User talk:CFWheeler

September 2012
Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Regarding your edits to TriMet, it is recommended that you use the preview button before you save; this helps you find any errors you have made, reduces edit conflicts, and prevents clogging up recent changes and the page history. Thank you. Dawnseeker2000  19:55, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Formatting your TriMet table
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As you've seen, I moved your all-time TriMet bus route history out of the TriMet article and into the List of TriMet bus routes article (see related discussion on TriMet talk page), placed in a new section there which I've headed "All-time route history". That section heading follows Wikipedia's manual of style, by using lower case lettering, and omitting "TriMet" and "bus", because both of those are already in the article's title (and therefore it is implied that everything in the article is related to TriMet bus routes). Because I still believe this content fails Wikipedia's requirements – as I explained elsewhere – and therefore does not belong here at all, I don't want to take time to format the entire list, but I've done the first several lines, to show you a suggested format. (I also chose headings that are more like ones I've seen in other Wikipedia tables, to try to make them more consistent with other WP content, but those can be revised easily without affecting the bulk of the list.) I don't know any way to put your list into a wiki-table without retyping the data, and just doing the 15-or-so lines shown below took more than half an hour (but including about 15-20 min. to set up the table and fiddle with possible column headings), so converting your entire list might take 2-3 entire evenings or more. I don't want to invest that time, seeing as there's always the threat that someone else (who agrees with me about the content) could come across it and delete the entire section. However, this shows you how it can be done, and how it can look.

And this is a sortable table, which means you can click on the arrows in any column heading to sort that column (by number or alphabetically) – which is why I used separate columns for the start and end year. I also made the route name column so wide because some routes have long names, but this isn't reflected in the first few routes. I corrected your rough date for Line 5-Capitol Hwy., but I don't plan to take time to do that for others. This makes the table look so much better – and adds the sorting function – that you may determine it's worth your time to convert the rest of your list, eventually. If you want to work on it a little at a time, you could copy it to your "sandbox" – a page you would create in your WP:User space by (1) creating a user page for yourself (see mine for an idea of a rather plain, basic one) and then (2) writing "User:CFWheeler/sandbox" (without the quotation marks) in the address (URL) window of your browser after ..... /wiki/ and entering it and then clicking on "Start ...." to create that subpage ("saving" would then create it). In that space, which is not a Wikipedia article but is just your personal space, you could gradually convert the lines in the list to the new format, over several days, and then when finished, copy the whole thing (the html) by copy-and-paste into the List of TriMet bus routes article. As Dawnseeker2000 recommended above, you should use the "preview" button before saving any edits (I used it several times just while writing this message, before I "saved"/uploaded it).

Sorry if you are hurt by my comments that I still don't support the inclusion of this content on Wikipedia, but nowadays I am more interested in good journalism than in transit, and I feel this is fan-type content that should be published outside Wikipedia, not here. I hope you have now read the articles that I and 2 other users encouraged you to read, including What Wikipedia is not and Verifiability and Citing sources, along with others linked in the "welcome" box at the top of this page. (You cannot claim to be familiar with Wikipedia's content policies if you have not read any of those articles, but I hope you have read them.)

Last, since this is your user talk page, you are feel to delete this message – including the partial table shown below, which you'll probably not want to keep on your talk page. You can always access it again (including the raw wiki markup) by going into your page history, as I explained by email. It will be there permanently, as long as your account exists. SJ Morg (talk) 11:52, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I see you have recently added a list of former TriMet routes, which has been moved to a page I created, List of TriMet bus routes. There has been a request for better sourcing of the list.  This slideshow might be of some help in sourcing  p  b  p  19:36, 13 September 2012 (UTC)