User talk:Rhallanger

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Welcome!

Hello, Rhallanger, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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:Where to ask a question, 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!  -- Longhair | Talk 09:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Welcome to WikiProject Trains!

Hi. I saw the article on Steamtown (and you probably noticed my copyedit) and noticed that you'd added yourself to WikiProject Trains; this is just a quick note to say welcome to WikiProject Trains. We've got a pretty big to do list of articles to write and articles to improve, and any help is greatly appreciated. Also, I'm the current lead editor on the Trains wikiportal, and I'm always looking for additional candidates for the portal's featured article and image for the week as well as new Did you know tidbits. If you've got any questions on the rail transport content here or in the Trains WikiProject, feel free to ask me on my talk page. slambo 20:06, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: images

It would be nice if we could just copy images from railpictures.net (that's where I get all my personal desktop wallpaper from these days), but due to copyright concerns, we can't do that. Copyrights and licensing can be a sticky issue. Wikipedia's official image use policy has good guidelines in this regard. For images that I've upload, I try to find an image that I created first (which I list on my gallery page). I put the Creative Commons ShareAlike license on my images (using {{cc-by-sa-2.0}}), but other editors release their images into the public domain or release them under the GFDL.

If I don't have an image of my own, I try for an image in the public domain (there's a long iist of potentially free image resources that comes in handy); generally, if the image was published in the US before 1923, or if it was created by a US Government agency in the course of the agency's work, then it's likely a public domain image.

Whoops, I've got to check the TV, the weather service just issued a tornado warning for my area. I'll be back later tonight. slambo 22:32, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, several tornadoes touched down as close as 20 miles from me, but no problems here. Anyway...
The biggest issue is that anything we upload to Wikipedia should be available under some kind of free license. The only exception that I will make in uploading files is images of corporate logos to use on articles about those corporations. In that case, the logo image gets tagged with {{logo}} which allows for fair use considerations (for example, see Image:Upshield.gif). The copyrights page explains the differences in more detail. slambo 00:24, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Good model articles for Class III and RR Pics

Hmmm... Well, I can think of several Class II and larger that would fall into that category such as Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad, but for a Class III, the first that comes to mind is San Diego and Arizona Railway. The latter's a little heavy on the timeline section, but it's a good length and it has a good selection of images (although the image placement could be improved a little). Except for a lack of a map and references, Buckingham Branch Railroad is also good. Georgia Southwestern Railroad and Housatonic Railroad both are referenced and have a good amount of text, but no images.

As to categories, I generally start with [[Category:STATE railroads]], where STATE is the state name, for each state where the railroad operated (for example, Wisconsin and Southern Railroad operates in Wisconsin and Illinois, so the article uses both Cat:Illinois railroads and Cat:Wisconsin railroads in its category list).

I don't think there are any truly great articles on Class III railroads yet, but these should give you an idea of what I consider good. slambo 18:30, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and about images (I knew I forgot something), the ones that I use in my own writing are usually either images that I created myself (see User:Slambo/Gallery) in various railfanning trips over the last 15 years, or public domain images (images created and published before 1923 or by a US government agency) that I've found at the Library of Congress. slambo 18:37, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Is this public domain image?

Neat site, now I'll have to spend a day or two exploring what's there! My first thought would be that we should be able to use it due to the image's age, but looking around a little, http://www.sacramentohistory.org/about.html has a short blurb on copyrights that brings that into question. It seems that the best option would be to inquire about permission to freely use images from the site in WP. We may be able to claim fair use rights similar to images licensed with {{Denver Public Library image}}; the {{Non-free fair use in}} license tag may provide some guidance. I try to avoid fair use claims for anything but logos, but in some cases, that is the best that we can get. slambo 14:52, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Stubs vs Articles

1. (duly ignored).

2. Usually what I do when filling in a list is to add as much information as I have on each topic. For example going through the articles in {{EMD GPs}}, I added the technical information that I had at hand for each one, but since I didn't have the history of their development except for the EMD BL2, they still came out as stubs (although some have been further expanded since then). However, in working through the list of America's most notable railroaders or Santa Fe Railroad presidents, I try to fill in a little more on each article before moving on to the next. I find it easier to concentrate on one topic for a while, but when I've got references that list information on several topics, I'll stub out articles on the topics that are mentioned and then come back to them when I find more. About the only time that I will usually build stubs is when the articles are listed in a navigation template that appears on a large number of articles; in that way the missing articles don't clutter up the Requested articles list quite as much.

3. Looks good, and I may do something like that for List of Wisconsin railroads as I find more information. We can probably get by without an alphabetical list and let the category take care of that for us. At worst, someone who is looking for information on a specific railroad can use the search function in his/her browser or the site search in the site navigation menu. I know what you mean about states with a large number of railroads; there are still more to discover for Wisconsin, and others like Illinois...

slambo 14:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Wfsloco.jpg

Hello, thanks for uploading Image:Wfsloco.jpg. You state on the image description page that the copyright owner has given permission for it to be used on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this level of permission is no longer sufficient and such images may not be used on Wikipedia. Perhaps you could ask the copyright owner to consider allowing it's use under one of the many acceptable copyright terms allowed on Wikipedia. I would suggest that the best option is if the copyright owner gives permission for anyone to use the image for any purpose. As it stands at the moment, the image will be deleted in 7 days. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on my talk page. Thanks! David Johnson [T|C] 19:46, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delink Dates and Railroads? Why?

Why are you delinking complete dates? (i.e. January 1, 1922). There is a reason why they are linked. The style manual says to put full dates within links, as that adjusts the date format based on the language. For example, in the USA it would show up as January 1, 1922 whereas in another country/format it would show 1 January 1922.

You also delinked railroads that are not written yet but need articles. Rhallanger 05:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess I'm confused as to what dates get linked and what don't anymore; there has been a lot of bot activity recently on many of the articles on my watchlist that have been removing the links, hence I have been only putting links up front (i.e., for a date of establishment) but at this point I'm just going to "punt" and leave things as is. As far as railroad links, the only ones I am conscious of removing have been in those instances where there are duplicate links (i.e., Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific) within the same article. If you have specific examples I will review my edits in this regard.--Lordkinbote 07:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page Blanking

On 14-Mar, you blanked Arizona and Eastern Railway. Blanking pages is generally considered a bad idea. I've reverted it to the previous version. If this was the result of a broken edit, you may wish to make the correct edits. If you believe the page should be deleted, please follow the deletion procedures. If you believe different content should go there, please create a stub. If you have questions, please let me know. Thanks! -- JLaTondre 04:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Copied from my talk page: We all make mistakes. Thanks for redirecting it to the right place. -- JLaTondre 15:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: How do I create maps for RR project?

For the maps that I've made (like Image:Wisconsin Central 1998 map.png or Image:Wisconsin Central 1998 map.png), I started with Image:US state outline map.png and then used GIMP (since most of my wikiediting is done from a Linux box) to crop it down to the section I needed and add the lines (freehand with the pencil tool) and labels. There was some brief talk on the Maps TF talk page about free GIS software and where to obtain data sets for it, but I haven't looked much farther into that. Slambo (Speak) 10:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creating new articles

Thanks for creating Woodbridge, California. Please use Wikipedia formats and include stub tags and Categories to help them grow. Take a look at the edits I made to it to see what you can easily incorporate while creating the articles. Thanks! Hu 11:53, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oregon Railway and Navigation Company

Thanks for creating the article and the OR&N one. I had assumed they were two names for the same thing, and since I got more google hits for Railway, I changed some of the references in articles from Railroad to Railway. Since you say you have the reference books, would you consider checking the "what links here" for the Railway article and make sure the references to the Railway are still accurate? Thanks for your help! Katr67 04:48, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned fair use image (Image:NWPLogoold.jpg)

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[edit] Northern Electric Railway-Marysville and Colusa Branch

Hi! I came across this article while doing categorization gnoming, and noticed what looked like a paragraph cut-off in mid-stride, "starting in the 1980s" or something like that. Thought you might want to take a look in case you wanted to complete that, thank you! --Joe Decker 19:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC) Ahh, think I got it. Thanks, though, great contributions to the railroad articles! --Joe Decker 21:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notification

Hello sir, I am Stephen Hjellum. I saw your Sierra Northern railroad page and merged it into the Sierra Northern Railway article. I am deleting the old one, and, as the deletion thing says, i must put the following on the author of the page, so i assume that you created the article:==Speedy deletion of Sierra Northern Railroad== A tag has been placed on Sierra Northern Railroad, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

No longer neccessary

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet very basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as an appropriate article, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is appropriate, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add {{hangon}} on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. StephenHjellum13 20:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC) StephenHjellum13

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:GSWRLogo.gif

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[edit] Speedy deletion of Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber

A tag has been placed on Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a company or corporation, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for companies and corporations.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Calvin 1998 (talk) 01:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I declined the speedy for you, Rhallanger; it's clearly a notable subject. I added a reference as well -- you may have found it yourself -- a well-written page at the Truckee-Donner Historical Society: [1]. Have fun writing! Antandrus (talk) 02:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Disputed fair use rationale for Image:CORPlogo.jpg

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[edit] Disputed fair use rationale for Image:WFSlogo.gif

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If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 07:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned non-free media (Image:CArrlogo.gif)

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