User talk:Sidp

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[edit] Punctuation, HTML character entities

Before you do mass edits of punctuation and other style issues, please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style and its related articles. English style issues are a point of heated contention in Wikipedia's global audience, so we've spent tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people-hours crafting style policies that can accomodate the conflicting standards that exist not only between countries, but even between school systems and publishers within each country.

Specifically, please note that WP's policy on punctuation and quotes splits the difference between American and British usage by using "double quotes" for quoting, but placing punctuation outside the quotes unless it is actually part of the quoted text. Also, Wikipedia uses Unicode characters, so please don't use HTML character entities (like – and —) unless the character is not a common Unicode character. Edit windows have a convenient set of clickable Unicode characters below the Save/Preview/Show changes buttons to make text insertion easy. Thank you for your cooperation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, thanks for the guidance. It's really the best way to learn these matters in Wikipedia (though less efficient for others). I must admit, however, that my misinformed activities regarding dashes is taken directly from Wikipedia's own style directives. As for comma placement, I am still not clear on what specifically I did that you refer to. Usually I keep the comma outside a quote that would not be a part of language (such as a title). Otherwise, I hardly ever make a correction on this issue because I know there are multiple accepted styles. Feel free to set me straight. Thanks again for your help. SidP 19:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Please forgive me for not citing the specific edit that caused me to comment. I normally include the links to make my points clear, but my failure this time, combined with your rapid editing, made it rather challenging to identify the article I had a problem with. I was thinking specifically of your otherwise excellent edit [1] to Firefly (TV series). The particular problems I saw were moving a comma inside a quoted phrase ("Earth that was"), and unnecessarily changing Unicode en-dashes (–) into their equivalent HTML character entities (–).
I also didn't provide specific links to the relevant policies, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation marks and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes). Taking another look at them, I can see the potential confusion with the dash policy at least, because it currently is somewhat unclear about the use of character entities. On the one hand, it says (in "Dashes and hyphens used on Wikipedia" to "use the HTML entity —, which the MediaWiki engine automatically converts into a numeric entity in the rendered HTML". On the other hand, in the intro section of the article, in bold, it says "Now that Wikipedia uses UTF-8, these can be entered directly into the article markup. To enter an em dash after your cursor, for instance, you can click the "—" link below the edit box". The confusion probably comes from someone adding the bold statement, once Wikipedia switched to UTF-8, without bothering to update the remaining text to reflect this change. (Worse, the first statement is now in error, as the MediaWiki engine now converts – to a UTF-8 character, not a numeric entity.) I've posted a note on the dash-policy talk page to ask that they update it. Again, I apologize for the lack of details. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nick Gulas

Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing. However, unconstructive edits, such as those you made to Nick Gulas, are considered vandalism. If you continue in this manner you may be blocked from editing without further warning. Please stop, and consider improving rather than damaging the hard work of others. Thanks. JFreeman 05:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

(From User_talk:JFreeman):
==received warning for something I didn't do==
JFreeman, I was very surprised to be admonished for "work" on an entry that I didn't do. I will be glad to help clean up the Nick Gulas article, but perhaps you meant to send your warning to someone else? Please respond.--SidP 05:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

SidP, I apologize. You're correct; the vandal was someone from an anonymous IP address (205.188.117.14). I was running Lupin's Filter recent changes script to watch for vandalism, and I apparently clicked on the "warn" link for the wrong message after I had reverted the Nick Gulas change. Please accept my apologies for wrongly sending the warning to you, and thanks for letting me know about it. --JFreeman 18:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About Saizen

(moved to Saizen talk page)

[edit] Hyphens and dashes

There's no need to edit an article just to replace hyphens in date ranges with en dashes. WP:DATE says "Ranges of dates are given with a spaced or unspaced hyphen or en dash (–)." Since either is acceptable, the original edit should be left unless there are inconsistent uses (some dates with spaced hyphens, some dates with unspace en dashes) within the article. -- JHunterJ 12:24, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Telluride

I agree with most of your edits at the Telluride article, except that most of the links at the bottom which you nix'd were wiki articles, while the [SKIMALL.NET nonsense is an external link to self-promotion, & you left that? I entirely agree that only 1/2 give/take of those wikilinks should be there, and then with actual sections created making them significant, i.e. organizations were important in T-Ride because blahblahblah, w/links... I'll get them out of history & create section(s) to add them to later, but for now, I think you have a bit more exp there than I, & your edits were d@$@ good, but... look (like, again, there) at what your tossing, esp Vs what your not...?

Delete my comment(s) here at will
Grye 06:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Taylor Ware

Hi Sidp. Before I revert a bit of your edit, I thought I'd discuss with you first. I was under the impression that the names of towns, especially those that have a Wikipedia article, are Wikilinked, so it should be Franklin, Tennessee, not Franklin, Tennessee. At least that's almost always the way I've seen it done. Am I wrong? Also, why did you remove the Wikilink for 2006? Thanks. Ward3001 01:11, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. What you say makes sense, so I'll leave your edits as they are. Ward3001 01:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My user page

In the future, I'd appreciate it if you didn't edit my user page -- your time is undoubtedly much better spent doing this to articles in the main article space. Thanks. JPG-GR 06:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Some people just can't be gracious.--SidP 16:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. It would be one thing, if he didn't later apply essentially the same spelling corrections that you originally contributed to his page—Sign of the wikitimes, I guess. Although I refrain from making friendly spelling or style edits on people's user pages these days for the very reason that people seem to be much more touchy than the "old days," I do recall when one or two folks actually left a note thanking me for fixing a typo or two on their page. Such was the spirit back then, that it was viewed as a friendly and helpful gesture rather than some sort of personal affront. --Ryanaxp 18:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
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