User talk:Spider of Destiny

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Welcome

Hello Spider of Destiny and welcome to the Wiki Jawaka,

Many thanks for your contributions.

I learned a lot of things from your edits, you seem to have a wide culture.

As you probably noticed, I made a few changes following yours.

This in order to comply with the general philosophy we are trying to maintain here.

So I will have only a few remarks regarding your forthcoming changes, if you are open to suggestions:

  • Could you please try to add links to the Wikipedia everywhere relevant? For many subjects, the Wiki Jawaka do not pretend to become the final reference. As well, I always prefer the idea of any page here to become a starting point, instead of the final page with no more links, if you see what I mean.
  • Instead of simply putting the first occurence of the page title in bold (the name of somebody, Ronald Reagan for instance), although the result will be the same, we usually prefer to put it into Wiki brackets, as if it was a link.
  • In your articles, could you please try to focus as much as possible on relations to Zappa. Please do not get me wrong, I do appreciate what you did. But for instance, the sentence mentionning there was a Godzilla remake in 1998 may help to avoid confusion with former stuff. However the fact the remake disappointed many fans is likely out of this Wiki scope.
  • Please try to fit in the existing templates as much as possible. I recognize that, we sometimes overrode them without always updating the template pages. They were created in order to accelerate edition, as well as to keep a consistent layout in the Wiki.

Okay, I stop bothering you ;-)

Have a nice weekend.

Maroual 01:56, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Spider of Destiny,

Indeed, I share your opinions about articles such as Bruce Springsteen, Ella Fitzgerald or John & Yoko.

I would say there is no particular policy here regarding articles deletions or merging. You just need to convince the most active members and administrators (Duncan, Emdebe, KillUglyRadio aka Barry, Propellerkuh and myself) that your actions are good and acceptable for the majority.

This is often an informal process. For instance, when I start a 'campaign', I usually start with a few examples. Then I submit a question or a discussion on the other administrators' pages, always leaving the possibility to rollback the changes. And if they like it or don't care, then I continue.

Regarding the articles mentionned above, I think there is no big risk if you delete or merge them, by the time you make sure not to leave any dead links (by clicking on the What links here option in the toolbox on the left side).

Now this could be a different story with the Conceptual Continuity (CC) articles. I have no particular objection myself, however I think you should rather have this discussion with the oldest members and founders of this Wiki (Duncan, Emdebe and KillUglyRadio aka Barry). The structure and essence of the CC articles was initiated by them (Emdebe mainly) before I start contributing. And these guys had their own philosophy of a CC network at the time. So I think you should obtain their approval or understand what they were trying to do before attempting anything.

Maroual 22:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

One more thing, could you please respect this syntax :

Title first use in the eponym article

Please prefer: 

"[[Freaks]]"

instead of: 

'''"Freaks"'''

Links to the Wikipedia

==See Also==

*[[wikipedia:XXXXXXX|Wikipedia article on XXXXXXX]]

Links to the sister Wikipedia are a bit more than just 'External links' ;-)


Thanks :-)

Maroual 23:02, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Wiki links

Hi Spider,

I just fixed your link to the Wikipedia on the Brian May page.

You do not need to put the full URL otherwise it would be a loss of time.

I changed 

[[wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May|Wikipedia article on Brian May]]

to 

[[wikipedia:Brian_May|Wikipedia article on Brian May]]

Cheers

Maroual 22:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality in articles

Hi Spider,

I made a few changes in the article about Muhammar Khadaffi‎.

It is important to respect a neutral point of view.

Tschuss

Maroual 22:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Maroual.

I don't mind the change from "dictator" to "leader", but technically Khadaffi is a dictator, since he took power by force. "Human Rights Watch" lists his regime as a dictatorship.

Tschuss to you (Are you Austrian/German/Swiss ? ;) )

User:Spider of Destiny 23:30 5 December 2010 (UTC).

Well, don't get me wrong, the purpose is to try to maintain a certain quality level, as well as to stay out of controversies.

It is unanimely admitted that Khadaffi governs this country, so in this case the word 'leader' seems appropriate.

However, in order to use a word such as 'dictator' or 'dictatorship', we'd better always cite a source as you just did.

Otherwise it is like writing down our own opinions, and a Wiki just cannot implicitely endorse its contributor's opinions.

The fact that I agree or not with you has nothing to do with it.

Just take a look at the Wikipedia articles, they almost never refer to contemporary heads of state as dictators.

Also, according to journalists, the supposedly financed terrorist activities were not limited to a specific category of fanatics.

There have also been accusations on supporting various european groups (revolutionary military organisations, nationalist and separatist organisations, Marxist-Leninist militant groups, etc.)

Actually these few words above are just ism schism.

This is not the purpose of this Wiki's smallest articles to talk about these matters in a few lines.

And nope ;-) I am a Frenchie who just like to salute using different languages.

Sorry for this long answer, I wish I was capable of doing it shorter.

じゃ、またね。

Maroual 22:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Spider,

I noticed you cancelled the change I made on the Muhammar Khadaffi article, although you once declared you did not 'mind the change from "dictator" to "leader".' (o.O)

Can you please read this short discussion? => http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Categories_for_discussion/Current_requests/2009/05/Category:Dictators

To summarize, moderators at the Wikipedia concluded that categorizing dictators "Violates POV by endorsing a subjective view, which could never have unbiased criteria as to what a dictator is".

Whatever Khadaffi died, whatever the newspapers say, whatever most people connecting here (including myself) think that Khadaffi was a dictator.

This space is intended to provide facts about Frank Zappa, it was not made to expose value judgement or our opinions.

Bonne nuit.

Maroual 19:50, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

References

I am troubled by some of the changes you have been introducing which seem to be clouding rather than clarifying what is already a murky pool. Specifically could you refrain from using References to list points where Zappa has referred to a topic/lyric etc. References should be used for citing sources; these oblique mentions could be listed under See also or Mentioned in or somesuch. Duncan 22:44, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

All I wanted to do was list a few topics related to one specific country on one page. So that it would be easier to track down certain people, tours, interviews and locations that all refer to the same country. I did this because at this moment users are unable to find out how many articles exist about certain tours and concerts Zappa gave in a certain country? It would be handy if they were listed on one page.

And since I was listing locations I thought it would be interesting to add people from those particular countries as well, including musical references Zappa might have made about that country. I admit that this last decision might be a bit too trivial, but I thought it might be interesting for users who live in that specific country. Also, if I really wanted to push the envelope I could've added every single quote Zappa ever made about a certain country, but to me that would go a bit to far. Especially since these comments should of course be seen in the context of the time the interview was conducted. That's why I didn't add those things.

My only intention was and is to put main articles about a certain country on one page and to add other main articles related to that specific nation.

User:Spider of Destiny 23:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Grateful Dead vs Jack Nicholson ???

Hello Spider of Destiny,

I am perplex after seeing some of your last contributions.

You emptied the Grateful Dead article, then renamed it Jack Nicholson and filled in information about Jack Nicholson.

Instead, you should rather have deleted the Grateful Dead article, then just redirected all the dead links to The Grateful Dead. Because now in some articles (Frank Kofsky interviews FZ for instance), clicking on Grateful Dead redirects to Jack Nicholson.

Now regarding Jack Nicholson, there is little if no relations with Frank Zappa. As you mentioned, he co-wrote and produced the movie Head and the The Yellow Shark liner notes mention he had "very special but no less significant contributions". But there is no need to create a dedicated article if we cannot write complete paragraphs about the relations between Frank Zappa and Jack Nicholson, citing sources, etc. Head and The Yellow Shark articles can just mention his name with a link to the Wikipedia page, this is way sufficient.

I will clean this.

In the past, we had long discussions with Duncan and Emdebe regarding similar stuff. The debate was contents vs structure. And the conclusion was that we decided to write less articles with more contents and quality instead of writing many small articles having many links with many categories.

Cheers

Maroual 00:06, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

There are two articles about The Grateful Dead. One Grateful Dead is the good one, full of information and every link leads to this article. Then, inexplicably another, Grateful Dead, with no articles leading to that one. I've checked. There are no articles linked to "Grateful Dead", only "The Grateful Dead". Therefore there will be no redirect-problems between "Grateful Dead" and Jack Nicholson since they don't exist.

Then my change to Jack Nicholson. I've sent a mail to "Barry" with questions about deleting articles, but he hasn't answered yet. So, I decided: "If I can't delete "Grateful Dead", I might as well rename it to a new article. Especially since all the other articles that refer to The Grateful Dead automatically refer to "The Grateful Dead"."

And to conclude: I've searched the Internet for more information about Nicholson. It seems logical that Nicholson might be a Zappa fan and therefore made a contribution to The Yellow Shark project. However, since Nicholson apparently selthom gives interviews, left alone about his musical preferences, I could not find any proof for this assumption. Therefore the article is indeed a bit short.

I don't mind that you delete an article with very little information relating to Zappa, but I've already noticed dozens of articles who are equally short or even empty. Most of them from Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List), where apparently even one mention of Joseph Goebbels in that book is enough to start an article about this person on this wiki. That's just one example, but there are many others. So can you blame me for believing that one link with Zappa is enough to start an article about something?

Cheers,

Spider Of Destiny 1:23 12 December 2010 (CC)

Time Out

Well I dunno how you checked but the following articles are linking to Grateful Dead :

So, yes, all of these, have been temporarily linking to Jack Nicholson.

And although Barry did not answer, renaming the page was actually not the right choice.


If it was only me, there would not be a category such as Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List).

Instead there would be just a simple article with a list and most items linking to the Wikipedia.

Whatever, we can speculate about Nicholson's musical preferences and so on, but if there is no proof, then it is difficult to start any article with no matter... unless you have hundreds of clues that you can cite and that allow you pulling conclusions.


I don't blame it on you, but these last days, I spent a lot of time here trying as well as failing to monitor your edits.


First, could you please comply with our recommendations regarding the links to the Wikipedia and external sites?

We just do not have enough time on our hands to follow your steps fixing all of these.


As well, could you please focus you efforts on contents rather than trying to reorganize our mess?

Yes, there is a real need to reorganize, but it cannot be done going blindly ahead.


If you continue this way, your account will likely be disabled, all your efforts be discouraged and you will be disappointed and angry towards us.

If you have suggestions and nobody answers, maybe it is time to slow down a little bit and think about all this in front of a cup of coffee.


नमस्कार

Maroual 01:35, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Fronobulax

Hi Spider of Destiny,

I checked in The Real FZ Book, and "Fronobulax" is not mentionned, I guess that was a mistake so I deleted the article as you asked.

Now to make the fix complete, I also fixed the mistaken links recently put in the Cheepnis article and added the Frunobulax article in Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List).

If we do not proceed this way (complete fixes), we will just create more an more regressions in the Wiki.

Maroual 02:07, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Consensus

You should discuss your ideas before unilaterally making changes to the structure. Some may well be worth while but others will be less so. This is a Zappa wiki and the content, and categorisations, should relate to Zappa. I imagine there will be general consensus to move musicians back to a single musicians category rather than you sub divisions into rock artists (whatever they are!) etc. The new animals category will be deleted too - which means someone will have to go through all your edits undoing your changes. While your enthusiasm is appreciated continuing to make such changes without discussion and consensus could find your account blocked. Duncan 12:45, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Answer to Consensus

Where can I discuss this?

There is a discussion tab at the top of every page.

Other people make changes to my changes too, without consulting my opinion. I only hear about it when the changes have already been made.

The changes are summarised in the edit summary box you are free to undo the change (from the History tab) if you think it is wrong but again use the discussion tab first.

Just to call everyone "musicians" without discerning drummers from guitarists, jazz musicians from doowop artists, bandmembers from people who never even played in Zappa's group is just too simple minded.

Band members are treated separately. You may well be right about the other stuff. Discuss it. Make a proposal before changing things.

Clear categorisations would make it so much easier to see what kind of musicians are listed in this wiki instead of this gigantic mess of numerous people who are called "musicians" or "supporting cast", even though quite a lot of these names are just one time references Zappa once made in his "Real Frank Zappa Book" or even people who Zappa never met, left alone "supported" him.

But it remains a Zappa wiki - if we start going too far down that road it becomes a Zappa and his contemporaries wiki. How they relate to Zappa is usually as musicians. As suggested by Maroual above all the lists with minor characters in the Zappa world can be covered by a page listing them, with a one sentence description and a link to Wikipedia for anyone who wants to follow it further. If there is enough Zappa related information to justify a stand alone Zappa article then they will get one.

I can understand why the category "animals" might be unneccessary and deletable, but when I see that only conductors and composers are categorized individually and the doowop-, jazz-, folk-, rock- artists are just considered unworthy of being anything other than "musicians" I have the feeling that this is a bit discriminating and confusing. Also, I was really amazed how many different doo-wop groups Zappa liked and I would never found this out if they weren't put into one clarifying category.

A category just creates yet another list. An article about Zappa's appreciation of Doo-Wop groups would be more interesting/beneficial.

User:Spider of Destiny 13:57, 12 December 2010.

Quoted text

Please do not change quoted text unless you are sure that is quoted incorrectly. By all means redirect what you consider erroneous into what you consider correct (often debatable) but the original quote should remain as originally published. Duncan 21:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

O.K., I will check my previous edits at once and bear it in mind for the future. User:Spider of Destiny, 17 December 2010.

Consensus - Yet again

Before making bulk changes please discuss your plans and wait for some consensus. Such unilateral actions without consensus would normally be considered vandalism and would result in your account being blocked. Duncan 10:19, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

External links

Hi Spider of Destiny,


I noticed you often use the following syntax which I very often modified after your contributions: 

 ==More information==
  * (http://www.website.com/path/page.shtml?id=4C5D3A&command=show%20it#Section1)

I don't know if you use to check the Recent Changes to know what other people are doing.


Could you please comply as much as possible with the existing articles layout? I mean recent articles.

In the current templates there are no sections named "More information", "Further reading", "References" or "External Links".

We have decided to have a split in two sections named "See Also" (for additional information either internal or external) and "Notes" (for foot notes, references, sources, etc.).

You can check the Freak_Out! article as an illustration if this helps.


Although it is true that nowadays most people know the meaning of URLs, we cannot put them as is in an article without a little formatting.

URLs are often ugly, and sometimes they have little or no immediate meaning. You easily imagine how the left side navigation bar would look like if it contained the target URLs :-D

For the reader, as for any reference, it is usually more convenient to know the author, article title, editor/site, date.


And AFAIK I think we've never used to put URLs alone into brackets.


So instead of: 

 ==More information==
  * (http://www.website.com/path/page.shtml?id=4C5D3A&command=show%20it#Section1)

Please use: 

 ==See Also==
  *[http://www.website.com/path/page.shtml?id=4C5D3A&command=show%20it#Section1 Beautiful Page Title Even It is Hard To Find]


Last but not least, can you please check (http://wikitalk.killuglyradio.com/2011/01/this-battle-of-the-egos-stop-it/) if not already done?


Thanks


Maroual 21:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Blanked pages

Hi Spider of Destiny,

If a page is not needed anymore, thank you to update all the pages that are linking to it prior blanking/deleting it.

Or at least put a REDIRECT in the page instead of blanking it which is unacceptable.

The following pages link to Quentin Robert DeNameland (CC): 

   Clowns On Velvet (← links)
   The White Boy Troubles (← links)
   Category talk:Conceptual Continuity (← links)
   User talk:Maroual (← links)
   Opal (CC) (← links)
   Religion (← links)

Thanks to update them.

Maroual 15:59, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Just saw your last changes, thank you ;-)

Maroual 13:01, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Spider of Destiny,

I cannot delete Michael Jackson (CC) since there is still an article page linking to it: Special:WhatLinksHere/Michael_Jackson_(CC) says United States of America is referring to it

However there is no need to update the Talk pages ;-)

Maroual 11:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Typos in citations, quoted articles, etc.

Hello,

I noticed that you fixed mistakes in the following articles:

Maybe from time to time our friend Propellerkuh - as every humain - could have done a few typos (e.g. each of us has once typed 'teh' instead of 'the', etc.).

But in the present cases, I am almost certain he has typed the exact contents of the article.

So, unless you have the article and can confirm this was a transcription mistake, I assume that the error comes from the original article.

And IMO removing the mistakes that do exist in the original article is not a good practice.

In this cas we should mention such a mistake with [sic].

Of course you can always fix wiki syntax errors and obvious transcription typos.

Maroual 20:20, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

BTW, as you mentionned in the article, Honker Home Video is a label. So it cannot be listed under 'Films & Videos By Frank Zappa'. This update has been cancelled.

Regards

Maroual 20:30, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi,

I fixed the typo in the article on Khomeini.

Thanks

Maroual 21:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

"Operation Gladio"

Hi Spider,

As you may notice, I had to undo some of the contents you wrote on "Operation Gladio".

Indeed, the song actually named RadioGladio is not at all an unreleased FZ song, it is just a song Zappa mentionned once as an example.

I suggest you carefully read the dedicated post at Zappateers for more information.

Salutations

Maroual 21:33, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Please stop

We can take it as read that most musicians will be aware of/interested in/admiring of Zappa and his work. If there is anything relevant to quote it can be added to the relevant article or included in the Zappa biography. Each one does not need there own article (I realise this is your thing and having a long list of articles created by you is in someway significant for you) but unless they have some direct connection with Zappa, his life and work they do not need to be included here. Any musician with a serious critical objection to Zappa'a music will be worthy of inclusion. And Zappa said that Yes were a progressive band "sometimes" so that one will be deleted for factual inaccuracy. Duncan (talk) 03:33, 31 December 2015 (PST)

OK, but how would you define a "direct" connection to Zappa? Only him alone or are his family members (Gail, Dweezil,...) also allowed? By the way, thanks for adding the interesting link about "Uncle Bernie's Farm" a while back. It shed a new light on the lyrics. User:Spider of Destiny 12:41, 31 December 2015

Kudos

Thanks for all your work to expand and improve this wiki! PopFanDoug (talk) 17:32, 16 October 2020 (PDT).

Thanks, I appreciate the appreciation. :) - User:Spider of Destiny, 2:35, 17 October 2020 (PDT).

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