User talk:Rhallanger

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Welcome!

Hello, Rhallanger, 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!  -- Longhair | Talk 09:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Welcome to WikiProject Trains!

Hi. I saw the article on Steamtown (and you probably noticed my copyedit) and noticed that you'd added yourself to WikiProject Trains; this is just a quick note to say welcome to WikiProject Trains. We've got a pretty big to do list of articles to write and articles to improve, and any help is greatly appreciated. Also, I'm the current lead editor on the Trains wikiportal, and I'm always looking for additional candidates for the portal's featured article and image for the week as well as new Did you know tidbits. If you've got any questions on the rail transport content here or in the Trains WikiProject, feel free to ask me on my talk page. slambo 20:06, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: images

It would be nice if we could just copy images from railpictures.net (that's where I get all my personal desktop wallpaper from these days), but due to copyright concerns, we can't do that. Copyrights and licensing can be a sticky issue. Wikipedia's official image use policy has good guidelines in this regard. For images that I've upload, I try to find an image that I created first (which I list on my gallery page). I put the Creative Commons ShareAlike license on my images (using {{cc-by-sa-2.0}}), but other editors release their images into the public domain or release them under the GFDL.

If I don't have an image of my own, I try for an image in the public domain (there's a long iist of potentially free image resources that comes in handy); generally, if the image was published in the US before 1923, or if it was created by a US Government agency in the course of the agency's work, then it's likely a public domain image.

Whoops, I've got to check the TV, the weather service just issued a tornado warning for my area. I'll be back later tonight. slambo 22:32, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, several tornadoes touched down as close as 20 miles from me, but no problems here. Anyway...
The biggest issue is that anything we upload to Wikipedia should be available under some kind of free license. The only exception that I will make in uploading files is images of corporate logos to use on articles about those corporations. In that case, the logo image gets tagged with {{logo}} which allows for fair use considerations (for example, see Image:Upshield.gif). The copyrights page explains the differences in more detail. slambo 00:24, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Good model articles for Class III and RR Pics

Hmmm... Well, I can think of several Class II and larger that would fall into that category such as Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad, but for a Class III, the first that comes to mind is San Diego and Arizona Railway. The latter's a little heavy on the timeline section, but it's a good length and it has a good selection of images (although the image placement could be improved a little). Except for a lack of a map and references, Buckingham Branch Railroad is also good. Georgia Southwestern Railroad and Housatonic Railroad both are referenced and have a good amount of text, but no images.

As to categories, I generally start with [[Category:STATE railroads]], where STATE is the state name, for each state where the railroad operated (for example, Wisconsin and Southern Railroad operates in Wisconsin and Illinois, so the article uses both Cat:Illinois railroads and Cat:Wisconsin railroads in its category list).

I don't think there are any truly great articles on Class III railroads yet, but these should give you an idea of what I consider good. slambo 18:30, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and about images (I knew I forgot something), the ones that I use in my own writing are usually either images that I created myself (see User:Slambo/Gallery) in various railfanning trips over the last 15 years, or public domain images (images created and published before 1923 or by a US government agency) that I've found at the Library of Congress. slambo 18:37, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Is this public domain image?

Neat site, now I'll have to spend a day or two exploring what's there! My first thought would be that we should be able to use it due to the image's age, but looking around a little, http://www.sacramentohistory.org/about.html has a short blurb on copyrights that brings that into question. It seems that the best option would be to inquire about permission to freely use images from the site in WP. We may be able to claim fair use rights similar to images licensed with {{Denver Public Library image}}; the {{fairusein}} license tag may provide some guidance. I try to avoid fair use claims for anything but logos, but in some cases, that is the best that we can get. slambo 14:52, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Stubs vs Articles

1. (duly ignored).

2. Usually what I do when filling in a list is to add as much information as I have on each topic. For example going through the articles in {{EMD GPs}}, I added the technical information that I had at hand for each one, but since I didn't have the history of their development except for the EMD BL2, they still came out as stubs (although some have been further expanded since then). However, in working through the list of America's most notable railroaders or Santa Fe Railroad presidents, I try to fill in a little more on each article before moving on to the next. I find it easier to concentrate on one topic for a while, but when I've got references that list information on several topics, I'll stub out articles on the topics that are mentioned and then come back to them when I find more. About the only time that I will usually build stubs is when the articles are listed in a navigation template that appears on a large number of articles; in that way the missing articles don't clutter up the Requested articles list quite as much.

3. Looks good, and I may do something like that for List of Wisconsin railroads as I find more information. We can probably get by without an alphabetical list and let the category take care of that for us. At worst, someone who is looking for information on a specific railroad can use the search function in his/her browser or the site search in the site navigation menu. I know what you mean about states with a large number of railroads; there are still more to discover for Wisconsin, and others like Illinois...

slambo 14:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Wfsloco.jpg

Hello, thanks for uploading Image:Wfsloco.jpg. You state on the image description page that the copyright owner has given permission for it to be used on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this level of permission is no longer sufficient and such images may not be used on Wikipedia. Perhaps you could ask the copyright owner to consider allowing it's use under one of the many acceptable copyright terms allowed on Wikipedia. I would suggest that the best option is if the copyright owner gives permission for anyone to use the image for any purpose. As it stands at the moment, the image will be deleted in 7 days. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on my talk page. Thanks! David Johnson [T|C] 19:46, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delink Dates and Railroads? Why?

Why are you delinking complete dates? (i.e. January 1, 1922). There is a reason why they are linked. The style manual says to put full dates within links, as that adjusts the date format based on the language. For example, in the USA it would show up as January 1, 1922 whereas in another country/format it would show 1 January 1922.

You also delinked railroads that are not written yet but need articles. Rhallanger 05:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess I'm confused as to what dates get linked and what don't anymore; there has been a lot of bot activity recently on many of the articles on my watchlist that have been removing the links, hence I have been only putting links up front (i.e., for a date of establishment) but at this point I'm just going to "punt" and leave things as is. As far as railroad links, the only ones I am conscious of removing have been in those instances where there are duplicate links (i.e., Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific) within the same article. If you have specific examples I will review my edits in this regard.--Lordkinbote 07:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page Blanking

On 14-Mar, you blanked Arizona and Eastern Railway. Blanking pages is generally considered a bad idea. I've reverted it to the previous version. If this was the result of a broken edit, you may wish to make the correct edits. If you believe the page should be deleted, please follow the deletion procedures. If you believe different content should go there, please create a stub. If you have questions, please let me know. Thanks! -- JLaTondre 04:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Copied from my talk page: We all make mistakes. Thanks for redirecting it to the right place. -- JLaTondre 15:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: How do I create maps for RR project?

For the maps that I've made (like Image:Wisconsin Central 1998 map.png or Image:Wisconsin Central 1998 map.png), I started with Image:US state outline map.png and then used GIMP (since most of my wikiediting is done from a Linux box) to crop it down to the section I needed and add the lines (freehand with the pencil tool) and labels. There was some brief talk on the Maps TF talk page about free GIS software and where to obtain data sets for it, but I haven't looked much farther into that. Slambo (Speak) 10:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creating new articles

Thanks for creating Woodbridge, California. Please use Wikipedia formats and include stub tags and Categories to help them grow. Take a look at the edits I made to it to see what you can easily incorporate while creating the articles. Thanks! Hu 11:53, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

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