User talk:MartinHarper
Put your text for the new page here.
Do I have to?
(who needs originality)
Hi, welcome to the wikipedia! I just saw your Q on Talk:Singular they about the suitability of the h2g2 article on gender-free pronouns. It's not a subject I know much about, but I know of no reason for us to not have an article on it. The one you wrote on h2g2 looks very good, though, as you suggest, it could take a little NPOVising, and as I'm sure you know, the style of writing in the wikipedia tends to be somewhat different to that in h2g2. But by all means, move it in - if there's anything wrong with it, there'll be no shortage of people there to tell you ;-)
You mention quoting external grammar guides: in general, it is a good idea to attribute views and cite sources and so on, so yes, this would be a good thing. It's also a very good way to NPOV things - "you should not do this" is just one nobody's opinion, but "Fowler says that you should not do this" is fact and worth mentioning in an article (assuming Fowler really does say you should not do this, and we all agree on what "this" is, and so on). Of course, when quoting directly, we have to be careful about copyrights, although it's better not to be too paranoid about that - fair use will cover most quotations of reasonable length.
By the way, just one small tip: if you want to write, say, "swans" in an article, but have it point to the article on "swan", the easiest way is to write [[swan]]s which comes out as swans. [[swan|swans]] is OK too, but rather harder to both write and read. Otherwise, if you need help on anything, there is the cryptically named Wikipedia:Help and its various subpages. General questions can be added to the bottom of the Wikipedia:Village pump. Have fun! --Camembert
Welcome to Wikipedia! I'm one of the people who focus on NPOV, so please don't be taken aback by my recent edits to your Sie and hir article. I'm not trying to knock those neologisms; nor am I trying to promote my pet solution, "they". My thing is ensuring that Wikipedia neither endorses nor opposes any point of view. --Ed Poor
Thanks for the tip and the welcomes. I was a little taken aback, but more by culture shock than anything. I quite like it, actually: this 'be bold in editing' approach certainly gets things done!
Incidentally, is there a problem with signing off as Martin and being the user MyRedDice? I don't want to confuse people...
We are having an edit conflict at gender-neutral pronouns. Would you like me to step back for and let you have the article to yourself for a while? --Ed Poor
Tell you what: you go for it - I'll go to sleep and see what I think tommorrow. I had to try three times to say what I wanted in Talk, anyway -Martin
I think that if you stick to "MyRedDice | Martin" then people will get to know you fairly soon. I'm one of the few people using my real name (I guess I just like being bold and fearless :-) but nicknames are much more common. You can count on getting some good-natured ribbing, if you choose a funny nickname, like sometimes we call Camembert's edits "cheesy" and I've been criticized for having "poor" math skills ;-) --Ed Poor
- And my edits are "dicy", eh? Hehe.
--- Hi. Please don't be offended but I deleted your comments on my things that annoy me page. I don't want it to get filled up with discussion, it's just a place holder for me to put some of my thoughts. Re: travelator, it wont show up on google under travelator, apparently. Mintguy
- No offence taken - thanks for explaining, though.
- Incidentally, search google for wikipedia "redirected from" site:www.wikipedia.org - you'll find a few hits from redirect sites... -Martin