User talk:Grandson-Jim

Welcome!

Hello, Grandson-Jim, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

The five pillars of Wikipedia
Tutorial
How to edit a page and How to develop articles
How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Gongshow ^Talk 22:33, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: New Britain Dry Cleaning Corp.

Hi, thanks for writing. I believe your points are meant for another editor, as my only contribution to this article was to clarify the use of cold storage (see link). Generally, if you find that an editor's suggestion is incorrect, Wikipedia encourages all of us to be bold, and your deletions sound reasonable given your reasoning. Please note that "Cash and carry" by itself does not link to an article, but to a list of articles which are related to the term in some way. If none of these possibilities apply, it might be best to simply remove the link.

As for nutshells at the beginning of articles, having a section (whether it's a sentence or paragraph) to serve as an introduction/summary to the article is standard practice, and is particularly useful in articles of this length. For example, here are a few articles about other Connecticut-based companies: Pratt-Read, TicketNetwork, American Brass Company. I hope this helps. Cheers, Gongshow ^Talk 22:33, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Lead-in and orphan status

For the introduction, just type it above "==History==". No special coding is needed, aside from bolding the article name with three apostrophes around it. I wrote a sentence in the article as an example, feel free to change or add to it as you see fit.

As far as the orphan issue, Wikipedia:Orphan gives a good overview of the topic. Basically, it is recommended wherever possible to link to an article from related pages so the article is not so difficult to find. Increased links can result in increased readership, which in turn can result in increased collaboration, something Wikipedia strongly encourages. I added a link at the List of Connecticut companies page. Cheers, Gongshow ^Talk 20:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Edit mode

I'm afraid I can't help with your edit-mode problem; I've never heard of its happening. I assume that when you say you're searching for NBDCC, you mean that you're typing it into the "Search" box at upper right.

Out of curiosity, what happens if you do a Google search for ("new britain dry cleaning")? When I do that, the WP article is the first hit; and clicking on the link gets me to the article, with no edit-mode weirdness. However, the same thing happens when I start typing the phrase into WP's "Search" box, or when I click on the link in my watchlist.

For what it's worth, I'm using Chrome. What browser are you using? It might be worth trying a different one. Ammodramus (talk) 14:58, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If I may, a couple of quick notes on talk-page practice, since you're relatively new here and it takes a while to pick up some of the fine points of Wikiquette. First, it's usual to start a new subject at the bottom of the page rather than at the top. One way to start a new one is to click on the "New section" tab at upper right, which automatically starts the new section at the bottom. (If you're continuing a discussion on a talk page, one or more colons (:) at the beginning of a paragraph will indent it; that's a good way to keep track of who's saying what. See, for instance, how I've put single colons at the beginning of each paragraph of this reply.) Second, it's not necessary to SHOUT; in fact, it annoys some people, and will make them less receptive to what you're saying.

Edit mode: If I'm correctly understanding your note on my talk page, you mean that when you open the article, the little blue "Edit" appears toward the right edge of the page at the top of each section; and that by clicking on that little blue "Edit", you can open a window to edit the section. Is that the case? If that's so, that's not edit mode; that's normal. You're not actually in edit mode until you've clicked the blue "Edit" to the side, or the one at the top of the page, and thus opened the edit window. If you'll check other articles that're long enough to have several sections, you'll see the same thing. And it's not necessary to sign in to edit an article: except for some articles that've been put under protection because of heavy vandalism and the like, anybody can edit them, whether registered or not. If you click the "View history" tab near the top right, you'll see a list of the edits that've been made and who edited them; and the people who weren't logged in appear as their IP addresses (and in Wikiparlance, are known as "IP editors").

Regarding notability, I'm still not sure. The title of the Nat'l Cleaner and Dyer article suggests that the NBDCC was used as an example rather than the article's principal focus. I'd like to leave the notability template up for now, in the hope that other editors will look at it and leave their comments. Ammodramus (talk) 01:30, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ammodramus. Thanks for your reply and tips. Let me comment on them one by one.

First, Wiki's e-mail package. I've been using Yahoo's e-mail package for over 10 years now and their chain of replies in newest on top. I just assumed, incorrectlly, that Wiki did the same; sorry for the confusion. Thanks for the tips on starting a new talk subject and continuing an existing one.

Second. Sorry about "shouting." It wasn't done to offend you. I did it to get your attention because you didn't answer all the questions that I posed in the earlier talk session. Looks like I got your attention but did it the wrong way. Again, I'm sorry.

Next, the Edit mode and my concern that the article was always in the edit mode. When I bring up my article about the NBDCC, each section shows "[edit]" and I can edit the section without having to log in. I don't remember seeing the "[edit]" on the right side of each section before. That's why I became concerned. However, you say this is normal (to see "[edit]" at the start of each section so you solved my supposed "problem." Thanks for helping me and giving me insight into the Wiki world.

Lastly, regarding the Notability issue. The article in the July 1954 issue of the National Cleaner & Dyer magazine entitled "Should You Buy New Equipment Now?" was two pages long. It was devoted solely to the NBDCC decision to spend a sizable amount of money to buy new equipment for their operation. With this information, I hope you will the Notability flag.

(Grandson-Jim (talk) 14:22, 23 August 2012 (UTC))[reply]

I hope you get this reply. I'm not sure how the system knows to send this to you.

Thanks for taking my suggestions re. talk pages in the right spirit. I was afraid that they might sound over-critical, as though I was trying to score points at your expense. Glad that you took them as they were intended, as an attempt to be helpful.

I found this reply just fine—and if you'll pardon my tendency to be didactic, I'll explain how, and go into talk pages in a little more detail. First, I knew it was there because I'm currently "watching" your talk page. This is a very useful feature of WP, so I'll tell you a bit about it, on the chance that you don't know. At the top of the page, you'll see a star just to the right of "View history". If that star's blue, it means that the article, talk page, or whatever, is on your watchlist; if it's only outlined in blue, it's not. Clicking on the star will toggle it from one to the other (it's fully reversible, so it's safe to experiment). By clicking on the "My watchlist" at the very top of the page, you can see if any of the pages on your watchlist have recently been edited. You can fiddle with the way things show up on the watchlist by clicking "My preferences" and then the "Watchlist" tab: for example, I've got it set so that every page I edit goes on my watchlist, and then I manually remove the ones I'm not particularly interested in. Again, that's something you might want to experiment with.

Talk page practices vary. Some people like to go back and forth: A puts his comments on B's talk page; B replies on A's talk page. Others like to keep the whole conversation on one talk page. It's a matter of personal preference. If someone's left a message on your talk page and you want to put your reply there as well, though, it might be a good idea to put a "Talkback" template on the other person's page: that just tells him that he's got a message at your page, in case he's not watching it. You can read all about it by typing "Template:Talkback" in the seach box at the upper right corner of the page. To use it, just put {{Talkback|Grandson-Jim}} at the bottom of the other person's page. (I've enclosed it in special <nowiki> tags here, so I'm not actually leaving the talkback template on your page.)

Hope this is useful to you. There's a certain amount of learning curve involved in all this, both in learning to use the various tools and in picking up the local etiquette. Don't let it intimidate you—it'll come soon enough.

This post is too long already; more on the NBDCC later. Ammodramus (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ammodramus. Thanks for all that good info on the Talk process. I did some fiddling around with the heart icon and My Preferences. You can see I'm using the colons to indicate different talk sessions. Got some reading to do on the process.

I look forward to your reply on the Notability issue. Hopefully, that's been resolved and you(?) or I can remove the coding at the top of the article. (Grandson-Jim (talk) 19:56, 23 August 2012 (UTC))[reply]