User talk:Tallanent

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Hello Tallanent, welcome to Wikipedia. Here's some tips:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Angela. 14:14, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

Hi and welcome! It's great that you're adding to the stamp info - Wikipedia got a mention in The American Philatelist recently, want to have lots of material for new people to look at! One thing to be careful about is image provenance; for instance, if the image in VR official is copyrighted, the owner could get on WP's case about it. So when you add an image, edit the image description page (its text is just like other pages) and say where the image is from - old book, URL, whatever. Stan 06:05, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, an amazing amount of interesting stuff! I hope I'm not sounding too condescending or anything - it takes a little time and practice to learn all the ways of Wikipedia. Anyway, if you're willing to license your scans for use in Wikipedia, that would be wonderful; we're always short of images. For an example of how I think the images can be tied into general narratives as part of a world-class philatelic encyclopedia, check out Stamps and postal history of Austria for one of several "stamps and postal history" overviews that exist - Stamps and postal history of the United Kingdom has been started, but needs a lot more work still... Stan 06:51, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I'll be sure to avail myself of the goodies on your site! BTW, check out Vin Fiz Flyer - been going through copies of Linn's and adding articles relating to interesting stories therein. Stan 07:55, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the Chalmers claim seems not be so solid that it can be left as a bald assertion. Going by Cabeen's Standard Handbook, it's a whole episode, but too detailed for the third paragraph of the article that introduces the postage stamp concept to someone who may be reading about stamps for the very first time; I suggest something like

"Although there have been a number of claimants to the invention of the postage stamp, the honor is commonly given to Rowland Hill [etc]"

then use the link to mention Chalmers and all the other people. The history section is about the right length now (the article as a whole being on the verge of being too long), so you'll want to be judicious about adding details here rather than in linked articles. The UPU country name thing is also clearly stream-of-consciousness writing that is too detailed here and should go elsewhere, either under UPU or perhaps UPU regulation of postage stamps; better replacement text would mention the next few countries to adopt stamps, then summarize worldwid spread of stamp usage. The key thing is to set context, because our readers include 18-year-olds who may only have ever used email(!), and they won't necessarily have all the background that you and I share. Stan 14:39, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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