User talk:France3470/Archive 1

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Hello, France3470, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. My name is Hdt83. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to the free encyclopedia anybody can edit. If you have any questions about Wikipedia, feel free to leave me a message on my talk/chat page or by typing {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. Here are some pages to help you. The left column contains tutorials and introductory pages while the right shows ways to help out Wikipedia.

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Again, welcome! :) -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 05:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Not Vandalism

You are wrong. I did not vandalize the Tom Leykis page. I have reverted your reversion. 24.80.117.217 20:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Grim

Thanks for fixing the Grimsay disambiguation page. My attempt was rather sloppy I'm afraid. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 18:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem.(: France3470 18:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

London Meetup - January 12, 2008

Hi! There's going to be a London Wikipedia Meetup coming Saturday January 12, 2008. If you are interested in coming along take part in the discussion over at Wikipedia:Meetup/London7. The discussion is going on until tomorrow evening and the official location and time will be published at the same page late Thursday or early Friday. Hope to see you Saturday, Poeloq (talk) 01:50, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Dab pages

You wrote (but i've added #s for convenience of reference here):

1. I've been noticing you've been doing quite a bit of dab cleanup recently, mainly to articles I’ve recently tagged for cleanup. Which I applaud because the never seem to manage to be to zero. Though there are just a few things, with some of the pages you've edited, namely Leave and Cerberus (disambiguation), that don’t fit with what’s in WP#MOSDAB and common DAB formatting practise.
2. I've noticed you like to remove item descriptions and/or shorten them one or two words. Though MOSDAB states “The description associated with a link should be kept to a minimum, just sufficient to allow the reader to find the correct link”, one word usually doesn’t suffice. I look to the following examples on the page as to the general length and amount of detail that should be included. This usually means a short sentence fragment. Just this bit more information makes it clearer for the reader, and there isn’t much harm in added a few more words and it doesn’t clutter the pages as long all fits on one line. For instance in Cerberus (disambiguation), the descriptions I had before [6] your edit, would have been following more by Dab convention. Though I admit some of them were overly long, and do need shortening.
3. Also, it’s unnecessary to add lots of spacing between sections, simply for consistency purposes. I know it's something the MOS specifies but it's just common practice to only use one space between sections.
4. Finally, titles should either use section headers or bold subject area headings. (:
5. Hope I'm not sounding insanely nitpicky. I'm by no means an expert, so feel free to address anything you disagree with. Meanwhile, keep up the disambiguating.

France3470 (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the needed critique.

As to 5, you're not at all over-specifying. I think the MoS works pretty well, and generally a lot of thot has gone into it, mostly in non-obvious areas. If you notice a pattern of deviation from it, a reminder is almost certainly constructive.

As to 4, thanks for bring this to my attention. I fixated on the tendency of non-MoSDab-reading editors to bold the individual entries, and i think unconsciously identified the bolding of titles and of entries as being treated the same. IMO our brains are more impressionistic than literal, and it takes effort at least for me to achieve the literality that we consciously seek.

As to 3, i honestly wasn't sure what the doc says, but i think two blank lines (preceding a title) are needed so that the titles and the [quasi-]sections below them appear to the eye as a unit, instead of all the quasi-sections running together, with the titles distinguished only by bolding and lack of bullet, but all beginning at the left margin. (IMO, that visual chunking of the entries into sections helps the reader focus on a title, and make "ignore the rest of the section and find the next title" for most of them, until a title is relevant enough to care what the subdivisions are. Now, it may be that the consensus would shift if we actively discuss the existing spec on that MoS page's talk page, but my theory is that editors spend so much time looking at the edit pane, where one blank line above a non-section title looks adequate (and two looks enormous), and too little previewing and noticing that that blank line essentially disappears in the rendered version, and that the two blank lines render as more like one, and very suitably to function.

As to 2, i think i disagree pretty strongly, in the spirit (paraphrasing from memory) that often the lk on the dab-suffixed title suffices. I admit that the purely visual clutter doesn't start until the line wraps, but i think that every additional word creates mental clutter: with prose, i think effective scanning sort of works by ignoring the words that mostly just make the syntax precise, while giving a sense of what the subject is (based on the nouns, verbs, an modifiers) without engaging the recursive processing that makes clear the relations among them; with lists, the unfocusing that you do with prose is likely to blur the terms from one entry together with those of the next, and this is best avoided by keeping the words few and essential. To me a good dab'n, when, say, there are multiple American politicians named Tom Johnson, is just vital stats, plus a state (or something like "cabinet" or "Supreme Court" if they went beyond representing part or all of one state) in most cases, and some i've rarely seen where you'd be helped to know whether he was the one in Congress or state legislature, or even in which house. To me, the real question is what information are they almost sure to have when they come looking for the article: if there is one distinguishing characteristic of a topic that appears in 80% of mentions that will inspire WP consultation, and another that occurs in 40%, including the 20% that don't mention the 80% characteristic, then those two characteristics (usually reducible to a word, maybe two, each) are all that's needed. I'd welcome the chance for us to tackle together some of the specific cases we disagreed about; would you care to identify a few for that purpose?
--Jerzy•t 10:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Your dab comment to User talk:Jerzy

Hi, France3470. I inserted a colon into the link to Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup that you placed in the first paragraph of your comment on Jerzy's talk page, so that it no longer made the page show up in the category itself. Just wanted to let you know, so you didn't think I was messing with your comment. Best wishes. Gwguffey (talk) 04:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Invitation to Wikipedia meetup in London

Wikimedia UK logo

Date: 13:00 onwards, Sunday 10 August 2008

Venue: Penderel's Oak pub, Holborn WC1 map

More information: Wikipedia:Meetup/London 12

Hello,

I noticed that you have listed yourself as a Wikipedian in London, so I thought you might like to come to one of our monthly social meetups. The next one is going to be on Sunday 10 August, which might well be rather short notice, but if you can't come this time, we try to have one every second Sunday of the month.

If you haven't been before, these meetups are mainly casual social events for Wikipedia enthusiasts in which we chat about Wikipedia and any other topics we fancy. It's a great way to meet some very keen Wikipedians, but we'd also love for you to come along if you're interested in finding out more about Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, or other collaborative wiki projects too.

The location is a pub that is quite quiet and family friendly on a Sunday lunchtime, so hopefully younger Wikipedians will also feel welcome and safe. Alcohol consumption is certainly not required!

Although the meetups are popular, many UK-based editors still don't know about them. It would be great to welcome some fresh faces, so I hope you can come along.

Yours,

James F. (talk) 09:27, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Please forgive the slightly impersonal mass-invite!

Oxford Wikimania 2010 and Wikimedia UK v2.0 Notice

Hi,

As a regularly contributing UK Wikipedian, we were wondering if you wanted to contribute to the Oxford bid to host the 2010 Wikimania conference. Please see here for details of how to get involved, we need all the help we can get if we are to put in a compelling bid.

We are also in the process of forming a new UK Wikimedia chapter to replace the soon to be folded old one. If you are interested in helping shape our plans, showing your support or becoming a future member or board member, please head over to the Wikimedia UK v2.0 page and let us know. We plan on holding an election in the next month to find the initial board, who will oversee the process of founding the company and accepting membership applications. They will then call an AGM to formally elect a new board who after obtaining charitable status will start the fund raising, promotion and active support for the UK Wikimedian community for which the chapter is being founded.

You may also wish to attend the next London meet-up at which both of these issues will be discussed. If you can't attend this meetup, you may want to watch Wikipedia:Meetup, for updates on future meets.

We look forward to hearing from you soon, and we send our apologies for this automated intrusion onto your talk page!

Addbot (talk) 07:44, 31 August 2008 (UTC