User talk:HouseOfChange/Archive 1

Here is some archived chat, starting from my first edits up until spring 2018. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:15, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Welcome!
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Reference Errors on 19 March
Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. as follows: Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:A930913/RBpreload&editintro=User:A930913/RBeditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:A930913&preloadtitle=ReferenceBot%20–%20&section=new report it to my operator]. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:28, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * On the Udacity page, [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=600258729 your edit] caused a URL error (help) . ([ Fix] | [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&preload=User:ReferenceBot/helpform&preloadtitle=Referencing%20errors%20on%20%5B%5BSpecial%3ADiff%2F600258729%7CUdacity%5D%5D Ask for help])
 * Dohhhh... I left http off the URL. Thanks to BattyBot for repairing this. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:29, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Wendy Cebula
Hello, HouseOfChange. I wanted to let you know that I’m proposing an article that you started, Wendy Cebula, for deletion because it's a biography of a living person that lacks references. If you don't want Wendy Cebula to be deleted, please add a reference to the article.

If you don't understand this message, you can leave a note on my talk page.

Thanks, KaraokeMac (talk) 07:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Wendy Cebula
Hello HouseOfChange,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Wendy Cebula for deletion, because it seems to be inappropriate for a variety of reasons.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. KaraokeMac (talk) 07:31, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Wendy Cebula Update
I did not actually delete the article, I merely placed the template, however another user who is admin has obviously agreed with me as they deleted it meaning it's criteria for deletion was founded. Sorry we don't all agree with decisions such is life I'm afraid, if you re-create the page be sure to use more sources and references and wikify the article and link to and from other articles. Also it is not our place to go hunting for loads of sources for articles, it is the creators to ensure they cite sufficient references and sources for that article so it meets the criteria for Wikipedia.

--KaraokeMac (talk) 21:44, 9 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The article you/your admin friend already deleted was not "lacking references," it had one extremely good quality reference (Harvard Crimson) and a great many more might be found on the Internet. Wendy Cebula has just (late March) been named President of EdX, whose previous (male) president had an article. I created the article because linking her name from EdX created a red link. The general absence of women from Wikipedia does not seem to preclude women holding notable jobs from being notable. It seemed to me that such a high-profile job would generate notability. Her hiring by EdX has generated quite a bit of news interest: https://www.google.com/search?q=Wendy+Cebula

More about her here: http://www.forbes.com/profile/wendy-cebula/


 * I have no intention of wasting my time re-creating the page and squabbling with petty bureaucrats over its inclusions. If she is notable, I am sure somebody else will create the page; if she is not notable, there is no reason for me to pursue it. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Talking to myself
I want to figure out how to do a really good format for references to a webpage that provides the information being cited. My informal method to figure this out was to pick a recent Wikpedia "Featured Article" and copy one of the references out of it. The article is about a song by Kylie Minogue.

Here's how the reference is formatted there:

Breaking this down....

It starts with opening tag saying ref plus possibly a name for the ref, it if it repeated.

Just inside the opening and closing ref tags, there is a "cite web" element enclosed by double curly brackets. The structure of the cite web piece includes a bunch of different possible elements, separated by | markers, but not using quotes at all, such as last, first, title, url, publisher, date, and access date. The date seems to be given in European format (day month four-digit-year) with no commas between elements.)

soooo,,, Dirac-ian "bra" ref name = whatever Dirac-ian "ket"

open curly brackets cite web close curly brackets
 * last=
 * first=
 * title=
 * publisher=
 * accessdate=
 * date=

Let's see what hash trying to save this mess creates! HouseOfChange (talk) 00:14, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Couple of notes
Hi there, saw some of your posts and wanted to leave a couple notes for you.
 * 1) Giving out barnstars is easy, fun, and free :) A page about them is here: Barnstars.  Just copy and paste that code to a User_talk: page to give them out.
 * 2) Formatting references can seem like a lot of work at first, but they are really really important to our articles! When editing an article, the citation helper tool should appear above the edit box (click on CITE) and follow the links.  Some very detailed directions can be found here: CITE.  Many academic settings stress the format of citations, to the point of making the formatting more important than the content!  On Wikipedia, we value function over form for contributors, so if you can't figure out what format to use, just use any-someone else will eventually come along and clean it up!
 * Happy editing! — xaosflux  Talk  22:46, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much! This is useful advice for sure. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:28, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

on your user page
You seem to be asking for this:


 * 1) Top of page while logged in, Preferences
 * 2) Tick (check) "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist"
 * 3) Click Save near the end of the page

That's it! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:59, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

History of China edits
You're welcome, and thanks for your recognition. It feels good to be appreciated. (I must remember to do so for others more often.) You set a good example. If you ever have a suggested article for me to examine and edit, feel free to let me know.--SidP (talk) 10:30, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Are you interested in improving the biography of Jack Ma? I just posted some grumpy comments to the talk page there but since I leave for SF at 6:30 a.m tomorrow, I don't have time to improve the article now. Ma is a very interesting person. IMO you understand so much more about him if you realize that his parents were professional performers in Pingtan, a Jiangnan art form that combines music, storytelling, jokes and improvisation, in the Wu language. Pingtan originated in the Song Dynasty. But like many other traditional Chinese arts, it came under attack during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976.) Many performers survived only by devoting their performances to recitals of poems by Chairman Mao. Pingtan is part of why Ma was bullied in his early school years (he was born in 1964) and probably also part of why he loves outrageous performance. Anyway, I hope to work on the article myself pretty soon. I just finished teaching a course on Chinese history centered on Hangzhou; Alibaba was featured in the last lecture. HouseOfChange (talk) 04:16, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll be glad to take a look at it soon. Sounds very interesting.--SidP (talk) 06:19, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Hope the edits I did meet your expectations.--SidP (talk) 07:00, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Great improvements by you there. Can't say more as I am on deadline project elsewhere, but thanks. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:10, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 18
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China VPN problem
Hi all, I am in China for business, and just got blocked from editing because apparently the VPN anonymized my IP. I just wanted to add, to the talk of Kit Craig article, that I know Wikipedia has no policy against including things in people's bios just because people dislike them, as Kit Craig apparently disliked her birth name. Two other editors express consensus that they want her birth name in the article, and I don't plan to dispute their decision to add it. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:03, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Still in China, but now allowed to edit again. I don't understand what is happening, but ... whatever.

Sample footnote
HouseOfChange (talk) 14:30, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Lawrence M. Krauss (and Al Giordano)
Hello. In answer to your question as to why I don't propose a draft for a new section of the Wikipedia article on Lawrence M. Krauss, again, I stopped editing Wikipedia regularly in 2013, in large part because I got very sick of the constant negotiation on the Talk Pages. The reason that is so tiring for me is because I have been a paid journalist for newspapers and magazines, a paid writer for Hollywood and a paid communications director for political campaigns. Going through "editorial" - while I completely understand it - is part of my job, for which I am paid. I no more relish the idea of spending my downtime with "editorial" than an attorney you meet at a dinner party would be willing to file a legal brief for you over that parking ticket you just caught.

And in fact, Wikipedia's "editorial" - because of its democratic nature - is ten times worse than any other "editorial." At a newspaper, I sit down with my editor, who answers to her editor-in-chief, who answers to his publisher, who answers to the president of her company, who answers to his stockholders. There is a clear chain. At Wikipedia, everybody gets a vote, including the intern. And because a "consensus" is necessary, and the intern is probably not interested, the story never runs. And if it does run, then it can be re-edited. Bear in mind: I don't mind that more information can be added, wording can be improved, a comma splice can be fixed, a link can be updated. But one person can decide it violates some arcane rule and just take the whole article out.

Again, I have edited Wikipedia infrequently for the last five years. One of the most recent times, I added a single, sourced entry to a list. I added the page to my Watchlist, just in case, figuring my edit should not be controversial. This past January, checking over my Watchlist, I saw my entry - indeed most of the list - had been removed. As I reverted that edit, I suggested if there was something wrong, it should be discussed on the Talk Page. And that's how I found myself at 3:00 in the morning giving a detailed defense as to why the dog that is a key plot device in The Great Gatsby qualifies as a "Notable Airedale terrier."

If someone who doesn't mind going through Wikipedia's byzantine editorial process wants to go to the BuzzFeed article (which mentions the Epstein story), follow the embedded links to the original Daily Beast article and the Skepchick blog post, which are right there, and include a paragraph while waiting for all Krauss' fans on Wikipedia to consent to mentioning it, they're more than welcome. I do mind, and I won't be doing it.

Life's just too damn short to be doing that on my free time, even if it weren't my job. Which, I repeat, it is.

As for Al Giordano, I replied to your comment on my Talk Page. It's really funny, I was surprised to hear that name again so soon and find out he wasn't who I thought he was. But I will say this, though, as a PS: I have worked for many volunteer organizations, and while it is not legally required for them to pay anyone, if they want someone with knowledge and experience to do the job, they have to pay. Because people who can get paid to do something typically won't do it for free. And they will typically take a stranger expecting them to do it for free as an insult. Anyway, cheers. -- JCaesar (talk) 01:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I can see that people getting asked to "volunteer" work that they expect to be paid for feel angry and maybe insulted. My point was that asking a woman to work for free is not necessarily sexual harassment of women in general--volunteer organizations typically try to get EVERYBODY, of any of the world's 79 different genders, to do stuff for free
 * I also sympathize with your unwillingness to do "free" editing for Wikipedia. I work here only on a few articles where I feel a balance between my desire to share information and my desire to spend time doing something that I get paid for or that makes me smile. I can totally see myself agreeing with you about a Great Gatsby Airedale terrier. Wishing you all the best. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:11, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

David Copperfield
Used to have an edit warrior pushing the "gay" bit despite his source having been officially retracted by the newspaper. I am not allowed to mention any BLP even remotely connected to American Politics, alas, but some of the "allegation" shoved saying a person actually used slaves in Nazi Germany could likely have been found in some BLPs. See User:Collect/BLP for some of the colloquy. It may take a while just on this one BLP, but I follow several thousand of them. Collect (talk) 22:00, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 5
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 * Thanks for this notification. I fixed it at the article HouseOfChange (talk) 01:06, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

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