User talk:Nan Boleyn

Major edit listed as minor
Hi

I notice you have put the article José Maria de Sousa Horta e Costa back to a state prior to the copy edits done on the article.

You tagged them as "minor" edits but they were in fact one major one and a small correction.

You have vastly increased the amount of text and have reverted back to roughly the same as it was on 10 February 2011, bar an addition of lots of dates in a long muddles paragraph. For example:
 * The change "and the colonial" to "and colonial" - "Colonial Governor of India and Macau" is a title, not really a problem as such but it should really have the.
 * The alternative name he was known by should really be in the article, not as a ref. The manual of style (WP:MOS) recommends that the place of birth is not placed at the beginning of the opening line of the lead, something which I edited out and you have put it back in.
 * You have changed my edit of "de Sousa studied" back to the terrible "he made a brilliant course at" (this means that he designed the courses that were studied)
 * You have changed "de Sousa studied at the Escola do Exército and started his military career as an Alférez in the engineers" back to the incomprehensible "made a brilliant course at the Escola do Exército, followed the military career and came an Alférez of Engineers"

I am sorry but I am going to have to undo your changes. If you wish to edit the article please make smaller changes and save them more frequently so that the good can be sorted out from the bad.

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 15:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Stop the personal attacks and comments. Comment on the edits, not the person.

"Why? "Your edits make no sense" sounds like a sentence well built!." No, that just proves my point as I originally said:
 * and comments such as "your edits make no sense" are in fact showing me that your English perhaps is not as good as you thought it was.

In other words although you think my edits are rubbish that is because your English is not very good.

Chaosdruid (talk) 15:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Page moves
Please don't keep renaming articles to include designations such as "department", as it is not in keeping with Wikipedia's style. For example, the article on Ohio is called Ohio, not "Ohio state", and the article on Yorkshire is called Yorkshire, not "Yorkshire county". It is normally necessary to include a designation of the type of entity only in cases which would otherwise be ambiguous, as for example New York City against New York State, and even there we use simply New York as the title of the article on the the latter. JamesBWatson (talk) 17:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't know. Since most of the articles had "Department" after them, without any disambiguation needed, I simply uniformized them. Nan Boleyn (talk) 17:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't know that there were more of these with "department" in the titles, I saw only the ones you moved. If what you say is right it would be a good idea to look at them to see if there is a good reason for the different treatment, and if not uniformize them. However, I have noticed another edit of yours which I think is more clear cut. You changed "Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova" to "Nataliya Sergeievna Goncharova". Wikipedia's manual of style specifies that we use names in the form most commonly recognised in English. A Google search for "Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova" produced 5720 hits, and "Nataliya Sergeievna Goncharova" produced none, so I think it is a safe bet that "Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova" is more common. It is also in my experience the way that Russian names are more usually transcribed into English. JamesBWatson (talk) 17:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Gagarin
On wikipedia we go by the most common English spelling.

As a result I have reverted the name to Grigory Grigorievich Gagarin

Chaosdruid (talk) 17:35, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Can't you keep both, for the sake of accuracy? Nan Boleyn (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The only time that would normally happen was if they were almost equal in numbers, or a significant ratio was achieved. For example the Kiev article starts with "Kiev or Kyiv" as they are only 2:1, and Joseph Stalin has him as Joseph (1,000,000 ) rather than Josef (394,000 ) as this is only a 3:1 10:1 ratio. It does not even give the name he was born with, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, until later and even though it only achieves 2,550 it was the name he was born with and that will always get a mention.
 * There is a real problem with anglicised Russian and Ukrainian names, most sources have used Americanised translations although pressure on some sources is achieving change this may take time before it reflects in searches and policies. Chaosdruid (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Happens the same with the Frenchifications of Russian names after the Russian Revolution... Nan Boleyn (talk) 18:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I was just changing my bad ratio, and a sp (spelling) mistake but got an ec (edit conflict) - I was going to use another city which had 10:1 but changed to a biog - have corrected in the above post.
 * It seems to me that as the ratio is quite high you could put it in as a "was also somtimes spelled ...) but I would ask if no one has any objections on the talk page first. Chaosdruid (talk) 18:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Fine for me. As a matter of principle many people will agree. Nan Boleyn (talk) 18:16, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I would try and avoid the assume mistake (make an ass out of u and me as is often said on here) as something which seems pretty obvious can often get shot down in flames due to consensus. Consensus says that if only 3 people are interested and 2 say no, then no it is.
 * That can mean that things which are perhaps wrong are left as is because the consensus is against the change! There are other routes after such a situation, such as WP:RfC, but they take time and are not always of benefit if articles are left with incorrect statements due to consensus.
 * I can think of a couple of occasions where obviously incorrect material was left in such a manner but they are rare thank goodness :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 18:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The disadvantages of wikipedia. And there is no Administrator with authority to manage things as they should. Nan Boleyn (talk) 18:31, 18 February 2011 (UTC)