Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:38, 27 March 2011

abc.123

Straight vs. Curly

According to the Misplaced Pages Manual of Style, "he exclusive use of straight quotes is recommended". Precious Roy 19:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, Jeremiestrother! Welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions to this 💕. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 12:25, 11 February 2008 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Misplaced Pages is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Alright, Stop

Stop changing the quotation marks. -- Veggy (talk) 16:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Adam Lambert straw poll on including/removing "Order #" and "Results" columns from the performances section

Hi, this may seem rather trivial but I'm trying to gauge community consensus on including or removing "Order #" and "Results" columns from the performances section on the Adam Lambert article which you have been in some way recently involved. The poll is here. Your time is appreciated. -- Banjeboi 21:34, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

2010 City Of Bell

Please double check here on Wiki, when and when not to capitalize "City". Editing for long periods of time, one word at a time, is rather tedious ,don't you think?It is to check, for sure, and other editors trying to edit are getting a constant "Edit conflict". You efforts are much appreciated but exhausting LOL. Could we please be a little more efficient in this team effort? TY! Namaste...DocOfSoc (talk) 21:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Bycatch

Those were silly comments I made. Sorry. --Epipelagic (talk) 02:11, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

City names

Please do not change official city names to common names. These official names are listed in the "official name" field exactly where they belong. Rklawton (talk) 01:53, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The MoS is directed toward usage within articles. The "Official Name" is not part of usage but a statement of fact regarding the name the city uses on its legal documents. Think of it another way, since we already have the city's name in the article title, including an "Official name" the way you describe would be entirely redundant. On the other hand, including the city's name the way I describe makes perfect sense. Rklawton (talk) 14:17, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

This is is now being discussed on the MoS talk page. Rklawton (talk) 14:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Resolution: the MoS talk page discussion confirms my view expressed above. Do not replace official city names with a city's common name in the "official name" field of a city's info box. The field is called "official name" for a reason. Rklawton (talk) 03:09, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello Jeremi, I'm so sorry to arrive in this debate after certain people decided to close it prematurely. Including identifiers in names and the lingo "official name" is a ridiculous practice and flies in the face of all proper rules of English. People who insist on seeing "City of" in front of their city name should recognize that what they're discussing is NOT an "official city name" but the city's "governing body". In this context, the infobox should be modified and "official name" replaced with "nomenclature of governing body" or something of that ilk. This debate should apply to all levels of government, not just cities. I live in Canada, the government's name is Government of Canada, in the province of Ontario who's government is named Government of Ontario, in the city of Guelph, who's government is named ]], three places, three governments. Notice I've purposely mis-linked the City of Guelph because of the ridiculous redirects caused by this error all because the infobox maker didn't understand some fundamentals! sheesh :) Canada's official name is Canada, Ontario's official name is Ontario, and Guelph's official name is Guelph.--Tallard (talk) 04:38, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Logging in

It appears that you failed to log in to your account to make edits. Logging in is not a requirement, though these edits will not appear under your user name. Instead, they will appear under the IP address of the computer you used.

This could, however, pose a problem if you use both your regular account, and one or more IP accounts in talk page discussions in a manner that gives the appearance that more than one editor supports you point of view. Unfortunately, this appears to be the case on the Manual of Style's discussion page. On this page you made comments both under your IP account and under this user account. On my talk page, you represented the discussion as "other points of view" when they actually represent only your one point of view. Here on Misplaced Pages we call this sock puppetry, and if you persist, all your accounts will be blocked from editing.

Next: since you are the only editor on the Manual of Style's talk page who supports using a city's common name in the field reserved for the city's official name, your persistence in changing dozens or more city articles to fit your unique point of view can be considered disruptive editing. Disruptive editing can also result in your accounts being blocked or even banned from editing, so please stop. So far, you are the only editor with your point of view on this matter regarding city names, and at least three other editors oppose your changes, so you're pretty much out of luck on this issue.

If you wish to continue editing Misplaced Pages constructively, please do so. We appreciate all the help we can get. However, if you take the position that your way is the only way regardless of the consensus of many other editors, and if you wish to impose your way on the rest of us, you will find yourself blocked from further participation. If you have any questions about any of this, please don't hesitate to ask. We're here to help. Rklawton (talk) 21:12, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Replies to your questions

You've posted questions and comments on my talk page. I've replied in the same place in order to keep the discussion together. Rklawton (talk) 14:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Re mentor request

I'm woefully short of enough time to do justice to the request, but if no one else volunteers, (or even if they do), I'll be happy to help, with the understanding that I can't promise timely responses. One other warning, if Jeremiestrother agrees that I can try to be a mentor, I will try to encourage him to spend some time at Requests for feedback, which needs all kinds of help, including copy edit help.--SPhilbrickT 20:52, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Mentor

Great!

I've never done the mentor thing on Misplaced Pages, so bear with me as we both learn as we go.

I was going to start with signing talk pages (one of my pet peeves about WP is that the software doesn't do it for you, but let's not go there.) However, you seem to be doing it now, so let's move on. Yes, I should take a look at some of your edits. I did look at a handful, to confirm for myself that the "official city" thing was not your usual approach, but I should look at more. I will.

I'll first mention that I have enormous respect for copy-editors. I think I am OK at it, but I've seen people that are good at it, and they are in a different league. I once wrote a fairly technical paper on a statistical distribution, and had a copy editor look at it. I wasn't sure how much she could contribute, because she wasn't able to follow the substance, but she was great! I was quite impressed.

Are you familiar with Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors? While I'm not a member, I've seen some of the work they do, and it sounds like a group you could consider joining, or at least following.--SPhilbrickT 14:12, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Page needing tidying up

Hey SPhilbrick! :) Here's one of those things that confounds me, and I could really use your input. I ran across this page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Klokie ) and it's in SORE need of tidying up. For example, "architecting" is not an English word. I don't want to change his words, but you can see it's a miserable example of English. I just want to clean up the page, but I also don't want to step on someone's toes. What do you suggest? Regards, jeremiestrother

It's a user's personal page. In this case, don't touch it. Period. Here's more information about user pages: Misplaced Pages:User pages Rklawton (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not the place for private conversations. If you'd like to have a private conversation, feel free to use instant messaging, e-mail, or the telephone. You asked for advice, you received it. It's valid advice from an experienced administrator. You don't have to like it. You don't have to follow it, though you risk being perceived as disruptive. However, asking me not to post a reasonable reply to a question of etiquette - that I will simply ignore. Rklawton (talk) 21:50, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

And I reserve the right to ignore your annoyances. Please just leave me alone. I do not find you helpful or kind. You don't have to like it either. Just leave me alone. At this point you're becoming somewhat of a stalker. If you don't leave me alone, I will simply stop editing Misplaced Pages beacuse you cause me more frustration than it's worth. How hard is it to understand: LEAVE ME ALONE!Jeremiestrother (talk) 21:57, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome to stop editing any time. Mixed in with your useful contributions you've been very disruptive and your unwillingness to taking advice or to participate appropriately in conflict resolution has set you apart as a problem editor, one that is likely to end up banned from editing eventually anyway. Rklawton (talk) 22:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Your personal attacks, hostility and criticism are not welcome or necessary.Jeremiestrother (talk) 22:20, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Re-read the thread. You posted a question. I posted a concise answer. You responded with hostility. This is a collaborative project - if you can't interact with other people appropriately, you will be asked to leave. This is not a threat or a warning. This is a fact based on many years experience. Your best answer is to say: "thank you, I appreciate the time and effort you've taken to help me learn the ropes, and I will endeavor to follow your advice." Or you could just say "ok" and move on. Or you could continue along your present path. It's your choice. Rklawton (talk) 22:35, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Jeremie, Jeremie, Jeremie, there are a lot of conventions at Misplaced Pages. Some of them make sense (don't bite newcomers). Some don't make sense (add four tildes after your post on a talk page but not an article page.) Some make sense but are not immediately obvious (use a template to make it easy to let someone know about a problem but don't use a template is the user has more than n edits, with n unspecified.)

One of the rules is that anyone can comment on anyone's talk page (with some rare exceptions). (As an aside, there's a convention that you can insist that a particular editor not edit your talk page, but I disagree with this convention).

This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but the catch phrase, while technically correct, can be misleading. Article pages are part of the encyclopedia and anyone can edit them. User pages are different, and with rare exceptions, should never be edited by anyone other than the user. User talk pages, with rare exceptions, can be edited by anyone, but only to add comments, you are not allowed to edit anyone else's comments. (User subpages fall into a third category).

A user page is supposed to be about you as a member of the Misplaced Pages community, although in practice, a lot of leeway is given. Check out my user page User:Sphilbrick, for example, and most of the material there relates to Misplaced Pages, but some of my user boxes do not.

Some people abuse this, and have used their user page to act as an advertisement for services. This is not allowed and can get a page deleted. In my opinion, the User:Klokie page crosses the line and is not acceptable. However, the remedy is NOT to edit it. If I cared, I might proposed it for deletion (The process is called MfD). But I don't. It crosses the line, but it is not so egregious that I feel I need to waste much time on it. What I will do is noindex it, so it will not be found in a Google search.

Yet, I don't understand why this person persists in harassing me. I've a lot to learn, and that's why I requested your help and advice before doing anything. Nevertheless this person is causing me so much frustration that I may leave the project. When someone asks to be left alone, it seems a reasonable thing to do.

I wasn't harassing you. I was answering your question, and I posted a link to the information which Sphilbrick so carefully summarized above. You will see that his information and the information found in the link I posted are consistent. As for the rest...

1. Your history of disruptive edits warrants an indefinite block to your accounts here on Misplaced Pages.
2. Your history of constructive edits, however, indicates we should make every effort to help turn you around into a positive contributor.
3. Therefore, you have a mentor, and several of us are monitoring your progress.

Should you fail to make progress, I (or someone else) will make a case to block your account from editing indefinitely. If you will recall our history of interaction, it has always been one of me providing you with correct advice, and of you responding with hostility - even though my recommendations were endorsed by several other experienced editors and your responses have been endorsed by none. I also served as the leading advocate for *not* indefinitely blocking your account and instead, I solicited other editors to help convince you of the error of your interpretation of our rules and of your intention to simply ignore them. If you continue your hostility towards me, I will be pleased to change my views that your future here is salvageable, and I will instead seek to have your account blocked. If this happens, you will see that each one of your hostile replies will be linked to and used as evidence supporting the indefinite block of your account. Please note that none of my prior advice has been mistaken, and I am not mistaken in this, either. All I ask is for you to learn and improve - a very reasonable request. Rklawton (talk) 23:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Rklawton is not harassing you. What you may have missed is that you took some actions you felt were quite reasonable, yet did not fit well with the way Misplaced Pages does things. Because you think you were reasonable , you might not fully appreciate that some people are quite upset with you, and rather than harassing you, Rklawton is being quite restrained. I will write something up in more detail shortly, which will attempt to explain why you are both right and wrong. That will be tricky so give me a few minutes.--SPhilbrickT 23:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Some general thoughts on style guides and change

I think, as a general principle (not just Misplaced Pages, but everywhere), when one finds the need to establish some rules, it makes sense to look at what others have done in similar situations. While there can be an advantage to starting with a clean sheet of paper, there are also advantages to recycling what others may have thought through in some detail. Thus, when it comes to establishing a Manual of Style for Misplaced Pages, it does make sense to borrow from existing styles whenever possible. There can be legitimate reasons for departing form these prior style guides. If something is viewed as archaic, it may not be appropriate to continue it. If something is not handled in prior style guide (I'm guessing The Chicago Manual of Style is silent on the subject of formatting of redirects. There are undoubtedly other examples.

I wasn't here when the Manual of Style was first promulgated. I can only guess that they reviewed other style guides, but I can't guarantee that they followed my maxim of change only what needs to be changed. In addition, remember that this is the English Misplaced Pages not the US Misplaced Pages, so US based style guides are not the only relevant guides.

I neither know nor particularly care how the rules for city names came to be. But I do know how the metarules - the rules for changing rules - work. In short, consensus. It is not acceptable for anyone to come here and declare that they happen to know the right answer, and forthwith, they will enact it. The metarule for changing a rule is to propose a change, and persuade enough people that the change should be made. The good news is that many people here are interested in consistency, and would agree that a standard imposed in Misplaced Pages that is at variance with other style guides needs to have a better reason than "that's what someone proposed in 2002 and we're stuck with it".

I welcome some familiar with style guides. I've read some of them, but don't have a close familiarity with them. I welcome someone who can find potential improvements to our rules, and point out that the change would be in accordance with accepted usage elsewhere. But changes must be made within a process. That process requires persuasion and consensus, not just imposing changes.--SPhilbrickT 01:47, 6 February 2011 (UTC)