User talk:Lostbedouin

Operation Spectrum

I've had to correct the same article three times now after you, so I wanted to ask if you could please stop adding extra colons to the category declarations on Operation Spectrum. The extra colon is a technique for creating a text link to a category page without categorizing the page in it (e.g. so that you can refer to a category on a projectspace page, such as a deletion discussion or a talk page or a sandbox page like your own User:Lostbedouin/sandbox) — it is not the proper process for declaring categories on articles that are meant to be filed in the categories, such as the finished version of Operation Spectrum.

The category links are correct in their current form, so please don't add the extra colons again — if you're copying and pasting content from your sandbox version, then you need to either avoid copying the category links from that page overtop the ones on the article, or remove the extra colons before you hit save on the article. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 04:01, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, that's it for now. I do see you're relatively new here, so it's not a big sin or anything — we were all new here once and we all make mistakes on occasion. One thing you might want to consider, though, is that if you're making only modest changes to the article at any one time, then it might be easier to just copy and paste the specific section you've made changes to instead of recopying the whole page each time — but that's just a suggestion to make things easier for you, not an actual "rule" that you're breaking or anything like that. Bearcat (talk) 15:50, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The colons are not put there automatically by your sandbox, but sometimes other editors will come through and put them there to keep your sandbox articles from appearing in the categories. If you create a new category in your sandbox, you should include the extra colon, then remove it when you copy it into the real article (or comment out the category while it is in your sandbox). You can go into the history page for your sandbox and probably spot the edit where the colons were added.

Generally, you reply to a question right where it was asked so that the entire conversation stays in one place. If that is on your talk page, the editor asking the question should watchlist your talk page until the conversation is complete. Don Lammers (talk) 14:19, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]