User talk:John Hendo/Autoarchive 1

Welcome
Thank you. John Hendo (talk) 14:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No worries. And hey, I see you are no longer a 'red-link'. Let me know if I can help with anything. Best, Daicaregos (talk) 17:00, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Didn't want to look like an oddball. I'm having a look round for now but will let you know if anything stumps me. Thanks again. John Hendo (talk) 17:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Be careful you don't give your real identity away. John Hendo (talk) 11:17, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * He he. Just trying to offer a practical demonstration that the 'Preview' button should always used to read what was written before saving : ) Best, Daicaregos (talk) 11:52, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Liked your edit, gave me a laugh! Waterwynd (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I made sure not to forget the little smile at the end. Wouldn't want anyone to think I was serious. :) John Hendo (talk) 15:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Edinburgh
Hey, I hope my comments didn't put you off. Have you considered peer review? It can be very helpful to get extra eyes on an article.-- Beloved Freak  21:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You didn't put me off in the slightest. All your comments were valid ones and in retrospect I should have known that more work was needed on it. Thanks. John Hendo (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, good. As I said, I'll try to have another look at it and make any more comments on the article talkpage. It'd be great to see it pass as a GA. :) -- Beloved Freak  22:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Three revert rule
Hi John,

Just a friendly heads-up... You're probably not be aware of the rules on making more than 3 reverts to an article in a 24 hour period, so it might be an idea to review WP:3RR. You appear to have got away with it though! Catfish Jim  &#38; the soapdish  10:52, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi
Sorry for not responding earlier.

I did actually write you a comprehensive reply, but a colleague came along and I got distracted and that webbrowser ended up getting shut down, so this is my 2nd draft! (It is less candid than the 1st draft by the way.)

I'll keep it brief: do not despair. Rest assured that there are many, many Wikipedians that are knowledgeable about Scotland and her society, history and civil life. We do a tremendous amount of good work, and will continue to do so.

Unfortunately, there is a strong tendency for trolls who know nothing whatsoever about topics (Scotland-related topics are by no means alone in this regard) to target high-profile elements of articles to twist them to misrepresent the topic in question. Eg. introductions, photographs, section headers, infoboxes, external links, categories etc. etc. The Scotland article itself has suffered horrendous attacks over the years, with the worst example being The Battle of the Opening Sentence.

Now, a lot of these attackers are quite clever (witness the infinite number of ip campaigns). However, for the most part, they are thick as shit, and know nothing whatsoever about the topic in question. It is a strange fact of Wikipedia life that the "vote" of a university professor specialising in a topic counts for exactly the same as an educationally subnormal teenager on the other side of the planet who has not even read the abridged version of the Lonely Planet Guide to Caledonia. Add in the fact that the retarded teenager then emails all his chums off-Wiki to "vote" the same way as him, and you can understand why "discussions" on Wikipedia are often utterly pathetic charades.

The best attitude is to genuinely pity our less-gifted Users. Keep your head high, and work, work, work as we live in the early days of a better Wikpedia (as Alasdair Gray didn't say). And my best tip of all: master the art of referencing. If there is one thing that retards struggle with, it is the cold, hard light of intelligent academic/journalistic material. And Scotland-interested editors have an absolute ocean of outstanding material which is almost unused on Wikipedia yet.--Mais oui! (talk) 06:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Back for a while

 * Best you make the most of it then, John. Good to see you back. If only for a while. Daicaregos (talk) 23:50, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Dai. I would rather not lose my internet connection, but circumstances mean that it's inevitable I'm afraid. I see there is still some crap being talked on certain wiki pages. With only a week left I think I shall contribute what little time I have on here to article improvement, and not responding to shite being written on talk pages. Cheers, John Hendo (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Good choice. Daicaregos (talk) 00:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * LOL. I couldn't help myself. I shall give myself a ticking off for going back on my word concerning my involvement with talk pages. :) John Hendo (talk) 02:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Stirling's looking good. Are you thinking of taking it to WP:FAC? Daicaregos (talk)
 * I would like to think I could, but I just don't have the time. I'll still pop in now and again and try to improve it a little until my last few days are up. I have been having a peek at some of your own work and I am quite impressed. I don't know what you thought of my above link. I found it quite amusing as I wrote it. Personally, I wouldn't start a discussion/debate if I didn't have anything to back it up with. Others obviously think it's not necessary. John Hendo (talk) 18:18, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It's quite eclectic, but usually has a Welsh connection. The one I'm most proud if is Parc Cwm long cairn (although taking the mess that was the Wales article to WP:GA was an achievement). The goal was to take it to WP:FAC, but I think the criticism of my 'baby' would be just too much (how shallow is that?). I may give it a go one day soon, we'll see. I followed your link. I made no comment there, as it would have been considered canvassing. I wouldn't start a discussion/debate if I couldn't back it up either (I have said as much on Talk:David Haye, Talk:British Columbia, Talk:Prince Edward Island, etc. as well as his and my Talk pages) I would consider that trolling.  Take a look at that editor's Talkpage. Sadly, that sort of behaviour is far from unusual for him. I find it disgraceful that it is tollerated, but there we are. Some things you can change, some you can't. Cheers for now. Daicaregos (talk) 18:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That's alright Dai, I wasn't expecting you to make any comments at the talk page. I think I've said all that's needed to be said over there. Anyway, it appears you know the editor in question well enough already. I wouldn't go near his talk page for all the tea in China, there's no knowing what I would say if I did. You took the Wales article to GA status? Quite a feat I would imagine for a country article. Well done mate! John Hendo (talk) 19:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not by myself, it was a collaboration, but it took a fair while and was quite intense. I do wonder though, after over 50,000 edits, would he be able to point to anything, anything at all, that he could be proud of here? And without his "contribution", all those 100s (perhaps 1000s) of hours of real editors' time may have been spent on improving the project instead. What a waste. Daicaregos (talk) 20:51, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Are the administrators on this site quite happy with his conduct? I imagine they will have a lot on their plate with a website of this size, but I would have thought they would have noticed something by now. It may be as you said earlier, some things you can change, some you can't. I'll be back on wednesday for my last two days. Cheers, John Hendo (talk) 21:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland
I'm just dropping you a quick note about a new Wikipedian in Residence job that's opened up at the National Library of Scotland. There're more details at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 15:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
Hi, You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

The 10,000 Challenge
Hi, at The 10,000 Challenge we're striving to bring about 10,000 article improvements and creations for the UK and Ireland and inspire others to create more content. In order to achieve this we need diversity of content, in all parts of the UK and Ireland on all topics. Eventually a regional contest will be held for all parts of the British Isles, like they were for Wales and the Wedt Country. We currently have just over 1900 articles and need contributors! If you think you'd be interested in collaborating on this and helping reach the target quicker, please sign up and begin listing your entries there as soon as possible! Thanks.♦ --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Europe 10,000 Challenge invite
Hi. The WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 09:14, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of Nicknames of Edinburgh for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Nicknames of Edinburgh is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Nicknames of Edinburgh until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. wikitigresito (talk) 16:51, 27 April 2018 (UTC)