User talk:Andrew Mill

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Contents 1 Woody Brown (surfer and catamaran inventor) 2 Notability of Austrian Prime Ministers 3 Patrolling 4 prod tag

[edit] Woody Brown (surfer and catamaran inventor)

Hi. Little bit concerned by your secondary tagging of this article. Given the narrow scope of this man's life contributions, the chances of a sufficiently large number of articles being created to meet your "NOFOOTNOTES" requirements are essentially nil. Nevertheless, he has made significant contributions and is "NOTABLE".
And the references are up towards the top-end of rock-solid: the original researcher has satisfied The Financial Times (globally considered more reliable than the Wall Street Journal) that their research is adequate, even on a topic of such narrow focus.

Do you think it's appropriate for an encyclopedia to demand that this topic be of wide interest (and hence of wide scholarship)? If on reflection you agree this is a bit extreme in this circumstance, it'd be great if you removed the NOFOOTNOTES tag.
Saltation (talk) 01:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Saltation. First and foremost, thanks for such a well thoughout reply. I really appreciate that you have assumed that I was acting in good faith when reviewing this new article.

When looking at the references and whether they had been cited throughout the article, I guess I was taking a pretty narrow interpretation of the policy on Citing sources. Sorry if I was a bit overzealous. I have removed the NOFOOTNOTES tag as requested.

A quick Google search returns several pages that may well provide some good additional sources in support of the article. You know more about Woody Brown than I do, so I'll defer to you on whether these sources can help or not. If you're happy with the sources that are listed, then you should probably remove the REFIMPROVE tag as well.

Please let me know if there's anything I can help with. ---- Andrew Mill 04:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Superb. Thanks, mate. You've single-handedly restored my faith in wikipedia (which had become sorely disabused of late). It's literally lightening to see someone cleave to its core ethos: Content over Style, Semantics over Syntax.

And in light of your notes, I had another stab at the article with a view to fleshing it out and widening its reference base. As above, it was already adequately referenced, but I hope it's now been improved.

*tips hat* Here's to wikipedia. Saltation (talk) 21:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability of Austrian Prime Ministers

Do you really think that Austrian Prime Ministers are not notable? Do you really think that an article with versions in five other languages should be proded? —Guy Peters ^{Talk • Contributions • Edit counter} 09:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

In short, no, probably not. However, the article is very brief (it doesn't actually state that he was an Austrian Prime Minister), so it is hard to assess whether he is notable. The article in other languages appears a lot more complete (regretfully, I can only read English). I certainly recognised that it was not clear cut and went to great pains to point this out in the Prod template. Apologies if my communication was unclear, or otherwise offensive. It was always my intention to assume good faith. -- Andrew Mill (talk) 09:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree it is very short. But stubs about notable subjects are never deleted.

It states. See both the templates:

Preceded by none

Minister-President of Austria 20 March 1848 – 18 April 1848

Succeeded by Karl Ludwig von Ficquelmont

v • d • e Prime Ministers of the Austrian Empire Franz Anton Graf von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky · Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Ficquelmont · Franz Freiherr von Pillersdorf · Anton Freiherr von Doblhoff-Dier · Johann Freiherr von Wessenberg-Ampringen · Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg · Karl Ferdinand von Buol-Schauenstein · Johann Bernhard Graf von Rechberg und Rothenlöwen · Erzherzog Rainer · Alexander Graf von Mensdorff-Pouilly · Richard Graf von Belcredi · Friedrich Ferdinand Graf Beust Ministers-President of Austria (Cisleithania) in Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918 Beust • Karl von Auersperg • Taaffe • Plener • Hasner • Potocki • Hohenwart • Holzgethan • Adolf von Auersperg • Stremayr • Taaffe • Windischgrätz • Kielmansegg • Badeni • Frankenthurn • Thun • Clary • Wittek • Koerber • Gautsch • Hohenlohe • Beck • Bienerth • Gautsch • Stürgkh • Koerber • Clam-Martinic • Seidler • Hussarek • Lammasch

—Guy Peters ^{Talk • Contributions • Edit counter} 10:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Guy, failing to properly assess the stub was my mistake completely. Apologies again for any frustration this has caused. -- Andrew Mill (talk) 11:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Patrolling

Yeah, I try to but do keep forgetting. Cheers SGGH ^speak! 13:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] prod tag

I see you're testing an interesting variant on the prod tag. I'm not sure it's useful, but I want to think about it--why not discuss it on the WT:PROD page. The problem i see with it is that the longer it gets, the less it will be actually read and acted on. DGG (talk) 18:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

In short, I wasn't seeking to change the PROD template, I just wasn't using it properly.

I've been adding the PROD template using the PROD function in Twinkle, which prompts for some additional text. In this section I've been using a couple of pre-written blocks of text to describe (as politely as possible) why I have PRODed. On reviewing the standard PROD template further, and the PROD process, it looks like that commentary may be better placed on the article's talk page. Which I'm happy to do.

A couple of the blocks I've been using are:

This page appears to be a dictionary definition, rather than an article. Over the coming days this page will hopefully develop further along the path towards an article (if so please follow the process below to untag the article as Proposed for deletion). However, if this article remains as-is, I propose that it should be deleted, per Wikipedia is not a dictionary.

This article about a person contains no references and it is therefore difficult to assess the subject as being notable. In itself, this could make the article meet the Criteria for speedy deletion A7. Assuming good faith, it is probably better to use the less aggressive Proposed deletion process. Over the coming days this article will hopefully be expanded and cite appropriate references to support the notability of the subject (if so please follow the process below to untag the article as Proposed deletion). However, if this article remins as-is, I propose that it should be deleted, per the Notability guideline.

I'm fairly new to patrolling new pages and your feedback would be welcome. -- Andrew Mill (talk) 00:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I realise you werent actually trying to change the tag--but if you ever want to do so, you can certainly propose it. I urge you to join the discussions at the talk pages for Deletion Policy, POD, and CSD. Read the archives, and see what has been discussed already. We very badly need new ideas--it's the only way we make progress, by seeing the limitations of what we've become over-accustomed to. WT:CSD is the most active, but it can be a little overwhelming.

I use stock phrases also, via a macro program in my operating system: my most used is "asserts at least some importance, so not a speedy. If sufficient importance doubted, use PROD or AfD. " My latest is "=some advice== sorry, but I had to delete this article--we're an encyclopedia, not a social networking site. You have to become famous first, then someone will write an article about you. In the meantime, [[WP:CTW| there's lots of things to do here]] -- so {{welcome}}."

as for your additions--I suggest that in addressing newcomers, you avoid using the wikipedia jargon. I know, it's hard to do that and still be compact, because we do use them as "terms of art" with specific meanings. that's what makes writing these a fascinating problem. DGG (talk) 04:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)