User talk:Wxthewx99

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Hello, Wxthewx99, 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! --W.marsh 18:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Portal:Baseball/News

I don't yet see your talk page comment relative to your reversion, but I imagine that you'll suggest that we ought to enumerate all inducted players, and I expect that's true. I've returned, then, the delineation of players but retained my formatting, which I think properly to fit with the news section and the fashion in which portals are generally maintained. Should you think me to be wrong or should that otherwise not work for you, you should, of course, feel free to write me at my talk or to discuss the issue generally at Portal talk:Baseball/News. Joe 05:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't excise most of your text; I simply reformatted it in order that it should be encyclopedic. I'm sorry if you've inferred any malign motive from my edits, but you should be assured that none of your work was lost. I returned your enumeration of the 2006 class and simply reworked your text; I also moved the trade section in order that the Abreu deal should be added. If you are interested in contributing frequently in portal space, you may do well to read WP:PORTAL, viz., Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines. As to the maintenance of the portal (see Wikipedia:Portal/Directory), I replace the selected bio, article, image, quotations, and DYK every two weeks (they've about nine days left now) and update the news section where appropriate. It is common practice across portals (and, for that matter, the main page) to list only the most significant events (even if in trivial detail), and broader work ought to go to 2006 in baseball or Current sports events, at which much help is needed. I'm altogether happy you've decided to help with the portal news section, though, and I hope you won't mind others' editing your work, especially in order that it should comport with gneeral practice. If you should have any questions, please feel free to write.  :) Joe 05:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I replied to you at Portal talk:Baseball/News. In sum, though, I think we've gotten off on a rather deleterious foot and that we ought to start again. I certainly didn't mean to foreclose the possibility that we ought to change the fashion in which news is formatted at the sundry sports portals, only to suggest that the fact of such formulation represented some sort of consensus about a change of which one ought to talk. As to stylistic issues, perhaps I untowardly altered some of your text (although, to be sure, I made no substantive deletions), for which I'll apologize. In any event, though, I hope we can start over; it is certainly to the project's benefit that others should involve themselves in the baseball portal, and I look forward to editing with you in the future.  :) Joe 05:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Jocular was, I think, in reference to your trade edits; slugging, blockbuster, and major here were inappropriate per WP:NOT, WP:RS, and, more generally, the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and uses formal, academic language. With respect to your BBHoF edits, my concerns were as to grammar more than as to syntax; here you misspelled notably, used a plural verb with a singular subject, used the present perfect simple where the simple past ought to have been favored, omitted a hyphen, and omitted a few internal links that likely should have been included. I mean this parsing not to reflect some vindicative condescension but rather to illustrate the reasons for which your edits were, at least to me, off-putting. My edit to your HoF addition was as to style rather than as to substance (save for with respect to the Abreu and Lee trades), and I suppose I can't elucidate precisely why I reworked your text, except to say that my version, you will surely concede, is more stilted than yours; whether such change is good is a wholly different concern and one on which I'll not touch at the moment. Where editors have different styles, there is no clear means by which to resolve editing disputes, except generally to defer to the editor to have crafted a given text first (as we deal with disputes as to what geographic form of English we ought to use); here, though, inasmuch as the rest of the news section is written in a certain style, it does not, I think, make sense to format one particular item differently—of course, as items fall off, a new style surely can be essayed. To be entirely frank, there is really no need for more than one editor to work on the baseball portal with any frequency; the body of the work is undertaken twice monthly and consumes only an hour or two (I undertake to rewrite articles before transcluding them on the portal, but others don't). If you should like to assume some responsibility for the portal, then, that would be great, and so if you'd like to take care to update the various sections in a week or two, I'd be altogether happy. I hope that, at the very least, you'll consider my formulations, though. Joe 06:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Toronto Blue Jays

Whilst looking at your userpage a few days ago, I noticed that you'd created some article apropos of the Blue Jays as subpages of the main article (or at least titles in view of which the mediawiki software would understand them to be redirects). Because, for content intended permanently to be part of the encyclopedia, subpages are deprecated, I moved each of the pages you created to appropriate titles, such that they should no longer be subpages (although each of the former subpages still redirects to the new pages); Toronto Blue Jays/Managers and ownership, for example, has been moved to Toronto Blue Jays managers and ownership (although the former remains a redirect to the latter).

FWIW, and since you inquired at Talk:Toronto Blue Jays team records as to the encyclopedic worth/character of the articles, I think each, with the possible exception of the broadcasters article, which I'd likely merge with the overarching article, to merit inclusion here, and, notwithstanding that a few editors might think otherwise, I think your proposal that we craft similar subpages (especially relative to team records and awards won) for each Major League team to be spot-on, and I'll help wherever I can; you should, of course, feel free to be bold and begin such pages whenever you've time. If ever you want a space in which to work on such pages (or others), which I imagine take a bit to format and might not be finished in one editing session, you may create a sandbox subpage of your userpage (e.g., at User:Wxthewx99/Sandbox) at which to work on shizz (my apologies for consuming your time if already you knew this; I know that you've been here for quite some time but contribute—at least while logged in—rather infrequently, and so I'm not sure how conversant you are with wiki syntax and policy.

Your work seems to be stellar—there are certainly a few WP:NPOV, WP:OR, and WP:RS concerns with respect to the Managers and ownership subpage (phrases such as realize their dream, cleaning up Johnson's mess, and axed are inappropriately informal, while intimations such as poor trade for Mike Sirotka [notwithstanding the self-evident nature of that proposition to you and me, it nevertheless seems to reflect an unsourced point-of-view])—so I look forward to working with you in the future.

Please don't infer malign motive or animus from my moving the pages you created and commenting on some less-than-encyclopedic treatments therein; I mean not to be incivil and, indeed, write because you seem to be altogether sensible and knowledgable and are an editor from whose presence Wikipedia surely benefits. If you should think me to have made an editing error where our paths have crossed (e.g., at Portal:Baseball), I'll cordially thank you in advance for your raising the issue with me.

One other thing to note: it's usually not a good idea to pipe links in the See also section of an article, lest the reader should not readily appreciate the page to which he is taken (even where the piping properly conveys the subject of the latter). Feel free to drop me a note if you need anything... :) Joe 03:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Baseball/News

I made a few tweaks to your Hafner addition, and I write only in order that you shouldn't once more impute malign motive. There were several syntactic and grammatical errors in your edit that I attempted to remedy (of course, should I have made errors, you should surely correct them). I noticed also that you changed Although his team win to Although his team wins; even as your edit here was probably fully appropriate, in view of the singular American nature of the news passim (my inexplicable love of British English notwithstanding), you might want, at your leisure, to peruse WP:MoS#National varieties of English, as some contributors are particularly irked at an editor's changing the fashion in which a collective noun is treated.

I write principally, I think, lest you should think me to have edited your version for other-than-encyclopedic reasons (see, e.g., in view of my putative desire to own the portal), and I hope you'll not once more think me to have been untoward here. Joe 02:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to reply at Portal talk:Baseball/News to your concerns, in order that we might move toward (hey, see, I used the American toward over the British towards!) a meta-philosophy such that we'll better be able to work together on the portal; please let me know if there's anything my treatment of which you think to be insufficient—I want to ensure that we're on the same page, at least as regards what questions we're discussing, if not as regards the appropriate dispositions thereof. Btw, I'm quite certain you think me to be acting as a hardass/jackass; I rather think you're justified in reaching such conclusion (even as I'd like to believe that generally I'm neither a hardass nor a jackass), and I'm sorry that I've been less clear and more abrupt than perhaps I ought to have been. I'm going, at the very least, to try to leave alone any news items that you add, as I understand how disconcerting it must be to have me ostensibly denigrating every contribution you make; I hope you'll believe that I've not meant to be a jerk but probably have been hypercorrective. Joe 22:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, btw, for catching my transcription error re Hughes. I rather think the item not to merit inclusion (even) in portal space—after all, we haven't any article on consecutive plate appearances in which a hit was recorded, and we wouldn't generally make mention of such records at current sports events—and to be a classic Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, but I am loathe to remove good contributions and in any case don't want you to think that I've it out for your every edit. To my mind, almost all of what you're adding is quite excellent—indeed, it's a pleasure to work with someone who is knowledgable about baseball but who also understands what Wikipedia is (articles w/r/to sports and pop culture, as you've surely gathered, attract copious cruft), but I hope you'll consider how WP:NOT might apply to PB/N (as I will, as perhaps it is I who interprets NOT, etc., much too strictly). Joe 07:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Canada Series

I have no problem with the merger. SFrank85 14:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Baseball/Quotes

(I wrote you apropos of this issue yesterday, but I find that my note was—brace yourself, this will shock you—exorbitantly long, and so I hope I might be a bit more cogent here.)
FWIW, I imagine that I ought to explain my move and cleanup of your addition; to the extent that my edit summary did not make clear that I did not intend simply to rework capriciously your text, I apologize.

My move was only in order that the images in the section should continue to display properly (viz., without unnecessary white space infra to them), but I gather that you may have thought me to be impugning the quality of your addition (I do think it to be unencyclopedic, but I didn't–and don't–intend to broach that issue); I have not, then, reverted your return of the quote to the top of the section and will preserve it upon my updating of the quotes in a few days (when also I will be sure that new images display properly).

As to my reworking your text, I found your version to have several syntactic and grammatical deficiencies—to-wit, Los Angeles Times was not italicized, in contravention of the manual of style; Mike DiGiovanna was not bolded, which non-bolding is inconsistent with practice across the portal (you have, I see, fixed this); $ was not linked, in contravention of the manual of style; present tense was employed, which usage was inconsistent with practice across the section (you've also remedied this in part, but "Boras has" remains; the latter concern, for instance, is why I used theretofore instead of heretofore); and, you ended the phrase in a preposition, which locution is, though not really disfavored by descriptivists, substandard for encyclopedic purposes—and intended to act solely to render the text such that it should be consistent with encyclopedic standards; I certainly hope that you appreciate that I do not mean to act simply to rewrite all of your submissions but only to attempt to improve them, as ought you to do, for example, to mine, and I hope you'll drop me a line at my talk page should you think me to be wrong regarding any of the five concerns I raise.

I surely err as much as the next editor, and I surely don't mean to be a high-handed, pretentious, uptight, pedantic prick here (it really sounds as if I protest too much), and so, whilst I gather we disagree about much, not least the level of rigor we ought to apply in divining the encyclopedic merit of the inclusion of a given fact and the level of formality we ought to use in our writing here (to be sure, even my academic writing style is less highfalutin than my on-Wiki style, and that which I employ whilst writing to or hanging out with friends is considerably different), I imagine that, as editors acting in good faith and ostensibly editing quite productively across the project, we ought not to continue to clash as we have. I'm going, then, to recommit to being especially circumspect when considering editing your contributions, most prominently, to the baseball portal, and I hope, similarly, that you might take an extra moment before editing to review those prospective contributions; each of us, I would suppose, as any editor, would do well to mind Essjay's suggestion that one, before he presses save, confirm for himself that his change will benefit the project.

I am, as you will have gathered, a bit distressed by our having quarreled other-than-productively with some frequency (more frequently that have I with any other editor, and apparently more frequently than have you with any other editor as well), so I'd surely like to bury the hatchet, to which I hope you're amenable. <handshake> Cheers, Joe 20:33, 1 January 2007 (UTC)