User talk:Kenwarren/Metrology

First, a couple of things that will hopefully make this conversation a whole lot easier.
 * Please (with the exception of your initial response to my questions below) don't intersperse your comments with my remarks that they refer to. A couple of rounds of that and I have a lot of trouble following the conversation. Please either just provide a response after my comment, or if you feel a subject merits it, add a new heading. I've provided a link just below for that purpose.
 * Please don't change the text of your edits after the fact, and especially not after I've replied to them. If I find something confusing, I'll ask for clarification, and if you then change what you originally said, I'll get confused and grumpy. In the same vein, don't refactor this page. I'll do it if the situation warrants.
 * Second, please do sign your additions with the standard Wikipedia signature macro: ~.

Create a new section.

Initial questions
I guess I have two, one content-related and one style-related, and a request. Please be brief; a paragraph or two would be quite sufficient for each.

Content
(okay, it's several related questions...) How would you describe what you're trying to accomplish? If left completely alone, what would the end result of your edits in the field of weights and measures be? I get the impression that what you're looking for is to tie all current systems of measurement back to ancient african and/or middle eastern measurement systems. Is that right?

Style
I get the impression that you're really a novice Wikipedian (thus unfamiliar with Wiki-markup and style conventions that have long since been settled), and much more interested in adding content than making it pretty. Is that a fair characterization? I ask because this is one of the causes of the friction between you and many other editors. Your content is so far from Wikipedia standards that it's effectively unusable, and if an article is going to remain in a state where users wouldn't be able to figure out what it's trying to convey, then it's not generally considered encyclopedic. There are solutions to this issue, BTW. The easy one is to work on articles in your user space, and only deploy them to the main namespace when they're in good shape. This is suggested for any large of complex article, BTW.

Ken talk 23:09, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

Request
Please consider declaring a truce until we hash out some of the differences that have arisen. By truce, I mean that I don't perform edits related to weights and measures, and you don't do so either. If you agree, please say so here, and realize that if you then go and perform such edits, I'll lose a lot of faith in this particular discussion. Assuming you agree, I'll also point some of the most seriously annoyed users to this discussion, and invite them to participate politely. I will also ask them to agree to the same truce.

Ken talk 23:41, August 13, 2005 (UTC)