==Welcome== Hello Rgrizza and
welcome to
Wikipedia! I'm glad you've chosen to join us. This is a great project with lots of dedicated people, which might seem intimidating at times, but don't let anything discourage you.
Be bold!, explore, and contribute. Try to
be civil by following
simple guidelines and signing your talk comments with ~~~~ but never forget that one of our central tenets is to
ignore all rules.
If you want to learn more,
Wikipedia:Tutorial is the place to go, but eventually the following links might also come in handy:
Help
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Float around until you find something that tickles your fancy. One easy way to do this is to hit the
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Community Portal offers a more structured way to become acquainted with the many great committees and groups that focus on specific tasks. My personal favorite stomping grounds are
Wikipedia:Translation into English as well as the
cleanup,
welcoming, and
counter-vandalism committees. Finally, the Wikimedia Foundation has several other wiki
projects that you might enjoy. If you have any more questions, always feel free to ask me anything on
my talk page. Again, welcome! --
Draeco 03:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Recent vandal attacks on the main page where an 'interesting' picture has been snuck in via unprotected subparts of the main page have been annoying at the least - Yes it's true. It has been one or two lapses of concentration by admins who forgot to protect something that they placed on the front page templates. Admins are human, they do make mistakes. Everyone has been poked and reminded. I'm not saying that it won't happen again, but everything that should be done has.
However.
What should happen when such a vandal attacks? Within minutes someone with admin ability spots it, quietly reverts it and covers the cracks that the vandal oozed in via. The vandal is blocked, defeated and deflated, they move on.
What does happen when such a vandal attacks? Everyone, their dog, cat, hamster and rabbits swamp this talk page with "OMG!11!! I'M OFFENDED!! ARGH! ARGH! MY EYES WTF!" style messages of outrage and indignation. The vandal says " HAR HAR PWND! I EMS TEH 1337", posts several taunting messages about how good they are and revels in the afterglow of their nuclear attack.
Eventually, within minutes someone with admin ability spots it, reverts it and covers the cracks that the vandal oozed in via. The vandal is blocked and moves on with a self-satified smug smile and sticky underpants.
People. If you get all up in arms about it, you're feeding the vandal's ego. Just let it pass. It will be reverted within minutes. -- Monotonehell 10:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rgrizza
I have put up an article titled Question blocks that came from WP:AFC. It was already proposed for deletion, but I would invite you to add to the topic, so that it is not deleted. Graeme Bartlett 00:48, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, The polynomial giving the smallest known Mahler measure less than 1 was actually correct before you changed it, but so is the one you changed it to, so I won't revert it back. The point is that if we let f(x) be the polynomial originally listed, then the one you changed it to is f(-x). The Mahler measure of a polynomial is the product of the absolute values of the roots whose absolute values are greater than 1, so f(x) and f(-x) have the same Mahler measure. Admittedly the only root of the original poly that is outside the unit circle is negative, and for your f(-x) it is positive, which maybe make f(-x) a slightly better choice if you prefer positive roots to negative roots. But is was a bit much for you to say that the original poly (and the one at Wolfram) is wrong, since that's not the case. (Which you'd have been able to check if you'd computed the roots of the two polys and compared them, you'd have instantly seen there was just a sign change.)
JosephSilverman ( talk) 03:36, 16 February 2013 (UTC)