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Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 18

The second half of this archived discussion on quotation marks is in Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_19.

Quotation Marks - Why Straight? Change proposed.
Can someone explain to me why the MoS states that straight quotation marks be used at all? They are clearly typographically incorrect, visually inferior, and the only reason they exist at all is because of ASCII (that sub‐standard blight inflicted upon computing in ages long since past). The MoS gives the reasons for this as for “uniformity and to avoid complications”. Now I must disagree with both of these – articles can uniformly use correct quotes, and doing so introduces no complications whatsoever. So both of the cited reasons are quite clearly invalid. Unless someone can give indisputable reasons for using them, I propose that the quotes section be amended and brought kicking and screaming into the 1980s. Nicholas 8 July 2005 12:10 (UTC)
 * Don't agree, and I'm a purist about typography, but mostly for printed publications. It's significant that the code you used for a hyphen ("‐") doesn't render correctly in my browser.
 * There are lots of reasons why using straight quotes is simple and efficient, and mandating anything else can introduce problems. I know a lot of people are bothered by not using true typographic quotes, but it's a non-issue to me and probably many others, for now at least. I would vote no to a change. DavidH July 9, 2005 03:55 (UTC)
 * It's significant that the code you used for a hyphen ("‐") doesn't render correctly in my browser.
 * That's the key for me; when I stop seeing quotes that turn into "no such character" glyphs, then I'll be ready to change away from straight quotes. But right now, there are still far too many inter-operability problems between the various browsers, text editors, word processors, mailers, and operating systems to do anything other than follow the KISS principle and stick to boring old straight quotes.
 * Atlant 8 July 2005 14:00 (UTC)

 * 8208 (U+2010) is an unambiguous hyphen. I guess some OSs or browsers don't support it yet, along with thin spaces and attribution dashes. But the ASCII hyphen, em and en dashes, typographic quotes and apostrophe don't suffer from the same problem. —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 14:54 Z
 * David H, I don't think anyone is proposing mandating typographic quotes. Isn't the proposal to allow them? —Michael Z. 2005-07-9 06:46 Z

 * I agree with Atlant completely on this. Jonathunder 2005 July 8 15:25 (UTC)

Almost all articles use straight quotation marks, they are easy to see, and easiest to write in the edit boxes. Why make life more complicated than this? jguk 8 July 2005 17:37 (UTC)

 * How are the typographic quotation marks harder to see? Which web browser are you using? —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 18:23 Z
 * By "see" I meant aesthetics - I can see curvy ones on Internet Explorer, they just don't look so good, jguk 8 July 2005 18:34 (UTC)
 * Actual quotation marks look fine to me — they're closer to what books and other printed texts use. Factitious July 9, 2005 03:12 (UTC)
 * Ah, but a computer screen is not print. What looks good in print does not necessarily look good on screen and vice versa. Indeed, we'd expect differences in font, font size, etc. between the two media, jguk 07:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Good typography is easier on the reader and looks more professional than poor typography, anywhere. Wikipedia's default design employs fonts optimized for the screen that support the characters in question.  I've seen WP on both Mac OS X and Windows XP, and there is no problem resolving typographic quotation marks.  If you're still using Windows 98, then typographic display probably isn't your priority.  Barring technical display foibles of particular systems or fonts, I can't imagine anyone arguing that typewriter quotes and spaced hyphens are actually better than real quotation marks and dashes.
 * Editing is still an issue so we can't require anyone to type typographic quotation marks and dashes, but there isn't much of an argument for banning these characters, especially since the English WP already includes hundreds of pages with Cyrillic, Chinese and Thai text. —Michael Z. 2005-07-14 03:33 Z

 * For further info, you might want to read through m:Help:Special characters. —Mike 07:57, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are all correct. Straight quotes are easier to type in (a key feature for wiki-markup), but are rendered incorrectly. The obvious solution therefore would be for the Mediawiki software to automatically identify quote pairs, and translate them to the correct unicode characters when rendering the page. MS Word already does this, so it can't be impossible. There could also be an option to disable this in the user preferences if you don't like it. The important point is that very few users are going to have keyboards with keys devoted to all the typographic variants of quote marks, so they should not be allowed in the wikitext. - Aya 42 T C 19:47, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * A) Ms-word currently does this very badly, often getting the wrong kind of quote, and there is no easy way to correct such errors. I doubt that any authomatical solution will handle all cases reliably. B) too many bouseres currently in wide use don't render these characters properly, so causing us to use them is actively harmful. If the automatic translation were off by defualt, that might be ok, but problem A remains. I oppose any use of "fancy" quotes at this time. DES 20:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Name just one browser—that’s what you meant by ‘bouseres’, right?—in common use that suffers from such problems. Just one!
 * Netscape 4.x. You'll say it's not in “common use”, and you're right, but I know several people who still use it for various reasons.  In fact, I was using it myself until a week ago, when I finally managed to build my own version of Firefox.  (I couldn't use the Firefox “Linux” download, because I run Linux on something other than x86). Steve Summit 00:18, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Automatic conversion does not work well enough to be used, but, still, curly quotes should not be forbidden. IPA, Cyrillic pose more problems, likewise the dagger (†) used in biographies a lot. Typographic dashes, – and —, are almost equally well supported as curly quotes. Yet only the latter are not allowed by the MoS.
 * It may be reasonable to use the ASCII substitutes in the article titles, in those rare instances. I would recommend redirects, though.
 * “If a law is not necessary, it is necessary not to have it.” (I forgot who said that and how exactly. Some late 18th century French or American revolutionist, I believe.)
 * Christoph Päper 15:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed that automagically changing straight quotes to directional (à la MS Word) is fraught with peril. But explicitly encoding directional quotes and optionally converting them back to straight (for display, if the browser prefers them that way) at some point along the line is an almost ideal solution, as long as they're encoded portably, and this is essentially what is advocated by Help:Special_characters. It's significant to the debate, I think, that the Help page rather directly contradicts this MoS entry in this regard, in that it essentially condones the directional quotes. I had already (before discovering this discussion) inserted cross-references so that readers will be aware of both pieces of advice. I propose changing the MoS text to
 * For uniformity and to avoid complications it is best to use straight quotation marks and apostrophes. If you prefer to use directional quotes, make sure they are encoded correctly and portably; see Help:Special_characters.

Steve Summit 14:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Check out what this edit did to directional quotes for a good argument why nobody should use them :-/. Rl 14:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * No question, but I have a hard time saying that no one should use them just because some people can't use them correctly. (And in any case when they tend to get broken is when people blindly cut'n'paste text between edit boxes and M---t W--d, and they're going to do that -- and mess stuff up -- whether or not this MoS says "use straight quotes".) Steve Summit 14:52, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Gaahh! You were too subtle.  When you pointed to "this edit", I didn't notice it was my edit.  Sheesh.  Haven't figured out how that happened yet; it might have been a problem cut'n'pasting UTF-8 text to/from an emacs buffer.  Thanks to Susvolans for fixing.  Steve Summit 23:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Can we put this to a vote? What are the guidelines for having the community vote on something? I think it's been discussed enough that any further discussion would just be more jaw-waving. Ravenswood 15:46, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * No. There would be too many stupid people voting nay, just because they think they had to use curly quotes then, although it’s just about allowing them. Christoph Päper 15:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I started this debate some weeks ago on a separate page. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes). From what I can see, there is absolutely no reason to keep the existing rule about forbidding curlies. The rule itself was adopted long ago without any discussion, and was based on a technological restriction. The restriction is now gone, so the rule needs to be reevalutated. The current debate shows that today there is no consensus at all behind that rule, so if we follow the way we usually adopt in such case, the normative restriction in the MoS has to go the way of the Dodo—same reasoning as with dashes, or UK/US spelling, or whatever. Note also that no other Wikipedia I know of needs a rule about what quotation marks editors should use, and they all work fine. Arbor 15:49, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

 * But they don't "work fine." There are still computers and webbrowsers in existance which render them incorrectly. Also, it is much easier to get everybody to use straight quotes than it would be to get everybody to use curly quotes. I honestly don't even know how to type in curly quotes. Ravenswood 16:09, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

 * (1) They (e.g., French and German Wikipedia) certainly "work fine". And quotation marks aren't even mentioned on their MoSs. Uniquely among Wikipedias (that I know of), the anglophone MoS makes quotation marks an issue. It shouldn't. Millions of WP articles (in French, German, and probably many other languages) are proof. They work fine. (Otherwise point me to any debate about their problems. I couldn't find any).

 * I think this is a key point. Right now we have a contradiction between this page (which says "Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes") and Help:Special characters (which says of the typographical ones that "Since using these characters maintains data integrity even on those machines that may not display them correctly, it should be considered safe to use these unless proper display on old software is critical").  I tried to temporarily fix Help:Special characters (to highlight the ambiguity by linking to Manual of Style so people would at least be aware of it), but my change got (properly) rolled back, becase Help:Special characters is a pure copy of m:Help:Special characters and isn't supposed to be edited.  So my attempt failed; I couldn't highlight the ambiguity in this way; it quietly persists.  But since m:Help:Special characters applies to all wikis, why can't it apply to en.wikipedia? Steve Summit 00:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

 * (2) I have challenged the argument that starts "there are webbrowsers" several times, including setting up a page so that people can test their concerns. I will gladly to it again: give me a concrete example. So far, nobody has ever responded. I invite you to be the first. (Remember that your situation must be a browser that is sufficiently advanced to view the rest of WP, and that your editing environment should be something that can be used to edit the other UTF-8 symbols in WP.) (3) Nobody want "everybody to use curly quotes". That's a straw man. If you cannot type them, use a straight quote. Wiki works. Arbor 17:13, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

 * As for (3), I'm sorry, I thought we were aiming for consistent use. Ravenswood 17:20, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't think we are -- or should be -- aiming for a single mandated (i.e. consistent) use at this time. It is not easy to get people to use straight quotes -- many people use the curlies by default, perhaps because their software does it for them.  But obviously it wouldn't be easy (would be much harder) to get everyone to use the curlies.  But the curlies are arguably superior, which is why I don't think we should discourage those who prefer (and are able to enter) them from using them. Steve Summit 00:25, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Proposal by Steve Summit
Clearly we don't have a consensus here, so I think we oughta do the NPOV thang and address both opinions. Here's my attempt. What do you think? (Note that I have also resurrected -- and revised -- the paragraph on Microsoft Word, which User:Crissov had deleted at 15:36 on 22 July 2005.)

Use of quotation marks and apostrophes Single and double quotation marks (and to some extent apostrophes) can be entered in two different styles: the "straight" or nondirectional versions ' and ", and the "typographical" or directional variants ‘ ’ and “ ” . Both styles are in current use on the English Wikipedia; there is not currently a consensus mandating conversion to a single consistent usage. For simplicity and to avoid certain complications, many editors of the English Wikipedia prefer to use the straight variants. However, Help:Special characters (which is a copy of the mediawiki-wide m:Help:Special characters) says of the directional quotes that they "maintain data integrity even on those machines that may not display them correctly" and that "it should be considered safe to use [them] unless proper display on old software is critical." Therefore, our best current advice is similar to that for British versus American spelling: When entering new text, it is permissible to use either quoting style, but you should not edit existing text merely to change from one quoting style to another. When you do enter or edit any directional quotes, be careful to encode them correctly and portably; see Help:Special_characters. There are two situations in which more definitive advice can be given. The fancier, directional quotes (which are not simple ASCII characters) can cause problems in article titles, since Wikipedia uses exact matches for link text and default searches. So the simpler, straight, ASCII quote characters ' and " should be used in article titles. Also, in contractions and possessives, there is nothing to be gained by using a right-hand directional single quote ’ instead of a plain apostrophe, and in those cases plain apostrophes (which are identical to straight single quotes) are preferred. Be careful if you are pasting text to or from a word processor such as Microsoft Word, since doing so can introduce unintended or nonportable directional quotes. It is recommended that you turn off the "smart quotes" setting in your word processor (in recent versions of Word it is is in the "Autoedit" settings, called "AutoEdit during typing"). If you do permit your word processor to insert directional quotes, make sure they are rendered in your submitted article as portable HTML entities, not as OS-specific extended characters (see Help:Special_characters). Do not use acute and grave accents or backticks ( ´ ` ) as quote characters. Steve Summit 01:48, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Comments
Steve, thank you for doing something constructive. My comments are as follows "In most cases, the preferred apostrophe character is the punctuation apostrophe (distinguished as typographic, or curly apostrophe)." To repeat a slogan: Wikipedia is Not a Typewriter. Arbor 08:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) I strongly disagree with the part about article titles. These are the most visible straight quotes/apostrophes, and an eyesore to the typographically trained eye. The technological argument doesn't hold water—we have lots and lots of articles with much weirder letters, and the software handles these just fine with redirects. Check Beth (letter) or Paul Erdös. For an overview, see Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft). Compared to the weird letters that already work, curlies are trivial from a coding perspective. They also appear on almost all fonts. We are already using many, many codepoints outside 7-bit ASCII, none cause us any trouble. The technological frontier of what works and what doesn't currently are "combining diacritical marks" as in This Is Spın̈al Tap, which renders weirdly. But the four curly quote characters are trivial. The MoS article should not imply that there are technological problems with using them in article titles.
 * 2) I don't think portable HTML entities are the way to go. A better advice would be to ensure that the external editor is set to UTF-8 encoding, which it must be anyway so as not to mangle all the other more-than-seven-bits characters. A non-UTF-8 editing environment will mangle the page, so it should be discouraged (for broader reasons than just entering curlies). An UTF-8 editing environment will encode the curlies properly, and not as a HTML entity. (The same happens for ö å ß and whatnot, which are used on countless WP-en pages, including titles.)
 * 3) Strongly disagree with the preference for the vertical typewriter apostrophe (ASCII 39) over the typographically correct choice (U+2019). To quote from WP's own article on Apostrophe (mark):

 * Thanks. Good points.  Quick comments on your comments: (1) I have no strong feelings about article titles; I was merely repeating the argument from the original text. (But did you mean to say "The MoS article should not imply that there are technological problems with using them in article titles"?) (2) I'm not quite ready to advocate/mandate UTF-8, because I fear there are still far too many ways to botch it (especially when cut/pasting to/from external editors).  I suspect some wikimedia fixes are appropriate here, to detect/correct the circumstances in which the common problems occur. (3) I in turn feel strongly about "plain" apostrophes, but that's my opinion which I shouldn't have injected so strongly into the proposal. Steve Summit 12:11, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Also, while addressing all the P's oV, we probably need one more sentence saying "Some/Many editors strongly prefer the visual appearance of the "typographical" quotation marks and note that Wikipedia is Not a Typewriter. Steve Summit 12:22, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Let's see if I can abstract all of this into a slightly edited version of Steve's proposal. Quotation marks and apostrophes: straight or curly? Single and double quotation marks and apostrophes can be entered in two different styles: the "straight", "typewriter", or nondirectional versions ' and ", and the "typographical", "curly", or directional variants ‘ ’ and “ ” . Both styles are in use on the English Wikipedia; there is no consensus mandating conversion to a single consistent usage. Our best current advice is similar to that for British versus American spelling: When entering new text, it is permissible to use either quoting style, but you should not edit existing text merely to change from one quoting style to another. When you do enter or edit any directional quotes, be careful to encode them correctly and portably; see Help:Special_characters. If you want to enter straight quotes, be careful if you are pasting text to or from a word processor such as Microsoft Word, since doing so can introduce unintended or nonportable directional quotes. It is recommended that you turn off the "smart quotes" setting in your word processor (in recent versions of Word it is is in the "Autoedit" settings, called "AutoEdit during typing"). Do not use acute and grave accents or backticks ( ´ ` ) as quote characters.

Note that I have removed quite a bit Steve's proposal, and was probably overzealous in doing so. Please put stuff back in. Especially, I have removed any attempt at explaining the reasons behind preferring one variant or the other; I think the MoS should give advice, not invite debate (that's what the talk page is for). Maybe I'm wrong, in that case Steve had good and short suggestions as to how this could be phrased.

I am very unsure about what advice we want to give about encodings. I think the best idea is just to maintain a link to Help:Special characters, which discusses the issue and would be the best place to keep up to date. I repeat may claim that neither French nor German Wikipedia have anything about this in their MoS, so I boldly assume that there really isn't a problem and the MoS shouldn't scare the user. But I may be underestimating the problem. Arbor 09:25, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * According to Plugwash’s comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Lock_out_unsafe_browsers?, there is now a workround to handle non-Unicode-compliant browsers. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 09:45, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah. Good to know. This confirms my opinion that such issues don't belong to the MoS, and certainly not to the section on quotation marks. And the Wikimedia Help:Special_characters seems to need an update badly. Arbor 10:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * JFTR, I support Arbor’s version, but IMHO the paragraph on Word is not necessary (any more). Should the section mention or encourage redirects? Christoph Päper 00:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I object to this change in toto -- I think the comments above show no consensus to permit the use of non-straight quote marks, and i think the MoS should continue to recomend that only straight quotation marks be used at this time. I don't see the above discussion as establishing a consensus broad enough to justify a change to an existing MoS provision. Please revert the change recently made to the Mos pending further discussion. DES (talk) 21:31, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I can see that CDTieme has reverted the change already. Could you or he suggest a method of operation to move this debate along? Its been over two months now since the first post on May 9 by User:Susvolans (see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes)), and the debate was announced on this talk page as well as on the Village Pump. The only conclusion I have seen anybody reach is that there is no consensus. We finally have tried to construct a MOS entry to that effect here, and after some polishing and a few extra days of possible feed-back I inserted it on the MOS page. That seems to be the usual way of proceeding. But maybe I read the evidence wrong. Do you think that there is consensus for a straight quotes only policy? Arbor 08:31, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * As I have stated previously on previous topics, Wikipedia guidelines should reflect common practice and consensus, and any guideline that doesn't reflect common practice and consensus must be changed so it does. There does not appear to be any kind of consesus to forbid curly quotes; therefore the section of the MoS that forbids them must be stricken. The "conservative" argument; i.e. that's the way it has been so that's the way it should continue to be, is anathema to the Wiki process. (For the record, I strongly support the use UTF-8 and correct typography). Nohat 09:08, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I support correct spelling, and that doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia standard. I see relatively little use of curly quotes in articles and small difference at normal type size. On my own website, I use curly quotes only in headings, where I think it's worth the extra effort. I would be more in favor of curly quotes (at least as an option) if they could be added more easily. Can buttons be added to the edit toolbar? I hardly use any of the ones that are there now, but curly quotes and an em-dash would be very useful. --Tysto 13:54, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

 * I added curly quotes to the "Insert" toolbar that appears at the bottom of edit pages on June 28. They're at the end, between superscript 3 and the Euro sign. Using the "insert" toolbar in most browsers, adding curly quotes is as easy and pointing and clicking. For reference, that template is located at MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. Nohat 08:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Tysto, thank you for your comments. Ways to enter curly quotes are very much a Mediawiki question and doesn't belong here. Also note (as I have pointed out before) that millions of Wikipedia pages (for example, in Germany and France) uses proper quote marks without software support or outlandish keyboards or any MOS discussion. Also, millions of anglophone Mac users can enter curlies without problems and have done so for decades. Still, before we can politely ask the Mediawiki designers to provide special quote support (maybe only for the Anglosphere? maybe even with new syntax as with dashes? who knows?), the MOS needs to allow using these symbols in the first place. Otherwise the wizards would waste their precious time implementing something that is forbidden to use. I completely agree that software support would be nice, of course! But we cannot expect the tech-gurus to preempt our decision. Ah, and one more thing: on my machine (yes, it's a Mac) the difference between “ and ” and " is quite visible to the trained eye. In headlines and titles it's an eyesore. Arbor 14:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * "...millions of Wikipedia pages..."? Aren't there only about 1.5 million total Wikipedia articles? Anyway, I agreed that curly quotes are okay for typographer-types; I'm just saying the great majority of Windows users aren't going to use them if it isn't easy. But do I blame them for not being German? Nein! I blame typographers for not lobbying the keyboard industry to abandon their awkward and outdated layout. --Tysto 18:36, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

 * Right. I should have said "hundreds of thousands". My bad, thank you for correcting that. As for your points: Windows users (and anybody else) are free to use straight quotes. You seem to be misunderstanding the change. It says no consensus instead of use curly quotes. Arbor 19:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Right. I'm agreeing with the proposal on the table that both are okay, which is the opposite of the original proposal to use curly quotes only. --Tysto 19:35, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

 * Huh? There was never a proposal to use curly quotes only. (Unless I have missed that.) Could you be more specific? Arbor 07:04, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with DES here. When wholesale changes to the MOS are made over the strong objections of many and there is not even a majority in favor, the best response may be a revert. And here there are strong objections because of what is lost by these changes. Smart quotes just don't work the same way on my Linux editors the same way they do on Microsoft Windows products. Smart quotes break things and make it harder for other editors. I wish people would understand that. As for the logical quote style, that has been raised and discussed at length. The longstanding guidance is prefered because it preserves exactly what is quoted: no more, no less. Jonathunder 15:18, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

in my view, this is not only a question of typography. It is also a question of parseability (aka 'semantic wikipedia'). I. e. while I hate the curly quotes, I think that quotes, beginning and end, should be formatted so that they are easily recognized by a parser. The ideal thing would be a "blah blah" template. Typographical issues then go to the template (they can even be customized via CSS). dab (ᛏ) 18:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * C'mon. That cannot have a bearing on the MOS—we don't normally argue that way. However, parsing curly quotes is easy, there are Unicode Character Categories for them, and the parsability of a page certainly improves by distinguishing opening and closing quotes, because these carry semantics (a parser can tell where the quote starts and where it ends). But I don't see this as a relevant argument. Arbor 19:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Then tell me why they break things when I try to use "Find in This Page" in Mozilla Firefox or "Find (on this page)" in IE 6. Since I don't see a difference in my default font size, that is a problem.  Redirects can take care of the article title problem, if they are made (and as someone pointed out, when you don't see the difference, you don't stop to think that they need to be made).  But they cannot fix the "Find" problems. Gene Nygaard 09:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

No consensus for straight quotes
We have debated this for 3 months now. There is obviously no consensus to use straight quotes only (nor, for that matter, to use only curlies). So we have fooled around with a paragraph to reflect this and then copied it to the MOS page. But User:Jonathunder and User:CDThieme have reverted this to the old version with its blanked prohibition against curlies.

Let me assume good faith here and ask both of you: I cannnot see how anybody could answer anything else but ‘no’ to the first and ‘yes’ to the second. But clearly I am missing something. Are you making—implicitly or explicitly—an argument ad historiam along the lines of ‘rules persist until there is consensus to abandon them’? From that perspective your behaviour makes sense; but as far as I understand that’s really bad wiki and not how things are normally handled at Wikipedia (or MOS for that matter).
 * 1) do you think forbid curlies is consensus?
 * 2) should the MOS reflect consensus?

Note that I am not asking a question about straight quotes versus curlies (there has been enough time for that, and I think every argument has been made). I am asking a question about how you think the MOS should work when there is no consensus. Arbor 06:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I have reverted to the non-prohibitory version because no one has answered the points brought up by me earlier and clarified here by Arbor. I expect that anyone who reverts the page will have reasonable answers to these two questions. Nohat 08:03, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I have reverted because you not only removed additional information not related to the straight-vs.-curly question but because the question itself is asymmetrical. What's the penalty for using straight quotes when curly would work?  The typography might be "boring"?  What's the penalty for using curly quotes when curly doesn't work?  They don't even appear as quotes at all.  When there is a conflict, the MOS should reflect utility over appearance -- i.e., making sure it will look acceptable on all systems rather than really fancy on some systems and really messed-up on the others. -- Antaeus Feldspar 11:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * My feeling is a) there was a clear guideline for strignt only, and there is no consensus to change this guideline. I think consensus is needed to change the MoS, and that no consensus should mean the atatus quo ante. b) I have seen curly quotes disply as boxes or question marks in mar browser, and i am using IE 6.0.2900, not an unusual setup. I had seen people discuss test pages in this thread -- I have not seen a link to a test page that has curly quotes on it that I can see.  c) In articel titles, the exact match rule that wikipedia searches use will mean that the possibility of curly quotes (and of more than one possible quote character, at that) will significantly exacerbate the problem of finding an article. i won't support curly quotes (abostrophes) in articel titles until the softwear will automatically match all quote varients in a search.

 * For all the above reasons i think the MoS should stay unchanged. DES (talk) 12:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The people who really want those curly smart quotes keep ignoring the fact that not everybody uses the same software they do, and that these abombinable smart quotes are a huge pain for some people. It seems like some people just don't care about making more work for others. But if they keep ignoring the objections and keep trying to force a change through, they will be reverted. CDThieme 13:41, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * OK, then to summarize:
 * In general, it is not necessary for guidelines on the MoS to represent consensus of opinion as well as common practice.
 * In the case that an old guideline loses consensus support, if the users who prefer to keep the old guideline believe that their argument for keeping is more important than the argument of the users who prefer to change the guideline so that it represents the consensus (or lack thereof), then the old guideline should stay even though the guideline no longer represents the consensus.
 * Even though the editors who support not changing the policy have failed to reach a consensus using their arguments, and a significant number of editors continue to disagree with them that the current policy should stay, the fact that the current policy is extant means that they can railroad through keeping their non-consensus-supported policy.
 * When a guideline no longer represents consensus, as long as the people who support keeping the current guideline are vocal and obstinate enough, then there is no need for a guideline to be changed to represent consensus, because the guideline should represent the opinions of the people who support how the guideline appears in the status quo rather than the representing the actual consensus.
 * I just want to make sure that I understand the line of reasoning. Please clarify if I'm misunderstanding what's going on here. Nohat 17:19, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * If there is consensus to change the current guideline, then it should be changed. I do not think such consensus to change has been established as yet.
 * If there is no consensus about the proper guideline, then the status quo ante should remanin unchanged. I think this is the current situation
 * A guideline that will be unworkable for some editors is not preferable to a guideline that will be unaesthetic for some editors.
 * A guideline that makes articles harder to find is a bad idea, in general.
 * Those are my view on this matter. I might add that I have mentioned this issue on WP:RFC and at the Pump in hopes of getting a broader range of people involved, one way or the other. DES (talk) 17:28, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Well, as I explained before, I think it is completely un-wiki and unreasonable to support keeping a guideline that doesn't represent consensus simply because the guideline is the status quo. Wikipedia simply doesn't work under the idea that the status quo should remain in general, unless there is overwhelming consensus to change it. In fact I can't think of anything more anti-wiki than that philosophy. Guidelines should be continually changed to represent consensus and common practice. When a guideline doesn't represent consensus or common practice, then it must be changed so it does. It doesn't work the other way around; i.e. that consensus or common practice should be changed to reflect the guideline, yet that seems to be what you and the other obstinate editors are advocating.
 * As per you other points, they don't really obtain:
 * Remember that you're not arguing against a guideline that requires curly quotes. You're arguing against a guideline that permits curly quotes. No one will be forced to use curly quotes if the guideline is changed to represent the fact that there is no consensus on whether curly quotes should be used.
 * Permitting curly quotes is no more unworkable than permitting any other non Latin-1 characters, but we have plenty of articles that are full of non Latin-1 characters, including ordinary punctuation like em- and en-dashes, as well as IPA and other more exotic Unicode characters, and yet those articles are flourishing.
 * Permitting curly quotes does not make articles harder to find. Creating articles with curly quotes in the title that don't have redirects with straight quotes does, but that's neither here nor there with respect to this policy. There are already plenty of articles with hard-to-type characters in their titles, like Gdańsk, and other guidelines as well as common sense demand that there be redirects at the easy-to-type variety. Curly quotes in titles would be no exception. Nohat 17:49, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * If there is no consensus on what the guideline should be, then what should it be? The general rule as I understand it, is that once a policy or gideline gains consensus, and is established, a change requires consensus, and in the absensce of consensus, no change should be made.
 * There is no consensus to permit curly quotes. (Nor to forbid them, I grant.)
 * I find that curly quotes disrupt display significantly more than en and em-dashes, which seem to be rendered corretly for me and I think for most users. I would support a policy to ban all non-latin characters in article titles, but i doubt that would get consensus.
 * "No one will be forced to use curly quotes if the guideline is changed" I grant, but users will be forced to see and perhaps edit articles containing such characters.
 * Granted that articles with titles containing non-standard characters are only harder to find when there is no redirect, allowing such characters increases the chance of this occuring significantly. At least people using diacritical marks generaly know that these are non-standard, and such editors are likely to create proper redirects. Curly single-quotes, used as apostrophes in article titles, I strongly suspect will be seen as "normal " by those whose software generates them automatically, and the proper redirects are far more likely to be ommitted, IMO.
 * A question to you: When there is an existing guideline or policy, and there is no current consensus on what the guideline or policy should be, should it be changed to a guideline of "there is no guideline" or "there is no consensus on this issue"? Or what?
 * Don't you see that an argument of "this will make it significantly harder for a sizable number of users" ought to trump an argument of "This will make things look better"?
 * You argue that curly quotes won't break existing bowsers in any significant way. Put up a test page, please where there is text that uses such quotes, preferably as many versions as you think ought to be permitted in wikipedia, and post a link to it in this thread. Let me and others see just how much of a problem they cause our current setups, and report our results. DES (talk) 18:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I have modified Carlito’s Way (this version in case someone reverts my changes) to use curly quotes for this experiment. Nohat 21:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * As for the other issues you bring up:
 * The guideline should be changed if it doesn't represent consesus. I just really don't understand the argument that the fact that a guideline already exists makes it a valid tiebreaker in the case where there isn't consensus. I don't see how the fact that some particular wording is already existing has any inherent value.
 * I think this is where the miscommunication is happening. Your position, if I understand it, is "there's not consensus on this rule, so it should change".  You see editor's choice as a compromise.  What others are saying is "there is not consensus on allowing a change that may make Wikipedia less readable, so that change should not be made".  Rather than a compromise, they see editor's choice as permitting curly quotes, which some see as problematic, and until a consensus process allays those concerns, the rule should remain unchanged.  I don't think its as much a matter of the existing wording having inherent value.  Rather, the existing rule was put in for a reason, and until there is consensus that said reason is no longer valid, it shouldn't be changed. -Satori 23:07, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * That seems like a disingenuous application of contradictory logic. The content of Wikipedia guidelines exists because there is a consensus for the guideline to exist the way it is. It doesn’t matter what people’s reasons are for supporting the content: either there is consensus support for a guideline, and the guideline stays, or there is not consensus support, and the guideline goes. The reasons that some people who support keeping a guideline that doesn’t enjoy consensus support are completely irrelevant to whether or not the guideline should stay. It is a completely unworkable policy to take into account the reasons people may or may not support a policy in deciding whether or not the policy should stay. The only metric that matters is whether or not the guideline has consensus support. Right now, the guideline in question does not have consensus support, so it must be removed. If, in the future, it regains consensus support, then it can be re-added, but the situation where a guideline persists even though it doesn’t have consensus support is intolerable and anti-wiki. Nohat 09:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * If there is no consensus on how something should be handled, then there should be a guideline that indicates otherwise. It seems tantamount to lying to our users if a guideline page says "you should not do X" when in fact there is no consensus that users should not do X.
 * Yes, I agree that "this will make it significantly harder for a sizable number of users" ought to trump an argument of "This will make things look better" but I reject that the former is true, based on the evidence that other special characters have existed in articles for years without significant outcry that results in a consensus that such characters shouldn't be used. Furthermore, this isn't just a question of aesthetics; it's a question of correctness. Using straight quotes to demarcate quoted material constitutes deprecated Unicode usage. It enjoys common usage, sure, but so does the <font> HTML element. Nevertheless, we use <span> here on Wikipedia, not <font>, because the latter is deprecated. Nohat 22:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The version with curly quotes looks exactly the same to me (in IE6, monobook skin). Only if I enlarge the size to "largest" I can see a difference, but not much text anymore. Moreover, the curly quotes then look rather old fashioned to me, and not fitting well with a sans serif font. My conclusion: using curly quotes is a lot of trouble for no benefit. −Woodstone 22:00:24, 2005-08-11 (UTC)

 * I though this was obvious, but the benefit is correctness, which I thought was one of our goals. Not to mention the fact that they will be required if Wikipedia is ever to exist in printed form, which is also one of our goals, is it not? Furthermore, not everyone uses sans serif fonts in their browser—I certainly don’t. And nobody will be required to use curly quotes! I wish people would stop making arguments about how much trouble curly quotes are to enter because those are arguments against a straw man representation of what this is about. This is about whether they should be forbidden, not whether they should be mandatory. Nohat 22:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Aside from one person who says curly, or smart quotes look better on whatever software system he or she prefers, and one person who is writing a lot about the process of concensus, there already seems to be a consensus of nearly everyone else who has commented or edited this section says the guidance should stay because of how it affects many editors, and how it varies in look from reader to reader. On many systems, to many readers, curly quotes are downright ugly. For many editors, smart quotes are broken. There seems to be a consensus about this, unless consensus means unaminity. I disagree that it does. Jonathunder 18:15, 2005 August 11 (UTC)

OK, first of all, this is how the Carlito's Way article looks on my browser: They... look like straight quotes anyway. Second: Suppose I want to edit this article, I take the first sentence: ...and somehow I cut the quotes off of the movie's title. When I go to put them back, I can't type-in curly quotes, (A point I have made before ), so I type them in straight: Question: For those of you who can see the difference, is it ugly? Not the straight quotes themselves, but the fact that both types are used in the same article? Because if it is, what you're proposing would require me to replace all the quotes in an article to straight quotes any time I use straight quotes anywhere. Ravenswood 23:10, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * I note that this example conveniently excludes the section of the page that displays the title of the article, which almost certain contains a noticeable curly quote. Nohat 09:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

This archived discussion on quotation marks continues on Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_19 >>


text:
Project portfolio management

Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals, while honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors. Standards for Portfolio Management include Project Management Institute's framework for project portfolio management, Management of Portfolios by Office of Government Commerce and the PfM² Portfolio Management Methodology by the PM² Foundation.

Key capabilities
PPM provides program and project managers in large, program/project-driven organizations with the capabilities needed to manage the time, resources, skills, and budgets necessary to accomplish all interrelated tasks. It provides a framework for issue resolution and risk mitigation, as well as the centralized visibility to help planning and scheduling teams to identify the fastest, cheapest, or most suitable approach to deliver projects and programs.

Pipeline management
Pipeline management involves steps to ensure that an adequate number of project proposals are generated and evaluated to determine whether (and how) a set of projects in the portfolio can be executed with finite development resources in a specified time. There are three major sub-components to pipeline management: ideation, work intake processes, and Phase-Gate reviews. Fundamental to pipeline management is the ability to align the decision-making process for estimating and selecting new capital investment projects with the strategic plan.

Resource manager
The focus on the efficient and effective deployment of an organization’s resources where and when they are needed. These can include financial resources, inventory, human resources, technical skills, production, and design. In addition to project-level resource allocation, users can also model ‘what-if’ resource scenarios, and extend this view across the portfolio.

Change control
The capture and prioritization of change requests that can include new requirements, features, functions, operational constraints, regulatory demands, and technical enhancements. PPM provides a central repository for these change requests and the ability to match available resources to evolving demand within the financial and operational constraints of individual projects.

Financial management
With PPM, the Office of Finance can improve their accuracy for estimating and managing the financial resources of a project or group of projects. In addition, the value of projects can be demonstrated in relation to the strategic objectives and priorities of the organization through financial controls and to assess progress through earned value and other project financial techniques. It is an important part.

Risk management
An analysis of the risk sensitivities residing within each project, as the basis for determining confidence levels across the portfolio. The integration of cost and schedule risk management with techniques for determining contingency and risk response plans, enable organizations to gain an objective view of project uncertainties. At the portfolio level, risk management enables organizations to protect portfolio investments and balance the level of risk in the portfolio.

The history of project portfolio management
The roots of project portfolio management can be traced back to financial theories that emerged in the 1950s, often linked with the pioneering work of Harry Markowitz, which was later recognized with a Nobel Prize. In essence, portfolio theories underline the importance of coordinating diverse elements to mitigate collective investment risks. These theories enable the optimization of portfolio benefits, the effective utilization and cultivation of limited resources, and the proper consideration of portfolio stakeholders.

Enterprise project portfolio management
Enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) is a top-down approach to managing all project-intensive work and resources across the enterprise. This contrasts with the traditional approach of combining manual processes, desktop project tools, and PPM applications for each project portfolio environment.

Business drivers for EPPM
The PPM landscape is evolving rapidly as a result of the growing preference for managing multiple capital investment initiatives from a single, enterprise-wide system. This more centralized approach, and resulting 'single version of the truth' for project and project portfolio information, provides the transparency of performance needed by management to monitor progress versus the strategic plan.

The key aims of EPPM can be summarized as follows:
 * Prioritize the right projects and programs: EPPM can guide decision-makers to strategically prioritize, plan, and control enterprise portfolios. It also ensures the organization continues to increase productivity and on-time delivery - adding value, strengthening performance, and improving results.
 * Eliminate surprises: formal portfolio project oversight provides managers and executives with a process to identify potential problems earlier in the project lifecycle, and the visibility to take corrective action before they impact financial results.
 * Build contingencies into the overall portfolio: flexibility often exists within individual projects but, by integrating contingency planning across the entire portfolio of investments, organizations can have greater flexibility around how, where, and when they need to allocate resources, alongside the flexibility to adjust those resources in response to a crisis.
 * Maintain response flexibility: with in-depth visibility into resource allocation, organizations can quickly respond to escalating emergencies by maneuvering resources from other activities, while calculating the impact this will have on the wider business.
 * Do more with less: For organizations to systematically review project management processes while cutting out inefficiencies and automating those workflows and to ensure a consistent approach to all projects, programs, and portfolios while reducing costs.
 * Ensure informed decisions and governance: by bringing together all project collaborators, data points, and processes in a single, integrated solution, a unified view of project, program, and portfolio status can be achieved within a framework of rigorous control and governance to ensure all projects consistently adhere to business objectives.
 * Extend best practice enterprise-wide: organizations can continuously vet project management processes and capture best practices, providing efficiency as a result.
 * Understand future resource needs: by aligning the right resources to the right projects at the right time, organizations can ensure individual resources are fully leveraged and requirements are clearly understood. EPPM software also allows an organization to establish complete project capacity.

Project portfolio optimization
A key result of PPM is to decide which projects to fund in an optimal manner. Project Portfolio Optimization (PPO) is the effort to make the best decisions possible under these conditions.

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

title: Project portfolio management


text:
Júlia Várady

Júlia Várady (Várady Júlia; born 1 September 1941) is a Hungarian-born German soprano who started out as a mezzo-soprano.

Life and career
Júlia Várady was born Tőzsér Júlia in Nagyvárad, Hungary (today Oradea, Romania). At the age of six she began violin lessons at the Conservatory in Cluj and then, aged fourteen, voice training with Emilia Popp. She later studied voice with Arta Florescu at the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory in Bucharest.

She made her debut, as a mezzo-soprano, with the Cluj Opera in 1962, singing in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte.

In 1970, she joined the Frankfurt-am-Main Opera and thereafter sang mostly in Western Europe. In 1973, she moved from Frankfurt to the Bayerische Staatsoper (the Bavarian State Opera) in Munich and later joined the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; at the Vienna State Opera; at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan; at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires; at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and at the Salzburg, Munich and Edinburgh festivals. In 1978, she created the role of Cordelia at the premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Lear with the Bayerische Staatsoper.

She was married to the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from 1977 until his death in 2012. In 1998, she retired from opera. She is currently a guest professor at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin.

Roles
Here are most of the roles Julia Varady sang and played in staged opera performances. Roles she sang in the studio (such as the Empress in Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten) or in concert (such as Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio, and Fidelia in Giacomo Puccini's Edgar) are not included.

 * Judit in Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle
 * Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen
 * Konchakovna in Borodin's Prince Igor
 * Alceste in Gluck's Alceste
 * Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice
 * Marguerite in Charles Gounod's Faust
 * Ginevra in Handel's Ariodante
 * Santuzza in Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana
 * Elettra in Mozart's Idomeneo
 * Susanna, Cherubino and the Countess Rosina in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
 * Elvira and Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni
 * Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte
 * Vitellia in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito
 * Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
 * Giulietta and Antonia in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann
 * Cio-Cio-San and Kate Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly
 * Liù in Puccini's Turandot
 * Giorgetta in Puccini's Il tabarro
 * Cordelia in Reimann's Lear
 * Angelina in Rossini's La Cenerentola

 * Adèle in Rossini's Le Comte Ory
 * Girl in Schönberg's Moses und Aron
 * Saffi in Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron
 * Arabella in Richard Strauss' Arabella
 * Composer in R. Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos
 * Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
 * Lisa in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades
 * Abigaille and Fenena in Verdi's Nabucco
 * Thibault and Élisabeth in Verdi's Don Carlos
 * Desdemona in Verdi's Otello
 * Aida in Verdi's Aida
 * Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore
 * Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino
 * Violetta in Verdi's La traviata
 * Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera
 * Irene in Wagner's Rienzi
 * Senta in Wagner's The Flying Dutchman
 * Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
 * Freia in Wagner's Das Rheingold
 * Siegrune and Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre

Recordings

 * Julia Varady: Song of Passion – DVD (documentary and recordings of live performances) EMI Classics
 * Bartok: Bluebird's Castle, with Dietriech Fisher-Dieskau and Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor - CD, 1979. Deutsche Grammophon
 * Richard Strauss: Arias from Salome, Ariadne, Danae, Capriccio – CD. Bamberg Symphony, Fischer-Dieskau, conductor, Orfeo
 * Giacomo Puccini: Arias from Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La bohème, La rondine, Gianni Schicchi, Manon Lescaut, Turandot, Suor Angelica – CD, 1995. Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Marcello Viotti, conductor, Orfeo
 * Pjotr Tchaikowsky: Arias from Eugene Onegin, The Maid of Orleans, Mazeppa, The Sorceress (The Enchantress), The Queen of Spades, Iolanta – CD, 2000. Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Roman Kofman, conductor, Orfeo
 * Richard Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder and arias from Tristan und Isolde, Götterdämmerung – CD, 1997. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Fischer-Dieskau, conductor, Orfeo
 * Verdi Heroines: Arias from Nabucco, II Trovatore, La Traviata, Un Ballo In Maschera, La Forza Del Destino – CD, 1995. Munich Bavarian State Orchestra, Fischer-Dieskau, conductor, Orfeo
 * J.S. Bach: Coffee Cantata, Peasant Cantata – CD, London 11/1981, Julia Varady (Soprano), et al., with Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Phillips Digital Classics
 * Mozart/Strauss Lieder – CD, Berlin, 1991, with Elena Bashkirova, piano, Orfeo
 * Mozart: Don Giovanni, 1987, Karajan, Vienna Philharmonic, DVD, Telemondial/Sony.
 * Cecilio in Mozart's Lucio Silla - Leopold Hager conducting the Mozarteumarchester Salzburg, 1975, Deutsche Grammophon
 * Giacomo Meyerbeer: Gli amori di Teolinda – CD, Berlin, 1983, RIAS Kammerchor, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin, Jörg Fadle Klarinette and Gerd Albrecht conductor, Orfeo

title: Júlia Várady


text:
Talk:Hammer's Slammers

untitled
I have removed the following from the "related works" section: " Seas of Venus (2004) A story of mercenary organizations similar to the Slammers on Venus." I did so because the section heading indicates this is for works set in the same universe as the Slammers works, which Seas of Venus is not. It is explicitly set in the world of "Clash by Night" by Henry Kuttner (possibly writing with his wife). Seas of venus is also about a group of mercenary soldiers, but so are many works by Drake that are in now way related to the Slamers series except via authorship and theme. This includes Redliners and The Forlorn Hope, as well as The Seas of Venus. DES (talk) 20:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Describe setting
Please describe the setting of the books. Where and when do these take place? MrZaius talk  06:48, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I had the same thought now, while reading the article on the "Hammerverse". The article includes lists of the books and stories, and of the technology, but there's no list of the locations described in the series.  I will research and put something together.  Generally speaking, it's a possible human future, in which mankind has colonized the galaxy.  Much of the colonization was driven by specific nations, who imparted their character to their off-world colonies.  For example, Colonel Hammer's home world, Friesland, was settled by a Dutch effort.  Best regards,TheBaron0530 (talk) 20:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)theBaron0530

Organizations are cruft
The section on "Organizations" is merely cruft, and in fact it's duplicated in the RPG books. I am removing it today. 192.91.147.35 (talk) 21:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

"ACV Weaknesses"
The specifics of air-cushion vehicles aren't relevant to this article. If you want the information included in Wikipedia, then make sure there's a link to the page on ACVs (and there is.) 75.61.133.119 (talk) 07:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

For one thing, I'm not sure that we need to specifically state that the capabilities of fictional powerplants in fictional universes are themselves fictional. For another, the source material repeatedly describes the fans as being gimbaled and directional; they're really just ducted-fan thrusters, and the reason that they blow air into a plenum instead of operating on direct thrust is to reduce the overall ground pressure. "Rolling Hot" even describes combat cars lifting solely on fan thrust. And the original text (currently restored) did state that the extremely high outputs of the fictional fusion plants were needed to make the whole thing work.

I guess I'm just not really certain why you're so insistent that this specific article dump on the idea of hovercraft combat vehicles. It's like going into the "Star Wars" article and complaining about the Force. It's part of the background, it's no less fictional than the powerguns that use Fortean phenomena to blow your head off. 192.91.173.42 (talk) 00:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

 * Gentlemen: I am 60 years old and in my life I have had many unpleasant realities revealed to me.  One, which I will use to make my point here, was when I face an entire second grade class of students ALL of whom firmly believed the human race regularly travelled to the stars because they saw it every week on "Star Trek".  To finish, if it is fiction in violation of physical law I believe it is simple common sense to label it as such because "no one would believe that" just doesn't happen in the real world.Aaaronsmith (talk) 21:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

 * I look forward to your extensive annotations on why powerguns, handheld lasers, handheld railguns, fusion powerplants, hyper-advanced AI, FTL travel, plasma thrusters, nucleardampers, and just about every single solitary aspect of the Hammer's Slammers universe is in violation of physical law. 192.31.106.35 (talk) 23:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

 * You missed the point. Everything you list MIGHT be possible w a sufficient change in technology.  ACV is something we do today and we KNOW, from theory and practical experience for the last 50 years, a bigger power plant makes no difference and all the other weaknesses cannot be eliminated.  Now, if he had postulated some kind of anti-gravity lift for his tanks, I would have no case because it MIGHT be possible.Aaaronsmith (talk) 18:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

 * Your objections are addressed in the original texts. If you had actually read the series you'd know this.  192.35.35.34 (talk) 23:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

 * I read the first book (the one w the incredible introduction). I'm sorry, they don't work.  Give them infinite power, and all the fans will do is cavitate.  A standard problem of pneumatics.  I don't care what extra explainations were given, THEY DON'T WORK or every army in the world would be using them right now.Aaaronsmith (talk) 03:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

 * What you lot fail to realize is that the novels are meant for entertainment, and their writer can do whatever he wants with his work. 199.247.253.42 (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Poetic license has its limits or some authors would use it as an excuse to tell stories of wooden sailing ships going faster than sound and flapping your arms and flying to the moon.Aaaronsmith (talk) 02:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Article is getting crufty
It seems to me that the "Technology" part of this article is becoming filled with cruft. Most of what's there is just flat-out copy-paste from the books and doesn't really need to be repeated here. Unless people express serious objections, I'm going to try to trim it down a bit. 192.31.106.35 (talk) 20:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Hammer's Slammers


text:
Talk:Balls of Steel (TV series)

Improvements

 * I put quite a bit of work into this to get it to a better standard. It's getting there,and this will be cleaned up very soon. To count I think 3 people are working on this. Let's hope this gets cleaned up soon as I think this is a very good show. (JS)

 * JS again. Looked through it and noticed that very little has to be done. WE have to clean up the criticisms column and perhaps go into a bit more detail and definitely add links. Oh and if possible,make a table of each week's winner's?

 * I've effectively rewritten the entire 'Guest Presenters' section (and renamed it as "Acts" since they're not guest presenters at all) to correct the grammar and give more general descriptions of the acts. Still needs work though. Foolish Mortal 22:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

1.external links
 * Thanks foolish,i've decided on a checklist of what needs done so this is easier.When we do the lot I think we have succesfully cleaned it up.

2.Wikipedia Categories

3.Short paragraph on the other Balls of Steel like programme on Channel 4

4. Redirect that other programme to here.

5.Add hyperlinks to other wikipedia entries.

6.Clean up those other three paragraphs.

Feel free to tell me if we need anything else. Bye for now,(JS)--213.107.255.247 16:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh Dear,there's another Balls of Steel. I'm gonna redirect it to here. I'll save the text in my computer just in case we need it back. (JS) 213.107.255.247 15:34, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Done,Done and dusted. All cleaned up. looks like we've done it. (JS)J.J.Sagnella 11:09, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Page move
There's an attempt going on at a page move, it's a little confusing, however I think the aim is to move this page to Balls of Steel (TV). Just thought I'd leave a note here. Driller thriller 17:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

New series
In the second series, new contestants include:

Mr Inappropriate A bloke who does things to people who is just wrong, eg; on one episode he teaches real foreign students sexual related words.

The Penis Trap A women who makes blokes help her out then has a go at them for looking at her and is sexist.

The annoying devil is a new person, but plays the same character.

YouTube links
This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed or you would like to help spread this message contact us on this page. Thanks, ---J.S (t|c) 03:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Winners
Right, let's just take off all records of any results in any TV show, then. I have been adding the past winners of the Balls Of Steel weekly trophy, because it is RELEVANT TO THE SHOW. Yet some idiot has decided that he knows what people should and shouldn't know about the show, and repeatedly removes the information without explanation. I can't exaggerate just how stupid this is. Stop doing it, it is pathetic.
 * Really, Wikipedia isn't the place to start creating arguments and making arguments. Discuss this civilly before creating edit wars or starting conflicts. In My opinion, as the show is more about the comedy and less about the winners (Channel 4 lists it always as Comedy and not Competition on 4od), I really doubt that an average reader coming to Wikipedia for the first time and clicking this article would want to know about the winners of each show. And at the end of the day, first-time readers are primarily Wikipedia's main audience and so the guidelines for a good article on Wikipedia are made for them. Of course if you owuld like to respond civilly to this, I would be happy to reply and may be persauded if there really is reason enough. J.J.Sagnella 13:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

A note on 'The Fuckers'
Just added that the sex isn't real - you can quite clearly see that they are wearing flesh coloured pants in the vital areas! Having real sex, I think, would be illegal in the contexts they do it in. I think they tow a fine line just being semi-clothed. Xzamuel 19:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Probably. But then again, I'd be just as surprised if half of Neg's sports are legal. -- Smjg 23:57, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Query: Right now the Tony Parsons link leads to a disambiguation page.  Should it lead instead to the british jounalist, or is the one here a fourth Tony Parsons, who ought not to be wikilinked at all.  I've never seen the show, so I don't know.  Would someone who knows either disambiguate the link or delete the brackets entirely, as appropriate? David in DC (talk) 18:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Identity of World's Worst
This edit, reverted 18 minutes later, gave his name as Ross Noble.

If there's no evidence of what his name is, what evidence is there of what his name isn't? -- Smjg 23:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Ross Noble is a comedian. Bencey 12:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

series 3
i seen something in this article earlier about series 3 but now it is removed:S:S is there going to one if so add it again and cite it. in my opiniun thier will be lots more series's, the show is brilliant.Andrew22k 19:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone site the source of information? I've heard nothing on a new series, the last one had only just finished I'd be surprised if they announced it, and announced who would be leaving. --WilkoDCFC 19:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Since there is not a source i will remove it but if anyone does have a source provide it. Bencey 23:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

New-look acts section
The section has been rewritten as a single table. I'm not sure what I think of it at the moment. Though I'd thought of doing something similar for when series three comes along, but still with separate "Current acts" and "Retired acts" sections.

Admittedly, the extra columns (along with the fact that the whole section is now subject to narrowing by the infobox) do make the table appear rather narrow.... -- Smjg 20:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah i thought it would be best for the long term, because more acts will retire and more will come along and there will be to many columns. I do like smjg's idea of having a retired and current acts table. I'm sure there is a way to put the table lower down i'll look around and check. Bencey 23:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Images
I have got images of each acts titlecard should they go on the article ? Bencey 23:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism
I just removed a pile of vandel edits. I don't think I removed anything important but if I have please feel free to put it back. Leaderofearth 12:13, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Free hoe
What is the racial implication of 'hoe'? OK, it's the slightly better way to say 'whore', but that has very little relevance to black people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.180.98.76 (talk • contribs) 08:24, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

 * This is probably OT for a Wikipedia talk page, but still. What Toju is saying is lost on me too.  But if it is something to do with "whore", the implication would be that the customer is being accused of having a nonsensical stereotype of people of a certain colour, similarly to the "Please keep off the grass" instance. -- Smjg 23:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Ouch! In that case, in series 3, even 'sausage' will tick him off. What with black people are sex gods and all. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TimHowardII (talk • contribs) 02:18, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Actually, what I think he is implying there is 'Just because I'm black, you think I'm a pimp?' -- Asiant X13 22:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Yeah, he posed as a worker in a hardware shop which had signs everywhere saying 'Free hoe with every purchase'. On being questioned about the free hoe, he kicks off at the two men who asked the question by accusing them of thinking he's a pimp. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.108.215.60 (talk) 16:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

"Balls of Steel.tv" link
Knowing the owner of the website "ballsofsteel.tv" personally (he's in the same class as me; I know it sounds a little too good to be true, but 'tis true), I've had to take down that external link, as he has been given a Cease and Desist letter from Objective Productions (the people who produce Balls of Steel) regarding the videos being shown there. undefined N  a  N  12:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

 * But ballsofsteel.tv didn't host the videos - it just linked to videos on YouTube. Is such linking actually illegal?  Indeed, how many of the videos did he put up on YT? -- Smjg (talk) 16:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Series 3 stuff recently added to article
Somebody has taken the "liberty" to add information on new Series 3 acts and even a "Series 3 winners" section. I have felt obliged to remove this because:
 * Series 3 hasn't started yet, so contrary to how they were listed, they are not "current" acts.
 * The information on these new acts is unreferenced. Add to that the facts that they were added one by one and that the edit summary was not filled in each time; FAIK they could be pure figments of the editors' imaginations.
 * Wiki is not paper, so setting aside space in which to add information before there's any information to add is nothing but clutter.

Of course, if anybody can find and cite a credible source telling us about the new acts from Series 3, then we could create an "Upcoming acts" section and put them there. Failing this, we should wait until the series has started to air. -- Smjg (talk) 21:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Series 3 acts, now that it's begun
On last night's programme, I noted down the acts listed in the opening sequence, and those that I caught agree with what the article currently says. However, I seem to have noticed that there was one I missed between Scummy Mummy and Neg, as they were coming too fast for me to write them down. Or was I imagining it?

I can't believe that three of Series 2's four new acts have already retired. And was I imagining it, or did PFT only ever perform once? I'm also amazed that none of the Series 1 acts have newly retired. -- Smjg (talk) 11:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

There isn't an act between Scummy Mummy and Neg in the opening credits.PFT did only perform once-and so did the Escapologist for that matter.I know that it's just my opinion,but i thought the three that retired weren't funny at all.Harry-fox (talk) 16:48, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I had begun to wonder about the Escapologist as well. So what are the "disastrous failures" mentioned in the act description at the moment?  It appears that somebody has confused the programme with some other programme he performed on or his website. -- Smjg (talk) 16:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Episode archive
I think this article should have an episode archive.This archive should contain a brief summary of all the episodes-stating which characters appeared in that episode and a short paragraph explaining what the clip was about specifically.I could help with this as i own series 1 on dvd-although anything i do in on series 2 and 3 will be mainly from memory-and watching you tube clips.Does anyone think this would be a good addition to this article.Harry-fox (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I suppose it depends on whether it can be done in a form that doesn't clutter the article too much. Perhaps as an extended version of the series winners sections?  Failing that, maybe it could be done as either:
 * Having a detail page for each series to hold this information.
 * Putting the data in each act's article, similarly to the way it's been done for some of the Pop Idol contestants. The Neg Dupree article currently includes a list of his urban sports; a start would be if this info could be made into a table, complete with series and episode numbers.
 * One difficulty is that some of the acts have individual performance titles (Neg, Alex Zane) while others don't. So depending on which approach we go for, it might make most sense to vary the table format slightly.  Of course, we could still list here the names of the acts that performed in each episode, even if the details are going to be in separate articles. -- Smjg (talk) 18:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I have now created the Balls of Steel episode page and I've spent three days researching all the episode and the information I've provided is all true. Comedy Dan (talk) 20:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Rowspans
reverted my improvement, but gave no explanation.

Unless I'm mistaken, having rowspans in the winners table serves no purpose but to make the table more complicated and cumbersome to edit. That's why I changed it so that every episode occupies a single table row.

The approach is also used in the acts table, but for two things: double acts and the change in who plays the Annoying Devil. What do people think we should do here?
 * 1) Leave it as it is
 * 2) Merge the rows in the case of double acts, but leave AD as it is
 * 3) Make it one row per act, simplifying AD
 * Barrie Hall (series 2-3) Jason Attar (series 1)

If we go for approach 2, it would change what happens should half of a double act be replaced. Essentially, the focus would change from following each member's entry and exit to following changes to the act as a whole over time. I personally think this is a slightly nicer approach....

Moreover, what do people think about the order of columns? The current order seemed OK under previous structures, but under the current structure it somewhat undesirably splits AD's performers from the info on when each was active. -- Smjg (talk) 16:01, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I really don't see your problem with it. It doesn't make it look more complicated, in my opinion i think it simplifies it. In23065 (talk) 16:11, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I didn't say look more complicated, but anyway. Compare the markup:

|-
 * 3
 * Michael Locke Matthew Pritchard
 * Pain Men
 * 1st
 * vs

|-
 * rowspan=2| 3
 * Michael Locke
 * rowspan=2|Pain Men
 * rowspan=2|1st
 * Matthew Pritchard
 * and tell me which you think is (a) less cluttered (b) easier on the average person trying to update the table. Moreover, to me it seems a bit silly to span a row across two rows when effectively all you're doing is putting two bits of information in one of its cells.
 * Still, let's see what others think. -- Smjg (talk) 09:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Still, let's see what others think. -- Smjg (talk) 09:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Number of appearances?
How about adding a "Number of appearances" column to the acts table? Does anybody out there have the data to add? -- Smjg (talk) 10:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Andrew Clover or Robin Huxtable?
Once, it said Andrew Clover. Then, it said Robin Huxtable. Now the performer is down as Andrew Clover, and the segment name as "Robin Huxtable - Naked Man".

What's this meant to mean? That Andrew Clover is his real name, and he has two character names - "Robin Huxtable" and "Naked Man"? This begs the questions:
 * Why the two character names?
 * What is the source for Andrew Clover being his real name?
 * If the segment name is "Robin Huxtable - Naked Man", why did the segment's title screen say only "The Naked Man"?

Answer: I found a blog-post written by Andrew Clover himself. He's credited under that name in the post. So, we know that is his real name. As for where "Robin Huxtable" comes from, I'm not sure. Maybe an alias, or something like that? But, this is just speculation on my part. He didn't sound super enthusiastic about the experience of portraying The Naked Man on the show in the blog-post.

-- anonymous 17:27, 28 November 2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A06:4001:6038:0:3DBD:1AA1:FEB3:909B (talk)

-- Smjg (talk) 13:48, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Balls of Steel (TV series)


text:
Roger Kellaway

Roger Kellaway (born November 1, 1939) is an American composer, arranger and jazz pianist who has recorded over 250 albums, and composed over 20 film scores

Life and career
Kellaway was born in Waban, Massachusetts, United States. He is an alumnus of the New England Conservatory. Kellaway has composed commissioned works for ensembles of various sizes. He also has composed music for film, television, ballet and stage productions. Pianist Phil Saltman was one of his early mentors.

In 1964, Kellaway was a piano sideman for composer/arranger Boris Midney's group The Russian Jazz Quartet's album Happiness on ABC/Impulse jazz records.

Kellaway composed the closing theme, "Remembering You" for the television sitcom All in the Family, which was also used as the closing theme for the spinoff Archie Bunker's Place.

In 1970, Kellaway formed the Roger Kellaway Cello Quartet with cellist Edgar Lustgarden. Their piece "Come to the Meadow" was used as the theme for the NPR program Selected Shorts. For their 1978 album, Nostalgia Suite, the group became a quintet with drummer Joe Porcaro.

On November 7 and 8, 2008, Kellaway was bandleader and pianist for the Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl concerts by Van Morrison, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Morrison's acclaimed 1968 album.

Kellaway was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adaptation Score for A Star Is Born (1976), and a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement for the Eddie Daniels album Memos from Paradise (1988). Guitarist Robben Ford credits Kellaway and Tom Scott, whom he met while playing for Joni Mitchell, as major influences on his music. Kellaway was featured on Ilya Serov's original rendition of Django Reinhardt's song "Swing 42" in 2017.

As arranger
With Melanie
 * Born to Be (Buddah, 1968)
 * Gather Me (Neighborhood/Buddah, 1971)
 * Stoneground Words (Neighborhood, 1972)
 * Madrugada (Neighborhood, 1973)

With Carmen McRae
 * I Am Music (Blue Note, 1975)

With Diane Schuur
 * Love Songs (UMG, 1993)

With Liza Minnelli
 * Gently (Angel, 1996)

With Robben Ford
 * Supernatural (GRP, 1999)

With Gary Lemel
 * Moonlighting (Warner, 1999)

As sideman
With Kenny Burrell With The Russian Jazz Quartet With Stan Getz With J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding With George Harrison With Jimmy Knepper With Herbie Mann With Mark Murphy With Oliver Nelson With Sonny Rollins With Lalo Schifrin With Bud Shank With Zoot Sims With Sonny Stitt With Clark Terry With Ben Webster With Kai Winding With Jimmy Witherspoon With Stephane Grappelli & Yo-Yo Ma
 * Guitar Forms (Verve, 1964–65)
 * Happiness (Impulse!, 1964)
 * Stan Getz Plays Music from the Soundtrack of Mickey One (MGM, 1965)
 * Betwixt & Between (A&M/CTI, 1969)
 * Dark Horse (Apple, 1974)
 * Jimmy Knepper in L.A. (Discomate, 1977)
 * Herbie Mann Plays The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd (Atlantic, 1965)
 * That's How I Love the Blues! (Riverside, 1962)
 * More Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1964)
 * Soulful Brass with Steve Allen (Impulse!, 1968)
 * Black, Brown and Beautiful (Flying Dutchman, 1969)
 * Alfie (Impulse!, 1966)
 * There's a Whole Lalo Schifrin Goin' On (Dot, 1968)
 * Let It Be (Pacific Jazz, 1970)
 * Just Friends with Harry Sweets Edison
 * Broadway Soul (Colpix, 1965)
 * The Happy Horns of Clark Terry (Impulse!, 1964)
 * Tonight (Mainstream, 1965)
 * The Power of Positive Swinging (Mainstream, 1965)
 * See You at the Fair (Impulse!, 1964)
 * Rainy Day (Verve, 1965)
 * Blues for Easy Livers (Prestige, 1965)
 * Anything Goes (CBS, 1989)

title: Roger Kellaway


text: User talk:86.133.135.99

title: User talk:86.133.135.99