User talk:Martyman/Archive1

Hi Martyman - welcome to Wikipedia. You might like to start by reading the tutorial and introducing yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask at the help desk or on my talk page. Two useful tips are that you can sign your name using four tildes ( ~ ) and you can preview your changes before you save using the show preview button. You can regularly find new tips on the Community Portal. I look forward to reading your great articles and I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. :) Ambi 05:53, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

P.S. Are you from Canberra, or the university? We've got a fair few holes in content in that area, and it'd be good to have another person around to fill some of them.

Hi Ambi, thanks for the info, I will add some information to my user page soon. Yes I am from Canberra and work at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the ANU. I intend to try and flesh out the ANU's entry a fair bit when I get a chance. Are there other Canberra entries that need work? Martyman 22:38, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Oh, this is wonderful! Yes, there's a lot of Canberra-related stuff that needs work. To my knowledge, there's only two of you at the moment, and one prospective-Canberran (me!). Regardless, I'm going to start a project (like WikiProject Melbourne) in order to coordinate filling in some of these holes. I just created List of Canberra suburbs the other day, and I've been meaning to try and expand the University article some more (although all I have is what is on the website and in the material I picked up at Open Day). Ambi 12:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Ack, you're right. They should be at Suburb, Australian Capital Territory. Also, if Hall, Tharwa, etc, are not technically in Canberra, then it may be an idea to remove those suburbs. Ambi 23:55, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Does ANU have a motto and/or coat of arms? It'd be good to add them to the article if this is the case. Ambi 06:34, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's not all that good I'm afraid: Image:Canberra-lake-panorama01_JAC.jpg

I'm adding your Lake Burley Griffin article to WP:FAC. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:56, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * One last thing: "The lake is stocked annually with a variety of introduced and native species, over 1.26 fish have been released since 1964." Ummm... that doesn't seem like very many fish! - Ta bu shi da yu 04:54, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, if its ok to ask, could you use your photographic skills to get some pics at the Botanic Gardens? I'm going to put a page up next week after my thesis is safely handed in--nixie 09:21, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Beautiful photography
I reuploaded your 'Srivener Dam' Photo to 'S c rivener Dam', fixed the relevant links. The original might be safely deleted now. I'll leave that for you to do if you wish. Thanks for adding your splendid work to the encyclopedia! I added your Scrivener dam image to the Dam article, and am going to vote for your Lake Burley article for featured article status. Pedant 17:43, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

Trangia image
Martyman, I used your very nice picture on portable stove, hope you don't mind.

Duk 04:03, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Tuggeranong
Ack - I didn't know. Thanks. I've reverted myself on those three articles. Ambi 10:47, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think a map of the ACT is useless as an indicator of the whereabouts of APH. A smaller-scale map of inner Canberra might be more useful. Adam 08:30, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ABS
How do you get suburb details out of the 2001 census, its driving me crazy. Thanks --nixie 02:16, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yarralumula
Good work on the Yarralumla article Marty. It's certainly one of Canberra's more interesting suburbs and one I'm personally fond of having spent part of my childhood there (Bailey Place). I read through most of the article and did some proof-reading edits as I went. I noticed we had some sort of simultaneous editing conflict as I was going along - hope that didn't mess anything up. Oska 01:11, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Looks like we co-incided then. I lived there from 1980-1984. My father still regrets selling that house. Moved on from there to Tasmania Circle Forrest.

I noticed your excellent photo of the brickworks. I remember accompanying my mother who was doing a photography course, on walks to the brickworks where she would photograph the chimney. My wanderings usually focussed more on the lake shore. It really wasn't a bad place to grow up. I still feel nostalgic for the physical environment of Canberra but culturally I find the place very narrow whenever I return there. Sorry if this sounds like the usual Canberra bashing but I do now see the place with an outsider's eyes.

Great surrounding countryside though. Used to do vegetation survey work in Namadgi Park which I loved and the bushwalking in the Budawangs which I see you've also written on is superb. Oska 01:31, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Responses
Firstly, please don't take offense at my criticisms - I tend be very critical of a lot of FA nominations, so that by the time they get to FA status, they're as good as Wikipedia can get.

As for the lead section - the first paragraph is alright, and the second is a half-hearted attempt at covering the history. IMO, Summer Hill does the lead section really well for this sort of thing.

With the landmarks section, it's just that Wikipedia isn't a tourist guide. The brief paragraphs don't really work, as Jeronimo as pointed out, and are things like Hotel Canberra that important that they deserve two or three decent-sized paragraphs? Compare Sarajevo and Marshall, Texas - they don't have mountains of information about individual local landmarks. But, IMO, there's the potential for a decent section there - that's why I suggested summarising them all into one or two paragraphs of prose. The example page in the sandbox is a good start, but could perhaps be summarised more.

With the amenities, why not merge the public transport paragraph in with "major roads" to create a transportation section? The amenities section just seems to be a mishmash of various points - perhaps the schools could go in an education section, whereas the information about where the shops are could probably go in a section of its own and then be expanded (ala the "Characteristics" section in Summer Hill).

What I was suggesting with the politics section was more if booth information could be obtained - i.e. how Yarralumla votes/has voted in the past. If that's not possible, then it's fine as is.

Finally, thanks for getting the references and further reading in line - that's now excellent. Ambi 01:36, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

I just read your comments about rudeness on here. It's a shame to hear that you're getting frustrated it (though you're certainly not the only one). You've done some fantastic work - it'd be a great shame if the project lost your efforts. Ambi 13:48, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I second Ambi's comments. I too have had a photo unceremoniously dumped by Adam in favour of his own. As a fellow mapmaker, I hope you stick with it because your maps are excellent. Geoff/Gsl 23:51, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Map drawing
My maps are almost entirely drawn using vector techniques -- I have zero talent for freehand painting. I have only ever used the GIMP so I don't know how its vector tools compare with Illustrator. As far as uploading source, I haven't been able to do it for some months now as non-standard image formats (such as .xcf) are now rejected. Geoff/Gsl 00:28, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Soda can stove
Hi Martyman, thanks for the Trangia information, I added it to the Comparison to other stoves subsection. Does it look alright to you? Is there any other information applicable to the Operation sub section? Duk 18:40, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

On The 10 Random Pages Test
Hi Martin, I've just come across your subpage. Wouldn't you agree that a sample of 10 is ridiculously small if you are using an inductive method -- especially if we keep in mind that Wikipedia is work is progress? I mean, stubs are part of the whole: They are continually being turned into long (and hopefully good) articles, while at the same time new stubs are created.

In particular, I'd like to know why you rate the Laura Blundy article under "bad to terrible" and why exactly you think it "needs work". I'll be glad to expand or rewrite it or whatever if you tell me what you don't like. Again, another way of constantly improving Wikipedia!

Best wishes,  16:33, May 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi, I agree stubs are needed but if any of the stubs I pointed out are still one or two lines then they are taking too long to evolve into a useful resource.


 * OK, I didn't mean to rate the articles that I said "need work" in the bad to terrible bunch. By "needs work" I mean that the article is not up to the standards I would think acceptable for a 1.0 release. I would expect all articles to be approaching a featured article standard.


 * So in the case of the Laura Blundy article it would probably require illustrations, external links, and more factual information. At the moment the article is 90% synopsis. The authors page disagrees witht he novel page as to when it was published. Examples of much more fleshed out novel articles are quite common on wikipedia, try almost any famous novel. Martyman 22:14, 17 May 2005 (UTC)