User talk:Theodulf

Charles01

I think if you follow the discussions at the project talk page for a bit, and maybe check out the entries on the things that most interest you, you'll get a feel for what goes on and of boring things like how the basic wiki-word-processing software works. 95% intuitive, but there are still a few surprosing bits that you only notice later. You'd get a wide and disparate range of answers on things like reference resources - maybe on basic questions too - but if you take a look at what people actually do and copy the approaches that you think are the good ones, you'll be headed in the good direction. It's true that it's prudent to start editing toe by toe rather than jumping in both feet first, if only to reduce the amount of cringing you'll be doing twelve months down the road when you come across things you did earlier. And since - at least as far as I'm concerned - I came across you because of your interest in LKJS, try and cultivate succinct. LKJS mostly got away with not being succinct because he knew a lot: doesn't always work for me, though. So ... on this matter, do as I write and not as I do.

If you end your comments with four four these "~" the system automatically adds your name and the date to your comments. Good thing to do on Talk Pages. Thus: Charles01 (talk) 05:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC). And enjoy. There is a sort of standard welcome to wikipedia para that sometimes turns up on the talk pages of new contributors, but (1) I don't know how to do it and (2) I don't feel a sufficient sense of overall project ownership to wish to inflict it on you. But enjoy anyway.

Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your sage comments. I would like to point out that, unlike LJKS, I didn't use any Greek, Latin, or Hebrew in my contribution!

The area I wanted to ask about what constitutes something worthy of inclusion, especially in regard to Automobiles? In particular I wanted to add a listing for a car made for a short time in the 1920s with total production of about 50 units. It should be interesting connecting the threads to write the article, but is this of sufficient interest to be included?

The other item I wanted advice on is the debate going on in the List of fictional vehicles. It is an unkempt list, but I noticed that some areas it references more specific lists, such as List of fictional aircraft seem to be part of a different project or hierarchy. I realize I can go ahead and create anything I want to in Wikipedia, but I'd rather learn to do so politely and create such a list under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles. Is it considered Kosher to just post such a suggestion on the Discussion board and see what happens? Is there some history here that I should know about first?

Again, thanks for your assistance.

Theodulf 04:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

If my musings help, that's good. Thanks for communicating that.

There's only one of me. Most of your follow-up questions are best directed to the project talk page. My views may be good and they may be bad, but they're the views of one person. If you put questions on the project talk page, the reactions you get may not be representative of the contributors who don't react. But they will be representative of the folks whose opinions are most likely to influence the policy of the project if that makes sense...

But I can't resist giving you a few of my views anyway, now that you've prompted me to think a little.

If wikipedia aspires to be a more comprehensive information source than others, and I think it does, then we should hesitate to discourage anyone from contributing entries about anything, regardless of whether or not I personally would actually wish to read it. Obviously it's important to supply adequate source notes and it's important to avoid untruth at least where offering up something purportedly factual, but awareness that you cannot do all of that in the first instance should not inhibit you from making a start. The infinite march in the direction of ever greater perfection can address the sourcing issues and the truth ones at a later date where your contribution cannot meet the highest criteria on Day 1. Then again:

(1) writing complete garbage is not a good idea. But you don't appear likely to be the one to do that.

(2) do make quite sure that your proposed entry has not already been created under another name. Searching around using alternative titles should sufficiently test for that.

(3) there seems to be a movement against creating "mere" lists. We certainly do have lists of Le Mans winners, rally winners and lots of other things. But sometimes lists need to be justified because there are folks out there who think that Wikipedia should not be a simple repository of lists, which I guess sort of makes sense on a good day. I guess that means a list needs to be incorporated as part of something else encyclopaedic. If I sound as though I'm not quite sure what this list-phobia is all about, there is a reason for that.

There may well be things - some history - going on here, and to the extent you can find out about it by running a search over the text for relevant key words it's maybe worth doing so. But a lot of any history will exist only in the minds of the contributors and you cannot hope to know all the "mental Hinterland" we each bring to our written comments. Nor can you even hope to have the time to read everything that any individual has ever written on a subject (even assuming s/he's been consistent) You just have to write as you mean and judge the arguments adduced by others according to what they write.

(4) there are already categories including 1951 introductions or Vehicles introduced by year. Does that do already what you are minded to do? Or are you minded to do something complementary / supplementary to performing the listing function served by those categories? I suspect the answer is yes, in which case do it. But the thought was worth passing on to you.

(5) as a general comment, and looking at what you have written, I think you may soon develop a better appreciation than I have mustered of the differences, interfaces and overlaps between a wiki-category and a wiki-entry and a list.

(6) It's considered kosher to write almost anything on a discussion page as long as it's not likely to be deemed rude - which given the different ways folks react in different bits of the english speaking world is not quite a simple as you might think. But almost. Open discussion is what discussion pages are for. If someone comes back and writes something that tries to make you feel small, he's the one with an issue: not you. It seems to me that wikipedia is about spreading knowledge more widely. If that's the case, then there should be no dumb questions: only dumb answers which is an old but nonetheless worthwhile mantra. And no doubt in my time I, like most folks, have got quite carried away and provided a few dumb answers on my own account. But that's not a reason to encourage the things.

(7) Some of those list pages seem to have been created by several different people with screamingly different (incompatible, even) opinions on how to set the entries up. I guess that's why there are all sorts of guidelines: but one doesn't want guide-lines to be imposed in a way that discourages people from contributing useful and / or interesting information. I don't think this is a lists issue. It's a wikipedia issue. The best entries in terms of coherence and structure tend to be the ones contributed by just one person, appropriately well informed, and maybe supported by a couple of folks carefully correcting grammatical and factual glitches and adding a few more source notes. The popular entries, where everyone has a slice to contribute, almost inevitably become hugely messy bordering on incoherent because each has his/her own ideas on how the informaion should be presented. I don't think there's a way round this. I'm sure that if today I look up poor Michael Jackson on wikipedia I will learn lots of stuff I didn't know and some of it will be interesting. But the price I'll pay for the chance to quiz all that high-grade knowledge is that I'll have to wade through a lot of stuff that, left to my own devices, I would have excluded from the entry, and a lot more stuff that I would have expressed differently (and in my own judgement much better). I think that's just 'part of it'. The answer is tolerance of different approaches which maybe sounds ridiculously 'wet' but I don't have a better answer. If you don't think it's worth it, don't look up Michael Jackson (or anything else that interests lots of people) on Wikipedia.

Success Charles01 (talk) 07:33, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you again. No doubt we will encounter one another along the way.

02:25, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Kees Boeke (musician)

Hello Theodulf,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Kees Boeke (musician) for deletion, because the article doesn't clearly say why the subject is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. LavaBaron (talk) 17:33, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Bertho Driever

Hello Theodulf,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Bertho Driever for deletion, because the article doesn't clearly say why the subject is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. Rberchie (talk) 13:06, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello Theodulf I am very sorry that your article has been deleted. I only nominated it and I was hoping you could have contested it. It is never too late you can still contact the Admin who deleted it for further details. But I am sure your defence wasn't strong enough. All the same I am sorry I only acted in accordance to Wikipedia's laid down procedures. Regards--Rberchie (talk) 08:13, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

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