User talk:E. Ripley

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Welcome!

Hello, E. Ripley, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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:Questions, 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!  Cheers, TewfikTalk 20:31, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm always glad to say hi. If you need any help or have questions, feel free to approach me. Happy editing, TewfikTalk 20:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Talk page formatting

I'm not sure why you find the format hard to read, but that's the way talk pages are always set up. One person posts, and everyone who replies to him should be aligned at the same indent. Our comments will not be confused, because you signed after yours and I signed after mine. That's how discussion threads are formatted. Bullet points can be used for clarity, but your comments to Mmx1 should not be any more or less indented than mine. Kafziel 14:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The way I've seen it done primarily, people simply keep indenting as they go. First reply gets one, second gets two, etc. It's much easier to read that way. At any rate it's no big deal and I think handled adequately as it is now. Thanks. — ripley/talk 14:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The discussions you have participated in so far do that because the editors were replying to each other. If I was replying to your comment, mine would be indented under yours. But you and I were replying to the same person, so our comments should be at the same indent. That's how discussion threads are always formatted. It's not a big deal right now, but it becomes a big deal when you have twenty or thirty people participating in the discussion. Unnecessary indents (and backward indents like you have now) cause a great deal of confusion in more drawn-out discussions. Kafziel 14:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I guess I simply disagree with your opinions about what standard practices and best practices are as it regards this topic. I think it's best left that we agree to disagree at this point. But I do appreciate your taking the time to explain why you feel the way you do! — ripley/talk 16:01, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Listen, I'm not going to change it back (because the discussion has gone beyond that now), but it's not best left agreeing to disagree. I'm right, and I'm trying to help you so that in the future you will understand the proper way to format discussion threads. See this help page for an example of what I mean. "If a reply is made to a statement, one adds a colon to the number of colons used in the statement being replied to." That means that you were correct having only one colon before your reply (because the original statement had none), and I was also correct to have only one colon before mine. We were both replying to the same statement. This isn't a matter of opinion; I'm trying to help you avoid problems in the future. Kafziel 16:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate the concern behind your messages, really, and I take no offense (and hope you'll take none with me), but I think in practice this is misguided. In practice, discussions do not proceed like this:

I have an opinion. (Person one)

I feel this way about #1's opinion. (Person two)
Well I feel this way about #1's opinion. (Person three)
And I feel like so about #1's opinion. (Person four)
The standard practice is to keep indenting even if everybody's technically answering the first person. Nobody can make heads nor tails out of the three new, discrete peoples' opinions if they all nest on the same line. — ripley/talk 16:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the example you gave there is exactly how discussions progress. If you look at my contribs you'll see I've made over a thousand posts to talk pages alone, and I know how it's done. I could give you countless examples if that's really necessary, but I've given you a link to an official page that explains the process. Three different opinions don't go "on the same line"; they each have their own line but are left-aligned at the same tab, and each one should be signed by the person who left it. That's how the different comments are distinguished, and that's why signing posts is important even for IP users. That's why some of us use the {{unsigned}} template when people forget to sign their posts.
As a simple example, the post you just placed on the USMC talk page is formatted such that it is replying to Mmx1's last comment. But Mmx1's comment didn't have anything to do with books; it was acknowledging the work I've done on Featured and Good Articles. So your reply to his comment doesn't make any sense. The bit about the books was a couple of colons ago, and your comment should have been lined up with that. Kafziel 16:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Again, in practice this is not how it's done (perhaps, if someone else nests further out then it makes it understandable for the next person to take it back a colon). My extra-nested comment makes perfect sense in context; it's not rendered unintelligible because it's not slotted in the place where you think it ought to be. Again, in practice your notion is misguided, in my opinion, though I appreciate the spirit behind your messages to me and wish you all the best. — ripley/talk 16:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC
And, again, in practice this is how it's done. Just look at the help page I linked to. You find the comment you want to reply to, add a colon to however many it already has, and begin.
A non-Wiki example: Have you ever used Microsoft Outlook? One person posts, and if you reply to that post your reply is slightly indented. If another person replies to that original post, their post is lined up with yours. Theirs is only indented further if they are replying to you, rather than to the original post.
Or think of it like the directory on Windows (when you right click on the "Start" button). Start out at the C: drive section. Within the C: drive and slightly indented are folders like "Documents and Settings", "Program Files", etc. Slightly indented further, because they're part of the Documents and Settings section, are the files that correspond to that. But "Program Files" is lined up with Documents and Settings, because it is not a subordinate topic. The indents show which files belong to which folder, just as indents here show which replies belong to which comment.
Maybe that helped, or maybe it just made things even more confusing, but I don't know how else to explain it. This is just how it's done. Kafziel 16:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you again. I'm fully aware and comprehending of the way you think things work, though I appreciate the time you're taking. I simply disagree, and don't have much else to say. All the best — ripley/talk 16:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] American

I noticed that you recently added a link to American here. American is a disambiguation page as the phrase has many uses including a person from the Americas or the United States. In the future, could you link the term to one of the articles listed on the American disambiguation term, that would be great. As an example, if you're linking to something related to the United States, you would input [[United States|American]]. Thanks! --Bobblehead 07:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cite

Aaaarrgggghh. I have no idea why I used cite not fact. Apparently a momentary lapse of reson. Sorry about that and thanks for fixing my error (and for notifying me that I made a rookie mistake, quite inexcusable too after 11,000+ edits). •Jim62sch• 19:39, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why not ban 209.129.177.2 entirely

You only gave this guy a first warning, but he'd gotten a last warning earlier. I suggest this user be banned. User:Jchillerup

Report him at WP:AIV; I'd love to block him, but I'm not an administrator. — e. ripley\talk 18:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
That's what I did, and you seemingly gave him another first warning...
I don't see that it matters very much, honestly -- a warning is a warning, as long as he's gotten at least one block warning then he can be blocked for continuing to vandalize. To the point, I use Lupin's antivandal program; it decides which test warnings to issue based on what's already on the talk page, as I understand it. Sorry if it didn't work properly somehow. — e. ripley\talk 18:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EVP

Hi, and appreciate your efforts in the article. I think what happened is that the Wikipedia:WikiProject Paranormal/Collaboration recruited the director of AAEVP, Tom Butler, as a subject matter expert, which appears to have created the potential for some significant POV-pushing in the article. LuckyLouie

For your info, if you weren't already aware of this paper: Failure to Replicate Electronic Voice Phenomenon, Barušs, I.

More: Turn Me On, Dead Man: Shermer on audio pareidolia in Scientific American. text. LuckyLouie 17:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I will recuse myself from participating in the article if it will help influence Davkal to cease his bad behavior. LuckyLouie 20:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Electronic voice phenomenon rewrite project

Hey, I noticed you were a frequent contributor to the Electronic voice phenomenon article and I thought I'd let you know that I'm proposing a rewrite project for the article. I thought you might be interested in contributing to it if you're still around. Currently the article seems to have numerous dispute problems including POV issues and I thought I could get it to at least a Good Article. You can see my proposal on it's talk page here Talk:Electronic voice phenomenon. There are a few questions I'd like you to answer first though. If you have any questions about it you can leave me a message. Thanks. Wikidudeman (talk) 00:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)