User talk:Levelistchampion

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! HGB 01:57, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
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I've noticed you were making additions to Harry Turtledove related pages and wanted to invite you to work on Turtlewiki. Shsilver 01:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Posting on talk pages
I noticed your recent posting to Talk:Starship Troopers, and wanted to make a few suggestions about posting to talk pages. If you have any questions about these practices, feel free to post them to my talk page. Thank you for listening. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:22, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * First, it's highly recommended that one sign one's postings with four tildes ( ~ ), which the wiki editor automatically converts to a timestamped, username-linked signature. The timestamp is important in trying to follow the chronological flow of the discussion, especially as many editors fail to follow standard talk page practices.
 * Second, when starting a new topic, one should use the "new topic" (+) tab, which provides a separate box to include the title of the new topic. This not only avoids syntax errors in creating the heading (which happen to even the most experienced wikians), but also displays the title as the edit summary for your posting.
 * And speaking of edit summaries, one should always include an edit summary for edits, as this helps other editors monitoring and reviewing the changes to both articles and talk pages to spot specific changes. (It's hardly infallible, but frequently saves a huge amount of time in this time-consuming work.)

"The late", and subsequent e-mail exchange
Hi, Levelistchampion. I noticed you recently made a change to Clemson University with the edit summary, "removing 'The late' from Strom Thurmond since the phrase conveys newness and he's been dead for seven years now." I don't think there's a problem with the change, but you should know that when applied to a person the adjective late means "dead," not "new." —Bkell (talk) 18:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

On 11/15/10 8:42 AM, Levelistchampion wrote: >I appreciate the calm response, I expect no less from an administrator, but I've encountered "the late" in references to people who died since the creation of wikipedia and I feel that it gives a temporal quality. Certainly you wouldn't write "the late Abraham Lincoln" or even "the late Tim Russert" in new edits, would you? Newspapers and newscasts use it all the time, perhaps to gently assure their users this person is dead before they proceed with the news. "Dark Knight is number one at the box office, starring Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger..." stands out as an acceptable usage. Putting "the late" in any article where people can simply click on the internal link to find birth and death range necessitates a return for style reasons. Thurmond has been dead for what, five years now? He's also famous enough, I would hope, that people would remember that. > >If the manual of style doesn't prohibit this type of usage, it should. Since my early days using wikipedia, I've not attempted to make substantial enough edits to merit studying the manual but if I'm receiving a multi part message ranging from forgetting to use my quadruple tilde on year old edits and a non-problem as you declared it, maybe I should...

Hi, Levelist. Thanks for the e-mail.

I understand now what you meant by "newness" in that edit summary; your Abraham Lincoln example made the point well. After thinking about it, I agree with you. I also don't know if there's anything about this particular usage in the Manual of Style, other than the general guideline to avoid language that dates the writing (see WP:DATED). This usage of the word "late" is probably not common enough to merit a specific point in the Manual of Style. However, now that you've brought it to my attention, I will keep it in mind, and if I come across it again in an article I will take it out.

By the way, if you don't mind, I think it would be good to copy this e-mail conversation to the appropriate spot at the bottom of your talk page, so that if someone comes along in the future and reads the beginning they can see how it concluded. (This happens more often than you might think.)

Thanks again for the explanation. Let me know if I can help you out in the future.

Brian (Bkell)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)