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Talk:Game balance

orphaned line with no section
Just a suggestion on the "miniature wargame" section, but could you go into more detail? Y'know, giving examples of what constitutes "fair" and "unfair" in that case, kinda thing. Yar Kramer

OR
The "Principles" and "Factors" sections, aside from having been written mostly about character classes, seem to be mostly original research. Percy Snoodle 08:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I second that. We probably ought to give it an overhaul and, uh, come up with sources for most of this, really. —Yar Kramer 00:50, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

—For the "Principles" section: it isn't original research, although it could have been worded better to show how the principles were universal claims about all games. All games, including computer-based, soccer, chess, etc. are based upon those principles, even if it wasn't clearly explained. Maybe the author should have also explained how the concept of a "class" or "role" is universal to any sort of game. I think we are dealing with a specialized subject that has yet to be fully explored in what is considered traditional literature or educational settings. Consequently, we have a much more difficult task of referencing "authoritative" sources for the more specific claims in this section, i.e. some of the best places to find this information is actually on gamer forums. Gdoghomes 12:37, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Good point! Maybe I ought to make some sort of article on it and get it published ... ;) —Yar Kramer 02:39, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

-Just to let you know, Sirlin.net has articles that cover game balance. --Juigi Kario (Charge! * My crusades) 20:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

—Indeed, the "principles" described do not decribe a "balanced game" but rather "balanced options in a game" - in fact they convey two specific points in very specific scenarios: "reap what you sow" to role playing (even in an FPS) while "offence/defence" clearly in a scenario of a first person shooter, comparing two "weapons". These are just *facets* of balancing (computer) games, not principles. In fact defining only these things as principles is VERY diminutive of creating a balanced game (perhaps that's why we see so many unbanlanced game? ;) Red! 11:32, 12 July 2007 (EST)

 * Agreed - I've removed the sections as this concern hasn't been addressed in nearly a year. Percy Snoodle 08:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

StarCraft
Terran are the best race at the highest level. -Iopq 22:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Balance is a more relative concept than the article implies
Quake (1996) was a simple and balanced deathmatch. Who gets the Rocket Launcher gets a winning streak until everybody can rush him and chip his health down enough with the starting shotgun. The (balanced) game is about having some luck when spawning and getting to the Rocket Launcher first, and keeping it. The carnage that ensues after someone dominates the Rocket Launcher is just the aftermath.

In the end, all games are balanced upon start-up, up to some point in time at least, when they transform in another game or stage which is an aftermath. Even a MMOG that allows level 30 characters to murder hordes of level 1 players is balanced: those MMOGs were balanced when the world was initialized. And even if some players paid to start at level 30 in said MMO, your (balanced) game as a level 1 player is to avoid those avatars.

So maybe the discussion should be about sustaining the game balance, and for how long. Starcraft does not sustain the balance for too long, and this is a good thing, or else the game would only end due to player exhaustion (the player skill being the only factor in the equation, it can loop for players that play at nearly the same skill level). If the protoss is allowed 6 full carriers with whatever rag-tag escort you'd have (a good economy-player can achieve this), and the player controlling this isn't like 10 times slower to click than the opponent, then he has the "rocket launcher" in his hands. Getting to this stage is rarer, more complex, and more dramatic than getting the RL in Quake, though.

The balance must break at some point, or else the game becomes boring. Spawning units affects the starting balance. Subtracting health from the opponent affects the balance. Changing the game rules mid-game affects the balance. The game is not just the static rules in the executable. The game is what happens, with actual players in it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.54.12.28 (talk) 12:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

 * I see this argument a lot, and it's quite hard to track down the fallacy, but it is there, in the statement "all games are balanced upon start-up"; you see (talking about multi-player here), it ignores the probabliity of events. For example, if, in a hypothetical Quake-like deathmatch, one player starts off much closer to a non-randomly spawned rocket launcher, then they have a much greater chance of getting the rocket launcher; this means that on start-up, one player, assuming perfect play, has a 100% chance of getting the rocket launcher, while the other cannot. Now, let's discuss a hypothetical RTS, with two species: one species has stronger soldiers which train faster and cheaper than the other species'. While, on start-up, both teams have the same physical resources, once again assuming perfect play, one player is guaranteed to have a larger army full of stronger units. Balance is actually a rather more absolute concept than most people realise, though it's oftentimes quite difficult to take every variable into account and calculate it.

 * As for your second argument, the idea that balance changes as a game progresses, all you have done there is changed the definition of 'balance'. Balance is about the equality of starting positions/teams/weapons/etc. assuming a blank slate. Once a game is underway, balance is no longer relevant. To put it another way, balance is a game design concept, not a gameplay concept. 143.92.1.33 (talk) 01:56, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Nerf
Please consider the large number of articles that link to nerf, these may deserve a look. I fixed Nerf (computer games). I am leaving the others in to see if this bold redirect sticks before I invest a lot more effort.

Added a Nerf subsection so that redirects can point directly here.

Broke the sentences down for less-painful reading and cite-checking in edit mode.

Fact-flagged the "connotatively neutral" bit about gimp.sinneed (talk) 06:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Game Balance is...
A key goal of game design.

Players must be able to compete, either as groups or as teams, either against one another, or against the world/computer. The conflict must be sufficiently rewarding that players want to play. sinneed (talk) 19:20, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Edits I made
I have gone through the article and broken the sentences down on individual lines so they are not such a mash in the edit window. Wikipedia does not "care" if the whitespace between sentences is a space or a newline.

I added the unrefereced flag to each section, so we can hopefully see progress.

I did soften some of the most extreme PoV and the broadest statements to something that I might lightheartedly hope might be verifiable.sinneed (talk) 19:20, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Wait, you did that? I wouldn't refer to a regular paragraph as a "mash"...if you can read a book, you can probably edit an article without splitting it up into sentences. If you have trouble reading it, you might want to copy it into an external app. Also, multiple unreferenced flags are unnecessary and contribute to clutter; we already know it's unreferenced because it has no references.--ZXCVBNM 21:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't break the paragraphs. Wikipedia treats the newline and space characters identically. It has nothing to with paragraphs, or reading paragraphs. Don't worry, I'll put it back. The flags were there to track progress.sinneed (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, whatever, I just changed it because I thought somebody typed it that way. You might also want to enable "wikiED" under the Gadgets tab in preferences. It helps eliminate clutter by changing the color of different text, for example references or links.--ZXCVBNM 21:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. It is an excellent tool, and many people don't know about it.  Always good to share knowledge.sinneed (talk) 22:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

imba also means "VERY GOOD"
Don't forget that in common usage, imba is used to imply that something or someone is very good. Example (from Company of Heroes), "Knights Cross Holders are totally imba infantry. I used them to capture a strategic point while it was being pounded by artillery". This is the figurative sense in which the term is used. Might be worthwhile mentioning it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.215.157.173 (talk) 20:54, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Terrible
Power-based balance has been proven to be an inferior model because:
 * It is open to far too much free interpretation, making it subjective.
 * It is inconsistent. A game not being balanced in the used definition doesn't automatically make the game bad: see chess, where white has an inherent advantage over black, but which is still a very popular and well-designed game, to say the least.
 * It is incomplete. A game being balanced in the used definition doesn't give any guarantees for the game being enjoyable for longer periods of time. For example, tic tac toe favors neither side, but it's a game that has been solved and is so simple that it's simply not worth playing. Another example would be throwing a coin and deciding the winner on the outcome.
 * It is non-sensical. If all options are equal, then it doesn't matter which option the player takes. In other words, acting completely randomly would have to yield the same results as acting in a specific manner. That's NOT something an enoyable game should do.

I propose we change this page to reflect a much stronger theory, that of skill-based balance. This model goes from the assumption that balance comes from rewarding inequality in skill, in other words, that players playing more skillfully should win from players playing less skillfully. An imbalance in this model is everything that contradicts that definition in some way, including a situation where it doesn't matter who's the better player. That also means terms like overpowered have no special meaning: in every individual case, they have to be shown to violate balance before they can actually be considered an imbalance. 83.163.190.111 (talk) 15:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

 * The subjectivity of power-based balance is the most frequent misconception I read about. It fails to take into account that the majority of games are based in objective rules, and therefore any outcome can be calculated mathematically, and therefore equality in power can be calculated mathematically. It frequently isn't, but that's not the point; the point is that power balance is actually inherently objective, even if people frequently view it subjectively.
 * The first move advantage in chess is a hotly disputed advantage, and many speculate it may be primarily psychological in nature; regardless, you are correct, games with small imbalances can still be fun. The first-move advantage, at its higher estimates, is deemed to be around a five-percent advantage to white.
 * No-one ever claimed that perfectly balanced games are inherently fun. Also, the problems with luck-based balance are touched on in the article.
 * This is the biggest misconception about balance, and one that I myself struggled with for a long time; the idea that if all features are viable, then it doesn't matter which one you use. The thing is, all features don't have to be viable all the time. For example, in StarCraft: Brood War, widely considered to be the most balanced game of all time, just because you will want to create a worker occasionally, that doesn't mean building nothing but workers is a viable strategy. Yes, all features/units/weapons/whatever should be usable, but they must also have their place, and this is why your choices still matter in a perfectly balanced game. 143.92.1.33 (talk) 02:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I reread this discussion, and wish to add one more point: skill-based balance relies on power-based balance. There is no difference between the two models. The only way to ensure that the player with more skill wins is to make sure that all races/weapons/whatever are ultimately equal. 143.92.1.32 (talk) 01:42, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

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Requested move 23 March 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 13:53, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Balance (game design) → Game balance – Seems like a cut and dry example of WP:NATURAL being an appropriate term whereas the current name is disambiguated paranthetically. This was its original title in 2012 and was moved without any rationale. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 02:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

 * Support per nom and WP:NATURAL. Paintspot Infez (talk) 21:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Support per nom and Special:WhatLinksHere/Game_balance which shows a strong level of editor preference already for that. -- Netoholic @ 12:41, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Revamp" section
I feel like the "Revamp" section could use a revamp. "Rework" is a much more common version of the term, for one, and the description is vague.

A rework usually involves completely disassembling an aspect of the game (item or weapon, playable character, enemy, map/level) and redoing it, usually keeping original major aspects of it but essentially starting over. It's often done because the aspect is so unmanageable -- in either balance, design, or unoptimized/outdated code -- that it would be easier and simpler to destroy it and try again.

Just my two cents. I don't know where one would find a good cite for this. Ethanicus (talk) 17:07, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Degree of difficulty
There was some stuff deleted from Degree of difficulty before it was "merged" to here. I thought it was interesting, but maybe suffered from too many first-party sources. (Though the current content lacks even those...) I'll just re-post it here:

In video gaming, "difficulty" often does not refer to how difficult a game is in general, but rather to a setting of the game, often chosen by the player in the menu or at the beginning of the game. Sometimes, the difficulty is set for the entirety of the game, sometimes it can be changed during the game. In many video games, difficulty modes run on a general scale of: Many video games use varieties of these as game modes. For instance, the Call of Duty franchise ranks its games on a scale of "Recruit", "Regular", "Hardened", and "Veteran", to stay with the military setting of the games. Similar to this, the 2010 top-down zombie shooter Dead Nation's difficulty levels are called "Braindead", "Normal", "Grim", "Morbid" and "Undead". Some games reward or punish players for their choice of difficulty. For instance, 2007 indie platformer I Wanna Be the Guy was created to be extremely hard to finish, and to illustrate this it uses the difficulty scale "Medium", "Hard", "Very Hard", and "Impossible", with no "Easy" mode or equivalent. If the player chooses "Medium", they will have a pink ribbon in their hair throughout the entire game as a sort of punishment for this. In games from the Kingdom Hearts series, unlockable post-game levels and bosses are often unlocked differently per difficulty level, with the easier difficulties usually making it harder to unlock these and vice versa, and these games often contain certain content that can only be unlocked by beating the highest difficulty level, usually called "Proud Mode" or "Critical Mode".
 * Very easy (sometimes known as "beginner", "novice", "basic", etc.)
 * Easy
 * Normal (sometimes known as "medium", "intermediate", etc.)
 * Hard
 * Very hard (sometimes known as "hardcore", "nightmare", "extreme", "impossible", etc.)

SharkD  ☎  03:36, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Review for Tone
Adding a tag to review for tone; This page has a lot of familiar and interpretive tone (including but not limited to unneeded use of "basically" and "generally"), as well as some grammatical issues. It also seems to have some original research issues, despite what appear to be attempts to fix in the past Piogre (talk) 05:44, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

GAWP
Note GAWP could be mentioned here - Gaming With A Purpose - see my paper for some idea of this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378150137_Le_Grand_Jeu_and_the_potential_of_money_games_for_exploring_economic_possibilities 91.154.169.156 (talk) 17:24, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Game balance


text:
Talk:Ted Egan

Untitled
As Administrator of the Northern Territory (the highest constitutional role in that jurisdiction), Egan would be notable even if he'd never written a song in his life. I haven't had time to look into his musical career yet.--Robert Merkel 04:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC) Might need mention that his prefered instrument was that of an empty beer cartonSunko (talk) 22:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I have attempted to make a start on covering some other aspects of the subject but as this is my first attempt at doing such might have been a little wrong in lay out etc. sorry if I have made a mess but if not I will try to expand on some details at a later dateSunko (talk) 00:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Drinkers of the Northern Territory
Does anyone have publication details of "Drinkers of the Northern Territory" which enjoyed huge currency in Darwin in 1970 (I lost my copy in 1975). Doug butler (talk) 01:07, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Ted Egan


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Poland at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Poland competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Poland returned to the Summer Olympic Games after having boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics. 143 competitors, 111 men and 32 women, took part in 105 events in 19 sports.

Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.

Archery
Poland entered three women in its fourth appearance in Olympic archery.

 * Women

Athletics

 * Men
 * Track & road events
 * Field events
 * Women
 * Track & road events

 * Field events

Boxing

 * Men

Sprint

 * Men

 * Women

Cycling
Eleven male cyclists represented Poland in 1988.

Track

 * Pursuit

 * Points race

Diving

 * Men

Eventing
* Only three riders are eligible to qualify for the jumping final.
 * 1) – Indicates that points do not count in team total

Fencing
18 fencers, 13 men and 5 women, represented Poland in 1988.

Judo

 * Men

Modern pentathlon
Three male pentathletes represented Poland in 1988.

Rowing

 * Men

 * Women

Sailing

 * Men

Shooting

 * Men
 * Women

Swimming

 * Men

 * Women

Tennis

 * Men

Weightlifting

 * Men

Wrestling

 * Men's freestyle

 * Men's Greco-Roman

title: Poland at the 1988 Summer Olympics


text:
Mongolia at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Mongolia competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.

Archery
Women

Judo
Men

title: Mongolia at the 1988 Summer Olympics


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Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is a first-person shooter video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Monolith and Interplay Entertainment in 1998. The game features on-foot first-person shooter action, and combat with anime-style bipedal mechs. Shogo is a combat system that features the possibility of critical hits, whereby attacking an enemy will occasionally bring about a health bonus for the player. Players take on the role of Sanjuro Makabe, a Mobile Combat Armor (MCA) pilot and a commander in the United Corporate Authority (UCA) army, during a brutal war for the planet Cronus and its precious liquid reactant, kato. Players must locate and assassinate a rebel leader known only as Gabriel. At two pivotal points in the game, the player also has the opportunity to make a crucial decision, which can alter the game's ending.

Shogo was initially known as Riot: Mobile Armor, and it is heavily influenced by Japanese animation, particularly Patlabor and Appleseed, and the real robot mecha genre. It is the first game to use the LithTech game engine. The game was received positively by critics, and it shipped 100,000 units of the game to retailers in the game's debut week. It underperformed commercially, selling roughly 20,000 units in the United States during 1998's Christmas shopping season. Despite this, Shogo's critical success led to Monolith's development of a later game, The Operative: No One Lives Forever. Shogo was ported to the Amiga PowerPC platform in 2001 by Hyperion Entertainment. Hyperion also made the Macintosh port and the Linux port of Shogo.

Gameplay
Shogo features a mix of both standard on-foot first person shooter action, and combat with anime-style bipedal mechs. Unlike mech simulator games such as the MechWarrior series, the mechs in Shogo are controlled essentially the same as in first-person shooter games.

An inherent feature of the combat system in Shogo is the possibility of critical hits, whereby attacking an enemy will occasionally bring about a health bonus for the player while the enemy in question loses more health than usual from the weapon used. However, enemy characters are also capable of scoring critical hits on the player.

Plot
Players take the role of Sanjuro Makabe, a Mobile Combat Armor (MCA) pilot and a commander in the United Corporate Authority (UCA) army, during a brutal war for the planet Cronus and its precious liquid reactant, kato. Players must locate and assassinate a rebel leader known only as Gabriel. Prior to the game's first level, Sanjuro had lost his brother, Toshiro; his best friend, Baku; and his girlfriend, Kura, during the war. He is now driven by revenge and his romantic relationship with Kathryn, Kura's sister; in Sanjuro's words, "It's kinda complicated."

At two pivotal points in the game, the player also has the opportunity to make a crucial decision, which can alter the game's ending. While the first decision is almost purely a narrative decision, the second decision actually determines who the player will be facing the rest of the game and how the game will end.

Development and release
Shogo was originally known as Riot: Mobile Armor. It has heavy influences from Japanese animation, particularly Patlabor and Appleseed and the real robot mecha genre.

The game's lead designer Craig Hubbard expressed that Shogo "(although critically successful) fell embarrassingly short of original design goals", and "it is a grim reminder of the perils of wild optimism and unchecked ambition" exercised by the relatively small development team. According to Hubbard, "The whole project was characterized by challenges. We had issues with planning, prioritization, ambition, scope, staffing, inexperience (including my own), and just about everything that can go wrong on a project. I think what saved the game was that we realized about six months before our ship date that there was no way we could make the game great, so we just focused on making it fun." This involved the team putting "all [their] energy in making the weapons really fun to use."

A later game developed by Monolith ended up becoming The Operative: No One Lives Forever, released in 2000. During the development of that game, it took a long time for Monolith to find a publishing partner. According to Hubbard, during this time, the game that became No One Lives Forever "mutated constantly in order to please prospective producers and marketing departments. The game actually started off as a mission-based, anime-inspired, paramilitary action thriller intended as a spiritual sequel to Shogo and ended up as a 60s spy adventure in the tradition of Our Man Flint and countless other 60s spy movies and shows." (Parts of the initial "paramilitary action thriller" concept evolved into F.E.A.R., another Monolith game, released after the No One Lives Forever series, in 2005.)

Cancelled expansion packs
The expansion pack Shugotenshi would have given more insight into Kura's roles. It would have been six or eight levels of Kura fighting and coming to terms with the death of Hank. Some features of that game would have been various body armor for Kura and new enemies and weapons for her.

Legacy of the Fallen would have moved away from the fighting of Cronus and taken the player to the remote kato mining facility at Iota-33. It would just show how well organized the Fallen actually were and the weapon capabilities of an Ambed (Advanced Mechanical Biological Engineering Division) team. Legacy of the Fallen was to have an entirely new cast of characters, five new mecha to choose from, six new onfoot weapons, five new mecha weapons, several new enemy aliens, and levels that played out more like Half-Life's levels in structure.

Ports
Shogo was ported to the Amiga PowerPC platform in 2001 by Hyperion Entertainment. Hyperion also made the Macintosh port and the Linux port of Shogo. The game had not sold as well as had hoped, most notably on Linux, despite becoming a best seller on Tux Games. Hyperion has put some of the blame on its publisher Titan Computer and because Linux users were likely to dual boot with Windows. A version for BeOS was also in development in 1999 by Be Inc.

Reviews
The game received "favorable" reviews, two points shy of "universal acclaim", according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Next Generation said, "Obviously there are a lot of alternatives in this market, with Half-Life and SiN releasing at the same time, but Shogo has clear merits and stands up on its own. It's an excellent game and it will be a fine contender."

Sales
Monolith shipped 100,000 units of the game to retailers in the game's debut week, following its launch in early November 1998. However, the game underperformed commercially. It sold roughly 20,000 units in the United States during 1998's Christmas shopping season, a figure that Mark Asher of CNET Gamecenter called "disappointing". Combined with the failure of competitors SiN and Blood II: The Chosen, these numbers led him to speculate that the first-person shooter genre's market size was smaller than commonly believed, as the "only FPS game that has done really well [over the period] is Half-Life." Shogo's low sales resulted in the cancellation of its planned expansion pack.

Analyzing Shogo's performance in his 2003 book Games That Sell!, Mark H. Walker argued that it "never sold as well as it should have" because of Monolith's status as a small publisher. Shelf space for games was allotted based on a market development fund (MDF) system at the time: major retailers charged fees for advertising and endcap shelving, which publishers were required to pay before a game would be stocked. Because larger publishers could afford greater MDF spending than Monolith, Walker believed that Shogo "just couldn't get widespread distribution" in mainstream retail stores compared to its competitors.

title: Shogo: Mobile Armor Division


text:
New Zealand at the 1988 Summer Olympics

New Zealand competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. 83 competitors, 67 men and 16 women, took part in 58 events in 16 sports. In addition, New Zealand sent four women to compete in Taekwondo, which was one of the Olympic Games' demonstration sports. Sports administrator Bruce Ullrich was New Zealand's Chef de Mission, after previously having had that role for the 1982 and 1986 Commonwealth Games.

Competitors
The following table lists the number of New Zealand competitors participating at the Games according to gender and sport.

Archery
New Zealand's 1988 archery team included only one woman, veteran Ann Shurrock.

Cycling
Thirteen cyclists, twelve men and one woman, represented New Zealand in 1988.

Track

 * Men's 1 km time trial

 * Men's individual pursuit

 * Men's team pursuit

Fencing
One male fencer represented New Zealand in 1988.

Rhythmic

 * Women's individual all-around

Rowing

 * Men

 * Women

Sailing
New Zealand had thirteen competitors in Seoul; eleven men and two women.

Shooting

 * Men's 50 m rifle, prone

 * Men's 50 m pistol

 * Mixed skeet

title: New Zealand at the 1988 Summer Olympics


text:
Talk:Nevada Museum of Art

VfD
On April 12, 2005, this article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Votes for deletion/Nevada Museum of Art for a record of the discussion. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:52, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Nevada Museum of Art


text:
Tony Saunders

Anthony Scott Saunders (born April 29, 1974) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1997 to 1999. He was the first player selected by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 1997 MLB expansion draft. Listed at 6 ft and 205 lb during his career, he threw and batted left-handed. His career ended prematurely, due to injury.

Career
Saunders initially signed with the Florida Marlins' minor league system in 1992, a year before their expansion season. He required reconstructive surgery on his elbow in 1994.

Florida Marlins
Saunders joined the Marlins' opening day roster in 1997, and despite a knee injury which cost him seven weeks in the middle of the season finished with a 4–6 record in 22 starts, with his first three wins coming against the Atlanta Braves. The Marlins earned a wild card berth in the 1997 playoffs, and after being left off the Division Series roster, Saunders was placed on the LCS roster against the Braves. He started Game 3 of the series, which Liván Hernández won in relief of Saunders.

In the World Series, Saunders started Game 4 against the Cleveland Indians, but took the loss after giving up six earned runs in two innings pitched; nonetheless, he earned a World Series ring as the Marlins defeated Cleveland in seven games.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Saunders was one of many members of that team who left the Marlins following that season, joining the Rays for their inaugural season after being the first pick in the 1997 MLB Expansion Draft. Saunders was 9th in the American League in strikeouts, but also 1st in walks, as he struggled to a 6–15 record. Saunders' 1999 season was short-lived as he went 3–3 with a 6.43 ERA.

Injury
On May 26, 1999, while pitching against the Texas Rangers, Saunders suffered a significant arm injury while pitching to Juan González. As he delivered a 3–2 pitch to the Rangers slugger, his pitching arm suddenly snapped with enough force that the sound of it could be heard throughout the stadium. Saunders subsequently collapsed on the mound, screaming in pain and smacking his right arm on the ground. Within moments, team trainer Jamie Reed and teammates John Flaherty and Kevin Stocker rushed to his side. Saunders had to be carted off the field, as the pain was too much for him to walk. He was diagnosed with a humerus fracture and torn ligaments in his arm, an injury severe enough to end his season.

Saunders attempted to rehab the injury and make a comeback, and was sent on a rehabilitation assignment in August 2000. He successfully pitched in two games for the Single–A Charleston RiverDogs, then moved to the High–A St. Petersburg Devil Rays. On August 24, during his fifth rehab game, Saunders’s humerus snapped again. With the break occurring in almost the same spot as it had before, Saunders retired immediately afterward, aged 26. Saunders was the 2000 recipient of the Tony Conigliaro Award, which honors a major league player who "overcomes an obstacle and adversity".

After baseball, Saunders worked as a stockbroker. In 2005, Saunders announced a comeback, signing a minor league contract with the Baltimore Orioles, and making their spring training roster. He pitched one inning against the St. Louis Cardinals before he was reassigned to the minor leagues. He remained listed on the Bowie Baysox roster for the whole 2005 season, but never pitched in a game, although he did appear in nine games for the Mesa Miners of the Golden Baseball League.

title: Tony Saunders


text:
Ma Yuan (Han dynasty)

Ma Yuan (14 BC – 49 AD), courtesy name Wenyuan, also known by his official title Fubo Jiangjun (伏波将军; "General who Calms the Waves"), was a Chinese military general and politician of the Eastern Han dynasty. He played a prominent role in defeating the Trung sisters' rebellion.

His military and political achievements included helping Emperor Guangwu unite the empire and putting down rebellions of the Trung Sisters (in Jiaozhi, modern Vietnam) and the Wulin tribes (in modern eastern Guizhou and northwestern Hunan). He fell ill during an expedition to modern Hunan in 49 AD, and died soon afterwards. Prior to that, Ma Yuan contributed to Emperor Guangwu's defeat of the warlord Wei Xiao (隗囂), who controlled the modern eastern Gansu region.

Early life
Ma Yuan was a native of what is now Xingping, Shaanxi province, descended from the Warring States period general Zhao She from the State of Zhao.

Qiang campaign
He also subjugated the Qiang. In 34 A.D., the Xianlian Qiang and a number of other tribes, raided Chinese positions in Jincheng and Longxi commanderies and were defeated by Han armies. A few months later, Lai Xi was killed on campaign against Gongsun Shu, but his assistant, Ma Yuan, Grand Administrator of Lonxi commandery, continued operations against the Qiang. In 35, the Xianlian tribe were again defeated, first at Lintao in Longxi and then along the Xining river in Jincheng commandery. In the two separate campaigns, Ma Yuan captured more than ten thousand head of horses, cattle and sheep, together with considerable stores of grain. He was wounded in the leg during one of the final engagements, and he did not completely destroy the enemy, but he did drive them away from the valley lands of Jincheng, and he was rewarded with Imperial commendation and several thousand of the animals he had captured.

Though members of the Qiang had escaped across the borders, Ma Yuan's victories in 35 had broken the power of the Xianlian tribe and had made possible a restoration of Chinese positions on the old frontiers.

Trung sisters' rebellion
Ma was placed in command of the campaign to suppress the Trung sisters' rebellion. He was given the title Fubo Jiangjun (伏波將軍; General who Calms the Waves). Ma Yuan and his staff began mobilizing a Han army in southern China. It comprised about 10,000 troops. From Guangdong, Ma Yuan dispatched a fleet of supply ships along the coast. He led the Han army through difficult terrain towards the Red River Delta, where they arrived in early 43 AD. The rebellion was brought under control by April or May.

Death
In 49 while on expedition against the Wulin tribes (in modern eastern Guizhou and northwestern Hunan), Ma died from a plague which also killed a large number of his soldiers.

After his death, Ma's deputy Geng Shu (耿舒), who had disagreed with Ma's strategy, and Emperor Guangwu's son-in-law Liang Song (梁松), who had prior grudges against Ma, falsely accused Ma of many crimes. Two specific accusations that are known are that Ma, by the route he took against the Wulin tribes, was responsible for the plague, and that he had, while on campaigns, embezzled pearls and rhinoceros horns. The latter accusation was a misunderstanding in that one of Ma's favorite foods (which he considered capable of warding off plague) was Chinese pearl barley, produced in southern China and northern Vietnam, which Ma had transported in large quantities back to the capital Luoyang. Emperor Guangwu believed these false accusations and posthumously stripped Ma of his fief and title of marquess.

Ma's daughter became Empress Ma of the Han dynasty in 57, after which his reputation was restored.

Memorials
Ma Yuan is worshipped as a deity in numerous temples in China and Vietnam. The Fubo Temples of Zhuzhou County, Hunan and Heng County, Guangxi are among the best known. Mount Fubo and Fubo Park in Guilin, Guangxi are also named after him.

Vietnamese temples to the Han dynasty general also existed in Cổ Loa, Thanh Hóa Province, Phú Yên Province, and Bắc Ninh Province during the 19th and 20th centuries. A 1938 report from a village in Bắc Ninh described worship of Ma Yuan in addition to their worship of the Trưng sisters as their main guardian. In southern Vietnam, temples dedicated to Ma Yuan were largely located in Chinese temples or areas associated with Vietnamese communities of Chinese descent. The practice of worshipping Ma Yuan was believed to have been brought by Chinese immigrants, but historian Li Tana expressed the "strong possibility that the story was the other way around - that the Chinese adopted the Ma Yuan cult from the Vietnamese" because the worship of Ma Yuan as a local deity was already widespread in Vietnam and because Ma Yuan was called a bản thổ công ("local spirit").

Hanoi Bạch Mã temple
There is evidence that Ma Yuan was worshipped at the Bạch Mã temple in Hanoi in some capacity before the worship of Ma Yuan in Vietnam was largely eliminated after the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. A 1956 École française d'Extrême-Orient book by Vũ Đăng Minh and Nguyễn Phú Hợi described the existence of a statue to Ma Yuan in the temple, and the Office of Cultural Affairs of the Administration of Hanoi documented the existence of a statue to Ma Yuan in the temple as recently as 1984. By the early 21st century, Vietnamese people of Chinese origin living near the temple said that they had never heard of Ma Yuan being worshipped in the temple before.

The original deity worshipped at the temple could have been either Bạch Mã (the spirit-protector of Hanoi who had been merged with the deity Long Đỗ) or Ma Yuan. The original deity may have been Bạch Mã before later Chinese immigrants and travelers confused the name for Ma Yuan. Historian Olga Dror suggests two alternative possibilities: that Bạch Mã was originally worshipped by older Chinese and Kinh communities at the temple before newer waves of Chinese settlers from the 17th century onwards merged the two; or that Ma Yuan was originally worshipped at the temple before it fell into obscurity after the Third Era of Northern Domination to be replaced by the cult of Bạch Mã.

Legends
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang was inspired by a temple of Ma Yuan en route to overcoming the rebellion of Meng Huo and the Nanman.

Ma Yuan was the source of two Chinese chengyu idioms. One, "wrapping one's body with horse leather" (馬革裹屍), refers to being dedicated to one's responsibilities that one is willing to die on the battlefield and have his body be wrapped in horse leather; Ma had given this phrase while talking to a friend as to why he wished to continue in military service. The other, "drawing a tiger improperly results in a dog" (畫虎不成反類犬), refers to his admonition to his nephews to be careful in their conduct and not to try to imitate a famed heroic figure of the time, Du Bao (杜保) -- in that if one tried to imitate Du but was not as heroic as he was, one would end up becoming a frivolous hoodlum.

title: Ma Yuan (Han dynasty)


text:
Switzerland at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Switzerland competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. 99 competitors, 72 men and 27 women, took part in 83 events in 17 sports.

Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.

Archery
In Switzerland's fourth appearance in Olympic archery, two women competed.

Women's Individual Competition:
 * Vreny Burger — Preliminary Round (→ 39th place)
 * Nadia Gautschi — Preliminary Round (→ 45th place)

Athletics
Men's Shot Put
 * Werner Günthör
 * Qualifying Heat — 20.70m
 * Final — 21.99m (→ [[Image:Med 3.png]] Bronze Medal)

Men's Javelin Throw
 * Rudolf Steiner
 * Qualification — 76.02m (→ did not advance)

Men's Decathlon
 * Beat Gähwiler — 8114 points (→ 12th place)
 * 100 metres — 11.18s
 * Long Jump — 7.34m
 * Shot Put — 14.48m
 * High Jump — 1.94m
 * 400 metres — 49.02s
 * 110m Hurdles — 15.11s
 * Discus Throw — 42.46m
 * Pole Vault — 4.70m
 * Javelin Throw — 65.84m
 * 1.500 metres — 4:16.74s

 * Christian Gugler — 7502 points (→ 22nd place)
 * 100 metres — 11.49s
 * Long Jump — 7.02m
 * Shot Put — 13.80m
 * High Jump — 2.03m
 * 400 metres — 50.60s
 * 110m Hurdles — 15.22s
 * Discus Throw — 39.08m
 * Pole Vault — 4.70m
 * Javelin Throw — 60.92m
 * 1.500 metres — 4:21.93s

 * Severin Moser — 7502 points (→ 27th place)
 * 100 metres — 11.10s
 * Long Jump — 6.98m
 * Shot Put — 12.69m
 * High Jump — 1.85m
 * 400 metres — 48.63s
 * 110m Hurdles — 15.13s
 * Discus Throw — 38.04m
 * Pole Vault — 4.70m
 * Javelin Throw — 49.52m
 * 1.500 metres — 4:21.90s

Women's Marathon
 * Genoveva Eichenmann
 * Final — 2"44.37 (→ 47th place)

 * Rosmarie Müller
 * Final — 2"47.31 (→ 48th place)

Women's Javelin Throw
 * Denise Thiémard
 * Qualification — 61.74m
 * Final — 58.54m (→ 9th place)

Women's Heptathlon
 * Corinne Schneider
 * Final Result — 6157 points (→ 13th place)

Cycling
Nine cyclists, six men and three women, represented Switzerland in 1988.

 * Men's road race
 * Marcel Stäuble
 * Daniel Steiger
 * Felice Puttini

 * Men's 1 km time trial
 * Rocco Travella

 * Men's individual pursuit
 * Bruno Risi

 * Men's points race
 * Philippe Grivel

 * Women's road race
 * Edith Schönenberger — 2:00:52 (→ 18th place)
 * Barbara Ganz — 2:00:52 (→ 40th place)
 * Brigitte Gyr-Gschwend — 2:00:52 (→ 41st place)

Fencing
Seven fencers, five men and two women, represented Switzerland in 1988.

 * Men's épée
 * Patrice Gaille
 * Michel Poffet
 * André Kuhn

 * Men's team épée
 * Patrice Gaille, André Kuhn, Zsolt Madarasz, Gérald Pfefferle, Michel Poffet

 * Women's foil
 * Alessandra Mariéthoz
 * Andrea Piros

Modern pentathlon
Three male pentathletes represented Switzerland in 1988.

Men's Individual Competition:
 * Peter Steinmann — 5181pts (→ 9th place)
 * Andy Jung — 4951pts (→ 26th place)
 * Peter Burger — 4731pts (→ 43rd place)

Men's Team Competition:
 * Steinmann, Jung, and Burger — 14863pts (→ 7th place)

Swimming
Men's 50 m Freestyle
 * Dano Halsall
 * Heat — 22.61
 * Final — 22.83 (→ 4th place)

 * Stéfan Voléry
 * Heat — 23.04
 * Final — 22.84 (→ 5th place)

Men's 100 m Freestyle
 * Stéfan Voléry
 * Heat — 50.96
 * B-Final — 50.74 (→ 11th place)

 * Dano Halsall
 * Heat — 51.21 (→ did not advance, 23rd place)

Men's 200 m Freestyle
 * Alberto Bottini
 * Heat — 1:51.45 (→ did not advance, 20th place)

 * Stéfan Voléry
 * Heat — 1:52.94 (→ did not advance, 25th place)

Men's 400 m Freestyle
 * Alberto Bottini
 * Heat — 3:57.92 (→ did not advance, 25th place)

Men's 100 m Backstroke
 * Patrick Ferland
 * Heat — 58.17 (→ did not advance, 24th place)

Men's 200 m Backstroke
 * Patrick Ferland
 * Heat — 2:07.77 (→ did not advance, 29th place)

Men's 100 m Breaststroke
 * Pierre-Yves Eberle
 * Heat — 1:04.53 (→ did not advance, 21st place)

 * Étienne Dagon
 * Heat — 1:04.71 (→ did not advance, 27th place)

Men's 200 m Breaststroke
 * Étienne Dagon
 * Heat — 2:18.68
 * B-Final — 2:18.17 (→ 13th place)

 * Pierre-Yves Eberle
 * Heat — 2:20.65 (→ did not advance, 25th place)

Men's 100 m Butterfly
 * Théophile David
 * Heat — 56.77 (→ did not advance, 30th place)

Men's 200 m Butterfly
 * Théophile David
 * Heat — 2:05.58 (→ did not advance, 33rd place)

Men's 4 × 100 m Medley Relay
 * Patrick Ferland, Étienne Dagon, Dano Halsall, and Stéfan Voléry
 * Heat — 3:48.09 (→ did not advance, 9th place)

Women's 50 m Freestyle
 * Marie-Therese Armentero
 * Heat — 26.32
 * B-Final — 26.34 (→ 11th place)

Women's 100 m Freestyle
 * Marie-Therese Armentero
 * Heat — 57.35 (→ did not advance, 18th place)

Women's 100 m Backstroke
 * Eva Gysling
 * Heat — 1:05.07 (→ did not advance, 20th place)

Women's 200 m Backstroke
 * Eva Gysling
 * Heat — 2:24.61 (→ did not advance, 27th place)

Women's 100 m Breaststroke
 * Patricia Brülhart
 * Heat — 1:15.00 (→ did not advance, 30th place)

Women's 200 m Breaststroke
 * Patricia Brülhart
 * Heat — 2:42.82 (→ did not advance, 36th place)

Synchronized swimming
Three synchronized swimmers represented Switzerland in 1988.

 * Women's solo
 * Karin Singer
 * Edith Boss
 * Claudia Peczinka

 * Women's duet
 * Karin Singer
 * Edith Boss

title: Switzerland at the 1988 Summer Olympics


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nonastolezan

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete. – ABCD 17:59, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Nonastolezan
Non-Encyclopedic. This is an article about a nonexistent dialect of the English language. Zero google hits. Should be deleted.
 * Delete. "The made-up accentual dialect of English" says it all.  RickK 04:56, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. "The made-up accentual dialect of English" says it all. Master Thief Garrett 05:35, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, vanity. --Angr/comhrá 05:48, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, not notable, vanity language. Megan1967 07:49, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete; it's obviously made up. The only Google hit is from a Wikipedia mirror.   [  +t,  +c  ] 07:58, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, bizarre. Leithp 15:08, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.


text:
Luxembourg at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Luxembourg competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.

Archery
In its fourth appearance in Olympic archery, Luxembourg was represented by one woman.

Women's Individual Competition:

Athletics
Men's Marathon

Men's 20 km Walk

Women's Marathon

Swimming
Men's 50m Freestyle

Men's 100m Freestyle

Men's 200m Freestyle Women's 100m Breaststroke Women's 200m Breaststroke

title: Luxembourg at the 1988 Summer Olympics


text:
Oniwaban

The Oniwaban (御庭番) or niwaban (庭番) was a group of government-employed undercover agents (onmitsu), established by the 8th Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684–1751). They were under the direct command of the shōgun and were in charge of undercover intelligence operations. In actuality, their work consisted more often of reporting any news about the city of Edo to the shōgun or remaining incognito to inspect and report on the states of affairs in the countryside. Their activities were comparable to those of the inspectors and general inspectors of the shogunate albeit under the direct orders from the shōgun.

Most historical plays and novels of the era depicted them as spies or ninjas, a tradition that continues to this time in popular culture. Oniwaban were male servers in the inner palace of the shōgun during the Edo shogunate where they served under the command of junior elders. They were the guards of the Edo castle who kept the security and checked every single thing for the sake of the Shogun's safety. There were restrictions placed on them regarding their contact with outsiders. They could only marry within their profession.

Intelligence gathering was originally conducted by the Iga and Kōka mono guards, who arrived to Edo years after Tokugawa Ieyasu's escape through the Iga and Kōka regions in 1582, where they were placed under the command of Hattori Hanzo Masanari. However, as the Edo period progressed, the Iga and Kōka mono were tasked less with intelligence gathering, and more with guard work and criminal capture. When Yoshimune arrived from Kii, he had given his niwaban guards the same rank as the Iga mono guards. While relatively low in ranking, they could directly communicate with the shōgun. As such, some among their ranks were able to become close advisors or sent as diplomatic envoys.

The character "niwa" in their name, meaning garden or yard, refers to the rumor that they were quartered in the garden of Edo Castle.

History
During the Edo period, onmitsu (the term meaning a spy or an undercover detective) acted as secret agents in security and espionage functions, mainly intelligence and information gathering, sometimes with aid of kobushikata, small groups of lower-class agents posing as mobile manual laborers and working under Iga ninja supervisors. The oniwaban followed a strict set of regulations, which, in some cases, forbade them from socializing with the general public.

Tokugawa Yoshimune established the Oniwaban as an elite cadre of originally about 20 handpicked onmitsu, providing him with information about daimyō feudal lords and shogunate officials, while also protecting high-ranking officials of the government and acting as security guards in the Edo Castle. They were possibly quartered in the garden of the castle, hence the name.

In popular culture
The Oniwaban have been depicted as the main characters in the television series Ōedo Sōsamō (an undercover group of secret agents, including Isaka Jūzō, Jūmonji Koyata, Konami and others) and Shōgun no Onmitsu! Kage Jūhachi (the group of Kanō Ametarō: Miki, Otojirō and Inokichi, brought together by Tokugawa Munetada) and in the film Oniwaban (known in English as Demon Spies). They were also featured in the TV series Abarenbō Shōgun (being the spies and bodyguards for Yoshimune, including Akane, Ayame, Gorōta, Hayate, Osono, Jūmonji Hayato, Koyuki, Kaede, Nagisa, Ōtsuki Hanzō, Saizō, Satsuki and Sukehachi), as well as in the manga/anime series Ga-rei (Hattori Naizou, a member of the Judgement Day brigade, was an Oniwaban in life), Gin Tama (Ayame Sarutobi, Zenzo Hattori and Jiraia), Lone Wolf and Cub, Peace Maker (Shinsengumi member Yamazaki Ayumu), Samurai Champloo (Kariya Kagetoki), The Dagger of Kamui (the oniwaban monk Tenkai) and Yoshimune (the character Kunoichi, in love with the titular character). The first Shadow Warriors TV series has Oniwaban existing under Tokugawa Ietsuna, the fourth Tokugawa Shogun, but they are Kouga Ninja working against the Iga Ninja. The Oniwaban also appears in One Piece where they work for the Shogun Orochi.

Some depictions feature the oniwaban in a time period following end of the shogunate, like the manga/anime series Rurouni Kenshin (featuring the now-unemployed Oniwaban group including Aoshi Shinomori, Beshimi, Han'nya, Hyottoko, Okina, Shikijō and Makimachi Misao ) and Yokujō Climax (Hayato); others take place in an altogether fictional alternative worlds, even in the futuristic science fiction setting, such as in the case of the anime Chou SD Sengokuden Bushin Kirahagane (Jyuuha Gundam), the video game Red Earth (Oniwaban leader Kenji), and the miniatures game Infinity. In the anime series Sailor Moon the name of the villain of the week Oniwabandana (renamed Ninjana in the English version) is also an obvious pun on the oniwaban.

title: Oniwaban


text: Talk:Aboobaker Osman Mitha

title: Talk:Aboobaker Osman Mitha


text:
Proclamation of Neutrality

The Proclamation of Neutrality was a formal announcement issued by U.S. President George Washington on April 22, 1793, that declared the nation neutral in the conflict between revolutionary France and Great Britain. It threatened legal proceedings against any American providing assistance to any country at war.

Background
News that Revolutionary France had declared war on Great Britain in February 1793, and with this declaration that France, by the country's own volition, was now at war with all of Europe, did not reach America until the first half of April of that year. President Washington was at Mount Vernon attending the funeral of a nephew when he was given the news. He hurried back to Pennsylvania and summoned a cabinet meeting on April 19. It was unanimously agreed to issue a proclamation "forbidding citizens to take part in any hostilities in the seas, on behalf of or against any of the belligerent powers."

Washington's members agreed that neutrality was essential; the nation was too young and its military was too small to risk any sort of engagement with either France or Britain. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, in particular, saw in this question, the influence of the Federalists — his political rivals; yet he too agreed a proclamation was in order, though perhaps not an official one.

In a cabinet meeting of January 14, Thomas Jefferson argued that while neutrality was a sine qua non, there was no real need to make a Proclamation of Neutrality either immediately or even officially; perhaps there might be no need for an official declaration at all. The United States could declare its neutrality for a price, Jefferson intimated, "Why not stall and make countries bid for [American] neutrality?" In response, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton declared that American neutrality was not negotiable. Jefferson eventually resigned from his duty as Secretary of State in disagreement with the Proclamation of Neutrality.

Text of the proclamation
"Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia,  Great Britain, and the United Netherlands of the one part and  France on the other, and the duty and interest of the United States require that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers:

I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid toward those powers respectively and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition.

And I do hereby also make known that whosoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the law of nations by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers, or by carrying to any of them those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States against such punishment or forfeiture; and further, that I have given instructions to those officers to whom it belongs to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war, or any of them.

In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Philadelphia, the 22nd day of April, one thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the seventeenth."

Debates
The proclamation started a war of pamphlets between Alexander Hamilton (writing for the Federalists) and James Madison (writing for the Democratic-Republicans), commonly known as the Pacificus–Helvidius Debates. In his seven essays, written under the pen name "Pacificus", Hamilton dealt with objections to the proclamation. Among his arguments were:

 * The decree was, in fact, constitutional; for while Congress has the sole right to declare war, it is "the duty of the executive to preserve peace till the war is declared."
 * The Proclamation of Neutrality did not violate the United States' 1778 Treaty of defensive alliance with France, as the Democratic-Republicans were claiming. The treaty, Hamilton pointed out, was a defensive alliance and did not apply to offensive wars, "and it was France that had declared war upon other European powers", not the other way around.
 * By siding with France the United States would have left itself open to attacks within American borders by the governments of Great Britain and Spain stirring up "numerous Indian tribes" influenced by these two governments.

Thomas Jefferson (having read several of the "Pacificus" essays) encouraged James Madison to reply. Madison was initially hesitant. From his Virginia plantation, he offered Jefferson excuses as to why he could not write a reply, including that he didn't have the necessary books and papers to refute "Pacificus", that the summer heat was "oppressive", and that he had many house guests who were wearing out their welcome. Ultimately, Madison agreed to Jefferson's request, though afterward, he wrote to him, "I have forced myself in to the task of a reply. I can truly say I find it the most grating one I have ever experienced."

Writing under the name "Helvidius", Madison's five essays showed the animosity that had evolved with the two political factions. He attacked Federalists, and Hamilton in particular, and anyone who supported the Neutrality Proclamation as secret monarchists, declaring: "Several features with the signature of Pacificus were [as of] late published, which have been read with singular pleasure and applause by the foreigners and degenerate citizens among us, who hate our republican government and the French Revolution." Madison brought to light the strict constructionist's view of both the Constitution and the Proclamation, demanding that Congress, not the president, had full authority over all foreign affairs except those areas specified in the Constitution.

In popular culture
The debate among Jefferson/Madison and Hamilton regarding the Proclamation is portrayed in the song "Cabinet Battle #2" in the musical Hamilton.

title: Proclamation of Neutrality


text:
Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce/Aegean civilization

Aegean civilization
Apparently this article has been recently cleaned up. Nevertheless I find it unbearable to have a sentence stating that after the Dorians crushed the Aegeans their surviving "racial elements" helped their culture to "blossom again" three centuries later. I could improve that phrase myself but I feel that I don't know enough about it. Also, reading such overcome racial value theories, the value of the whole article seems questionable to me and should be reviewed. Added to User:Elric of Grans/Desk 85.182.12.32 15:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That the "Dorians" crushed the Mycenaeans is a theory that is rapidly falling out of favour among Greek Archaeologists. There is little to no evidence for the "Dorians" as an invading force, and they can only be speculated over. To see an article ascribing the fall of the Mycenaean civilisation to them as a certainty is quite worrying. Delphi22 (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC) delphi22 (Post Graduate student in Greek Archaeology

Elric's Notes / Current Status

 * Article is an absolute mess: it may look OK superficially, but the content is pretty awful. Who references the 1911 Britanica in this day and age?
 * Shall dig out my books and notes on the Aegean this weekend (I did some research into this area only a few years ago), to begin working out a plan on improving this.
 * UPDATE: books found, notes sorted, going through one section at a time. Little free time until late-March, so not likely to make any significant changes before then.

Old entry by Dmcdevit
Both the articles General nature of the evidence of Aegean civilization and General features of Aegean civilization, awkward 1911 EB copies, need to be merged here and redirected. This, also from EB, needs a thourough copyedit and wikification. Plus more references. --Dmcdevit 04:56, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Added to User:Apwoolrich/Desk. --Randy 23:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Added to User:Hunterd/Desk. Your one true god is David P. A. Hunter, esq. III Let us to it, Pell-Mell If not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell Hail OneCone International! 10:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


text:
Malta at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Malta competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.

Archery

 * Women's Individual Competition
 * Joanna Agius
 * Preliminary Round — did not advance (→ 58th place)

Judo

 * Men's Competition
 * Jason Trevisan

Sailing

 * Men's Board Sailing
 * Jean Paul Fleri Soler

Wrestling

 * Men's Competition
 * Paul Farrugia
 * Jesmond Giordemaina

title: Malta at the 1988 Summer Olympics


text:
User talk:Patrick T. Wynne

Hey Pat, Thanks for all of the typo/grammatical edits to Degrassi:_The_Next_Generation - I appreciate it! I've really got to start writing in OpenOffice.org and then pasting over... Glitch010101 04:57, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Tribe
Hi, good idea adding the spoiler warning on to The Tribe article. When I added all the information about the series' earlier this summer I don't think the show was airing anywhere in the English speaking world apart from some poorly edited repeats of series 5 in the UK. It never entred my head to come back and add the warning when I heard about all the new places in America which were to start showing the programme. Evil Eye 15:24, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

The Fall of the Mutants
Hey, thanks for cleaning up this article. When I write, I tend to just try to get everything out there as quickly as possible, which results in grammatical minefields like this one. In other words, the help is greatly appreciated. :) --InShaneee 17:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The N
I denied the protection request because right now, it seems to have calmed down. If it comes back, let me know. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 07:59, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

The West Wing & Fonzie syndrome
WRT Josiah Bartlet's inclusion on the list, the show was centered around Sam Seaborn in the first few episodes, but then the critical acclaim of Martin Sheen's Clintonesque performance raised his character's profile. Originally, he was not even slated to appear in half of the episodes. This is corroborated in Josiah Bartlet and The West Wing. I am going to re-add him per this information. Thanks. -Scm83x 06:40, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

William H. Keith, Jr.
Hello there. I've moved the article William H Keith Jr to William H. Keith, Jr. in accordance with Wikipedia naming guidelines. You may want to fix the redirects on your User:Patrick T. Wynne/BT_Novels page. --Landauer 15:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Patrick T. Wynne/BT Novels
Nice table, when are you planning on moving it to mainspace? I don't see there is any reason to delay. The timelines are also quite good.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Battletech wikiproject
I've noticed that you are active in the BattleTech articles here at Wikipedia. I've started a proposal for a Battletech Wikiproject. If you are interested please check out my proposal at the Battletech main article's talk page. Thanks alot. NeoFreak 05:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

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ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

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Proposed deletion of Kahndaq

The article Kahndaq has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern: "No indication this fictional location passes GNG/WP:NFICTION/WP:PLOT. Primary sources only, no real world significance, BEFORE fails to find anything that's not a plot summary."

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:53, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

title: User talk:Patrick T. Wynne


text: User talk:69.194.66.86

title: User talk:69.194.66.86


text:
Matthew Lesko

Matthew John Lesko (born May 11, 1943) is an American author known for his publications and infomercials on federal grant funding. He has written over twenty books instructing people how to get money from the United States government. Widely recognized for recording television commercials, infomercials, and interviews in colorful suits decorated with question marks, Lesko's signature fashion also extends into his daily attire and transportation, earning him the nickname Question Mark Guy.

Life and career
Lesko grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He is of Slovak descent. Lesko received his undergraduate degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee. Upon graduation he was commissioned as an officer in the Navy. In the Navy, he served as a navigator aboard the USS Oxford in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War. When Lesko returned he earned a master's degree in business administration (MBA) from American University in Washington, D.C.

In 1975, Lesko quit his job designing computerized information systems and co-founded Washington Researchers with his then-wife Leila K. Kight.

After a slow start, Lesko started sending out a professional newsletter telling people how to get free information and, by 1979, Washington Researchers employed 30 people in its Washington, D.C. office.

As side lines of business, Lesko began publishing directories for those who preferred to do their own research, such as the Researcher's Guide to Washington, and conducting seminars on the types of information then available from the government.

Lesko was able to interest publisher Viking in his idea to publish a directory of government information sources in 1980. That book, Getting Yours: The Complete Guide to Government Money, was published by Viking's Penguin subsidiary in 1982.

He claims to have researched government grants for over 25 years.

Lesko lives in Kensington, Maryland, with his third wife Wendy Schaetzel Lesko and their two sons, Max and Morgan.

Criticism
Critics claim that Lesko is misleading in his advertisements. A 2004 report by the New York State Consumer Protection Board claimed that most of the grants mentioned in Lesko's books were actually public assistance programs that many people were not eligible for, and that Lesko misrepresented examples of people who had taken advantage of government programs.

The New York Times criticized him for having implied a current association with the paper long after ending a 1992–1994 Times column.

In 2005, Lesko was named #99 in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America because, "He is a symbol for self-centered free-riders."

In an interview with The Washington Post in July 2007, Lesko admitted having assembled his books from government guides to grants and loans, quoting Lesko as saying of his first book "I plagiarized the whole thing" and "I didn't write a lick." Lesko later added "I get stuff for free and I sell it for as much as I can get." But in the last couple paragraphs of the same article, the author cites the names of multiple people who have actually used Lesko's books and teachings to get free money for several different things, everything from having their roof replaced on their home to "a local government program that gave them $12,000 to help pay for a gravel walkway for their cows."

In popular culture

 * In the season four episode of The Venture Bros. titled "The Better Man", Jefferson Twilight trains with cardboard cut-outs of various villains. When one of the cut-outs turns out to be Matthew Lesko, Jefferson explains that he mistook Lesko for a villain because "he was wearing punctuation on his suit", like that worn by Batman villain Riddler. The Alchemist contends that he "helps people get free money from the government" and therefore is a good guy.
 * Comedian Andy Dick parodied Lesko on his short-lived MTV sketch comedy program The Andy Dick Show.
 * Lesko appeared as himself in advertisements for the album Danger Doom.
 * Was on The Tom Green Show.

Books
Matthew Lesko's company, Information USA, has published several reference books including:
 * Information U.S. (1986, ISBN 0-14-046745-9)
 * Getting Yours (1987, ISBN 0-14-046760-2)
 * 1001 Free Goodies and Cheapies (1994, ISBN 1-878346-25-3)
 * Free College Money, Term Papers, and Sex Ed (1994, ISBN 1-878346-24-5)
 * Lesko's Info-Power (1994, ISBN 1-878346-17-2)
 * Free Health Care, Free Medical Information and Free Prescription Drugs (1995, ISBN 1-878346-34-2)
 * Gobs and Gobs of Free Stuff (1996, ISBN 1-878346-33-4)
 * Free Legal Help (1996, ISBN 1-878346-35-0)
 * Free Stuff for Busy Moms! (1999, ISBN 1-878346-49-0)
 * Free College and Training Money For Women (2000, ISBN 1-878346-52-0)
 * Free Money and Help for Women Entrepreneurs (2000, ISBN 1-878346-51-2)
 * Free Money For Your Retirement (2000, ISBN 1-878346-60-1)
 * Free Stuff for Women's Health, Fitness, and Nutrition (2000, ISBN 1-878346-50-4)
 * Free Money To Change Your Life (2001, ISBN 1-878346-40-7)
 * Free Money To Pay Your Bills (2003, ISBN 1-878346-65-2)
 * Free Money To Get A Better Home (2004, ISBN 1-878346-67-9)
 * Free Money To Quit Your Job (2004, ISBN 1-878346-68-7)
 * Free Money for Entrepreneurs (2005, ISBN 1-878346-69-5)
 * American Benefits for Seniors: Getting the Most Out of Your Retirement (2006, ISBN 1-878346-87-3)

All of his books claim to contain information about how to get free money from the United States government.

title: Matthew Lesko


text:
Twisted (software)

Twisted is an event-driven network programming framework written in Python and licensed under the MIT License.

Twisted projects variously support TCP, UDP, SSL/TLS, IP multicast, Unix domain sockets, many protocols (including HTTP, XMPP, NNTP, IMAP, SSH, IRC, FTP, and others), and much more. Twisted is based on the event-driven programming paradigm, which means that users of Twisted write short callbacks which are called by the framework.

Separation of protocols and transports
Twisted is designed for complete separation between logical protocols (usually relying on stream-based connection semantics, such as HTTP or POP3) and physical transport layers supporting such stream-based semantics (such as files, sockets or SSL libraries). Connection between a logical protocol and a transport layer happens at the last possible moment — just before information is passed into the logical protocol instance. The logical protocol is informed of the transport layer instance, and can use it to send messages back and to check for the peer's identity. Note that it is still possible, in protocol code, to deeply query the transport layer on transport issues (such as checking a client-side SSL certificate). Naturally, such protocol code will fail (raise an exception) if the transport layer does not support such semantics.

Deferreds
Central to the Twisted application model is the concept of a deferred (elsewhere called a future). A deferred is an instance of a class designed to receive and process a result which has not been computed yet, for example because it is based on data from a remote peer. Deferreds can be passed around, just like regular objects, but cannot be asked for their value. Each deferred supports a callback chain. When the deferred gets the value, it is passed to the functions on the callback chain, with the result of each callback becoming the input for the next. Deferreds make it possible to operate on the result of a function call before its value has become available.

For example, if a deferred returns a string from a remote peer containing an IP address in quad format, a callback can be attached to translate it into a 32-bit number. Any user of the deferred can now treat it as a deferred returning a 32-bit number. This, and the related ability to define "errbacks" (callbacks which are called as error handlers), allows code to specify in advance what to do when an asynchronous event occurs, without stopping to wait for the event. In non-event-driven systems, for example using threads, the operating system incurs premature and additional overhead organizing threads each time a blocking call is made.

Thread support
Twisted supports an abstraction over raw threads — using a thread as a deferred source. Thus, a deferred is returned immediately, which will receive a value when the thread finishes. Callbacks can be attached which will run in the main thread, thus alleviating the need for complex locking solutions. A prime example of such usage, which comes from Twisted's support libraries, is using this model to call into databases. The database call itself happens on a foreign thread, but the analysis of the result happens in the main thread.

Foreign loop support
Twisted can integrate with foreign event loops, such as those of GTK+, Qt and Cocoa (through PyObjC). This allows using Twisted as the network layer in graphical user interface (GUI) programs, using all of its libraries without adding a thread-per-socket overhead, as using Python's native library would. A full-fledged web server can be integrated in-process with a GUI program using this model, for example.

Applications using Twisted

 * The BuildBot continuous-integration system relies on Twisted for client/server communication.
 * ITA Software has developed an airline-reservation system for Air Canada that uses Twisted extensively.
 * SageMath, an open-source alternative to Mathematica, Maple, Magma, MATLAB, has a web-based interface, SageMath notebook, that runs on a Twisted server.
 * Twisted was used in the Omegle one-on-one chat service until it was replaced with gevent for performance reasons.
 * The Apple Calendar Server uses Twisted, as do some internal projects of NASA.
 * Conch, an implementation of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol
 * The original version of social networking and microblogging site Jaiku used Twisted.
 * Fluidinfo, an online cloud data-store, uses Twisted extensively for internal RPC (partly in combination with Thrift and AMQP), for its internal services, and for external APIs.
 * The file-hosting service Ubuntu One used Twisted.
 * Tor2web, an HTTP proxy for Tor Hidden Services (HS), uses Twisted.
 * GlobaLeaks, an open-source whistleblowing framework, uses Twisted.
 * Cloudkick, a cloud-server management web-application, used Twisted. It now has been rewritten using Node.js.
 * Twilio, a cloud telephony provider, uses Twisted.
 * Twitch, a video game broadcasting and chat community, uses Twisted.
 * Velocity Weather, a meteorological data processing and integration API is built on Twisted.
 * qwebirc, a web-based IRC client, uses Twisted.
 * Zenoss Core, a network management platform, uses Twisted for many internal and collection daemons.
 * Scrapy, a web crawler based on Twisted.
 * Listen to Wikipedia, a Wikipedia audio-visualizer, uses Twisted to broadcast real-time edit events to browsers.
 * Tahoe-LAFS, a distributed data store and distributed file system.
 * Deluge, a highly modular BitTorrent client, uses Twisted.
 * Magic Wormhole, a secure file transfer tool using PAKE.

title: Twisted (software)


text:
Jordan at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Jordan competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Seven competitors, five men and two women, took part in nine events in five sports.

Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.

Archery
Women

Fencing
Men

Table Tennis
Women

title: Jordan at the 1988 Summer Olympics


text: User talk:69.210.77.227

title: User talk:69.210.77.227


text:
Happy Valley Racecourse

The Happy Valley Racecourse is one of the two racecourses for horse racing and is a tourist attraction in Hong Kong. It is located in Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island, surrounded by Wong Nai Chung Road and Morrison Hill Road. The capacity of the venue is 55,000.

History
It was first built in 1845 to provide horse racing for the British people in Hong Kong. The area was previously swampland, but the only flat ground suitable for horse racing on Hong Kong Island. To make way for the racecourse, Hong Kong Government prohibited rice growing by villages in the surrounding area. The first race ran in December 1846. Over the years, horse racing became more and more popular among the Chinese residents.

On 26 February 1918, a temporary grandstand collapsed, knocking over hot food stalls that set bamboo matting ablaze. In the fire that ensued at least 590 people died.

Over the years, facilities have been added and extended, including extensively in 1995.

Facilities
The Happy Valley Racecourse is one of two racecourses in Hong Kong used by the Hong Kong Jockey Club for horse racing meets, the other being the Sha Tin Racecourse. Races in Happy Valley usually take place on Wednesday nights and are open to the public as well as members of the Club. The Happy Valley Racecourse and its seven-storey stands are capable of accommodating approximately 55,000 spectators.

The inner field of the course contains sports and leisure facilities such as football (a total of 11), hockey and rugby fields, managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Archive and Museum
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Archive and Museum (or Hong Kong Racing Museum) was set up in 1995 and opened on 18 October 1996. It is now located on the second floor of the Happy Valley Stand of the racecourse.

There are four galleries in the museum:
 * The Origin of Our Horses: Shows the migration route horses travelled in the early days from the northern part of China to Hong Kong.
 * Shaping Sha Tin: Exhibits the history of construction of Sha Tin Racecourse.
 * Understanding Horses: Exhibits the skeleton of the three-time Hong Kong Champion Silver Lining.
 * Thematic Exhibitions: The history of the Jockey Club is exhibited. Selected charitable organisations and community projects supported by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust are also displayed in this gallery.

There is also a cinema and a souvenir shop in the museum.

title: Happy Valley Racecourse


text:
Mickey Smith

Mickey Smith is a fictional character in the BBC One science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is portrayed by British actor Noel Clarke and was the show's first televised black companion. The character is introduced as the ordinary, working class boyfriend of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), a London shopgirl who becomes a travelling companion to the Ninth and Tenth incarnations of an alien Time Lord known as the Doctor. Mickey first appears in the first episode of the 2005 revival, "Rose". Initially someone who struggles in the face of danger, Mickey nevertheless acts as an Earth-based ally to the Doctor and Rose. In the second series he joins the pair as a second companion of the Doctor's, though he leaves during the 2006 series to pursue his own adventures. He returns to aid the Doctor and Rose in the series finale later that year, and then again for the 2008 finale "Journey's End," as well as fleetingly in 2010 in the Tenth Doctor send-off "The End of Time".

Executive producer Russell T Davies created the character alongside Rose's mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) in order to provide a home context for Rose. The character's dubious personality traits were made evident; both Davies and Clarke postulated that the character "deserved to lose his girlfriend". Though Clarke felt his character was initially "a clown" he enjoyed having the chance to mature Mickey into a more heroic character in his later appearances. Television commentators generally reacted positively to this character growth. In 2007 the entertainment and media news website Digital Spy highlighted him as a "Cult Spy Icon".

Television
Mickey Smith is first introduced in the series' 2005 reboot première episode, "Rose". When Mickey's girlfriend Rose (Billie Piper) begins investigating a mysterious alien called the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Mickey is captured by the alien Nestene Consciousness, from which a living plastic facsimile of him (an 'auton') is created. Mickey, terrified by the revelation that alien life exists, fails to impress the Doctor, who only invites Rose to be his travelling companion in time and space. In the year after Rose absconds with the Doctor, Mickey becomes the prime suspect for Rose's disappearance and becomes distressed as a result. However, he assists the pair in defeating the Slitheen, a family of extraterrestrial criminals; using his computer hacking skills, he commandeers a military harpoon missile which he targets at 10 Downing Street to kill the Slitheen. Mickey then declines an invitation from the Doctor to join him and Rose in the TARDIS. A much younger Mickey, played by Casey Dyer, appears briefly when Rose attempts to alter her childhood in "Father's Day". In "Boom Town", Mickey later meets up with the Doctor, Rose and new companion Captain Jack (John Barrowman) in Cardiff, where he helps them foil a Slitheen plot. In the series' finale episode "The Parting of the Ways", when Rose becomes stranded at home at the Powell Estate, Mickey uses a recovery truck to crack open the TARDIS's console, through which Rose is able to absorb the time vortex and save the universe from an invasion of the hateful mutant alien Daleks.

Having investigated a case of possible alien activity on Earth, Mickey alerts the Doctor and Rose to strange goings on at a school run by Headmaster Lucas Finch (Anthony Head) in "School Reunion". On meeting the Doctor's former companions, investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and robot dog K-9, Mickey begins to see himself negatively as the K-9 to Rose's Sarah Jane: "the tin dog". In the episode's conclusion, the Doctor finally takes Mickey aboard as his companion. He appears in the next three episodes "The Girl in the Fireplace" and two-parter "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", where the trio end up in a parallel world where vicious, emotionless Cybermen have just been invented. There, Mickey is mistaken for his parallel universe doppelgänger "Ricky Smith", the leader of a human resistance group called the Preachers. In the story's conclusion, following Ricky's death, Mickey decides to stay behind in the parallel world to look after the parallel version of his grandmother (Mona Hammond) and fight the Cybermen; Mickey's grandmother is dead in his universe. However, Mickey makes a surprise reappearance in finale episodes "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", wherein like the Cybermen, he and fellow Preacher Jake Simmonds (Andrew Hayden-Smith) are able to cross the Void into our world. There, they help the Doctor repel simultaneous Dalek and Cybermen invasions. In the episode's conclusion Mickey returns to the parallel world, this time with Rose who is now also trapped there.

Mickey returns again in the series four finale episode "Journey's End" (2008), along with Jackie. Alongside many other recurring characters, they have come to help the Doctor defeat Davros (Julian Bleach), the creator of the Daleks. Mickey and Jackie save Sarah Jane from a Dalek attack, and the trio then surrenders to other Daleks in order to be taken to the Dalek headquarters, the spaceship Crucible. There they join forces with Captain Jack. After Donna (Catherine Tate) defeats Davros, Mickey is one of several former companions who pilot the TARDIS. In the episode's conclusion, Mickey declines to return to the parallel universe because, having both broken up with Rose and his "parallel" grandmother having been passed away, he can find no reason to go back - in fact, he tells the Doctor, "I'm not stupid, I can work out what happens next," obviously realizing that Rose will wind up with the metacrisis Doctor. Leaving the TARDIS, he follows after Jack and the Doctor's former companion, UNIT officer Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman). Mickey next makes a brief final appearance in the Tenth Doctor's final episode "The End of Time" (2010), when the dying Tenth Doctor visits all his companions and saves the now-married Mickey and Martha, "freelance alien hunters", from a Sontaran sniper.

Online media
Mickey appeared extensively in electronic literature and tie-in videos hosted by the BBC website. These websites are "in-universe", part of an alternate reality game set within the show. Concurrent with the 2005 series, Mickey ran the conspiracy theorist website "Who is Doctor Who?" (first featured in "Rose"). In the 2006 series, however, the website became "Defending the Earth". Both featured videos of Clarke as Mickey, informing the viewer of facts about the series, or introducing "missions" which would be played out in online Macromedia/Adobe Flash games. Several of Mickey's blog entries tied into the overarching Torchwood story arc, depicting interceptions by the Torchwood Institute. Games include tie-ins to the plots of 2006 series episodes, such as "Tooth and Claw" and "Fear Her".

Clarke also starred as Mickey Smith and Ricky Smith in several online 'Tardisodes'; these were 60-second webisodes and mobisodes (available online and via mobile phone download), which only aired in 2006. For the "School Reunion" TARDISODE, Mickey is researching UFO sightings online when he is blocked by a notice referring to Torchwood, prompting him to call Rose to investigate. In the TARDISODE prequel to "Rise of the Cybermen", Ricky Smith is seen viewing a message sent to all the Preachers, again on his laptop.

Literature
Mickey appears in one New Series Adventures novel alongside the Doctor and Rose, Winner Takes All (2005), and two Tenth Doctor novels, The Stone Rose and The Feast of the Drowned. These novels are set before Mickey joins the Doctor and Rose as traveling companion in the episode "School Reunion". Mickey features as the centric character in the short story "Taking Mickey" from the Doctor Who Files series of hardbacks from BBC Children's Books. In Gareth Roberts' Doctor Who Magazine comic book story "The Lodger", the Tenth Doctor is forced to cohabit with Mickey; this story was later adapted into an Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) episode of the same name, with Mickey's role supplanted by that of Craig Owens (James Corden). In the comic book story "The Green-Eyed Monster", Rose becomes jealous when Mickey appears to suddenly have several Amazonian girlfriends. It is later revealed that these were actors hired by the Doctor in his bid to defeat a creature that feeds on jealousy which had possessed Rose. In the ongoing Ninth Doctor comic series, an unconventional storyline sees Mickey Smith, from a time after he has witnessed the Tenth Doctor depart for his regeneration, forced to deal with mysterious events in San Francisco with the aid of the Ninth Doctor. During this storyline, Mickey takes care to prevent himself being seen by Rose or the Ninth Doctor witnessing his wife Martha, with it being implied that this sight of what Mickey would become influenced the Tenth Doctor's higher opinion of Mickey after his regeneration.

Development

In accepting the role Noel Clarke comments that he "had to have a lot of faith" in executive producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner because he felt the series was not of high quality at the time of its previous cancellation. Mickey was created alongside Rose's mother Jackie in order to explore the question of who is left behind after a companion leaves earth to travel with the Doctor. Russell T Davies created the two characters and returned frequently to them in order to make Rose "real" and "give her a life". Whilst Billie Piper, who played Rose, felt that the character of Rose was "ruthless" in abandoning elements from her home life, Clarke commented that he felt anybody would do the same, stating "who can blame her really?" He felt that Rose's relationship with Mickey consisted of her "sitting on the couch, watching him watch football". Retrospectively viewing the episode "Rose" in 2009, Davies identifies Mickey's characterisation as "naturally selfish"—in the same vein he identifies many of his characters—drawing into question his "mysterious emails" and the fact he "abandons Rose for the football down the pub". He suggests that the character "deserved to lose his girlfriend, right from the start". Clarke feels the character of Mickey wasn't widely liked in the first series, admitting that he also saw the part as a "kids’ TV" role.

Following the production of series one, Davies took Clarke and Coduri out for dinner to discuss their contracts for the second series. Davies reveals that Clarke was excited about Mickey's development in the second series, particularly having the chance to carry a large gun and be an action hero. Clarke noted that he was "amazed" by the scripts for the second series, as he felt Mickey had at times been written as a "buffoon". He felt that the character had gotten "progressively braver" throughout the series and that as an actor he found it fulfilling that people had gone from disliking the character to saying "how they love this guy now". Mickey's character arc sees him join the Doctor and Rose as a companion, becoming in turn the show's first ethnic minority companion. Billie Piper explained that this upsets Rose initially because she "likes to keep her life separate" and "wants The Doctor to herself because she's selfish like that". Tennant stated that through his actions, Mickey "earns his spot on board the TARDIS". Clarke stated that he didn't want to focus on his status as the show's first ethnic minority companion, stating "the fact that I happen to be a black actor is beside the point, I'm an actor first". However, he felt that it provided a positive effect in that young fans of ethnic origin would no longer have to be a monster or alien when role-playing characters from the series.

"Rise of the Cybermen" and its online Tardisode prequel, set in a parallel universe, featured Mickey's doppelgänger, Ricky Smith. Clarke stated that he enjoyed the chance to play a "macho, gruff version of the character" and also to play two different characters. However, he explained that the scenes which featured both Mickey and Ricky were difficult to film as they involved green screen work, and the necessity of Clarke filming each character's part separately. A deleted scene from "The Age of Steel", suggests that Ricky was originally intended to be in a gay relationship with his co-fighter Jake. The scene, included in the Series Two DVD release, shows Jake telling Mickey that he can't replace Ricky, as he will "never have another boyfriend like him." Following Mickey's appearance in "Journey's End" the production team had intended for Clarke to join spin-off show Torchwood for its third series in 2009, but his career led him elsewhere. Reflecting on his time on Doctor Who in 2010 Clarke stated that he was happy with his character's development during the series. He comments that over the course of his appearances, Mickey develops from "a clown" into "someone with a bit more edge and a bit more stubble."

Reception
Charles McGrath of The New York Times described Mickey in "Rose" as Rose's "well-meaning but dopey boyfriend". In their review of the episodes "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" Graeme Burk and Robert Smith praised the character's development stating that "by the time he faces down a Slitheen in his apartment, armed only with a baseball bat... you want him to become a regular companion." The authors felt that the character had "grown magnificently" by the time of his temporary departure in the second series, remarking favourably on his "zero to hero" arc in light of his status as the first ethnic minority companion in the televised series. By "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" they contend that the character is "at last... flirtatious, smart and dashing".

IGN's Ahsan Haque praised the addition of Mickey as a companion in "The Girl in the Fireplace", writing that he "adds a new sense of discovery to the show, as the audience can easily relate to his sense of awe and his infectious excitement about being onboard a spaceship". Haque was also positive about Mickey's development in "Rise of the Cybermen" when he finds his parallel universe counterpart and his grandmother alive in the parallel universe, as Haque felt that previously "he's always been treated as a tossed-aside comic relief character that has no bearing on the story". In a review for the follow-up, "The Age of Steel", Haque believed the episode was "worth watching" to see Mickey "finally [step] up and finds a purpose" and become a hero. Ben Rawson-Jones of Digital Spy highlighted Mickey as a "Cult Spy Icon", praising his development into a hero.

In 2015 Michael Hogan of The Daily Telegraph criticised the general portrayal of male companion figures in Doctor Who. He described Mickey, alongside 2010-2012 character Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) and 2014 character Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) as all "basically soppy, sappy, slightly annoying plus-ones to far superior females".

title: Mickey Smith


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Talk:Matthew Lesko

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