User talk:Yksin/Deco Da Man

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This is a special talk page created for discussion under the WP:AAU program between Yksin (talk · contribs · count)
(adopter) & Deco Da Man (talk · contribs · count) (adoptee).

Declan: I created this special talk page just so all the conversation can be kept together. Make sure it's on your watchlist, & if you want stick a link to it from your user page. After it's agreed that you're "graduated" & we put aside the formal "adopter/adoptee" relationship, you can feel free to copy it over to your archives. If you need to keep anything private between us, you can click on the E-mail this user on the left of the window & send me an email. But seems best to keep most communications on this page. --Yksin 17:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Starting out

Okay, now down to work! I'm considering that this is still under the whole idea of addressing the concerns from that second block, if only so that the same admin doesn't block you again. That means, for the time being:

minimal edits within userspace, in favor of
lots of edits on articles in mainspace -- which, as Alison pointed out in the block discussion, is the reason we're here: to create an encyclopedia.

Here's some context: Your edit count. (You can check any user's edit count through Wannabe Kate -- here's mine). I'd recommend you also establish a link to your edit count as a useful (allowable) edit on your userpage to help you keep track of how you're doing. At the moment the edit count shows that you've made a total of 197 edits on Wikipedia since your first edit on 14 May 2007.

Of those 197 edits, only 12 have been in of actual articles in Wikipedia mainspace. The short-term goal is to make that number climb climb climb. Along with that goes being sure that they're good (useful) edits, and that you're growing more comfortable & confident in making them.

You'll notice also that most of your edits thus far have been "red": you haven't included edit summaries on your edits. It's a good practice to include them for your own & other editor's sake. Help:Edit summary explains why.

My first recommendation, then, would be to pick up at least one of the suggestions that I mentioned in the "Suggestions for working on Wikipedia" I made on your talk page a coupla days ago (I've copied them below) & make at least 50 edits on articles in mainspace. And see how it goes. --Yksin 17:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for working on Wikipedia
(copied from User talk:Deco Da Man history)

Hey Deco Da Man. In hopes that your second (& in my eyes, second unjust) blocking case is resolved favorably, there are nonetheless some issues that another admin (Alison) besides the blocking editor (Ryulong)) believes need to be addressed: appropriate use of your own userspace, & making contributions by edits to Wikipedia mainspace (i.e., articles). So, here's some suggestions:

Appropriate use of your own userspace.

First take a look at policies and guidelines: WP:NOT#SOCIALNET and Wikipedia:User page

Per WP:NOT#SOCIALNET, Wikipedians have their own user pages, but they may be used only to present information relevant to working on the encyclopedia. If you are looking to make a personal webpage or blog, please make use of one of the many free providers on the Internet. The focus of user pages should not be social networking, but rather providing a foundation for effective collaboration.

Based on my memory of what your userpage looked like before it was deleted, I'd guess that you from Ryulong's POV it was providing more autobiographical detail about yourself than necessary for Wikipedia purposes, while giving very little about what your interests are on Wikipedia. Take a look at my user page, for example. Or here are other examples I'm just randomly grabbing to show how various users inform the community of their Wikipedia-specific activities/interests: Gimmetrow, Pb30, Keenan Pepper. Note how this last one provide some autobiographical info, but also mentions specific interests & includes a to-do list of tasks that particular users wants to accomplish. You might consider using Template:Todo, which is a nice gizmo way to do the same thing.

All those pages focus more on what how the users involve themselves in Wikipedia than in their non-WP lives/histories: the info, to quote from above, is "providing a foundation for effective collaboration."

Making contributions in Wikipedia mainspace

Maybe you don't know where to begin...? Some start-up resources

Read Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia. In particular, see the section called "Where do I start?" It's got a lot of good practical suggestions, and links to lots & lots of different kinds of collaborative projects, cleanup efforts, etc. etc. that you could get involved in. For example, one of the projects linked to there is Wikiproject Wikify, which has a well-organized page about how to help with this Wikignome-like task, along with how-to's and tools. Even just a half hour in an evening after school contributing to a project like this would add significantly to your mainspace edits, & maybe make admins like Ryulong feel a whole lot better about you.
Since you seem to be interested in programming, you might also want to check out the "Programmers wanted" section on the above page.
Join and become and active member of a WikiProject. For example, there's a whole bunch of them related to Computer science. Or, since you're an Aussie, maybe one of the Australia-related WikiProjects might be up your alley. Check out various projects pages, their purposes, lists of tasks needing to be done -- join a project or two, & do some stuff for them. (And feel free to add userboxes, if available, to your user page to indicate your participation in those projects.)
Learn how to fight vandalism. Even if you don't become a dedicated vandalism fighter, vandalism is so common that it's good to know the best ways to fight it -- first by learning exactly what it is, of course, in order to be sure you're not inadvertently reverting good edits. I personally learned a tool call Twinkle which makes dealing with vandalism pretty fast & easy, & also assists in making appropriate warnings on the talk pages of vandalizing editors. Mostly I just focus on reverting vandalism on pages on my watchlist, but now & again I go to Special:Recentchanges (linked from the left side of every Wikipedia page) & check out recent edits, especially of mainspace articles edited by anonymous IPs, & look for vandalism & revert it.
(Be sure when you make edits to put a note in the article's edit summary.)

Anyway, I hope this block, too, is resolved in your favor, & there's a few suggestions to help you keep it off you. Please do ask for help if you don't know what to do. I've got your talk page on my watchlist -- so even if you can't write on mine because of a block, I'm keeping an eye out. --Yksin 22:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

:D first wikification

I made my first wikify edit on 3D optical data storage. I added links to the first section. I assume that this was all that was needed so I removed the wikify tag. Deco Da Man {talk} 11:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Oh.. And I also have this page on my watchlist. Deco Da Man {talk} 11:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good job, good edits! You're on your way. You now have 15 mainspace edits to your credit (up from 12).

I am going to scold you about one thing: you didn't include an edit summary for any of your three edits on that page. Please remember to do that. You could say wikifying or wikikinks or rm wikify tag, etc. Those edit summaries are vitally helpful to other editors when they look at an article's edit history.

There are a couple more things you could also do to improve that article.

(1). First is, follow the links you provided & double-check that they're the best links. Sometimes when words or phrases have multiple meanings, you might actually be directing people to a disambiguation page. Usually you want to direct the reader to the page that gets them closest to the meaning you want them to understand. This is the case with your link to three dimensional -- it's a disambiguation page. Figure out which of articles linked from that page are a closer fit to the meaning of "three dimensional" intended in the 3D optical data storage, and modify the link. (Good job on correcting your first choice nonlinear to nonlinear, btw.)

Tip. When I'm doing edits, I like to have more than one tab in my browser (in my case, Firefox) open to Wikipedia. I do edits in one tab, & the other I can use for lookups. So, if I'm working on 3D optical data storage in one tab, & want to doublecheck my wikilinks as I go, I could look up three dimensional in the second tab. And when I find, whoa, that's a disambig page, I can immediately discover it.

(2). My second suggestion has to do with the WP:Manual of Style standard about how headers are written. Here's the exact reference from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings): Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case. Thus "Rules and regulations", not "Rules and Regulations". Notice how all the headers in 3D optical data storage violate that standard? Go fix it right now, & there's another mainspace edit to add to your scoreboard. (Manual of Style (or for short, MOS) concerns about layout are also part of wikification, per WikiProject Wikify: see WP:WIKI#How to help).

(3). Also, notice how the words 3D Optical Data Storage are capitalized at the very start of the article. That's also against standard, because it's not a proper noun. Should be 3D optical data storage. So go ahead & fix that, too.

Tip. If you get bored just going through WP:WIKI pages, just look up something you're interested in -- a book you really like, the school you go to, the town you live in -- & read the article. Chances are, there's some snippet of info you can add, some change of working, some improvement of punctuation or formatting of the article. Go for it. Don't be shy: be bold! And pretty soon you'll be racking up all kinds of edits.

Good start. Keep up the good work! --Yksin 17:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tips! :D
I forgot to put in the edit summary, I'll remember to do that from now on. I'll do those edits to that page right... now!. Deco Da Man {talk} 06:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Attention, error!

<Copied from User talk:Deco Da Man>
Declan, just checking your edits. Um. You seem to have misunderstood something I said at User talk:Yksin/Deco Da Man. Or something. Standard article naming is the same as for headers: only the first word & proper nouns get initial capitals; everything else gets lower case. So, you should not have moved/renamed the article 3D optical data storage to "3D Optical Data Storage": the original name was right, the name you renamed it to is wrong. Needs to be moved back! Hopefully you're still online & will get this message to do it before I get up in the morning. If not, I'll move/rename it myself in the morning. It's currently my 12:30 AM, your 6:30 PM I think. I'm copying this message over to User talk:Yksin/Deco Da Man; please reply there. --Yksin 08:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC) Declan, just checking your edits. Um. You seem to have misunderstood something I said at User talk:Yksin/Deco Da Man. Or something. Standard article naming is the same as for headers: only the first word & proper nouns get initial capitals; everything else gets lower case. So, you should not have moved/renamed the article 3D optical data storage to "3D Optical Data Storage": the original name was right, the name you renamed it to is wrong. Needs to be moved back! Hopefully you're still online & will get this message to do it before I get up in the morning. If not, I'll move/rename it myself in the morning. It's currently my 12:30 AM, your 6:30 PM I think. I'm copying this message over to User talk:Yksin/Deco Da Man; please reply there. --Yksin 08:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ak.. I just relised, I'll fix it now. Sorry :(. Deco Da Man {talk} 08:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Fixed! Btw, it's 4:46 PM where I am. Deco Da Man {talk} 08:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah good. Whew. Good edits otherwise, good edit summaries too esp. your apology for disruption. You're getting the hang of it. Hmmm... time stuff must be due to changes between daylight savings & standard time in our respective locales. I have a good friend in Brisbane, I'm used to making the time zone conversion but I haven't talked w/ her recently, & I know Queensland is an hour off a lot of the time from most of the rest of the eastern part of Oz anyway. Anyway, copying this stuff over to the regular place, & then off to bed. Keep up the good work. --Yksin

</end copy>

I hope this is good...

I've randomly chosen the article Allowance from Category:All_articles that need to_be_wikified. It was such a mess I decided to rewrite it from scratch from the information that I could get my hands on. I would like you to review the rewrite before I replace the current revision. It should be around 6:00PM your time right now, I think. Thanks, Deco Da Man {talk} 14:53, 23 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

It was actually probably my 6:00 AM when you wrote. Here's a gizmo for you -- http://www.timeanddate.com/ -- you can set up a person world clock that you can bookmark that shows specific cities around the world & their times. The one I set up for myself is here -- http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/personal.html?cities=18,47,240,28,101,136,211 -- I'm in Anchorage but I know people in those other places. If you're in Western Australia, probably the city I could add would be Perth -- at least now I know it's two hours off from where Sydney currently is. I'm writing now at my 10:45 AM (on Saturday), your 2:45 AM (on Sunday) (at which point I assume you're safely asleep). So I'm eight hours further along in my day than you are, but still on the previous day, since I'm the other side of the International Date Line from you.

The article Allowance: I guess I wouldn't want to completely lose the info in the "old" version of the article that talks about the word as it's used in construction or in the retail grocery business. However, those areas should be separated off with headers -- e.g., In construction, In retail grocery; but also, both sections would need to be wikified, & the article as a whole could have the tag for wikification replaced with the tag for an article needing sources. Probably there's something at Wikipedia:Template messages/Disputes for that -- most likely {{Unreferenced}}.

Your rewrite could then be integrated into the article after that's been done, maybe shorten your headers a bit. I'm not sure that the material you have warrants two sections to themselves; they are both fundamentally about allowances of money, with just slightly different usages. Watch your spelling: periodically not periodicly. And $1,000 is an incredibly low amount for a company's monthly spending budget, no matter which country's dollars you're talking about. You might try doing Google (or your search engine of preference) searches on "business allowance" to search for real-world examples. I did something like that for the word (& article) Bioneer. Maybe try that, & add cites (even if only to add plain old unadorned URLs) where you can.

The language stub is problematic: its referring more to actual languages like English, German, Finnish, etc. etc. than to how language is used. But you've got the right idea in terms of knowing this article needs to find some categories to live in.

Hope this helps. Again, my overall advice is: keep the substance of the original article, but wikify it, & integrate your own work into it. Don't worry overmuch about being too perfect with it; remember that other editors will come along for it too. Just do the best you can. And don't be afraid also to make multiple edits of the same article; that's expected, & also increases your edit count for the sake of people like Ryulong who may still be watching you. Right now you are at 27 mainspace edits, up from 15 a day ago, and 12 when we started this.

I'll be back online later this afternoon (which'll be your AM). --Yksin 19:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the adivce. I only just realised that it doesn't say 'You have new messages' for pages on your watch list :D. So I was constantly watchinf the main page waiting for it to come up :D. As for the advice, I will defineatly follow it and remember it for later. As for the Stub message, well... it is a stub, so I need a stub message template, but I can't find the right one! AK! I will work on the article later maybe, I have two assignments due on Thursday and Friday, maths and IT. I'll see you later! —Deco Da Man {talk} 07:42, 25 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Week off

Hey Declan, just to let you know that I'm going to be on a vacation from for a week June 30-July 7 (due to time zone difference, that means your July 1-8). I'll still check in periodically, but not quite as often. Hope all's well with you, with school, with the world. --Yksin 05:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]