User talk:Haikon/Clutter

These are messages I left on various talk pages. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I moved them here to preserve for posterity. At the time of writing, this seems like a good idea.

from Talk:Amphibian

I wanted to edit this page for clarity, but I don't know any herpetology :[
The reproduction section in particular is confusing. It says "Several hundred frog species... do not need any water whatsoever." It's unclear when the article stops talking about these species and starts talking about more typical amphibian reproduction. May be it should be split into 2 paragraphs?
Elsewhere it says, "...groups like temnospondyls and Lepospondyls..." but it doesn't say what kind of groups they are and I don't know whether they should be capitalized or not.
My point is, if some one who knows about amphibians (or biology in general) wanted to go through this page and iron the edges out that would be really great. It would be even better if they taught me enough biology to do it myself :D
Haikon 13:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

from Talk:Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar

Some one added a link to Go_(board_game) at the top, so I linked the other 3 arts for consistency. I'm not sure if the links I picked were necessarily the most relevant.
I changed parts of the 'qi' section also: Xiangqi is not "less popular" than weiqi, although it is considered low class, compared to the cultivated gentlemens' game of weiqi. I'm pretty sure (but not 100% sure) that the scoring method described was not widely used. Sometimes go players are contentious about the finer details, and I didn't mean to assert anything about that either way. Rather, I tried to edit it with the four arts in general in mind. This section seems to have a lot of technical information about the game in proportion to information about how it reflects the ideal refined scholar, why it was regarded as highly as calligraphy, etc.
It would be really cool if some one more knowledgable than myself would contribute to this section. --Haikon 19:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

from Talk:Kashrut

I'm deleting the section on kosher kitchens, as it seems to have been made by a vandal, and there's already a bullet about utensils under "Principles". --Haikon 02:37, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

from Portal talk: Heraldry

Hi! I would like to join your project and improve and improve some of the more neglected articles on vexillology. :D

I know very very little about heraldry and vexillology but it looks like there is work I could do even as a complete ameteur. I come across a lot of articles I could "fix", but I don't know how the Heraldry project feels about the details:

The article on crescents seems to fall prettymuch into this projects domain. I was going to put a {{WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology|class=NA}} on it, but I thought I should ask first.
I edited the flag of Guam page, but was left confused on these (and other) points:
- I'm pretty sure "emblem" is not the right term, but I don't think "blazon" is not the right term either. I left it as "emblem" because that seemed the most readable.
- The article on the seal of Guam is named Coat_of_arms_of_Guam; should the page be renamed Seal_of_Guam, or is it preferred that all articles on seals, great seals, coats of arms, etc. be Coat_of_arms_of_ articles? (My guess is the second option is better)
- On the seal, is Guam written in red letters or is it colored in gold letters? Various editors had changed it back and forth :/
- The discussion at FOTW [1] seemed unanimous on the point that the flag was originally adopted in 1917. Since there was no argument there, should I have changed the date in the article?
Many heraldry articles are marked as a stubs.... There's not much more to say about the flag of Guam though. It might even be argued that with one or two more sentences, the article will include the sum total of all human knowledge on the subject. When is a stub ready to graduate into an article?
On the other hand, the flag of Afganistan might deserve 2 articles, a main article and a history of.

Anyway, I was hoping you could fill me in on the more general guidelines and the more obscure details of the project before I dive in. Thanks! --Haikon 03:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I am new to wikipedia, and I looked in earnest for your general guidelines before I asked, so please, if they are somewhere just direct me :$

You might want to drop in on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology. It's OK to add a WP:HV banner to Crescent. The history of the flag of Guam seems a little complicated, as it has been modified a bit over time; the 1948 year probably comes from the sources mentioned on FOTW, although saying it was "adopted" then seems misleading. The article is a stub because this confusing history is not described. Non-stub flag articles typically also discuss who designed the flag, what the colors and symbols represent, and why any details were modified (such as the border). I would start by looking up the sources mentioned in the FOTW page, reading those carefully, and trying to decipher the history of this flag. Gimmetrow 01:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I was posting this on the project talk page, but accidentally put it in the portal talk page. It occored to me that this was kinda weird off-topic clutter that should be moved (but may be other people were too polite to move it?) Since my questions were already answered, I figured this was the best place to move it. —Haikon 01:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]