Category talk:Patterns found by Dieter Leithner

Dietrich Leithner is referred to as "Dietrich" about as often as "Dieter" (unlike Ralph William Gosper, who almost always goes by "Bill Goseper"). For this reason I think it is more appropriate to go with his given name rather than his nickname

Fine by me, but which is which? Someone who knows or who is willing to edit the Wiki for consistency is welcome to work on this. (Please!)

His given name is Dietrich (see Dietrich Leithner).
~Sokwe 22:55, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

This "someone" may as well be me, unless someone has an editing robot handy. A fairly traditional resolution of this anomaly would be to place the name Dietrich (Dieter) Leithner on his biography page, but there is still the question of which name he actually preferred, as used in LifeMail or wherever. The short version probably comes from the name of a website and its content.

Actually, I'm not too sure how to go about uniformizing the name. Possibly that "Pattern" Infobox adjoins the entry to all its categories - discoverer, date, heat, etc. Possibly not, but then how do items get listed? double brackets in the Infobox data? This discussion got started because the "discoveries by ...," I found was empty, and it seemed that it should have greater content.

He signed his posts "Dieter Leithner".
Calcyman 07:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that we should use the name he preferred, which, as Calcyman points out, was probably "Dieter". Since the LifeWiki has no clear policy on naming Life enthusiast pages, this should probably just be decided by consensus. This category does not include any of Dieter's patterns because all of his patterns on the wiki (Fast forward force field, P57 Herschel loop 1, star gate, and vacuum (gun)) are said to be discovered by "Dietrich Leithner". This is, as someone suggested, defined by the infobox (the "discoverer" parameter). Pages can be added to additional categories by adding [[Category:category_name]] to the page (generally at the bottom).
~Sokwe 01:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow! an Editing Conflict. Here's what I was saying:

There were some five references to Dieter, thirteen to Dietrich, so I revised four of them and made a link to Dietrich for the fifth even though the text will still read Dieter. That was because it referred to a prize, which may be known by the latter name. The biography page will probably remain the same, but this may reduce the expectatation of finding biographies under both names. The page actually does contain the short name, using quotes rather than parentheses; an explicit comment to the effect that the latter is used in many references might be in order. Also, inspection reveals that the conflict of references was already apparent at the inception of the biography page.

Arguments for either choice of name could be given: The full name would be more official, appearing on curriculae vitae, publications, etc. Blog practice favors shorter names, even screen names, for both convenience and security. I guess this Wiki could be considered more formal, but familiarity or personal preference could overrule that choice.

Another comment is that his dates are too asymmetrical - couldn't both just be given as years, even if the first is somewhat unknown?

To go back to Dieter would be nice, but that would imply changinging all those eighteen pages. "nowiki" or not, we still bave plenty of seeming conflicts.