User talk:SECurtisTX

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"And so it begins." -Kosh

1 Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
2 WATCH
3 Gettysburg edits
4 World's Smallest Political Quiz userbox
5 Dealing with vandalism
6 Thanks for fast action....
7 commons:User:SECurtisTX

[edit] Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs: Michele Dotrice; Karnal Sher Khan; Bombing of Kobe in World War II; National Intelligence Agency (U.S.); Yvette Dotrice; Langley, Virginia; Kay Dotrice; Ivan Rabuzin; Walter Bedell Smith; National Clandestine Service; Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary; China Xinjiang Airlines; Man Bites God; Major carrier; Herb Kelleher; Mengke Bateer; Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter; Rudy Tomjanovich; Mycobacterium phlei

Cleanup: Dirección de Contra-Inteligencia Militar; Ming-Ming; United Airlines Flight 227
Merge: Forward Intelligence; Malayan Emergency; Socialism with a human face
Add Sources: Glasnost; Stall; Jeffrey St. Clair
Wikify: Stephen Kappes; Harlequin type ichthyosis; Nantucket Airlines
Expand: White Revolution; Demographic history of the United States; Eureka College

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 03:22, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WATCH

A particularly vile kind of villain:

66.168.44.43
66.159.181.175
24.247.218.250
216.220.18.138
69.119.204.66
208.49.141.13

[edit] Gettysburg edits

Howdy!

I salute your zeal in working to keep some very good articles (the Gettysburg articles) pristine, but I would like to comment on the changes I tried to make that you reverted.

1)Concerning Gen. Schimmelfennig, I realize he was already linked, but that particular paragraph finally had something interesting to say about him, and that was the only time while reading the article that I felt any interest in reading more about him, and experienced what I considered to be a typical user's annoyance in having to scroll back up to hunt for the linked version of his name. I understand that it is silly to link every instance of any name, but in this case I would argue that this link fits into this particular paragraph considering its content.

2)Concerning the header about Longsteet's delay during the Second Day, I felt it deserves its own heading because it was more than just troop movement, it was a notable development of the battle. It remains notable to me, even as familiar as I am with the battle, that Longsteet's attack didn't happen until 4 in the afternoon.

3)Finally, concerning the red link for Charles E. Hazlett, I thought it was a general rule of thumb to remove red links. But I am still fairly new to editing Wikipedia, and not totally familiar with the policies, so I don't know.

Anyway, thanks for your time. --Steve

--SECurtisTX | talk 00:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Howdy. I process many many dozens of edits per day, so I often do things quickly. More than 95% of the time, reverts I do aren't questioned, so I tend to barrel ahead (particularly in those cases when it's an anonymous user). I'm happy to discuss or negotiate with interested parties, however.

1. OK, but remove the second link to him and the style is not to include the rank in the link.

2. I don't feel really strongly about this one, although I am sensitive to Lost Causers blaming JL for GB, so I wouldn't have made that choice to highlight him. The style is use lowercase on words after the first.

3. No, the RoT is that redlinks encourage people to write new articles. We try not to go overboard, but almost all prominent people of the ACW get linked in our articles.

Happy editing. Hal Jespersen 01:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a couple of comments from a slightly different POV.

On #1 - while it's true that repeat links are discouraged, the WP:Manual of Style does, in fact, explicitly support the common-sense practice of adding another link when a term recurs in part of an article at some distance from the first occurence of the term.

On #3 - My sense of the "redlink" issue is that they are indeed discouraged, unless there's good reason to think that an article will actually get written at some point. This may well be the case with ACW figures; I'm sure Hal Jespersen would be a better judge of that than me, as I haven't really done any editing in that field (other than abolition-related articles). But, generally speaking, it comes down to "use your judgement". If there's no real likelihood of an article being written, then by all means, remove the links.

Cgingold 14:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] World's Smallest Political Quiz userbox

You may be interested in User:Audacity/Userboxes/WSPQ, which is a replacement for the old Political Chart userbox. The new userbox takes the two variables (economic and personal freedom), calculates which political alignment they place you into (Statist, Libertarian, Liberal, Centrist, or Conservative), and links your userpage to the appropriate category.

Please reply to User talk:Audacity, as I will not be watching your talk page. Λυδαcιτγ 07:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dealing with vandalism

Hi there! I just read your, um, I believe the word is vehement, essay on vandalism. So... how do you really feel? ;)

In all seriousness, it's great to see someone getting so involved in combatting vandalism after such a short time as a registered editor. Something tells me you were already all-too-aware of this unpleasant feature of Wikipedia from reading it before you ever started editing...

I suppose I should thank anon. user -- and serial vandal -- 216.11.82.109 for leading me to your user page. This doofus had vandalized Charles Sumner (which is on my watchlist). After I reverted his handiwork and posted a vandalism notice on his talk page, I checked out his "contributions" (ironic term!) and quickly saw that -- among other things -- he had done a series of edits to David Goodman Croly, which you had already reverted, thankfully. But I also noticed that you hadn't posted anything on his talk page about it. Which is why I'm writing you this note...

Seeing as you do feel so strongly about dealing with vandals and vandalism, you really ought to consider taking the time (maybe 30 seconds) to finish the job -- by posting a warning notice on the miscreant's talk page after you've reverted the vandalism. IMO, it's nearly as important as taking care of the article itself. I'm not even an official member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit (I may get around to signing up one of these days), but I've gradually been taking that step more often; I'm probably up to about 80-90% of the cases I deal with, at this point. There is a wide range of warning templates available, depending on how serious, prior history, etc. (I think they're at WP:Templates, probably elsewhere, too.)

Btw, after my chance encounter with David Goodman Croly, I wound up giving the article a minor overhaul. Hadn't even heard of the gentleman before! (though I knew of his son Herbert, co-founder of the New Republic magazine)

P.S. - I'm adding a comment re "Gettysburg edits" (above).

Regards, Cgingold 13:53, 27 January 2007 (UTC)