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User talk:Maurreen

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JesseW (talk | contribs) at 10:24, 12 November 2004 (Don't despair about a comma!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 10:24, 12 November 2004 by JesseW (talk | contribs) (Don't despair about a comma!)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Hello Maurreen and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

Good luck!

Regarding tildes, if you're using a standard keyboard, try pressing shift + the key directly to the left of the number 1. If that's not it, I recommend the help desk and a picture or diagram of your keyboard. Best wishes, ] 07:04, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

McClatchy

Hello, Maurreen. Welcome to Misplaced Pages! Great to have you aboard. If you haven't yet perused Misplaced Pages:Welcome, newcomers, I encourage you to do so at your convenience.

I appreciate your care and diligence to present McClatchy in its very best light, both in wording and in professional AP style, per the AP style guidelines.

However, The AP manual of style is not what Misplaced Pages goes by. It has its own Manual of Style, which you may wish to peruse. Note that the Wikpedia Manual of Style is only a guideline - a suggested way of having text look on its site - and not any kind of heavyhanded thing that is rigorously enforced. (smile)

In that light, the way I set the text (admittedly with a few additions which come from my knowledge of the company where it got its start - California's San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys) was in the usual Misplaced Pages style. If that is not what you want, that's fine with me - but it might be useful to know how different your edit looks compared to many other articles on Misplaced Pages about other United States newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few.

Also, since Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and not a newspaper, it does things a bit differently in its articles. Misplaced Pages community consensus to date agrees that an introductory paragraph about the article's subject, covering what it is notable for in summary form, is standard.

What you do with the article is up to you. I am just letting you know in a (hopefully) kind and gentle way that your editing style is just a wee bit different from what most do around Misplaced Pages. That's to be expected, seeing you are new! Hopefully you will decide to stay around here awhile - which is my sincere hope - and "learn the ropes" much as I did earlier this year. I know you are new, and I'd like to be of help if you don't mind. You are very welcome to discuss anything about Misplaced Pages you would like to me (or any other Wikipedian you desire). I'd welcome your thoughts to me, if so desired. I was once new to Misplaced Pages, so I know how it feels to be new and not know everything. . . Actually, I still don't know a lot as yet. You may reach me at my user page, User:Avnative, and leave messages at the bottom of my discussion page - the tab just to the right of the user page up on top of your screen. Happy Trails, --avnative 07:22, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Good evening, Maurreen! (or is it Good Morning. . .) (wink) Thanks for your very nice note just now. Yes, I was trying to be thoughtful, thanks.

Nah, I don't think there's as yet a formal Manual of Style for newspaper names. I gave you those links to US newspapers so that you could get a feel for how other Wikipedians dealt with the subject. I guess you can see a few warts there. . . Anyways, the Wiki Manual of Style says that when all else fails, the Chicago Manual of Style is a good resource to go to.

Understand the bit about getting the name right. FWIW, I've always referred to your employer as "McClatchy Newspapers" - and though I haven't yet done a Google test on that particular term, I suspect that that might be the most used term out there in cyberspace. You titled the article McClatchy. That is also fine with me. I am not by nature an argumentative person, and the minutiae of the naming can cross a threshold that causes me distress. . . So I tend not to get super involved in minutiae like that.

Glad to add a bit more on the company. The usual Misplaced Pages custom is to leave in those type of items in the most current revision.

You don't sound terse to me in your reply to me just now - not at all! You are probably a bit tired at your hour of the night, while I'm not at bedtime hour just yet. I give you slack to make a flub or two, OK? (grin) Happy Trails, --avnative 04:13, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Unlist Hamdi?

Hi Maurreen – shall we unlist Hamdi from the COTW nominations? We're the only two votes so far, and the article now looks quite satisfactory, not really a COTW candidate anymore. Fpahl 10:31, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Hi Maurreen -- thanks for your note that you unlisted Hamdi -- it took me a while to notice it, since you placed it on my user page instead of my talk page :-) Fpahl 21:11, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week

Thanks for helping with the removing of unsuitable candidates in the CotW project! If you remove a candidate though, please add the nomination to the CotW archive and state a reason why you removed it (Lack of votes, no longer a stub, etc.). --Conti|✉ 09:20, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Catagories, U.S. Marine Corps equipment

Hi Maurreen, you added "Category:U.S. Marine Corps equipment" to the AAAV page, and then moved it to the "Category:Amphibious vehicles" page.

I think you were right the first time (with "Category:U.S. Marine Corps equipment" on the AAAV page).

If you have no objections I'll add "Category:U.S. Marine Corps equipment" to both AAAV and AAV, and remove it from the "Category:Amphibious vehicles" page.

Duk 16:43, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks...and a request

Hi Maurreen -- thanks for all of your work -- it's certainly been noticed. I also want to ask you if you could wikify the articles that you work on as you go along (especially links to other articles) -- because it saves a lot of work for people later. For an example, please see the edits I made to your excellent addition of the timeline in the NAACP article -- you can check the differences with this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=NAACP&diff=6190373&oldid=6190248

Many thanks, and keep up the good work!
BCorr|Брайен 16:23, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes Maurreen -- I think I'm a new fan of yours -- I'll be keeping an eye on your work ;)

Thanks for tip about categorizing the KERA article. I presented it under http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Schools#School_reform

Perhaps there can be some further discussion, there. Quinobi 15:52, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Dates and commas

Maurreen, I've added this to the manual of style discussion page. I thought, trying to be helpful rather than patronising (which is difficult to convey as I've not yet found a way to convey tone in writing), that I'd add it here too.

The problem is that dates can be used in different ways. When used in an adverbial phrase, commas may be used (though some would omit them):

On 5 November 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the English parliament; OR On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the English parliament.

As nouns and adjectives, no comma would be used after the year:

5 November 1605 saw Guy Fawkes try to blow up the English parliament; OR November 5, 1605 saw Guy Fawkes try to blow up the English parliamnet.

The 5 November 1605 plot was perpetrated by Guy Fawkes and others; OR The November 5, 1605 plot was perpetrated by Guy Fawkes and others.

So, coming back to 9/11, this could be referred to as:

The 11 September 2001 attacks; OR The September 11, 2001 attacks.

I must say, however, and please take this as a pure aside, that when used as an adjective, even the American format of the date looks better without a comma to me, perhaps both with and without are correct there. Jongarrettuk 19:34, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Would you believe it, I can only find US websites on the point. I'll revise the noun construction (since the format MM/DD/YY is American, I'll have to concede to US English on this one - though it is very jarring to a British eye). This gives:

November 5, 1605, saw Guy Fawkes try to blow up the English parliament.

I can find no examples of dates being used as adjectives. I can see no reason to break the normal rule of having no comma between an adjective and the noun. Certainly, even if you find an American reference for it, I would argue strongly against it for an International encyclopaedia. Jongarrettuk 20:03, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I've just searched on google under 'September 11, 2001 attacks' - this version wins out easily. Jongarrettuk 20:21, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Substubs

Hi! Might I impose on you to create more than mere substubs when contributing? A single sentence about an air force base in Germany does not an article make. Thanks much and welcome to the club. Best, Lucky 6.9 01:43, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Universities in Greece

Flower
Flower

Thank you!

For looking after my neglected Category:Universities in Greece. Etz Haim 09:35, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Misplaced Pages:U.S. Southern Wikipedians' notice board

Hey! I've created this new notice board specifically for articles related to people from the U.S. South. If you are interested in contributing, leave a message on the page and add articles you feel need to be reviewed, contributed to, or started. Mike H 21:06, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:U.S. Southern wikipedians' notice board/USSCOTW

The Southern Collaboration of the Week board is now up. Please vote or nominate other articles. The first voting ends on October 3. Mike H 14:23, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Copycat suicide

After your comment and a revert by Guanaco I have substantially fleshed out the separate entry for Copycat suicide. I hope you now think it warrants the Journalism category. All the best and thanks for the prodding. --CloudSurfer 07:34, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Commas

In reply to your comment on my talk page, after typing it into google, I went down the list to see whether the underlying examples coming up in the short description of each article that google gives use 1 or 2 commas. Jongarrettuk 14:21, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Categories and subcategories

Please don't remove articles from their parent categories just because they themselves define a subcategory—the article is properly placed in whatever category their own category is. Science museum is a core kind of museum, and so should be classified under Category:Museums. Otherwise, a visitor to the article can only see that there are more science museum-related articles, rather than the existence of other fundamental museum topics of which science museums are one in a series. This aids navigation in addition to properly classifying an article. This is very different than the redundancy that occurs when an article that is merely a member of a subcategory is placed within every parent to that subcategory, such as if science museum were placed in Category:Buildings and structures, of which museum is itself merely one in a series of members. Thanks! Postdlf 22:38, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Congo Civil War

Over at Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates, the Congo Civil War nod is being shot down quickly. Care to help defend? -- user:zanimum

Advice columnists

Hi, M, & welcome.
This is the first i've noticed you, but as with at least the first handful who did (i didn't read much further) i'm impressed and pleased about your being here. I suppose your good record from the start of proofreading before saving is no surprise, from a professional writer. (I just hope the many amateurs like myself don't exasperate you!) I also anticipate your being a truly major contributor, if you sustain your rate of the last month!

What finally caught my attention was your Cat edit at Category:Advice columnists. It was i who moved it from Category:People to Category:Journalists, and i applaud your adding the Category:Opinion journalism tag, since that subdivision of journalism (which never occurred to me) is a valuable refinement. My guess is that you dumped the old Cat believing it had become redundant. What is by no means obvious is that for Cat purposes the distinction between occupations and the people who practice them is crucial. To dramatize that, your change removed Dear Abby's bio from being a descendant of the high-level Category:People, for which one of the Cat-system's creators' specific goals is to have all bios among its descendants: as far as the Cat system is concerned, you decertified her as a person . (I've added the old Cat to your valuable new one.)

In my mind, a basic set of principles (tho i'm sure you've already learned more "advanced" things abt Cats) is that

  • where one of two Cats could include everything the other could, an article (or Cat) goes, with very rare exceptions, in the narrower of the two but not in the wider, but
  • two Cats that overlap, without either covering the whole of the other's ground, are entirely compatible, and it is preferred to apply them both to any article that
    • is independently of encyclopedic interest in connection with each, or
    • rises to that interest because of the combination.

Of course, you may already see that, and just have missed the fact that we have numerous categories in and descended from Category:People by occupation as part of the "people tree".

I've put (what feels like) a lot of Cat-related editing into that tree and little into other Cats, and i can imagine that you might give special focus to the journalists and journalism trees. I doubt i am going to push much deeper than Category:Writers by genre, but you also might like to look above and below from that Cat; i certainly would endorse parallels, for most of the occupational subdivisions i imagine in Category:Journalism, within Category:Journalists.

BTW, after musing over how many female Marines there might've been (and, excuse me, how many cross-dressing ones!), i finally got it about your name. Nice choice!

Looking forward to future path-crossings, i'm
--Jerzy(t) 05:11, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)

Re name: Wow! (Can't help my perverse curiosity about how you got ridden over that, in the Corps.)

Re Adv. Col.: point well taken; i may not have gotten around to saying it, but that is the type of insight that i meant to say i would expect more from you than from me; i encourage you to implement if you're willing.

(I'm also mulling whether i carelessly call people (perhaps lacking J ethos) journalists just bcz they write for short-cycle pubs, or think of them still as journalists when they take off their usual short-cycle hat & write books. But i don't presume to conclude. )

--Jerzy(t) 07:32, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)

Didn't have this user-name on the tip of my tongue last night, in case you haven't noticed him: User:Marine 69-71 --Jerzy(t) 17:43, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)

Category:Military terms

Why have you been removing the links to the "Military term" category? I think it's pretty useful for things like Dual use technology and Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle. In any event, please discuss such wide-reaching changes on Category talk:Military terms before deciding to implement them. --Fastfission 21:25, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I must say that I agree with Fastfission. /Tuomas 13:42, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

9/11 poll

Whoops! Sorry - voting in the correct one now :) JOHN COLLISON 22:30, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Trivial category relationships

I removed your people article additions from Category:North Carolina. Why did you think they were of base-level importance to the topic of North Carolina? They wouldn't even be properly put in a "people of NC" subcategory—it would be a mess if we categorized articles by every bit of information they contain. Michael Jordan, for example, was already categorized (and logically so) as a Chicagoan, considering how that's where he lives now and where his notability was most tied. But he was also associated during his life with New York City, Birmingham, Alabama, Washington, DC... Please focus on the most notable aspects of a subject when you are categorizing them. Postdlf 09:42, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: Vote on Sept. 11

Oh, oops. Thanks for the heads-up. --L33tminion 01:44, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

We've already set out our rationale in the first vote. We should leave it there. If I've added some since the first vote closed that I haven't redacted, feel free to move it. Essentially, I didn't like any of the three points you added - rather than expand the section into a point by point rebuttal, I thought it would be easier just to revert. jguk 06:42, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm quite comfortable rebutting, I just thought it would be distracting. I've now reverted the talk page briefly highlighting the rebuttals. I think it's best there, but am happy to put the rebuttals on the increasingly long talk page if you have strong feelings about it. jguk 06:52, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Seems some of my editing of the talk page produced entirely unintended results. Apologies for that. jguk 08:15, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please use proper subcategories

I noticed that after my last comments to you on my talk page, you added Category:Computing to Ability Photopaint. This implies that subject is of base-level importance to the subject of computers. Category:Computing of course contained no articles on individual pieces of software, because it has Category:Software as a subcategory, within which is Category:Application software for task-specific programs, within which is Category:Graphics software, the proper category for Ability Photopaint. You also put Oyens, Iowa in Category:Iowa when we have Category:Cities in Iowa, as does every state category have subcategories for municipalities. Could you please explain why you have disregarded subcategories? Postdlf 01:48, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Archive 11 problem

When Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style--Archive11 was created, a good chunk of discussion was chopped off the bottom. I just added the missing material to the archive. Hope I did it right :-) My question: what do we do now regarding the proposed changes? I'm kinda new around here and don't know - seems to have fizzled out. -Vsmith 23:45, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Manual of Style poll

A well publicised poll like this gets lots of votes and together with many votes, lots of opinions too. It is a useful gauge. Even if consensus is not immediately obtained, it may suggest where a better answer lies. For instance, some of the objections already noted can be easily dealt with.

As far as why am I interested in changing policy: it's because I don't like my perfectly good English being 'corrected'. (Conversely, I do like my bad English to be corrected!) I write, and mostly read, UK English. It's what I'm most comfortable with. This is the rationale behind the compromise between styles that the Manual of Style already supports. (As an aside, I must note that I prefer a well written article in US English over a poorly written one in UK English.)

I'm more than happy to compromise between styles on an international encyclopaedia written by the general public. It seems sensible - and why correct perfectly good English when there are many articles out there that have misspellings and are ungrammatical. The compromise between styles should be total, demanding only consistency within articles. To leave 2 residual points because some people prefer one form of language over another, when people the world over adopt differing practices, does not seem right. Demand good English, demand consistency, but do not specify one form of English over another. jguk 07:54, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The poll is a good way to get a wide range of views. Within 12 hours, 16 people have already voted. (Compare this with how many views we got on style guide.) Many have left comments. These are valuable. They may indicate consensus to change. They may indicate where further discussion should be directed. They may indicate that further discussion is futile. Let the poll run its course. Absent these views, any discussion would be carried out in a sort of vacuum. jguk 08:15, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dispute resolution

Well, I'm not an expert, but I'd like to help you resolve the dispute. What is it about and where can I find the previous discussion documented? ] 09:10, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

Maurreen, can you summarize, why this poll is bothering you so much? ] 18:51, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

AMA Request for Assistance

Maurreen,

If you are having a problem with a particular user, than it would appear that you are in a dispute. An Advocate is able to assist you in attempting to resolve this dispute in a way that conforms with the Misplaced Pages basic standard of justice. From one on one discussion with the user, all the way to arbitration if it becomes necessary. An Advocate cannot act as a mediator, but can assist you in resolving the dispute through the proper channels. You can read the member statements and contact an Advocate of your choosing or you can outline your problem in your request and someone will most likely volunteer or be appointed.

Best of luck in resolving your dispute.

Skyler1534 21:50, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

Culture of Greece

Culture of Greece is this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article.

Manual of Style apostrophe changes

Maurreen, I'm curious why you changed several occurrences of "straight" apostrophes to the so-called "curved" version in someone else's Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style postings (but not globally across the page), perhaps ironically in defiance the Manual of Style itself (8.1.1, Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes). I can't quite see the purpose of it. — Jeff Q 23:47, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You say I changed apostrophes or quote marks in other people's postings. I plead ignorance. The only thing I can think of is that sometimes I write in Word and copy stuff back and forth and don't often notice the apostrophe or quote style. Maurreen 04:55, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm talking about your edit at 00:06, 9 Nov 2004, the first of five consecutive edits you made on that page. It seemed unusual also because you had taken care to add summaries to each of the other four edits. Perhaps it was an accidental premature save? (I'm afraid I do this on occasion myself.) If so, I can switch the apostrophes back, unless you or someone else beats me to it. — Jeff Q 05:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Don't despair about a comma!

I just noticed your post on the Village Pump, and just wanted to by sympathetic and point you to m:Wikistress (and if you wish Misplaced Pages:The_Wikipedian's Prayer, YMV). Keep up your good work; comma's arn't everything. JesseW 10:24, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)