User talk:Pe327maug

Please do not use the email contact system as you have: what you wrote to me should be at Talk:Ohthere of Hålogaland, although very little of it appears to be relevant. Of course improvements to an article are always welcome – I have not yet seen any in your edits. Nortonius (talk) 17:14, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Nortonius, did you really read my mail to the end? I wonder.
 * My small edits in Wikipedia were just a tiny preparation for much more to come: 99% of what I had intended to change in "Journey south to Hedeby" are still on my hard disk.


 * Pe327maug (talk) 18:51, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, I read your whole email. The trouble is, there is no way that I can predict what someone does or doesn't have on their hard drive. It might be best if you develop the changes you wish to make in a sandbox, and then paste them into the article in a single edit, so that other editors are not confronted by seemingly random additions such as . Alternatively, if you would rather take longer about it, you might use a template such as Template:In use, which signals to other editors that an article is undergoing some changes – you can even specify how long it might take. Of course, you would need to remove the template(s) as soon you have finished for the day, rather than until you have finished working on the whole article – this is explained under the heading "Usage" on the page for the template. I hope that helps. Nortonius (talk) 19:14, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the hints. My text plus a totally new fn. 13 is 100% finished as sourcecode (or whatever you call it), printout two A4 pages plus another page for additions to the bibliography. When I tried to edit fn. 13 I was told I could not do it in the visual editor because of the "group=Fn" at the end, so I had to sit down and try to understand the underlying system, and I simply copied things like {sfn} etc. I have not used any templates, I do not know which ones and where to use them, and I am not prepared to learn these things in the first place: because I have no intention of revising another article. So I have tried to progress by small steps and check the results, but this is apparently not welcome. I have tried the Sandbox several times but it is not the same as a whole article. My short meetings with the inner workings of Wikipedia have left the impression with me that WP cares very much for proper syntax and WP etiquette - to the detriment of content. The system makes it hard for WP-outsiders like me to suggest improvements and corrections: for example, you deleted my anchor (invisible to the normal reader) but the Prague "Bosworth-Toller of 2010" (refering to a work of the 19th century) has been in fn. 13 (and elsewhere) for years, an absolute eye-sore for any linguist which makes the professional reader doubt the quality of the whole lot. And I told you of other corrigenda in my mail. I am prepared to share my knowledge but not if I have to learn a programming language for it.
 * Pe327maug (talk) 21:11, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I think this is a shame. WP mark-up can be very arcane. I made my first edit in 2008, but still would not pretend that I understand it all. I understand your reluctance to learn how WP works; but I also get the impression that you might well have useful material to add. I should say now that I'm quite ill, and find it quite hard to sit at my computer for very long. But, Talk:Ohthere of Hålogaland is the venue for discussing new and changed material for that article, and we could collaborate there. Why not set out the details of what you have in mind there, and perhaps we can then take our time to discuss it, without disturbing the article: I would then be able to use my familiarity with how WP works to work such new or changed material into the article as we might agree is suitable. If you want to do that, start by clicking on "Add topic" at the top of that page, give it a title in the "Subject" box, perhaps "New material", and type away. I could then have a look and comment as and when I have the energy. I have struck through the preceding offer of collaboration because, in the cold light of day, I simply do not have the energy at this time. My apologies. By the way, you'll notice that my responses are indented to show the chronological order of the comments: this is done by adding a colon at the start of each paragraph in a comment. Subsequent comments require extra colons to increase the indent. I'll apply that now to this discussion, to show you what I mean. Please try it. Thanks. Nortonius (talk) 21:56, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your original offer of collaboration, very kind of you. But as a linguist I have been used to lone fighting, and all my scholarly contributions were in a finished state when submitted to a colleague for a sort of easy peer-review. I take it that you are a native speaker of English, and if you find any linguistic errors (in addition to mark-up errors) you are welcome to correct them. But otherwise my revisions and enlargement to the beginning of the section "Journey south to Hedeby" were already in a completely finished state last week, at least in my word processor. When I was speaking about "progress in small steps" I only meant problems of mark-up language, not of scholarly aims or contents. I amalgamated my completely new footnote 13 into the main text and slowly added my bibliographical notes with the mark-up elements, all by hand, no templates. I had just added the anchor further up the page for a trial and had begun adding ten books and articles to the bibliography (VE) when the mail pointing to your "interference" arrived. My plans were to first bring the bibliography up to date and then edit the source page, delete the first paragraph of the Hedeby section, replace it by my own new source file, press "Publish changes", hope for the best and see what comes. That's what I thought was how Wikipedia works. Let's see what you will say about this, I hope you can after recovering from your illness, sorry to hear about it. All the best.    Pe327maug (talk) 09:52, 12 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Still no note from you, Nortonius, that looks serious. My very best wishes for a speedy recovery. I have just finished the alterations I spoke of in my last message.Pe327maug (talk) 18:15, 15 May 2020 (UTC)