Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:34, 12 May 2006

==Welcome== Hello -Barry- and welcome to Misplaced Pages! I'm glad you've chosen to join us. This is a great project with lots of dedicated people, which might seem intimidating at times, but don't let anything discourage you. Be bold!, explore, and contribute. If you want to learn more,

Misplaced Pages:Bootcamp teaches you the basics quickly,
Misplaced Pages:Tutorial is more in-depth, and
Misplaced Pages:Topical index is exhaustive.

The following links might also come in handy:
Glossary
FAQ
Help
Manual of Style
Five Pillars of Misplaced Pages

Float around for awhile until you find something that tickles your fancy. One easy way to do this is to hit the random page button in the navigation bar to the left. There are also many great committees and groups that focus on particular jobs. My personal favorite stomping grounds are Misplaced Pages:Translation into English and Misplaced Pages:Cleanup for sloppy articles. Finally, the Wikimedia Foundation has several other wiki projects that you might enjoy.

There are a few crucial points to keep in mind when editing. Be civil with users, strive to maintain a neutral point of view, verify your information, and show good etiquette like signing your comments with four tildes like this: ~~~~ If you have any more questions, always feel free to ask me anything on my talk page or ask the true experts at Misplaced Pages:Help desk. Again, welcome! -- Draeco 05:46, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the helpful form letter, Draeco.

In other news, I created articles on string art and copyholders recently. The copyholder page currently needs more descriptions of copyholders. -Barry- 01:43, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

sry,

i dont know anything about copy holders =) TastemyHouse Breathe, Breathe in the air 04:53, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Form Letters

hey, some people just talk like that, maaaan. TastemyHouse Breathe, Breathe in the air 15:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Formatting

Hi Barry -- Just FYI, leaving one (or more) spaces does that, and on certain skins it also produces a blue box with a dashed border around the text...

Like This

(I saw your edit summary for Talk:Misplaced Pages)

BCorr|Брайен 18:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll have to look through all of the formating options some day. Thanks. -Barry- 19:48, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello

hello Barry- if you have any comments or questions please ask on my talk page --Family Guy 04:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok. You seem to be an expert at soliciting comments and questions, so I'll ask you something on your talk page. -Barry- 04:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. I asked "Why don't you contribute something to Misplaced Pages besides asking random people to post to your talk page?" Hope that helps. -Barry- 04:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

smiling fetus

a reference is always appreciated. sallison 04:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding this edit, see Scanner shows unborn babies smile. -Barry- 05:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

"Mandatory check"

Curious. On your page, you state that "Articles should go through at least one mandatory check before being publicly posted as a Misplaced Pages article." Who would be in charge of this checking, and by which authority would it be checked? --mtz206 04:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe two or three Wikipedians should have to tick a box to approve an edit before it's applied. If an article is on your watchlist, it would also subscribe you to edit requests for that article. Maybe voters would have to be elected before they could approve or disapprove an edit. Edits wouldn't have to be checked as though they were to be published in a real encyclopedia or conventional media. This is just to prevent some of the more blatant inaccuracies and vandalism.

Basically, I'd like to see Misplaced Pages take it to the next level, were at least obvious vandalism doesn't have a chance. I recently reverted weeks-old vandalism from some article. No excuse for that. -Barry- 05:24, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Links

Help on links can be found here. For example, to link to your Talk page you would enter ], or to link to a particular section enter ]. It also can be helpful to click on "edit this page" to view the wiki markup and see how others link to various things (like how I used the <nowiki> tag just now). --mtz206 02:16, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I thought I tried that and it didn't work, but it works now. Not sure what I did the first time. Maybe I used single brackets. Thanks.

And that's another thing, a " | " should be the separator between the link and the text for outside links AND Misplaced Pages links. I think a space is currently used for outside links. And they should all use single brackets. -Barry- 02:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Article organization

On your user page you said, "It should be Misplaced Pages policy that, if feasible, each writeup of a particular product that's distinguished by brand or author, especially if it or competing products of other brands or authors might be commercial products, be included in the single broader, most closely related article as opposed to being given its own article." This thinking could turn Misplaced Pages into one big article, rather using links, breaking up pages (aka content forking), and working to limit article size to create small useful articles. According to Misplaced Pages:Notability, "Obscure content isn't harmful." So, as long as a product is verifiable and the article on it is not original research then the page should exist and be linked to from related articles and competing products.

Maybe I'm not understanding you, but are you asking that Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux be merged?

Regardless, your ideas might be relevant to the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Notability (software) or even Misplaced Pages:Notability (companies and corporations). --Ashawley 17:12, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for those links. I didn't have a chance to follow them yet. I had MS Windows and competitors in mind when I added the phrase "if feasible." Something more descriptive would be better.

Obscure content may not be harmful, but stubs are too short. It's easier for the researcher when related information is on one page, assuming the page loads in a reasonable amount of time. I think one recommendation is about 8 seconds for dial-up users.

Who's going to put an article about minor, bad software on their watch list? It would be a vandalism magnet and an invitation to lie about your product.

I have other concerns, mentioned in Talk:File comparison that I don't want to fully repeat. -Barry- 16:17, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Now this is just silly. -Barry- 17:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

List of shock sites nominated for deletion for a fourth time

The article List of shock sites has been nominatied for deletion again. I noticed that during its past nominations for deletion you voted to have the article deleted. If you have time, please support me in my attempt to have this article deleted by casting your vote in favour of deletion. Thank you. - Conrad Devonshire 07:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Done -Barry- 08:56, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Bot reversion

Your recent edit to Timeline of labor issues and events was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Misplaced Pages articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept our apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // Tawkerbot2 02:23, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The following is my response to the above, which I posted to Tawker's discussion page:

I received the notice "Your recent edit to Timeline of labor issues and events was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Misplaced Pages articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept our apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior..." My edit was not vandalism. Please read the edit summary. I just added sub-headings to specify the countries in which the issue or event occurred. I see you won't be back until Tuesday. Maybe I'll look into what that big shut off button is about. Seems it wouldn't be that easy to shut off the bot, but I'll see.

I should have also mentioned that Tawkerbot2 didn't create the "Bot reversion" or any other heading for the above post, messing up my discussion page. I had to create the heading. Bad bot. -Barry- 02:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

It appears someone has fixed it for you, thats a tricky one to figure out, 99.9% of the time an edit like that occurs its vandalism but yours was good. Sorry about the bot being a little hard to shutdown, don't want vandals being able to kill the vandal fighter. As for the headings, people hate me for making one, people hate me for not making one, more people seem to not want the header so thats why it doesn't have a header :) -- Tawker 06:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Timeline of labor issues and events

Hi Barry. Just wanted to say hello, and good work on the timeline page. I had unlinked the headers for the US because, as a general rule, only the first instance of a name is linked in an article. (Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (links)) But I'm not too worried about it either way, so I'll leave them alone. :) Chris.--Bookandcoffee 00:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, B&C. I thought you unlinked them because you thought all of the titles should be unlinked. If a new country is added and its heading is linked, and right above it you see a United States heading that isn't, it wouldn't look right. I'll take advantage of the "as a general rule" provision and link them all. -Barry- 00:19, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Perl

Barry, I'm going to be direct and say I don't like your recent additions (since May 1st) to the Perl article, and from the discussion on the talk page it appears I'm not the only one. The material and links you added are arguably anti-Perl and I'm left wondering if you have an agenda or alterior motive. I'd like to pass you off as a trouble-maker or Perl-hater and simply remove your additions, but the rest of your edit history appears good. I'm just not sure what to make of you and your edits to the Perl article. Can you explain what are you trying to do? Imroy 22:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I am anti-Perl, especially with regard to the Perl community. There are plenty of decent Perl folks, but there are far too many immature idiots that have been active members of various internet discussion venues for a long time, so bad as to drive several people away, including myself.

I'm also anti-Perl because I think that in a couple of years they'll be a major shift away from Perl 5, to an even more difficult Perl 6 (or to other languages), and I'd rather learn Python 3 than Perl 6.

In the Perl article, I was obviously anti-Perl in the Con section (which wasn't my idea to create). I think the quote I added was pretty even handed for a Con section, and was basically just something from a reliable source to back up what was asserted previously. Probably a more reliable source than anything else in the article, because it came from a formal study. One of my external links, to a critique by an author, teacher, and developer, was reverted for unspecified inaccuracies, and I didn't question it or put the link back.

I'll go out of my way more to add appropriate anti-Perl material than pro-Perl material, but I've improved the article in more neutral ways too, which could only help Perl. -Barry- 22:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)