User talk:David Shepheard

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You have new messages (last change).

Greetings, David Shepheard, and welcome to Wikipedia. It's good to see new folks showing an interest in the place and wanting to improve the articles. Thanks for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

If you have any questions, feel free to drop by my talk page and ask. I'll do my best to provide you with an answer. If you're more of a "research it yourself" type, there's always Wikipedia:Where to ask a question. The Help Desk is also a good place for info.

Whenever you leave a comment on someone's talk page or on the Help Desk page or whatever, remember to sign your name. You do this by typing four tildes (~~~~) in a row at the end of your comments or questions. This will automatically produce your name and the date. Again, welcome to Wikipedia. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 04:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Welcome, too! -- Perfecto  05:18, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] List of Spelljammer novels

Hi Extreme Unction, and thanks for welcoming me.

Today was my first day on Wilkipedia and I was baffled to see my first article wizzing around the either almost as soon as I finished typing it. I've read all the things that you suggested, but saw more how to advice rather than when two things are one subject advice. I thought that an article about role playing and an article about novels (even if they are based on the same setting) would be two different things. The List of Forgotten Realms novels (which I based my article on) certainly seems to be a separate thing.

How do you work this sort of thing out? I'd be interested to know so that I can decide what to do in the future.

Big Mac 05:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

It can be a bit overwhelming for a new user. I consider myself fairly internet savvy, having been playing around online in various capacities since 1995 (and having been on BBS systems before that since 1981), and even I found the Wikipedia process rather byzantine. One page over here says this, and another page over there says that, and you just sorta have to get a feel for it over time. It really does come with experience.
I guess the first thing worth pointing out is this: You didn't do anything wrong. Your article wasn't moved because you screwed up and violated some sacred tenet of Wikipedia. You did absolutely the right thing by making an article that will improve Wikipedia. Wikipedia now has content it didn't have before, thanks to you. All that has happened is that I, a slightly more experienced editor, came along and saw how your information might be more usefully organized. I ran into the same thing when I first started editing, and I still run into it now that I've been here for a while. If you stick around, you'll do it too, eventually.
The thing is, if you felt really strongly about it, you could absolutely revert every change I made. You could, if you wanted, restore List of Spelljammer novels to its state prior to when I merged and redirected the article, and you could remove the Spelljammer novel section from Spelljammer. You could do all of those things and I couldn't stop you. (Well, that's not 100% true. I could stop you, because I'm an admin. It would be very much against the rules for me to do so, however, and I would get yelled at by many people. So I wouldn't. Well, I wouldn't anyways, because I'm just not that big of a jerk. So even if nobody at all would yell at me, I still wouldn't do that.)
(Where was I?)
(Oh yes.)
So anyhow, you could make those changes and revert all that stuff back to the way it was before I started mucking about with it, and nobody could stop you. Of course, they could turn around and change everything right back to the way it was before you changed it back, and then you could change it back to the way it was before they changed it back, and so on and so forth. But that just gets ugly in short order, so we don't recommed that.
Under ideal circumstances, if you do something, and then someone comes along and makes a change to what you did, and you have questions about that change, you go to the article's talk page. Every article has one. The Spelljammer talk page is at Talk:Spelljammer. You leave a note on that page saying "Here's what I don't understand about why you did what you did" or "I think it was better the other way because..." and hopefully you can make them change their minds or they can change your mind, and everybody goes away happy.
This is what you've done already on Talk:Spelljammer, and I've responded there with my reasoning of why I did what I did. Hopefully you will find it persuasive. If not, you can respond to me with a counterargument, and maybe I'll find that persuasive. Or maybe not, and I'll respond back to you. And so it goes, until hopefully we reach a compromise we can both agree on.
By the way, you'll notice that I've taken the note you left me on my talk page, and reprinted it here (in italics) on yours. I did this so the conversation won't be fragmented, and so you'll get the spiffy "You have new messages" notification. But it's not required or anything. If you leave someone a note on their talk page, some folks will respond on their talk page as well, while others will respond on your talk page. So it varies. But if you leave someone a note on their talk page, it's a good idea to add their talk page to your watchlist for a couple of days, just in case they respond on their talk page and not on yours.
Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any more questions you may have.
→ Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 06:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I'm not going to go moving things back, I just wanted to bounce a couple of things off of you to see what you thought. I agree that bouncing things around would be silly (and would probably damage Wikipedia in the long run).

I'll do the things you suggested now (reading the talk page and putting you on my watch list) and I hope that editors won't want to move my things about in the future because I hope I can get things spot on the first time.

See you around.

Big Mac 06:26, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] P.S.

Here's a little something I wrote years ago...
→ Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 06:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Here is an even smaller thing I wrote...

Big Mac 06:59, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Nicely done. Did you ever see the Crystal Sphere someone made up on the old Spelljammer mailing list that was filled with water? That would be a good place to stick your Aquatic Elves... =) → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 07:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I didn't but I'll look out for it at some point in the future. Thanks for the heads up.

Big Mac 07:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Something you may want to consider

Big Mac:

I see you're still going at it. Hope you're enjoying yourself.

Just a thought about Spelljammer: It might be better to have the sections for the Website and Computer game above the lists of product materials. Generally speaking, most wikipedia articles that have both prose and lists put the lists at the end, so that you can read the actual meat of the article before getting to the lists.

Another thing you may consider is to turn the Spelljammer Novels section into a subsection of the product line, rather than leaving it in its own section where I put it. Just seems like it would make more sense to have it as part of the overall product list, rather than "Here's the products. Oh, and here are the novels, too."

Anyhow, these are just suggestions which I thought I'd float past you. Let me know what you think.
Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 18:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The 'official SJ website' section is different to the rest of the stuff I just added. You might have a point with what you said about that. The website is a 3e thing so does need some sort of separation to help people see that. I suppose the original article (which I didn't write) might need something on it to mark the fact that that is what happened for 2e AD&D. Then the 3e website stuff I added could be put after that. I do think it needs a subheading - I think all D&D products need subheadings to separate 1e D&D, 2e AD&D, 3e (WotC) D&D and 3.5e D&D. Often campaign settings have very similar products issued again and again as the RPG editions have increased.

The bit that says: "Several of TSR's other campaign worlds had their own sections..." would be a good place to put in a 2nd Edition (AD&D) subheading. I've got a couple of problems with what is written after this point:

1 I certainly do not like the two references to 'solar systems' which I know is incorrect for Spelljammer (they are called 'planetary systems').

2 I also question the stuff about Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Mystara. Dark Sun and Ravenloft are ignored with the original boxed set which concentrates on the 'Radiant Triangle' (the collective name for 'Greyspace', 'Krynnspace' and 'Realmspace') but are mentioned briefly in the Complete Spacefarer's Handbook. I think that the person who wrote this has not refered to all of the Spelljammer products or they would not have said what they did about two of the settings. In my opinion (and as I understand it facts and not opinions are supposed to be what I am writing) I think that these advanced settings were only ignored in the original boxed set because they were awkward to integrate. I think that if Spelljammer had gone on TSR eventually would have included them. As for Mystara, I think that was ignored only because it was already discontinued, I don't Mystara is worth a specific mention there (but if Mystara does get mentioned at all then the Mystaraspace conversion on the official Mystara website should get a link).

I'm not entirely sure where to go with the existing stuff. You have far more editing experience than me on this sort of thing. However, what feels right, at the moment, is to look to see about taking out references to the settings that were not included, then document Spelljammer in as close to chronological order as possible, mentioning briefly what each product did to change the SJ universe. For example there are quite a few spheres that were added before the Astromundi Cluster boxed set (Clusterspace). I'd add Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Mystara back (along with any other TSR settings) but only to show how they are being added to Spelljammer.

Back to the 'computer game'. This mainly needs to be a cross reference. A lot of tabletop roleplayers will not be interested. The same goes for 'novels'. You are suggesting that Spelljammer products and novels should go together, but I think that may cause ambiguity. People that do not do tabletop games and/or read roleplaying books, may not realise that a book, like Into the Void, would never be used in any tabletop game. In fact I know that some Spelljammer fans actually dispute 'facts' from the Cloakmaster books. Some don't consider spin offs as 'proper' products.

The thing about table top role playing games and spin offs like novels and books is that a lot of people do not consider the spin offs as official, or 'proper' products. Those people would not want to even see anything about the computer game or the novels in the article. (That is why I originally put the novels in a separate article.) If they do have to be in the same article as the (so called) 'proper' role playing stuff then there should be a clear destinction of some sort.

Maybe I should move both the computer game and novel sections down - maybe I could have a 'Spelljammer spin offs' section with both the computer game and the novels (and the original comics if I can find anything out about them).

I'll have a think about it while I am reading my email and come back to this later.

Big Mac 03:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More inane procedural blather from Yours Truly

BigMac:

FYI, it is generally frowned upon to seed the main body of an article with external links. The philosophy is "If you are linking to an article or other content outside of Wikipedia, it is better to incorporate that content within Wikipedia somehow, and then link to it internally." m:When should I link externally has some informative discussion on the matter.

→ Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 23:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again for your help.

Big Mac 00:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mongols

It's called vandalism, and it sucks up a lot of time and energy. However you caught that less than a half-hour after the vandal struck. Thanks for doing your part. Shenme 06:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know what was going on.
Big Mac 10:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
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