User talk:Rich Wannen

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I've seen the discussion in Village_pump (technical). Please don't be put off by your first, rather rude, acquaintance with Wikipedia: it takes a little time to get to know how a community like this works. If you want to continue with your magazine article, please consider using a subpage of your user space, User:Rich Wannen. The easiest way to create a subpage is to add a link to an existing page and use the redlink to create a new page. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:34, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi - I'm glad it hasn't put you off too much. Keep up the good work. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Film headings
Sorry if you think I have been "messing" with your edits, I am just trying to get them to comply with normal wikipedia standards and practies. Please read Manual of Style (headings).

"See also" is a standard heading, to quote the manual:


 * Some heading titles have standard wordings:
 * See also
 * External links
 * References
 * Footnotes
 * Please do not vary the wording or capitalisation of these headings, except for removing the plural "s" where there is only one link/reference/footnote.

The page also says:


 * The Manual of Style says "Avoid links within headers. Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence under the header."

It is also customary to put comments about work that needs to be done on the talk page, and not on the article. If everyone did that, there'd be notes in almost every paragraph of every article.

Also, I commented as to why I made the changes, which you must not have seen. Check the history.

I'm reverting most of Film again. I hope we can discuss this if you still disagree. -- Samuel Wantman 05:13, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I do not understand why you think my efforts are keeping you from accomplishing your goals of merging film and cinema. I am cleaning up your work so that it fits Wikipedia style. I don't see how your version does anything but make things look different from the norm. If you want to change the name of an article, you should move it to the new one. However, you should only rename things using the conventions that everyone has already worked to reach consensus on, or work to change the consensus. Yes, the list is in essence an index, but here in wikipedia we call them lists. Categories don't get redirected to articles, etc... Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. That means that you can't just do everything the way you think is the best. Everyone else has to agree with your changes. I am going to hold off on reverting for a while, because I believe that someone else will probably come along and see the same problems I saw. This isn't my own pet peeve.

I would suggest that you use the discussion pages to list the tasks you think need to be done on the article and not put those comments in the article. While the old articles may need to be cleaned up they are still usable, and your comments are very distracting and confusing to people who are reading the articles instead of just editing them.

If your changes are really major, and you can't do everything you'd like to do at once, You might consider making new temporary pages for the articles and work on them until they have been cleaned up. You can then copy the changes all at once. You could put them at User:Rich Wannen/Film.

You see my efforts as a waste of your time. I can understand how you feel that way. What I hope you understand is that while I appreciate the work you are putting into these articles, I'd like you to do it in a way that doesn't waste my time, and the time of other editors. You can do this by following the established conventions.

BTW, thanks for all of you work on Legong. -- Samuel Wantman 19:50, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

One more thing. I noticed that you are removing red links from the list of film topics. Since categories can only have articles that exist, the custom is to list articles that should exist, but haven't yet been written in wikipedia lists. The lists are meant to list EVERY topic that should go in the list. They are not meant to be an index of what already exists, that is what categories are for. The list is a way of organizing information and also letting everyone know of a missing article. So please don't delete the red links for missing articles unless you find one that has been listed by mistake and really doesn't belong on the list. Also, if a listing redirects to a different article it probably would be best to leave it in the list because the redirected article is where one should look for information about the topic. There is a method to this madness! Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 06:12, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

List of Motion pic co's
Remember first of all that it was an admin who deleted your page in response to my tagging it, and I am not an admin. I didn't delete it myself. If you are genuinely working on the article, that's great. But you'll be far far more likely to keep it if, instead of re-creating blank pages with angry comments you either:
 * a) Build the page on your user page and then, when you've got something (and it needn't be much), re-create the page.
 * b) Write it offline in e.g. Notepad (or whatever) and then upload it all in one go. Again, it needn't be much.

But repeatedly re-creating a deleted page as a blank, angry page and then writing angry comments in other user's talk pages is not a way to proceed. It does none of us any good. If you have something to contribute - the Wiki wants you to contribute it! -Splash 03:14, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)


 * I see it's been deleted again. Nothing to do with me this time. 'Wiki' means fast, so if you plan to hold onto a deleted page, you're gonna have to have either Jedi reflexes or follow a) or b).-Splash 03:28, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Your Film project
Rich,

I'm not sure that you understand how wikipedia is arranged, and that there might be a much easier way to accomplish what you are trying to do. I'm not sure I understand everything you are trying to do. I hope we can discuss this further, and perhaps I can help you in your task.

First a little history about Wikipedia...

Until some time in 2004 there was no such thing as categories. Instead, people made lists. The purpose of the lists was to organize all the topics in a field and have links to all the articles in the wiki. People would add topics if an article existed, or if they thought there should be an article about a topic. Sometimes, a topic would get redirected to a different article if there was information in that article about the topic.

When categories were implemented in the software there was quite a bit of discussion about if and how categories and lists should coexist. Some people wanted the lists to go away and be totaly replaced by categories. The consensus was that there was a value to both categories and lists. Categories kept a record of what existed, and lists were comprehensive and could be annotated.

Every so often people decide that categories are mis-named, and they get submitted to the Categories for deletion page. If there is consensus, the category gets renamed and all the articles in the category get moved into it. So if you want to move all the entries in category:Cinema to Category:Film all you have to do is post it at the appropriate page and discuss it with everyone else. Since there have already been discussions about moving Cinema to Film, I would guess that this would be approved. I would certainly support this move. Using a bot, this process can be automated without any work at all on your part.

List of movie-related topics can be renamed List of film-related topics. This too, is a pretty simple procedure.

I notice that you are removing duplicates between the lists and the categories. This is not a good idea. It makes the lists fairly useless. There SHOULD be duplication. That is part of the point of having the list. In the current scheme of things, List of movie-related topics should contain:
 * A link to every article that has already been written about a film topic.
 * Every topic that deserves an article but hasn't yet been written. These appear as red-links.
 * Every topic that someone might be looking for that doesn't have its own article, but the information can be found in a different article.

The list can be organized in ways that the category cannot. The organization can make it easier for someone to find what they are looking, and it can also educate by showing how topics in the field are organized. Some lists add annotations that help explain the topic.

You have been removing the duplications between List of movie-related topics and Motion picture terminology. This is a good thing. I would suggest that Motion picture terminology be combined with List of film techniques and moved to List of filmmaking terminology.

So it looks to me that a good deal of your effort is counter productive. If I am not understanding what you are attempting, please correct my misconceptions. I'm more than willing to help you with all this, once I understand your intent better.

Does this explanation help? -- Samuel Wantman 08:21, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

can I help?
Hi - If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. I hope you include me in some people who seemed genuinely interested in making Wikipedia a productive community (your comment on the Village Pump). I think I've been around long enough to know how most things work. I've asked another user who's a film buff if he can help as well. So. please let me know if there's anything I can do. This is quite a confusing place at times, and the "rules" are sometimes not so obvious. I do think that the overwhelming majority of people have good intentions, but there are a small number of folks who seem to delete in trying to screw it up. The admins spend ALOT of time dealing with such folks, and I suspect sometimes fail to see the distinction between a new user learning the ropes and an outright evildoer. BTW - I believe the welcome from user:ALoan is sincere and he'd be willing to help as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:22, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

Rich, as someone who hasn't been involved at all: I'd be glad to chat with you (I have no idea how to make that sound less...dorky). I have no intention of passing judgement or pointing fingers or assigning blame. I've been on wikipedia for only 10 months and can recall the period I think you're going through. Since going through an adjustment period (that's what I would call what I went through) I've managed 13,000 edits (in just the english wikipedia alone) and been voted an admin.

Wikipedia is a beast unlike any other I've experienced in my many years on the internet. Collaboration in real-life is easy, but throw in relative anonymity and the lack-of-emotion that text-only brings...and it's something unique. As I said, I'd be glad to answer any questions you have or perhaps help you understand others' positions or anything else.

Having read the discussion on the Village Pump just a few moments ago, I ran across you saying this:


 * Or maybe I'll just not waste my time trying to satisfy people who claim outwardly to be open and receptive - be bold - but have a clandestine set of narrow, rigid expectations applied swiftly, at least to newcomers, at the expense of creativity and interest.

I hope you realize that wikipedia is made of thousands of people with varying personalities and temperments and give me a shot at helping you become a valuable contributor that I think you can be. I strive to be open and receptive person so please leave a message on my talk page or send me an email with your email address or AIM screen name. Cburnett 07:11, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

film project
Rich, Thanks for the explanation of what you're attempting to do. First suggestion - rather than just jump in and do it (which the be bold quasi-policy suggests, but I think this is really meant to encourage folks to boldly make minor changes), it might be worth finding some folks willing to work on it and creating a WikiProject. There is a wikiproject on movies (WikiProject_Movies, which is more slanted toward making articles about movies have some consistency), but I'd expect there to be considerable interest overlap. WikiProject Categories is a project attempting to rationalize the entire category structure, of which the cinema categories are a subset. I think organizing it as a wikiproject would serve three purposes: Anyone can charter a wikiproject (instructions are on the WikiProject page). I'd be happy to help you set this up as a wikiproject if you'd like.
 * 1) it would enable you to find folks willing to help
 * 2) it provides a mechanism to inform the larger community what you're up to
 * 3) it provides a mechanism (via the wikiproject's talk page) for folks to comment about the project

Second suggestion - major changes to existing articles (like what you're doing with List_of_movie-related_topics) are generally received better if there's some discussion of them on the article's talk page first. Writing up your intent on the talk page, inviting comments, and waiting a bit (a week seems to be customary) for folks to comment aside from letting anyone who's interested actually make comments (which in my experience rarely happens) provides a record you can point to if overeager reverters start undoing your changes (you can even refer to "changes per talk page" in your edit summaries when you're making the changes). You might even consider doing a wholesale rewrite "offline" (in your own private copy of a page) if it's going to take a while (all articles are "live", so submitting partial restructures that leave an article in an inconsistent state or with editing notes are sort of frowned on). You can make a copy of a page either on your own PC and edit it with Notepad (or whatever), or as a subpage of your wikipedia user page (for example, user:Rich Wannen/Index of film topics - just yank and put the whole article there, and when you're ready yank and put it back). Note that if you decide to do it this way you should probably put something on the article's talk page saying you're intending to do this and watch the page so you can include edits made to the "live" page after you've made your copy.

Specifics: I think these might be 3 different things. The existing list is meant to be simply that, a list of all the movie-related articles that exist within wikipedia. No order (other than alphabetical), no higher level organization, no real organization at all (i.e. I don't think this is even remotely like what a user would consider to be an index). The category is meant to be the top level of a tree of categories that I think probably should include all the articles in the list. The index you seem to be trying to morph the list into is probably most like the category, but the wikipedia category feature is so primitive I think it's definitely worth doing this as an article (assuming you have the time and interest). I think the list and the ultimate index could be the same article, but given how much work seems to be involved you might think about creating the index as a separate article and at some point in the future (when the index is mostly done) redirecting the list to the index (see redirect, doing this basically makes one article name a synonym for another article). FYI - the category feature automatically groups articles based on tags added to the individual articles (i.e. it's not done top down, but more bottom up). Articles (and categories) tagged as being in a given category show up automatically (alphabetically) in the category whenever anyone views the category "page". Since category references are created (bottom up) by random users editing individual articles, the category structure is wildly inconsistent and rarely (probably never) matches any sort of sensible "index". The categories wikiproject intends to fix this, but as long as users can add whatever damn category they want to an article I fear this may be a hopeless cause.
 * List of movie-related topics vs. category:cinema vs. Index of film topics

Per the above discussion, it's perhaps not a problem for the technical terms to show up both in List of movie-related topics and Motion picture terminology. I think it's a good thing to make sure any of the technical terms that are in the master list are actually in the terminology page, but I'm not sure duplication here is a problem. For the index page, a link to the terminology page (without duplication) seems fine but since the intent of the list page is to show every single movie related article I don't think duplication is a problem.
 * Terminology

I think the intent here is for the Film article to have an overview, but for History of film to have much more detail. The Film article needs to be comprehensible in its own right and should certainly mention something about history, but the details take up so much room they're worth an article on its own. Stylistically, this is handled in other articles by referring to the detailed article but reducing it to a paragraph or two in the "main" article.
 * History of film

I'm more than willing to help you understand the conventions and expectations of the wikipedia "community" but as to the actual doing of all this work I'm not sure I can be much direct help. I have a couple of other projects I'm involved in (one of which is making sure that we don't lose newcomers, which is actually a personal crusade rather than a wikiproject!). Perhaps you might use me as your guide. BTW - the tab does seem to change between "talk" and "discussion" (I don't know of a good explanation for this).

-- Rick Block (talk) 02:31, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

note re admins
Rich, Just a note about admins - wikipedia admins have absolutely no content oversight role. They have a few technical capabilities not given "regular" users (e.g. ability to delete/undelete articles, ability to protect/unprotect articles from changes, ability to block/unblock users from making changes), but as far as content decisions go, admins are no different from any other user. An admin who reverts changes or deletes articles or blocks a user due to content disputes is abusing their admin powers. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:04, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

reverting your changes?
Hi - I see you've reverted your changes to the list article. Are you going to be working on this on a private copy? I don't want you to leave, and I certainly don't want you to feel your changes are unwelcome. I definitely think what you've started will be tremendously worthwhile. Can we talk about it? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:27, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)