User talk:Bschmidt

Feel free to add whatever you like here!

Database Normalization
Hi Bob,


 * Help me out here a bit... I picked your name off the Normalization discussion group because I saw you took an interest in the topic and seemed to have been around a while.

Welcome to the Wikipedia. One thing to know is that there is no need to put attribution in the article itself--only in the discussion page. There are some interesting "rules" like the idea that the introduction (part before the index) is supposed to only be three paragraphs maximum, and that you are supposed to write in such a way that the article makes sense if you click "Print view" (no links). But other than that, you just have to read a lot of articles and policy documents. Practically anything goes in a discussion context, communicate in whatever style is polite and natural for you, jokes or otherwise are fine as long as you don't sacrifice clarity of your points.

Yes I have edited the Database normalization article in the past and tried to help it out some. In fact, my own understanding of the relevance of set theory evolved through trying to make the article more readable. (I migrated set theory material into an article about the relational model itself). Because I think normalization is a useful catch-phrase for an idea that a lot of people should understand, I wanted the article to be readable by a general audience. Though I like your citing of Codd as a primary source, the article as a whole is straying a little from the (er, my) goal of being useful to even non-CS readers. I will look over your additions and perhaps make some edits when I get a moment.

You asked about being able to see who does edits under IP address (non-logged in) accounts, and there's no way of doing that. Hopefully you've gotten some experience with the version comparison tools. If you don't like the edits someone has done and want to go back, don't try and undo their edits by hand--you can click on the version in the history and then when it brings up that old page choose "edit this page". (That's how people do reverts)

There are many push-and-pulls over style, even spelling (colour vs. color). The concept of Be Bold is to go ahead and start making edits and let people go in and undo it if they don't like your idea. I thank you for having written me to ask my opinions--and I think that it's a good policy to look through the history and see who you think has changed an article for the better before doing anything too drastic. But go ahead with what you like, just don't get too emotionally involved with it, because it's an experimental medium that will quickly drive you up the wall if you start taking edits (spam or otherwise) personally.

Best, Metaeducation 11:42, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

OTHER
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I have become very disapointed in Wikipedia and no longer acrtivly edit here. I have, however, made some minor edits recently.

I would not be around frequently enough to mentor anyone.

KeyStroke 03:26, 2005 September 12 (UTC)