Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:33, 29 March 2006

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Things to do

• Look at other user pages and get ideas for layout.
• Make summary of my contributions to date (including IP addresses).
• Start using watchlist.
• Start making bookmark list.

Bookmarks

• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Categories
• Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_deletion
• Misplaced Pages:Categorization_projects_(current)
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Usability
• Misplaced Pages:Main_Page_alternates
• Misplaced Pages:Image_tutorial
• What links to www.wikipedia.org
• Category Tree and Category Scan
• WP:TIP
• Misplaced Pages:Article_assessment
• WP:POP
• Misplaced Pages:AutoWikiBrowser

Contributions

• First edit as Carcharoth was January 2005.
• Log of contributions is here.

First article

Spotted a missing article in Category:Chess magazines, and decided to add CHESS magazine. Unfortunately I appear to have just missed out on the honour of creating the 1,000,000th article...

Second article

Baruch Harold Wood might be considered a better attempt at an article, except for the fact that I nicked... translated it from the German Misplaced Pages.

Creating an article from a disambiguation page

These thoughts are based on work I did on Ptolemy (disambiguation). This started when I realised that Ptolemaic redirected to Ptolemaic dynasty, as seen here (27/09/2003). This rang a warning bell in my mind, as I realised that many people would link Ptolemiac in articles referring to Claudius Ptolemaeus, the famous astronomer of the 2nd century AD, not the Egyptian ruling dynasty (of Macedonian origin) of the 3rd to 1st centuries BC. Clicking on "What links here" confirmed my fears. I eventually got round to tidying up those links and redid Ptolemaic as a disambiguation page (24/03/2006). While changing those links, I had got interested in the history of the Ptolemies, and the confusing tangle of Ptolemies in the Ptolemaic dynasty. I then gradually started tidying up the disambiguation page by adding descriptions to help people find the Ptolemy they needed. Previously, a reader had to click back and forth between different Ptolemies, and try and mentally keep track of where and when these Ptolemies existed. I also expanded the list and organised it into mostly historical sections. Over the course of a few days, Ptolemy (disambiguation) went from this (25/03/2006) to this (28/02/2006). During the course of this work I had been delving deeper and deeper into the history of the Ptolemies (see here for 'The House of Ptolemy' by Edwyn Bevan, an enthralling history of the Ptolemies). At some point I also tidied up the disambiguation page at Ptolemais.

The reorganisation of Ptolemy (disambiguation) into historical sections had made me realise that there was a narrative thread here, one that spanned over 2000 years of history. This focused my interest on the etymology of the name Ptolemy, to add to the history of the people bearing the name, and how the name has come to be used in today's world. This accounts for the addition of the etymological section ranging across several languages. By the time of this version (29/03/2006), my earlier fears that the page was no longer a disambiguation page were well and truly confirmed!

At this point, I initiated discussions at various places in Misplaced Pages, to add to the discussions I had already started at places like the Help Desk and the Reference Desk. Here, I provide links to some of these discussions (some discussions may have since been archived, and talk page discussions have not been refactored):

• User_talk:Carcharoth#Ptolemy - User:Macrakis points out that Ptolemy (disambiguation) includes more information that is needed.