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Revision as of 01:37, 16 April 2008

Editing this page

Welcome! The following are the rules and guidelines for placing an edit on this page. As I expect to begin editing wikipedia heavily, the number of potential comments/criticisms generated requires use of an organized system of categorization.

General guidelines

First, it is important to organize the discussion page by user name

If your user name begins with any letter from the alphabet sequence A-M (of the traditionally arranged English alphabet), please place your comment using level 2 headline for the first letter of your nickname preceding the comment subject, your alphabetical designation letter to be followed by a colon. The colon should be in the same font as the heading and placed directly after the first letter of your user name, followed by a space between the colon and the beginning of your comment subject in the level 2 headline. The text of your comment will naturally fall under the headline in unaltered wikipedia font and and text.

If your user name begins with any letter from the English alphabet sequence N-Z, please follow the instructions above. However, in addition, you must bold the first letter of your user name. This is designed to allow me to keep track, at a glance, of the statistical array of user names of wikipedians responding to my posts. The text of your comment will follow the headline in unaltered wikipedia editing font.

Other alphabetical user names absent

In the event that you are the first user of a given alphabetical designation to place a comment on this page, you must place those letters, in order, 1 per line, which precede the letter category designated for your user name. This will be done using the same font and heading style as prescribed in the section above, as though a person with that user name were in fact posting a comment themselves. Future users with a letter designation matching that of one created on the page, but not yet posted under, are required to amend the simple letter designation with the appropriate colon and comment title (see above), thus converting the bare letter to the first heading beginning with a user name of that appropriate letter designation.

Chronology

This will differ depending on whether you are initiating discourse on the user page, or responding to a post by me. If you have not received a post on your user talk page, with an official Snookerhorn signing (make sure to verify this!), you will place your comment on this page at the top of the others which begin the alphabetical category to which you belong. If, however, you are responding to a post of mine, you will place your comment at the bottom of those comments in the alphabetical category to which your user name belongs. In addition, you must copy and paste (no recreations!) the title of the comment to which you are responding. Following this, you must paste the official Snookerhorn signing (cannot be from SINEBOT), which will contain my user name, the designation "(talk)", followed by the time and date of the original comment. If you like, you may delete "(UTC)" or any similar designation from this string. You must place this on the first line, in bold, following your heading in order to have your comment read. The main text of your comment should thus begin on the second line (third line if including the level 2 heading) of your posted response. Please note that I will check to see if you are in fact responding to an earlier post (these are all catalogued and recorded, by me), and that the provisions of this guideline have been followed.

Instructions to remain at the top of the page, always

In no event will a user be permitted to post anything, comment or otherwise, above the text of these instructions (with the exception of questions or inquiries, see below). As the first user with an "A" designation should naturally begin the posting below the instructions (unless the A designation is in fact created by a non-A designated user, in the event of no A postings at the time of the non-A users post (see above)) it should be more or less simple to avoid a violation of this requirement. The first "A" designation post will occur no less than two standard lines (i.e. in traditional double-spaced format) from the end of these instructions. In the event these instructions are amended, it will be that user's permanent responsibility to ensure the appropriate spacing has been maintained and the comment is not deleted.

Questions or inquiries not covered by these instructions

In the event there is a question or comment about formatting not comprehended by these instructions, the user will post according to the following guidelines: With respect to formatting, all shall remain the same, except the user will post using the alphabetical designation of the first letter of a short title they have created to designate the nature of their question/inquiry. This short title should be succinct, descriptive, and comprehensive, and will be styled in the level 2 headline where the comment/response heading would otherwise appear. The inquiry must be indented using two "::" marks before the headline and text in order to appear here. All such posts will occur here, under the text of this very subheading (yes, the one you are reading right here!). This will create a de facto FAQ right in this section that other users can then reference in regard to questions that they themselves, may have.

All posts to be personally signed with typed user-name

At the end of every post to this discussion page, a user shall personally type their name, in bold, regular sized (otherwise unaltered) font, after the text of their question/comment/response. This will operate as an affirmative verification of user identity and also an assertion of compliance with these rules. The hand-typed user name will be followed by a period, also in bold. After this period, immediately followed by a single space, the user will type the word "Verification" (in bold), followed by a colon (in bold). The user must then type the traditional four tildes in sequence to allow the signing bot to attach their name via the wikipedia database.

Hi Snooker......

I hope you don't mind me posting here - I thought I'd drop by with a small bit of advice which you could take or leave.... The truth is, that your approach to your user talk page is rather idiosyncratic (do have a look around mine, and others' pages - this one is a little unusual!) - it's interesting to see someone try something which on the face of of it looks kinda complex, but I'm afraid I don't really think it's a very good fit for the function a talk page generally fulfills.... which is for folk like me to drop notes like this in! You may be pleasantly surprised at how easy it can be to manage even a heavy load of messages, and there are certainly many wiki folk who will be more than happy to share their techniques and experiences with you.

Maybe give some thought to loosening the rules and reg.s a little, and I'd certainly hope you could understand that many passers by will be a little confused or nonplussed (or cheeky enough like me just to drop a message at the bottom and hope for the best!). cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 01:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I should add that I'm happy to talk further about what might achieve the results you're after in ways more 'in tune' with current wikipedia practice... it can be fun and quite easy to manage communications here, and I might have a few tips, if you'd be interested... cheers, and best wiki wishes! - Privatemusings (talk) 01:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Warning

All pages here, including user pages, belong to the community, not to individuals. (see WP:USER and WP:OWN for more information) Your posting instructions are unreasonable and you cannot require that people follow them. Notes from others pointing this out to you, such as CambridgeBayWeather and Guy left you, are are not "vandalism" and while you're entitled to remove them, you are not entitled to use incivil edit summaries in doing so, so please do not again characterise them as vandalism. Most importantly, you should realise that if someone turns up here to leave you a warning or notice about something, you will be assumed to have read that notice or warning if you remove it, and will be held accountable for what it says. Hope that's helpful. I'd strongly suggest switching to a normal page. ++Lar: t/c 01:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

PS, I removed the Failure to comply with instructions section for you, as those sorts of restrictions, regulations, codicils, etc are not allowed. ++Lar: t/c 01:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)