User talk:Skibden/Archive

Thank you!

Hi, thank you very very much for your award!I'm glad you liked my articles. If you need any further information about European awards, don't hesitate to ask me. Maybe I can help you. --Der rikkk (talk) 14:05, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks again for the ribbon! If you are interested in more European awards, here are two webpages that might be useful.

• http://www.european-paratrooper.de/de/navid.6/abzeichen.htm
• http://www.aecopsd.eu/ (It's in French. Look in the Brevets étrangers section on the left

If you travel to Germany frequently, you could also be interested in the German rescue swimming badge. It can be awarded as a ribbon or a badge. You can see it often among German firefighters. --Der rikkk (talk) 08:08, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I forgot to ask you, how did you get a chance to get the Dutch parachute badge? I'm also interested in badges like these. And when you need translations from that page in French, just let me know. --Der rikkk (talk) 08:20, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Ribbons for you

Hi Skibden, As per your request, I have created the following ribbons for you. I hope it is what you were looking for. Cheers! – S Masters (talk) 15:02, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar! Yes, I use PhotoShop and Fireworks. One can't do too much with Paint. – S Masters (talk) 16:10, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Adoption

Hello, Skibden! Netalarm was kind enough to facilitate your adoption and he paired you up with me! I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're okay with me being your adopter, but if not don't hesitate to let me know. A little about me... I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia (which is more or less the only Wikimedia project I edit, other than uploading files to Commons from time to time). I do mostly maintenance work (article deletion, vandal patrol, etc.) When I do do article work, it is often cleanup, expansion, referencing, or the like. Articles I create are often to do with stage lighting, but like I said, I'm usually doing maintenance. You say you're already doing some maintenance when you're bored, so if you're interested in continuing or improving those skills I can help! You also said that you're interested in orders and medals, and stuff about the Bunyaro Kingdom. I can't say that I'm exactly familiar with that, but I think that if you bring your knowledge regarding that and I bring my knowledge regarding the workings of Wikipedia itself, this can work well!

So I guess you should probably know how to contact me. My preferred method of communication is my user talk page. However, I am almost always on IRC while I'm editing, so if you use IRC, I hang out in #wikipedia-en and #wikipedia-en-help under the nick GorillaWarfare. If you really need to, you can email me, but I much prefer the first two modes of communication.

So, tell me about yourself! What are you hoping to learn from me? Are there any types of maintenance are you interested in becoming more involved with? Why are you putting yourself up for adoption -- do you just want to improve as an editor or are you interested in eventually getting other user rights? — GorillaWarfare ^talk 06:03, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

About me

That's very nice of Netalarm! Even though as a prejudicing European I really should have seconds thoughts about having an American teenage girl as my "Master Yoda", but I will live ;-) (Yes, that WAS a pathetic attempt at being humorous). I will try to tell about my wiki-life in chronological order and at the same time answer all your questions.
Besides a bit of minor edits on da.wikipedia (primarily adding stuff to talkpages, and hoping others will fix it), my wikipedia-experience was quite non-existing until about 1½ year ago. Then I became an administrator on a Danish Emergency-services-facts Wikipedia and later I created my own website using Wikimedia.
The main reason I came to the English Wikipedia was to create articles for the Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom, who I am a volunteer for, so I joined mainly for public relations reasons. I have made some edits to some medal-related sites, and I am thinking about moving my entire website over to the Wikipedia - no reason to have a wikimedia-website with 50 hits a month, when you can add it to wikipedia and have a lot more hits (Plus I have this hippie "free for all" attitude and in general I just LOVE the idea of everything being freely available online)..

I am also myself on IRC (when I remember) and besides that Google Talk and MSN Messenger is always online.

I really don't know what maintenance tasks I like.. I am browsing a bit.. Right now I am working on sorting and making new graphics for Wikipedia:Ribbons.

The reason I am looking for adoption is because I need someone to look over my articles for grammar and such, and then to have a general "yoda" / advisor. But I am looking forward to learning all I can.
My english isn't perfect, and I would like to improve it, because I use it a lot in my work for Uganda. And as stated above I just fell like adding all my knowledge to Wikipedia, so others can learn about stuff.

Great! Consider yourself adopted! I can definitely try to help you with checking grammar and answering any questions you may run into. If you want more idea of what maintenance tasks entail, WP:Maintenance covers them pretty thoroughly.

For your first "assignment", you might want to read over WP:Conflict of interest. This will be very important if you are hoping to edit articles on the Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom. — GorillaWarfare ^talk 20:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

About the maintenance, I am working on cleaning up Wikipedia:Ribbons.. See here for my contribs: User:Skibden/Edits Skibden (talk) 13:09, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks great! I see no problems there. I presume you are creating all the ribbon images yourself? Perhaps there's some way to organize them better, although I can't seem to think of what that would be... Keep it up! — GorillaWarfare ^talk 19:38, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I am thinking the same, but can't figure anything out.. Skibden (talk) 20:15, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, why do you often use "Ø" as an edit summary? — GorillaWarfare ^talk 17:16, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Read somewhere that it's wikipedian for "minor edit" / "bug fix".. But I havn't seen it used that much.. Skibden (talk) 17:18, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Huh, very well could be I suppose. I've never seen it, though. It's generally a good idea to be more specific about what you're doing, even if it's as simple as "fmt" for formatting changes or "re" for replies to comments. Also, good recent edits (the copyediting ones)! One thing I might suggest: you added references to Richard Beck in this edit. This is very good, as it needed them. However, it's often more helpful to use citation templates. If you look at my edit to the page, you'll see how I did that. I use a gadget called RefTools (you can enable it in your preferences -- I highly suggest it) that makes using citation templates very easy. And remember -- you don't have to fill out every field. Although it didn't expand those references too much, it made them a little bit clearer. You'll also see that I use <ref name> instead of <ref>. This allows me to name the reference, and then easily use it later. For example, you'll see that the first reference is enclosed in <refname="Bigboy">...</ref> tags. Then later on, in the Management section, I only have to write <ref name="Bigboy" /> after the fact that's being cited. It saves a lot of space and is cleaner. Then, down in the References section, you see that next to that reference is "a b". Clicking on one of those brings you to each of the citations. — GorillaWarfare ^talk 01:06, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll try it out! Thanks! :-)

Hmm.. I just took a look at my preferences page.. 0 to 550 edits in just under a month, creation of 7 new pages, and a major contribution to Wikipedia:Ribbons.. It's going way better then I thought.. :P But I have spend a lot of time reading about templates and have learned a lot..! Skibden (talk) 17:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Yep, you're doing great! There are also outside websites such as WikiChecker, X!'s tool, and River's tool that show some pretty in-depth descriptions of a user's edit history. Good luck with the templates, too! That's beyond my comfort zone, for sure, although I probably should become more familiar with them... — GorillaWarfare ^talk 18:24, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

When I started my own Wikimedia-based website I was REALLY scared of the whole template-thing, but I am starting to get a hang of it. About all those extra-tings, all I have so far is for counting page-size.. More will come later..

Besides that, I have found s little project to do.. I will merge Danish National Rescue Preparedness with Danish Emergency Management Agency and hopefully make it a WP:GOOD Skibden (talk) 18:33, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, very nice! That's a respectable goal! Which title are you planning to use? I would suggest Danish National Rescue Preparedness, as it's more all-encompassing. You probably already decided that though. I presume you've already read the guidelines at WP:Merge, but if not, that's a great place to start. Good luck, and I'll keep an eye on your contributions to see if there are any suggestions I can make as you are in progress. — GorillaWarfare ^talk 18:51, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll actually go the other way. The Danish National Rescue Preparedness doesn't exist anymore. But DEMA does.

Oh, I see. I didn't realize it was an organization, rather I thought it was a general term. Makes sense. Carry on! — GorillaWarfare ^talk 20:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)