User talk:Scothill

checking Scothill (talk) 11:59, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I have built a page called Moffat Hills in my user space and then tried to copy and paste this into the page I was offered on the above topic, but when I do that I lose all the formatting etc. Help!!!! Scothill (talk) 12:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, Scothill, 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)
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion 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 {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! JohnCD (talk) 12:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Moffat hills

Hi. Welcome, again. When you copy from one page to another, e.g. from a user page to an article, the way to bring all the wiki markup etc across properly is to click "edit this page" on the source, and then copy from the source text that is shown. I have done this for you with Moffat hills - you can see the difference between this version and this one. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 12:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, learning by doing is the only way on Wikipedia - if you read all the guidelines first, you would never get started! Some more useful links:

• WP:CHEAT - summary of Wiki markup
• WP:EDIT - more detail
• WP:HELP
• WP:HELPDESK - for questions about using or editing Wikipedia
• WP:BETTER - writing better articles
• WP:MOS - the official style guide

and links on from those... Also, you can put {{helpme}} (two curly brackets each side) on your talk page followed by a specific question, and someone will come along.

One particular detail of markup that causes problems for many new users: I don't know why, but if you put a leading space at the beginning of a line, the format goes all funny

like this!

Another useful tip: make frequent use of the "Show preview" button after you make a change, so that if the result is not what you expect you can correct it before you actually commit to "Save page." You can in fact build up quite an extensive edit this way before you save it, which has the side benefits of simplifying the page history and reducing the load on the servers, which have to keep track of all the versions of every page. If you acquire this good habit there is a trap to avoid - it's all too easy to forget actually to click "Save page" when you're done, and then all your work is lost!

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 14:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Gosh John, "I don't know why" indeed. Using a leading space forces the text to be marked <pre> in the HTML and can cause terrible page-widening. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 18:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I know what it does - what I don't know is why that "facility" is provided - it confuses new users like anything, and I can't recall having seen any constructive use of it.. JohnCD (talk) 23:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

See Help:Wikitext examples#Just show what I typed. Preserving your formatting with leading spaces is useful for examples of computer source code, among other things. This MediaWiki feature confuses new users who are familiar with using leading spaces to indent lines in a text editor. It's another reason why readers outnumber editors on Wikipedia by possibly 1000 to 1. If you ever have a question about why something on Wikipedia is the way it is, ask at the Help desk. --Teratornis (talk) 05:40, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

When I was working on Moffat Hills page I copied the whole markup text and pasted it into a draft email to myself in Windows Live. The external links then showed up in red as spelling mistakes and this helped me to find them in the mass of the text. It also checked the spelling for me too of course, but most importantly it gave me a back up. I had found that it was very easy to lose the changes I had made if I tried to make several changes before saving and backing up regularly onto Windows Live gave me a safety net. "Saving" the draft seems to cause problems with the markup and you loose the red spelling-error indicators. Scothill (talk) 18:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

<pre> is also useful for cheap and cheerful tables. I have seen it used for sports league PWDLFAP lists. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 21:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Photos

Please re-upload your photos to The Commons so that other wikis can use them. Please give each image a proper licence tag such as this one. Re your map, you need to give more detail about the base map you used. I suggest you ask at the help desk before you transfer it. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 18:53, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. I have uploaded my photos to The Commons and I have put the statement you gave me with tags onto the pages with the images. I am not sure what the problem is with my map. I created 4 master maps for the 4 main sections of my website when I first started the website around 10 years ago - by hand drawing layer upon layer in Photoshop over a scan from the relevant Ordnance Survey map much as you would use a light table. There is nothing of the Ordnance Survey map left in my maps except in so far as it has informed my drawing. My master maps cover the whole area for each of the four principal sub-sections within my site and from these I simply take the small section I need for each individual web gallery and work it up as required. So the base map that you ask about is a small reworked section from my West Borders master map and is entirely my own work. Scothill (talk) 20:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

After uploading to Commons, you should have tagged the images here with {{nowcommons}}. But I have zapped them for you. If you have any more photos to upload, feel free to do them even bigger than 640px wide. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 21:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

hello

Inline links

Hi there Scothill. Glad you're back. Just a quick note about linking words in articles as I notice that you changed some "redlinks" in Lowther Hills to link to external websites. The only place that external websites should be linked in an article is in the "External links" section or as part of a citation. (If you want more details there are pages and pages of it at WP:External links!) I understand why you did it on this ocassion - I'm guessing you saw that the words were "redlinks" but you shouldn't worry about that - they actually serve a really important purpose as they highlight to editors and readers that an article does not yet exist and may prompt someone to create one. Also when someone does create the article then all those redlinks automatically turn blue without any manual intervention. Hope this helps, kind regards, Nancy ^talk 10:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

That's fine. If you read all the stuff that there is to read on Wiki you would never have the time or energy left to produce anything new. All my life I have much preferred to learn by doing, just muck in and get on with it and skip all the pedantic stuff. I understand that you have to have protocols for doing things, so I really do appreciate constructive advice and will be quite happy to sort out issues which are pointed out to me. Thank you Scothill (talk) 11:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I know what you mean - I've been here a few years now and there are still plenty of "project" pages that I haven't read yet (or dare I admit, even opened!) but the beauty of Wikipedia is that there is always someone watching your back and ready to help when one strays. Rather than reading policy I've found that a good strategy for writing articles is to find a high quality one on a similar topic (a Good article or a Featured article is best) and use that as a template for headings, layout, scope etc - e.g. I recently wrote Datchet Bridge using the featured article Battersea Bridge as a template. Please don't hesitate drop me a line on my talk page if you ever need any assistance & I'll do my level best. Kindest regards, Nancy ^talk 13:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a good working relationship having you to keep an eye out for me. I have looked at the Datchet Bridge page and I wonder why you allow so much empty space to the right of the "contents" list. I increased the size of the first image on the Lowther page and placed it in the script in such a way that this empty space was removed as much as possible. Is there any problem with doing that?Scothill (talk) 15:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The recommended approach is not to try to manipulate the layout too much & not to oversize images. This is because Wikipedia is viewed by people on wildly varying equipment - different physical sized monitors, iphones, Blackberries etc at varying screen resolutions. look how much the display changes just by making your browser window narrower. Readers also use many different browsers which render the pages in different ways, for example just on my own PC pages can look different in Internet Explorer than in Firefox so I could make a page look "perfect" in one only for it to look not so great in another - likely what you saw in Lowther Hills was different from what I saw (unless in a beautiful coincidence we have the exact same system set-up!) and different again from what a.n.other editor might see. With very large images there is also the accessibility angle - some visually-impaired readers need to configure their systems to display large text; forced large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult. Best, Nancy ^talk 18:19, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

License tagging for File:Hoddom Castle from Repentance Tower.jpg

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More information needed about File:Cairn at start of Annandale Way - north end.jpg

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More information needed about File:River Annan approaching Annan town.jpg

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Commons

Thank you for uploading free images/media such as File:View Across the Solway Firth from near the southern end of the Annandale Way.jpg to Wikipedia! As you may know, there is another Wikimedia Foundation project called Wikimedia Commons, a central media repository for all free media. In the future, please upload media there instead (see m:Help:Unified login). That way, all of the other language Wikipedias can use them too, as well as our many sister projects. This will also allow our visitors to search for, view and use our media in one central location. If you wish to move previous uploads to Commons, see Wikipedia:Moving images to the Commons (you may view your previous uploads). Please note that non-free content, such as images claimed as fair use, cannot be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons. Help us spread the word about Commons by informing other users, and please continue uploading! --Stefan2 (talk) 19:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

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A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar

I'd like to thank Scothill for his contributions to the hills of D&G and the Borders - he was the primary author on this topic, despite only 5 pages, for 8 years. If he's still going, he'll be 77 now. I would like him to know that he inspired me to make the Galloway sub-range pages, Minnigaff Hills, Ettrick Hills and Moffat Hills pages as well as the remaining Donald hill pages too. It seems we would have had a lot of mutual connections in real life had I stayed in Dumfries longer. Cheers, Dunkie! iangpark (talk) 21:58, 5 June 2020 (UTC)