User talk:Luis rib

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Confusing edit

I'm confused by this edit [1]. Did you go through someone else's comment and replace apostrophes with question marks? Mattley 20:43, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cheers. I wonder how it happened? Still, as long as it isn't the start of a war against apostrophes... Mattley 21:26, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Minaret of Jam

Hi, I edited the first paragraph to make everything full sentences, but the rest of it looks fine. Rick K 21:16, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Capita...cake!

I made the decision to withdraw from the article talk page. Sadly, I am rather confident that the intro will end up glowingly pro-capitalist, representing the views of the Right and Moderate Right, and underrepresenting that of the Left and Moderate Left (again, it should be expected under this socio-economic system called capitalism), as must be the case for such fundamental articles. I don't have the energy to fight a losing battle over this POV eventuality. Watch this flash video for further generic details. (this generic comment has been forwarded to User talk:RJII, User talk:Luis rib (that's you!), User talk:SlimVirgin, User talk:Slrubenstein, and User talk:Ultramarine ]

You, specifically, made some rather expansive comments, many of which are highly polemical in nature and requiere either an equally polemical answer, or writing a whole book (which references hunderds of others) in response. I'm only one person, who is struggling to juggle editorial contributions on their spare-time. So, I can tell you the truth, then, as I see it, that unbeknowst to you, your worldview is based on insidious lies and distorted rationalizations which are utterly divorced from the facts, and highly self-serving, parasytic, immoral, irrational, et cetera, etc.; but that is, again a polemical generalization (yes, I can specify and qualify it so that you will have to respond accordingly – see first sentence in this paragraph).

Now, if you have any specific item you would like me to address (about capitalism, communism, or anything), I will be more than happy to respond to it on my talk page, so long as its scope is resonable (despite your hitherto comments, I feel you are more than competent to judge what is or isn't reasonable in that sense). Collegial polemics, also as a method towards comrpomise is no longer possible (for me, at least) in that article, and at any rate, you demand too much of me even with that, unless all you wish for is back and foruth rhetoric. To reitreate, providing it is a well-organized and concisely phrased, I don't mind treading in waters deep (so long as I'm not surrounded by sharks).

Since much of your comment revolved around the developmental, I will finish this section by noting to you that I have written about the rationality of the ruling class on that front, though I do find it fundamentally shallow and self-serving, etc. This does not mean, though, that I am incapable of writing in an NPOV way – in fact, you will find that the majority of articles I have major contributions in enjoy overwhelming consensus. When it comes to development theories, I am currently the sole author of Modernization theory, for example.

More topically, as for the intro itself, I'm pleased you agree with some of my points (again, I emphasize that not only economic relations but also social relations from the vantage point of the L, ML, MR, and R be included in the intro, and it does need to be a relatively lengthy one), but, as said, I have very little hope for it becoming balanced, to be honest (and no offence intended), even from your end (although, at least you have some scholarly background in the subject). At the event, the intro now is vastly different from, in form and aim, to the one we were originally discussing.

To sum up, I am willing to engage in constructive dialogue about the article specifically as well as collegial polemics in general, any time, but I am withdrawing from the article talk page for all the reasons cited above. El_C 02:47, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Adminship

Hi there! If you have an opinion on me, here's the page to say it on: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Chamaeleon.

If not, excuse the intrusion. Chamaeleon 14:22, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry

On the communism page, I didn't mean the section about abuses was to remain. I deleted a section ultramarine had added that mentioned ayn rand and said her perfect society wouldn't have those abuses, which is why I said ayn rand's answer is if you don't have the money, starve. I hope that clears up my edit summary.-- Revolutionary Left | Che y Marijuana 22:30, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Do you think the section on communist states is NPOV from the last version I edited? I think Ultramarine keeps expanding it too big, and beyond NPOV boundries, would you say that this version (the last one I edited) is a neutral enough version to rest on? That it summarizes the point well enough and presents the two sides, leaving the rest to the main article?-- Revolutionary Left | Che y Marijuana 23:11, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't mind it, I think it's better like that :)-- Revolutionary Left | Che y Marijuana 23:23, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

arb case

hey, thanks for that comment man. RJII 23:14, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Help for a Newbie

Im a relativly new user (read: made about 3 Anon edits and two edits logged in), and you reverted an edit I made today to Yazd as vandalism, and I was hoping I could understand that determination. As to the actual edit in retrospect I suppose that it did not fit well into the article how I did it, though it was factually correct. I also poked around and listing well known residents in articles about cities is not unprecidented (see Edinburgh). Dalf 05:14, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

West Germany

Just look at [2] to see what POV stuff and non-English usage he/she put in. PMA 22:28, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

83.109.165.234 is now claiming on the West Germany talk page that i am a vandal - i'm tempted to block him. PMA 08:08, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've had similar troubles when he or Heimdal tries to state that Bonn was the "provisional" capital of West Germany - while it may have been considered that, it's also POV, giving support to the view that the government in Bonn was the rightfull government of Germany as a whole. PMA 01:19, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Recent Capitalism edits

Hi. I apologize if my tone was a bit confrontational on Talk:Capitalism. I wasn't suggesting that you started an edit war, but I believe that one is (or was) going on between Ultramarine and Paranoid. Personally, I am more inclined to go with Ultramarine's edit, but I think the controvery is over something kind of ridiculous. Capitalism has many virtues and many shortcomings, and I think that making a blanket stement like "capitalism reduces poverty" or "it doesn't" is overly simplistic. I hope we can all work this out soon. Mgw 01:47, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Germany article

There seems to be some will now on the part of a number of editors to resist User:Heimdal's taking ownership of the page; would you be willing to return and contribute? Jayjg ^(talk) 21:32, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"deleted picture of constitution. If we start putting pictures of every constitution on every country page, we'll never finish." Sure we would, just as we've finished making articles for every country. :) That's like saying, if we start making maps of every country on every country page, we'll never finish. But we already have. --Golbez 18:55, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Welcome back!

Hi Luis, I read on Jayjg's page that you are returning to contribute to the Germany article. This pleases me very much! I look forward to your renewed participation. Best, gidonb 19:24, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thanks for the extremely kind words, I didn't know I'd end up giving hope to someone :) I just hope a war doesn't spring up over this. So far so good. --Golbez 17:28, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Cross-naming

If there is a community consensus similar to the Talk:Gdansk/Voting then yes, Russian names should be included. However, so far the rule mentions only the Polish-German history. Halibu tt 16:13, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

They are doing this anyway, so there's no risk of starting a war since it has already started. However, be advised that reverting my changes has no sense since the voting itself includes a ruling that reverting people who exclude such cross-naming does not fall under the 3RR. Tricky, isn't it.

BTW, if you complain about the results of the voting, you might want to try to put down your remarks at the Talk:Gdansk or Template talk:Gdansk-Vote-Notice pages - or start another voting. Halibu tt 16:33, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

No, it's not bad at all. IMHO the German names should be mentioned in the leads. Cross-naming might be a step too far, but it was agreed upon during the voting. Also, I do not worry about breaking the 3RR since the Talk:Gdansk/Vote mentions specifically that Reverts to confirm with community consensus are excluded from the 3RR rule, so I can add the Polish names as many times as I please. Halibu tt 16:46, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

I explained that on the relevant talk pages when asked. As to Dresden - the case is even more simple since the city used to be the capital of Poland. Halibu tt 17:05, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Existence of God merger

I'm attempting to develop a consensus in favor of merging the Arguments against the existence of God and the Arguments for the existence of God articles. A beta version of the resulting article is available at Existence of God. To date, there seems to be consensus in favor of this merger on the "for" talk page, I'm now trying to get a consensus together on the "against" talk page. Please visit Talk:Arguments against the existence of God to weigh in. I'm copy-and-pasting this message to everybody who has contributed to that talk page. crazyeddie 05:44, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Economics fascism

Hey Luis, I'm writing to you because you may be interested in vote for deletion on the economic fascism article that I authored. And, I'm bringing the vote to your attention message because the guy who put it up for deletion went around putting notices on people's talk pages misrepresenting the contents of the article, so maybe some semblance of fairness can be achieved. (and by all means, don't feel obligated to vote to keep --no pressure) Later. RJII 16:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Sorry, you hadn't apparently been active in two months, and it's kind of pointless to spend time notifying inactive editors (we have some 30,000 unlicensed images to take care of, time is of the essence). In any case, all you need to do is to add the {{GFDL-self}} template (the "tag") to the image description page, and remove the template that I added. (Nice pics BTW, better than the Tallinn town halls I got when visiting there!) Stan 17:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Defining Feature of Capitalism

Thanks for the message. Yes, I think the existence of secondary markets in debt and equity should be regarded as a defining feature of capitalism. Obviously, there are lots of businesses in a capitalistic system that don't go into these markets, that never have an IPO and borrow from banks rather than issuing bonds, etc.

Still, the secondary markets serve three crucial functions.

First, the secondary markets are such a valuable and flexible mechanism for corporate expansion that there is, in an informal sense, a limit to how large a buisness can grow without availing itself of these markets. The limit is different from one industry to another, but it is always there. You'll always find the largest players issuing stocks and bonds.

Second, the market-cap value of these public firms establish values, and the valuation ripples through the system. I can look in the newspaper every day and discover whether, say, silver mining stocks are on the way up or down, and my view of the value of a privately-held silver mine will be influenced by this signal.

Finally, the secondary markets aren't just a market for the paper issued, they are a market for corporate control. They create the possibility of proxy fights, hostile takeovers, etc. These are among the ways in which overly-stagnant management systems can be either shaken up or replaced, and so are crucial to the dynamism of the whole economy. This dynamism, too, ripples through the rest of the business scene, establishing patterns of whicht he privately-held folks take note.

Just some initial thoughts on the subject. --Christofurio 13:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Industrialised" slavery

Nice to have your support on the EU maps thing Luis! I didn't find much fault with your edit on the slavery issue, but wanted to explain what I meant by "industrialisation" of slavery. This term is quite widely used in the literature. It implies that slavery before Britain's growing involvement was primarily sporadic, in small consignments and disorganised. Britain commercialised it, built huge special slaving ships, set up factories in the UK to supply goods to Africa to purchase the slaves, built massive plantations in the Americas and an industrial network in Britain to handle and process the cotton and sugar. All of this amounts to "industrialisation". MarkThomas 21:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, ok on that. I'm not a specialist on slavery, to be honest. I remember seeing a documentary on Liverpool, though, which mentioned that most of the fortune of the city was based on specialisation on slavery.Luis rib 21:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

EU map

Thanks for your help on the EU base maps Luis, really appreciate it - sometimes it's very difficult to get intelligent positions on Wikipedia against the objections of foolish editors! MarkThomas 00:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regime & forms of government

Thanks for the positive response to my explanation distinguishing the concept of the formal constitutional form of government and the political system. Being able to explain such key concepts brightened my day.

Since you found the explanation of how to describe Moldova interesting, and since (as I see from your userpage) you are knowledgeable about Zimbabwe, I bet you may be interested in the politics literature on regimes that combine democratic forms of government in their constitutions and authoritarian elements precluding preclude fair contested elections free of massive irregularities. Robert Dahl, Seymour Martin Lipset, Juan Linz, Larry Diamond, and Guillermo O'Donnell have proposed various terms describing these "hybrid" regimes, including various grades of "pseduodemocraitc," "semidemocratic," "electoral authoritarian," and "delegative democratic" regimes. As Juan Linz put it, in these regimes "the existence of formally democratic political institutions, such as multiparty electoral competition, masks (often, in part, to legitimate) the reality of authoritarian domination." These regime typologies have been use to describe political rule in a diverse range of cases such as Zimbabwe and Putin's Russia. If you are interested in this area of literature, let me know; if I'm online I'll find some links to free articles, or send PDF files by email. 172 | Talk 01:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images in EU article

Hi, a vote is taking place on the EU article discussion page on retention or removal of each of the images currently in the article. This seems a good, focussed way of resolving the controversy. Your contribution would be greatly appreciated. Countersubject 12:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. Thanks for your input. I'm afraid I had already begun to tidy up the graphics, just before your edits on the discussion page. Please accept my apologies. I don't think we have any major differences of opinion, but if you feel strongly about any individual item I've removed, please put it back! On a positive note, we no longer get the warning at the top of the article about it's size. Countersubject 00:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Location Maps

On the WikiProject Countries talk page, you had either explictly declared a general interest in the project, or had participated at a discussion that appears related to Location Maps for European countries.
New maps had been created by David Liuzzo, and are available for the countries of the European continent, and for countries of the European Union exist in two versions. From November 16, 2006 till January 31, 2007, a poll had tried to find a consensus for usage of 'old' or of which and where 'new' version maps. At its closing, 25 people had spoken in favor of either of the two presented usages of new versions but neither version had reached a consensus (12 and 13), and 18 had preferred old maps.
As this outcome cannot justify reverting of new maps that had become used for some countries, seconds before February 5, 2007 a survey started that will be closed at February 20, 2007 23:59:59. It should establish whether the new style maps may be applied as soon as some might become available for countries outside the European continent (or such to depend on future discussions), and also which new version should be applied for which countries.
Please note that since January 1, 2007 all new maps became updated by David Liuzzo (including a world locator, enlarged cut-out for small countries) and as of February 4, 2007 the restricted licence that had jeopardized their availability on Wikimedia Commons, became more free. The subsections on the talk page that had shown David Liuzzo's original maps, now show his most recent design.
Please read the discussion (also in other sections α, β, γ, δ, ε, ζ, η, θ) and in particular the arguments offered by the forementioned poll, while realizing some comments to have been made prior to updating the maps, and all prior to modifying the licences, before carefully reading the presentation of the currently open survey. You are invited to only then finally make up your mind and vote for only one option.
There mustnot be 'oppose' votes; if none of the options would be appreciated, you could vote for the option you might with some effort find least difficult to live with - rather like elections only allowing to vote for one of several candidates. Obviously, you are most welcome to leave a brief argumentation with your vote. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 7 Feb 2007 20:23 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]