User talk:Mednak

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Headings

Hi, I noticed you changed the headings of Lojban. I changed some of them to conform to the Manual of Style. Level-1 headings -- that is, = Like this =, with only one equals sign -- are generally avoided, as they're usually unnecessary. I also changed them so that the headings are nested properly. For instance, a level-4 heading should never appear directly under a level-2 heading; it should always be level 2, level 3, and then level 4. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), in particular the markup section. I'm not mad at you or anything; I'm just making you aware of our conventions for using headings. :) - furrykef (Talk at me) 08:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. I will make sure I follow that convention. --Mednak 11:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Lojban

Hi,

If you'll explain what you're trying to do at Talk:Lojban, I can help you do it correctly. Right now it looks like you're simply deleting certain past discussions, which obviously is unacceptable.

—RuakhTALK 23:19, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted no discussions; it is just that their positions have been re-arranged in accordance with the relevance of their topics. Please have a look at the archives of Lojban grammar. All of the previous discussions should be preserved either on there or on Lojban's. --Mednak 23:28, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
That's not how it works. You can't just decide that one discussion is more important than another and should appear higher up, or that a discussion doesn't actually apply to one article and should instead appear at the talk-page of another. —RuakhTALK 23:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
(Let's discuss this issue on the talk page.)
The grammar section of Lojban and Lojban grammar share the originally identical, and now more elaborate, descriptions; the previous discussions concerning the grammar can reasonably be on the talk page of Lojban grammar.
I have noticed the comment on Talk:Lojban grammar/Archive 1 - 'This "archive" is a fake; these comments never appeared at Talk:Lojban grammar'; but I am also aware the fact that every comments in question are entirely relevant to the history of discussions on the content of Lojban grammar (and is no longer as much of relevance to that of this article, Lojban). --Mednak 00:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
If you want to copy a discussion from Talk:Lojban to Talk:Lojban grammar, that's fine; just be sure to note it in both copies of the discussion. (If you copy multiple discussions, the obviously multiple notes will be needed.) —RuakhTALK 00:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Any template for that kind of notes?
And why would the agreement between the subject of comments and that of the article on which the comments are archived cause a serious editorial problem and the disagreement not (which is the case of e.g. Pronouncing the comma in Talk:Lojban)? Leaving those no-longer-trully-relevant comments on a talk page to which they cannot refer any significant things seems to me more problematic for the editors. I mean, most of the comments I tried to replace (after the creation of Lojban grammar) were that which had quite few things to do with the descriptions in Lojban#Grammar simply because their real references were just no longer in there (such are now in the respective sections of Lojban grammar). Suppose there is a starting article on "movies", in which the actor "Robert De Niro" is simultaneously described and discussed; the article or its sections grow, and effectively some sections including "Robert De Niro" are split, becoming independent articles; the editors try to replace/concentrate/archive the previous discussions on Robert De Niro from "movies" onto "Robert De Niro" because they find it would facilitate and encourage new discussions on "Robert De Niro" (and also help the talk page of "movies" be tidy-up). The specific comments & discussions on "Robert De Niro" have now only limitted relevance to the generality of the article "movies".
If a stored form of texts is a "fake" because the included information/comments never appeared internally at its local space, how come the site allows for the redirection between different articles? What I hope to be done is just like redirecting texts so that everyone who wants to read the old discussions is not baffled by the scatteration and balkiness and irrelevancy of what they find there. The original arrangement of the comments posted by people is (naturally) crude, and I think of the re-arrangement of them as an important part of our activity on wikipedia.--Mednak 00:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Talk-pages are different from article pages in that no one owns an article page, but to some extent each editor owns his own comments, in that his signature is attached to each of them. Now, in some cases it's necessary or desirable to alter another editor's comment (by changing its content or location); the important thing is to do so transparently, so anyone reading the discussion will know that they're getting an altered version. You can see this, for example, with discussion archives, where the page title and the box at the top make it clear that the discussion actually took place at the main talk-page. (See Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages#Concerns for some discussion on things to be careful about when editing a talk-page.) Further, some kinds of changes are simply never worthwhile; for example, discussion pages always start at the top and work downward, which is a simple scheme that makes it easy to find a discussion if you know roughly when it was initiated. Moving conversations around on the page simply makes the page more disorganized and less useful. —RuakhTALK 03:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Really? I would find it more organized and useful if conversations about phonology are under the category of "Phonology" and morphology under "Morphology" and so on. From the same viewpoint, I would question the quality of a talk page or its archives if some comments are under different headings while they do share the same categorical properties. Example: On Talk:Lojban/Archive 1 there is a discussion titled genericaly "Suggestions", while there are other such a kind of discussions under different headings on the same level. It also seems not as easy to find a discussion by date because searchers would usually know less about the time it was initiated than about the topic they are looking for. Some discussions might span years and its chronological context is difficult to be remembered or identified, whereas their topics are invarible as long as the headings are existent and properly followed. Newcommers will certainly have no idea about such date, first of all. My intention is to make things clearer, easier, and useful for everyone who is willing to join the talk page, not solely for those who have posted the comments and are done with it. It is very likely that people who were not involved in the old discussions will want to read its archives more than those who already finished discussing the topics will. That's why I think ordering the archives according to their topics is more vital than leaving it as crude as is. I find no reason to keep the texts unorganized and make the searchers feel lost.
I don't wish my action to be called vandalism so I will make myself agreed with and follow what Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages says. That is, I will make separate, "ordered" versions of the archives and link them from the box on the talk pages, preserving the original version as another accessible archives. --Mednak 10:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)