User talk:Victor Engel

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[edit] Belated welcome

Hello, Victor Engel, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} and your question on your user talk page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! // FrankB 02:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"Full moon cycle" or "moon cycle" would be good names. But "fumocy" is not (yet at least) a widely-accepted term for this; thus it cannot be used as an article title or linked to (but it could be mentioned as a proposed name of the concept). The article was not deleted; It's right here. Just use the "move page" feature. --mav 20:06, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Belated welcome, and Thanks for the note on Fabartus

Typos and misspellings are a likely thing. You probably shouldn't make a practice of throwing minor mistakes like that in peoples faces, just fix them.
  • Not sure what plain dates I obscured,
Since this is my own talk page (thanks for setting it up), I'll experiment here with editing. I know there's a sandbox -- I just haven't played in it enough. The dates I was referring to were, e.g., changing "2000-01-01 00:00:00" to "two thousandths (2000 AD) very first second". Was that supposed to be easier to understand? It actually took me several readings before I understood what you were trying to do.
so far as I can see on a re-read, as intended, I introduced the concept of Terrestrial time, which was only linked as an abbreviation,
It seems to me being linked as an abbreviation is sufficient. If you're not familiar with the concept, simply follow the link, conveniently located at the appropriate spot, and read up. That's the whole beauty of hypertext.


   Moreover, like the little fixup I did, the paragraph needs to be carefully worded to introduce terms, then use them,
Doesn't hypertext do that automatically? It seems to me that it's possible to define terms to excess. If the intended publication were print, I might have a different opinion, but wikipedia is intended for browser use, as far as I know.
Sorry if you thought I in any way thought of that as a completed edit for that section.
I didn't think of it as a completed edit. I did, however, think you thought it an improvement, else why do the edit at all. I thought the article was much harder to read after the edit than before. I would have reverted it, had I known how to do so.
Refer to the Village Pump (Policy) for other thoughts. WP:VPP

   I did (for me) much worse 'damage' on Full Moon, as like the paragraph I suggested needed written more carefully, I found the whole section was poorly self-integrated for the lay person. In general, I'd extend that comment to the next section on both articles. In any event, I abhor 'IN-YOUR-FACE' templates as a rule, but when time (or knowledge) limitations press in this volunteer service, I will (regretfully) occasionally resort to such.
Fortunately for you, perhaps, I'm not sure what you mean by 'IN-YOUR-FACE' templates, but I can guess.
Basically, the two articles should share the same text so far as I'm concerned,
As far as that goes, "full moon cycle" would be equivalent to "new moon cycle". Well, at least they have the same period. The details of the variation would differ. For example, the maximum interval between new moons is not the same as the maximum interval between full moons even though their mean intervals are the same.
as I commented plainly on Talk:Full moon. Note I also stated a three-point set of deficiencies, but also that only the third was 'Real important', the other two are matters of taste.

   Now being a new editor, note that it's preferable to do a complete edit, but if you can't, it's important to state what you percieve is wrong, and if possible (like points 1 & 2) suggest what may be a corrective measure. People edit in an area to which they tend to specialize. Most articles are patrolled or watched by people making a contribution on them, but that doesn't mean a wandering editor has no place or valid view point. Some matters, especially technical ones like this can benefit from a view from another's shoes. The idea is to work together, and minimize friction (See WP:CIV), not expect everyone to be perfect everytime. It is part of our culture that any non-user page is subject to being edited mercilessly. So edit out my misspelling, don't bitch about it.
I was at work at the time and didn't have the time. My decision to contact you directly was to point out something that I perceived was a sloppy edit by you that you may have been unaware of. I tried contacting you in as private a way as I could identify. Consider my comment to you to have been terse, but not rude, please.
If you have the time to work on the article flow and present the dates, do so. No one owns any article on wp, and the troubles follow if and only if one begins to feel possessive of them. In the meantime, I'll leave you a welcome message above, which has some useful links. Best regards // FrankB 02:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the welcome message. I will use it.

[edit] Wholesale deletion?

You added comments to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#self-appointed gatekeepers with the edit comment, "Restoring wholesale deletion of my comment." I looked at the history/diffs, and it does not look like your remarks were previously added, so I am puzzled what you mean by "Wholesale deletion." Robert A.West (Talk) 20:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I am puzzled, too. I only added that remark after I verified that my change was edited out (by the change currently after it). It appeared both in the current view and the history view. Like you, I now can see no evidence of my ever having made such a change. Have I accidentally run into a wiki bug? What happens if two people make an edit to the same page at the same time, by the way? Victor Engel 22:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
If both editors make identical edits (as in two reverts of the same vandalism), one will be ignored; otherwise, the second one to save should get an edit conflict page, which that editor has to resolve manually. My edit (immediately following yours in space, but preceding it in time) was an edit conflict, and I thought that perhaps I had inadvertantly wiped out your edit in resolving the conflict. When I saw that it wasn't so, I looked further. I have seen odd things happen when there are multiple edit conflicts on a page -- perhaps that is what happened in this instance. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps. In any case, I wasn't particularly worried about it. In the worst case scenario, it would have been an illustration for the subject the commentary was about. For what it's worth, I thought you said much more eloquently essentially what I was trying to say. Perhaps I shouldn't have said "Wholesale deletion". That was out of frustration with having lost the changes I'd just made. Victor Engel 23:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
There seems to have been an additional problem. Your comment, "Yes, there are some articles that are infested by POV-warriors who keep down reasonable edits, but they are outnumbered by the articles that are guarded by knowledgable, responsible editors. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)" does not appear in the current version. I did not delete it. In fact, I want to pains to ensure it remained, since it was not my comment, and it included your sig. I thought I'd better post this, so you knew there was no intention on my part to delete it. Victor Engel 00:33, 27 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Digital Photography edit undone

I undid your edit to the digital photography article. I don't think the edit substantially improved the article. Furthermore, the illustration was an animated GIF. GIF images are not appropriate for photographs because of quantization issues. I realize GIF was used to do get the animation to work. However, animations are also annoying to many people, and I think in this context having two separate pictures side-by-side would be more appropriate. The animation would be completely lost to anyone reading through quickly, having a browser with animation turned off, or for a printed version of the article. Victor Engel 01:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your memo. Most editors don't bother to do such. And I understand the various arguments against animated gifs, but I've seen it used in many other articles here on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jupiter_Great_Red_Spot_Animation.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rivertree_thirds_md.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AnimECHECS-Le-coup-du-Berger3.gif
I also believe the very nature of animated web media lends itself to more advantages than disadvantages. We are using browsers on electronic machines, not pen an paper or books to view the web, thus the media is different. I also think seeing the dramatic differences in such an image has more impact than doing a side by side comparison as you suggested. Someone can look at the various areas of the image and see exactly where the changes were made with an animation. This is much more difficult and less noticeable with a side by side illustration. To completely disregard the benefits of web media for the sake of deferring to "old" media is, in my opinion, to try to grandfather the need for buggy whips when the automobile has clearly made the need for buggies obsolete.
Thus in this case, I default to the Wiki no firm rules policy.
--Mactographer 03:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
In this instance, I think a mouseover action would be far more effective. I have no idea how to do that on wikipedia, however. By the way, I think the animation of the River tree thirds also suffers the same problem as the image I removed. However, in the case of the Digital photography article, in addition, the accompanying text didn't improve the article. Victor Engel 05:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)