User:RHaworth/moans

"Google this"
One of my pet hates is people who say "if you Google &hellip;". Now it is OK to say that down the pub (nowadays we even have to qualify that to 'down the pub when no-one has internet access about their person'!). Now let me spell out very slowly what I expect people to do:
 * Go into your preferred search engine and do the search you want to tell people about. Refine it, if necessary to improve your argument. Every decent search engine returns its results as a new URL, so &hellip;
 * Go to your browser's address bar, copy the URL and paste it into the message you are creating.

Here is an example: this Google search is a totally inaccurate indication of the number of times people have asked me "why did you delete &hellip;".

redirect
On Wikipedia we create an article once only. If other titles are considered appropriate, we use #redirect. (If you have created multiple copies of an article, ask yourself: "which copy are people supposed to edit"?)

Shh
There is an internet convention that writing in capitals is shouting. (For example see this at the Beeb and this about the US Navy.) Wikipedia is like a public library: we do not shout. If you have submitted an article using excessive capitals, you will need to convert it to lower case with normal capitalisation before it stands any chance of being accepted. See also this in the manual of style and another user's take on the subject.

Writing in capitals is a throwback to the age of the typewriter when it was the only means of providing emphasis. Today on the web CSS offers a bewildering variety of font effects.

e-mail
I am usually willing to e-mail copies of deleted articles but if you want me to do it, please:
 * Log in if necessary
 * click on 'my preferences'
 * set up an e-mail address and tick the box "allow other users to email me". Note that nobody will ever see this address - unless you choose to reveal it.
 * leave a note on my user talk page (or the user talk page of any of these admins). If I am feeling Bolshie, I may ignore your message if you do not include a proper wikilink to the deleted article and your signature: ~.

insult
Time and again I see cases where people have copied their own website to Wikipedia and think they have created an article. I call such action an insult to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is now up there in the top ten websites. Google indexes new pages with frightening rapidity. If you are not prepared to take the time to study Wikipedia style and create a proper article from scratch, then you simply do not deserve an article.

But before you do that please read our views on conflict of interest (COI) and ask yourself: should I leave it to someone with no COI to write the article? If you persist, note that the most common failings of copy & pasted articles are: a) spammy tone and peacock terms and b) lack of links to significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

sponsor
If you have no contributions history and are a spammer, autobiographer or person with COI, this is how to get your article accepted. Find existing articles here comparable to the one you want to create; look carefully through the edit history of each one to find an established editor who has contributed significantly; contact that person, e-mail them your text or, if you have created a user space draft, point them to it and ask if they are willing to create the article. (If you are willing to do that, then you probably are not a spammer!) You can also go to articles for creation or deletion review if the article has existed before.

AfC
Go to this AfC page. (The full articles for creation wizard contains useful advice about copyright, notability and references but if I have given you a link to this note, you may assume that your article stands a reasonable chance of being accepted.)

DRV
To request undeletion of an article, follow the instructions at deletion review. When you create the request do be sure to state that you have already discussed the matter with me and provide a link back to the discussion. The instructions state that you should inform me that you have raised a DRV request - don't bother! I have told you to go to DRV, if I am interested, I shall watch for the DRV request being raised.

English
You have posted an article here in a language other than English. (If I have deleted it, read this or I may have moved it to the user namespace.) Providing the subject is notable (and the text is not a copyright violation, etc.), will you now please, either:
 * post it to the appropriate wiki for its language, or
 * translate it into English and post it here, or
 * both!

Camel Case
Where Is It Written That You Should Start Every Word Of A Sentence With A Capital Letter?

Alternative outlets (serious)

 * See also Wikipedia: Alternative outlets


 * The other Wikimedia Foundation projects: Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity
 * WikiHow seems to accept almost anything and does not care about duplication
 * Wikia, a collection of separate specific-topic wikis is more selective and appropriate for a small wiki
 * Familypedia, the family history and genealogy wiki
 * Conservapedia sees itself as the antidote to us liberal, anti-American, anti-Christian Wikipedians
 * Citizendium aims to be a "reliable" encyclopedia but has an Alexa rank even lower than Conservapedia
 * Comparison of wiki farms lists other hosts - I have RHaworth.editthis.info

Alternative outlets (humorous)

 * Uncyclopedia parodies encyclopedic subjects
 * Encyclopædia Dramatica exists to parody online-related events
 * Illogicopedia is a collection of random humour and nonsense
 * Wackypedia is humour
 * Urban Dictionary.

Edit summaries
Please go to your preferences, click the Editing tab, tick the box that says "prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" and follow the prompts in future.

noncomm
You recently uploaded an image and selected "&hellip; only in Wikipedia articles &hellip;" or "&hellip; non-commercial and/or educational purposes &hellip;" as the licence. Even before you clicked on "upload file" a message came up warning you that those licence terms were unacceptable and the file would be speedily deleted. OK, the message may have been off the bottom of the screen but clearly you did not review the image description after the upload. It is pointless to upload an image with a speedy delete request in place. More details in fdw-noncom. (If you re-upload with proper licence terms, then that upload should probably be to the Commons.)

links
Which of the following links are you most likely to click on? See also bare URLs and the Reflinks tool.
 * 
 * http://rhaworth.net/phots/rwhgal1.php?g=du&fmt=v&minth=5&from=191250
 * Three hags with bags

IP address
I have a firm "I don't talk to IP addresses" policy. Given how ridiculously simple it is to provide confirmation, is it unreasonable for me to ask for confirmation that the person writing about an article is actually the person that submitted the article? It also helps to train you in a basic matter of Wikipedia etiquette. See also IP edits are not anonymous.

So: log in; go back to my user talk page and append to your message something like "yes it was I who wrote the above" and, most importantly, sign your new message with &#126;~&#126;~

Alternatively if you actually have no Wikipedia account and do not intend to create one, please annotate your message to that effect and I will reply.

Why did you delete?
I do not accept messages that are just a bald "why did you delete?". If you know I deleted the page you must have been looking at the deletion log entry which looks like this:


 * 2013-03-22 17:46:57 RHaworth deleted page Self Help, Inc. (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)

Do you see the stuff in ? That gives the reason for deletion. Also, most reason messages begin with a cryptic link - G11 in this example. That link takes you to more information on the deletion reason. If after reading that information, you still do not understand or if you disagree with it, come back to my user talk page but make sure that: a) you provide a wikilink to the deleted page and b) you word your message to indicate that you have looked at the deletion log entry.

If the log page contains more than one log entry, note that entries are counter-chronological.

It's been deleted
"I can't provide a link - the page has been deleted." If I see that or a similar message again, I shall scream. If the page has been deleted then give me the link that was valid when the page did exist or a link to the page that tells you I did the deletion. (Note that with some variants of such a link you may not be able to see the deletion information if you are not logged in.)

My CoI test
If I see a new article about a living person, company or organisation and the creator of the article has done few other edits, then I automatically assume that they have a conflict of interest. If you are such a person and ask me to withdraw my accusation, if I am feeling bolshie, I may say that I will only withdraw it when you have become eligible to vote for the Arbitration Committee - see this for example. But certainly I am unlikely to withdraw it until you have a good contributions history on a number of different pages.

&lt;noinclude>
If you apply a speedy delete tag to a page which is transcluded, you must bracket the speedy tag with &lt;noinclude>&lt;/noinclude> otherwise all the pages which transclude that page will also get dragged into category:candidates for speedy deletion. For example an articles for deletion nomination is transcluded by all these pages. (Actually that list is an exaggeration but you get the idea!)

wikify!

 * Wikilinks. I don't just insist on a link – I insist on a wikilink because it generates an entry in the massive links database and can be retrieved using Special:WhatLinksHere. Here is an example. In 2018 December I received a message here about a certain article.. Making a Special:WhatLinksHere/Draft:Kirk Deviere enquiry told me that I had already been asked about this matter in August and I was able to word my reply in December appropriately. If the link in August had been coded as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Kirk_Deviere&action=edit&redlink=1 it would not have been recorded in the data base (as well as being downright ugly!).


 * Grumpy old. I don't think of myself as old - just 'retired'. I consider that I have a cheerful outlook on life and in particular, when editing Wikipedia I try to be totally unemotional. Even a reaction of "oh no! not again" to some horror must be suppressed. It may be the hundredth time I have seem that sort of thing but for the perpetrator, it is the first time.

Page artificially lengthened so that links to a specific moan will put that at the top.