User talk:The Merovingian

Regarding "Spoilers"

Welcome to the Wiki! Just wanted to drop a note by and state that this site doesn't censor spoilers. Therefore, I've reverted your changes. See the Spoiler Policy. Thanks! -- Joe Beaudoin 11:06, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Well yes, but I think we should just keep stuff that's current, or chronological i.e. put the first entry under "Pegasus" saying that Tyrol served there, THEN mentioned the rest...I don't know. P.S. What's with that IP address that keeps sending junk links on this wiki? Is it a person or a bot?

I think its a bot of some type. I'll probably end up blocking the IP ranges. -- Joe Beaudoin 12:52, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Cylon Wars

Just wanted to compliment you for your recent adjustments to the Cylon War articles. Nice job. --Peter Farago 05:43, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Ditto. I like the Battle pages you've created. It has a great functionality to show in a nutshell any changes in equipment and manpower. If that isn't already there, can we have a count of lost Colonial ships, pilots, or other humans? Spencerian 10:09, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

As I understand it, there is a "list of pilots" page, and I believe that it and the article for Galactica cover Viper numbers (though Raptor numbers are anyone's guesss so far; the official site+on screen dialog has only said the number of Vipers). I also appreciate it that RDM, unlike the morons on Star Trek: Voyager (HOW MANY shuttles did they lose?) will devote an ENTIRE EPISODE's "A" plot ("Flight of the Phoenix") to saying that the Galactica has reached the point where they have to start building more Vipers from scratch. --->Actually, all I did was copy/paste the wiki battlebox from Wikipedia's Battle of Pelennor Fields page....of course, I WROTE most of the entry for Pelennor Fields including the battlebox, as well as the box for Helm's Deep, Black Gate, Bywater, Dale, etc. If you check "history" on Wikipedia I (Ricimer) actually have written most of the LOTR material, and I regulary update the Battlestar Galactica pages. Weird thing is, on Wikipedia if you type in "Cylon" you get this 6th century B.C. Athenian statesman named "Cylon" with a link to "the fictional robots". I think maybe 5 people would be looking for the ancient Athenian: anyone known how to bump Galactica's Cylons ahead of them? Anyway, the hard part was actually figuring out how to get a color that was visible on a black backround; it was originally pink and looked horrible (I don't know how to change colors) and had to toy around a dozen or so times before I got a nice bluish color. ---Ricimer 8:00, 18 Aug, 2005 EDT

12 Colonies

Thanks on the Colony stuff, I'm still new at this.

Nuggets

You said:

According to the SciFi.com official website, after the events of "The Hand of God", there are 5 surviving nuggets.

Can you tell me where to find this? --Peter Farago 11:45, 27 August 2005 (EDT)

Go to Scifi.com's Battlestar Galactica page. Click on "Ships Gallery" go to the Viper page. Click on "CAG roster". It gives a list of ships. During the first season it was updated every episode that Vipers were lost or damaged, up until episode #10 "The Hand of God" (I actually don't think any Vipers were lost since then). Anyway, it says that there are "5 trainee pilots" right there. So I went to the "nugget" page and updated it to say that there are 5 now (Hot Dog, Kat, and three others apparently). ---Ricimer, 27 Aug, 2005 4:00 pm EDT

Your fight with Philwelch

Gentlemen: rather than reverting each other's edits on Cylons and submitting ban requests, please attempt a civilized discussion on the article's talk page. --Peter Farago 15:03, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Agreed. I will revert the Cylon page to whatever it was in the last edit before this started, then continue on the discussion page. ---Ricimer, 1 Sept, 2005

Redirects

Use #REDIRECT [[Gideon]], for example. --Peter Farago 01:08, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

Humano-Cylons

I was looking into your reason for removing my "Starbuck's a Cylon" bit and wanted to point out that the line that Boomer says concerning Starbuck having a child does not say that she would breed with a Cylon. Boomer states, "No, if you agreed to bear children, it’d be voluntary, maybe even set you up with someone you like." Now, if Starbuck were to be set up with a Cylon to create a hybrid and the "twelve models" bit meant twelve different Humano-Cylon models, that would be extremely limiting (after all, we've already seen the chemistry between her and Leoben. Heh.). If the Cylons were trying to set her up with Simon, for example, it seems odd how he kept pushing her buttons (the child abuse thing, the "do you see any Vipers around here" bit, etc.). If one wanted to look at Boomer's comment as a general one relating to humans, then it still seems like Starbuck would not really work in that situation, either. I think that Boomer's comment could mean that the Cylons would set her up with Anders or Lee Adama, both of whom she has feelings for (note that Boomer says "someone you like," not "someone you would like."). While a case could be made that Anders is a Cylon, his presige and career in professional Pyramid makes it likely that he would have been in the public eye for more than two years prior to the Cylon holocaust, which, as I stated, seems to be the point of origin of Cylon infiltration. However, the information on Anders is quite weak and would make such a case on either side very difficult. D'anna Biers may have been in the public eye as a reporter, though the case has been made by others that she was probably a low profile reporter prior to the attack, and therefore would not have had the exposure that Anders enjoyed. Also, if one were to make the case that Baltar was a Cylon and that he could be used, the brainscan performed on him in Home, Part II, seems like it would have shown silica pathways in his brain, as that appears to still be part of Cylon technology (according to the mini-series), so it seems unlikely that he's a Cylon, too. Well, that turned into quite the long and roundabout case. Anyhow, as Boomer, nor anyone else in the episode, seems to have stated directly that Starbuck would be made to breed with a Cylon, there is enough wiggle-room to justify that this may not have been the case. -- Linaf

Final Cut

Thanks for the clean-up on my addendum... was kinda klunky.... Lone Odessan 18:17, 11 September 2005 (EDT)

The Great Cylon Turkey Shoot

You, sir, are a genius with the new battle page title. I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read your title change. The content of this page should be equally amusing. Spencerian 01:46, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

• No sir, I was actually quite serious. RDM was in the NROTC, and he says he has stacks of Word War II naval history books which much of the new "realistic" Battlestar Galactica is based on. My new title is a referrence to an infamous World War II battle: The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, properly referred to as the Battle of the Philippine Sea. It was the battle that struck a death knell to the Japanese Imperial Navy: the Japanese Naval Carrier threat was elminated in this battle and they never challenged US air dominance again. While suffering relatively light losses, for every one American plane shot down, *four* Japanese plains were shot down, and their carriers were annihilated. The battle was incredbily lopsided. Because of this lopsidedness, I felt it appropriate to use it here, because BSG is based on a lot of WWII carrier stuff. I'll leave a note there saying it's a name we made up. By the way, we need to link these battles into the episode articles so people know to look at them (casual fans coming onto the site). Problem I have though, is that we don't know if there were Turkeys on the 12 Colonies! (see Life Forms section of "Twelve Colonies"). ---Ricimer, 17 Sept, 2005

Still a genius move in both humor as well as military history research. I'm faintly familiar with that WWII battle: I think your name is quite appropriate. At least we know the Colonies have blackbirds. Spencerian 02:00, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

Don't Bite the Newbies

While User:Destinymaker familiarizes himself with Battlestar Wiki:Welcome, newcomers, please give Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers a read. --Peter Farago 22:15, 18 September 2005 (EDT)

I appoligie, though I am a strong believer in the survival of the fittest. --Ricimer, 18 Sept, 2005

Hey, Ricimer. You may also want to cut Sprocketeer a little slack, although in principle I agreed with some of what you said. See my edits on the Phoenix page as well. I struck your last edits only because they were too argumentative (as in fistfight) to reedit and add in the time I had. Please add them again as appropriate to the existing page information, which also has my last edits, too. (we were on the page at the same time). Spencerian 19:12, 19 September 2005 (EDT)

No, they were actually quite civil. I made a point by point rebuttal. I'll go back and see if I can iron them out a little though. Still, he should realize that that should have been put in talk. ---Ricimer, 19 Sept, 2005

Definite Articles

There's a place to throw your two cents in. --Peter Farago 20:49, 19 September 2005 (EDT)

Kudos

Ricimer, I just wanted to say that although I know we don't always see eye to eye on everything, I think the work you've done on the battle pages is fantastic, and I've greatly appreciated your contributions here. Thank you, and keep it up. --Peter Farago 17:40, 24 September 2005 (EDT)

Moving Pages

Each page should have a "move" tab right after history. If you use this instead of pasting the content into a new article, it will preserve the edit history. --Peter Farago 23:12, 30 September 2005 (EDT)

Jzanjani

Ricimer, please. He's allowed to do whatever he wants with his talk page. At the very worst blanking it is in bad taste. See Wikipedia:Talk page, specifically the section "Can I do whatever I want to my own user talk page?" --Peter Farago 00:24, 6 October 2005 (EDT)

Dear friend Ricimer,

Since I have joined the community of Wikipedians here on battlestarwiki, it has been my misfortune to have alienated so prolific and knowledgeable a contributor as yourself. Spencerian, Farago, and Watcher have all played third parties to our heated disputes, which have occasionally - it shames me to admit it - come close to blows. Our disputes have rendered vulgar the level of discourse on this website and have proven a distraction to the practical minds which everyday toil to clarify the mysteries of Battlestar Galactica. Because we have been unable to resolve our differences, our bickering has consumed a significant portion of the efforts of our peers, and thus may delay key contributions in the future.

Therefore, this situation can not continue. Whatever form our differences take, it is unacceptable that we continue to divert the efforts of our eloquent colleagues. Let us put the past behind us, and let us go forward hand-in-hand as we unravel the complexities of this, the greatest television series in the history of the Twelve Colonies. Ricimer, please accept my most sincere, genuine, and heartfelt apology.

Respectfully,

Jzanjani

You come here under the banner of peace, and yet you post me an "apology" link at the end connecting to a pic of a kid giving me The Finger? For this the only Verdict is Vengeance.

Further posting into this is not worth my or anyone else's time. I am going to resume my normal 'rounds about the wiki without futher commentary or complaint regarding this. But you have just made an enemy for life. ---Ricimer, October 7, 2005

I, for one, appreciate you standing down from this, Ricimer. The Wiki would diminish without your contributions, though I'm not taking sides. Just remember Peter's words and don't bite the newbies too hard, OK? :) I've already put my 2 cents on Jzanjani's page on his behavior, and we'll let that alone unless Joe has any further wisdom to part to either of you. I'm glad you, like many of us here, are now officially a recovering member :) . Take my advice on not flaming, leave the vengeance thing to the writers of other fiction (life's too short to be angry) and keep up the good contribs. Spencerian 18:31, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

I think the above link is a tad off-color, otherwise fine---Ricimer

Regarding Jzanjani

Ricimer,

If you haven't been made aware of it already, I have banned Jzanjani for one week starting today.

I'm letting you know that I don't blame you for any actions you took against Jzanjani -- which consisted of, mainly, following good manners in reverting Jzanjani's wipes of his own talk page while an issue was still being discussed. Were I in your position, I would've done the same myself.

While I don't say this often -- perhaps because I feel I don't have to, but maybe I should just to make it clear -- I appreciate your contributions to this Wiki. You are a valued contributor here and I appreciate your restraint in this situation. You backed down and I'm sorry that Jzanjani didn't have the same sense to follow your example. Now both of you don't have to like each other, again I don't have the right to dictate how people should behave. Not my place. However, if it invovles this Wiki, then behavior becomes my concern and I'll make sure it stops at the front door, as it were. (Or the windows, or whatever entry point one chooses to use to enter this website.)

Believe me when I say that this could have spiraled so far out of control that it might have damaged this community we've built here.

If Jzanjani turns out to be a troll -- I hope to hell he isn't, but I've been disappointed before by human nature -- then I'll ban him permanently. I've made this clear to him on his talk page, so none of this should be constitued as "talking behind Jzanjani's back".

Anyway, again, I appreciate your contributions and, if you feel you need to take a break from the Wiki yourself, feel free. Take a breather. You've earned it the honest way, as it were.

Thank you. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:37, 8 October 2005 (EDT)

Language/Aerelon/Grace Park

Hello Ricimer,

I hope I'm communicating with you the right away. I'm about as nugget as nugget gets on any Wiki system, including this one!

There were a couple of changes to the entry on Grace Park and Aerelon language that I wanted to explain. First, it is true that Grace Park is a fluent speaker of Korean, but her English--either as Sharon Valerii or as herself in interviews--doesn't have any trace of a Korean accent whatsoever. I'm married to a native Korean speaker, have friends and colleagues who speak Korean either as their first or second language, and have been studying the language for a few years myself, so I'm absolutely certain that Korean has no bearing on what might or might not be considered an Aerelon accent.

On a somewhat smaller matter, there's no accepted version of English called "General English," with a capital G. I am willing to accept a lower case g, "general English," to indicate "common sense" notions about that accent/group of accents.

Actually, I am not the one that keeps putting the Korean references on that page, and I thought it was irrelevant but people kept putting them back. The thing I had was that I don't think that Grace Park (on or off camera) really speaks with a "Canadian accent" at all; you came here after this, but I had this whole edit that said that it was just an accent that we the audience could not possibly detect but a Colonial could, but this was removed. --Ricimer 17:44, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

Picture Updates to Battle Pages

Very nice work there, Ricimer. Adds greatly to the pages majesty and atmosphere. Trying to work these pages up to quality articles, perhaps? :) Spencerian 10:32, 20 October 2005 (EDT)

Pronunciation

How do you pronounce "Ricimer"? Is it RIH.kih.mer, or RIH.sih.mer? Or is the stress elsehwere? I'm just curious. --Day 18:13, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

• Ricimer was the "shadow ruler" of the Roman Empire in it's twilight years. He ruled through a series of puppet emperors, and while himself not 'officially' controlling the state, he was the puppeteer pulling all the strings from off stage. It was not only possible for me to take this name, it was essential. It's pronounced "Rih-sih-mer" (mer as in drummer). --Ricimer 19:53, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Hrm. If that's Latin, then I doubt it had a soft C at the time. However, neither did Caesar, so I assume you're giving the modernized/bastardized pronunciation. Interesting name story. Huh. :) --Day 06:02, 23 October 2005 (EDT)

Well, Ricimer belong to a german tribe, so his name probably wasn't Latin, I would assume. --Ricimer 22:39, 24 December 2005 (EST)

Image Use from GalacticaStation.com-A No-No

Ricimer, I strongly believe that using images from Galacticastation is some violation of derivative or extended use of another person's web site without permission, since the site appears private. The web site does not have a Creative Commons License, which is the only fair-use sharealike license we're supposed to acknowledge or derive content from. (Technically, we can't share items from Wikipedia for this reason--Peter had to chastise me on this when I was updating the Basestar (TOS) page. Yes, the images and likenesses that GS gets are Universal's, but it's where you get them that matters here.

For images, you can get many excellent caps from TVIV, a TV episode Wiki that does have a CCL, so we can copy items from there (with appropriate credit) without issue. They have a number of BSG ep pages that are really atrocious in textual content but generally great caps... --Spencerian 09:25, 7 November 2005 (EST)

I don't think it matters. Screengrabs we use on this site are copyright Universal Studios anyway, and used under the aegis of fair use, not the CCL. Galacticastation has no copyright over the screen grabs they post, and certainly can't relicense them to us under the CCL (or any license, for that matter). If we're infringing anyone's copyright by using the images, it's Universal's, not Galacticastation's. --Peter Farago 18:17, 7 November 2005 (EST)

I've got one "yea" and one "nay" on this: can Joe please give me final word on whether or not we can use GalacticaStation screencaps? Because TVIV doesn't really have many useable ones. I've tried making one or two for Seelix and Jammer, which were removed. I'm a total spaz at this; how are screencaps originally made, anyway (what do you need to do it)? --Ricimer 22:39, 24 December 2005 (EST)

I've made a few image contributions, myself, and all of them are screens I grabbed by my lonesome. As I've gone, I've kind of hammered out a system: For DVDs (I own the British version of Season 1 and the first half of Season 2 on DVD, a friend of mine will be giving me the Mini, eventually), I view them in VLC, which has a "snapshot" feature which doesn't seem to care about copy protection (or whatever it is that makes the "Print Screen" button not work). This saves them as .png. I then fire up good ol' the GIMP and do any cropping or resizing I feel like and save 'em as a .jpg. So... That's how I do it, anyway. --Day 02:07, 27 December 2005 (EST)

Sacrifice

Dude. Re: Your edit to the Season 2 episode listing. If you put the source in there, it would carry a lot more weight. Also... You have sacrifice as 2.14... Is that a mistake, or is there some weird numbering thing I'm missing or was there a typo in the note, or... What's up with that? Lastly, you should seriously consider trimming/archiving your talk page. --Day 01:08, 21 November 2005 (EST)

Don't Bite the Newbies (or the Vets), Part Deux

Hey,Ricimer. You're an excellent contributor, but lately you've had the cordial conversational replies of Doc Cottle on crystal meth--your replies are becoming flamebait. When you're replying and correcting an edit, particularly done by a new contributor (and we've had lots of them lately), PLEASE try to respond politely, or at least in a neutral voice (Peter Farago does this well, even though I can almost hear the wafts of flame from his comments to me after he concises or edits away some of my fanciful stuff). We need more contributors, and scaring them off with a bad tone is Not Good, even if you're right. Also, keep in mind that not everyone has the gift of good English writing style (or even a good grasp of English, period), so look around the bad grammar and spelling and try to see their point or meaning in their contributions, concising and editing to help perfect their addition. Don't take all of this too seriously. --Spencerian 11:05, 9 December 2005 (EST)

Spence, this itself is kind of flamey. Ricimer has been reasonably good lately. --Peter Farago 15:10, 9 December 2005 (EST)

Helps to have conservative ballast around--Ricimer 15:26, 9 December 2005 (EST)

I stand properly chastized if my language seems gruff--but hopefully you understand my meaning. Ricimer's recent summary comments on the Recent Changes and edit histories are the things I've reacted adversely to. We're not here in person, and whether people come or go is determined by the words and phrasing they see here. If they're misinterpreted, then there's a problem. --Spencerian 16:22, 9 December 2005 (EST)

Quote 09/30

Wish you'd posted into the talk page, rather than re-reverting, man. --Day 03:56, 13 December 2005 (EST)

Regarding "Coffea"

I have referred to a source on the talk page which disagrees with your assertion regarding "coffea." It could also be noted it doesn't pass Aspell's en_US dictionary by default. I just wanted to ensure you saw it, as I didn't want to change it back without discussing it. --CalculatinAvatar 02:04, 29 December 2005 (EST)

Actually, as you can see on the talk page for that article, Peter Farago and others are the ones promoting that line of thinking. I myself am ambivalent. --Ricimer 02:06, 29 December 2005 (EST)

Unwanted Template Lines

How'd ya do it? By switching Templates? --Watcher 17:32, 29 December 2005 (EST)

Stared at it until I saw meaning; you have to include "|Children=" and "|Cylon=", but you don't write "yes" or "no" after it; leave it blank. --Ricimer 17:43, 29 December 2005 (EST)

Check that out. It was hiding in plain site. Danke! --Watcher 18:20, 29 December 2005 (EST)

Re-imagined Series definition: the senior pilot on a battlestar

Re-imagined Series definition: student pilot (TRS: "Act of Contrition", "Scar")

Re-imagined Series definition: Battlestar Group (TRS: "Water"). It also doubles as an acronym for the television series itself.

Original Series definition: a breathing mask, or a life support system supplying air (TOS: "Lost Planet of the Gods, Part I")