User talk:Fredvent

Council-Manager Government article
First, let me say welcome, Fred. I'm glad you joined us, as it does indeed seem to me that you have a strong base of knowledge you can draw upon in your contributions. As a new editor, I'd recommend checking out a few of the key wikipedia policies and guidelines, just to familiarize yourself with what is commonly done around here. Some of them incluse verifiability, using reliable sources, the neutral point of view, Wikipedia's nature as encyclopedia and our manual of style.

As for the article itself, the two things that bothered me about your contribs were that firstly, after you added it, you went back to remove hyphens, which seemed to me to indicate that the text may have been copied. Similarly, the removed citation seemed to come from another text. Because of the nature of it's licenses, we have to be very cautious about using other texts on wikipedia.

Secondly, the text have a waffling quality about it, starting as it does with "seems" and such. It didn't read as though it has the imperitive quality that an encyclopedic text should. But that might just be me.

Anyway, thanks for your intrest. I spend too much of my time here fighting vandals, that it's always nice to see a new contributor who genuinely wants to help. Happy contributing! oknazevad (talk) 16:47, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, that makes sense. Glad to be of help. oknazevad (talk) 15:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Hey, Fred, just checked out your mos recent edits. Looks good, though I would still get rid of the "seems". I noticed the use of an ibid. on your second cite. Typically, they aren't used here, if only because another editor might flip-flop paragraphs putting the cites out of order. If you want to use the same source more than once, the easiest way is to give the reference a name on its first use, such as writting, then putting the source info, closing as normal. When you cite it again, just use and it'll link tomthe same reference as before, which will now have tiny letters indicating the number of times it's used. Check the page to see what I mean, as I'll put it in action there. oknazevad (talk) 03:20, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Council-manager orgchart.png
Thank you for uploading File:Council-manager orgchart.png. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their license and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation.  F ASTILYsock (T ALK ) 06:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

This chart
Hey Fred,

I see exactly what you're saying about the comparison chart not showing the heirarchical nature of council-manager. I definately think we should keep your new one and, if you do feel up to it, mayor council and city commission versions would be keen.

The real advantage I see in retaining the comparison chart, however, is the ability of someone familiar with one form, perhaps because they live in a town with that form, to get a quick understanding of the other major form by comparison.

As for the copyright issue mentioned in the section above, while you did claim ownership on the file's page, you didnt put how you are releasing it, that is into the public domain, through the GFDL or Creative Commons, which are the licenses acceptable to Wikipedia. (The later two are what wiki text is under, so you can check out a link to each below the edit window of any page.)

Finally, yes I do think the Ireland section could be better referenced, but as I live in the US, I wouldn't even know where to look to begin finding sources. Maybe a friendly not at the Wikiproject:Ireland talk page could help.oknazevad (talk) 18:54, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Re:reply to you message regarding council-manager government page
Hi Fredvent. Basically what the above message refers to is the fact that you are missing information on the copyright status on File:Council-manager orgchart.png. Here on Wikipedia, policy dictates that all files must have a license tag denoting how a given image is copyrighted. Since you created this work yourself, this problem can easily be resolved by going to WP:ICTIC, selecting a license from the list, and adding the license tag to the file description page located at File:Council-manager orgchart.png. Hope that helps to clarify things. Regards,  F ASTILY  ( T ALK ) 21:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd recommend a combination of the cc-by-sa-3.0 and GFDL licenses. That's usually the preferred set of licenses for free user-created images on Wikipedia. Regards,  F ASTILY  ( T ALK ) 21:23, 26 December 2009 (UTC)