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User talk:Karen Johnson

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Karen Johnson (talk | contribs) at 00:39, 10 August 2002 (Everyone appreciates your efforts Mav... I don't know how you fit in so much work around here alongside a real paying job (unlike some of us layabouts)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

More comments are stored on the page User talk:Karen Johnson (old)


Karen, to make an e acute, you say é, e.g. é. The other available symbols are listed on wikipedia:How does one edit a page. AxelBoldt


Congratulations on finding so much about Porter Blanchard--it's much more than I found. From when his wife died, though, I gather that he was born in the mid 1800s. But I'd much rather have a source stating his birth and death dates--my sleuthery is typically subpar. Koyaanis Qatsi


The click-on-the-link edit you made to Fox may not have had the desired effect. I can't tell what you intended, so I'm just pointing at it. Marknau Huh? I'm not quite sure what you mean. Oh well... I downsized the redfox to a more managable size because it was almost a megabyte file... I guess I'll leave the fiddling to other people - I'm not much good at it anyway.

I was just confused because it says "clivk on the link for a full-sized picture" and I see no link. Did you mean "click on the picture for a..."?

Never mind, you figured it out.  ;)


This isn't too important, but several of us have decided on what to rename the / pages of countries. Here it is:

History of *
Geography of *
Demography of *
Government of *
Economy of *
Communications in *
Transportation in *
Military of *
Foreign relations of *

Note the signficant name changes for the former /People and /Transnational issues. --mav


RE your comments on the deletion log: You are allowed to disagree with me BTW -- just don't make a habit of it. :) --mav 21:50 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)


Uh oh -- didn't know about the signature feature eh? All you have to do is type three tildas in a row (like this ~~~) anywhere you like and when you hit either preview or save that will magically become a link to your user page. You can also set your preferences so that something other than your user name will be displayed (such as KJ). Another cool feature is that typing an extra tilda will also leave a time and date stamp. This feature really should be better documented. Happy hacking! --mav

Oh goody... thanks Mav! Lessee if it works KJ

Now all I have to do is to figure out how to siphon some of these comments off to a new page cause this page is getting rather lengthy. KJ 22:51 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)

Well what I have done is create a couple of talk archives: For example, user talk:Maveric149/archive 1. Hopefully this doesn't create a new user in the system. BTW, does it bother you that North America Pacific coast time is used for the time stamp and history? It really bothers me and I live in that time zone. I think we should have everything in universal time (GMT) since this is an international wiki. I may be paranoid, but I really would hate to alienate non-American contributors and risk pushing away good contributors, or worse rist a fork. Wikipedia is already spelt in American English and date formats are likewise American -- need we needlessly remind everybody at each opportunity that Americans dominate the project? I'm probably over-thinking this and since I am an American I really can't speak for non-Americans. What are your feelings on this? I think it would be cool to always be aware of what GMT is in realation to my time zone and the time zones of others. --mav

I didn't fill in a timeslot in my preferences table, because I really don't know how many hours difference there are between Australia and the standard they're using... It doesn't really bother me that they're using US time - the site is run off a US server after all, and it was started by Americans, and a large percentage of the internet population IS American. I tend to totally ignore all date and time references anyway... what DOES annoy me is when people write wikipedia entries and imply that North America is the only continent in the whole darned world! I seem to spend half my time running around adding 'and Australia' to entries! lol Still, once again it's a majority rules thing. Australians are definitely in the minority here.

I saw your new archive pages, but I decided to use a bracket because I'm not at all likely to need more than one archive page. People don't really talk to me that much :) It made the page and I hope it hasn't registered me again... but I don't think it did. KJ

Oh, I hadn't noticed the time-stamp offset feature. Now it really makes sense from a technical perspective to switch to GMT -- data on +/- GMT status of each time zone is easily found whereas data on the same of PDT is not. Besides, we have daylight savings time which is also a headache. I will add this as a feature request. BTW I'm glad you don't mind about American domination here -- I still would like to see it lessoned where it makes sense though (which just might reduce your "and Australia too" workload). Cheers! --mav
Hope you don't mind me eavesdropping... In the beginning, I was a little annoyed by some the American-centric things you mention. I've edited some pages like this 23 June, but soon realised that wasn't going to make the difference, and that consistency is more important. I even learned to live with the city naming convention. Now the only thing that annoys me is articles that assume some topic is only important or even existing in the US... And of course you'll be able to see me write "colour" and "analyse" :-) Jeronimo

Hi, Karen, I've noticed that often when you delete a page you list the reason simply as "Deletion requested". This doesn't really tell me anything. Who requested it, and more importantly, why? (It would make sense if the request appeared on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, but often it didn't.) Even if the reason is "New page; deletion requested by its creator.", then that would be much more useful; at least I know that there's nobody that might dissent. Thanks for your consideration! — Toby 22:02 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

I usually write that on an entry when somebody has deleted the contents for a noted reason, and/or replaced them with a request for deletion. I have the world's worst shortterm memory plus I'm dyslexic and I can't hold their name in my head long enough to load the deletion screen, let alone writing exactly WHY. It's enough for me that somebody else wanted the page deleted for what seems like a reasonable reason. Besides, it takes long enough to page through everything already - if I stopped to write more details all the time I'd never get anything bloody done... I don't see anyone else going around cleaning up other people's messes in the stub list. I'm spending over an hour a day there just trying to keep ahead of the entries with zero content and deciding whether they really need to be restored, deleted or replaced. KJ 23:46 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Addendum... sorry about that Toby. I'm feeling a bit short-tempered today... I don't quite understand why some people prefer to remove the entire contents of a page and leave it there blank or with a deletion request on it. Why not just delete it themselves? I guess it's because they don't have delete authority, but it puts an extra step in the deletion process. The easier it's made for people to remove garbage the better. GIVE US BACK OUR 'vote for deletion' key! The entries I say 'deletion requested' on are ones where somebody has removed the text and replaced it with 'deletion requested' or 'ready for deletion' etc... my memory and spelling skills aren't good enough to transfer their name from the page to the 'why are you deleting this' box, so I usually leave it off. A lot of the times it's been Vicki Rosenzweig or KQ (no I certainly CAN'T spell his name!) or Mav recommmending deletion - I don't take just anyone's word for it. I'm really not sure why they don't just do their own deleting... KJ

Hey, I do my share of deleting without posting to the deletion queue - honest. ;) The only time something is supposed to be on the queue is if there might be any question about whether an item should be deleted. Generally that means that the person posting will not also be the person deleting (unless the item was on the list for a looong time). Bryan used to be the number one cleaner of the list but he has been having major computer trouble lately and is only on the pedia for a few minutes a day. I used to be the second most active person clearing the list and I know that I have been negligent of late in doing this but it literally takes me 2 to 3 hours a day just to review a days worth of RecentChanges. Not to mention the fact that I am a member of 3 WikiProjects. I do hope RecentChanges is fixed soon. Things are getting messy. The vote for feature would also be nice. Adios! --mav

Did I say your name? Oh, actually I guess I did :P You do more work around here than practically anyone else Mav, so of course you don't have time to do everything! I just listed a page in the deletion queue and it was more trouble than it was worth to get it there because after finding it I had to go to my watch list and then to the deletion page and then edit it... ARGH! It took forever to load the deletion queue page too - I think my internet connection is running backwards today! I REALLY miss the 'vote for this page' feature - it made life so much simpler :( I think the whole deletion thing is an example of how many hands make light work - if you look at the deletion log there are only about four or five people who go through and delete (un)deserving articles, and another two or three tackling uploaded pictures etc, so it takes forever to get to them. Compare that to the hundreds of people actively CREATING stuff and it's a wonder that anyone can keep up. Everyone appreciates your efforts Mav... I know I do! I don't know how you can manage to find so much time to work on the pedia when you have to go out to work every day - the only reason I've got so much time is because I'm a professional dole-bludger :) KJ