User talk:John Mark Williams

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[edit] List of post-nominal letters

Hi! I was just wondering why it's better to link MBE to List of post-nominal letters rather than Order of the British Empire in Ellen MacArthur. I find it distracting when an abbreviation links to a long list, because the reader then has to search a long list to find what they were looking for, but it may be just me! Is this a matter of general style? Given that the Order of the British Empire article starts with a list of the Orders of the British Empire anyway, is the change really an improvement? John Mark Williams (t) 11:22, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, I did it for two reasons. First of all, that's the way I've seen it done in other articles, so I think it might be standard. This makes sense when you imagine somebody with a long string of post-nominals — some of them may not actually have individual articles to link to; and furthermore linking the whole series to one page to explain the whole shebang is arguably more convenient than a lot of little links. Of course, that situation doesn't really apply here; but it provided my precedent. Secondly, I thought it necessary, further on in the ¶, to link Order of the British Empire since readers might not have noticed that the MBEs were already linked to that page. But other things being equal, of course, we're supposed to use the first and only the first opportunity to link a particular phrase. So (and this on the one hand provided my original impetus, although on the other I realize it seems a little obsessive-compulsive) I was afraid that somebody might invoke this rule and un-link "order of the British Empire" even though its link is probably more important than the MBE's link. The latter had priority by position, the former for the sake of clarity. At any rate, by changing the link, I obviated the issue.
As you can see, neither of my justifications really make the change necessary. But on the other hand I don't think there's anything wrong with List of post-nominal letters especially since I believe that is a standard way of doing things (particularly with the "small" html tag). Even if this doesn't convince you, I hope it explains my thought processes. Doops 17:49, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I personally link individually (for example - KG, PC), because there are only a few people with long lists of post-nominals (dead people should probably not have post-nominals, so sorry, no "Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, VC KG GCMG GCVO OM CH PC QC MP Esq., Bt., D.Ed., D.Phil." :-) ugen64 21:58, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] UK GB

Frankly, I don't agree with that convention, but I followed it simply because I noticed UK was linked several times. Feel free to change it back - in fact, I encourage you to do so :-). ugen64 21:56, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Eugene Bullard

Bullard's date of birth is listed as October 9, 1895 in Craig Lloyd's biography of him, Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris. As I was working with the author when he was writing the book, I'm apt to trust his research. Ganymead 1 July 2005 04:04 (UTC)

Yes, linking the reference would be required if you're working this up to FA standard. Ganymead 2 July 2005 18:13 (UTC)

[edit] Runaway

Heya John Mark,

About the runaway bride thing, I guess I didn't consider it a classical 'easter egg' because runaway bride is a disambig page. I suppose to some degree I felt that your edit took the wind out of Conyers' comment--the idea of media coverage solely for the sake of distraction. Though I completely agree we should not just adopt every little phrase that anyone of some notoriety speaks, I think that the 'runaway bride' idea _should_ be kept permanently.

The 'runaway bride' story is one example of a long line of stories which come along and dominate media attention (and thereby viewer attention), yet are very anecdotal and wholly inconsequential to really anything. A kind of unadvertised reality programming. Perhaps this is not unique to America, and I think you're probably right that you'd have to be an American to catch the reference. But, being an American, I really found it ... insane ... how many thousands of hours of network attention this received.

My revert represented more the wishes about the runaway bride than my believing your adherence to wikipedia 'policy' was in error. Yeago 4 July 2005 19:50 (UTC)

[edit] Re: My ex-red user page link

Hi there! Thank you very much for clearing my user page, which I am studiously keeping blank til I have something to say on it. I rather enjoyed having a red link to it, so that others wouldn’t be tempted to click through to it, but I imagine that there’s no way to have the page deleted without going through the normal deletion procedure (which I’ve never even used, so I don’t know how that works either!), is there? Whatever, thanks again! ☺

—John Mark Williams ❲⌂|☏❳ 17:23, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I've deleted your user page per your request. Kelly Martin 17:50, July 28, 2005 (UTC)