User:Fezmar9

Salutations. I am fezmar9. It's a word I made up followed by a number that means nothing to me.

My first contribution (after setting up an account) was creating a page for a band in August 2007. The page was deleted shortly after that on the grounds that the band failed he notability guidelines (one user that assisted in its deletion accused me of trying to get laid by advertising "my band" on wikipedia). So I read up on the general notability guideline, and continued editing. Every time I ran into a problem such as this, I figured out why what I did was wrong, learned from my mistakes and carried on.

I edit using Google Chrome, which causes certain table features and templates to display funny. If I have performed an edit that made something technical look worse on a different browser, please let me know!

Advice for new Wiki contributors

 * Read Policies & Guidelines – Wikipedia has no tutorial or training (though, it should). Instead, you're expected to stay current on a seemingly endless list of policies and guidelines that are regularly updated. I recommend starting with Five pillars, and since you likely came across my page from an edit to an album article, I recommend WikiProject Albums/Sources and WikiProject Albums/Album article style advice.


 * Don't Copy + Paste from Other Articles – You may accidentally spread an error or outdated idea across Wikipedia. For example, the album infobox has been updated many times over the last decade, and some articles may feature outdated fields or practices. Instead of copying an infobox from an article that might not be using it correctly, always copy and paste the template from Template:Infobox album to ensure you're using the correct one.


 * Read the Article Before You Edit – I actually see this fairly regularly, someone will add a sentence or paragraph to an article that is already there. Sometimes it's literally the sentence right before. Make sure you understand what the article already says before adding something new.


 * "Show Preview" & "Show Changes" Buttons are Your Friends – Instead of making an edit, noticing a mistake, making an edit, noticing a mistake, making an edit... use the "Show Preview" button to make sure it looks correct the first time. It's also really easy to accidentally and unknowingly delete a word or bump the keyboard and type "asdfs" somewhere. Use the "Show Changes" button to make sure you didn't do this.


 * Unplug, Spend Some Money – The internet is vast, but it is not limitless. Some of the best information you can source for a Wikipedia page lies in journals, books, magazines, etc. To write a really in-depth page here will require some offline research and maybe spending a bit of money. If you're truly committed, it's worth it. My work rewriting Botch (band) would not have been possible without ordering a handful of back-issue magazines and getting my hands on the physical liner notes.


 * All Great Writers Were Once Terrible Writers – You're not going to be good until you attempt to write your first article. It won't be great, but you'll learn from your mistakes and apply your newfound wisdom to the next article.


 * Don't Be Toxic – In my past 13+ years of contributing, I've noticed the social state of both Wikipedia and the internet in general become increasingly toxic. Treat your fellow Wikipedians with respect, we're all in this together.

<!--== Looking for sources? == I feel like those of us that edit music and album articles search the internet for every last possible source. But the internet can be limiting. Often times the best sources are published in magazines, which no one here seems to subscribe to. So I am willing to share my subscriptions to help expand Wikipedia! A list of articles I could scan for you can be seen at User:Fezmar9/Magazine scans. Partial citation templates are also provided for you.

I also highly recommend using an RSS reader, such as Google Reader—if you already have a Gmail account. Go to WikiProject Albums/Sources, select some pre-approved music-related websites and add them to your RSS feed. Now, instead of going to Google and sifting through thousands of pages of crap to research your topic, you can instantly search dozens of sites that Wikipedia already considers reliable through your reader. Personally, I like to save sources to my reader about upcoming albums for which I'd like to write a Wiki article. Then when the release date comes closer and the subject appears to meet the notability guidelines, I already have a bunch of great sources to start decent article. Two disclaimers if this is a route you choose to take: one, this should only be used for more recent topics. If a publication has existed since 1980, but only started using RSS since 2005, then you will only be able to find articles published since 2005. And two, some publications like to track readers who came to their site using a RSS reader via a special URL. When adding and linking a source from your reader, be sure to remove the following gibberish and everything after it:.

Track listing template fail
I thought I would use my user space as a soapbox to visually illustrate my complaint after countless talk page arguments and edit wars trying to verbally express my issue. Despite the consensus at WikiProject Albums and various discussions at WT:ALBUM and the track listing documentation being that track listings should generally be in a simple list, except for more complicated situations, there are a number of users that still feel this template must be used to provide a cleaner look. I do agree that it looks very clean and neat in Allmusic's similar format or on articles that actually use the additional fields such as on Axe to Fall or Christ Illusion. However, in situations where only the "track title" and "track length" fields are in use, this can leave a completely unnecessary gap between the two. The template extends from the left side of the screen to where the album infobox is/would be on the right, and because this width varies depending on the monitor size, the higher the resolution the larger this gap becomes.

As editors, keeping in mind our readers' monitor resolution is something that has been suggested at WP:ACCESSIBILITY. This manual of style mostly suggests keeping in mind lower resolution screens, but the same logic should apply if some part of Wikipedia is a hindrance to higher resolution screens as well.

I previously had a screenshot of how horrible and pointless an empty template is, but for some reason screenshots are frowned upon on user pages and the image was deleted within a few days. So let's see how effective this table is at illustrating my point:

As the kids these days would say, "fail." According to the display resolution article, a width of 1440 is not even the most extreme example of this issue. The table at the resolution article suggests that some 48.8% of computers using Steam have a width of 1440 or larger. This may or may not be an accurate representation of all readers visiting Wikipedia since Steam is generally (or entirely?) used for video gaming, but a percentage that high should not be ignored none the less. Thank you for your time. -->

Barnstars

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 * style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | The Working Barnstar
 * style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | I noticed your complete reformat of the Simple Plan discography article. I checked out your userpage, and realized that you've done the same from tens of other articles.  For your tireless efforts in reformatting discography articles, I award you the Working Man's barnstar. -- Poe Joe  (Talk) 01:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
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 * style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | The WikiProject Albums Barnstar
 * style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | I hereby award you this barnstar for your great work on the expanson of the article content guidelines for the WP:ALBUM project, including the extraction from the main project page into a separate subpage. – Ib Leo (talk) 21:20, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
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 * rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 5px;" | Veganlife SuicideGirl.jpg
 * style="font-size: x-large; padding: 3px; height: 1.5em;" | Metalpunk Barnstar
 * style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 3px;" | I award you this barnstar for your hard work improving several not-so-metal-related articles. Keep up the good work! Malconfort (talk) 13:48, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
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Personal reference

 * WikiProject Albums (infobox, ratings template, assessment, notability, track listing template, record charts, hammer time, genre warriors)


 * WikiProject Musicians (infobox, navbox, MUSTARD, notability)


 * Citing sources (templates, cite web, album notes)


 * Vandalism (list of warning templates, protection request)


 * Deletion (proposed deletion, speedy deletion, merging, redirect)
 * reason


 * Template messages

Subpages

 * User:Fezmar9/sandbox1 (List of Converge members) – Anything before Jane Doe is so poorly documented, this is quite the challenge...
 * User:Fezmar9/sandbox2 (Heiress (band)) – waiting for Early Frost to be released/reviewed
 * User:Fezmar9/sandbox3 (pieces of Axe to Fall) – not sure why I still have this
 * User:Fezmar9/sandbox4 (The Austerity Program) – most of the reliable sources are out of date, and don't give very much info. what I have is actually littered with original research.
 * User:Fezmar9/sandbox5 (rewrite of Botch (band)) – been far too lazy to sit down and whip out a musical style section
 * User:Fezmar9/Magazine scans
 * User:Fezmar9/The Allmusic Trickle-Down Effect
 * User:Fezmar9/Prophaniti sockpuppetry
 * User:Fezmar9/Editcounter