User talk:Gcanyon

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[edit] Welcome to the Wikipedia

Here are some links I find useful


Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Cheers, Sam [Spade] 07:54, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] ITIL

Hi Geoff,

I see the changes you are making on the ITIL page. Thanks, the changes you've made are great. There's really a lot to do, and I'm finding it a little overwhelming.  :-)

Have you seen the proposal for changes that I put on the discussion page? I'd appreciate your reactions/input.

DanielVonEhren 20:49, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Moved from DanielVonEhren's talk page.

Not sure what the etiquette is when adding messages back and forth. In any case, thanks for the kind words on my talk page. I find ITIL about as clear as the tax code. The article does a reasonable job at an introduction, I think. I read the discussion page and your plan to split the page into sub-pages. One thing I haven't read in my wanderings around wikipedia is a discussion of depth. In other words, how much detail is necessary in an article on ITIL? I'm not saying there's too much now, or that your plan to split into separate pages is too much either. I just think that there's a bit of a slippery slope between where the article is now and the (however many) books that describe ITIL completely. We need a clear sense of where "enough detail" is.
Other than that I think we're in exactly the same boat. I can help clarify and organize, but I'm not an authority. I need to become more knowledgeable, and helping with the wiki page seems like a reasonable way to get there.
Geoff Canyon 22:38, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what the etiquette is... I asked the same question early on (in fact, I think I even used the word etiquette). The answer I got, boiled down, was "whatever". I like these virtual conversations to happen in one place rather than two, for obvious reasons. I moved your response over to your talk page for no compelling reason; feel free to move it back to mine or wherever (it's on my watchlist, so I'll notice). eMail is possible, but not everybody turns it on (mine in enabled). Obviously I put notes of direct importance to the article on the article's discussion page.

...as clear as the tax code. Oh, yeah. Gotta do my taxes.

...a discussion of depth. Here's my take. One of the things I like about the Wikipedia is the sublime irrelevance of so much of the material. In Britannica, you'll never find an analysis of the personality of a video game character; or a list of Japanese porno actresses; or the Guinness Book of World Records entry for longest sushi ever. This texture is one of the things I like. I infer from your words that you believe that a Wiki article is supposed to be a coherent, well-formed essay; I think that it's whatever someone wants to take the trouble to put in. Too much detail? I don't think I understand the concept. Of course, it still must be managed, or at least channeled. To me, this points to splitting up.

I lean toward splitting things up once they get past five or ten pages (certainly an arbitrary number). There are (or maybe: were) some size limitation, and obviously bigger has technical problems (the diffs, loading time for slower connections, and so forth), but I think of it in a more conceptual way. It is pretty easy in this case. My argument is: OGC split it up, and so should we. But if I do in fact bother to make the split and you don't like it, you can always revert. And then we can have an edit war, and call each other rude names. It will be great fun.  :-)

...helping with the wiki page seems like a reasonable way to get there. Isn't the Wiki a fabulous opportunity to learn new things? I absolutely love it.

DanielVonEhren 01:53, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)