Wikipedia:Editor review/spazure

spazure

spazure (talk · contribs) I'm new, and if I'm making mistakes, I'd like to correct them before they become habits, which would be much more difficult to break. Spazure 05:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reviews

I reviewed Astrid Young and some of your recent edits. I have a few minor points of advice.

Avoid links to disambiguation pages. In Astrid Young, you wrote that she is the daughter of Steve Young, but that links to a disambiguation page for seven people with the same name. I corrected this for you.
Avoid links to Myspace. According to the policy on reliable sources, personal blogs and myspace pages are strongly discouraged in External Links or elsewhere in an article. More often than not, someone puts them there for ulterior motives. I removed the Myspace link from the Astrid Young article.
You seem not to know the difference between WP:PROD and WP:AFD, since you said you "prodded" an article when really you sent it to AFD. It's not a big deal.

I notice that you've been working on the AFD log and the dead-end pages clean-up project. These were among my first two Wikipedia project contributions, and are still of interest to me today. You may also enjoy sorting through lists related to the dead-end pages, such as uncategorized pages.

I wish you good luck. Send me a message if you need any assistance. Best regards. Shalom ^Hello 16:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These are just the sorts of bad habits I was hoping someone would catch before they became a real problem, thank you! Somehow I never even saw WP:EL during my hours of scouring the help section, but there's definitely some useful information there. You're also correct that I didn't realize prod and afd were actually different processes, apparently I have more reading to do in order to fully understand speedy delete vs prod vs afd (and any others I might not have come across yet). spazure 04:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be off to a really great start, Spazure. Reviewing your recent edits I would never have guessed that you were such a recent editor! I'm particularly impressed by your commitment to proper sourcing. If you haven't already, I'd suggest joining one or two WikiProjects relating to your interests, as this is a great way to interact with other users and find new ways of improving the encyclopedia.

A few extremely minor points in addition to Shalom's excellent advice. Your edit summary usage is already very good, but you might like to check the 'Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary' tickbox under the editing tab on your account preferences to take it up to 100%. You also occasionally make several edits in a few minutes to one page, and I wondered if you could try to cut that down, as it does clog the history a bit. It's no big deal, and I do it all the time, but it is something to think about as you gain confidence. Happy editing! Espresso Addict 20:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The frequent edits are usually an issue with something looking fine in the preview, then when saved to the rest of the page, something ends up displaying wrong in the reference section. I've been trying to make better use of preview, and putting my refereces in-line to preview them first before putting them in ref tags. The rest of the time it's just my ADHD kicking in and I save thinking I'm done, then realize one more thing that needs to be done, and one more thing, and one more thing.. I've taken to making subpages on my userpage of articles I think I may do this to, so my constant revisions don't clutter the "real" page, and once something is satisfactory enough to be more or less "done", I check the "real" version (in case somebody else had made changes there), then move my edits over. I also tried to enable 'prompt me when entering a blank edit summary' for a few days once, but I seemed to not only not see the message reminding me to enter a summary, but I would frequently assume the info had already been saved, and close the browser window, thus losing my entire edit. :/ On article edits I try to always enter an edit summary, but I'm never sure if one is truly required on talk pages -- or when making edits in my own userspace.

With the references not appearing on preview, I've found it's often easier to edit the entire article rather than just a section; that way you can see the references at the same time, and make sure they've not gone screwy. You do need a fast download connection, though, if the page is long.

I find the edit summary can actually be quite useful on extensive talk pages, especially where one section's got very long. Otherwise it can be hard to tell on a watchlist whether someone's responding to your comment or to someone else's without going away and opening the page. You certainly don't need to use it in your personal userspace, though, unless you find it helpful. Espresso Addict 04:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've started using summaries on talk pages, as I notice I actually like it when other people do. It's sort of a "do unto others" sort of thing now. I've also done some research to further understand the differences between the different deletion processes (and reasons for each). Thanks again for all the great feedback though, I feel like a better editor already!

PS.. is there anywhere I can make a suggestion for the wiki source?? I think it'd be cool if we could save "drafts" of work.. where data isn't saved to the article, but it's saved somewhere on our PC or in the cache or something. This would resolve the issue of people (like me!) avoiding the "prompt when entering a blank summary" due to being afraid of losing data to a save that didn't go through and the issue where some editors (also, coincidentally, like me) have a tendency to over-edit while looking over an article for a second, and third, and fourth time.. Spazure 04:00, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Such proposals should go to Village Pump, probably the Proposals section, although it has to be noted that there are very few code developers, so many code-related proposals, however useful, seem to just get shelved :( Espresso Addict 04:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reeeeeeeeaaallly. There's only one thing I do better than nitpicking spelling and referencing -- and that's coding. I think I'll take a break from dead end pages to look into that side of things. Thanks for the info! Spazure 04:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Questions

Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
I'd have to say Astrid Young. This was my very first article. Although I know it's nowhere near perfect, I'm pleased to see how far it's come in such a short time.
Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
No stress here. There's been a few minor conflicts, but it's been easy enough to explain reasoning on a talk page, and come to either a compromise or a full agreement one way or another. I'm also proud of the fact that I haven't always "won" these types of conflicts, as I'm willing to admit when I've made a mistake or simply interpreted something incorrectly. I believe people learn more by making mistakes than they do by being right all the time