User talk:Bigmeeting

A tag has been placed on Englishlink, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable (see the guidelines for notability here). If you can indicate why the subject of this article is notable, you may contest the tagging. To do this, please write  on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself.

Please read the criteria for speedy deletion (specifically, articles #7) and our general biography criteria. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. MER-C 11:04, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Phonewords
Hi, Bigmeeting, welcome to Wikipedia. I've been reverting your change in layout to the Phonewords article because it really doesn't fit the article. If you are curious as to why, please check the edit summaries I've been including with my reversions, or please reply and we can discuss it. I did retain the new example you added to the Australian examples, but I stand by my assertion that the changes you have been making are not appropriate to the article. Cheers! Anchoress 07:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear Anchoress

I'm pretty new to this Wikipedia.

Well, I've been reading stuff on it for ages - but only just started to edit things.

I'm not sure which of my changes you didn't like - but I am quite an authority on phone words and phone names.

I am the president of the Australian Phone Word Association - so if you want to clear anything with me with regard to phone words, I can help.

Kind regards

Jack Singleton President Australian Phone Word Association jack@phonenames.com.au
 * Thanks for your reply, Jack. My objection was to a) the separation of examples into two sections, and b) the move of the North American examples to the 'US' section (North America is more than just the US, as I'm sure you know). It's not a content issue, it's a) an issue of WP conventions; Wikipedia is foremost an encyclopedia, and all those examples are just not encyclopedic enough to warrant two separate sections (in fact, a lot of experienced editors would probably argue that they don't warrant inclusion), and b) there was some concern when this article was created that it was a vanity article, and - especially since you, a major contributor, are the self-identified president of the Phonewords company - steps must be taken to keep the article global in scope, otherwise it will be deleted as a non-notable vanity article. I suggest you read the page quoted above (WP:COI, and also read WP:OWN. I'm not accusing you of anything, but if this article and your future contributions are to thrive on Wikipedia, it is important for you to understand our standards and conventions. They aren't necessarily right, they aren't necessarily fair, they aren't necessarily logical, but they are our culture, and folks who go against them can draw the ire of the community.


 * To summarise, look at it this way: we want to make the article look more global, less regional. You can't look at it from the standpoint of what works for your company.


 * Happy editing, look forward to continuing to work with you. Anchoress 09:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Anchoress

I understand your changes. And respect the culture of Wikipeida.

As a matter of fact, I have just sent the link to the Wikipedia phone word section to a variety of phone word / vanity number experts in the USA and the UK.

I also did some reading in the policy and noted that we should not include external links to commercial sites.

As such, I will remove the links.

Keep up the good work! Kind regards, Jack

PS - A vanity article on vanity numbers. Isn't it ironic, don't you think?
 * I know, I thought of that too, lol. Kudos to you for all the effort, and I look forward to the contributions of other editors. This will be a great article once it covers more of the world's telecommunications schemes. And please feel free to contact me about any questions you have. I am not the ultimate authority on WP culture and norms, but I am an experienced editor, and I would be happy to help or guide you in any way I can. By the way, a good way to communicate with other interested editors is through the talk page of the article. Feel free to leave notes there about what you are doing, what you want done, etc. Also check there periodically for other contributions. When commenting, users usually create a new section (with the + sign at the top of the screen), indent their responses with a : for each level of indent, and sign contributions at the end with four tildes at the end: ~ . And finally, I don't think you added it, but do you have access to a reference for the 92% thing quoted in the intro? It doesn't have to be online. Have a good day. Anchoress 09:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Anchoress: Glad you see the potential in this article. The history of alphanumeric numbers actually started in Canada and is very interesting.

When direct long distance dialling was introduced in Canada (as opposed to operator assisted long distance dialling) phone numbers increased from 4 digits to 6 digits.

The telecom people guessed rightly that people would not be able to remember 6 digit numbers very well, so the first 2 numbers were expressed as letters. Eg Toronto 4534 would be TO 4534 (86 4534).

There are also really interesting facts about alphanumeric keypads and why the phone keypad starts 123 at the top but calculator keypads start 789 a the top.

The calculator keypad was invented first. The reason for the phone keypad starting 123 is that the rotary phone dial had ABC on the 2, DEF on the 3 etc etc - so if the phone adopted the 789 calculator-style keypad it would have been weird to have the alphabet going in reverse.

Anyway, rather than just telling you all this stuff, I guess I should be adding it to the article!

The 92% is a figure from the Roy Morgan research conducted in Feb this year. I have a PDF of the full report.

The report doesn't exist online - should I add a link to Roy Morgan Research site? Regards, Jack Bigmeeting 10:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That info is very interesting. As you probably have gleaned, verifiability is an important issue on Wikipedia; verifiable information is always welcome, and unverifiable info (even if interesting) may be questioned or removed. I found citing sources one of the most challenging aspects of working with WP standards, and I'd be happy to do the work for you if you can come up with the information. Regarding the Roy Morgan report, a link to the site would be great, and additionally, if you can provide the following info:


 * author =
 * title =
 * version =
 * publisher = Roy Morgan
 * date =
 * url =
 * format = PDF
 * accessdate =
 * Or as much of it as you know, I will add a proper reference to the article. You can put the info either here or on the article page. That goes for any other references you want to add (the reference information is different depending on the source; if you want to explore it yourself, look HERE). Anchoress 10:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I will get the research information to you tomorrow when I'm at work. I've just found that there is a Roy Morgan Research page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Morgan_Research. I'm not sure how to do internal links on the copy in the article. Over and out for now. Jack Bigmeeting 10:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Neat. I'll take care of that. It's amazing what WP has articles on! Anchoress 11:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

And I just found a really good article on phone numbers!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number. It has the history of alphanumeric dialling - as per my earlier posting. It would be good to have the phone word article link to the phone number article. And vice versa.

If you could to do this for me it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Jack Bigmeeting 11:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. If you look at the 'See also' section, you'll see it, and I added a reciprocal link to the Telephone number page. BTW looking at the edit view of articles is a good way to figure out formatting etc. Anchoress 11:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

And the hits just keep on happening. ..

There's even an article on songs whose title includes a phone number:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_whose_title_includes_a_phone_number

And a good percentage of them are some form of alphanumeric / vanity number.

1-800-Sleazorama!

I just dialled it and got a company called CS Thursten & Sons.

Oh well, can't win 'em all.
 * Not sure I understand? Let me know. The link to the phone songs thing should be cool, tho. And oh, I screwed up the wikilink to the citation page. HERE it is. Anchoress 11:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help.

I just had a look at how the See also links are done.

I think I get it. I'll give it a go.

Off to sleep now. I'll dream of editing Wikipedia.

Have a great Thursday.

Regards

Jack Bigmeeting 11:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear Anchoress

Below are the details of the Roy Morgan reseach on phone names.

Not sure what access date means?

Jack

author = Roy Morgan Research title = Phone Word Awareness, Usage & Dial-ability Omnibus Telephone Survey Results version = 1.0 publisher = Roy Morgan date = March 2006 url = http://www.roymorgan.com.au/ format = PDF accessdate =

Bigmeeting 22:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * OK I'll add it now. The 'access date' is if the article is online, to register the last confirmed date that the info was available. For WP references, not every field needs to be filled, just whatever we know. I am very happy about your enthusiasm for editing, your aggreeability and your willingness to work within WP culture. I'm sure you'll have a great career here in whatever way you choose to contribute. Anchoress 08:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)