Welcome! edit

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Happy editing! I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 15:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

February 2022 edit

  Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions, such as the edit you made to History of photography, did not appear to be constructive and have been reverted. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use your sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Please don't add blank lines in an attempt to even out the display. Not everyone will be using displays with same number of characters per line. If there are images that are bleeding over into the next section the {{clear}} markup command can be used to prevent the next section form starting until after the image. Meters (talk) 22:45, 28 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

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John Walter Scott edit

Hello @TimeTreks. I am @Archer1234. I want to let you know why I reverted your edits to John Walter Scott. While I think your edits were well-intentioned, the change from {{Infobox engineer}} to {{Infobox person}} ends up hiding some of the information about Scott from appearing in the infobox. This is because {{Infobox person}} does not support the same parameters that {{Infobox engineer}} does. For example, {{Infobox engineer}} supports the |significant_projects= and |significant_awards= parameters, but {{Infobox person}} does not. So the information about Scott assigned to those parameters do not appear when using {{Infobox person}}.

I realize that using {{Infobox engineer}} is not ideal for a philatelist, but that seems to be the practice for other philatelists on WikiPedia. If you have not already, I encourage you to join the editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Philately where you can ask questions about best practices for philatelist articles. You can also share your thoughts on how to improve on the best practices and even offer to help. Anyway, I hope this explains the reasons why I revert the edits at Scott's article. If you have any questions for me about this, just reply here on your talk page to this message as I will be monitoring for any replies for the next week. Or you can always ping me adding the following in your reply:

{{U|Archer1234}}

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If you have a question about another topic, you can ask at my talk page User_talk:Archer1234 or you can ask at The Teahouse where many experienced editors are available to answer questions. Happy editing. — Archer1234 (t·c) 05:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thank you Archer for reviewing my edit. Obviously I am not an expert at the wiki markup language and did not even notice the information loss. But in my humble opinion saying Scott was an "engineer" is much worse than losing information (which could be included in the body of the text in any event.) I suppose "engineer could be applied to many professions in a very broad and unusual sense , and perhaps the strength of the term "engineer" is not well understood by all, especially non US residents. To most it applies to a very specific occupation - such as "electrical", "mechanical", "civil" - a "philatelic" engineer is actually pretty funny . I believe no information clearly supersedes misinformation. TimeTreks (talk) 14:14, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have reviewed the wiki info box categories and given this a little more thought. It seems very illogical to me that there are only be a few biographical templates and simply not a general "biographical" box template. There are countless
individual templates that would fall under the general template and i don' think anyone seems disposed to create
them. Trying to use a template for q person for whom it is not really suited is a mistake. One does no force information into an unsuitable template without distortion. I would write the general template myself but I would have to spend much time at the pc, am old and my vision is poor. Archer you would do us all and wiki a great favor if you were to write the template and not insist in fitting a round peg into a square hole. TimeTreks (talk) 16:29, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply
TimeTreks, those are all good points. I took a stab at converting all of the values used in Scott's infobox to parameters that are supported in {{infobox person}} (which, by the way, is the general biographical infobox template). Take a look at the result. I think it looks pretty good, but if I have missed anything, let me know or you can make the appropriate change.
Separately, I have started a discussion over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philately#Infobox_for_philatelists? to see if there is enough need/interest to create an infobox specifically designed for philatelists. I don't know how many that have that page on their watchlist, so I have no idea how much response, if any at all, will be forthcoming. Hopefully others with an interest in philately will chime in with their views. I encourage you to monitor and participate in that discussion to share your views. You may want to add that page to your watchlist so you can see when new messages are added.
I hope this helps. Happy Editing. — Archer1234 (t·c) 20:35, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've responded to Archer1234 at the WikiProject Philately talk page as I remember noticing the inappropriate infobox being used by this editor User:Wikited who has long since abandoned wikipedia. ww2censor (talk) 22:14, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply
thanks so much archer! as mentioned I just don't have the intellectual energy to do much coding any more. I was a programmer analyst for 50 years. The philatelist template is fine. As noted my wiki mark up knowledge is pretty limited and I am just learning. My thinking may be lame but I have a hard time understanding why we need separate occupational templates at all. The number of parameters in a a general person template is massive. One internet source (career planner) lists over 12,000 careers. Creating templates for all of them would seem to be insurmountable and unnecessary. But at any rate keep up the good work - you are performing a real service or folks. TimeTreks (talk) 22:34, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message edit

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