text:
User talk:Dbenbenn/archive2

A few requests
You said: "If you come across any more diagrams like Image:8cage.jpg that need cleaning, let me know and I can try to make a Metapost version."

Really? Cool! I think I'll take you up on that. Here are some relatively simple diagrams and such that look like they may be copyright violations. New versions would be wonderful.
 * Image:Equivalence.PNG: obsoleted by Image:circuit equivalence.png
 * Image:EquivariantMap.png: obsoleted by Image:equivariant commutative diagram.png
 * Image:SnakeLemma01.png
 * Image:SnakeLemma02.png
 * Image:SnakeLemma03.png

Thanks in advance! – Quadell (talk) (help)  04:07, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

I have a few more. Someone used screenshots and altered them to illustrate a situation in the game of Go. Unfortunately, screenshots can only be used according to our fair use policy, and it is never a fair use to alter an image. Could you recreate these as well? I could do them myself, but I'm sure they wouldn't look as good as if you did them. – Quadell (talk) (help) 12:53, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
 * Image:LnD11.png, obsoleted by Image:Go position, life and death, 1.png
 * Image:LnD12.png, obsoleted by Image:Go position, life and death, 2.png
 * Image:LnD13.png, obsoleted by Image:Go position, life and death, 3.png
 * Image:LnD14.png, obsoleted by Image:Go position, life and death, 4.png
 * Image:LnD15.png

I've started studying the Lambertian diffuse lighting model for rendering the stones. I'll be able to do these, but it might take a week or two. Dbenbenn 05:00, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

afu rfc
Please see draft at User:Dbenbenn/Antifinnugor. Comments have been moved to User talk:Dbenbenn/Antifinnugor. Dbenbenn 18:10, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image:Pomegranate crosssection.jpg
I uploaded the image to the commons, but it got deleted because the Stock.xchng license is not compatible with the commons (i.e. no picture archives). I didn't know that until now. -- Chris 73 Talk 01:16, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * Oh damn! I should have read their fine print more carefully.  Thanks for letting me know.  Dbenbenn 01:27, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Date (fruit) image
What's the problem with Stock Xchng images?? - the ones marked 'no restrictions on use' (as is the dates image) should be OK (I've used a few too). - MPF 11:54, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * See the comment above. Apparently "no restrictions" doesn't really mean that.  See stock.xchng terms of use, section on "DOWNLOADING", points 2), 3), and 4).

 * I'd love to be proved wrong! Possibly the images can be kept at Wikipedia but not Wikimedia?  But in the mean time I thought it was safer to take the images off.  Dbenbenn 13:59, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I asked about it at Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags and Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems Dbenbenn 14:43, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks; looks too complex for me to know, I know b***** all about copyright. Maybe send a query to stockxchng too? MPF 15:52, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Sollog
Awww, that's just plain cruel! Tohchina had finally managed to make a comment with only a handful of references to homosexuality and no direct personal attacks and only an indirect legal threat, and you delete it. And all the sentences had verbs this time too! *giggles* --fvw *  18:54, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

Thanks, Dbenbenn :) Wyss 04:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

David. The picture of you on a car shows that you're very young. Posting your email address: dbenbenn@cam.cornell.edu. might even be unwise. But surely even you, in your youth, see that archiving my posts rather than trying to deal with the string of very sensible comments is merely another outbreak of Institutionalised Vandalism?

I expected better from Wiki people. --Comment by User:217.43.103.220 (contribs), 14:38, 13 Jan 2005

 * I archived the talk page in accordance with Wikipedia policy, see How to archive a talk page. Dbenbenn 22:43, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Could you lend a hand?
Heya, you have the dubious honour of being having the first username I recognised on WP:RC, I was wondering could you lend a hand cleaning up? A vandal has been inserting a useless link in Dick Cheney (and in doing so violated the 3RR rather massively). All the others involved in cleaing up his mess are somehow involved with blocking or warning about being blocked so would rather not create a conflict of interest by reverting, and I've used up my 3R there. Could you have a look and if you agree the link doesn't belong there remove it? Thanks. --fvw *  18:56, 2005 Jan 6 (UTC)
 * Done and done. Glad to oblige.  Dbenbenn 19:32, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The colour white
People who use an encyclopedia might be doing so because they want to learn something. People who want to learn more than the encyclopedia contains might be interested in finding out how. Putting a link on a page to a course specifically about the subject of the article might not add much, but it adds something, don't you think? Why take it out? I've put it back anyway. Matt Stan 12:12, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Let's take this discussion to Talk:White. Dbenbenn 17:41, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Like ... vandalism?
You said: ''Was this change to Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania simply vandalism? Dbenbenn 10:27, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)'' My response is that if I were going to be a vandal, would I have left my calling card? If you are a native of the western suburbs of Philadelphia, please forgive this explanation: King of Prussia is not just the second largest shopping mall in the United States. King of Prussia also is a place name. Something one finds in Pennsylvania, possibly uniquely so within the U.S. Many of the people who live in Upper Merion Township are, for the purposes of their post office, in King of Prussia. Some residents of Upper Merion Township have as their post office, Valley Forge. However, neither place is a local unit of government of any kind. Nor is, for all I know, Upper Merion Township a place name or a post office. Wikipedia provided some recognition of this before this writer arrived by listing census data for King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. One also finds census information on Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania. May I conclude by saying that while I am happy to take my Wikipedia lumps with the best of them, I find the label "vandalism" a bit distasteful. If you believe my addition of this "see also" is not in the Wikipedia style, I would welcome your comment upon that minus the labels. --MacSigh 02:32, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Decline and Fall
If there are any flaws to this page, I suggest you fix them. This page has been vandalized; reverted without any notice or discussion. I attempted to discuss this with StBalbart (whatever) and I spent too much energy working on this for the past two weeks to continually be aggravated by reverts without any input. fix the header. find someone else. I'm out. allie 03:31, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Kind of like Tennis??
Wimbledon must look very odd from your perspective. --fvw *  03:50, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)
 * Back and forth, back and forth. Dbenbenn 03:54, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * "At which point Henman copies the ball, leaving one copy on his side of the court and returning the other one, along with a new ball intended as a response to the original ball." --fvw *  03:57, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)
 * Thanks, fvw. That's the first time I've laughed out loud all day!  Dbenbenn 04:07, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

afu, once again
I would appreciate any help with Requests_for_arbitration/Antifinnugor/Evidence. I'm a bit unhappy with this rfar now that afu seems to have lost interest. But since it's underway, I suppose we'll have to see it through. regards, dab (ᛏ) 10:19, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * never mind, I think I got most of it covered, now. You are still welcome to add additional material. dab (ᛏ) 13:53, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the slow reply; didn't have time to look into it during the work week. Anyway, I've added some evidence of my attempts to resolve the dispute.  If you have any suggestions just let me know.  dbenbenn | talk 01:47, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Move over redirect?
On WP:RCP, you wrote "anyone can move articles over a simple redirect with no edit history, I've moved it back." I've seen this kind of comment before, but I don't understand it. As far as I can tell, you have to be an admin to move a page over another page, even one that has no history. (But obviously there's something I'm missing, because you're not an admin yet!) Thus, I've been listing cases like that on WP:RM. ? Dbenbenn 15:04, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Nope, a redirect without further content and without history (or perhaps only one that's been created by a page move, I've never tried it for other cases) can be overwritten. You just do a simple move as if the redirect wasn't there and it works. --fvw *  15:48, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. I should have read more carefully: "unless it is a redirect to the old title and has no past edit history".  What I tried before was a move over a page that redirected to a third page.  Dbenbenn 16:51, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Inclusionism
C'mon, no inclusionist would vote to delete Autobiography promotion and publicity. The subject matter is far more notable than so many other topics on Wikipedia—you think it's less notable than the Meow Wars, which even I, interpreting notability much more broadly than most, voted to delete? Sigh, oh well, oh well. But it does appear we have something in common, that we're both big Pumpkins fans. Everyking 02:03, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've actually been feeling torn lately about that. If you want to argue about it, I might be amenable to changing my mind.  What do you think about Legal history of Sealand?  How about Homespring?

 * I suppose that as an inclusionist, I feel that every "topic" should be covered here. But that says nothing about how much detail a topic gets.  I think you feel the same way—that some details should be left out.  The only issue is that with respect to "certain topics", your opinion about the appropriate level of detail is radically different from that of most other people.

 * Are you familiar with Mary Star of the Sea? I'm disappointed that Zwan only made the one album.  Dbenbenn 03:53, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sud Pol
Please stop deleting images. It is considered vandalism. This is your last warning. Sud-Pol 12:47, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi Sud-Pol, As I am not an admin, I am not able to delete images. Perhaps you're referring to removing an inappropriate image from a page ?  It is not in fact considered vandalism.  What do you mean by "last warning"?  Dbenbenn 14:39, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Too slow!
Hi Rdsmith4, You keep slipping in before me! Reverting penis, then copyvio-tagging Iraqi occupation. I guess I need to get a faster computer! Dbenbenn 02:43, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the compliments :-) I don't know if you've been using Special:Recentchanges, but there's also the RC dumper - it's a nifty tool and speeds up the process considerably. Rdsmith4— Dan | Talk 03:25, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for interpreting my (unintentionally) ambiguous comments as compliments! And thank you very much for the RC dumper link.  It's a lot faster than waiting for Firefox to render the whole Recentchanges page.  Of course, you'll still be faster than me, with your magic "rollback" button.  Dbenbenn 14:15, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * By the way, are you aware of the "Raw signatures (without automatic link)" setting? That would allow you to simplify your User:Rdsmith4/sig template.  dbenbenn | talk 14:30, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

TeX looks terrible?
Hi Michael,

You wrote : "TeX looks ... terrible when embedded in lines of text because it gets badly misaligned and is far too BIG". Are you aware of the "Rendering math:Recommended for modern browsers" setting? With that option set, the page in question,, looks fine; the math is rendered as text, not images.

Cheers, dbenbenn | talk 00:40, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * I have no idea whether you're talking about a Wikipedia setting or a browser setting or what, but Tex always gets properly rendered when I look at it on Wikipedia from my browser. I am aware that some people have Wikipedia settings that cause TeX not to get properly rendered in some simple cases, but I am not one of those.  Do you understand that I said TeX embedded in lines of text looks bad but DISPLAYED TeX looks good, i.e., do you understand what the difference is?  Why are you asking me whether I am aware of that option while telling me nothing about it that could enable me to answer yes or no?  At any rate, I'll be surprised if I do not have far more experience using TeX both on and off Wikipedia than you do. Michael Hardy 00:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * I think I found what you're referring to, and I tried that setting, and the result is that you're very very very badly wrong in this case; that setting makes even DISPLAYED TeX look terrible. It makes it fail to get rendered as TeX! Michael Hardy 00:53, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * And now I've put my preferences back the way they were, and the displayed TeX looks good again; it gets properly rendered, but the TeX embedded in lines of text now looks bad BECAUSE it gets properly rendered without getting properly aligned and without matching the size of the surrounding text. One very bad thing about the setting you're recommending is that it makes minus signs in TeX look like hyphens.  Among other bad things.... Michael Hardy 00:55, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Sorry I didn't make that clear. See Special:Preferences, then click on the "Rendering math" section.  Yes, I understand the point you were making about displayed versus inline math.  The point is that someone who cares about math rendering can change their settings to make it look good.  I didn't in fact "recommend" any settings.

 * For what it's worth, I have quite a lot of experience using TeX, and I don't appreciate the implication that my message was motivated by ignorance. I was simply trying to give you a helpful suggestion.  I suggest you would do well to avoid that kind of tone in the future.  dbenbenn | talk 01:00, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hello. Just in case you missed it on my talk page:

 * I stand corrected concerning you TeX experience. I leapt to a conclusion based on the apparent fact that you don't find it horribly ugly to set one's preferences in a way that makes minus signs look like hyphens.  Donald Knuth's very careful attention to just such details as those is the major reason why TeX is what it is. Michael Hardy 01:24, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Everyking arbitration
I've filed an arbitration request against Everyking. Please comment; brickbats for my foolhardiness are more than welcome. Johnleemk | Talk 07:51, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

State seals
I was working on state seals today here on En when I noticed that you started uploading them to the Commons. I guess I should have thought of that before I created Template:US state seal. I also just uploaded a bigger and better version of the Texas state seal to En. Oh well. I think a template for state seals is still useful, since I'm not quite sure about their legal status. They may not be in the public domain just because they are government works – that only applies to the federal government. Plus each government can prescribe what its insignia may be used for. I think we're fine under fair use, but usually these things cannot be used for commercial advertising or for political purposes. There could be a general disclaimer to that effect in the template, but I'll probably do that on the Commons, unless you beat me to it. --MarkSweep 04:03, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll leave it to you. I only came across Image:Alabamastateseal.png becase I was going through Category:Images with unknown copyright status.  dbenbenn | talk 13:20, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Too many pages on watch list
Thank you, you were beginning to make us grumpy reply-on-my-talkpage-or-I-won't-see-it-ers look bad. Glad that got solved. --fvw *  16:50, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)
 * Yeah, after a spate of image tagging over the weekend it's at 984. I'll have to come up with some other way to make you look bad now.  By the way, it's cheating to serve two balls at once. dbenbenn | talk 17:34, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * What, you've never played doubles? :-p. --fvw *  08:14, 2005 Jan 18 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Everyking/Proposed decision
Hey, you were involved in this dispute deeply and certified the RfC. Some of us feel that the proposed decision against Everyking is insufficient and too weak for a user who has abused Wikipedia so badly. I hope you can weigh in at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Everyking/Proposed decision having read the proposed decision and discussion and share your opinion with us, whether it's that the decision is too strong, just right, or too weak. Johnleemk | Talk 06:07, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Electrical and electronic diagrams, commons:Category:Diagrams, and commons:Category:Diagram
you moved electrical and electronic diagrams from the diagram category to the diagrams category despite the fact the diagram category is more established and is the one linked from the main page please explain. Plugwash 14:44, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry! Feel free to move it back if you disagree.

 * My reason was simply that categories in general ought to be plural. Note that the link on the main page appears as Diagrams.  Most of the other categories linked there are plural.

 * I'm trying to make commons:Category:Diagrams more established in the only way possible: by moving pages there! dbenbenn | talk 15:00, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ok i've moved everything out of commons:Category:Diagram and put a message that the category is no longer in use. The contents of the combined category needs some tidying though. Plugwash 15:55, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Closing VfD decisions
Good afternoon, dbenbenn. Thank you for your help in closing so many of the VfD discussions.

I was just spinning through the entries on the 17th looking for a few to close myself and the discussion about Wikings caught my eye. (Votes that end up that lopsided interest me.) You closed that discussion as a "keep" and noted that the vote was 9 keep to 1 delete. I counted two delete votes - the nomination by User:RickK and a vote by User:Starblind. I don't dispute your decision but I was wondering why you discounted one of the delete votes.

Curiously, Rossami (talk) 20:36, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Sometimes someone nominates an article without themselves having an opinion. Thus, I don't count the nominator unless they make it obvious.  In this particular case, it didn't look obvious enough to me, so I didn't count RickK.

 * I'd probably avoid a page where one extra "delete" vote would make a difference anyway. dbenbenn | talk 22:29, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * P.S., I edited your user page.

 * Interesting. I interpret the nomination as an vote to delete unless the nominator explicitly withholds that decision.  (User:Niteowlneils frequently makes those nominations for procedural reasons but he's always careful to express the fact that he's not voting.)  Thanks for answering.

 * Oh, and thanks for cleaning up my user page. I noticed the duplication a little bit ago but hadn't yet gone back to figure out exactly what needed cleaning up.  You saved me a bit of time.  Rossami (talk)

 * I always vote explicitly when I nominate. You're certainly right that a nomination usually implies a "delete" vote.  My method probably reflects my inclusionist POV :).  I tell myself (rationalization) that an erronious "keep" can always be fixed later.  dbenbenn | talk 23:35, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

VfD/Ohio Wesleyan buildings
Hi Dbenbenn — thanks for merging the information in the articles to Ohio Wesleyan University. One question: several people (including myself) noted that the pages that were being voted on would have the wrong title even if kept ("Wesleyan" being the name of any number of different universities). As it is, these are the articles that have now been turned into redirects, and thus the redirects still have incorrect titles. Should I just go ahead and move them to their correct titles? Thanks,   — Asbestos | Talk 23:42, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi Asbestos, I think the easiest thing to do is just make redirects from whatever pages you think need them. Alternatively, you could move, for example, Elliott Hall, Wesleyan to Elliott Hall, Ohio Wesleyan, but that would just result in a redirect at Elliott Hall, Wesleyan pointing to Elliott Hall, Ohio Wesleyan.  Redirects are cheap, so having a redirect from the wrong title isn't really a problem.  Cheers, dbenbenn | talk 00:10, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks.   — Asbestos | Talk 08:57, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Johnson solids
Just in case you missed it, I responded to your query on Talk:Johnson_solid. Respond there if you feel the need. -- Andrew Kepert 08:00, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Happy number
You wrote:
 * I removed the text:

 * It can be shown mathematically that no matter what the initial number t is, the sequence t0,t1,t2,.. will eventually settle between 1 and 163. What happens to this sequence after it is inside this interval can be estimated by a simple computation.

 * It turns out that the only alternative to ending up at 1 is to be stuck in the cycle

4, 16, 37, 58, 89, 145, 42, 20, 4, ...

The second part is in the references. The first one I proved. I did not know on Wikpedia you must submit the proofs. What is a good way of proceeding about that? Assuming that the text fragment is accurate, and since it adds value to the article, maybe it should be left. What do you think? Oleg Alexandrov | talk 21:39, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * I should have given you more time to explain yourself. :) I got your message. I think, in the fragment above I said that it can be proved that things will settle between 1 to 163, and only from there on one can do some computerized checking. So, you want me to include the proof? It is not that hard.

You can reply here, I will keep a watch on it. Oleg Alexandrov | talk 21:42, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Let's take this discussion to Talk:Happy number. dbenbenn | talk 21:44, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * There is a problem with proof. You see, you focus too much on what happens over 100. If you are at 99, you jump up to 162. And then, if you drop below 100 again with your reasoning, you can come back later. So it is not clear if you ever get stuck under 100. So I think you should say we are stuck between 1 and 162 and leave it that way. What do you think?Oleg Alexandrov | talk 05:44, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Replied at Talk:Happy number. dbenbenn | talk 06:24, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image recreation requests
Greetings. I just started the Image recreation requests project, and I thought you might be interested. Your help would be greatly appreciated. (I got your name from the list at Wikipedians/Graphic Artists.) Best regards, – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 03:12, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I noticed. In fact, I actually reserved one of those images a few hours ago, and I'm almost done recreating it.   (Great project idea, by the way!)  dbenbenn | talk 03:37, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

To-Do List Editing on Talk Pages
I'll thank you not to edit my own personal to-do list. —chris.lawson (talk) 21:01, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Your user page was incorrectly in Category:United States coins. I fixed the problem by replacing
 * [[Category:United_States_coins|...
 * with
 * [[:Category:United_States_coins|...
 * I'm sorry; I didn't feel it was necessary to ask your permission to fix the problem, but I probably should have left a note explaining what I did. dbenbenn | talk 23:26, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Three halves
I defer to your judgement on number-related articles. Please look at Three halves. Is it something that needs to stay around? Joyous 02:20, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * Probably not. I've asked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers.  I'll give it a couple weeks; maybe someone can come up with something interesting to put there.  dbenbenn | talk 05:03, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Author of photos?
Hi Chilepine,

You've uploaded some marvelous photos! It looks like you're quite into hiking. The only problem is, some of them don't indicate who actually took the picture. I retagged Image:Hippeastrum.JPG as under the assumption that you took it, but there are others. If you like, I could retag them for you; just let me know.

Also, it looks like you've reduced the resolution of the images. If you still have the original high-resolution versions, it would be wonderful if you could upload them. Higher resolution is always better.

Thanks, dbenbenn | talk 01:10, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Hello Dbenbenn

 * I'm glad you like the photos. The link 'PD-link' I have used does say it is released by the creator who is myself.  I usually take images in 640 by 480 pixel resolution.  If I take them in a high resolution I can only get a handful on the memory card.  I may try taking a few high resolution images and upload them some time to see the benefits.

 * cheers Chilepine 15:32, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * I think the main benefit would be for a hypothetical print edition of Wikipedia. Not really a big deal.

 * I guess it's a minor point, but the image description pages don't actually say that you are the creator. Is it okay if I add "This photograph was taken by User:Chilepine" to the ones that use PD-link, just to make it totally clear?

 * By the way, are you aware of the Wikimedia Commons? It's a sister project specifically for images.  The benefit of putting images at the Commons is that all Wikipedias can use them.  For example, da:Venus-Fluefanger (Dionaea muscipula) could use your photo of a Venus Flytrap.  dbenbenn | talk 16:27, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for telling me about Wikimedia Commons. I looked at it and it looks interesting.  Also if you still want to change my copyright tags that is fine and would you use the PD-user|Chilepine tag now please.  It is on Image:Johnson's Blue.jpg.

 * cheers Chilepine 17:56, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, done. Thanks for helping me clarify that.  dbenbenn | talk 21:44, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image:Alpha Centauri relative sizes.png
Hi Neutrality,

I noticed you copied the text from Commons:Image:Alpha Centauri relative sizes.png to Image:Alpha Centauri relative sizes.png. I'm just curious, is there an official policy somewhere that that's what should be done? Is there somewhere it's being discussed?

I haven't been doing that for the various images I put at the Commons, mainly because I don't want to have to update two different places when I change an image.

Thanks, dbenbenn | talk 22:14, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, it's standard practice to copy Commons information from there to here. This has several advantages: it allows one to get information quickly without going to the Commons; it also allows for a copyright tag and image category. Neutralitytalk 23:26, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry
Hi Dpbsmith,

I loved the sockpuppetry at Votes for deletion/Ashlee Simpson on SNL!

Instead of Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping, I think dollar voting would have been interesting.

You wrote "if the content is merged, then the article should be deleted". In fact, if the content is merged, then the article can't be deleted. See Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion.

Cheers, dbenbenn | talk 00:15, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Merged articles CAN be deleted, it just has to be done correctly

 * No time to check the discussion in detail, but this has come up a number of times before and any number of GFDL mavens have assured me that it is perfectly possible to perform a merge and delete that is in accordance with GFDL.

 * Apparently GFDL's requirements for preserving history are not 100% clear so there's not 100% agreement, but my understanding is that there are two ways to do this.

 * First, any sysop can follow a fairly involved procedures described somewhere under some title like "how to fix cut-and-paste moves" which merges the history of the article being deleted into its destination. The original article can then be deleted.

 * Second, in the commonest case, where the article being deleted is essentially the work of one contributor, it is sufficient to a) merge the text without making any other edits, b) make a note on the Talk page saying identifying your last edit by timestamp, copying in the text of the article-to-be-deleted's history, and indicating which edit is being merged. That doesn't make the history available in exactly the same way as normal Wikipedia editing, but it does provide traceable history and (probably) meets GFDL requirements.

 * The statement that "you can't do a merge-and-delete because of GFDL" is just wrong. The correct statement is that you can't JUST merge the text and delete the article, and special care and the intervention of a sysop may be required. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:53, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Well yes, I was exaggerating. Of course you can do a merge and delete.  I just meant that "merge and delete" will usually be interpreted as "merge" unless a good reason for the extra effort is given.  dbenbenn | talk 14:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

PD category
I purposely didn't add my user page to the PD category, I think the cat bar though sometimes useful seriously messes with the aesthetic. When someone wants to do automated license computation I'll have to change my ways but until then I'm sticking with a plain non-category PD box. Thanks anyway though. --fvw *  15:11, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that! I should have asked first.  (To defend against people like me, you could put a comment like
 * in there.) dbenbenn | talk 15:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * in there.) dbenbenn | talk 15:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Not at all, it's nice to see someone actually reads my page; Asking up front for such things isn't necessary, it is a wiki after all. And I have high hopes that the sun bleached bones of those who tried to categorise my userpage before will ward off any future categorisers. :-P --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 15:51, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)

 * "Abandon all hope, ye who categorise here." I'm curious about your Rcpat program.  Does it automatically flag editors who have  in their Talk page for closer attention?  Does it do "sockpuppet detection" as you have on your Todo list?  dbenbenn | talk 17:20, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Hehe, quite.
 * Flagging users who have test templates on their user page would be very useful, but isn't feasibly alas without server side modifications (otherwise you'd have to request the talk page of each anon who edited and had a talk page, which wouldn't be nice for server load). It does however highlight users who have no talk or user page, as these are often freshly created users. Sockpuppet detection is another thing that can't be done here, it needs to be done on the server.
 * The method of operation is that you flag users/IPs as good, bad or risky in the rc patroller, which means in future they either don't get shown (for trusted users) or get flagged in red or yellow so they're sure to get your attention. That way you don't have to look at edits for good users if you don't want when patrolling, and repeat vandalism shows up like a sore thumb. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 17:11, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

Permission
The powers that be at Augsburg College have seen, reviewed and are prepared to approve Wikipedia's use of an article largely based on information from its web site. The question that was asked of me today is ... how does one DO that? Montanean 03:16, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh good. Just have them indicate on every page that it's licensed under the GFDL.  dbenbenn | talk 14:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

MultiLicensePD versus PD
Hi Weapon,

I retagged Image:Pissew 2.jpg as. The MultiLicensePD tag is for user pages, and refers explicitly to text contributions. Shall I make the same change on Image:Pissew 3.jpg, Image:Pissew1.jpg?

Also, I don't suppose you have higher-resolution versions of those pictures? If you do, it would be wonderful if you could upload them.

Cheers, dbenbenn | talk 14:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually, if the people in Purchasing ever get around to filling my order, I'll be able to bring my scanner home from the school and re-scan my originals... once I find them. Thank you for changing the licensing... the whole Licensing issue makes my head spin, and as I'm not a pro photographer, albeit living in a great place for it, I have no issues with contributing them tp the public domain. In doing so, I was also able to use them on WikiTravel. Realistically, what I have uploaded are just thumbs from my Ya-ho! Photos page, but i do have the originals somewhere, and intend to re-scan as GDFL licenced when I have cleaner copies. I'll let you know. Weaponofmassinstruction 03:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Dbenbenn/archive2


text:
Robert N. Buck

Robert Nietzel Buck (January 29, 1914 – April 14, 2007) broke the junior transcontinental air speed record in 1930 and for a time was the youngest licensed pilot in the United States.

Early life
He was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on January 29, 1914, to Abijah Orange Buck (1869–1932) and Emily Nietzel. Emily was Abija's second wife, and she was the daughter of Elizabeth Bellingrath.

In 1930 at age 16 he took lessons in a Fleet Aircraft using a Kinner engine. He received the United States Department of Commerce license #13478.

On October 4, 1930, he beat the junior transcontinental airspeed record of Eddie August Schneider in his PA-6 Pitcairn Mailwing he named "Yankee Clipper". His time was 23 hours and 47 minutes of elapsed flying time. The junior record only counts time in the air and excludes time spent on the ground. Robert said on February 6, 2005: "I was the youngest to fly coast to coast and that record still stands. I had my license at 16 and after that, they raised the minimum age to 17. With that change no one could break my record."

In December 1933, he flew to the Yucatan with Bob Nixon. As part of that trip, they stopped in Los Angeles and spoke at a meeting of Alpha Eta Rho, an aviation fraternity. They also participated in a cattle round up in Santa Rose, New Mexico.

Career
In 1937 he began flying for TWA. Buck became a Captain in 1940, then was promoted to TWA's chief pilot in 1945. In September 1957, Buck piloted the first nonstop flight from Los Angeles to London, flying the long-range Lockheed L-1649 Starliner. The following year, he wrote an extensive description of the flight published by Air Facts magazine. In 1965 he flew around the world from pole to pole in a Boeing 707. This was done with several other pilots in shifts. In 1970 he flew TWA's first Boeing 747 on Flight 800 from New York City to Paris, and in the same year wrote Weather Flying.

Personal life
Buck married Jean Pearsall in 1938. He retired from TWA at age 60 on January 28, 1974 and moved to Vermont, where he wrote Flying Know-How, Art of Flying, and Pilot's Burden.

He died on April 14, 2007, in Berlin, Vermont, after complications from an accidental fall.

Legacy
He was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey in 1981.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Robert N. Buck


text:
Forestside Shopping Centre

Lesley Forestside (better known as Forestside) is a shopping centre located in Newtownbreda in the south Belfast, Northern Ireland. The first phase of the centre, the 39000 ft2 Sainsbury's store, opened in March 1997 followed by the remainder of the centre in September 1998.

Construction
Supermac, when it opened in 1964, was Northern Ireland's first supermarket; when Sainsbury's announced its move into the Northern Ireland market on 20 June 1995, Supermac's Newtownbreda site was one of seven identified for future stores. Sainsbury's purchased Supermac for £32m. Supermac had planned to redevelop the site itself in a £30 million project, however a company director pointed out that the company would be at the peak of its overdraft at the same time as facing competition from Sainsbury's opening its first stores in Northern Ireland. The Irish Times quoted the director as saying "that was a situation we didn't find particularly acceptable."

Planning permission for the Sainsbury's store was granted in early February 1996 and construction by John Laing Group began with a groundbreaking ceremony a week later. The Sainsbury's store was built on the northern part of the roughly triangular site which was unoccupied as part of the Supermac complex. Sainsbury's first annual report after the store opened in March 1997 noted that the store was "trading far above expectations".

Sainsbury's paid £1.75 million for an alcohol sales licence for its off-licence in the centre. However this allowed Sainsbury's, with just two off-licences open in Northern Ireland in 1997, to capture 6% of the market. In January 1998 The Grocer reported that sales at the Forestside off-licence were £140,000 a week.

As the first stage (Sainsbury's) opened, work continued on the final stage of the shopping mall: 31 small units and two other large stores occupied by Marks & Spencer and Dunnes Stores. The total floor space of the centre is 250000 ft2, the southern part of the which stands on the site of the Supermac supermarket. The architects of the centre took advantage of the large east–west gradient of the site to build underground car parking and service access. Sainsbury's opened a petrol filling station at the same time as the supermarket, on the site of the demolished Drumkeen Hotel.

In October 1997, Sainsbury's announced the forward sale of Forestside to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) for approximately £50m. The sale was completed following completion of building works in September 1998, with Sainsbury's taking a 125-year lease for its store. In January 2001 USS sold the centre to Foyleside Ltd. for £70 million. Foyleside Ltd. owns Foyleside in Derry and the Abbey Centre in Newtownabbey.

2000s and 2010s
On 26 March 2005, the centre's Next outlet was targeted with an incendiary device which ignited after it had closed. Another device was defused in the centre's Dunnes Stores on 28 March. The campaign, which also included an attack that destroyed a B&Q store at Sprucefield, County Down, was blamed on dissident republicans.

On 23 November 2006, Marks & Spencer announced a £35 million investment in its Northern Ireland business, £8 million of which was invested in its Forestside store. This involved remodelling, the addition of a second floor to add 22000 sqft and a multi-storey car park.

In an article discussing the reform of local government, The Belfast Telegraph described Forestside as a "cash cow" which delivers annual rates of over £4 million to its local authority. In summer 2013 River Island, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis and Evans all closed. Next expanded into the former River Island Unit. Other new retailers to open included O2 store, Vision Express and Blue Inc.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several companies owning units such as Warehouse and Oasis (Owned by Aurora Fashions) and Clintons went into administration. The latter unit was purchased by Hallmark Cards

2020s
In September 2023, Forestside was purchased for £42 million by Mussenden Properties Limited, itself owned by local entrepreneurs Michael and Lesley Herbert. The shopping centre was subsequently rebranded as Lesley Forestside. Construction of three new restaurants commenced in January 2024. One of these will be occupied by Popeyes, the company's first restaurant in Northern Ireland, and another will be occupied by Nando's.

title: Forestside Shopping Centre


text:
Wikipedia:Peer review/Timpani/archive1

Timpani
I would like to submit this article to FAC. I was waiting to get pictures, which I now have. In the meantime, I also went back and verified the factual correctness of the information against the references I listed (i.e., I didn't just stick some references at the bottom so I could meet the FAC criteria) since I wrote this before references were a "thing" on Wikipedia.

I feel this article really demonstrates the advantages Wikipedia has on a traditional encyclopedia. It gives information that is interesting to all different types of people. There's a history section, that's a given, but there's also a lot of more practical information that would be of great interest to the musically inclined.

– flamuraiTM 22:31, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

A specific question: Do you think the TOC is too long? I am thinking of converting most of the last level of headings into HTML headings instead of Wiki headings so they don't show up in the TOC. – flamuraiTM 16:16, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * I do. Not only is the ToC too long, making it look unappealing at the beginning of the article, but many of the sections are very short, and this also looks unappealing.  It makes it look like those topics have been covered too briefly, when in fact that is not the case. I think if you join some of them together under broader headings, the look and feel of the article will improve dramatically.  Rossrs 09:33, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Do you have any suggestions on how to fix it? The only think I can think of is changing the "special effects" section into more of a list. I think that's the worst offender. – flamurai (t) 21:08, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

 * Whoa there, sailor. We don't use HTML headings. HTML is seriously deprecated around here, used only when it's unavoidable. If the TOC is too long, then (as suggested above), maybe you have too many short sections. The wiki headings are semantic markup. Don't chuck them in favor of unstructured HTML. grendel|khan 20:24, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)

 * I swear I remember some tutorial or MoS section somewhere saying, "when you don't want a section to show up in the TOC, use equivalent HTML headings." – flamurai (t) 21:08, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

How do you guys feel about the sectioning now? I removed the third-level subsections from "special effects" and "tuning", but left them under "machine timpani" since it helps to clarify the distinct types of machine timpani. – flamurai (t) 02:24, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * I apologise for not answering your earlier question. I think you've made a huge improvement.  I don't know much about the subject, but to my untrained eye, you've now got a very good balance. Rossrs 13:35, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful article, very comprehensive, and I especially like the pictures. One thing you might want to consider, though, is moving the "History" section all the way to the top of the article. Right now the article begins with everything about modern-day timpani and only at the end describes their history. The sudden jump backwards in time in the "History" section felt like a discontinuity to me. Wouldn't it be better to follow the development through time of the instrument first, and only then describe the contemporary aspects? Cheers. --Plek 17:40, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks. My reason for putting the history section at the end is that I feel it's more relevant to describe their modern use first. I think that's what most people would be interested in who are coming to the article. This order is more like, "here's what timpani are, and here's where they came from". It'd work either way, though. I've considered putting the history section up front before. – flamurai (t) 05:00, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia:Peer review/Timpani/archive1


text:
Linear discriminant analysis

Linear discriminant analysis (LDA), normal discriminant analysis (NDA), or discriminant function analysis is a generalization of Fisher's linear discriminant, a method used in statistics and other fields, to find a linear combination of features that characterizes or separates two or more classes of objects or events. The resulting combination may be used as a linear classifier, or, more commonly, for dimensionality reduction before later classification.

LDA is closely related to analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis, which also attempt to express one dependent variable as a linear combination of other features or measurements. However, ANOVA uses categorical independent variables and a continuous dependent variable, whereas discriminant analysis has continuous independent variables and a categorical dependent variable (i.e. the class label). Logistic regression and probit regression are more similar to LDA than ANOVA is, as they also explain a categorical variable by the values of continuous independent variables. These other methods are preferable in applications where it is not reasonable to assume that the independent variables are normally distributed, which is a fundamental assumption of the LDA method.

LDA is also closely related to principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis in that they both look for linear combinations of variables which best explain the data. LDA explicitly attempts to model the difference between the classes of data. PCA, in contrast, does not take into account any difference in class, and factor analysis builds the feature combinations based on differences rather than similarities. Discriminant analysis is also different from factor analysis in that it is not an interdependence technique: a distinction between independent variables and dependent variables (also called criterion variables) must be made.

LDA works when the measurements made on independent variables for each observation are continuous quantities. When dealing with categorical independent variables, the equivalent technique is discriminant correspondence analysis.

Discriminant analysis is used when groups are known a priori (unlike in cluster analysis). Each case must have a score on one or more quantitative predictor measures, and a score on a group measure. In simple terms, discriminant function analysis is classification - the act of distributing things into groups, classes or categories of the same type.

History
The original dichotomous discriminant analysis was developed by Sir Ronald Fisher in 1936. It is different from an ANOVA or MANOVA, which is used to predict one (ANOVA) or multiple (MANOVA) continuous dependent variables by one or more independent categorical variables. Discriminant function analysis is useful in determining whether a set of variables is effective in predicting category membership.

LDA for two classes
Consider a set of observations $$ { \vec x } $$ (also called features, attributes, variables or measurements) for each sample of an object or event with known class $$y$$. This set of samples is called the training set. The classification problem is then to find a good predictor for the class $$y$$ of any sample of the same distribution (not necessarily from the training set) given only an observation $$ \vec x $$.

LDA approaches the problem by assuming that the conditional probability density functions $$p(\vec x|y=0)$$ and $$p(\vec x|y=1)$$ are both the normal distribution with mean and covariance parameters $$\left(\vec \mu_0, \Sigma_0\right)$$ and $$\left(\vec \mu_1, \Sigma_1\right)$$, respectively. Under this assumption, the Bayes-optimal solution is to predict points as being from the second class if the log of the likelihood ratios is bigger than some threshold T, so that:

 * $$ \frac{1}{2} (\vec x - \vec \mu_0)^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_0^{-1} ( \vec x - \vec \mu_0) + \frac{1}{2} \ln|\Sigma_0| - \frac{1}{2} (\vec x - \vec \mu_1)^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_1^{-1} ( \vec x - \vec \mu_1) - \frac{1}{2} \ln|\Sigma_1| \ > \ T $$

Without any further assumptions, the resulting classifier is referred to as quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

LDA instead makes the additional simplifying homoscedasticity assumption (i.e. that the class covariances are identical, so $$\Sigma_0 = \Sigma_1 = \Sigma$$) and that the covariances have full rank. In this case, several terms cancel:

 * $$ {\vec x}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_0^{-1} \vec x = {\vec x}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_1^{-1} \vec x$$
 * $${\vec x}^\mathrm{T} {\Sigma_i}^{-1} \vec{\mu}_i = {\vec{\mu}_i}^\mathrm{T}{\Sigma_i}^{-1} \vec x$$ because $$\Sigma_i$$ is Hermitian

and the above decision criterion becomes a threshold on the dot product

 * $$ {\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \vec x > c $$

for some threshold constant c, where

 * $$\vec w = \Sigma^{-1} (\vec \mu_1 - \vec \mu_0)$$
 * $$ c = \frac12 \, {\vec w}^\mathrm{T} (\vec \mu_1 + \vec \mu_0)$$

This means that the criterion of an input $$ \vec{ x }$$ being in a class $$y$$ is purely a function of this linear combination of the known observations.

It is often useful to see this conclusion in geometrical terms: the criterion of an input $$ \vec{ x }$$ being in a class $$y$$ is purely a function of projection of multidimensional-space point $$ \vec{ x }$$ onto vector $$ \vec{ w }$$ (thus, we only consider its direction). In other words, the observation belongs to $$y$$ if corresponding $$ \vec{ x }$$ is located on a certain side of a hyperplane perpendicular to $$ \vec{ w }$$. The location of the plane is defined by the threshold $$c$$.

Assumptions
The assumptions of discriminant analysis are the same as those for MANOVA. The analysis is quite sensitive to outliers and the size of the smallest group must be larger than the number of predictor variables.

 * Multivariate normality: Independent variables are normal for each level of the grouping variable.
 * Homogeneity of variance/covariance (homoscedasticity): Variances among group variables are the same across levels of predictors. Can be tested with Box's M statistic. It has been suggested, however, that linear discriminant analysis be used when covariances are equal, and that quadratic discriminant analysis may be used when covariances are not equal.
 * Independence: Participants are assumed to be randomly sampled, and a participant's score on one variable is assumed to be independent of scores on that variable for all other participants.

It has been suggested that discriminant analysis is relatively robust to slight violations of these assumptions, and it has also been shown that discriminant analysis may still be reliable when using dichotomous variables (where multivariate normality is often violated).

Discriminant functions
Discriminant analysis works by creating one or more linear combinations of predictors, creating a new latent variable for each function. These functions are called discriminant functions. The number of functions possible is either $$N_g-1$$ where $$N_g$$ = number of groups, or $$p$$ (the number of predictors), whichever is smaller. The first function created maximizes the differences between groups on that function. The second function maximizes differences on that function, but also must not be correlated with the previous function. This continues with subsequent functions with the requirement that the new function not be correlated with any of the previous functions.

Given group $$j$$, with $$\mathbb{R}_j$$  sets of sample space, there is a discriminant rule such that if $$x \in\mathbb{R}_j$$, then $$x\in j$$. Discriminant analysis then, finds “good” regions of $$\mathbb{R}_j$$ to minimize classification error, therefore leading to a high percent correct classified in the classification table.

Each function is given a discriminant score to determine how well it predicts group placement.
 * Structure Correlation Coefficients: The correlation between each predictor and the discriminant score of each function. This is a zero-order correlation (i.e., not corrected for the other predictors).
 * Standardized Coefficients: Each predictor's weight in the linear combination that is the discriminant function. Like in a regression equation, these coefficients are partial (i.e., corrected for the other predictors). Indicates the unique contribution of each predictor in predicting group assignment.
 * Functions at Group Centroids: Mean discriminant scores for each grouping variable are given for each function. The farther apart the means are, the less error there will be in classification.

Discrimination rules

 * Maximum likelihood: Assigns $$x$$ to the group that maximizes population (group) density.
 * Bayes Discriminant Rule: Assigns $$x$$ to the group that maximizes $$\pi_i f_i(x)$$, where πi represents the prior probability of that classification, and $$f_i(x)$$ represents the population density.
 * Fisher's linear discriminant rule: Maximizes the ratio between SSbetween and SSwithin, and finds a linear combination of the predictors to predict group.

Eigenvalues
An eigenvalue in discriminant analysis is the characteristic root of each function. It is an indication of how well that function differentiates the groups, where the larger the eigenvalue, the better the function differentiates. This however, should be interpreted with caution, as eigenvalues have no upper limit. The eigenvalue can be viewed as a ratio of SSbetween and SSwithin as in ANOVA when the dependent variable is the discriminant function, and the groups are the levels of the IV. This means that the largest eigenvalue is associated with the first function, the second largest with the second, etc..

Effect size
Some suggest the use of eigenvalues as effect size measures, however, this is generally not supported. Instead, the canonical correlation is the preferred measure of effect size. It is similar to the eigenvalue, but is the square root of the ratio of SSbetween and SStotal. It is the correlation between groups and the function. Another popular measure of effect size is the percent of variance for each function. This is calculated by: (λx/Σλi) X 100 where λx is the eigenvalue for the function and Σλi is the sum of all eigenvalues. This tells us how strong the prediction is for that particular function compared to the others. Percent correctly classified can also be analyzed as an effect size. The kappa value can describe this while correcting for chance agreement.

Canonical discriminant analysis for k classes
Canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) finds axes (k − 1 canonical coordinates, k being the number of classes) that best separate the categories. These linear functions are uncorrelated and define, in effect, an optimal k − 1 space through the n-dimensional cloud of data that best separates (the projections in that space of) the k groups. See “Multiclass LDA” for details below.

Fisher's linear discriminant
The terms Fisher's linear discriminant and LDA are often used interchangeably, although Fisher's original article actually describes a slightly different discriminant, which does not make some of the assumptions of LDA such as normally distributed classes or equal class covariances.

Suppose two classes of observations have means $$ \vec \mu_0, \vec \mu_1 $$ and covariances $$\Sigma_0,\Sigma_1 $$. Then the linear combination of features $$ {\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \vec x $$ will have means $$ {\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \vec \mu_i $$ and variances $$ {\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_i \vec w $$ for $$ i=0,1 $$. Fisher defined the separation between these two distributions to be the ratio of the variance between the classes to the variance within the classes:

 * $$S=\frac{\sigma_{\text{between}}^2}{\sigma_{\text{within}}^2}= \frac{(\vec w \cdot \vec \mu_1 - \vec w \cdot \vec \mu_0)^2}{{\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_1 \vec w + {\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_0 \vec w} = \frac{(\vec w \cdot (\vec \mu_1 - \vec \mu_0))^2}{{\vec w}^\mathrm{T} (\Sigma_0+\Sigma_1) \vec w} $$

This measure is, in some sense, a measure of the signal-to-noise ratio for the class labelling. It can be shown that the maximum separation occurs when

 * $$ \vec w \propto (\Sigma_0+\Sigma_1)^{-1}(\vec \mu_1 - \vec \mu_0) $$

When the assumptions of LDA are satisfied, the above equation is equivalent to LDA. Be sure to note that the vector $$\vec w$$ is the normal to the discriminant hyperplane. As an example, in a two dimensional problem, the line that best divides the two groups is perpendicular to $$\vec w$$.

Generally, the data points to be discriminated are projected onto $$\vec w$$; then the threshold that best separates the data is chosen from analysis of the one-dimensional distribution. There is no general rule for the threshold. However, if projections of points from both classes exhibit approximately the same distributions, a good choice would be the hyperplane between projections of the two means, $$\vec w \cdot \vec \mu_0 $$ and $$\vec w \cdot \vec \mu_1 $$. In this case the parameter c in threshold condition $$ \vec w \cdot \vec x > c $$ can be found explicitly:

 * $$ c = \vec w \cdot \frac12 (\vec \mu_0 + \vec \mu_1) = \frac{1}{2} \vec\mu_1^\mathrm{T} \Sigma^{-1}_{1} \vec\mu_1 - \frac{1}{2} \vec\mu_0^\mathrm{T} \Sigma^{-1}_{0} \vec\mu_0 $$.

Otsu's method is related to Fisher's linear discriminant, and was created to binarize the histogram of pixels in a grayscale image by optimally picking the black/white threshold that minimizes intra-class variance and maximizes inter-class variance within/between grayscales assigned to black and white pixel classes.

Multiclass LDA
In the case where there are more than two classes, the analysis used in the derivation of the Fisher discriminant can be extended to find a subspace which appears to contain all of the class variability. This generalization is due to C. R. Rao. Suppose that each of C classes has a mean $$ \mu_i $$ and the same covariance $$ \Sigma $$. Then the scatter between class variability may be defined by the sample covariance of the class means

 * $$ \Sigma_b = \frac{1}{C} \sum_{i=1}^C (\mu_i-\mu) (\mu_i-\mu)^\mathrm{T} $$

where $$ \mu $$ is the mean of the class means. The class separation in a direction $$ \vec w $$ in this case will be given by

 * $$ S = \frac{{\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma_b \vec w}{{\vec w}^\mathrm{T} \Sigma \vec w} $$

This means that when $$ \vec w $$ is an eigenvector of $$ \Sigma^{-1} \Sigma_b $$ the separation will be equal to the corresponding eigenvalue.

If $$ \Sigma^{-1} \Sigma_b $$ is diagonalizable, the variability between features will be contained in the subspace spanned by the eigenvectors corresponding to the C − 1 largest eigenvalues (since $$ \Sigma_b $$ is of rank C − 1 at most). These eigenvectors are primarily used in feature reduction, as in PCA. The eigenvectors corresponding to the smaller eigenvalues will tend to be very sensitive to the exact choice of training data, and it is often necessary to use regularisation as described in the next section.

If classification is required, instead of dimension reduction, there are a number of alternative techniques available. For instance, the classes may be partitioned, and a standard Fisher discriminant or LDA used to classify each partition. A common example of this is "one against the rest" where the points from one class are put in one group, and everything else in the other, and then LDA applied. This will result in C classifiers, whose results are combined. Another common method is pairwise classification, where a new classifier is created for each pair of classes (giving C(C − 1)/2 classifiers in total), with the individual classifiers combined to produce a final classification.

Incremental LDA
The typical implementation of the LDA technique requires that all the samples are available in advance. However, there are situations where the entire data set is not available and the input data are observed as a stream. In this case, it is desirable for the LDA feature extraction to have the ability to update the computed LDA features by observing the new samples without running the algorithm on the whole data set. For example, in many real-time applications such as mobile robotics or on-line face recognition, it is important to update the extracted LDA features as soon as new observations are available. An LDA feature extraction technique that can update the LDA features by simply observing new samples is an incremental LDA algorithm, and this idea has been extensively studied over the last two decades. Chatterjee and Roychowdhury proposed an incremental self-organized LDA algorithm for updating the LDA features. In other work, Demir and Ozmehmet proposed online local learning algorithms for updating LDA features incrementally using error-correcting and the Hebbian learning rules. Later, Aliyari et al. derived fast incremental algorithms to update the LDA features by observing the new samples.

Practical use
In practice, the class means and covariances are not known. They can, however, be estimated from the training set. Either the maximum likelihood estimate or the maximum a posteriori estimate may be used in place of the exact value in the above equations. Although the estimates of the covariance may be considered optimal in some sense, this does not mean that the resulting discriminant obtained by substituting these values is optimal in any sense, even if the assumption of normally distributed classes is correct.

Another complication in applying LDA and Fisher's discriminant to real data occurs when the number of measurements of each sample (i.e., the dimensionality of each data vector) exceeds the number of samples in each class. In this case, the covariance estimates do not have full rank, and so cannot be inverted. There are a number of ways to deal with this. One is to use a pseudo inverse instead of the usual matrix inverse in the above formulae. However, better numeric stability may be achieved by first projecting the problem onto the subspace spanned by $$ \Sigma_b $$. Another strategy to deal with small sample size is to use a shrinkage estimator of the covariance matrix, which can be expressed mathematically as

 * $$ \Sigma = (1-\lambda) \Sigma+\lambda I\,$$

where $$ I $$ is the identity matrix, and $$ \lambda $$ is the shrinkage intensity or regularisation parameter. This leads to the framework of regularized discriminant analysis or shrinkage discriminant analysis.

Also, in many practical cases linear discriminants are not suitable. LDA and Fisher's discriminant can be extended for use in non-linear classification via the kernel trick. Here, the original observations are effectively mapped into a higher dimensional non-linear space. Linear classification in this non-linear space is then equivalent to non-linear classification in the original space. The most commonly used example of this is the kernel Fisher discriminant.

LDA can be generalized to multiple discriminant analysis, where c becomes a categorical variable with N possible states, instead of only two. Analogously, if the class-conditional densities $$p(\vec x\mid c=i)$$ are normal with shared covariances, the sufficient statistic for $$P(c\mid\vec x)$$ are the values of N projections, which are the subspace spanned by the N means, affine projected by the inverse covariance matrix. These projections can be found by solving a generalized eigenvalue problem, where the numerator is the covariance matrix formed by treating the means as the samples, and the denominator is the shared covariance matrix. See “Multiclass LDA” above for details.

Applications
In addition to the examples given below, LDA is applied in positioning and product management.

Bankruptcy prediction
In bankruptcy prediction based on accounting ratios and other financial variables, linear discriminant analysis was the first statistical method applied to systematically explain which firms entered bankruptcy vs. survived. Despite limitations including known nonconformance of accounting ratios to the normal distribution assumptions of LDA, Edward Altman's 1968 model is still a leading model in practical applications.

Face recognition
In computerised face recognition, each face is represented by a large number of pixel values. Linear discriminant analysis is primarily used here to reduce the number of features to a more manageable number before classification. Each of the new dimensions is a linear combination of pixel values, which form a template. The linear combinations obtained using Fisher's linear discriminant are called Fisher faces, while those obtained using the related principal component analysis are called eigenfaces.

Marketing
In marketing, discriminant analysis was once often used to determine the factors which distinguish different types of customers and/or products on the basis of surveys or other forms of collected data. Logistic regression or other methods are now more commonly used. The use of discriminant analysis in marketing can be described by the following steps:
 * 1) Formulate the problem and gather data—Identify the salient attributes consumers use to evaluate products in this category—Use quantitative marketing research techniques (such as surveys) to collect data from a sample of potential customers concerning their ratings of all the product attributes. The data collection stage is usually done by marketing research professionals. Survey questions ask the respondent to rate a product from one to five (or 1 to 7, or 1 to 10) on a range of attributes chosen by the researcher. Anywhere from five to twenty attributes are chosen. They could include things like: ease of use, weight, accuracy, durability, colourfulness, price, or size. The attributes chosen will vary depending on the product being studied. The same question is asked about all the products in the study. The data for multiple products is codified and input into a statistical program such as R, SPSS or SAS. (This step is the same as in Factor analysis).
 * 2) Estimate the Discriminant Function Coefficients and determine the statistical significance and validity—Choose the appropriate discriminant analysis method. The direct method involves estimating the discriminant function so that all the predictors are assessed simultaneously. The stepwise method enters the predictors sequentially. The two-group method should be used when the dependent variable has two categories or states. The multiple discriminant method is used when the dependent variable has three or more categorical states. Use Wilks's Lambda to test for significance in SPSS or F stat in SAS. The most common method used to test validity is to split the sample into an estimation or analysis sample, and a validation or holdout sample. The estimation sample is used in constructing the discriminant function. The validation sample is used to construct a classification matrix which contains the number of correctly classified and incorrectly classified cases. The percentage of correctly classified cases is called the hit ratio.
 * 3) Plot the results on a two dimensional map, define the dimensions, and interpret the results. The statistical program (or a related module) will map the results. The map will plot each product (usually in two-dimensional space). The distance of products to each other indicate either how different they are. The dimensions must be labelled by the researcher. This requires subjective judgement and is often very challenging. See perceptual mapping.

Biomedical studies
The main application of discriminant analysis in medicine is the assessment of severity state of a patient and prognosis of disease outcome. For example, during retrospective analysis, patients are divided into groups according to severity of disease – mild, moderate, and severe form. Then results of clinical and laboratory analyses are studied to reveal statistically different variables in these groups. Using these variables, discriminant functions are built to classify disease severity in future patients. Additionally, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) can help select more discriminative samples for data augmentation, improving classification performance.

In biology, similar principles are used in order to classify and define groups of different biological objects, for example, to define phage types of Salmonella enteritidis based on Fourier transform infrared spectra, to detect animal source of Escherichia coli studying its virulence factors etc.

Earth science
This method can be used to. For example, when different data from various zones are available, discriminant analysis can find the pattern within the data and classify it effectively.

Comparison to logistic regression
Discriminant function analysis is very similar to logistic regression, and both can be used to answer the same research questions. Logistic regression does not have as many assumptions and restrictions as discriminant analysis. However, when discriminant analysis’ assumptions are met, it is more powerful than logistic regression. Unlike logistic regression, discriminant analysis can be used with small sample sizes. It has been shown that when sample sizes are equal, and homogeneity of variance/covariance holds, discriminant analysis is more accurate. Despite all these advantages, logistic regression has none-the-less become the common choice, since the assumptions of discriminant analysis are rarely met.

Linear discriminant in high dimensions
Geometric anomalies in higher dimensions lead to the well-known curse of dimensionality. Nevertheless, proper utilization of concentration of measure phenomena can make computation easier. An important case of these blessing of dimensionality phenomena was highlighted by Donoho and Tanner: if a sample is essentially high-dimensional then each point can be separated from the rest of the sample by linear inequality, with high probability, even for exponentially large samples. These linear inequalities can be selected in the standard (Fisher's) form of the linear discriminant for a rich family of probability distribution. In particular, such theorems are proven for log-concave distributions including multidimensional normal distribution (the proof is based on the concentration inequalities for log-concave measures ) and for product measures on a multidimensional cube (this is proven using Talagrand's concentration inequality for product probability spaces). Data separability by classical linear discriminants simplifies the problem of error correction for artificial intelligence systems in high dimension.

title: Linear discriminant analysis


text:
User:Kuty~enwiki

Marcin Markiewicz
'''Polish nationality, currently living in Switzerland, Basel area. '''

Contributions

 * Basel - Town Hall Image
 * Brzeg Dolny - Initiated the entry

Contact

 * email: marcin dot markiewicz at gmail dot com
 * website: http://www.pbase.com/kuty
 * blogsite: http://kuty.blogspot.com/

title: User:Kuty~enwiki


text: Portal:Biology/Opentask

title: Portal:Biology/Opentask


text:
Category:Cars of Canada

Automobiles that were built for the Canadian consumer market.

title: Category:Cars of Canada


text:
Category:Scenic railway lines in Devon and Cornwall

Scenic railway lines in Devon and Cornwall.


text:
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mouse (computing)/archive1

Computer Mouse
An extremely thorough article I stumbled upon.-- Etaonish 22:39, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Very good article. 137.122.50.133 23:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. That is impressive.  --L33tminion | (talk) 02:30, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose too many mistakes, has no mention of the CORRECT original "laser" mice, which have been around since the 1980s, and were used through the 1990s by SUN and various other unix workstations. These were the type with the aluminum mousepads with the grid on them. These mice were not functional on anything else. Not to mention the laser mice section is a short 2 sentances. No mention of the "2 footed" mice which were available during the 90's. Merely a brief mention of "trackballs". Nothing on track points and touch pads which are "pointing devices" and incorrectly labelled as mice. Still too much content missing for me to support this, perhaps another time.  ALKIVAR ™[[Image:Radioactive.svg|18px|]] 06:58, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Refer to peer review not enough references for the volume of writing here, and also there doesn't appear to be anything over how Apple consistently refused to make their mice with more than one mouse button for many years (I'm an idiot), also the "hockey-puck mouse" (possibly the most stupid design decision Apple have ever made) isn't covered. Also there is nothing on the "click-and-a-half" mouse feature that was in OS 9. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:15, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * More opposition: the "history" section has non-historical material in it! Needs a total restructure. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:17, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Not the finest writing. Some sentences are so contorted as to be almost incomprehensible. For example, "On the other hand, supporters of — or otherwise people feeling comfortable with — mechanical mice claim that optical mice can be totally unreliable or even useless on some surfaces, which was true for the earlier models of optical mice and even some present-day models, which have trouble working on mousepads that are too glossy and some specific surfaces (especially transparent ones)." Huh? GeorgeStepanek\talk  01:25, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. ✏ Oven Fresh  ☺  03:00, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)


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Dave MacKenzie (politician)

David MacKenzie (born June 12, 1946) is a Canadian politician. He is a former member of the House of Commons of Canada, representing the riding of Oxford, Ontario as a Conservative from 2004 to 2023.

Career
Born in London, Ontario, MacKenzie served with the Woodstock City Police from 1967 to 1997, and was Chief of Police from 1987 to 1997. In 1997, he became the General Manager of Roetin Industries Canada.

He first ran for parliament in the federal election of 1997 as a Progressive Conservative, losing to Liberal John Finlay by 1,575 votes. He ran again in the election of 2000, and lost to Finlay by roughly the same margin. The national Progressive Conservative Party had a weak organization in Ontario during this period, and that Mackenzie's vote totals were well above the party's provincial average and that in both 1997 and 2000, the right wing vote was split between the Progressive Conservatives and Reform who later became the Canadian Alliance.

In 2002, MacKenzie was the Bosnia and Herzegovina trainer for the National Democratic Institute in Washington, D.C.

The Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance as the Conservative Party of Canada in early 2004, and Mackenzie joined the new party. Finlay did not run in the 2004 election, and MacKenzie defeated new Liberal candidate Murray Coulter by about 6,500 votes. After the election, he was named as his party's associate critic for National Defence. In the 2006 federal election, MacKenzie was re-elected to his Oxford seat, beating Liberal candidate Greig Mordue by a wide margin. With the Conservative Party of Canada forming a minority government, MacKenzie was selected as parliamentary secretary for the Ministry of Public Safety.

In December 2022, MacKenzie announced that he would retire as MP by the end of January 2023. In February 2023, Mackenzie sent a letter to Anthony Rota, Speaker of the house,  Caroline Simard, Commissioner of  Election Canada, Robert Batherson, president of the Conservative Party, Kevin Price, chair of the party's candidate selection committee, and Mike Crase, the executive director of the party, arguing that the party violated their own nomination rules by allegedly supporting Arpan Khanna to be the party nominee. Mackenzie believes that Andrew Scheer violated House of Commons rules by parliamentary resources to record the endorsement video for Khanna. MacKenzie also questioned Khanna ties to the riding since Khanna was also the party candidate for Brampton North during the 2019 election. Mackenize's daughter, Deb Tait is also running for the party nomination. Tait lost to Khanna, and MacKenzie is backing David Hilderley, who is running for the Liberal Nomination, by arguing that the Conservative Party operates differently from Stephen Harper or Peter Mackay.

The by-election to replace him in parliament is scheduled for June 19, 2023. Citing concerns with the Conservative nomination process, MacKenzie endorsed Liberal candidate David Hilderley.

Electoral record
Note: Conservative vote is compared to the total of the Canadian Alliance vote and Progressive Conservative vote in 2000 election.

Note: Canadian Alliance vote is compared to the Reform vote in 1997 election.

title: Dave MacKenzie (politician)


text:
Chronic prostatitis

Chronic prostatitis may refer to:

 * Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (about 90-95% of cases)
 * Chronic bacterial prostatitis
 * Asymptomatic inflammatory prostatitis

title: Chronic prostatitis


text:
Tarka Line

The Tarka Line, also known as the North Devon Line, is a local railway line in Devon, England, linking the city of Exeter with the town of Barnstaple via a number of local villages, operated by Great Western Railway (GWR). The line opened in 1851 from Exeter to Crediton and in 1854 the line was completed through to Barnstaple. The line was taken over by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) in 1865 and later became part of the Southern Railway and then British Rail. In 2001, following privatisation, Wessex Trains introduced the name Tarka Line after the eponymous character in Henry Williamson's book Tarka the Otter. The line was transferred to First Great Western in 2006.

It is one of the railway lines supported by the Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership and passenger numbers on the line have more than tripled since 2001.

Background and construction
The first proposals relating to what would become the Tarka Line originated in the 1820s, when it was proposed that a railway line might be built from Crediton to Exeter Quay. Authority was obtained to build this line by an Act of 1831, but construction never started and the powers lapsed. However, business interests in Crediton became interested in a railway again after allies of the Great Western Railway (GWR), the Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&ER), reached Exeter in 1844, and the GWR-allied South Devon Railway started extending that line to Plymouth. In 1844, the Exeter and Crediton Railway (E&CR) was formed and a proposal was put forward for a new line to connect Crediton to the B&ER. This proposal was accepted and authority was granted by an Act of 1845. The new company had capital of £70,000 (around £8.5 million in modern money), and made arrangements with the B&ER for the latter's trains to run to Crediton along the former's tracks.

Meanwhile, a proposal from business interests in Barnstaple was put forward in 1845 to build a new line connecting their town to the B&ER at Exeter. However, these proposals were rejected by the Railway Commission under Lord Dalhousie, the so-called "Five Kings", who wished to defer the decision on linking Barnstaple to the national railway network in order to appraise an alternative proposal by the B&ER to construct a line that would run between Barnstaple and their station at Tiverton.

By January 1846, construction had started on the E&CR and on an unrelated line connecting Barnstaple with Fremington Quay, five miles to the west, and this created a new sense of urgency in connecting Barnstaple to the national network. Two proposals to reach Barnstaple were put forwards: an east-west route from Tiverton to Bideford, via Mid Devon and Barnstaple; and a north-south route from Barnstaple to Crediton (with access to Exeter along the E&CR). The Tiverton option had Isambard Kingdom Brunel as its engineer, was favoured by the GWR, and had backing from the Five Kings and the Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire, Hugh Fortescue, 2nd Earl Fortescue. Meanwhile, the LSWR had long-term ambitions to challenge the GWR's dominance in the south-west, and they backed the rival Crediton option, installing John Locke as its engineer.

The GWR party failed to submit their plans in line with the standing orders, and so Parliament rejected them, authorising the Crediton route despite the recommendations of Dalhousie's commission and the preference of the Lord Lieutenant. This Act of 1846 created the LSWR-allied Taw Vale Extension Railway (TVER). In 1847, the GWR party tried and failed to agree a lease of the TVER's line to the B&ER. In the same year, the LSWR party purchased a majority stake in the E&CR and then leased the E&CR line to the TVER. The E&CR board, led by a J.W. Buller, remained aligned to the B&ER until Buller was removed that year (amid a procedural controversy that resulted in an unsuccessful appeal to the Five Kings). At the same time, construction continued on the E&CR, and by the end of 1847, the line was complete except for a connection to the B&ER. Given the departure of Buller, the E&CR directors conceded that an agreement with the B&ER would be impossible and ordered that the line be converted to the LSWR's narrow gauge and a station be constructed at Cowley Bridge.

As for the TVER, the end of Railway Mania had left it without funding and the Act of 1846 had left the decision on its gauge to the Railway Commission, who in 1848 announced it would be in broad gauge. Four days later, the conversion of the E&CR was complete. Thus, in 1848, construction had not yet started on the Crediton to Barnstaple line, there was no capital available, and it would have to be constructed in a gauge that would make through trains to Exeter impossible. Meanwhile, the Commission also told the LSWR that they would not be permitted to construct a line linking the Cowley Bridge to Exeter, leaving the E&CR completely isolated.

Nineteenth century
The deadlock was broken in 1851 by William Chapman, chairman of the LSWR and the E&CR. He agreed to convert one of the two tracks on the Crediton line to broad gauge and lease the line to B&ER; in exchange, the B&ER agreed to construct a junction allowing trains to run from Crediton to Exeter St Davids, and Cowley Bridge station was never opened.

A service commenced of seven trains a day in each direction—the first trains to run on the future Tarka Line—and new railway stations opened to passengers at Newton St Cyres and. In the same year, new company the North Devon Railway (NDR) was formed to replace the financially failed TVER and construction started on the Crediton–Barnstaple section. The NDR opened in 1854 with stations at Yeoford, Copplestone, Morchard Road, Lapford, Eggesford, South Molton Road,, Umberleigh and Barnstaple, as well as a siding at "Chappletown". However, the track south of Crediton continued to be owned by the E&CR. The NDR was taken over by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) in 1865, and while the E&CR remained nominally independent, the majority of its shares were owned by the LSWR and the B&ER. The section south of Crediton became part of the LSWR in 1876.

Twentieth century
Following the passage of the Railways Act 1921, the LSWR was merged into the Southern Railway, and in 1948 this became the Southern Region of British Rail. Along with the LSWR line to Plymouth, the route was part of the "withered arm" of Southern routes in predominantly Great Western Railway (and subsequently Western Region) territory.

Privatisation
From 13 October 1996, services on the Tarka Line were operated by Wales & West (owned by Prism Rail) as part of heir franchise. National Express purchased Wales & West from Prism Rail in July 2000 and on 14 October 2001 rebranded Wales & West as Wessex Trains after the Strategic Rail Authority transferred the company's Welsh services to Wales and Borders.

Sponsored by the North Devon tourist board, Wessex Trains renamed unit 150241 to The Tarka Belle and changed its livery to advertising for tourist destinations on the Tarka Line.

The line was transferred to First Great Western in 2006, who rebranded as GWR in 2015 and introduced the line's current fleet and service pattern in December 2019.

Stations
There are 12 stations along the line, although trains also serve Exeter St Davids and Exeter Central. Crediton and Newton St Cyres are also served by Dartmoor line services to Okehampton.

Crediton and Eggesford stations are both Listed grade II, as is an old railway warehouse outside Barnstaple station.

Services
Since December 2019 most services have been operated by Great Western Railway diesel multiple units. For several years before this they had been operated by s, which were transferred to other branch lines in Devon and Cornwall, and s which were withdrawn. They operate approximately hourly and take around 75 minutes for the journey between Exeter Central and Barnstaple. The off-peak service pattern is generally Exeter Central, Exeter St. Davids, Crediton, Yeoford(req), Copplestone, Morchard Road(req), Eggesford, Umberleigh(req), Barnstaple. Only two services each way call at all stops on this line. A single service is extended beyond Exeter to Axminster on Monday to Friday evenings, and another operates to and from Exmouth in the May 2022 timetable.

Operation
The line is single track with passing loops at Crediton and Eggesford. The only signal box is at Crediton. Its semaphore signals and mechanical lever frame were replaced by electric signals and an electric signalling panel on 16 December 1984. Trains between Crediton and Barnstaple are controlled by tokens which ensure there is just one train on the line at any time. Train drivers exchange their token in the No Signalman Token Remote (NSTR) equipment at Eggesford.

Community rail

The Tarka Line is named after the otter in Henry Williamson's book Tarka the Otter which is set in the area. It is one of the railway lines supported by the Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership, an organisation formed in 1991 to promote railway services in the area. The line is promoted by many means such as regular timetable and scenic line guides, as well as leaflets highlighting leisure opportunities such as walking or visiting country pubs.

The Tarka Line rail ale trail was launched in 2002, the first of several such schemes which encourages rail travellers to visit pubs near the line. The trail originally covered 16 pubs, and the number has risen and fallen over the years, but in 2020 is 11 pubs. There are three pubs in Exeter and five in Barnstaple, with one each at Lapford, Portsmouth Arms, and Umberleigh. 10 stamps collected in the Rail Ale Trail leaflet entitle the participant to claim special Tarka Line Rail Trail souvenir tour shirt.

Wessex Trains covered Class 150 2-car DMU number 150241 in coloured pictures promoting the line and named The Tarka Belle. It is still in service with Great Western Railway (Formerly First Great Western) but is no longer in that livery.

The line was designated by the Department for Transport as a community rail line in September 2006. This aims to increase revenue and reduce costs. Among possible options are increasing the car parking at stations, looking at ways to increase the train frequency and facilities at stations.

Proposed improvements
Network Rail would like to raise the Cowley Bridge during their Control Period 7 (2024-2029). This would reduce the likelihood of the railway being closed or damaged by floods.

The Barnstaple to Bideford route was mentioned in the Association of Train Operating Companies 2009 Connecting Communities: Expanding Access to the Rail Network report which recommended some closed lines that could be rebuilt to restore railway services to large communities. Following the reopening of the Dartmoor line to Okehampton in 2021, a local 'Atlantic Coast to Exeter' campaign resumed interest in reopening the line from Barnstaple to Bideford.

title: Tarka Line


text:
Saetia

Saetia (pronounced SAY-shuh) is a New York City-based screamo band. While relatively unknown during their initial existence, the band is now seen as one of the most critically lauded bands of the late-1990s screamo scene. Stewart Mason of AllMusic described their music as an "essential document" for fans of screamo.

1997–1999: Formation, Saetia and breakup
Saetia initially formed in February 1997 when each of its members were attending New York University. Their name originates from a misspelling of the Miles Davis track "Saeta", from his album Sketches of Spain. The band had numerous members throughout its existence, with frequent changes in membership. The band's first bass player, Alex Madara, was affected by a severe allergic reaction which placed him into a coma for eight days, finally resulting in his death on December 14, 1998.

Their drummer, Greg Drudy, was the original drummer of the band Interpol prior to their current popularity. He operated the record label Level Plane, which was initially started so Saetia could release a 7-inch single to sell at shows. Other members of the band continued their musical careers in numerous outfits, some of them joining screamo bands such as Off Minor, Hot Cross and The Fiction, as well as the bands Errortype: Eleven and Instruction.

The group would eventually break up in October 1999. Saetia's final, posthumous single, "Eronel" (also a title of a Thelonious Monk composition) was released under the Witching Hour label in 2000. The single contains three songs recorded by Steve Roche and mixed by Pat Kenneally. In 2001, Level Plane issued A Retrospective, a discography album that compiles every recording the band has made, including recordings taken from one of the last shows the band played at ABC No Rio.

2016: Posthumous releases
In 2016, Secret Voice, the label of Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm, released Collected, a two-disc, 180 gram vinyl set that includes every studio recording by the group. The tracks from the ABC No Rio also saw their own release in the form of a cassette titled Live At ABC No Rio Spring 1999, which was also released in 2016 through Secret Voice.

2022: Reunion
In April 2022, Saetia, consisting of Billy Werner, Jamie Behar, Adam Marino, Colin Bartoldus, and Steve Roche, announced via Instagram that they rehearsed for the first time in 24 years. In November 2022, they played live at four locations in New York and Pennsylvania.

Band members

 * Billy Werner – vocals on all
 * Greg Drudy – drums on all
 * Jamie Behar – guitar on all
 * Adam Marino – guitar on Demo, Saetia 7", Saetia LP/CD
 * Alex Madara (deceased) – bass on Demo, Saetia 7"
 * Colin Bartoldus – bass on Saetia LP/CD, guitar on Eronel 7"
 * Steve Roche – bass on Eronel 7", guitar at final live performance before disbandment, drums for reunion
 * Matt Smith – bass at final live performance before disbandment
 * Tom Schlatter - guitar for reunion

title: Saetia