User talk:MacGyverMagic/Archive 10

JMBell

Now, now, that isn't very nice, you know. You could get banned for such language. And why do you think I'm treating you like a doll? Am I doing anything inconsiderate, because if I am, I am not at all aware of it. In fact, I have always made use of civility and good nature in my dealings with you, and now you're telling me this?

And how did you ever come to the conclusion that I take this matter as a joke? How? I am and have given you perfectly reasonable and civilized answers, unlike you; your statements sometimes come very close to sounding like orders. I, being responsible for the outcome of your (your and Mel Etitis') debate and the article, cannot allow you to carry out so drastic a change without first allowing other editors to view your intentions. Your refusal to make a draft is outright preposterous - you only need to right a draft, which will end this whole war, and not persist in editing something which you cannot edit - yet!

I have always been very level-headed and reasonable with you, but now, my patience is running out. Please do this for all of us so that we can get this over and done with. And please don't say that I should cooperate because I am cooperating. You are, in fact, not.

I will ask for mediation, if you don't mind. Now I must go. JM Bell ° 12:13, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can you please look through the last two comments you posted? I have no time to quarell over this trival matter. Also, your hard-headed nature (shown in refusals to edit) the Zanskar page lack co-operation. I apologise if there is a contradicting policy in retrospect to my above statement. Goodbye.

Mr Tan 03:08, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

User:Humanbot update 13 June 2005

The spelling2 project (to work on secondary namespaces) was opened and finished. Progress charts will be available soon.

Version six-three tracks who made the edits, and rankings are available. Much of the work was done while I was asleep, explaining my low place ;).

The next project, which may even be released today, will probably fix incorrectly capitalised headings, particularly "See Also" and "External Links".

The mailing list has grown to 24 people and while that is very nice for my ego, it is rather difficult to send out updates. This is why I did not send out a notice that the spelling2 project had opened. From now on, then, you must watch User:Humanbot/announce for updates. r3m0t ^talk 12:04, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

King levitation

Hey Mac :)

creative work by an individual, yes, should be protected. if you take a look at the history of the page, you'll see the anon, which I presume is User:Ilovemagic, cited this link as the copyright violation, which is a promotional dvd on sale for the King levitation trick. It seems to me that the anon is trying to make his sales not suffer. Unless, the anon IS Cory King, which the article cites as the original creator. Furthermore, the copyright law does not apply when someone, who has understood the mechanics of the subject in question, discloses or discusses those mechanics, ie, the copyright law is not a Non-disclosure agreement.

Now, I understand that there's a fair amount of competition between illusionists and each illusionist is trying to keep his or her secrets, well, secret, but this is not a violation of copyright law, mostly because the original author does give credit to the man that created it.

Thanks for replying :)

Project2501a 12:32, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To me it seems unfair, to make a product freely available when people should actually pay for the secret.

Bill agrees with you :) So, let's close down wikipedia and let's all move to Encarta, so we can have the privilledge of paying for editing their articles :D And while we're at it, let's conjure fireballs against the evils of Linux, because, you know, it's Free as in beer and Free as in freedom! you know, there's this commercial operating system called Windows and we should all run it and we should all pay for the priviledge of running it because it's a recent commercial product that does a lot of magic - poorly. :). I'm not trying to be cynical here, I'm just just trying to show you the computer analogy.

I deduct from your username that you are an illusionist yourself, or deal with magic trics one way or the other and trust me, I do sympathise, because I do know what it feels like when someone steals your work and presents it as his/hers. That's why I develop Free software and not Closed source software: No secrets, no worries, no bull like this to work with, open market and meritocracy at its best. If you got the skill to pull of wizardry, go ahead, nobody is going to stop you, but if you try to copy somebody else without giving him proper credit, you're SOL and someone will call you on your bull :)

furthermore, the magician's oath is a guild oath. Much like Masonic oath, it has no binding legal value. Thanks for replying :)

Project2501a 16:17, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Operas by title

Since you participated in discussion on Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Opera, I thought I should let you know that the category is now up for deletion on WP:CfD#Category:Operas by title. Cheers. --BaronLarf 12:44, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Sneaky user...

Hi there, I see you're an admin and you're online at the minute, so could you have a look at User:SIimVirgin (note the captial i), I don't know what they're doing, but I don't think it's very good... Anilocra 18:05, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good stuff. You might also want to look at User:AniIocra :) (I've never been impersonated before). Anilocra 18:15, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Anilocra 18:17, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm about to call it a night, but thought I should also point out User:MacGvyerMagic...! Anilocra 18:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vanessa Blue

Thanks for the note. I wasn't too concerned about it being speedied -- though I would have voted "expand or delete" instead. I'm not exactly an expert on the subject so I'm not really qualified to write an article. I just wanted to note in the VFD that actors in her profession have articles so I wanted to make sure the speedy didn't occur simply because of the subject matter. Deleting (even speedy) due to lack of content, plus there was POV in what little content there was, is fine by me. Cheers! 23skidoo 23:19, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zanskar

Having forced to no other way out by time and social circumstances, I think the draft is the most viable solution. Just to inform you about my new plan, please take a look at it again when I finish. I will tell you then and there. Thanks.

Mr Tan 07:19, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Magic trick

I'm no expert at IP law, but here's my best shot:

I find it unlikely that you could copyright a magic trick. "Methods" and "procedures" are the sorts of things covered by patents primarily. There are some possible exceptions to this: you can trademark your very-individual personality if you are a celebrity (in a sense), and I bet you can claim copyright on certain types of performance art, but I don't know how strong the claim would be. Or, put more strictly in the way copyrights work: if you performed a trick, and somebody else watched you do it, and then goes on to perform the trick and their own show, could you sue them for infringement? Maybe, but I'm doubting it would hold water. If you wrote it down, and then sued them for following your directions? Most definitely not.
Could you patent a magic trick under U.S. IP law? It probably depends on the trick. You can patent business methods, you can even patent general concepts (there is a famous "bad patent" called "Method for swinging on a swing", which is a way to use a swing, a not very original one at that). If you called it, "Method for producing an illusion of X and Y", would it be too different from the fellow who (no doubt) patented the method of producing 3-D comic books by interspersing different layers of red and blue? I doubt it. If you called it, "A wonderful magic trick," I bet it would get rejected. A lot rides on the language.
You'd have a much better time if it involved some sort of apparatus, I think. There are patents for magic tricks of this sort, such as this one for some sort of "vanishing effect" trick. Look at the way the "claims" are presented -- I can easily imagine something worded in this fashion for even a card trick. Of course, you'd have to prove that nobody else came up with it first ("prior art"), but assuming you've done your research that shouldn't be hard, if it is truly original and not too similar to other tricks.
One could interpret most magic tricks of the past as having fallen under the domain of IP law known as trade secrets -- which is to say, you don't get any monopoly on them, but you also never have to tell anybody how they are done! Filing a patent on a magic trick would require full disclosure of the trick.. and what's the fun in that? ;-)
It is worth wondering how many magic tricks would be around today, though, if magicians had to wait 17 years before building on the trick of another -- would we have had Houdini if he had to pay royalties for his escape tricks? I'm not sure I think patenting magic tricks is necessarily the best way to "encourage innovation" in magic, which is the stated purpose of IP law.

Hope that is of some use to you in thinking about this. IP law is a murky area—most of it comes down to "what will hold up in court?" than it does any sort of rule-based ("what is allowed?") system. So I don't have a definite answer. It comes down to whether or not it would hold in court (could go either way, depends on how persuasive your lawyer is!), or whether the USPTO would grant the patent (which again is hard to predict, would depend on how you worded it most likely; they grant patents for some pretty silly things). --Fastfission 21:19, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Houston Chronicle/Mediation

Mediation requested. -Willmcw 01:01, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

user:Rangerdude has given an indication that he is willing to participate in mediation with me. Can you, in your capacity as Mediation Committee chair-presumptive, recommend some potential mediators? Thanks, -Willmcw 09:16, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

MacGyver, it looks like you still have not had time to work on this. I wanted to make sure you know that Rangerdude has now replied to the Request for Arbitration here. Johntex 00:22, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Houston Chronicle Mediation

MGM - greetings and thank you again for your willingness to mediate this dispute. A problem has emerged on the mediation page between myself and User:willmcw. As I mentioned previously, this poster and I have a long history including a pattern of behavior he has engaged in that I consider to be harassment and wiki-stalking in which he conciously follows me around wikipedia for the purpose of disrupting and deconstructing my edits and to lend his assistance to other editors whenever I am involved in an editing disagreement and dispute. It was for this reason that I am leery of his participation in this mediation at all, and that I explicitly requested separating the mediation between myself and Katefan from mediation discussions involving other editors. Since the mediation began, Willmcw has unilaterally added himself into the main discussion between myself and Katefan, including an alteration to the mediation header that included him and the creation of a new section for himself within this section rather than the section designated for other editors. I restored the original formatting and moved his comments to the appropriate section, however he seems to be reverting them at the present.

Given the aforementioned history between this poster and myself I very strongly object to his addition to the top section's mediation between myself and Katefan and will withdraw from the mediation if he persists. My general experience with Willmcw is that he intentionally tries to fuel controversy and inflame disputes where he knows I am involved, thus his participation in the manner he presently desires will likely have the effect of widening the already severe rift between myself and katefan on this article. Thank you Rangerdude 01:10, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

thank you everybody

I would like to express my thanks to everybody helping in the nomination of Antarctic krill. I think 3 1/2 supports and a long long discussion are an unexpected and great outcome for a critter so remote and unknown - you should see how little and poor Antarctic krill is represented in Encarta and Britannica - this is the best reviewed and resourced general article of krill we know of - it is impossible to fullfill all wishes at the same time - this is what we did with our all product peer review stamp to qualify this stage of the article for academic exercises, especially for our dreams of a Virtual university within Wikiversity - good luck to you all Uwe Kils 21:48, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

huh?

I have created no gallery of images. What are you talking about? Eyeon 11:38, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I Dream

I didn't really like I Dream (and have never been mad on S Club 8), so that's why I didn't write too much on it. But, by all means, feel free to improve it yourself if you want to (a lot of the article was originally written by you, after all!). You can find episode guides at TV.com, although the main cast list on that site is inaccurate: as you probably know, the members of S Club 8 weren't playing themselves. For that, I'd suggest consulting the IMDb entry, which I am working to improve (but ignore the "lead writer" writing credit for Paul Dornan, he only received episode-specific credits). Extraordinary Machine 17:01, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for editing my talk page with Wikipedia help links, I have been scrambling to find information on how to do things, and your links help a ton. Srcrowl 20:35, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Srcrowl (talk • contribs) Mgm

Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Marilu_mercalina

Hey there, thanks for the edit. I totally forgot to sign my comment; that is fixed now. See you around. -- claviola (talk to me) 20:44, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I forgot to do so, too. It is listed now. Thanks again. -- claviola (talk to me) 20:56, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

User:Tverbeek mediation request

I've notified the other parties, but User:Stevietheman (the one I'm in dispute with, and previously expressed a willingness to go through mediation) has blanked that message - and then our entire discussion - from his Talk page. {shrug} Tverbeek 21:35, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have the right to remove personal attacks (and really anything!) from my own talk page. I am refusing mediation with Tverbeek due to incessant personal attacks from him and RobotWisdom. The weblog article is now theirs to play without any interference from "egomaniacal, ignorant" me. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 14:55, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

User:Guy who changed benedicts pic mediation request

Im sorry for doing this, i wont do it again. Actually I just created the entry for Morichro with real information. If you require proof, I will get it for you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.248.69 (talk • contribs) Mgm

Active members of the Med com

I actually mailed everyone on the Med com page asking if they were still active and if I could update the list - the result is what you see! I should've have cc'ed you really, but I forgot. D'oh. Anyway, yeah, there's only four left and iirc they've all already stated support for you to take the chair. (PS If you've ever wondered what my motivation is, it's just that I see mediation as being 'nicer' than ArbCom cases, and I'd like to see mediation happening again!) Dan100 (Talk) 18:54, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

HELP ME

please can you tell me how to get the link to your talk page in your append? I know the one with 4 of these ~ gets your username, time and date, but not the talk page. HELP! - Supersaiyanplough 09:11, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

user name talk stuff

Comment by AlMac

Notice that here I am using 3 of these things, but I have not yet populated that page.
Here is the actual link to my talk page [1]
- In case you not know how I got that to work nice

I went to the actual page and got the url for cut & paste
I came back here and pasted it
I highlighted it
I went to the tool bar at top of the editing and pushed the fourth option

There's probably other ways to do this that I have not yet learned
AlMac 28 June 2005 22:10 (UTC)

I'm having a real problem with Ed Poor and have formally requested mediation

See also his talk page and the administrator's noticeboard for details.

Really need some help here, serious disruption by means of multiple page moves at Qur'an desecration controversy of 2005. Talk page there will make for interesting reading, as well. BrandonYusufToropov 19:30, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Me, You, Mr Tan, and Zanskar

Hi MGM, nope, I'm not leaving for good, though I did get rather irritated by Mr Tan and his stubbornness, but I've seen a couple of good movies since then, and had time to cool off, so I'm back to wreck a few articles in whatever dismal way I can :) and to try get this whole Mr.-Tan's-editing-dispute to an end in whatever way I can. Thanks for your message, btw. :) Cheers - JM Bell ° 21:45, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)