User talk:Ryan Vesey/Archive 3

I've found your messages on my talk page just as I have to go offline, so I said I would answer in about 12 hours or so. However, I see you have found at least a partial answer to the question which I thought would take a while to answer properly. As for the other question, I think using Twinkle is probably OK, but be careful. Huggle is a different matter: it is very easy to make major mistakes with it, and I don't think you're ready yet. (You don't have the option yet,a s you don't have rollback rights, but my point is that I think you should gain more experience before asking for those right.) JamesBWatson (talk) 20:59, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I actually do have rollback rights though and have used Twinkle in the past. Ryan Vesey (talk) 21:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see that you do have rollback. I don't know how I missed that. However, I still stick by my opinion: I think you should be OK with Twinkle, but it would be better to keep off Huggle for now. JamesBWatson (talk) 07:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Re: Sorry to bother you but
Re your message: The numbers and letters are the results of a cryptographic hash function. A few years back, there was this big fuss about people losing control of their accounts for whatever reason (weak passwords, intercepted passwords, etc.). If one were to regain control of your account, people wanted to have a way to prove that it was really you back in control (On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog). So somebody came up with the idea that people should have "Committed identities". What you do is take some amount of text only known to you, run it through one of the more secure hash functions, and publish it on your user page. Should you lose control of your account, but gain it back, you can then give that secret text to somebody trustworthy, they can run it through the same hash function, and then verify that is really you. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

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Your recent editing
Two points:
 * 1) I have had a look at a sample of your recent editing, and everything I've seen is great. You are well on the way towards justifying the faith I showed in you.
 * 2) I happened by chance to be the administrator who reviewed your report at [Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism]] on 173.8.130.250, and I blocked the IP. Thanks a lot for that report. JamesBWatson (talk) 18:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Copyedit 39th Army (Soviet Union)
Hi

I have taken a look:


 * The article has a note on it to "use dmy" which means that all those dates should in fact be in the format of "17 July" and "1 December 1941".
 * "On December 1, 1941 the army was" -> "On December 1, 1941, the army was" - There should be a comma after the years when this method is used.
 * "and 39th Army" -> "and the 39th Army"
 * "The Sychevsk-Vyazma Offensive Operation (January 8 - April 20, 1942) was launched on that same day..."
 * "Date, this happened" - The comma is incorrect.
 * "On July 17, part of 39th Army, numbering about 8,000 people under" ->
 * "On July 17 around 8,000 troops of the 39th Army, under the command of Maslennikov, crossed the Obshu..."


 * Try and avoid short sentences of less than six words (the planes crashing for example)
 * "providing battle entrance" - what does this mean?
 * "defense of the "pocket" to Germany's 9th Army. This projection attracted enormous forces of the enemy" - again, poor english and unclear what is meant by some of the terms. I would think that the "pocket" is a salient, however the use of the word "projection" is opposite to pocket, and "attracted" makes it sound like they were looking for somewhere to have a party or a day out :¬)

In general the edit is good, there are a few things that need attention in regard to grammar and some punctuation issues regarding the chopping up of sentences. If you have not already looked at them you can try the exercises on WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors/How_to.

I will give it a quick once over so you can see how I would have approached it User:Chaosdruid/sandbox1. Chaosdruid (talk) 05:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle & watchlist
Having looked through the documentation, I have come to the conclusion that to stop Twinkle adding anything to your watchlist (not just pages you revert) you want this:


 * TwinkleConfig.watchProdPages     =  false;
 * TwinkleConfig.watchRevertedPages =  [];
 * TwinkleConfig.watchSpeedyPages   =  [];
 * TwinkleConfig.watchWarnings      =  false;
 * FriendlyConfig.watchTaggedPages  =  false;
 * FriendlyConfig.watchWelcomes     =  false;
 * TwinkleConfig.xfdWatchDiscussion =  "no";
 * TwinkleConfig.xfdWatchPage       =  "no";
 * TwinkleConfig.xfdWatchUser       =  "no";

No responsibility accepted if this is not 100% correct, but it looks to me as though it is. For some time I had been vaguely intending to look up the documentation to see how this could be done and not getting round to it. Your query about it prompted me to do it at last. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:37, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Huggle
Hello again, Ryan. From what I have seen of your editing, I think it would probably be OK for you to use Huggle, if you still want to. However, a few words of advice before you do so. It is very easy indeed to make serious mistakes using Huggle, for various reasons. Perhaps the biggest reason is that you see only an individual edit, without seeing that edit either in the context of other edits or the context of the rest of the page. Because of that lack of context it is easy to see an edit as vandalism when it isn't. For this reason you need to be very careful, and hold back from clicking on the revert button until you have made really sure you know what you are doing. In the case of really blatant vandalism (e.g. writing "Obama is gay" gratuitously in the middle of an article) there is no problem, but a lot of things are not so clear cut. When I have used Huggle I have always had a browser open as well as Huggle, and frequently I have checked a page in the browser before taking action with Huggle. This is much slower than going straight ahead with Huggle, and since one of the great advantages of Huggle is its ability to work fast, it is tempting to think that doing this loses much of the advantage of Huggle. However, the important fact to remember is that it also loses much of the disadvantage of Huggle. Really the main point is that Huggle is a great tool, but it needs to be used carefully and thoughtfully, not automatically. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:32, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

VCY America
You were quite right to revert John Redding22's edits to VCY America. However, the warning templates you posted to his talk page said "Please do not attack other editors" and "Please do not attack other contributors", which was not really suitable, as the edits attacked someone outside Wikipedia. It's as well to check a preview of what a templated message is going to say before you click on "Save", to make sure that what it says is actually suitable. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have also found a more serious error on the same user talk page. You posted a link to Removing warnings, and quoted from it: "Removing warnings for vandalism from one's talk page is also considered vandalism". However, you may or may not have noticed the box at the top of that page which says "This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant, or consensus on its purpose has become unclear." That page was a proposal which failed to gain consensus. At one time it was widely thought that removing warnings from one's own talk page should not be accepted, but trying to enforce that caused endless problems, and eventually a consensus developed that users could remove such messages, and that doing so was taken as indicating that the messages had been seen. The current guideline on this is at WP:OWNTALK, and Removing warnings must not be cited as an authority. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:01, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I posted on his wall that I had made a mistake. I clicked personal attacks assuming that is what it would be for.  Thanks for telling me about the warning removal templates, I'll leave him a message on his page if you haven't already. Ryan Vesey (talk) 12:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

"I would like to show him..."
Having noticed George's comment, related to Span's post, on Boing! said Zebedee's user talk page, I would like to show him that he has been editing Wikipedia for almost four years. That is where his experience is shown. Every administrator is very experienced, otherwise they would not be an administrator. Some may be better than others, you may disagree with some, and they all edit with different styles, but each one of them is experienced. Ryan Vesey (talk) 13:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * "I would like to show him..." Then do so. I'm sure there's a list of Wikipedia editors with years of experience; you could point me to that. George Dance (talk) 13:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC) (copied)George Dance (talk) 13:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * add sections to my talk page so that I can navigate in and read it more easily. In response to your complaint, I put your letter back in its original section, and quoted it in the new one. If you'd like some different format instead, let me know and we'll discuss it - I'd certainly think it's better to have your words where I can reply to them. I already have a list of administators, which is why I didn't ask you for one. Nor did I ask for any of your other suggestions. You weren't completely non-responsive; indirectly you've told me that I can get the information off each user's page and make my own list. Thank you for that.George Dance (talk) 16:14, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Talkback
I hope you would know how to use your watchlist by now...so I don't have to add talkback templates like this. &mdash; HXL's Roundtable  and  Record  23:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I am fully able to use my watchlist. Ryan Vesey (talk) 05:21, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

User Boxes
Hello Ryan. Thank you for the welcome message and the info on the user boxes. Hope to put it to good use. And... chocolate chip cookies rule. :-)  John Redding22 (talk) 11:49, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!
Hey Ryan, thanks for the barnster, it will be added to my user page :) - Rich (MTCD) T 14:49, 26 May 2011 (UTC)