text:
Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Open tasks/Archive 2

All of the requests for specific article enhancements in this archive have either been filled or added to the template page itself. -- Beland 00:44, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Add "make a suggestion" link
Add a line like
 * MediaWiki_talk:Opentask suggest a task for inclusion.

so that people can get straight to this talk page from msg:Opentask.

Queue
Moved from Main Page

 * Are you familiar with Egyptian mythology? If so, help us by writing about it.
 * Neuromodulators needs to be filled in also.
 * There is a "TO DO" in the 13th section of combinatory logic.

width
is there a reason we are making these lists so short? Seems like we have room to add one or two more article titles to each list. Kingturtle 21:01, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * It depends on what resolution screen you have. --Jiang

(what are you doing? those done need merging; if they do, then put them on the same page and add a divider; dont rm undone entries for no good reason)

Atop Republic is says needs merging. That doesn't tell the user anything, unless they are in the know. U.S.-North Korea relations and Peace movement don't even say needs merging at the top. How are users supposed to know? I couldn't tell they were two articles spliced into one. Anyway, that is not the protocol I am used to here. The articles I put up there DO need merging. I took them right off the Duplicate articles page...but I didn't check them closely.

We need to create a MediaWiki that says

 * :This article should be merged with ...

I'll give it a shot. Kingturtle 01:14, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * There's a divisor in the middle of the page. We don't add divisors unless they're meant for disambiguating. Gungfu redirects to Kung Fu. I don't see how they could be merged. Military of India and Indian Army should not be merged. India has more branches in the armed forces than the army. Peer-to-peer and file sharing are crosslinked, so I don't see the need there either. None of these say needs merging, which of course, they don't. Wikipedia:Duplicate articles is largely outdated. --Jiang 19:49, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deadend pages too short
All/most of the pages on that list seem to have been handled. Can the automagic 'pages without wikilinks' script be reactivated, or at least run again? The open tasks:wikification bit is a little useless without it. -- Kimiko 18:47, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

suggestions
Let's add Wang Youcai — it's hot topic. Updating Politics of China would be nice too.

 * What about chinese politics needs updating? --Jiang 18:55, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How about having a new section for stubs and removing the "complete" after "merge"? --Jiang 18:55, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Please add Panay incident to the pages that need to be wikified. Perl 01:23, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Reorg
I'm thinking of remvoing the requested articles section since there's already one in recent changes. I'll then add stubs and cpyedit. Comments?

 * wikify
 * copyedit
 * update
 * complete
 * merge

--Jiang 19:25, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I am against removing it. I have had recent experience that proves it is being used.  It is often a welcome entry for newcomers who may not have discovered "Recent changes".  I see no problem in adding to it with new useful entries, however. - Texture 19:29, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean by "new useful entries"? We can keep it, but I'm concerned about space. How many lines are we allowed? --Jiang 19:46, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So does the opentask message scare new users?
A couple of people have commented above that this message will scare new users, but the worries have been swatted away. I also have my concerns. Does anyone have evidence either way? E.g. new users actually doing the tasks... or never contributing again having seen the task list set for them? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:21, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I've never seen a user reply to it on their talk page. It's way enough to use this on the Community Portal; new users who become regulars will find it. — Timwi 16:29, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * As a personal anecdote, I got this message when I first made an account in December 2003. I saw it for what it was, a suggestion. The only misunderstanding I had when I saw it was that it made me think Angela was an automated greeting script. -- Cyrius 00:50, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I guess the messages should be a bit more personalised. One aim of the new user log is to get more information on people so the welcome messages can be a bit more customised, but for users who haven't filled that in, I still think the generic Opentask message is a good idea. Automated greeting script 21:25, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

 * How are people supposed to let whoever updates this know when they are done? Thanks, Mark Richards 21:23, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Post here! Maybe we should add a link. I also think this should be unprotected because I would rather be editing some other page than this one. --Jiang 01:24, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I object to it being unprotected as I explained above, but I don't use this in my messages very much anymore so I won't protect it myself, but if anyone else wants to, I would support that. Angela 22:40, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

We should also have a queue of articles to add for each category so updates can be done more quickly. --Jiang

Deadend pages revisited
(Put this at the bottom so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, above...) I completely agree with the call for the update of the Deadend pages. We really need to find a way to ensure that it is kept updated more. Our wonderful contributers have managed to plow through the short list in its entirety within 3 weeks.

Furthermore, if we are to use Opentask properly, we need to ensure that all those meta pages which deal with the four categories in Opentask are continually updated. I realize that it puts a strain on the server, but surely we can run these once a week at non-peak times? --Wolf530 04:28, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

 * These might be back on next week when the Geoffrin server is back next week. Angela. 03:12, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Backlog
Ok... finally get to edit this page now that I'm an admin. Whee! :) Ok. Ok. Calming down. Heh. Is there any backlog list to fill in as tasks are completed (and removed from the message)? Or is it just by ad hocery? - UtherSRG 17:20, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * There's no queue as such, but there are plenty of replacements to choose from at Requests for page expansion, As of, Duplicate articles, Requested articles and cleanup. Angela. 20:10, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Yup... knew of all of them. Wasn't sure if there was any organized thought to what to use for replacements. Ok. I'll do as I will. *grins* - UtherSRG 19:00, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article of the Week
Can we add this to the opentask box in some way? I am not sure where it would fit... Anyone have any ideas?--Oldak Quill 09:56, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Shall we 'revive' this idea ? Where should we put it ? -- PFHLai 20:07, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

"Opentask" is FROZEN !

 * I think Article of the Week  deserves its own line.
 * But first, we need to get this Opentask Template fixed up before anything is done here. It has been frozen for a week now.  Maybe we need to delete this 'Template' and start from scratch in order to get Opentask to run properly ....
 * -- PFHLai 04:29, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)

It can't be deleted using the normal method. If it's going to take some time before this gets fixed, I think we should go ahead and make Template:Opentask-temp. --Jiang 00:51, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Jiang, just an FYI in case you are going ahead with Template:Opentask-temp: I've rewritten Lector, so no need to put that on the 'Wikify' line as you have previously tried; but Leroy Chiao still needs to be wikified. -- PFHLai 02:41, 2004 Jun 17 (UTC)

 * I changed Canarian Wrestling to its proper spelling of Canadian Wrestling. WayneRay 13:15, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)WayneRay

Can't edit Template:Opentask
I've tried at least a dozen times today to edit Template:Opentask. Everytime, the page won't load after I his "save page" and after a few minutes has passed, I get ''Database error: A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software...from within function "Article::updateArticle". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; Try restarting transaction".'' I want to chage the "wikify" line to: Wikify: Antioch, Pisidia, Euthymia, Candaba, Pampanga, Lector, Leroy_Chiao, Deadend Pages Anyone else getting this problem? --Jiang 23:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * There seem to be more such problems recently - see the above section Delete problem and even more similar Trouble editing template namespace. andy 11:36, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * And another article which cannot be edited anymore: Flat-clawed Hermit Crab. There seem to be serious database problems developing. andy 14:50, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * The Template:Opentask page is still un-edit-able. I have been trying to replace the 'blue' requests with new 'red' ones the past few days, and I keep getting the same error msg.  Rather frustrating.... :-( -- PFHLai 20:32, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

 * I tried to fix this once, and only succeeded in crashing the whole site. Apparently it's impossible to fix while there's a backup running, which is a fair proportion of the time. -- Tim Starling 04:05, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

 * Thank you for trying, Mr. Starling. I hope you can catch the backup taking a break soon. :-) Good Luck. -- PFHLai 06:07, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

After almost a week, Template:Opentask is still frozen. Sigh .... Is it possible to start a new Template, delete the old template, then rename/move the new template to take up the void ? Will this solve our problem ? I ain't an Admin. I can't try it out it myself. I don't even know if this is a good idea or not, so I shouldn't try it, I suppose ..... -- PFHLai 05:22, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)

 * Make that almost three weeks.  I did a workaround on Community portal by just copying the entire template onto the page.  Poccil ([[User Talk:Poccil|Talk)]] 06:54, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

'''It's working now ! :-) ''' Thank you, Mr. Starling, I think you fixed it. Thank you !  -- PFHLai 04:03, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

meenas
I've copyedited meenas to the best of my abilities... I'm still new, so I'm not sure if it's okay for me to edit the opentask page to take it off. Or even if it's been fixed enough to take off yet! That article was quite a bear. Miss Puffskein 21:30, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Meenas was listed on the Template:Opentask a few hours ago. You are welcome to edit the 'template:opentask' and replace 'meenas'.   But I'd let it sit there for a while longer in case someone else wants a stab at editing it. -- PFHLai 22:47, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)

New line: Categorization... What shall we do with it ?
Hmmm... we have a new line here on Template:Opentask: Categorization. Cool. What shall we do with it ? First, let me 'populate' the line .... -- PFHLai 13:11, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)

Definition of "Copyedit"
What _is_ Wikipedia's definition of copyediting? I thought copyediting was spelling, grammar, and continuity editing. However, there's a bunch of pages in the "copyedit" category that have nothing wrong with them aside from lacking information. StellarFury 21:04, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Poor formating, too ? -- PFHLai 21:50, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)
 * That is true, but, if that's it, then we shouldn't have people putting pages that simply lack content in the copyedit section. Or we should have notes about what needs to be done on the page. StellarFury 21:51, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Pages with multiple problems won't be listed on multiple lines at the same time. Sometimes, a problematic page gets bounced around the Opentask template depending what problem still needs attention .... at least this is how I deal with these things.  Hope this helps... -- PFHLai 03:24, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)
 * BTW, User:StellarFury, please feel free to post articles that need copyediting onto the template. :-) -- PFHLai 03:57, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

Article of the Week (again) --> Template:Opentask getting too large ?
No offense to this noble project, but I think it should be removed from the template. The template is getting to be too long, and the Article of the Week currently has its very own section on the Community Portal, so putting a link here as well is overkill. --Michael Snow 22:26, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, I also think the Opentask template is getting too large. However, I'd like to point out that this template is not only found on the Community Portal.  It's also on the Userpage of many Wikipedians (try "what links here".)  It's sometimes used in the greetings to newbies as well.  AOTW is not right next to the template for the overkill in these cases.
 * I think AOTW can stay. However, I would not mind taking off
 * - "Categorization" : new, i don't quite know what to do with it,
 * - "Update" : ignored by wikipedians, and
 * - "Merge" : a link to Duplicate_articles would be sufficient, as jobs posted here don't get done more often.
 * Just my 2 cents... -- PFHLai 02:38, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)

 * Now we have yet another line added: "Substubs" ! -- PFHLai 02:32, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

I agree that categorization can go, but I think update and merge should stay since those are urgent tasks. We can also remove the article captions. The wikiproject is a good thing, but what it does is neither urgent nor vital. --Jiang 04:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Okay, categorization is now gone, since nobody seems to have issues with that. I also removed substubs, because quite a few people object to using the concept of substubs at all. Jiang, did you mean image captions? I suppose we could live without it, but it's sort of nice to work in something image-related with all the text stuff. And on the Article of the Week project, I know it's not overkill when the template is used elsewhere, but I still would prefer to remove it. --Michael Snow 16:39, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Hmmm... I agree with the cuts. I just didn't expect to see changes so quickly .... I posted a question about the recent "hypertrophy" of this template at the VillagePump just last night .... -- PFHLai 17:25, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

 * I'd like to see WikiProject Writing Captions stay since it's a relatively simple way to contribute: pick an article and write good captions for the images in just a few minutes. Perhaps the approach can draw more contributors to Wikipedia.  (Perhaps the "ImageCaptions" link should go to Captions - thoughts?) -- ke4roh 17:00, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

 * I support "Captions" to stay. Articles listed there are actually edited (according to "Related changes". Don't know if the captions were being edited, though.) -- PFHLai 17:29, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

 * Yes, I meant image captions...
 * We could add the article of the week link at recent changes to compensate for removing it here. I would like the substubs to stay. The objection is over the terminology, not listing those articles here. We could call it stub line no. 2 if there's really a problem--Jiang 04:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but do we want stub line no. 2? The point is that this template is too big, particularly in the context of the layout on the Community Portal. It's not a place for everyone to cram in their pet project. --Michael Snow 03:25, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * substubs need to be displayed somehow. the objection, if any, is over terminology. --Jiang 04:47, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Do the Stubs and SubStubs lines have an overlap in function on this Opentask template ? It's a little redundant to have both lines there, right next to each other.  We can certainly have SubStubs included on the Stubs line. We have been listing Substubs there long before the category of Substubs was created. -- PFHLai 08:14, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)

 * The objection here is to having an additional line for them. As PFHLai says, it's quite simple to include "substubs" in the Stubs line, and this has been going on well before any attempts to group substubs separately. --Michael Snow 16:56, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't mind having two lines, as long as there are clear rules what to do with the listed items -- they are the same to me. However, JanSport is now a 'substub' instead of a 'stub', while Hypertime and Hill Hook are now 'stubs' and not 'substubs'.  They got changed while listed on the template.  Am I supposed to move these items up and down the Template:Opentask ???  I am not moving them now, unless any of them gets expanded, in which case I'll remove them from the template. -- PFHLai 21:32, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)

I think the "update" and "merge" lines could be replaced with links to as of and duplicate articles. The stubs line could merge with the substubs one since there is a link to the substubs category anyway where they can all be found. Angela. 21:18, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

 * Horrendously outdated articles don't necessary link to "As of". Judging from what I've seen, they usually don't at all.

 * The requests can go since theyre already linked at RC, while everything else is not... --Jiang 00:39, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Is the Template:Opentask still being used as greetings ? I thought the red links are meant as 'easy tasks' for newbies. .... RC = Recent Changes ?  I never understood why a yet-to-be-created page is listed there. Who updates that list of red links there ? Any way to hook up both lists ? -- PFHLai 04:14, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

 * We could start Template:article requests and link it at both...but then are we allowed to link a template within a template? ...i dont think so. You can update RC at Recentchanges. --Jiang 04:31, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, Jiang, I'll move unattended red links there. -- PFHLai 12:34, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)

Appearance in text browser
I made a few changes yesterday to improve the appearance of this template in a text browser (actually, I was using a graphical browser with images disabled). PFHLai asked the following question on my talk page, and I'll reply below. —AlanBarrett 10:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Hello, AlanBarrett, I don't understand the codes you've added to the Template:Opentask, but I like the way the frame keeps it neat and tidy. Thank you.  I've widened it a little bit (I think that all I've done) so that the lines don't get truncated.  May I ask how you decide on the dimensions ?  I hope the template is not too wide now. -- PFHLai 21:59, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

Short answer: I did not decide on the 25px overlap between the left column (containing the icon) and the right column (containg the text). All I did was add compensating 25px spaces or anti-margins to balance that overlap.

Long answer: Previously, the open tasks section on the Community Portal looked very ugly without images. There was a wide column that was almost blank except for the text "Image:Evolution-tasks.png", and narrow column (with four or five words per line) containing all the tasks. To see what I mean, try loading the version from 19:08 27 Aug 2004 in a browser window with images disabled, and re-size the window to approximate the width that is available on the Community Portal page. (You need a browser that displays alt text when images are disabled.

Just adding empty alt text to the image wasn't sufficient, because of the way CSS positioning attributes are used to make the two columns overlap. The left column is the image, with a width of 48 pixels, or the alt text, with a width of zero. The right column has all the words, but the words were positioned 25 pixels to the left of where they would naturally have appeared if the "left:-25px" CSS code had not been present. Moving the text left by 25px to overlap the 48px image seems fine in a graphical browser (it's almost as if the first column containing the image was narrowed to only 23px instead of 48px). However, when images are disabled and the left hand column has a zero width (due to the alt=""), there is no space to absorb the overlap.

The workaround I chose was to add an invisible spacer with a width of 25px and a height of zero. This makes no difference when images are displayed (a 48px-wide image just above a 25px-wide ivisible spacer behaves just like the image alone. But with images disabled, it makes a big difference: a 25px-wide spacer just below null alt text creates a left-hand column that is 25px wide, and this provides enough space to accommodate the way the right hand column overlaps the left hand column by 25px.  The result is in the version of 18:47 28 Aug 2004.

After I had done that, I realised that the way the right hand column was moved led to the appearance of a 25px-wide margin at the right hand side. My next edit was to remove that (by adding a -25px right margin), and the result is in the version of 19:39 28 Aug 2004.

By the way, it's very easy with Opera to see how all the spacing works. Just select "Debug with outline" from the drop-down stylesheet menu (which is typically just to the left of the URL box), and you will get a black outline around the table, and a red outline around the right hand column. —AlanBarrett 10:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the detailed explanation. -- PFHLai 17:23, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC)

Categorization
So I made the link for "parenting" go to Category:Orphaned categories, which is for parenting of categories. I added text at the top of that page to point to the homepage for categorization of articles.

My reasoning is this: Thanks to some automation, we recently expanded the list of orphaned categories a great deal; we are now up around 800. Unfortunately, hardly any progress is being made on this project, due to a lack of volunteer attention.

The alphabetized list of articles to be categorized is extremely long, and rather intimidating to a newbie. Though there are vague "projects" to categorize broad swaths of article space, there is scant documentation on how to do so. In contrast, the list of orphaned categories is viewable on a single page, and it's nicely sorted. Helpers have a choice between finding homes for the "popular" but hard to place categories, and cleaning out the sparsely populated dreck at the bottom of the barrel. And there are some friendly instructions to help newbies get started.

In the long run, I intend to build a system to cluster uncategorized articles by looking at their "see also" links and related articles in the existing category structure. I think this will help make the article-categorization process more approachable for random volunteers. However, this quasi-automation would probably work better if category space is as clean as possible. And, of course, a clean category space helps future categorizers land articles in the right places. So I'm thinking once Category:Orphaned categories gets back down to a reasonable size (containing mostly orphans created in the past week or so), the "parenting" link can go directly to a place that can help newbies get started on categorizing articles. Hopefully with the "suggested cluster" feature up and running.

Thanks.

-- Beland 04:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This link was deleted by Jiang with the reason given as "those are categories, not articles". An automated scan on the latest database dump showed a rate of about 60 orphaned categories per day. When the orphaned category link was posted to Template:Opentask, we started getting random visitors who were especially useful in fixing the hard-to-categorize but "popular" categories at the top of our list. There's nothing in this template that I can see that specifies "articles only", so I'm wondering why this link shouldn't be put back in. Thanks. -- Beland 08:26, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

FYI, Auto-categorization now contains requests for categorization of specific articles. The lists are automatically generated, sorted by topic, and supplied with advice for newbies. The first collection of topics is the 50 states of the USA, since these were the most numerous among uncategorized articles. (The bulk of US State-related articles are actually being automatically categorized; only the leftovers are presented for manual categorization.) -- Beland 06:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A number of people have started to work on Category:Orphaned categories, and with their help, we've cleared the backlog there. I'm changing the parenting link to point to Auto-categorization so that new recruits will be directed there first. As I mentioned above, there's a large number of pre-sorted articles there awaiting manual categorization. -- Beland 22:26, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Getting far too large
When I created this template I wanted it to be a friendly list of a few things people could do. Now, imagine you're a newbie and you get this huge block of text as your first welcome message - that does not look very friendly at all.

I propose the following: --Eloquence*
 * that wikify/copyedit are merged into one line
 * that "image captions" is removed
 * that "substubs" are removed (substubs may be added to the list of stubs)

 * I agree that "image captions" serves no vital purpose and should go. I also think the link to "translation" at the bottom is really something for advanced editors on meta and should be removed. Wikify and copyedit arent quite the same so I don't think we should merge them. --Jiang 20:27, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I think something image-related is nice to include, but haven't really followed how much activity that line generates. If it's not that significant, perhaps we can do without it. I agree with Jiang, wikify and copyedit should not be merged. But I still support getting rid of the extraneous substubs line. --Michael Snow 03:43, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I second. -- PFHLai 08:59, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)

 * We could also remove article requests since that's covered in Recent Changes (or we can switch off at Recent Changes between article requests and stubs) --Jiang 05:00, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tasks on the 'Updates', 'Merge' and 'Captions' lines are usually not well attended. Losing these lines would not be a great loss, even though these tasks really need to be done. I would just mention them at the bottom, next to 'CleanUp'. BTW, should the whole Opentask be at the top of RC, after the 'About Us' line ? -- PFHLai 08:59, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)

Process for updating the requested articles list?
Hi I moved out a few that were done and replaced them with some that were in wait. But it seems from the history there is more I should do. Can someone clue me in? - Taxman 17:19, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * It's helpful if you mention the name of the article (with a link) in your edit summary. Also, if it's still a stub or needs to be wikified or copyedited, you should move it to the wait list for the appropriate category.
 * It's also smart to preview your edits. All of the lines should be about the same length. If they aren't, either pick something else to add as a replacement (you don't have to go straight down the wait list if the next one on the list doesn't fit) or add something else. At least, this has been my impression of how it works. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 17:19, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How long to leave after merge complete
How long should an article be left in the "merge" section after a merge is completed? -- Alphax 00:34, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * I would think it should be removed immediately, to be replaced with another article in need of merging. -Beland 22:06, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Line needed?
I don't know much about whatever it is this is written in (is there some text on this language in Wikipedia?), but I'm trying to put Opentask inside a colored box for a welcome message (as shown here) and there seems to be a problem. In the first line, is style="background:transparent;" needed? It seems to me that the background would automatically be transparent, and that line seems to be messing up what I'm trying to do. So, is that line needed? Would we be able to take it out? pie4all88 00:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Where should I put these links, then?
I recently added more links to the list of "more tasks" at the bottom of this Template. (See this historical version) They were reverted, with no explanation. While I have no problem putting them elsewhere, this appeared to be the right place for them, and if it is not, I would like to know where else to put them, and/or why this is not right. Any comments appreciated... JesseW 21:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * The issue is resolved. JesseW 22:21, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to remove the ones that are already listed in the template. There's no need to include them twice. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:10, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Very good. I've just done various formatting, ordering and other small changes (including linking cleanup to Leftovers (till we get that clean, we should encourage people to work on it) JesseW 00:27, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Period of rotation for pages on here.
It seems to me that with the large number of pages on Wikipedia that need copyediting, destubbing, etc... there's no reason for pages to stay on this template as long as they do. A week seems more than enough time for anyone who may be interested in improving an article listed here and regularly checks Opentask to take notice of it. If no one feels differently, i'm going to make an effort to make sure no page stays on this template for longer than a week. -℘yrop (talk) 02:28, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Trying to fix misordered div endtag
(Update: my fix appears to have been stored, despite what the edit conflict, apparantly with myself, tells me!) I'm trying to fix the misordered div endtag in the template, but the server is returning errors and I'm losing out to edit conflicts. Here is what needs to be done in case anyone has more luck than me: The last in this line: should be moved to after the as here: (this may have been fixed already, but the server is giving me grief) -Wikibob | Talk 18:50, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

Merge -> Expand ?
There's not a very large list to draw Merge items from, perhaps this line could be replaced with items off Requests for expansion? 119 00:24, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dead end pages
Could someone please update the Dead End Pages list? It hasn't been done in a long time and many pages have already been categorized (or vfd'd). Radiant! 18:17, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

 * SimonP updated it today. -- Beland 05:52, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Background color
It might just be my eyes, but it looks to me as if the background color for Open tasks is white while the standard WP color is something like a light blue. Perhaps it would blend better if they were made to match. That is, unless the box is supposed to stand out, in which case we should probably put a black line border around it. Any ideas? --Dmcdevit 02:02, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I like having it stand out... --Smooth Henry 00:45, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, just checking. Do you think a box around it would make more sense.?--Dmcdevit 20:34, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization/Categorization switch
There's reportedly a problem with the capitalization page, so I'm temporarily changing that link to the orphaned category page. It would actually be nice to clear out the orphaned category backlog because in order to fix the capitalization problem, I should probably do a new database dump analysis, which means it's time to add another orphaned category dump. But that page was pushing 700k earlier today, and I don't have enough time to get things down to a reasonable level all by myself. -- Beland 08:01, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The capitalization project has pretty much folded for now, so I'm leaving the pointer to Category:Orphaned categories in place. -- Beland 03:11, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Soundgarden Request
wanted to see Soundgarden expanded Jobe6 23:47, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Automatic Update
How are you getting these articles? If they're from a category, can MediaWiki pick a random member? That would make things easier. Otherwise, at least make a category people can get them from.

Superm401 22:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

All Right
Okay, I looked at it, and the page has always been done manually, but right now, there are lists or categories referring to each of the problems. i.e. wikification, stubs, updates.

P.S. I changed the link for more stubs form one to Category:substub to Category:Stub categories. Substubs are needlessly restrictive.

P.P.S. There used to be a dedicated substub section of this template. If you want to reinstate, feel free. I don't.

I'm going to look into automating this. Superm401 23:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Requests
This is now on two lines each starting with Requests: I think this should be be turned into one line. Does anyone agree? TAS 12:59, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not partial either way. I can see we may not want soo much red in one place, but I do think the requests are the most likely ones to be fulfilled and need the most exposure. In any case, we should somehow get rid of the repeated "Requests" at the beginning of the second line, and maybe just have an indented asterisk. --Dmcdevit 16:26, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with that. TAS 18:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * What is a YubNub??????--Zxcvbnm 03:34, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think requests should be extracted from the EB 2004 missing list, the highest priority missing articles writing project.

lots of issues | leave me a message 11:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Currently they come from The articles requested for 2+ years, the most wanted articles (by links) list, and random submissions by contributors. I'll certainly look there in the future now that I know about it, but I encourage you to add what you think are the most important (or at least most likely to be created) to the standby list. --Dmcdevit 21:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

NPOV line
The categories full of accuracy and NPOV disputes are getting excessively large. In an effort to get more publicity, I've added a line here for NPOV disputes. Fact-checking usually requires either familiarity with the subject or the willingness to do research. NPOV disputes are a little easier for random people to help with. Often all that's needed are fresh perspectives, or neutral parties to help move the discussion forward. I expect a lot of random people will be enticed to click on the listings here, either because the topics are controversial. Sometimes it is surprising to see seemingly innocent (or just plain weird) topics listed as having an NPOV dispute, and it's tempting to read the talk page to find out what all the fuss is about. As usual, these will need to be rotated as they are fixed (which is easily checked by whether or not the NPOV tag has been removed from the top of the article page). -- Beland 06:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Automatic updates
I'm getting tired of manually checking whether any of the articles here have been fixed today, and adding new ones. It would be nice to spend less time doing that and more time actually fixing articles. I'm also a bit worried about the slow turnover here. Some of the lines are simply fed, more or less at random, from categories - NPOV, copy editing, wikification, mergers.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have these lines updated on a regular basis - say, daily, by a bot. Instead of only moving out an article after it is fixed, why not have the bot just display an entirely new set of articles every day? Different people have different interests; perhaps this would make it more likely that some article featured here will catch someone's eye. I'm thinking to keep things simple, the bot could just pick articles from the appropriate category at random, without bothering to keep track of them. If an article is stubbornly broken, it will statistically get listed more often. I wonder whether it's worth looking past the first 200 articles in a category, if it's that badly backlogged.

Thoughts? -- Beland 14:09, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Asking for permission on Wikipedia talk:Bots. -- Beland 09:37, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I implemented this idea. Enjoy. -- Beland 03:37, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

How long till links go away?
I wrote the lightface analytic game page recently, and removed it from the Opentask template. But if I hit "What links here" from "lightface analytic game", I still see about 200 user pages. Does something need to be purged or something? --Trovatore 02:34, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I think those link will remain until the next time those user pages are edited. (Yes, this is a bug.) -- Beland 00:28, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Converting cleanup to auto-update
So the old theory with the cleanup category was to take some of the oldest cleanup requests and feature them on this page for a week or two. If they weren't cleaned up at the end of that time, I would assign them to someone on the Cleanup Taskforce.

I'm thinking that it would be a lot better to pick five or six articles at random from a list of 50-100 cleanup articles from a given month, and feature that list for a day at a time. That will give a lot more articles exposure here, increasing the chances that someone will become interested and clean them up. Once a month has too few articles in it to provide a diverse pool of cleanup candidates, we can move on to the next month for this page. The Cleanup Taskforce can still get the oldest requests, since now they are all sorted by month. We can just assign it all the articles from months which are older than the current "featured" month here (and thus have a smaller number of more difficult articles to clean up).

To implement this change, I will now add cleanup to the list of lines that Pearle automatically updates. -- Beland 01:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Requested Article: Elvin Marsalas
As far as I can tell, there are no links to Elvin Marsalas other than from transclusions (and maybe some substs:) of this template. Nor does googling for the term return any real hits. It went into to Most Requested category in this change; I hesitated to jump in and remove it since I might be missing something. Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Not everything on that line comes from Most wanted articles. Some of them are requested directly, and some of them, including Elvin Marsalas, come from Articles requested for more than two years.  Though people there seem to agree that he's not notable, so I'm removing that request. Thanks for checking, Beland 13:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks. My obsessive-compulsive little mind can rest easy now ;-) Bunchofgrapes (talk) 14:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Automatic updates
FYI, I'm putting Pearle on a cron job to update this template daily, so that should happen at the same time every day now. Sorry about the underscores, by the way; they should be fixed on the next automatic edit. -- Beland 04:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Widening
I've removed the non-informative clip art to make more room for listings. I'm increasing the number of characters allowed on the automatically-updated lines, and the other ones will grow to match as they are updated. If this template gets too wide for any particular page, please let me know, and I'll lower the character limit. -- Beland 21:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

New friends
The updatedness, factual accuracy, and style cleanup categories are fairly large, so I thought they should get featured on this template. We have other templates that better track active projects, so replaced project listings with links to those other templates to make room for the new article lines. I hope you like the result. -- Beland 05:29, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

On the road
Automatic updates might be get done every day for the next week or two, as I'm taking my laptop on the road. Feel free to update by hand if necessary. -- Beland 08:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Stubs
Stubs are now being updated automatically, because I got tired of doing it. -- Beland 02:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


text:
Mokola lyssavirus

Mokola lyssavirus, commonly called Mokola virus (MOKV), is an RNA virus related to rabies virus that has been sporadically isolated from mammals across sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of isolates have come from domestic cats exhibiting symptoms characteristically associated to rabies virus infection.

As of 2021, there have been two confirmed cases of Mokola virus infection in humans, of which one was fatal. The rabies vaccine does not confer cross-protective immunity to Mokola virus, and no other known treatment for MOKV exists.

Classification
Mokola virus (MOKV) is a member of the genus Lyssavirus, which belongs to the family Rhabdoviridae. MOKV is one of four lyssaviruses found in Africa. The other three viruses are the classic rabies virus, Duvenhage virus and Lagos bat virus.

Emergence
MOKV was first isolated in Nigeria, in 1968, from three shrews (Crocidura species) found in the Mokola forest, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The virus was shown to be morphologically and serologically related to rabies virus. Since the initial isolation of MOKV, the virus has been mainly isolated in domestic cats and small mammals in sub-Saharan Africa.

There have been two recorded cases of human infection with MOKV, with both instances occurring in Nigeria. Both cases involved young Nigerian females. The first patient, who had been suffering from a fever and convulsions, recovered fully from infection. The second case, which occurred in 1972, involved a 6-year-old girl who had been suffering from drowsiness. The second patient ultimately suffered from paralysis and a terminal coma as a result of the MOKV infection.

The origin of the MOKV in both human cases of MOKV infection remains unidentified.

Genome and structure
The MOKV genome consists of a non-segmented, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA molecule of 11,939 nucleotides in length. It is estimated that 90.3% of the MOKV genome consists of protein-encoding or signal-encoding sequences.

The genome encodes five proteins: matrix protein M; transmembrane glycoprotein G; nucleoprotein N; phosphoprotein P; and the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase L.

MOKV is an enveloped virus, with the envelope lined with spikes consisting of the viral protein G. MOKV exhibits the 'bullet-shaped' morphology that is characteristic of members of the Rhabdoviridae family.

Evolution
This virus appears to have evolved between 279 and 2,034 years before the present.

Transmission
The human cases of human MOKV infection have demonstrated the zoonotic potential of MOKV, but as a natural reservoir has not yet been identified, transmission of MOKV is poorly understood.

Considering the MOKV isolates from small mammals and domestic cats; it has been suggested that small mammals, which are preyed upon by domestic cats, may be the natural MOKV reservoir.

Unlike other lyssaviruses, MOKV is able to replicate inside mosquito cells in vitro, suggesting that insects may be implicated in MOKV transmission.

Pathology
Symptoms provoked by MOKV infection are similar to the symptoms associated with rabies virus infection, such as fever and headache. Ultimately, both MOKV and rabies virus infection can lead to death by encephalitis. The similarity between the symptoms associated with MOKV and rabies virus may be the reason why there are so few case records of MOKV infection, as MOKV infection might be falsely diagnosed as rabies virus infection.

There is one significant difference between the symptoms observed in domestic cats infected with MOKV and those with rabies virus. MOKV-infected domestic cats do not demonstrate the unprovoked aggressive behaviour typically associated with rabies virus-infected mammals.

Treatment and prevention
At present, there is no medical or veterinary vaccine that protects against MOKV infection. It has long been established that, in spite of the relatedness between MOKV and rabies virus, immunisation with the rabies vaccine does not confer protection from MOKV infection. Isolation of MOKV from a number of domestic cats vaccinated with the rabies vaccine has demonstrated this.

In order to neutralize rabies virus, the rabies vaccine targets the transmembrane glycoprotein G on the viral envelope. Variation in the amino acid sequences of the antigenic domain III within protein G between rabies virus and MOKV has rendered the rabies vaccine ineffective against MOKV infection.

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

title: Mokola lyssavirus


text:
Manwel Dimech

Manwel Dimech, also known as Manuel Dimech (25 December 1860 – 17 April 1921) was a Maltese socialist, philosopher, journalist, writer, poet and social revolutionary. Born in Valletta and brought up in extreme poverty and illiteracy, Dimech spent significant portions of his early life in the Maltese prison system, mostly on charges of petty theft. At the age of seventeen, Dimech was arrested for the crime of involuntary murder, and sentenced to seventeen years in jail. After being thrown in jail, Dimech started to educate himself and became a man of letters.

Upon his release from prison, Dimech became a teacher and publisher, becoming a major figure in the public life of Malta. Dimech spoke freely among the social issues facing the populace of Malta, earning him great support and popular approval. However, the ideas espoused by Dimech caused him to come into conflict with both the Catholic Church and the colonial government of Malta. After the Governor of Malta grew frustrated by Dimech's growing support among the Maltese populace, he was permanently exiled to Sicily, Italy. Dimech later moved to British-controlled Egypt, as it was the closest territory controlled by Britain at the time. Despite pleas from high-ranking British officials, Dimech was refused permission to return to Malta, and he died in Egypt in 1921.

Early life

Manuel Dimech was born on Christmas Day (December 25), 1860, at St John Street, Valletta, Malta, and baptised at the church of St Paul Shipwreck, Valletta. His family was poor and lived in a single room that was part of a common tenement house with over sixty people. His ancestors on his father's side were genuine artistic sculptors, though up till Dimech's birth his family had fallen on difficult times. During his childhood, Dimech's family moved residence twice, leaving Valletta for Qormi (today Santa Venera), and then moving to Msida. His father tried hard to make ends meet, but his weak health prevented any success in this endeavour. He died at the age of 37, leaving his widow to care for their ten young children.

Prison experience
Just a fortnight after his father's death the 13-year-old Dimech committed his first recorded crime of petty theft. He was a street urchin with no education, guidance or direction. For his first crime he was sent two days in a lockup. This experience did not stop him from delving deeper into a life of crime. Subsequently, he was to be sent nine more times to prison, sometimes for very serious crimes. Mostly it was for theft or burglary, but in 1878, when he was 17 years old, he committed involuntary murder, and was imprisoned for more than twelve years. In 1890, then, he was found guilty of forging counterfeit money (though he only traded it), and was imprisoned for a further seven years. He was definitely released from prison in 1897 at the age of 36. In all he had spent some twenty years of incarceration.

Education
While in prison Dimech began to learn how to read and write. This was in 1877, when he was 17 years old. With all the time of the world on his hands he quickly became an avid reader, absorbing all kinds of stuff: literature, grammar, politics, history, philosophy, religion, and more. He discovered he had a special penchant for languages, and in prison he learnt the ins and outs of Maltese, English, French and Italian to perfection. Later he would make a living teaching these languages. He had a good brain and a fruitful mind. His keen interest in politics was not committed to petty squabbles or parochial issues, but burrowed deep into the structural causes of poverty and social inequalities. All of this would serve him well in the public sphere.

Terror in prison
In prison Dimech had another kind of formation. During his last stint in prison between 1890 and 1897, a certain Marquis Giorgio Barbaro was appointed Commissioner of Prison. This man was a psychopath who made the life of prisoners, vulnerable and defenceless as they were, a hell on earth. He tortured, murdered, persecuted and tormented prisoners ceaselessly. He also perjured his way into sending at least two prisoners to the gallows for crimes they had not committed. Dimech saw all this and lived through it with growing agony. The experience, together with the reading he was doing, moulded him into a daring, powerful and intrepid personality.

Philosophy
Dimech adhered to a philosophy that he called 'of action', a position very close, though directly unrelated, to the contemporaneous Pragmatism of the United States. He came at this position through his acquaintance with the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and other British Empiricists and philosophers of Utilitarianism. He claimed that actions can be considered right or wrong, and value judgments can be rightly gauged, according to whether they perform well when applied to practice. Actions, he maintained, proceed from the power that knowledge possesses from itself. Furthermore, actions are aimed at acquiring happiness, first, for the individual, and, simultaneously, for the whole community of individuals.

Life as a public figure
Once out of prison in 1897, Dimech embarked on an outstanding public career that brought him fame, though not immediate success. From the start of 1898 he issued a weekly in Maltese that was to serve him as his mouthpiece for many years to come. He called it Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin (The Flag of the Maltese; pronounced ilbaandeera taal maaltin). Through it he explored, albeit with the language and prose of the times, the Maltese social structure. Furthermore, Dimech proposed the way forward. He advocated the education of the masses, and audaciously specified how Malta could one day be an economically self-sufficient independent republic.

Publications
During his lifetime Dimech issued various publications. The 462 editions of Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin are perhaps the foremost. But others are also interesting. Amongst these one can find other newspapers in foreign languages (of short duration), two novels, grammar books (in Italian, English, French, and Maltese), and pamphlets. Unfortunately, books of poetry have not survived. Dimech's main objective with these publications was to form a political class from amongst the people, especially young men and women who had not the possibility of acquiring an education otherwise. Dimech was enamored of the Maltese language, and saw it as an efficacious tool of emancipation.

Foreign experience
Dimech had travelled to Tunis in 1890 for expediency reasons. However, in 1903 he visited Montenegro (for almost three weeks) to study at close range the social and political situation there. He enhanced this experience by travelling twice to the north of Italy (especially Genoa, Milan and Turin), where, in all, he spent almost four years. There Dimech became particularly acquainted to workers' movements and the trade unions. He was also very interested in the state-church relationship that prevailed in Italy during that fascinating time. Understandably, he came back to Malta fired up and all ready to bring about the social changes he had been mulling over for many years.

Main political programme
It is indisputable that Dimech wanted, and worked for, an overhaul of the social system. His main aim was to reform social inequalities whether they were maintained by the colonial government, the Catholic Church, the privileged class, the landed gentry, or whoever. His strategy was to begin with the political education of a new grass-root group of people, and subsequently permeate the illiterate, underprivileged and destitute masses. His ultimate aims were to make Malta an industrialised country that could be economically self-reliant and, eventually, be worthy of self-rule.

Popular organiser
Definitely back to Malta from Italy in 1911, Dimech founded what he called Ix-Xirka ta' l-Imdawlin (The League of the Enlightened; pronounced ishirka taal imdaaulin). This was a sort of union in the modern understanding of the word, in the sense that it was a social club, an organisation militating for workers' rights, a school of adult education, and a political party all in one. Through this league Dimech hoped to have a say, and transformative influence, in the political, and then the social, and maybe also the religious, fields. Young idealists and people craving for change flocked to him, and not only from the lower class but also from the middle and higher classes. Dimech's political "revolution" had begun.

Excommunicated
But immediately Dimech was held in his tracks. The then mighty Catholic Church pounced on him, and first condemned Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin and Ix-Xirka ta' l-Imdawlin, and shortly afterward excommunicated Dimech himself. Though this was an overwhelmingly devastating blow in all respects in Malta of the 1910s, Dimech was undaunted. He fought back with the little freedom of movement and action that was left to him, and stalwartly stood his ground. For a whole year, between 1911 and 1912, he and his family were systematically and pitilessly persecuted by the Church, but nothing could break his back. Then, obliquely admitting defeat, the Church called a truce and retired Dimech's excommunication on December 1, 1912.

Dimech had won against all odds, and immediately re-established his former organization with the name Ix-Xirka tal-Maltin (The League of the Maltese; pronounced ishirka tal maltin).

Considered dangerous
But the Catholic Church was not the only institution disgruntled with Dimech. The colonial authorities were unhappy with his widespread and growing influence amongst the workers at the Maltese shipyards. Indeed, the great majority of Dimech's supporters came from there, and this threatened to precariously disrupt the use of Malta as one of His Majesty's major Mediterranean naval base.

Deportation and imprisonment
Just over a year after Dimech re-launched his Xirka tal-Maltin, he was arrested. The First World War had just begun, and Malta's colonial governor accepted the accusation that Dimech was a spy of Germany (then at war with Great Britain), and surreptitiously deported him to the island to Sicily, in Italy (as yet a neutral country in the war). There he was shortly arrested again, and asked to leave to a country, save Malta, of his own choice. Dimech chose Egypt, then a British protectorate. Again, shortly afterwards, he was arrested once more, this time for good. For the remaining days of his life, for seven long and miserable years, Dimech lived in prisons or concentration camps either at Alexandria or Cairo.

Exile
At some unspecified time the British began to consider Dimech as a "prisoner of war". However, when the First World War came to an end in 1918, he was not released. Technically and actually, Dimech then became an exile, and he remained so until the end of his days. Various pleas for his return to Malta were refused by the colonial government in Malta, even when these were repeatedly made by the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Edmund Allenby, and later by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill.

Death
At the end of 1918 Dimech was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp at Sidi Bishr in Alexandria, Egypt. Dire prison conditions caused his health to deteriorate fast. In November 1920, after becoming half-paralyzed by apoplexy, he was transferred to Victoria College, Alexandria, at Sidi Bishr itself, a college that had been transformed into a hospital due to war exigencies. But by then Dimech was doomed. He died in Alexandria on April 17, 1921, and was unceremoniously buried in the sand grounds of Victoria College, Alexandria, itself. His grave was unmarked, and all attempts to locate it have been futile.

The Dimechians
A small group of young followers of Dimech continued to be somewhat active in Malta well after his deportation in 1914. They organized Malta's first recorded strike at the Royal shipyards in 1920, and certain of them played a significant part in the Sette Giugno riots, which led to the granting of Malta's first self-government constitution in 1921.

Posthumous recognition
Dimech was re-introduced to the public by Gerald Azzopardi (1910–1993) in the 1960s, and later, in the 1970s, he was given more academic validity by Henry Frendo. This led to a renewed interest in Dimech's life. Also in the 1970s, the socialist Prime Minister, Dom Mintoff, transformed Dimech into a sort of socialist icon, even though Dimech himself would have been ill at ease with such a recognition. However, Dimech's fame was finally set. A small run of one Maltese pound coins were produced engraved with his name and likeness in 1972. A monument to him was erected in 1976 in front of the Prime Minister's office in Valletta, at one of Malta's main squares. In 2004 Dr Mark Montebello placed the study and appreciation of Dimech on a new and unprecedented standing with a master biographical work called simply Dimech (PEG, Malta), which started to behold Dimech's personality in a more balanced and objective way.

On October 14, 2012, the discovery of new Dimech manuscripts was announced dating from the last three years of his exile. The manuscripts contain an extensive work in English made up of thousands of aphorisms, and some fables, epitaphs and poems. The discovery was made in two phases, in 2002 and 2009. Dimech's work was published in 2012 by Sensiela Kotba Socjalisti, SKS, as Aphorisms: Wisdom of a philosopher in exile.

In April 2013, Karl Fiorini composed a work called 'Sinfonietta Pro Populo' based on the 'Innu Malti' (the Maltese Hymn) written by Dimech. He created a refined symphony which placed revolutionary aspirations within the modern parameters of music. The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, notwithstanding all the problems with which it was faced, emerged triumphant under the musical directorship of Brian Schembri.

A year later, in June 2014, Henry Frendo published yet other hitherto unknown manuscripts belonging to Dimech dating from the early 1880s (when Dimech was still in prison). The publication, Dimech's Lost Prison Poems (Midsea Books), contains poems by Dimech (some of which signed and dated in his own hand), and letters received by Dimech while in prison.

National recognition
As a sign of national recognition, on November 10, 2012, the President of Malta, George Abela, unveiled in St John Street, Valletta, a commemorative plaque marking the birthplace of Dimech. A year later, on October 13, 2013, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, unveiled in Qormi another commemorative plaque marking the spot were, in 1912, Dimech had been stoned by a mob. On September 5, 2014, exactly 100 years to the day since the beginning of Dimech's exile, the President of Malta, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, unveiled, close to the Customs house at Valletta (from where Dimech was sent to his exile), yet another commemorative plaque marking the event.

In 2021, a musical about his life was written and subsequently staged at Kordin prison where Dimech spent a large part of his formative years. Veteran actor Joseph Zammit starred in the titular role.

Foundation
In April 2019, it was announced that a foundation will be established bearing Dimech's name. Though it was stated that the foundation will be "dedicated to the ideals of Dimech," further details of the construction have not been revealed.

Posthumous

 * 1926 Il Chelliem Inglis (The English Speaker), 2nd revised ed. by Giovanni Magro, Giuseppe Arpa and Giovanni Segond, Tipografia Tancredi Borg, Malta, 1068 pp.
 * 1972 Ivan u Prascovia (Ivan and Prascovia), 2nd ed. by Ġeraldu Azzopardi, Malta, 231 pp.
 * 1978 Għejdut Manwel Dimech (Manuel Dimech's Words), selected ed. of articles by Ġeraldu Azzopardi, Union Press Malta, 239 pp.
 * 2011 Ivan u Praskovja u Kitbiet Oħra (Ivan and Prascovia and Other Writings), 3rd ed. and selected writings by Mark Montebello, SKS Publications, Malta, 410 pp.
 * 2012 Aphorisms: Wisdon of a philosopher in exile, 1st published ed. by Mark Montebello and Francis Galea, SKS Publications, Malta,
 * 2014 Dimech's Lost Prison Poems, Henry Frendo, Midsea, Malta, 128 pp.
 * 2014 Dimech Poeta (Dimech the Poet), Jessica Micallef, SKS Publications, Malta, 321 pp.

Significant publications related to Dimech

 * 1926 Għakda Proletaria Maltija, L'Idea Socialista (The Socialist Idea), John Bull Press, Malta.
 * 1930 Juan Mamo, Ulied in Nanna Venut fl'Amerka (Grandmother Venut's Family in America), Tipografia Antonio Ellul, Malta, 400 pp.
 * 1960 Robert Mifsud Bonnici, 'Dimech, Manwel', Dizzjunarju Bijo-Bibljografiku Nazzjonali (National Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary), Department of Information, Malta Government, Malta, p. 179.
 * 1971 Henry Frendo, 'Il-ħajja ta' Manwel Dimech' (The Life of Manuel Dimech), Il-Ħajja, Malta, 11 till 16 January, p. 6.
 * 1971 Henry Frendo, Lejn Tnissil ta' Nazzjon (Towards the Birth of a Nation), Klabb Kotba Maltin, Malta, 103 pp.
 * 1972 Henry Frendo, Henry, Birth Pangs of a Nation, Mediterranean Publications, Malta, 188 pp.
 * 1972 Henry Frendo, Story of a Book, Malta, 8 pp.
 * 1975 Ġeraldu Azzopardi, X'Ġarrab Manwel Dimech (What Manuel Dimech Went Through), Malta, 152 pp.
 * 1977 Herbert Ganado, Rajt Malta Tinbidel (I Saw Malta Change), Interprint, Malta, vol. I, pp. 211–217; vol. II, p. 357; vol. III, p. 335.
 * 1979 Henry Frendo, Party Politics in a Fortress Colony, Malta, especially pp. 148–151.
 * 1981 Ġeraldu Azzopardi, Manwel Dimech u Dun Ġorġ Preca (Manuel Dimech and Rev George Preca), Malta, 19 pp.
 * 1984 Adrianus Koster, Prelates and Politicians in Malta, Van Gorcum, Assen, Olanda, partikularment pp. 69–72; 241–242.
 * 1991 Emmanuel Agius, Social Consciousness of the Church in Malta: 1891–1921, Media Centre, Malta, especially pp. 80–86.
 * 1991 John Chircop, The Left within the Maltese Labour Movement, Mireva, Malta, partikularment pp. 59–69.
 * 1995 Mark Montebello, Mark, 'Manwel Dimech', Stedina għall-Filosofija Maltija (An Invitation to Maltese Philosophy), Pubblikazzjoni PEG, Malta, pp. 118–121.
 * 1997 Paul A. Buhagiar, Ix-Xogħlijiet Miġbura ta' Manwel Dimech (The Collected Works of Manuel Dimech), unpublished dissertation, University of Malta, Malta, 619 pp.
 * 1997 Desmond Zammit Marmarà, 'Manuel Dimech's Search for Enlightenment', Beyond Schooling, ed. by P. Mayo u G. Baldacchino, Mireva, Malta, pp. 5–22.
 * 2001 Mark Montebello, 'Dimech, Manwel', Il-Ktieb tal-Filosofija f'Malta (The Sourcebook of Philosophy in Malta), vol. I, PIN Publications, Malta, pp. 119–121.
 * 2001 Henry Frendo, Henry, 'Maltese exile in Egypt', four parts, The Sunday Times, Malta, 22 and 29 April; 6 and 13 May, pp. 36–37, 40–43, 40–41 and 46–47 respectively.
 * 2004 Mark Montebello, Dimech, PEG Publications, Malta, 582 pp.
 * 2006 Mark Montebello, Jien, Manwel Dimech (I, Manuel Dimech), Daritama, Malta, 95 pp.
 * 2006 Maria and Michael Zammit, 'Manwel Dimech: Bniedem ta' Spiritwalità' (Manuel Dimech: A Man of Spirituality), Knisja tat-Triq, Malta, pp. 29–38.
 * 2007 Francis Galea, Juan Mamo, SKS Publications, Malta, especially pp. 74–100.
 * 2008 Yosanne Vella, ed., From the Coming of the Knights to EU Membership, Maltese History Sec Level, History Teachers' Association, Malta, p. 74.
 * 2008 Montebello, Mark, 'Manuel Dimech', 20th Century Philosophy in Malta, Pubblikazzjoni Agius & Agius, Malta, pp. 47–56.
 * 2010 Mark Montebello, Manwel Dimech: Fi Kliemi (Manuel Dimech: In my own words), Kottoner 98FM, Malta.
 * 2011 Mark Montebello, 'Newly discovered writings of Manuel Dimech' and 'More writings by Manuel Dimech come to light', two parts, The Sunday Times, Malta, 10 April, pp. 48–49, and 17 April, pp. 52–53.
 * 2011 Giovanni Bonello, 'More memories of Manwel Dimech', The Sunday Times, Malta, April 24, p. 18.
 * 2011 Michael Grech, 'X'ħasibna? Għarab slavaġ tal-Mokololo?' (Who do he thinks we are? Savage Arabs from Mocololo?), Ta' Barra Minn Hawn, ed. by M. Galea, Klabb Kotba Maltin, Malta, pp. 46–85.
 * 2011 Carmel Mallia, Mi, Manwel Dimech (I, Manuel Dimech), short biography in Esperanto, Malta, pp. 42.
 * 2011 Mark Montebello, 'Manuel Dimech', Malta's Philosophy & Philosophers, PIN Publications, Malta, pp. 90–93.
 * 2011 Adrian Grima, Minn kull Xorta ta' Qżież (All sorts of Filth), Karmen Mikallef Buhagar Foundation, University of Malta, Malta, pp. 22–27.
 * 2012 Frendo Henry, Europe and Empire, Midsea Books, Malta, especially Chapter 5 (pp. 95–151).
 * 2013 Various authors, Manwel Dimech: Ilbieraħ – Illum – Għada (Manuel Dimech: Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow), ed. by Mark Montebello, SKS Publications, Malta. 200 pp.
 * 2014 Mark Montebello, The Amazing Story of Manuel Dimech, Dom Communications, Malta.

Places named after Dimech

 * Manwel Dimech Street, in Għaxaq; Qormi; Rabat, Gozo; San Ġiljan; Sliema
 * Manwel Dimech Bridge, in San Ġiljan

title: Manwel Dimech


text:
Richard Armitage (actor)

Richard Crispin Armitage (born 22 August 1971) is an English actor and author. He received recognition in the UK with his first leading role as John Thornton in the British television programme North & South (2004). His role as dwarf king and leader Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's film trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit brought him international recognition.

Other notable roles include John Proctor in Yaël Farber's stage production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Francis Dolarhyde in the American TV series Hannibal, Lucas North in the British TV drama Spooks, John Porter in the British TV drama Strike Back, Daniel Miller in the EPIX spy series Berlin Station and Guy of Gisborne in the British TV drama Robin Hood. He voiced Trevor Belmont in the Netflix adaptation of Castlevania. In 2020, he played the lead role in the Netflix miniseries The Stranger.

After graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Armitage initially sought theatre work and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). He turned to film and television roles when he noticed that leading stage roles went to actors with name recognition who could bring in patrons to fill venues. After twelve years away and having earned that name recognition, Armitage returned to the stage in 2014, taking his first leading role in a major production. He played John Proctor in the successful and critically acclaimed production of The Crucible at The Old Vic, and earned an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor.

One of Armitage's trademarks is his baritone voice, which he has employed as a voice actor since 2006. While working on the TV series Robin Hood, he was asked to record audiobooks for the first season of that series. Armitage has recorded several audiobooks and has worked as a narrator on TV, radio shows, and adverts. In 2022, he ventured into video games for the first time, providing the voice of the Daemon Prince Be'lakor in Total War: Warhammer III.

Early life and education
Armitage was born in Leicester, England, the younger son of Margaret, a secretary, and John Armitage, an engineer. He has an older brother named Chris.

He attended Huncote Community Primary School in Huncote, Blaby District, Leicestershire, and began secondary school at the local comprehensive school, Brockington College in Enderby. At Brockington, Armitage pursued his interest in music – playing the cello in school and local orchestras, and learning how to play the flute. By the age of 14, having secured a grant from the Leicestershire Authority, he successfully persuaded his mother to allow him to transfer to Pattison College in Coventry, an independent boarding school specialising in the performing arts, so that he could focus on drama and dance.

Armitage has expressed gratitude for the lessons and opportunities Pattison College provided, saying "It... instilled me with a discipline that has stood me in good stead – never to be late, to know your lines and to be professional." By the time he finished school, he had achieved A Levels in music and English, and acting experience in local amateur and professional productions such as Showboat, Half a Sixpence, Orpheus and the Underworld (as Bacchus), and The Hobbit (as an elf) at the New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham.

1988–2003: Early work
After completing the programme at Pattison College in 1988, Armitage joined the Nachtcircus in Budapest for six months to obtain his Equity Card, a requirement at the time for entertainment professionals to work in the UK. Returning to the UK, he pursued a career in musical theatre – working as an assistant choreographer to Kenn Oldfield and performing in various productions, including the ensembles of 42nd Street, My One and Only, Nine, Annie Get Your Gun and as Admetus and Macavity in Cats. Armitage was also pursuing acting in dramatic theatre productions, including The Real Thing, Six Degrees of Separation and Death of a Salesman.

By 1992, he began to doubt if musical theatre was the right career path, so he enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in 1993 to further study acting. "I needed to do something a bit more truthful than musical theatre. For me it was a bit too theatrical and all about standing on stage and showing off. I was looking for something else, so that's why I went back to drama school."

After completing LAMDA's three-year programme, he returned to the stage as a supporting player with the Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of Macbeth and The Duchess of Malfi, as well as Hamlet and Four Alice Bakers with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre while taking a series of small roles in television and films. In 2002 he starred in the Charm Offensive's production of Use Me As Your Cardigan.

That same year, Armitage appeared in his first major television role, as John Standring in the BBC drama Sparkhouse (2002). "It was the first time I went to an audition in character. It was a minor role but it was something I really got my teeth into... I couldn't go back. I knew I had to approach everything the same way." After this he took supporting roles in the TV productions of Between the Sheets, Cold Feet (series 5), and Ultimate Force (series 2).

2004–2010: Television success
In 2004, Armitage landed his first leading role as textile mill owner John Thornton in the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South. The director and producers took a chance casting a little-known actor for their leading man. He was the first actor to audition for the role and the last person cast. North & South was an unexpected success. The BBC message boards crashed shortly after the telecast as a result of chatter about him and he was hailed as the new "Mr. Darcy" (referring to Colin Firth's "Mr Darcy" whom many regard as the definitive romantic leading man). Armitage did not perceive John Thornton as the ideal romantic leading man role and was surprised by the response. Instead, he said that he felt personally drawn to the role, as his father's family had been weavers. He cited Thornton's dualism as drawing him to the character. "The dichotomy between the powerful, almost monstrous, entrepreneur and this kind of vulnerable boy is exciting for me to look at."

In 2005, he played Peter MacDuff in Macbeth in the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told series and appeared as a recovering gambling addict in one episode of Inspector Lynley Mysteries. He starred in The Impressionists, playing the young Claude Monet, and as Dr Alec Track in ITV's The Golden Hour, a medical series based on the London Air Ambulance. His first substantial role in movies was in the independent film Frozen.

In 2006, Armitage was cast as Guy of Gisborne in the BBC series Robin Hood, which was filmed in Hungary. "In order to sustain the character of Guy, you have to find the conflict within him. He's constantly pulled between good and evil, between who he wants to be and who he actually is. He could have been a good man, but he is forever dragged down by his fatal flaw – that he wants glory at all costs." Approaching the third series, he said, "I do love playing him, but with a character like Gisborne, if you give him what he needs, then in a way, it's over. That character is only interesting when he isn't getting what he wants, whether it's power, money or the girl." The third and final series of Robin Hood started on 28 March 2009.

Armitage appeared in a two-part 2006/07 Christmas/New Years special of The Vicar of Dibley, as Harry Kennedy, the vicar's new love interest (and eventual husband). He reprised the role in 2007 for Red Nose Day. On 8 April 2007, he played biker Ricky Deeming in the detective drama George Gently with Martin Shaw and Lee Ingleby. On 9 May 2007, he appeared in the BBC Four production of Miss Marie Lloyd – Queen of The Music Hall playing Marie Lloyd's first husband, Percy Courtenay. He also appeared in the Granada TV production of Agatha Christie's novel Ordeal by Innocence as the character Philip Durrant.

Armitage joined the cast of Spooks as the character Lucas North for series 7, which began on 27 October 2008 in the UK. Armitage notes that the character, who spent eight years in a Russian prison, has a personable exterior, but is psychologically damaged. "I love films with a combination of action and good characters. That's why Lucas is interesting as I get to play someone with a complex psychology who goes out there and tries to save the world." During the filming of series 7 Armitage allowed himself to be subjected to waterboarding to film a flashback sequence. In July 2010, Armitage completed filming of series 9, his final series.

On 20 May 2009, Armitage appeared in the BBC1 drama Moving On as John Mulligan.

In May 2010, Armitage starred as former SAS trooper John Porter in Strike Back (also known as Chris Ryan's Strike Back) for Sky1. Filmed in South Africa, Armitage found the main challenge of the role was to show how the character resolved being a trained killer with having a family and home life. "In the end it was the character I was attracted to, the story of a man who makes a decision under pressure and that decision has a knock-on effect on his whole life," he said. "He goes in search of atonement still believing he did the right thing even though it cost the lives of three of his friends... There's anger and there's injustice. It's like, 'I did the right thing, with the wrong outcome.'" By the time Sky1 and Cinemax decided to commission a second series of Strike Back called Strike Back: Project Dawn, Armitage had committed to The Hobbit and was unable to continue in the series. However, he appeared as a guest star in the first episode to resolve John Porter's fate.

It was his role as John Porter that led to his casting in Captain America: The First Avenger. American casting agents noticed posters of him as John Porter in London. Although unknown to them, they offered him the role of Nazi spy Heinz Kruger because he looked the part. Armitage accepted and shot his scenes in the autumn of 2010, after filming wrapped on Spooks, series 9. The film was released in July 2011.

2010–present: film success and beyond
On 21 October 2010, Peter Jackson announced Armitage was cast as Thorin Oakenshield in the three-film production of The Hobbit. Principal photography in New Zealand ran from March 2011 to July 2012, broken into three filming blocks with breaks in-between, and pick-ups were shot in the summer of 2013. All three films were released in December, starting with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 2012, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in 2013 and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in 2014. Armitage thought it was a wonderful opportunity, as he grew up reading the books. Coincidentally, one of his first stage roles was playing an elf in a production of The Hobbit at the Alex Theatre in Birmingham. He describes the character of Thorin as being complex and flawed, "somebody that had doubts and that had fears, and there was a gentle side to him and a very perhaps lonely side to him." He notes the scene with Balin in Bag End shows the character's inner sensitivity and fear of failure, "failing where his father and his grandfather had failed as well."

After filming had been completed on The Hobbit, Armitage flew to Detroit, Michigan to film Into the Storm from July to September 2012. He starred as Gary Fuller, a high school vice principal and football coach with two teenage sons. The film from New Line was released in August 2014.

In March 2014, Armitage began the eight-week shoot of an adaptation of Bernard Hare's memoir Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew in Leeds, UK. He played "Chop" (the author's nickname), an ex-social worker, drunk and drug addict in Britain's lowerclass who befriends the hardened young delinquent Urban. Armitage explained his attraction to this role: "it ticks a few boxes for me: it"s based on a really interesting piece of literature, but also based on living people, who have been working with us on set." Urban and the Shed Crew premiered at the Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) on 7 November 2015.

Armitage next appeared as John Proctor in The Old Vic's production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Directed by Yaël Farber and performed in the round, the play ran from 21 June to 13 September 2014. The production drew an unprecedented number of 5-star reviews and was a commercial success. For his performance, Armitage was awarded Best Leading Actor in a New Production of a Play by Broadway World:UK Awards 2014 and a Best Actor nomination for an Olivier Award. Due to worldwide demand to see the production, Digital Theatre captured the live performance to bring The Crucible to cinemas and for digital download. It was screened at cinemas on 4 and 7 December 2014 in the UK and Ireland, with further screenings in other selected territories in February and March 2015. Copyright issues prevented the film from being screened at North American cinemas. Digital Theatre made the digital download available worldwide on 17 March 2015.

In a September 2014 interview, Armitage revealed he would film his cameo role of King Oleron in Alice Through the Looking Glass in London after The Crucible closed. The film was released in May 2016.

Armitage spent four weeks in October 2014 filming Sleepwalker in the greater Los Angeles area. In this psychological thriller, Armitage plays Dr. Scott White, a senior MD at a sleep research center. Released on February 4, 2017.

DeLaurentiis Company tweeted on 13 January 2015 that Armitage was cast as Francis Dolarhyde in the TV production of Hannibal, written and co-produced by Bryan Fuller. Dolarhyde is a serial killer, a character type which Armitage had expressed interest in portraying. He filmed the series in Toronto, Canada from January to April, and the series aired from 4 June to 29 August 2015. Armitage appeared in the last six episodes of season 3, earning high praise, wide acclaim   and several award nominations, including two wins.

After wrapping on Hannibal in late April 2015, Armitage joined his fellow Pilgrimage castmates who had already begun filming in Connemara, Ireland two weeks prior. He plays Sir Raymond De Merville, a 13th-century French Norman who is intent on foiling a group of monks escorting a sacred relic from Ireland to Rome. The cast and crew later moved to the Ardennes region of Belgium to complete filming, with Armitage wrapping one week earlier than the film wrap at the end of May.

News broke on 13 May 2015 that Armitage would star in Clearance, the first English language film by Finnish director Aku Louhimies and set to film in South Africa in November 2015. It is an action drama about a hardened mine expert named Ray (Armitage) and his pregnant partner (Naomie Harris) who are kidnapped in South Sudan.

In a June 2015 interview, Armitage mentioned his next projects included an Edith Wharton film and a true Irish tragic drama. Per agent David Higham, Bridget Cleary is likely the Irish drama.

On 12 July 2015, Armitage revealed he was about to start filming Brain on Fire in Vancouver, Canada. Subsequent news outlets provided more details about his role as "Big Man" Tom Cahalan, father of the protagonist in the true-life story of young journalist Susannah Cahalan's sudden descent into inexplicable madness and the eleventh-hour diagnosis by one doctor. Filming began 13 July 2015. Brain on Fire premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on 14 September 2016.

Armitage landed the lead role of Daniel Miller in Berlin Station, an original spy series for Epix. His character, a cerebral analyst from Langley, is a newly anointed undercover CIA officer tasked with finding a mole in Berlin. Filmed in Berlin from November 2015 to April 2016, with some additional filming in the Canary Islands, the series premiered on Epix in the autumn of 2016.

On 13 July 2016, Roundabout Theatre Company announced Armitage was cast as Kenneth in the American premiere of Love, Love, Love by playwright Mike Bartlett. Love, Love, Love marks Armitage's first leading role in a theatrical play on an American stage. The off-Broadway play ran from 22 September to 18 December 2016 at the intimate Laura Pels Theater in New York City.

Armitage co-starred in the heist comedy Ocean's 8 (2018).

In February 2017, it was announced that Armitage had joined the cast of Julie Delpy's film My Zoe. In it he will play the role of James, the ex-husband of Delpy's character Isabelle. Their toxic marriage may be over but they are still in contact with each other as they co-parent their daughter Zoe. But when tragedy strikes this fractured family, Isabelle takes matters into her own hands. In February 2018, Armitage joined the cast of The Lodge, which began filming in early February. Armitage plays the leading role of Adam Price in Netflix's 2020 mystery thriller miniseries, The Stranger, which is based on the Harlan Coben novel of the same title. The series has been critically acclaimed, with a rating of 89% from Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2022, Armitage gave his first performance in a video game, appearing as the Daemon Prince Be'lakor in Creative Assembly's real-time strategy game Total War: Warhammer III. In October that year, Armitage's debut novel, Geneva, a thriller, was published by Audible. Armitage and former Spooks co-star Nicola Walker narrate the audiobook.

Voice work
Armitage was introduced to voice work while working on the TV drama Robin Hood in 2006. The BBC was publishing novels of the first four episodes of series one and asked Armitage to record the audiobook versions. In recent years, Armitage has also performed a great deal of voice work, such as reading poetry for various radio programs and starring as Robert Lovelace in BBC Radio 4's production of Clarissa: A History of a Young Lady in April 2010. He has recorded many audiobooks: six based on BBC's Robin Hood, Bernard Cornwell's The Lords of the North, three Georgette Heyer novels for Naxos AudioBooks (Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle, Venetia, and The Convenient Marriage), David Copperfield by Charles Dickens for Audible Studios and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel. He has narrated television documentaries such as Homes from Hell, Empire's Children, Too Poor for Posh School?, The Great Sperm Race, Forest Elephants: Rumble in the Jungle, Surgery School, and Elsa: The Lioness That Changed the World. In 2011, he provided the narration for a series about the Royal Navy flagship HMS Ark Royal (R07), 125 Years of Wimbledon: You Cannot Be Serious, and Fraud Squad. He has also provided the voice-over for many TV and radio advertisements, and stars as lead character Trevor Belmont in the Netflix animated series Castlevania. He has also voiced the title character in the scripted podcast Marvel's Wolverine, and voiced Rassilon in the Doctor Who audio spin-off Gallifrey.

Richard III connection
Armitage was hoping to star in a drama based on Richard III. Armitage was born on the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth Field, where Richard III was killed and has said "I believe it is a great story, a socio-political thriller, a love story and a dynastic tragedy." He thinks the story has the potential to be told as a twenty-episode miniseries. A script has been in development since 2010 and "a lot of people... are interested [in producing it], but there is no one that will step on the gas."

Acting style
Armitage has described himself as a method actor. "Yeah, I suppose I am. In a way it's slightly lazy because it means you don't have to pretend – you just have to believe. As much as it's possible to be like that I suppose I kind of do step in and out, I'm not one of these people that can't talk to other people because I'm in my character, but I kind of do stay with the character, yeah. He's always there. It's like marinating something – you're sitting in a marinade the whole time." He has also spoken of dreaming in character while playing John Porter and Thorin Oakenshield. However, recently he rejected the label of "method actor." "I think I'm a concentrating actor. So in order to do my work in the course of a day, particularly with a character like this I have to concentrate. So it's about staying in the scene, staying with my head in the scene and attempting to keep the character with me. It doesn't mean I can't have a conversation or go and make a cup of coffee. But I actually stay with the character for 18 months."

He frequently speaks of developing and being drawn to dualism in his characters. "If I'm offered the role of the hero, I immediately look for the antihero within!... I see everything in terms of an outer skin and an inner skin." He creates "character diaries" with entire biographies for the characters he plays. "It was important to me to put in a background for my character that would be useful for the whole journey. A lot of that is secret and no one gets to read that. It's what is useful to me. If you are playing something long-running and a role that has a future [beyond the initial series], it's almost like you have to plant a garden which you will need to come back to at some point. If you don't put in early, it can jar with you."

Personal life
In 2023, on the subject of his sexuality, he revealed that he came out to his family at the age of 19. However, it was only recently that he felt comfortable enough to come out publicly.

Radio

 * 2007: BBC Radio 4: The Ted Hughes Letters, as Ted Hughes (29 October 2007)
 * 2007: BBC Radio 2: A War Less Ordinary, narrator (10 November 2007)
 * 2010: BBC Radio 4: Clarissa: The History of a Young Lady, as Robert Lovelace (14 March 2010)
 * 2010: BBC Radio 3: Words and Music: Symphony of a City as narrator (12 September 2010)

Voice-over

 * 2007: Channel 4: Empire's Children, as narrator (2 July 2007)
 * 2009: ITV1: Homes from Hell, as narrator (3 March 2009)
 * 2009: Channel 4: The Great Sperm Race, as narrator (23 March 2009)
 * 2010–11: Voice-over for Santander TV and radio adverts
 * 2010: BBC 2: The Natural World, Forest Elephants: Rumbles in the Jungle, as narrator
 * 2010–2011: Voice-over for Sky Sports HD TV and radio adverts
 * 2010: Voice-over for General Election 2010 Leaders' Debates radio adverts
 * 2010: Voice-over for BBC Winter Olympics TV and radio adverts
 * 2010: Voice-over for Alfa Romeo Mito TV advert
 * 2010: Voice-over for John Bull Jewelers radio adverts
 * 2010: ITV: Surgery School, as narrator
 * 2010: Voice-over for Hyundai ix20 TV advert
 * 2010: BBC: Lost Land of the Tiger, as narrator
 * 2011: BBC: Elsa: The Lioness That Changed the World, as narrator
 * 2010: Voice-over for ActionAidUK TV advert
 * 2011: Voice-over for Pilsner Urquell TV advert
 * 2011: Discovery Channel UK: HMS Ark Royal, as narrator
 * 2011: Eden Channel: Trouble in Lemur Land: Phantoms of the Forest, as narrator
 * 2011: BBC2: 125 Years of Wimbledon: You Cannot Be Serious, as narrator
 * 2011: Voice-over for LG Optimus 3D Smartphone TV advert
 * 2011: ITV: Fraud Squad, as narrator
 * 2011: National Geographic Wild: Leopards of Dead Tree island, as narrator
 * 2012: ITV: Fraud Squad, series two, as narrator

Podcast shows

 * 2018: Wolverine: The Long Night as Logan / Wolverine
 * 2019: Wolverine: The Lost Trail as Logan / Wolverine

Video games

 * 2022: Total War: Warhammer III as Be'lakor

Honours
Armitage was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by the University of Leicester on 22 July 2022.

title: Richard Armitage (actor)


text:
Capilano Bridge

Capilano Bridge may refer to:
 * Capilano Bridge (Edmonton), a freeway bridge in Edmonton, Alberta across the North Saskatchewan River
 * Capilano Suspension Bridge, a pedestrian suspension bridge in North Vancouver, British Columbia across the Capilano River

title: Capilano Bridge


text:
Diamond Point School

The Diamond Point School is a historic one-room school house in Nowata County, Oklahoma, at the junction of county roads 409 and 245. It was built in 1919 and was used through 1968. It is built of red brick and has a bell tower in one corner. It was restored in 1996 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. It is set within a 1 acre school yard which includes the original playground equipment, including teeter-totters, a wooden merry-go-round, a slide, and a swingset. The grounds also include boys and girls outhouses and a more modern building which includes a kitchen and lunchroom. The school is open for tour by appointment, and is used for reunions, meetings and weddings. It is also used by local schools for "A Day at Diamond Point", a program giving fourth grade students the experience of students in a one-room country schoolhouse during the 1950s.

The listing included four contributing buildings: the school, a combination coalhouse and garage, and two privies. A concrete block pumphouse was deemed non-contributing.

title: Diamond Point School


text:
Talk:Treaty of Gandamak

I moved it to Wikisource. Rmky87

Removed text
I removed this recent addition. Today Pakistan cedes to proclaim those frontier areas and officially recognition of Durand Line from Afghan Government.

The Durand Line cuts through the Pashtun tribal areas and further south through the Balochistan region, politically dividing ethnic Pashtuns, as well as the Baloch and other ethnic groups, who live on both sides of the border. The first sentence makes no sense. Also, this is an article about a nineteenth century treaty not current AfPak territorial issues. Please explain how this fits into the article before re-adding it. JBH (talk) 23:13, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Treaty of Gandamak


text:
Dematerialization

Dematerialization may refer to:

 * Dematerialization (art), an idea in conceptual art where the art object is no longer material
 * Dematerialization (economics), the reduction in the quantity of materials required to serve economic functions (doing more with less)
 * Dematerialization (products), using less or no material to deliver the same level of functionality
 * Dematerialization (securities), moving from handling paper securities certificates to book form, usually electronic
 * Demat account, a type of banking account in India where paper-based physical shares are stored electronically
 * Teleportation, theoretical movement of objects without traveling through space

title: Dematerialization


text:
Burscough Priory

Burscough Priory, at Burscough, Lancashire, England, was an Augustinian foundation, established in around 1190 and dissolved in around 1536. Some remains of the church survive.

History
The priory was founded in c. 1190 by Robert Fitz-Henry, Lord of Lathom, for Augustinian canons. In 1390 the Lordship of the Manor and lands of Lathom passed to the Stanley family, several of whom were buried in the Priory, notably Sir Thomas Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley, K.G., of Lathom and Knowsley, in February 1459, his wife Joan in 1466, and their son Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby.

The priory was dedicated to St. Nicholas. There was an associated leper hospital. Fitz-Henry endowed it with land in Burscough, the entire adjoining township of Marton, the chapel of St. Leonard of Knowsley, all the mills on his demesne, and the patronage of three parish churches—at Ormskirk, Huyton, and Flixton. The ownership of Flixton however proved problematic. From the 1330s until the dissolution, the vicar of Ormskirk was always one of the canons of the priory. A Royal Charter that was granted by Edward I of England in 1286 to the monks at Burscough Priory permitted a regular market nearby in Ormskirk.

Dissolution
As a priory with an income of less than £200, it was dissolved under the act of February 1536. At the time of its surrender the religious community consisted of only five canons, including the prior. The Earl of Derby made attempts to save the church, in which many of his family had been buried, but they came to nothing and upon dissolution, many bodies were moved to Ormskirk which ever since has been the burial place of the Stanleys.

Following the dissolution eight bells from the Priory were moved to Ormskirk Parish Church, where a tower had to be built specially, as the existing steeple could not support them. The remaining bells were removed to Croston church. The tenor bell at the Ormskirk Church (the third bell from the Priory) has a Latin inscription which translates as "J.S. de Burscough, Esq., and E. my wife, made [this bell] in honour of the Trinity. R.B. 1497". It also bears the symbols of the rose, portcullis and Fleur-de-lis which suggests that the bell was presented in honour of a visit from Henry VII as these were some of his favourite badges.

The Priory gives its name to the local high school Burscough Priory Academy, which has an enrollment of around 700 pupils of ages 11–16 years.

Other burials

 * Sir John Stanley (died 1414)
 * John I Stanley of the Isle of Man
 * Joan Goushill Stanley, daughter of Elizabeth Fitzalan, Duchess of Norfolk
 * Thomas Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley
 * Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby

Architecture
According to a survey of the ruins made in 1886, the church was cruciform in plan with a presbytery (chancel) 42 ft by 24 ft, a central tower 22 ft square; north transept and south transepts, and nave 100 ftby 24 ft with a north aisle. On the south side of the nave was a cloister 67 ft square. The seal used on the surrender deed of the priory shows a view of the monastic buildings.

The parts still standing above ground consist of the two piers which originally supported the north side of the crossing tower of the church. They survive to some height above the springing of the crossing arches, although the voussoirs of the arches themselves have been removed. There are fragmentary walls projecting  from the eastern pier  to the north and east, while the  other incorporates a small trefoil-headed recess or aumbry. These remains probably date from the late 13th century.

title: Burscough Priory


text: User talk:68.79.132.71

title: User talk:68.79.132.71


text:
Nicola Duffett

Nicola Duffett (born 22 January 1963) is an English actress. She is known for her roles as Debbie Bates on EastEnders and Cat MacKenzie on Family Affairs.

Career
Duffett had a supporting role in the Oscar-winning film Howards End (1992) by James Ivory. She is known for two long-running soap opera roles. After appearing as Debbie Bates in EastEnders from 1993 to 1995, she went into the role of boozy floozie Cat Matthews in Family Affairs. Cat first appeared in Family Affairs in late 1998, and was a key character in the show's story lines until the series ended in December 2005. She has appeared on stage in Simon Gray's Simply Disconnected at Chichester Festival Theatre; as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Helen of Troy in Troilus and Cressida at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park; and in Coming Up by James Martin Charlton at the Warehouse Theatre.

Duffett also took part in the reality series Celebrity Fit Club, and appeared as Bronwen Jones in an episode of Torchwood titled "Random Shoes". In 2016, she appeared in the BBC series The Coroner episode 2.4 "The Beast of Lighthaven" as Amy Penketh. In 2018, she starred in the BBC Two drama Collateral. She then appeared in the ITV drama series Deep Water in 2019. In July 2020, it was announced that Duffett would appear in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street as Lucie Fernsby.

title: Nicola Duffett


text:
Amyclas

In Greek mythology, Amyclas (Ἀμύκλας) refers to two individuals:
 * Amyclas, a mythical king of Sparta.
 * Amyclas, a Theban prince as the son of King Amphion and Niobe, daughter of Tantalus. He perished with his brothers and sisters in the massacre of Niobids. In other versions, however, he was presented as the only surviving male (with his sister Chloris). When Laius the rightful king of Thebes returned, he was exiled, fleeing to Sparta, where some say he founded Amyclae.

There is also an Amyclas in Roman epic:
 * In Lucan's Pharsalia (Book V), Caesar knocks on the door of a poor fisherman named Amyclas as he looks to cross the Adriatic. Dante mentions this scene in Paradiso, Canto XI.68.

title: Amyclas


text:
George MacDonald (Prince Edward Island politician)

George MacDonald is a former teacher and Canadian politician.

MacDonald has a long history in municipal politics in his home province of Prince Edward Island. He served as a councillor for the city of Charlottetown through the 1980s and 1990s before being elected as the 44th mayor in 1997. He served in that position for two terms until deciding not to run again in 2003.

MacDonald was selected as the Progressive Conservative candidate for the provincial electoral district of Charlottetown-Rochford Square in the 2003 PEI general election and lost to Liberal leader Robert Ghiz.


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Guayas

Guayas may refer to:

 * Guayas River, Ecuador
 * Guayas Province, Ecuador
 * BAE Guayas, ships of the Ecuadorian navy
 * Guayas (chief), a legendary chief of the Huancavilcas in the coastal plains of modern Ecuador
 * The fruit of the mamoncillo tree

Guayas

title: Guayas