User:DaronDierkes/Adoption

Adoption
I'd be happy too! But, just so know, this will be my first adoption, so it will be a new experience for me as well as you. As long as you are okay with that, I'm in! Just wondering, what specifically are you interested in that I edit? Skyscrapers, Dubai, Miami, New England, ...? Cheers, Rai - me  12:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind - I see now from reading the information on your userpage what you are interested in! :) Cheers, Rai - me  13:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed you said you are "bad at" uploading images. Just wanted to let you know, it is actually very easy. You seem to have the art of image posting and uploading down, so I won't go over that. To provide a wikilink to an image, instead of just posting as "Image:Central model.jpg", you can place a ":" after the bracket but before the word "Image:", so in wikicode it will read as  on your page, but it is usually easier to simply type in User WPKorea. If you would prefer to move these notes to a subpage, such as User:DaronDierkes/Adoption, just let me know.  Cheers,  Rai - me  16:11, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Ocean Financial Center and more
No problem! I am glad to help. The Ocean Towers situation seems to be a little confusing. According to Emporis, which is generally regarded as the premier site for skyscraper information, Ocean Towers and the Ocean Building (the one being deconstructed) were not a part of the same complex. Ocean Financial Centre also doesn't seem to be a part of the same complex. Therefore, I would say that the Ocean Financial Centre should have its own article, separate from the Ocean Towers article, and perhaps Ocean Building should also be separate.

I would be gald to council you on the page's "construction". First, Ocean Towers should be in bold font in the lead paragraph, per WP:MOSBOLD. Also, you probably noticed the  in the first Infobox for Ocean Tower. If information cannot be retrieved (teh best bet is to use Emporis), then infobox parameters can be left blank. So, for example, instead of, you can just leave it as   to prevent this parameter from appearing. Also, terms such as Office and Retail really don't need to be linked. This would be an example of overlinking, as wikilinks to these two articles really don't add to the content at all. When questioning whether or not to link a word, ask yourself if the corresponding article would really add to the reader's understanding of the topic. In mnay cases, the answer to this is no, so wikilinking should not occur.

You seem to have a good understanding of referencing. For articles with only one reference, such as this one, you may want to consider using, as it uses a larger font, although reflist is also acceptable (I actually prefer reflist, but a general "rule of thumb" seems to be to only use this template if more than 5-10 refs are present in an article).

Next, the caption of the second image in the gallery reads You can see the old building clearly, the new financial centre will be built right next... "You" is generally regarded as too informal and unencyclopedic for an article, so it should be reworded to something along the lines of ''The Ocean Towers, as seen on March 23. The new Ocean Financial Centre will be built on the adjacent lot, in front of Republic Plaza. Taken on March 23.'' The first letter of the first word in any caption should always be capitalized, and ful stops should only be used if a caption contains a full sentence and not just a fragment. Let me know iof you have any questions. I know creating articles can br tricky, but judging by your impressive workd at List of cities of East Asia, I think you are a natural.

I hope this helps! I will watchlist the article and check it out when you have finished editing/separating it. When you're finished, perhaps I will show you an article is desperate need of cleanup and ask you to fix it up when you have the time. Whatever the case, I am sure you will be getting this award soon! :)

Oh, and creating user subpages is very easy. It is all outlined at WP:SUBPAGE. You can see that I have created many subpages, such as User:Raime/Sandbox, User:Raime/Awards, and User:Raime/Skyline rankings. Basically, one of your subpages would begin with your user name and a "/", so,. So, an adoption page could just be entitled User:DaronDierkes/Adoption. To create that page, you can just follow that redlink or create it as you would a normal article - by typing it into the search bar and then hitting Start the User:DaronDierkes/Adoption page. Cheers, Rai - me  21:42, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * For the skyline ranking list, the criterion is number of buildings at least 500 feet / 152 metres in a city. So, if both New You and Chicago had 150 buildings over that height, they would be ranked equally, as they have the same number. Good luck with your St. Louis County-realed endeavors! I know very little about that topic, but it does seem very interesting.


 * And with the Ocean Financial Centre article, the reason the second half of the page was blank was because there was a broken reference cite web usage; it was missing the . If a reference is not closed with , then everything after it will be considered a part of the reference, and thus no following text will appear. Cheers,  Rai - me  22:56, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Long, overdue reply
I am very sorry to respond so late! I have been very busy over the past few days, but now I should be back to editing at a usual rate. It would be great if you could reply on my user talk page; I hold great stock in the You have new messages orange bar! :) I can either reply here, or on your user talk page, which you can then later transclude here. Your choice.

I really like your work on List of tallest buildings in Seoul; there definitely are not enough tallest building lists for cities and regions outside of the US, EU, PRC, and Canada. You should feel free to take the initiative and create those pages! I am very impressed by your work at Ocean Financial Centre. In fact, take it as an "optional first assignment" to create a page for one of the buildings you listed: the strangely named Star Tower (Seoul), for instance. Wikipedia would surely benefit from the creation of these articles!

Don't be afraid at all; I wouldn't call myself a "specialist", but I have written 11 Featured building lists, so I should be able to answer any questions you may have. In fact, we can even have an FL-drive for your newly created Seoul list, should you so choose.

And yes, I am always amazed by the projects in Dubai. And, knowing Dubai, it will probably be built. Although, I seem to recall a past proposal for a "city in the clouds" (literally, a city built on a gigantic white structure held in the air by large metal poles designed to look like rain) that was even more outrageous... Who knows if that will ever be constructed...

I hope you are well also. I am really unsure about the Lotte building; you know much more on the topic than I do per your reply on the talk page, so do you think you could add to/fix the article in any way? Oh, and one last thing - you probably already know all about this, but just to be sure: you can see right now that I am writing in a subsection, which in code would be typed  instead of. These subsections are particularly useful on talk pages, where a conversation falls into an umbrella topic but breaking up of text is needed. So, for example, on my talk page, you could put the two headings of "follow-up" and "constructing oceans" as subsections under "I'm a fan of your work." rather then as separate sections. Of course, it is always up to preference. Sorry if you already know this! Cheers, Rai - me  20:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Basically, an FA drive (or Featured List drive, in this case) is a collaboration between editors, often under the banner of a WikiProject, to improve an article and eventually nominate it at WP:FAC (or WP:FLC). It is often a very long process, and although editors make posts on WikiProject talk pages, often only two or three editors actively participate. Still, a collaboration between for editors, myself included, brought the overly long List of tallest buildings in Dubai to FL-status, so it isn't impossible! :) I am currently in the middle of a List of tallest buildings in Houston FL drive (you should consider "joining", we could always use more help and you are certainly experienced at creating skyscraper articles!), but hopefully I will be done soon and will be able to work on the Seoul list with you. If you want, you can wait until this weekend, or start now by possible posting on the talk page of WP:KOREA to garner interest from other editors.


 * Yes, I see what you mean about the gallery. I think the main reason the other editor did that was because the list itself it still rather short, so listing a long group of articles to the right of it doesn't look good on many resolutions (the images will go on, past the end of the table, at some resolutions, which is frowned upon). Once the list is longer, we can remove the gallery and put the images back as you had originally placed them, which is the norm. For the skyline, you may wish to browse these results at Flickr; all five are acceptable for use on Wikipedia, as they are licensed for commercial use. List of tallest buildings in Boston needs two images to cover the whole skyline, so perhaps Seoul will also need more than one. I think it would be best to put all skyline images in leads and before sections, but then reserve the areas directly to the right of tables for individual building photos (The L.A. list seems to be unusual in the this aspect; perhaps I will change it when I get around to working on that list to bring it up to FL-standards).


 * And yes, I do find that article amusing. :) The airbrushing comment was particularly funny... It is hard to believe that there is a 105-floor empty building anywhere in the world... Cheers, Rai • me  00:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for "joining"! Like I said, we could use more help. And also, thanks for this edit you made on a building article I made; as you probably guessed, I have a sort of "set template" for adding leads and infoboxes to building articles, and sometimes I forget to fill in the needed info... :) Anyway, I hope you have a great trip and return to editing soon. A visit to the Riau Islands sounds really interesting!


 * I agree; the images aren't the best, but unfortunately they are all Flickr has to offer. Basically, to find suitable images for Wikipedia on Flickr, you need to go to this page (Advanced Search) and check off the three boxes next to "Creative Commons" (all free images on Wikipedia need to be available for commercial use). For other sites, if the photographer/copyright holder doesn't have any copyright posting that fits this criteria, you can e-mail him/her if possible, first asking if the image fits the policy linked above and then asking which of the tags listed at Image copyright tags/Free licenses he/she prefers. Cheers, Rai • me  01:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Glad to see you are back from your trip! I hope you had a great time. Anyway, just wanted to say that I am very impressed with your recent work. You now have over 1,000 edits under your belt, and have uploaded several images (this one is particularly great), created several articles, gotten Wikipedia policy/codes/etc. down, and seem to be very involved in the WikiProjects of topics in which you are interested. I really don't think there is much more I can do for you! It may be time for you to place AdopteeGrad on your userpage. Honestly, you seem to have done most things on your own without my guidance, so I don't think that I should still be dubbed your "adopter". But if you disagree, then of course there is no problem, and we can hold off for the "graduation" :)


 * One thing we didn't really go over is vandalism - do you have any questions? Basically, my method is usually to use one of the 8 coded templates listed at Vandalism for use on vandal talk pages, but there are several more at Template messages/User talk namespace. Once an editor has vandalized a few articles and has made no constructive edits, and you have given sufficient warning on his/her IP or user talk page, you can report him/her at Administrator intervention against vandalism.


 * One other thing - you may already know this, as you have created articles such as Samseong-dong that have references, but the cite web template is particularly useful to provide inline citations for all articles. The parameters of url, title, accessdate (written as 2008-04-18), publisher, work, date, author, etc. are all pretty easy to figure out, but they are discussed in greater detail at Template:Cite web. But here is an example:  And, to place a reference section at the bottom of articles that display the inline citations, you can use either reflist (my personal preference, which can be divided into two columns as  ) or , which doesn't use a smaller font.


 * Do you have any questions about anything? Even after your adoption period ends, you can always feel free to ask me any questions. Cheers, Rai • me  04:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, don't be sorry. There is nothing that I could "forgive" you about! You probably noticed my recent absence - I was in New York City, and User:Alaskan assassin pretty much created all of the Houston articles without my help. But, of course, if you don't feel you are quite ready to "graduate", then I will gladly "keep on keepin on" :)


 * I really like your revisions to the Gu of Seoul article. Great work! The Seoul buildings list could be a challenge... I am still working on the Houston list, but then I thought I might move on to List of tallest buildings in Jersey City, which I started way back when but never got around to completing. But no worries, List of tallest buildings in Seoul will have its FL status someday soon. Is geographical groundwork really necessary though? There is no "location" column, after all. Cheers, Rai • me  01:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

More replies
Yes, that makes sense. Have you tried Emporis? For Houston's KBR Tower, for example, both "Neighborhood" and "Borough" are listed. I am not sure if these will be listed for Seoul, given the apparent confusion. Are gus basically the same as neighborhoods/boroughs?

I currently live outside of the bustling metropolis of Providence, Rhode Island, but I used to live in Plymouth, Massachusetts (I know, big difference :) ). I have never lived in Miami, but I travel there relatively often, and I love it. It has such a unique culture, and the amount of construction go on there is spectacular (although it doesn't come close to rivaling Dubai). The only other place I have ever lived is Vermont. Perhaps someday I will move there, but I doubt it, as I am so used to the cold and the snow in the winter. New Jersey is very interesting. It gets "bad press", I guess you could say, but it is for the most part undeserved. So, how did you end up in Singapore? Do you plan to ever move anywhere else, or are you going to remain there? I have never been there, but I hear it is a spectacular. I need to go there someday - the closest I have been is Cambodia. -- Rai • me  05:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Categories
So, now I will begin to address the three issues you raised. How about we start with categories? They are really very simple. To place a category on a page, just go the very bottom and type in. Then, if you go to Category:..., the article will be listed there. To create a new category, first make sure it isn't already adequately covered by an existing cat, and make sure it complies with the naming conventions, but then just begin by typing in anything random on the cat page (It will soon be deleted). For example, when I created Category:Plymouth, Massachusetts, the only text I put on the page was. After I tagged articles with, I blanked the cat page.

The main thing to watch out with categories is to be careful not to overcategorize. For example, tagging the building article 900 Biscayne Bay with Category:Miami, Florida or even Category:Buildings and structures in Miami would be inappropriate, as a more specific subcat, Category:Skyscrapers in Miami, is already listed on the page. Another thing to watch out with cats, mostly for lists and templates - tagging an article will automatically list the article on the category page in alphabetical order with other categories in accordance with the first letter. So, List of museums in Seoul would be listed under "L". However, perhaps you want to list it under "M" in Category:Seoul (hypothetically - this would actually be an example of overcategorizing). You would only have to type in. If you wanted the article to appear above all other articles in Category:Museums in Seoul, as it is the cat's primary article, you would only have to type in. Does this help? Do you have any more questions about categories? -- Rai • me  05:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Commons images
I am a little confused with what you mean by "moving things back and forth from the commons" and "setting correct margin widths". For the Commons, any image there can automatically be used on Wikipedia. So, you could upload this image to the Commons as "Capital tower.jpg", and even if the image was deleted from Wikipedia, it would still show up on your userpage. It is best to upload any free images (minus self photographs intended for use only on userpages) to the Commons, as then all of the different language Wikipedias can use them. But, to upload at the Commons, you do need a Commons log in - this, for example, is mine. If you want an image to move from Wikipedia to the Commons, it is really easy to just use commons helper, The entire process is outlined at Moving images to the Commons, but again, Commons helper is the easist way to go. Finally, after uploading the Commons image, tag the Wikipedia image with  (or, if it i using the same name, just  ) so that it can be deleted. -- Rai • me  05:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Setting widths
Is that helpful? But could you just expand upon "setting correct margin widths"? Do you mean in tables? Table cells have default settings to be as wide as the text they contain; to make them wider, just add  (or whatever width) instead of the usual   between columns. Here is an example table of widths:

In code, this is:

Hope this also helps, but I know this doesn't answer your question. Honestly, I hardly ever set margin widths in tables. Cheers, Rai • me  05:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

4/25 reply
Sorry for the late reply... Image uploading on WP is basically good for personal user photos and fair use images, but otherwise, you are completely correct; uploading to the Commons is optimal. I am assuming you are referring to Infobox shopping mall? I know, image sizing in infoboxes can be difficult, but most have parameters to avoid thumbnailing. For example, in the mall infobox, there is an  that goes with the image. So, typing in "200" in that parameter will set the image for 200px, and thumbnails are avoided. Generally, 200px is a good image size for infoboxes, but sometimes 300px or 150px are better; it really depends on the image. When there is no infobox. 300px is the standard for lead image, but again this is not set in stone. And yes, the coding for infoboxes can be overwhelming; it is usually best to bring something up on the talk page to allow another editor very familiar with the coding, perhaps an active participant in its creation, to bring about the change. And you are correct about categories; there are "specialists" in that field. But category sorting is a good habit to get yourself into; for example, you seem to create several article relating to Singapore; perhaps you can browse Category:Singapore and its subtopics (Category:Buildings and structures in Singapore, Category:Urban planning in Singapore, etc.) to "get a feel" for what is avaibalbel and basically categorize the articles you create.

I know what you mean about "misinformation"; it really can get depressing. The best we can hope for is the use of talk page; if a unplanned subway map is really based on original research, then feel free to nominate it for deletion; after all, Wikipedia isn't a crystal ball :) I am unfamiliar with the Korea-Japan relationship, but one thing I often get annoyed at is the idea of many non-American editors that not discriminating against US articles is the same thing as discriminating against all non-US articles. Perhaps I stand alone on this issue, but I don't see why Richmond is a disambiguation page and not a redirect to the global city in Virginia, while Worcester goes directly to the UK city that is smaller and attracts less readers than its American counterpart. And yet, if I even bring this up, I am labeled as "ignorant" and "completely American-biased". I guess what I am getting at is Wikipedia certainly has its faults, and it probably always will. But isn't the joy of editing worth dealing with it at points? :) I am concerned with this Korea-Japan "conflict", so as to speak. Do you know a lot about it? I would really be interested in this, as [[WP:BIAS|systemic bias should always be fought.

I think your idea is great; I would love to live in different world cities. Any chance Dubai or Miami are on your list? They would be at the top of mine... :) But that is great if your focus on East Asian studies; I imagine it must be very interesting. And thanks about the gu clarification. So, again, just let me know if you have any questions about anything. Cheers and happy editing, Rai • me  02:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The Liancourt Rocks is amusing, particularly since there are no inhabitants... I guess land, even seemingly useless land, is too precious to let slip into another country's hands. The thing that most annoys me with the Worcester thing is that the MA city actually gets 5,000 more readers per month, even with the UK city being declared the "unambiguous primary topic" and being located at Worcester. (If you want, you can see my whole reasoning at Talk:Worcester (disambiguation)). The thing that many editors seem to not understand is that when naming articles, the only thing that needs to be taken into account (besides subject-specific agreed upon conventions, such as all US municipalities being at CITY, STATE) is what the majority of English-speaking readers will recognize. Importance, population, history, etc. are invalid points when discerning which, if any, article is the "primary topic". Still, even with these statistics presented, I have a feeling that the situation will not change, just like "America" will never redirect to United States. And I do find User:Appletrees/Watchlist of Japanese 2channel very interesting; I am so used to American vs. British disputes (or, in the eyes of some editors, Americans vs. everybody else in the world...), it is a "nice" (nice seems is a vastly inapropriate word to use here, as bias is never "nice", but oh well...) change.


 * If you long for multiple seasons (I agree, that would the thing that would be hardest for me to lose if I were to leave New England for Miami or Dubai), perhaps the Dubai desert isn't the place for you? :) Maybe you should consider Boston, Montreal, or Toronto? Cheers, Rai • me  05:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, it was only due to the fact that you left the  part of   as  ; here, the desired coding will only respond if placed in all caps. I know, silly :) Since it was such a small change, I went ahead and fixed it myself. I also added a shortcut wording, NBH, since "neighborhoods" is rather long.


 * However, I am sure you are aware of the fact that this now creates subpage (WikiProject St. Louis/Neighborhoods) and category (Category:WikiProject St. Louis Neighborhoods working group) redlinks in the project banner and on article talk pages? You should probably try to create pages for this subpage and category right away to avoid having redlinks on talk pages marked with . Cheers,  Rai • me  15:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC) (Text alteration made by  Rai • me  at 00:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC))


 * Thank you very much for the barnstar! I am very happy to hear that you think you have become a better editor. :) I wouldn't say it took me twenty seconds; I compared the two templates at first for small coding variations, such as the lack of a bracket that would cause that category to strangely appear underneath the project box, and then I saw the non-capitalization. I have confidence that you will soon also be skilled at wikicoding - it is really not hard at all once you are used to it! Still, I am not coding expert at all. But do you have any specific questions about coding? Cheers, Rai • me  03:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It was actually just another quick fix relating to the placement of . As you can see in this edit, there were three lines between   and  . This resulted in the space on the talk pages, as technically those three lines were "included" in the template transclusion. Let me know if you have any more questions; I am happy to answer them if I can! Cheers,  Rai • me  21:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, there is no way to make a "Wikiproject watchlist", at least not in the same manner as a user preference watchlist. The best option would be to create a subpage such as WikiProject St. Louis/Pages to watch and list several different articles that should be watched by users for various reasons (perhaps listing some of these reasons). Then, interested users can put the pages on their own watchlists to monitor the pages effectively.


 * I noticed that you placed three userboxes at WikiProject St. Louis/Education. However, the problem with this is that it placed the working group page into Category:WikiProject Education members and Category:WikiProject Universities participants, both of which are pretty much meant to be reserved for users. Yu may want to consider using Infobox WikiProject instead.


 * But anyway, great job with all of your work at WP:STL! It is an impressive feat to develop 10 working groups; the project is lucky to have you. :) No worries on the not working on architecture articles - I think that after I finish the lengthy WikiProject Skyscrapers/Featured Topic Drive, I myself may take a break from architecture articles to focus on Miami. Cheers, Rai • me  19:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I apologize profusely for my extremely late, overdue reply. As you might have guessed, I have been extremely busy. But it is not like you are in dire need of my help anyway :) I am very impressed with what you have done with the St. Louis WikiProject. Do you still think it is too early for your "graduation"? At the rate you have been going, it won't be long before your edit count surpasses mine :) And I guess the category discussion is long since over, but I am happy they were all moved for consistency reasons. Still, I agree with Vergaswikian in that the addition of the ", STATE" doesn't rule out the possibility of tagging articles into a city category about topics not actually in the city...


 * It is great that you visited Kuala Lumpur - that is another city at the top of list. Although I have never seen them in person, I would imagine that the Petronas Towers are spectacular. Did you manage to take any pictures while you were there? And, have you ever been to Taipei? I have always wanted to see Taipei 101 as well, as you might have guessed... :) Cheers, Rai • me  20:17, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Small talk
Hey, long time no talk! :-) Wow, it has been awhile. How is everything going? I see you don't seem to be editing as fervently as before - why is that? I hope you haven't decided to leave Wikipedia; that would be a big loss for the project... Cheers, Rai • me  03:10, 28 June 2008 (UTC)