User talk:Deleting Unnecessary Words

I'm curious as to the reasons for your dislike of the word presently; glancing at your User Contributions page, I can see that you've removed it from a variety of articles. It seems to me that the word can often be quite useful, not "Unnecessary" at all. When comparing a situation in the past to one in the present day, such as "Its first building was Moreton Lodge, located where Johnston Hall presently stands" (taken from University of Guelph), it is often necessary to say "presently" to emphasize the distinction -- Johnston hall stands there now, but didn't in those days. Please understand that I'm not criticizing your edits; I'm just curious about the reasons behind them. -Etaoin 22:46, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

• My objection exists on several levels: (1) The verb tense in the sentence will indicate if something is in the past, present, or future, making "presently" redundant. (2) The word presently has traditionally meant "soon," though common usage has meant that dictionaries often also define it as "now." I would argue that the simple way to avoid this ambiguity is to use "soon" or "now" instead of "presently," which is also the advice given by several style guides. (3) "Presently" has a pompous tone. That said, I agree that sometimes, as in the example you give above, one needs to emphasize the present tense. What I should have done in University of Guelph article is change "presently" to "now." Deleting Unnecessary Words 02:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

• The objection to the word "presently" is usually that the word ought to mean "in a moment" or "before long" rather than "at present"; the OED includes a usage note that objects to presently as a synonym for "now". More recent dictionaries seem to recognize that the word as actually used can have either meaning. - Nunh-huh 23:40, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

• I am often 'guilty' of using "presently" in the sense of "now". It seems that substituting "now" for "presently" accomplishes the purpose and skirts the objections as well. I found the following interesting commentary on "presently" at www.dictionary.com. - Rlvaughn 17:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

"Usage Note: An original meaning of presently was 'at the present time; currently.' That sense is said to have disappeared from the literary language in the 17th century, but it has survived in popular usage and is widely found nowadays in literate speech and writing. Still, there is a lingering prejudice against this use. The sentence General Walters is... presently the United States Ambassador to the United Nations was acceptable to only 50 percent of the Usage Panel in the late 1980s."

What is your real name??

What is your real name?? Why won't you go by it rather than a phrase like this?? 66.32.149.224 23:32, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

• Why do you object? Deleting Unnecessary Words 02:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate population in town articles

Unless you're going to sign up to change all 30,000 US town articles, you should leave the format alone. We put the population in the lead because it's the most important number, and repeat in the demographic so it's complete and self-contained. If you want to make a case for changing this approach, Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities is the place to bring it up. Stan 03:54, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Anarchism

You have asked if there is a way to make Anarchism article acceptable length. One of the ways would be to copyedit it, moving some stuff to other relevant articles. Such as Past and present anarchist communities. Sorry, i didn't have time to do so yet... Beta m (talk)

Canadian Politics

I appreciate your interest in the page, as its large enough that i will need help with edits. Most of my serious reading and my university papers went through at least one scan by an outside person, often two. For suggestions and because I don't pick up spelling quirks all that well. Sometimes i will write the material offline and past but that has its own difficulties. I have problems picking up spelling quirks in my own writing when printed out sometimes (i tend to just "get" a word if its familiar, in all likelyhood its spelled in a manner that makes sense to me....hence why i had people read over my drafts when i was in university). So if you want to nit pick on the spelling it actually could be helpful.

Its too late for me to change the sentence in question today. I'll try working on it tomorrow before the evening so that it will hopefully be clearer. If you don't have the page on your watchlist you might want to add it...i'd appreciate help in trying to get the information across better. Frankly if your type of comment is the type i will get after doing a large increase and some corrections on the page i will be quite happy ;-). Some of the pages i've worked on including abortion in Canada were ruthless edited. Those were my first efforts though and my style seems to be starting to match Wiki style beter. However a lot of the content was kept, or when i realized i wasn't quite sure how to word some material i put it up on the discussion part of the page and someone would word it correctly.

One question. Wiki says the article is getting to long. If you could look at the talk page for the article i mentioned this and i'm asking for suggestions on how to deal with this (ie what might be a way of hiving off some of the information. I only added material i think is important but there be some other organization method that might work better and i'm looking for suggestions. The only idea i have had so far is to possibly try to create a page on the history and dynamics of minority governments but then i'm not sure how much to leave in. Since we are in a minority government i'd like to be able to make what i know about them accessible (more completely explained on the discusion page for the topict believe)--Marcie 03:18, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC).

Anarchism

I have added your edits to the NPOV version. Sorry about reverting them; I noticed you had made some changes to the POV version but was going to wait before trying to reinstate them (which I did intend to do). VeryVerily 23:46, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Canadian nationalism/Trudeau

1. I took Trudeau out of Canadian nationalism – you're entirely correct about him. I have also commented about some other issues you raised there.

2. I think our dispute at Talk:Pierre Trudeau is due to the standard lack of communication. Basically, I want to get moving on a solution to this dispute over the Charter, so I didn't like that aspect being ignored. Your priorities, as is your right, different. Anyway, I'll clarify here that: a) strictly speaking you're right, b) I wasn't aware that you were going to be a stickler about the meaning of demonize, but I'll withdraw my statement that you were engaging in demonization (and I'll say no more on that topic because both our noses would probably end up out of joint again), although I still think the productive approach is to c) work together on clarifying the dispute over the Charter. As we seem to be largely of like minds (especially about presently) although of different opinions, that could be productive. Of course, you may do as you please.

Oh – I also detest being told to "think about it," and it shouldn't be hard to figure out why. That's where the last outburst came from. In short, you're not the only one who feels offended here (and that's not the only thing I found offensive). John FitzGerald 00:55, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it best if we drop the issue; clearly we are not going to be able to resolve this dispute, which, in any case, is not central to the Trudeau entry. I understand why you found my "think about it" comment to be offensive. I can see that it could be construed as condescending, particularly when taken out of its context. In any case, I will leave it to others to judge the appropriateness of my comments (and yours) in this matter. Those who are interested can find the exchange at Talk:Pierre Trudeau under the subheading "Charter of Rights and Freedoms." Deleting Unnecessary Words 18:01, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, especially as we both responded honestly, and it's no sin to get heated about civil rights. As Desmond Morton (I believe) has said, the reason you don't discuss politics at the barber shop is that there are razors lying around. As you probably know from Talk:Canadian nationalism, I liked your comments there. I would like to see the article improved, but I suspect you may have better ideas about how to do that than i do. John FitzGerald 21:42, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Frank Miller (politician)

Are you sure about your last edit? I recall Larry Grossman as Finance Minister drafting a budget plan that was defeated in the Leg., and that led to the Miller govt resigning. I'm just going from memory on this. Do you have a source? Kevintoronto 21:18, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, you're right (thought it was the speech from the throne, not the budget plan). See http://www.parl.gc.ca/infoparl/english/issue.htm?param=114&art=635 Deleting Unnecessary Words 21:25, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I am glad to have my aging and decrepit memory refreshed on that incident. I think I had jumbled the Speech from the Throne with speculation that the Tories would respond to a defeat in the Legislature by naming Grossman party leader and seeing if he could put together a government more acceptable to the NDP. It's a good thing they saw the writing on the wall and didn't try any more acts of desperation. regards, Kevintoronto 21:47, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Election results 2004

Greetings! I noticed on Talk:Canadian federal election, 2004 you posted a query regarding the final results of the election. I too have been on a quest for this information, and I have found the following: 1) The results on Elections Canada's website are the preliminary results from election night and will not be updated; 2) Validated results for 2004 are available in the "Past Elections" section of their site [1], but these are not "official"; 3) the official results have not been released yet, according to the report of October 28. It states they will be released "soon". Hope this helps! Christopher^ 03:44, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

Hello!

I saw that you started editing today after being gone since 2005; I just wanted to say welcome back! —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 09:22, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Edits at Mark Bourrie and allegations of ban evasion

I see you've been reverting edits at Mark Bourrie,and your edit summaries have included allegations that the user you're reverting is banned. Can you provide some evidence regarding that user's ban, so I can evaluate the situation? On the surface, your reverts introduce some spelling errors, which leave the article worse off, but that's not the entire picture of the edits. —C.Fred (talk) 01:25, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The context is this: The Mark Bourrie page has been the subject of recurring efforts to sanitize it by a user who has since been banned. This user has used numerous sockpuppets and IP addresses (Spoonkymonkey, Centaurus, Arthur Ellis, 174.115.164.109, Jacquestheripper, 71.19.184.107, inter alia) over a period of many years. Oneofff is clearly another of these sockpuppets (even the name suggests it's a single-purpose account). The account was created on 10 December 2023. As soon as the account had been established long enough to edit the Mark Bourrie page (which is semi-protected), the account began doing so. Like the banned user, Oneofff accuses others of being sockpuppets. Like the banned user, Oneofff is fixated on the same topics: Canadian history and journalism. Like the banned user, Oneofff knows an incredible amount about Mark Bourrie and is steadfastly determined to clear his name. Like the banned user, Oneofff wants to remove the quotation from Christopher Waddell. (It was removed at least three times before, each time by a sock of Arthur Ellis: by 174.115.164.109 on 31 March 2019, by Jacquestheripper on 2 April 2019, and by 71.19.184.107 on 2 October 2019.) We don't need a check-user here. Oneofff is quacking very loudly. Some of Oneofff's edits are legitimate--as you point out, Oneofff has corrected some spelling errors--and I am happy to fix these problems once Oneofff stops editing the page. Deleting Unnecessary Words (talk) 01:57, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@Oneofff Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Spoonkymonkey filed. —C.Fred (talk) 15:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)