User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2008/Oct

MERLIN

Are You A Fan Of The New TV Show MERLIN On BBC One If So A New Wikia Has Just Started On www.merlin.wikia.com and it desperatly needs pages editing and adminastrators so if you would like to edit or be a part of the community start editing and drop me a message. Thanks. Michael-Downey (talk) 18:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

List of one-club men

This wasn't the tidiest edit I've seen. Please amend your AWB settings accordingly. Thanks. - Dudesleeper / Talk 20:12, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Not a complaint, just confusion about the seemingly random unlinking in the nationality column. - Dudesleeper / Talk 21:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

This partial delinking of lists of country names is a problem I haven't yet solved. Sometimes I just don't delink any "common terms" with the monobook script to avoid it; often I take the risk that all or almost all country names will be cleansed of bright blue. Tony (talk) 08:11, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Please see WT:Only_make_links_that_are_relevant_to_the_context#Break 1 for the current discussion. I'm letting everyone know who has a comment on the relevant talk pages. Obviously, we're not going to push anything through without a full discussion of every issue, including whether to merge at all. My sense is that there's wide agreement on all the big points, but the devil is in the details. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

United States

I'm sorry, but it's the standard for all municipalities and other communities (including townships) in the United States to include a link to the country. "United States" is no less relevant to the context than is "Canada" to any article for a Canadian community, or "Martin Luther" for any article on a Lutheran church. Please don't continue trying to make Reed Township different from virtually every other municipality and community in the United States. Nyttend (talk) 12:46, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your enquiry; please explain how "United States" does not fall into the category of an item that "would be familiar to most readers of the article, such as the names of major geographic features and locations", as listed under Wikipedia:Only_make_links_that_are_relevant_to_the_context#What_generally_should_not_be_linked. Tony (talk) 13:11, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Tennis names

Hello, I've seen some of your recent edits on tennis articles. I have reverted part of them, specifically the addition of diacritics, as it is the consensus on tennis articles to use the non-diacritic versions of players' names in events articles. Thanks, --Oxford St. (talk) 17:13, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

This is a complicated subject which has generated plenty of discussion (and probably will again in the future), but common practice has been (since early 2008) to avoid diacritics in tennis tournaments articles, but use them in biographies. --Oxford St. (talk) 17:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Diacrtics are accepted for all names in biographies, not only for the player concerned. --Oxford St. (talk) 17:41, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Dates

I see you've been de-linking dates from pages among other things. If you're going to do this, it would be nice if you would also make some effort to make sure the dates in any article are formatted consistently while at it. For example, you left the Laura Robson article with a mixture of "13 October 2008", "21 January, 1994" and "July 6, 2008". Generally, it should be day month year (note no comma) for British/European topics, month day, year for American topics, and otherwise however most of them are formatted already. (Citations are a bit messy at the moment, with some templates still expecting the ISO numeric format and others expecting a date in natural form, but hopefully that'll fix itself soon.) Thank you and best wishes. -- Smjg (talk) 21:05, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Your response is all good advice, but it doesn't really follow on from what I said. It's true that I prefer to have my date format preference set, for edit histories and the like and not just display of dates in articles. But my point wasn't so much that you'd brought out the inconsistent formatting by de-linking the dates - but rather that, if you're going to make the effort to de-link dates, you might as well go that one step further by formatting them consistently. Just a suggestion. -- Smjg (talk) 22:57, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Main Page redesign

The Main Page Redesign proposal is currently conducting a straw poll to select five new designs, before an RFC in which one will be chosen to go against the current main page. The poll closes on October 31st. Your input would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks, Pretzels^Talk! 07:34, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Your delinking edits

Hello. British biographies generally link [[English people|English]] in the LEAD. If you think it shouldn't be done generally, there should be a guideline about it in MOS. Your change creates an inconsistency among Bio articles. The link is useful because it brings you to an article about the history of the English people. I agree that when people use this link: [[England|English]] it's a pretty irrelevant connection and would be discouraged by WP:OVERLINK. As for the link to Bourchier, my understanding is that when you link something in the LEAD, then you need to link it again when it is used later in the body of the article. Please let me know if you have a clear reason for making these edits, and I'll be happy to learn something. If not, please return the links. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I understand that what you wrote is your interpretation of WP:CONTEXT, and I agree that it is a reasonable interpretation. However, I do not think that either of these issues is clear at all from the language of the guideline. I see language in that guideline that supports linking [[English people|English]] because the link ADDs CONTEXT to the article. And, it is quite clear that the two links to Bourchier are in different sections of the article. So I think that the language of WP:CONTEXT equally supports both interpretations. Why not clarify the guideline or MOS? It seems like MOS ought to say somewhere (assuming that there is consensus for it) that in biography LEAD sections, we are now discouraged from linking coutry-of-origin designations to the article on those countries or the history of their people. Otherwise, you are just an editor going around changing the preferences of the editors who created the articles based on your interpretation of a gray area of MOS. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I support the idea of reducing overlinking in WP, but I don't think it should be done haphazardly. I think there should be clear guidelines so that all editors can see very clearly what should be done in a consistent way. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation, but I don't want to get involved in MOS discussions. Whatever rule MOS has is fine with me, but I prefer to spend my time on WP writing and expanding articles. I try to follow the MOS and do what is customary, but I think you can understand that it is annoying when people change things in the articles without a CLEAR guideline to support their change. Then it just seems like they are exchanging their aesthetic preference for mine. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ssilvers, there's absolutely no benefit for the reader in a bright-blue "English" or "American" or "Australian" at the top of just about every biographical article. Our readers are not that dumb. And if they were, the article would swamp them with irrelevant information; they would be better to educate themselves about the major anglophone countries—and the major geographical features of the planet, like "Atlantic Ocean" via the search box before consulting other WP articles. That is what the search box is for. The alternative is a formulaic bright-blue nationality at the top of every article, which encourages visitors and newbies to blue out every occurrence. I sometimes delink six or seven occurrences of "United States" or "British" through an article. This dilutes the high-value links, just as linked dates and date fragments do. Tony (talk) 01:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

List of poliomyelitis survivors

Thank you for your edits to this list, which were mostly very good. However, take care not to "improve" text that needs to be retained verbatim. For example, the titles of sources or quoted text must not be altered from the original. See this diff, which reverts a few of your edits. Thank, Colin°^Talk 09:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)