User talk:Brian Olsen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I find when I click on someone's else talk page, I get annoyed having to go back and forth between someone else's talk page to follow a discussion. So on my own talk page, I include my own comments (lifted from whoever's talk page I posted them on) in italics. In case you're just that fascinated by my conversations.
 Archives |
| August 18, 2005 - August 5, 2007 |
Contents |
[edit] Your Welcome
Hey Brian,
Thanks for your welcome note - good to get some encouragement. I've been using Wikipedia for a while, but hadn't looked at any of the theatre pages before. Then I did, and they irritated me sufficiently to prompt a re-write (not the best of motivations, perhaps, but whatever works :) ). Even the main Theatre page is pretty shoddy, notwithstanding all that bickering about theater/theatre - it reads like the academic equivalent of a thrift store clear-out...
Anyhow, thanks again.
DionysosProteus 22:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "Lawrence Mays" The man himself!
Hello Mr. Olsen,
My name is Lawrence Mays and I am the author of the now deleted page for Lawrence Mays. I hate to say that I am a rookie of sorts at this Wikipedia thing. I was under the assumption that wikipedia encouraged people to create pages of people who have made some significant progress in their own personal careers and mankind. I am in no way saying I am a humanitarian but I have accomplished much and I have helped many. With that said I assumed that My page would meet the criteria for wikipedia. As you stated in your "report" you googled my name and nothing came up. Well is that what makes a page credible? The world is full of new emerging playwrights and although they may not be in any book you have read, they exist. Shouldn't they be remembered? Shouldn't their story be told?
I am not a professional at these wiki pages (by far). So along with work, writing, and normal life I found time write that page alone and I was "winging it" the best I knew how. While I was making the page, someone (who I now know to be Malathos) stuck a bio-notability tag on it. I was confused at what this was. I clicked the link and it explained. So I made, what I believed was the correct changes to the page and removed the tag. Then you noticed that my page violated wikipedia: biography notability guidelines, and you concluded that is also reads as an advertisement. Now you are correct that it included links to my info pages and being a member of the Dramatist Guild is not noteworthy accomplishments but what is? But in no way was it advertising. I have nothing to sell.
As a fellow Thespian you understand how vast this business is and how many writers, directors, actors, producers, etc. come and go. What makes them worthy of Wikipedia? Is it up to you to say? What are the guidelines that say who and what is important in this world? There are wiki pages for many things, some significant and some insignificant. But who is the judge? I am not writing this to cry and complain about you or wikipedia and this is not my bitter words for not being on wikipedia. I am not bitter, nor am I angry because I deleted my own page and I am a big fan of wikipedia.
But I am writing this as a question for all the wikipedians such as your-self. This is the same site that lists Tupac Shakur as a gang member, that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X had a rift about Muhammad sleeping with various NOI women (Which is hearsay and not fact), and many other pages with hipocrital comments and contradictions. My friend, how important is it to keep out people like me? When you have many other people who alter facts and change history with their own personal opinions. Many times these pages are tagged for lack of sources, as was mine. But the lack of sources are not hurting wikipedia, it's the opinions. In my case as Malathos stated I deleted his tag after adding what I assumed to be sources. Even you list on your user page that you take credit for rewriting many pages. Why did no one attempt to salvage my page? Was it because google proved that I wasn't important or was it you?
Thank you for your time. I hope you have read the whole thing and what I wrote will have an effect on the decisions and "reports" you make in the future. I also hope that I make some sense to you and I commend you for helping to clean up wikipedia, which is not even an acceptable source in most elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges in America. You have a lot of work ahead of you.
Sincerely, Poet, Playwright, Actor, Entrepreneur, and former wikipedian...:) Lawrence Mays —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Poettruth (talk • contribs) 02:05, August 23, 2007 (UTC).
- Hi - I appreciate the comments you left on my talk page. Please understand that it was nothing personal, and the decision to remove your page was not made by me. I flagged it for deletion, and what that does is draw the the attentions of an administrator. If that person doesn't agree with me that the page is worthy of deletion, it won't be deleted. I posted a notice on your talk page when I added the tag - it described the steps you could have taken to defend the page, and have it sent to Articles for Deletion instead, where a consensus of Wikipedia editors would have been required in order to delete the article.
- Nevertheless, I believed the article was worthy of speedy deletion. I looked up all the sources you added, and they seemed to be either from your own company, or simply your entry on the Dramatists Guild page, and yes, being a member of the Dramatists Guild page in and of itself doesn't make you notable, any more than being a member of Actors' Equity makes me notable. I couldn't rewrite your page in order to save it, because I couldn't find any reputable sources that established notability.
- Another big problem is that Wikipedia has a guideline against conflict of interest, and in creating a page about yourself, you are violating that guideline. The general assumption is that if you are notable enough to have a page in an encyclopedia, someone else will create it. If you create a page on yourself, it comes across as self-promotion (perhaps a term I should have used instead of advertising). Still, conflict of interest isn't the main reason your page was deleted; violating the guidelines on biographies was.
- You ask if it is up to me to decide who is notable; no, it's not. But here on Wikipedia, it is up to the consensus of editors. And consensus defines who and what is notable enough for inclusion. I didn't decide that policy, but I did bring a page that violated it to the attention of an administrator.
- You said, "The world is full of new emerging playwrights and although they may not be in any book you have read, they exist. Shouldn't they be remembered? Shouldn't their story be told?" Absolutely they should be - I'm a director, and I work primarily with new emerging playwrights to help them tell their stories. But Wikipedia isn't the place for that.
- You're right that a lot of pages have a lot of problems, but all that does is encourage me to fix what I can, not throw up my hands and ignore the problems I see. I hope you stick around and contribute; read some of the main guidelines:
- and dive in; we can always use more editors. --Brian Olsen 00:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Cite serial template
Just wanted to mention I made that change to the template. Thanks for pointing it out - I never would have thought of it, but it makes so much sense, and I think makes the template much more useful. Plus, I enjoy the excuse to muck about with the syntax! I think it's working all right, but please let me know if you spot any bugs. --Brian Olsen 03:55, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking care of that, Brian! It looks moist and lovely. (Can you tell I've just watched a documentary about Stephen Fry?) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:19, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Lawrence Mays again...
Hello Mr. Olsen,
Thank you for responding to my message. First I want to clarify that if I seemed upset or offended you in any way, I do apologize. My attempt was not to come across as a bitter wiki reject. Reading my message again I think that I seemed as if I was blaming you personally, which I shouldn't have done. You honestly brought light to most of the misconceptions I had about Wikipedia.
I understand what you mean when you say, "The general assumption is that if you are notable enough to have a page in an encyclopedia, someone else will create it." lol. You are correct, that is a general assumption. But it's amusing that in order for you to be in an encyclopedia, someone else has to create it. I understand that I (At age 21) actually may not qualify as a candidate for an encyclopedia article. But I have done some very notable things in my lifetime (which is my personal opinion). I have alot to learn...lol, but I guess as a writer, I wanted to be remembered. I would like to consider myself "A Great Writer" (Whatever that means). If I said I won a Pulitzer Prize would that make me notable enough? (Just kidding)
I do pose a question; where is the place for emerging playwrights tell their stories? I have yet to find a forum to tell my story and promote my work. A site that can serve as a catalyst for people who are some years away from being notable enough to have an article in the encyclopedia. A place alot more professional than myspace, facebook, etc. Another common assumption is that writing is no longer a formidable career unless you are in journalism. I believe that has some truth to it. I've been a playwright for more than seven years and in my journey I have been rejected for more reasons that I can write. On the other hand, I have accomplished much as a playwright.
Where does a 21 year old, African American, poet, playwright, novelist, struggling writer get a chance to be noticed? Something besides the common playwriting contest, where writers have to compete for recognition. I don't believe it exists and maybe it's meant to be that way; but hey, you can't blame a guy for dreaming. I'm sure you have come across some dreamy eyed writers with more ambition than merits. Don't we all deserve a break? But, I do want to help with the improvement of this site. I am a lover of knowledge and understand the importance of publishing the pure unadulterated truth. I think Wikipedia is a great resource for the human community and I honestly respect your commitment to authenticity of the knowledge, so that we all may understand the reality that we like to refer to as life. Maybe one day you will have the pleasure of writing my wiki article and I might have the pleasure of writing yours. Thank you for the helpful links. I will be sure to study and hopefully become a wiki editor, much like you.
Sincerely, Lawrence Mays —Preceding unsigned comment added by Poettruth (talk • contribs) 09:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Brief torch
Hey - I've been cleaning up the external links for the Doctor Who episode articles. I had created a bunch of new templates to use for individual episodes, which would use quotation marks instead of italics. Since then, I've learned a bit more template syntax, and today I went back and instead added a parameter for quotation marks to the original templates, then went and changed all the pages using my templates to use the originals, and nominated mine for speedy deletion. Anyway, while I was at it, I added parameters to {{Brief}} so that it can be used for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and changed the Torchwood episode pages to use the original template. Since you created {{Brief torch}}, I wanted to check in before nominating it for deletion. Are you cool with that? My goal is to cut down the total number of templates we're using. Thanks. --Brian Olsen 16:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Sure, go ahead. I only created it because I couldn't figure out how to make it work with the other one anyway. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:10, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
- Great, thanks. --Brian Olsen 17:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Template:Vojvodina-geo-stub fixed
Hi, I think I fixed the template you were asking about. The tags for the table (like <table>, <td>, <tr>) didn't have the corresponding closing tags (</table>, </td>, </tr>). I'm guessing that with the template by itself on its own page, that didn't matter, but with other text, the page didn't know where the table was supposed to end, causing the weird spacing. I checked a few pages and they seem fine, but let me know if what I did causes any other problems. --Brian Olsen, 05:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
That's great. It's just something I noticed when I was editing a page for some other reason, and I had no idea how to fix it. Seems to work fine now on the pages I looked at. Thanks for following up. --ShelfSkewed Talk 05:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Award
 |
The WikiProject Doctor Who Award | |
| I am awarding you this, (the first Barnstar thingy I have ever awarded), for your continued contributions to Doctor Who-related articles. I would like to particularly thank you for your hard work on Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Episode citations which has proved a very useful resource for verifying information. (Wolf of Fenric (talk) 03:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)) |
[edit] WikiProject Doctor Who newsletter, March 2008
 |
The Space-Time Telegraph | |
||||
| The WikiProject Doctor Who newsletter | ||||||
| Issue 1 | March 2008 | |||||
For the Doctor Who project, Sceptre (talk) 18:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC) |
||||||
