User talk:Pgan002/Archive

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Contents 1 edit to Sudan 2 Path 3 Minor edits 4 India copyedit 5 India Map 6 Rhodesia copyedit 7 Adsorption 8 Please use the preview feature 9 Barnstar 10 Vandalism on Microsoft 11 Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can 12 Numbers spelled out 13 Welcome to the League of Copyeditors! 14 Edit Conflict 15 Thanks! 16 Article on Zambia 17 See also section in Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate 18 Cougar

[edit] edit to Sudan

Thanks for your contributions, but this is one of the least minor edits I've seen in a bit. Please make less liberal use of the "minor edit" checkbox. Also, inserting "invisible" text into the article is not very productive in encouraging new contributions; a more effective approach may be to make a list of important to-dos in the talk. Thanks, BanyanTree 23:32, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Do you mean I mande too many (albeit small) changes, or some of the changes are big? Which ones? I think they are all small rearrangement of text, sentence simplifications or wikifications, which qualify as minor edits according to "How to edit a page". Pgan002 00:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The first explanation.  :) There are so many tweaks that it actually takes a while to go through all your rewordings to make sure that something does not now imply something that it didn't in the previous version. (I'm sure you're being careful about that, but some editors like me are a bit paranoid unless they scan every edit.) Leaving off the minor check and writing "extensive copyedit and rewording for clarity", or something similar, as an edit summary would be much appreciated when doing a bunch of minor edits at once. You must be the master of the preview; I always find myself going back and catching things I had originally missed. Cheers, BanyanTree 00:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

OK. It might help others if the consideration of quantity of small changes is mentioned at "How to edit a page". Ideally, I would make checking easier. Would it help to, say, edit and save each paragaph separately, or something like that? Pgan002 01:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, you appear to have a sudden traffic jam on your user talk after several months of solitude. I'm not at all saying that you should break up your editing, and doing so would just require editors to do a group diff to see the combined effect of all the separate edits. But please consider whether the combined effect of your edit would require more than a few moments for another editor to check. If there is doubt, don't mark it as minor. Nobody will bother you for marking multiple phrase changes as a regular edit, while several will find a thorough copyedit throughout a large article marked minor to be misleading. Users with hundreds of watched pages rely heavily upon the "m" and edit summaries to keep track of the edit churn. - BanyanTree 02:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Path

Noticed your recent edit to Path. Piping and excess wikilinks do not go in disambiguation pages, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Also, always use an edit suumary, it's important and much appreciated. I have revert your edit to Path.--Commander Keane 02:10, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know -- I would not have read the Disambiguation Page Style Manual on my own. I do not remember such guidelines when I joined a long time ago. I do not understand why the Style says wikilinks should not be used; if the reader does not know some term in the disambiguation, he must then look it up by typing. Pgan002 05:38, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The dab style guide started in July last year. The reason to not use excess wikilinks is that it distracts the reader from finding the article they were looking for. For example in Path, without excess wikilinks there are 9 options for the reader. With excess wikilinks there could be 25 options - which is harder to navigate through.--Commander Keane 00:43, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor edits

You've been occasionally marking edits minor that aren't. See Wikipedia:Minor edit. Note "A major edit is basically something that makes the entry worth relooking at for somebody who wants to watch the article rather closely, so any "real" change, even if it is a single word, is a major edit." To take two examples: you made two minor edits to Wikipedia:Manual of Style recently. One, about serial commas, was probably safe to mark minor, since it was a copyedit without any substantive change (but I know some would disagree, since copyedits can often subtly change meaning—which is more important on a policy page like this). The other, you added information (about "alternate" as a verb). That was not a minor edit. --TreyHarris 08:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, I seem to be messing up pretty badly lately! I apologize; I think it's because I'm making bolder edits. I agree the latter was not minor, and I thought I had gone back and re-edited it trivially, just to mark it as "non-monor"; but now I read at Wikipedia:Minor edit that such trivial edits are auto-discarded. I appreciate your feedback, because I have long had doubts about what is a minor edit and how to summarize edits. I honestly think I'm learning. -Pgan002 00:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] India copyedit

Hi. I appreciate your copyediting of the article on India. Thanks. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 08:30, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! -Pgan002

[edit] India Map

On the India talk page you said you wanted a specific map,i have made my own,and put it up there (Image:India ter1.jpg).If you do not like it,please tell me,ill glady remove it myself or atleast inform me and delete it.I know it doesnt look too good,but it did take some of my time.Plus i uploaded another image by mistake,how do i delete it??Prateek01 15:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I like it, good work! I would still recommend some improvements, most of which require the unlabeled map:

1. Leave a space after every stop (period, ".") and comma (","). The space looks better and words can break on different lines.
2. Make the text background transparent rather than white.
3. Shade all disputed areas with a hashed pattern, either in addition to or instead of the solid color.
4. Label the state names inside the state borders, when they fit, rather than by numbers. I think it is even better if a name is broken on two lines to fit in, for example "Karna-taka".
5. If possible, replace all numbers with lines from a state to its name when it does not fit inside the state borders, as you did with "administered by ..., claimed by ...". This makes it easier to see which name corresponds to any state.
6. Label the "admnistered by, ..." as "admin. by ..., claimed by ...". The first word is abbreviated, and everything but names is lower case -- there is no reason to capitalize.
7. Make the font size the same for "admin..." as with state names.

-Pgan002 04:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rhodesia copyedit

Thanks for your good work on this. I had flagged it and you saved me a lot of trouble. I changed 'program' to 'programme' as I think the Commonwealth spelling is more appropriate here.

Guinnog 23:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course, I meant Zimbabwe here. Sorry, I was looking at both tonight. Guinnog 23:51, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks :-) -Pgan002 03:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adsorption

Very nice corrections to adsorption, are you also a chemist?? Knights who say ni

Thanks. Nah, I'm a computer scientist but I like to read well-written articles. -Pgan002

The Isotherms section probably can be improved. What is the first isotherm called? Do the isotherms have more descriptive names than the names of their discoverors? There is a trend in science to prefer such names, and I think it's a good trend. -Pgan002 18:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please use the preview feature

I would like to thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. However, it is recommended that you use the preview button before you save; this helps you find any errors you have made, and prevents clogging up recent changes and the page history. Thanks again. - Tangotango 08:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I will be more careful. Certainly errors should be corrected before a save. But what may sometimes look like errors is that I try to break up large edits into pieces which can be rolled back more independently. So which edits did you have in mind more specifically? -Pgan002 08:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I was referring to your edits to DNA, but I can see why some edits would be more useful split up than together. That's certainly something I didn't think about :) Cheers, Tangotango 08:38, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

		The Worker's Barnstar
		You have done some great work keeping some science articles clean, and wiki-tastic (triangle of U, polyploidy, etc)! Thanks from everyone! Adenosine | Talk 09:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reconition! I had never heard of barnstars. My next goal should be an Editor's Barnstar ;-)

[edit] Vandalism on Microsoft

I had to revert your edit on Microsoft. Some people before you did some massive amounts of vandalism and there was no good way to fix what they did without undoing what you did. ---J.S ^(T/C) 08:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, your call. I noticed the vandalism, but the versions where it was introduced seemed so many that I thought it would be simpler to improve the current article than to revert. You must be better acquainted with the article history. I probably will not edit it again anyway, unless I return to read it for information. -Pgan002 05:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

[edit] Numbers spelled out

Please familiarize yourself with WP:DATE before changing numbers, such as "sixth" to "6th". Happy editing! Chris the speller 01:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the Manual of Style says that numbers from zero to ten should be spelled out, but also that within a context or a list, style should be consistent. "Example: There were 5 cats, 12 dogs, and 32 birds. or There were five cats, twelve dogs, and thirty-two birds." You refer to the context in the article Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: "The film ended with $423.0 million domestically and just over $1 billion worldwide, becoming the 6th-highest grossing film domestically and the third-highest worldwide. When ticket prices are adjusted for inflation, however, the film is only the 44th highest-grossing film domestically." This constitutes a list much like the example in the Manual of Style, I think (I should have also changed "third-highest" to "3rd-highest"). I'm open to arguments to the contrary. -Pgan002 01:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to the League of Copyeditors!

Thanks for joining. If you're interested, check out the goals of our February participation drive, detailed in the Announcements section of the project page. Again, welcome! And keep up the great work with your copy-edits! BuddingJournalist 02:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Conflict

Hi. As I was editing Cúcuta and pressed "Save page", I ran into an "edit conflict" with you. I moved my version to User:Rintrah/Sandbox. Is it alright if I put my version of History and Foundation into the article? You may refine my version if you like. Rintrah 09:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I saw this so late! I guess we both should have left a note saying we were about to edit it. We both made some big but positive changes, and I think it would be better to merge them rather than choose one set. -Pgan002 09:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I've further refined my version. I have only copyedited the History section up to Battle of Cúcuta, though. Rintrah 09:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I liked some of your wording better than mine, and replaced mine. What do you think about my new structure? It's interesting (alarming) how we differ in interpreting some of the vague sentences. For example, I did not realize that "...Cuellarby ... donated a further 782 hectares to the settlement." So it's good to compare. -Pgan002 09:30, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Table

The table of Cúcuta (this one) is a table of the political division of the city.

--Ricardocolombia 23:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

Thanks for helping me in the article of Cúcuta...

			City of Cúcuta
			This barnstar is awarded to Pgan002 in appreciation of his contributions in the article of Cúcuta. --Ricardocolombia 23:17, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

--Ricardocolombia 23:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article on Zambia

Hey there, I read the discussion page on Zambia and saw that you're one of the regular contributors. I posted a possible add to the article based on an article I read on The Guardian. It is regarding the Chinese population in Zambia. Please if you get a chance check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks a bunch! Vnv lain 17:53, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] See also section in Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate

Hello there. I see you have removed the "see also" section in this article. I have a few comments: first of all, it was not really necessary for you to remove your commentary on the talk page, which would make it easy for someone to identify your edit or rationale later on, as edit summaries are more difficult to search through. Also, the removal of the section left a redundant line-break in the article itself (I've removed it). Lastly, I'm wondering whether it's really a good idea to remove "see also" sections like that. The section contained relevant links. It's usually a good idea to have such a section, because maybe the reader would like to skip the actual article and click through to different articles that are related. We also have users of print versions to consider. There are no hyperlinks in print versions of articles, but it's much easier to figure out relevant articles to look up if there's a section for it. Maybe you can reconsider. —msikma (user, talk) 21:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, perhaps I should have left a comment on the talk page saying why. I thought that my summary sufficed, and that the "See also" section was clearly unnecessary. I did not want to clutter the talk page with trivia. Sorry about the line break. For removal, I followed the Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#See_also, which says:

'The "See also" section provides an additional list of internal links to other articles in the Wikipedia that are related to this one as a navigational aid, and it should ideally not repeat links already present in the article. Mostly, topics related to an article should be included within the text of the article as free links.'

(bolding in original) I agree with this. Why duplicate links from the article, after it? The article is supposed to link only to relevant topics. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to skip reading the article, only to look at related articles, but they can easily use the links in the article. What's more, the context of the links in the "See also" section is lost -- unlike in the article body, it is not clear why a link is relevant. As for print, links are as visible there as in a "See also" section. And especially for print, it is important not to waste space with duplicate information. The only caveat is that the relevant links should be included as free links (which I suppose means without altered text). I did not check the archives, but I remember making sure that all the links in the "See also" section were included in the article as free links. -Pgan002 02:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cougar

Hi, I was wondering if you could remove the inuse tag and discuss your changes on the article talk page, as some of the changes you are making are to items that were covered in the featured article review and/or go against WP:MOS conventions such as WP:MOSNUM. Having the article in use while it's on the main page isn't great. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:40, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Sure. It's not me who put the tag there, but someone has now removed it. -Pgan002 01:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, it was hard to figure out. And I discovered your changes to the numbers were the correct ones. But there have been several discussions about the capitalization issue. I hate the main page !! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:56, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I have not made most of the capitalization changes that I see now in the article, only some obviously wrong ones. "Cougar" can only be capitalized when it refers to the species; for example, you cannot write "Male Cougars ...", because the plural refers to a collection of individual animals, not to the species. You can write "Male cougars..., or "The male Cougar". If the latter, then all references to species in the article should be capitalized too, including deer, elk, aardvark, etc. I prefer lowercase, but I don't want an edit war over it. -Pgan002 02:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)