User talk:Karlscherer3

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Welcome!

Hello, Karlscherer3, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Alai 02:14, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] chaining redirects

Sadly, chained redirects (A redirects to B which redirects to C) don't work, and you end up on a page which just states "1. redirect somewhere". This means you should always point redirects to a real article, not another redirect. And also, echoing the above, welcome to wikipedia, and thanks for joining in! --W(t) 06:47, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Math-tetrad-46.GIF

Hi. As per your request on Cleanup I have listed this image on Images for deletion - the image should be gone in a week or so. Andreww 10:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] recent contributions

Hi, I've noticed that you've made a lot of changes to cvg related articles recently. I've also noticed that many of the edits mention your own work, or link to it. This is somewhat worrying. Could you please explain your intentions? -- Slike2 00:52, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Response by Karl Scherer: I am writing a lot on puzzles, games and tilings because I see there is a lot of material missing on many topics relating to these themes. In case you have not read my CV on my page, I have a PHD in mathematics and worked a lot in these areas.

I have also uploaded a lot of images, see pages on convex tiling and tetrad (tiling). It seems that I am the one who has some of the best experiences in these areas (have written three books and dozens of scientific articles on these themes, see Karl Scherer.) If author name is not wanted in wikipedia in tables etc (see pages on convex tiling and tetrad (tiling)), I am happy to take this column out. However, I know from working in science that it is strongly recommended to quote the author of scientiofic achievements. If you have a different policy on this, I am gladly prepared to accept it, but it might be seen as offensive to other authors.

I have also quoted about 400 Zillions game I have written. These are freeware games without exceptions and I do not earn a cent with them. I get satisfaction from giving things away for free which I enjoy myself. I know, not many people do this, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with this...  :-)

I have no other intention than adding and spreading knowledge. I assume my publications in the last 40 years in these areas speak for themselves. You are most welcome to check them out. I have already got emails thanking me and congratulating me for my work in wikipedia from the international puzzle community.

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me or visit my web site in karl.kiwi.gen.nz .

Cheers, Karl (Sorry, I had originally clicked the wrong button and the text was stored in your talk page)

I appreciate your contributions, and I'm reassured in knowing that you're adding them for no material gain. I do, however, have some objections, which have more to do with the links you've added than with the content. If you have a look at the list of gaming topics, you'll see what the "see also" section of the cvg would look like if many, but not all, of the directly relevant articles were included. Including only a certain amount of articles in the see also section, out of those, may not seem fair to the people whose preferred articles are not linked. I'd like it if you could add the articles you linked to the list mentioned above, but I would like to keep the 'see also' sections relatively clean and impartial. I'll remove the extra links in some of them in a little while, if you have no objection. Also, a lot of people frown down upon external links that are not meerly referance and support, regardless of their intention (if I added my own to yours, and so on, we'd have a page of 10000... things, and "wikipedia is not a directory" and all that). If you included the list of external links as a subheading of Karl Scherer, that may be more appropriate. Usually, a future editor will remove things like this, so it's not a problem, but just so you know and so there's no conflict. I'd like to make it clear that the majority of your contributions are just fine, and rather good in fact - but I do feel that some parts may be innapropriate. Slike2 02:36, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)


P.S. Prompted by your mail, I have now taken out the "Author" columns in the tables of the pages "tetrad (tiling)", "nowhere-neat tiling" and "convex tiling".Karlscherer3 02:40, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've readded them, I hope you don't mind (because I didn't mind them.) I have nothing against the whole credit where it's due thing, I was mostly referring to showing favor to articles/links that you like (or that are your own work). Slike2 02:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re: your two last mails. I think I got the essence of what you mean, but I must say the details of your policy are rather unclear to me. For example, I do not quite understand what you mean by "unfair to other people". I cannot see why I should write 600 more links when the authors of the other Zillions games can do that themselves. Be aware that we are not talking about 1 or 2 lines of typing here!!! I found htis simply too much work.

Why should I be forced to spend this much time and effort? Firstly, I am not the other author's typist and secondly, I do not even know whether they want to have their games listed in Wikipedia. I think it is only fair to leave this decision (and the work it means) to the author.

Re: editing You or any other administrator can edit or delete whatever you want of my articles, I am not worried about it. I believe that the greater good will eventually prevail anyway.

Cheers, Karl. :-)

You talking about "games I favour" shows me the ego-problems of other people you have to fight with. Doesn't work with me. I am always ready and willing to say that some good games of other authors I prefer over some of my less well written games...Karlscherer3 03:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ah, great, so I'll assume that I won't have to sidestep certian topics that may deter other people from contributing, or would make them take a more hostile stance - good. What I mean by the unfair to other people is - I'll give a very recent example: [1] in red is an addition that I reverted. It's informative, yes, but there's two problems with it. First, if you follow the link, you'll note that it's a brand new forum with something like 30 posts in total. This just isn't noteworthy enough for such a high level article, and you can see that even the largest english forum on the internet isn't directly linked, and if it wasn't for that picture, it wouldn't be linked at all. It is, however, linked from category internet forums, and there's a link to that category at the bottom of the page. Second, if adding of things this was tolerated, the cvg page would have about 100 external links (and more when people learned of this tolerance) to all sorts of forums and sites and download pages and directories and everything. That wouldn't be good for wikipedia, so editors revert these things. In short, it's usually not good to add non-referance external links, because if everyone did then wikipedia would be swamped. Granted, usually it's because the person who made the edit is trying to advertise their site, as in the case of that edit to the forums article, but adding a link to, say, trillions in cvg, or adding single external links to your games has the same overall effect. Hope I'm making sense.
oh, and just to clarify, yes, I don't expect you to add everyone's games to wikipedia just so you could add your own, but I do want you to not so extensively add your own. The usual rule of thumb is to not list things unless they have a wikipedia article, unless there is a finite list of those things (for example, minerals). So if you made a wikipedia article for any game that you'd like to link, and then linked to the game out of that article, then I wouldn't mind that at all. Just make sure the article is descriptive, and marked as a stub if it's short. You might also want to combine them into a single article or the like - some people are against small articles, I don't mind them at all. Slike2 03:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi Silke, Thank you very much for the clarifications. I totally and wholeheartedly agree. It was my insecurity whether it is the right way and also simply time restraint and workload - as you can imagine - that I have not yet created an article for each game. However, that would have been most likely my next major project anyway. I am glad that you suggest that yourself, and it confirms me that I was on the right path. I have seen that the other computer and video games are documented and referenced to that way (by having an extra article for each one). Well, I had to start somewhere, eh? So bare with me please, the next days and weeks will see the appearance of dozens of new articles, one per game, and connected with that the disappearence of all external links to my games. I hope this relieves your worries. Rome, too, has not been built in one day! :-) Thanks again, KarlKarlscherer3 04:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please note

Wikipedia is not an advertising hoarding. Nor is it a method to cheat Google Page Ranking. ~~~~ 09:29, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Zillions games marked for possible deletion

Please note that a large number of articles which you have contributed to are being voted for deletion. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Zillions games to contribute to the discussion. OpenToppedBus - Talk 12:49, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify any possible confusion, the full list of articles being considered is at Category:Alleged spam by Karl Scherer. ~~~~ 13:40, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your contributions

If you wish to continue editing Wikipedia from any of the IP addresses that you use, you will read

it is also recommended, given your edits, that you avoid articles concerning puzzles altogether.

Failure to comply with the above policies is highly likely to lead to WP:RFC, which is likely to further lead to a formal ban at WP:RFAR. ~~~~ 13:31, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Out of interest

What does the 3 in your username stand for? Is it anything to do with User:Slike2's reason for the 2 in his - that the password of a previous account was forgotten? ~~~~ 28 June 2005 19:31 (UTC)

[edit] How to contribute

I don't know if you followed the entire discussion on the deletion of your Zillions of games articles, but I would like to offer some assistance concerning your contributions to Wikipedia.

The Web is a wild and wooly place, with both helpful, friendly folk and vile miscreants. A wiki, being open to all for editing, must therefore be especially sensitive to the nature of edits if it is to serve the purpose of an encyclopedia. Ideally, the collective wisdom and diverse points of view of all the contributors make it strong; but it can easily be vandalised or misused. To better achieve its aims, Wikipedia has developed a number of policies.

Whether deliberately, as some have said, or unknowingly, as I have posited, your contributions have violated some of these policies to the point of provoking a successful vote for deletion of more than one hundred pages you created. That's not a good thing. It wastes your time and ours, and can lead to hostility.

Policies are laid out in large numbers, so it can be difficult to follow them all. However, two articles are essential reading:

Two other, related, policies that were frequently mentioned are:

Not only did you create page after page about your own work, you added links to other pages pointing to your web site and/or your publications. You also created an encyclopedia entry, not a user page, talking about yourself. All of these acts are a violation of the "no original research" policy, as you can see by the deletion discussion. It is the kind of thing that deeply concerns people, because of its potential to destroy Wikipedia's credibility. As a general guideline, the idea is that if your work deserves mention, someone other than you or a close friend will mention it. For example, it would be bad form for, say, Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, to create a page about himself, even if he is a notable person. It could be acceptable for him to correct details, and perhaps add modest facts not otherwise available, but even then he'd have to tred carefully.

Therefore:

  1. For the benefit of Wikipedia, and to help others appreciate your good intentions, a nice thing to do would be to remove all the self-references you added to existing articles, especially any links to your own web page(s).
  1. Refrain from creating any new pages about your own work, and from editing existing pages to include your own work. If you think essential references to your work are missing from a page, bring it up on the talk page for that article.

I hopes this helps you to get more out of Wikipedia, and to contribute more effectively.

Incidentally, some of your work gets a certain amount of credibility with me because respected researcher David Eppstein mentions it on his Geometry Junkyard pages, a valuable resource despite the humorous name. I'd also like to hear if you happen to know puzzle collector Stan Isaacs in California.

KSmrq 2005 July 3 01:42 (UTC)

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