see you mentioning the Turing test a lot, perhaps a way to deal with that is to create a userspace essay and link to it from your userpage (actually you already do this). Also, a way to control long comments is to commit to never having the longest comment in discussion thread thus far. For example if a discussion has 5 comments and longest comment in 4 lines long, then your comment should not exceed 4 lines. Obviously this is just a rule of thumb.--Commander Keane (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments. I welcome criticism, and I expect my critics can take as well as they give. Responding point by point, to the extent that I can given your puzzling vagueness:

• I have read WP:CIVIL and WP:BITE. I think it is "civil" to tell people what they need to know, not just what they have thus far managed to become aware that they need to know. If someone were to ask how to build an improvised explosive device, should we stay on-topic and just tell them how to build it? Or might we want to digress a bit into some of the potential consequences of playing with bombs? On Wikipedia, any new user who wants to write a new article must know that Wikipedia deletes tens of thousands of articles by new users just like them. I think this is the most important thing a new user can know about Wikipedia. New users never ask for this information because they have no clue about it - most new users are probably not even aware that deletion is a possibility, because Wikipedia tries hard to hide this dirty big secret from new users. Do you think warning people about dangers they don't know about is "off-topic"? I don't. I'm reminded of a soliloquy from the movie Apocalypse Now, in which the protagonist muses about the military maintaining its rules of decorum while simultaneously burning people alive with napalm. I have never deleted anyone's article on Wikipedia. I hesitate even to remove minor contributions made by other editors in good faith. I feel sorry for new users who get suckered by Wikipedia's phony welcome into wasting hours of their time as they edit articles that violate unintuitive policies and guidelines they never heard of. Whenever I get a chance, I warn new users against creating new articles until they are sure their articles will have a chance to survive. I rank myself above all deletionists on the civility scale. Do you agree? If not, explain your reasoning.
  • If someone could feel bothered by something I write, how will that person react when their first article they spent hours laboring over comes up for deletion?
  • Wikipedia gravely insults one billion Muslims. Do you care about their feelings? Last I checked, nothing I have written caused angry mobs to burn down embassies. Many Muslims feel deeply insulted by Wikipedia's insistence on publishing depictions of Muhammad, especially these highly disparaging ones. Evidently this does not violate Wikipedia's definition of "civility." It's not only OK for Wikipedia to trample on the most sacred beliefs of one billion people, we are actually proud to do this. I see some irony here.
• You don't like my "rants." I don't like pejorative labels substituting for logical analysis. If I made some factual error, or some invalid logical inference, point it out. What you call a "rant" I call expository writing. All my truth claims are amenable to refutation. I care about your feelings as much as Wikipedia cares about the feelings of one billion Muslims - not much. I only care about what is true. Show me where I wrote something which is not true.
• Of course I am always interested in improving. My definition of "improve" means to make my truth claims closer to the real truth. The real truth really bothers lots of people, so that would make me less popular with people who oppose truth for one reason or another. As Robert Ringer wrote, if we ignore reality, it automatically works against us.
• When I answer a question, I'm responding to the person who asked the question, not to someone else, although occasionally other people have told me they have learned from something I wrote. Thus I would be more interested in complaints from the people I was actually responding to. Do you have some evidence that something I wrote was counterproductive to the person I wrote it to? Bear in mind that I'm often trying to inform new users of how hostile and uncaring Wikipedia is, if they happen to fall into one of the groups of people we like to kick around (such as new users who create new articles before they have read all the manuals, and Muslims who don't want to see drawings of Muhammed, etc.).
• It's not necessary for anyone to be perfect on the Help desk every time. In many cases, the questions are so vague that we are only guessing at what the questioners want. People are getting help for free, so if any fraction greater than zero of the questions get decent replies, that's great. The more people we have who are writing more replies, and longer and more detailed replies, the greater our chances of guessing what the questioners are really after. If people were paying $100/hour for their help, then they would have some grounds to complain about the quality. But I think the quality on Wikipedia's Help desk is better than any other technical support provider I have seen, professional or volunteer.
• Length - I write a lot because there's a lot to say and I don't have time to write less. More specifically, there is lots of faulty thinking to address. Such as your apparent belief that meta-considerations of length matter more than content. If I write some truth that wasn't already obvious to the person I was addressing, then I think I accomplished something. I don't think we can ever have too much truth, any more than we can have too much money.
• Your comment above is rather long. It's longer, for example, than the strange example you gave of four lines. How does the length of someone else's answer have any bearing on the number of facts I want to state? I don't limit myself according to anyone else's capability to think or write, and I don't expect anyone else to limit themselves according to what I do. Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia ever written, and it doubles in size every two years or so. If people feel bothered by lots of writing, why are they here? Wikipedia is a paradise for literate people; why would any other kind of person be here? We might dumb down the Help desk, but we cannot dumb down Wikipedia. What the new user needs to learn about Wikipedia to have any chance of participating productively is vastly longer and more complex than anything I write. Wikipedia's manuals might outweigh everything I have written in my entire life.
  • To the extent I repeat myself, it is because the questions on the Help desk endlessly repeat. Wave after wave of new users ask variations on the same questions over and over. Almost none of them have read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way and they unknowingly violate its guidelines, quite possibly crippling their ability to get solutions to their problems. Thousands will continue to make the same mistakes and we will delete their articles with sadistic pleasure.
  • I fully agree that it's better to abstract out the repetition into essays and link them. You are correct that I have made some progress in that direction, but obviously not enough yet. You could help me with this - you could dredge through my collected works and summarize all my ideas for me. I'm serious here. You could write an outline of my "rants" and that might help me realize what I need to put into essays.
    • I really should get going on my counter-essay to WP:CREEP which I believe is possibly the most ill-conceived guideline on Wikipedia. Unlike WP:CIVIL and WP:BITE which mostly reflect a stunning lack of self-awareness and empathy as we delete articles, insult Muslims, and provide sexually explicit articles and images to children, WP:CREEP harms the project by discouraging people from codifying all the instructions they actually follow. Note for example the shortage of step-by-step tutorials for beginners. Instead we expect beginners to slog through the relatively compact general instructions and from them infer the exact procedures they should follow for every specific situation.
• If you don't like reading my replies, why read them? Other users enjoy reading (some of) them; check out my barnstar page. I cannot please everybody; I'm like Wikipedia that way. Does Wikipedia make everybody happy? Lots of people hate our project (e.g., the folks who started Conservapedia think we are a leftist/British/gay conspiracy or something). I write the facts as I see them, because I enjoy writing. If you think I made a factual error somewhere, or I wrote something that was objectively irrelevant to some questioner's question, feel free to point it out and provide evidence to support your claim. I don't care about anyone's opinion, I care about the facts. I'm not running for office or trying to win a popularity contest, so I don't need to compromise any truth just because it bothers someone.
• Many people who ask questions on the Help desk probably won't stay on Wikipedia long. Thus I don't sweat it too much when I see someone else answering a question in a way I consider rude. To survive on Wikipedia, a new user needs to be tough enough to take a little heat. What will happen to a hypersensitive individual when someone deletes or reverts their contributions? Wikipedia is not a support group. We are not singing Kum Ba Yah. We are not all things to all people. We don't have to be, because Wikipedia works extremely well for the editors it was designed to serve - people like you and me. Both of us figured out what we needed to do to get through our beginner difficulties. Everything a new user needs to know is in writing. It's all right there for anyone who cares to read it. Virtually every answer we provide on the Help desk is straight out of the manuals. If people could RTFM, we almost wouldn't need a Help desk (except to report server problems and bugs that aren't documented yet). I think the most important message we can get across to people is: Everything you need to know is in the manuals. Until a person grasps that, they aren't likely to succeed on Wikipedia. Reading the manuals is faster than asking 5000 questions on the Help desk to learn everything one question at a time. I had an advantage when I came to Wikipedia because I had previously learned many different computer systems by reading manuals, and Wikipedia has the best manuals I have seen in any computer system of any kind.

--Teratornis (talk) 10:35, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are capable of excellent Help desk answers, I should have mentioned that before. You often make excellent points in discussions, but I feel it would be better make those points more concisely. It is challenging to write a concise reply. You mentioned not getting complaints, would it be ok to set up a page, say User:Teratornis/Discussion complaints linked from your userpage, where I or anyone could list criticism in hope that it will be constructive? Certainly I can reciprocate this idea for my userspace if you wish. As a side note, I find your views, on new users' article deletions for example, cynical, negative, and not representing the common view. I personally am strongly for a flagged revisions implementation, but I don't push this view in every discussion I can, in fact this is the first time I have ever mentioned it - as an example of disruptive behaviour.--Commander Keane (talk) 11:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not so sure about the User:Teratornis/Discussion complaints idea, but I just had another thought: since you welcome criticism how about you ask a couple of Help desk regulars "Is there anyway I could improve my responses?". You could also ask someone you regularly frequents your article talk page area (wind power for example) as my civility comments apply to all discussions.--Commander Keane (talk) 02:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're not an admin, something that Wikipedia always needs more of. And it looks like you'd be interested. And that others have inquired, and not gotten around to nominating you. Anyway, I'd like to put this on my "to do" list (I've got a conference on Wednesday that I've got to prepare for, so next week at the earliest), if you're willing - maybe "third time is the charm"? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]