User talk:Queenmomcat/Archive 3

Drafts discussion

Hopefully, this comes through to you (DThomsen8) as a 'new message'; "Oh, like THAT! I tried last night, but was too tired to figure the correct way out, only to come back this morning to see you'd done it for me. Thank you ever so much!" The Jack Flanders article here serves only as an example; I'm actually reasonably happy with its current state.

This is where sandbox articles go. You can have them at this level, or put them down one level more. If you look at my talk page, it is a mess, because I have too many sandbox articles at the talk page level, and a good many more at lower levels (better), plus other obsolete stuff near the top of the talk page. I put my barnstars on the User page, even though they are usually awarded on the Talk page, after I noticed someone else with barnstars on the User page. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I suppose my next step is to discover 'the next level' below this. Is there a way to delete sandbox articles, once you're done with them? (not deleting articles out in the main space of Wikipedia, just one's own creations?)

The next level down is easy enough, create one level, go into it, and repeat the earlier creation. I will put an example above for you, but you should easily be able to do likewise. Be careful not to leave out the / mark, as that will result in a main space article, not the intended effect. I have fallen into that pit myself, so it is easy to do. Deletion? I just delete the link to that article, but I have seen remarks about having Administrators delete talk page material. You ask good questions, which is good for me, I go learn how to do what you ask about. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you again; that does make sense. (Now for remembering to sign my own replies....)Queenmomcat (talk) 23:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Mosodeng for deletion

The article Mosodeng is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mosodeng until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Propagator

Hi, as Heated propagator was virtually unfindable when I searched for it (I searched for Propagator), I have moved the article to prominence at Propagator and moved the other article to Propagator (Quantum Theory). Should make it much more visible – I've also linked to our Propagator article from Plant propagation (I've created a new section in there). Cheers! --PopUpPirate (talk) 12:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Recent copy edits

Hello! I was reviewing some of your copy edits as a part of the GOCE drive, and I noticed in both of the articles that I review that hyphens were incorrectly use in those articles. For future work, please see WP:dash for the correct usage of hyphens and dashes. Happy editing! --Tea with toast (talk) 04:58, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for reviewing them—always something to learn? (runs and hides)Queenmomcat (talk) 12:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to apologise in advance as I had to correct an edit in one of the articles Sport_in_Manchester#Other_sports.

"Within Greater Manchester/Cheshire two clubs play ..." The problem was that you may not have fully understood that the two clubs are Brooklands and Bowdon. These two clubs have two teams, one for men and one for women. You had unfortunately separated them by team rather than by club.

thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 06:59, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for catching that; the article as originally written really was not clear on that point (at least for an American).Queenmomcat (talk) 12:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I have installed a script that fixes the dashes. I ran the script on this page. I hope you don't mind. Fixed dashes using a script. Follow the links in that sentence for the standard, and then the script. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

January 2011

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Kent Hovind, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear constructive, and has been reverted. Please make use of the sandbox if you'd like to experiment with test edits. Thank you. Aggravating this removal was a deceptive edit summary of "grammar, typos". Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 19:45, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; I'll be more careful as I work on the article to provide more accurate edit summaries, and not remove what doesn't need to be removed Queenmomcat (talk) 20:02, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive news

Guild of Copy Editors January 2011 backlog elimination drive Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors January 2011 Backlog elimination drive! The drive is halfway over, so here are some mid-drive stats. Participation GOCE January 2011 backlog elimination drive progress graphs So far, 43 people have signed up for this drive. Of these, 25 have participated. If you signed up for the drive but haven't participated yet, it's not too late! Try to copy edit at least a few articles. Remember, if you have rollover words from the last drive, you will lose them if you do not participate in this drive. If you haven't signed up for the drive yet, you can sign up now. Progress report We have eliminated two months from the backlog – January and February 2009. One of our goals is to eliminate as many months as possible from the 2009 backlog. Please help us reduce the size of this part of the backlog if you haven't already. Another goal is to reduce the entire backlog by 10%, or by 515 articles. Currently, we have eliminated 375 articles from the queue, so if each participant copy edits four more articles, we will reach that goal. Thank you for participating in the January 2011 drive. We anticipate it will be another big success! Your drive coordinators –S Masters (talk), Diannaa (Talk), The UtahraptorTalk to me, and Tea with toast (Talk)

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors at 20:43, 16 January 2011 (UTC).

February 2011 Wikification Drive

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Wikiproject Wikify at 00:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC).

WikiProject Wikify's Coordinator Election

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Wikify at 22:25, 23 January 2011 (UTC).

The Wikifier, WikiProject Wikify's First Newsletter (January 2011)

The Wikifier Your Wikification Newsletter – Volume I, Issue I, January 2011 From the editor • General news Membership • December drive results To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Welcome to WikiProject Wikify's first newsletter! This newsletter will be published every two months, right before the start of the upcoming drive. February's Drive is projected to be a huge success, with announcements posted at The Signpost and Community Portal. Participants will be rewarded with barnstars. Sign up if you have not already! Project Coordinator elections are still open until February 1, 2011. Happy Wikifying, The coordinators of The Wikifier: Mono (talk) and Sumsum2010·T·C·Review me!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Wikify at 02:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC).

The February 2011 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive has begun!

Get going! The February 2011 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive has begun. Please get started, as the drive aims to wikify over 2,000 articles this month. We're going to need all the firepower we can get, so please remind your friends to join up as well. In case you didn't know, wikification is fairly simple: just add wiki markup, links, and similar formatting. Thanks for joining; we're looking forward to an exciting time this month! Regards, Guoguo12 (talk · contribs), Mono (talk · contribs), Nolelover (talk · contribs), and Sumsum2010 (talk · contribs).

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Wikify at 00:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

GOCE January Backlog elimination drive conclusion

Guild of Copy Editors January 2011 Backlog elimination drive Greetings from the January 2011 Backlog elimination drive! We have reached the end of the month and the end of another successful drive; thanks to all who participated. Statistics 54 people signed up for the year's first Backlog elimination drive. Of these, 40 participated. One of our goals was to reduce the size of the backlog by at least 10%. We managed to reduce the backlog by 633 articles, or about 12%. Another goal was to eliminate as many 2009 months as possible from the queue. We eliminated January, February, March, and April—4 out of 12 months is not bad! In addition, we eliminated 37% of all remaining 2009 articles from the queue. Chaosdruid copy edited Kutch Gurjar Kashtriya for 32,711 words, which is the largest single article completed in one of our drives so far. This article counts as six 5000-K articles, and Chaosdruid wins the "most 5000-K articles" leaderboard category. Way to go! A complete list of individual results is here. Barnstars If you copy edited at least 4,000 words, you qualify for a barnstar. If you participated in the November 2010 Backlog elimination drive, you may have earned roll-over words (more details can be found here). These roll-over words count as credit towards earning barnstars, except for leaderboard awards. We will be delivering the barnstars within the next couple of weeks. Thank you for participating in this year's first Backlog elimination drive! We hope to see you in March. Your drive coordinators –S Masters (talk), Diannaa (talk), The Utahraptor (talk), and Tea with toast (talk)

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors at 15:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC).

Help request

The Guild of Copy Editors needs your help! As you already know, the Guild of Copy Editors has a Requests page where editors can list their articles to request a copy edit. During January and February, the requests have been arriving at the rate of several every day, and we are getting a bit behind! As one of our prolific editors and a January winner of a leaderboard award, we are hoping you can spare some time to help us get caught up. If you are interested in lending a hand, please select one or two articles from our Requests page and do a copy edit. Help a little or a lot; it's good karma! Thank you very much for any assistance you can offer. Your GOCE coordinators –S Masters (talk), Diannaa (Talk), The UtahraptorTalk to me, and Tea with toast (Talk)

The February 2011 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive Needs Your Help!

Please help! The February 2011 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive is almost complete. Please help, as the backlog is still very large. Still exceeding 20,000 articles! The goal is 18,000 or less. Lets see if we can do it! We're going to need all the firepower we can get, so please remind your friends to help as well.Thank you for all your help thus far! Regards, Guoguo12 (talk · contribs), Mono (talk · contribs), Nolelover (talk · contribs), Sumsum2010 (talk · contribs), and WikiCopter (talk · contribs).

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Wikify at 04:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC).

Reviewer

Hi, just in case it comes in useful, I've set your account as a wp:Reviewer. There is bling {{User wikipedia/Reviewer}} if you want it. This means that if you happen to edit a page in the pending changes trial, you can mark other people's edits as reviewed if they come up on your watchlist and your own edits are already deemed reviewed. ϢereSpielChequers 12:12, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

(twists toes in rug, pleased) Thank you. I'll try it out, and post that bling to my userpage when I have it figured out.

March 2011 Backlog Elimination Drive

Hi. On behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors, I am inviting you to sign up for our March Backlog Elimination Drive. Win a barnstar! It's fun. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 01:30, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Wikify's March Mini Drive

WikiProject Wikify's March Mini! Hello, I thought you would be interested in the March Mini, a coordinated effort by WikiProject Wikify members to eliminate the 2008 backlog of articles tagged with {{wikify}} and/or {{dead end}}. Come join in the fun! There are only three prizes to be won, including a special barnstar created just for this drive! Regards, WikiProject Wikify

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Wikify at 04:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC).

GOCE / Mid-drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2011 backlog elimination drive Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors March 2011 Backlog elimination drive! Here is your mid-drive newsletter. Participation GOCE March 2011 backlog elimination drive progress graphs So far, 79 people have signed up for this drive. Of these, 64 have participated. Interest is high due to a link to our event from the Watchlist page, and many new and first-time copy editors have joined us for the drive. If you signed up for the drive but haven't participated yet, it's not too late! Try to copy edit at least a few articles. Remember, if you have rollover words from the last drive, you will lose them if you do not participate in this drive. If you haven't signed up for the drive yet, you can sign up now. Many thanks to those editors who have been helping out at the Requests page. We have assisted in the promotion of seven articles to Good article status so far this month. Progress report We have already achieved our target of reducing the overall backlog by 10%; however, we have more work to do with the 2009 backlog. We have almost eliminated May 2009 and we only have some 700 articles left from 2009. It is excellent progress, so let's concentrate our fire power on the remaining months from 2009. Thank you for participating in the March 2011 drive. We anticipate it will be another big success! Utahraptor resigns The UtahraptorTalk to me has decided to step down from his position as project coordinator due to real-life issues. Your drive coordinators – S Masters (talk), Diannaa (Talk) and Tea with toast (Talk)

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 04:46, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Protohistory of West Virginia

I noticed you were trying to do some clean up to this page. I started a page here User:Heironymous Rowe/Sandbox3 several weeks ago, but have been so busy IRL haven't been able to finish it, you are welcome to contribute to it if you like. When I finish it I plan on replacing the existing article, which (along with Prehistory of West Virginia) is quit possibly the worst written article I've seen on WP. As you can see, I've already tried putting a workable structure to the article, remove unrelated and redundant material and try to focus it on the actual protohistoric period. Help would be appreciated, as real life work wise is gonna continue being hectic for awhile. Heiro 20:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Gah, no kidding! I've seen some poor writing in the course of editing, but those two are horrid. Combining Prehistory of West Virginia and Protohistory of West Virginia (and hopefully shortening them both considerably in the process) sounds a grand idea. I'll come over and take a look at your sandbox version; thank you for permission to tweak it if I see fit?

Sure thing, any help would be appreciated. Especially with the sorting out of the bottom 2/3 of the material, which I have barely touched. Heiro 20:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do; I'm in the middle of a copyedit drive, so it may be sporadic.

Right on. As I said, as soon as I can find time to finish this(or have others help to finish it) I plan on replacing the existing article completely. I don't usually work this way when revising an article, but it has so many systemic problems, I couldn't find a way to fix it simply by tweaking wording or grammar here and there. Heiro 20:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for mentioning it at all! I was about to pack my attempt on the existing article in as a bad job when you mentioned you were creating a whole 'nother article in the hopes of replacing the existing one. (even after a brief glance, yours seems an improvement, not least as it's got subsections)

Librarians can save us all!

I very much enjoyed This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, by Marilyn Johnson, and I am commending it to you. She overdoes the Second Life chapter, but the book cart races are hilarious, and much of the book is very serious and very important. Forgive me if I am telling you what you already know.

You are doing good work on the copy-editing drive. This is my first try at it, and I find some of the articles are far beyond my ability to fix, while others turn out to be easy, if somewhat tedious at times. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, I'd heard of the book, but haven't gotten around to reading it; thank you for reminding me! I've never been in a book cart race, but my library participated in the local town's parade with a "little yellow cart precision drill team" (called thus because our original book carts were a virulent shade of mustard); we weren't precise and not all the carts were yellow, but it was fun. As for the articles, I think it's always the case that some are just beyond our ability to correct, or why having a group of people working helps. Don't let that discourage you from participating in the copyedit drive, although at 44,000 edits, I'm sure you wouldn't let a recalcitrant article or two dispirit you! Queenmomcat (talk) 00:21, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Some articles I look at and just say, no way! For Golden Fleece Mining and Milling Company (New York), I rewrote the second paragraph in my sandbox and replaced the original. The one section of Praxeology was heavy going because of the content. Two earlier edits were checked and improved by User:Diannaa. I do tend to make improvements other than just copy-editing, and I make sure the talk page has the proper templates. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

(runs off to check the articles to which you linked) Great work on the Golden Fleece mining article—that one looked to be riddled with puffery and needless detail. (sheepishly) I need to figure out how to set up a sandbox for articles; usually, I just swoop in and tweak one section at a time. Templates couldn't hurt either. Queenmomcat (talk) 00:21, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Be bold! WP:BB Set up the sandbox, directions below. Templates are more tricky, especially the Biography ones. I learned a lot by looking at pages with well done templates. But you have 15 copyedit barnstars, hidden in archives. Here I am hoping for just one, and not putting enough effort into it. Are less than 20 articles going to be enough? I should get with it, and do less on ARS and Pennsylvania templates.--DThomsen8 (talk) 11:29, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

(nudge, nudge...) Where is the first sandbox? You can limit the first sandbox article, which should be one level down, to just the word "Sand" or "Test." --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Sandbox files

To make a sandbox section, place ==Drafts== * [[/Draft articles]] at the top of this talk page, and click on the red name, repeat with * [[/article1]], and so forth. Then you can play with an article section without creating a long string of updates in the mainspace history section. Try it, you will like it. --DThomsen8 (talk) 11:09, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

(starting a thread down here) Thank you for the instructions; there are a number of programming questions I need to work on. And whether you get a barnstar on the copyedit drive depends on the word count of what you've done, among other things; I think the minimum is 20,000 words or some such so it depends on the word count of the articles you've done. Too bad I can't sell off my rollover words on the black market or something! Queenmomcat (talk) 13:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I am at 8,154 for 14 articles, 20,000 is a long way away, with only 5 days to go. (sigh)--DThomsen8 (talk) 18:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Please look at Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual online, or get the paper book, for "programming" questions. Feel free to consult me, too, I am a retired professional programmer. That has been a big help in understanding Wikipedia editing and syntax. Just post on my talk page. (Yes, a new thread is what I intended.) --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:30, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! It's now ensconced in my bookmark toolbar for future perusal...

I am now at 12,099, and working on Wesel Rail Bridge for 593 words, but I have learned that 12,000 + is sufficient for a nice barnstar. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

(applauds) Knowing that Wikipedia is the ultimate winner is nice, to be sure, but getting a barnstar for your work is a heartening thing; (sheepishly) you're absolutely right as to the number of words needed to get one for the copyedit drive—dunno where I pulled the "20,000 words" figure from. Pesky real life and increased duties at work getting in the way of (other) important things, I think. Queenmomcat (talk) 11:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Your barnstars are hidden in an archive. Yes, you are modest, but you are hiding your achievements. Those golden typewriters are really fun! The 20,000 figure got me working harder, though. The Wesel Rail Bridge is really hard, so I am working on it in a sandbox, and maybe I won't finish in time, 3D life makes demands on me, too. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

In the case of the barnstars, I was playing around with how to archive past bits of my talk page; what with one thing and another I haven't had time to figure out how to put them all on a separate but more visible page. (goes to look at Wesel Rail Bridge, out of curiosity) Queenmomcat (talk) 14:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Look at User talk:Dthomsen8/Draft articles/Wesel for my start at rewriting this article. The beginning is different, and there is a whole section taken from elsewhere at the bottom, which is going to be a resource in redoing the article. I have decided to rewrite and do a good job, rather than just copyedit for the drive credit. I want to fix the inline citations, and get more coherent military history. I have seen the Remagen bridge remains, and I have created several Pennsylvania bridge articles, so I was attracted to this article. Perhaps I will go on to a different article, but I have little hope of reaching 20,000, so I am likely to be content with the 12,000 level barnstar. I have given out three barnstars, as part of the fun of doing Wikipedia edits. I learned how to do an {{Outdent|::::}}, to bring back this talk page section to the left. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, that's how you do an outdent! (lightbulb goes on). I'd noticed you'd done other bridge articles; I'll definitely take a look at your draft version of the Wesel Bridge article too.Queenmomcat (talk) 17:48, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

My draft version has not gone anywhere yet, and I need to get a WW2 book to help with the details, but I have been reading military history for a long time, so I am sure I can redo this article, eventually. I am still plugging away at unrated Pennsylvania articles, but I am under 300 to go, so the end of that project is in sight. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

(shyly) Would it be a terrible breach of etiquette to copyedit your sandbox? or should I sit on my hands and concentrate on the mainspace article? I've flown so under the radar for the first 2.5 years I was on Wikipedia that I still have no idea. In fairness to anything you create, I've found Wikipedia to be a marvelous addition to the encyclopedias my library can afford to purchase for the (forgive me) more obscure information which Britannica and Americana would never deign to list, whether that's specialty dishes in a little known town in Korea or the Czech republic or a bridge in Pennsylvania.Queenmomcat (talk) 01:20, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Generally speaking, the user's sandbox is only edited by the user, except, of course, by permission. Yesterday afternoon I went to the Central branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, looking for World War II books about the Rhineland phase of the invasion of Germany. I found an excellent book about it, with lots about Wesel, but the Wesel Rail Bridge construction was never mentioned. Now I am not sure what to do, but I am thinking that a librarian may be able to find something better than Rhineland, the Battle to end the War (ISBN 0-312-03419-9) on the bridge reconstruction. I made an update to the mainspace article from my sandbox article. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

That's rather what I thought...now off to the other section below.Queenmomcat (talk) 17:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Template assessments

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ says that anyone can do an assessment. That certainly applies to class=stub, class=start, and class=C, which are the only classes I ever apply, and class=C only for long articles with many inline citations. I must have a very good reason to apply higher than importance=mid. Go ahead and assess articles that you wrote, but be modest. (I suspect that you are naturally modest.) --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Modesty aside (although I should quite like to think I was modest!), it makes more sense to me to assess others' articles.Queenmomcat (talk) 11:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2011 backlog elimination drive report Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors March 2011 Backlog elimination drive. Thank you for participating in the March 2011 drive! This newsletter summarizes the March drive and other recent events. Participation GOCE March 2011 backlog elimination drive progress graphs There were 99 signups for the drive; of these, 70 participated. Interest was high mainly due to a link to our event from the Watchlist page. We had a record-breaking 84 articles listed on the Requests page in March; 11 of these have been promoted to Good article status so far. Several of our recent efforts have received Featured Article status as well, and the GOCE is becoming a solid resource for the Wikipedia community. Many thanks to editors who have been helping out at the Requests page and by copy editing articles from the backlog. Progress report Remarkable progress was made in reducing the backlog this month, as we now have fewer than 500 articles remaining from 2009. We are well under the 4,000-article mark for the total number remaining in the queue. Since our backlog drives began in May 2010 with 8,323 articles, we have cleared more than 53% of the backlog. A complete list of results and barnstars awarded can be found here. Barnstars will be distributed over the next week. If you enjoyed participating in our event, you may also like to join the Wikification drives, which are held on alternate months to our drives. Their April drive has started. New coodinators On March 21, SMasters appointed Chaosdruid (talk) and Torchiest (talk) as Guild coordinators to serve in place of The Utahraptor, who recently stepped down. Please feel free to contact any coordinator if you have any questions or need assistance. Your drive coordinators – S Masters (talk), Diannaa (Talk) and Tea with toast (Talk)

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 14:38, 2 April 2011 (UTC)