User talk:Cowboydan76

Welcome!

Hello, Cowboydan76, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!

Arundhati bakshi 11:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Matt Blunt

Hi! Welcome to wikipedia. I've noticed your edits to a couple of pages about Missouri politicians. Thanks for your contributions. I hope you will continue to edit. I am a bit concerned, though, that your edits to the Matt Blunt article may go against Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. I'm going to change the article back to the old version for now, though I'd be happy to try and come up with something that conveys the relevant information from a neutral point of view. Thanks! TMS63112 21:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. I appreciate that you were trying to help bring balance to the article and give some context to Blunt's election. I've re-read the whole article and I agree that the end comes off as somewhat negative. But, frankly, Blunt has had a pretty rough first year in office, and it shows in his approval ratings. Wikipedia's job is to report the verifiable facts and the context in a neutral way by citing sources whenever possible. I think the article still needs more context and more balance. For example, there should be some discussion of the tort reform measures that were enacted early in Blunt's term, and were not as controversial. As to your specific edits, I know Blunt's supporters have talked about the need to get the state budget under control. But has he received "widespread praise"? Can we cite a newspaper article or some other source that supports that statement? Also, doesn't Missouri's constitution require that the budget be balanced anyway? I just thought there were several problems with the specific language. I hope we can work together to make the article more balanced and more informative. Thanks TMS63112 21:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree with your most recent comments about the nedd to include more than just mechanical information in a politican's biography. It requires careful effort though, and attention to WP:NPOV. By the way, please remember to sign your comments on talk pages using four ~ Thanks! TMS63112 21:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for your comments. I think we're both trying to make the article better, and it's always a good idea to assume good faith from other editors. The article does need more citations, which I will also work on. Don't worry too much about formating, it gets easier with practice. Using a colon allows you to indent, a double colon double indents, etc. so it's easier to follow comments and responses in discussion. TMS63112 22:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I added some information about the Jessica's law proposal and some of Blunt's other stated priorities for the 2006 session. I sourced most of it to artilces in the Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau paper) which has a much better on-line archive than the Post-Dispatch. Take a look at the other changes I made to the article. I hope it made it better sourced, more informative and more balanced. Thanks again for helping make this a better article! TMS63112 04:53, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jessica's law

By the way, I noticed wikipedia doesn't seem to have n article about Jessica's law. Maybe you should write it! TMS63112 04:54, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Userboxes

Hello Dan. Welcome to Wikipedia. You can learn all that you need to now on Userboxhes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userboxes -- its best not to overuse them, but they can convey information about you to others very quickly and visually. there is some discussion about getting rid of some of the political ones, so you may want to avoid using those. I have copied the format and templates that I have used on my userpage and added them to yours so you can see how it was done. Now you will wanrt to edit the page and alter the userboxes to suit your own preferences after reading about the various categories available. Please let me know if you need any more assistance. Arundhati bakshi 16:22, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]