User talk:ScarletRibbons

ScarletRibbons

 * So far, I have learned that actually stating you know something about a subject is going to bring down instant jeering & derision upon your head. Don't know why actually having credentials seems to be a bad thing, but evidently it is.  That seems backwards & well, crazy.  You ought to know what you're talking about.  Apparently ego trumps actually having a decent article.  Who knew?


 * One post, one deletion. I'll just dig in my heels.  I'm like that.  Pick your battles.  Telling you how to improve a bad article shouldn't be a battleground.  It's not like this is the Middle Ages & you need to slap down a gauntlet for every little thing.


 * I am definitely so far not feeling the love. The Welcome Wagon was quite rude.  No one seems to have nicest manners anymore.


 * Don't fence with me. I own a sword & a broadaxe :-)  They came nicely honed & ready to rumble.  I will not hesitate to use them when provoked.


 * My interest is in history, particularly English history. And yes, I *am* a self-proclaimed expert in it, in addition to having the degrees to prove it that bolster my opinion.  (But I'm not going to send them to random people on the internet to peruse.)


 * If that also gets mocked, it's going to get dirty in here.


 * Could some person with nicest manners kindly inform me how I get a pic in my header? TYVM in advance if you're that person.  This joint has weird coding going on IMHO.

ScarletRibbons (talk) 06:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Welcome
You are right that wikicode is an odd animal. My best suggestion would be to do what I do, steal code from someone else's page (and give them credit in the edit summary when I do). No reason to reinvent the wheel, and modifying that code is a good way to get comfortable with wikicode. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Oh, and regarding long posts, I've had to force myself to be more pithy around here as well, as the community frowns on long comments.  WP:TLDR is worth a look and should shed some light on the concern.  The best place to get answers to questions is to visit the WP:Teahouse, which is hosted by a number of friendly faces who spend much of their time helping new editors here.  Dennis Brown - 2¢  © Join WER 14:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * TYVM for the suggestions, Dennis. I'll check those out.  Never seen anything like this code before.  Could be because I haven't done any HTML in ages & don't know any CSS? ScarletRibbons (talk) 18:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I wish. I'm quite comfortable coding in HTML, I do it by hand rather than use a program the majority of time, but Wikicode is quite different, requiring a slide rule, animal sacrifice and voodoo doll to learn properly, I've been told.  As for editing here (below):  Baby steps.  Ignorance is bliss, and being too educated can get your feelings hurt around here.  Yes, often you will be arguing with someone that you might feel is less knowledgeable than you are on a given topic, but in time I think you adjust and see the advantages and learn some cooperative skills in the process.  You might find this short essay interesting: WP:Randy in Boise.  Personally, I'm not a professor, nor even a college graduate, but I manage to muddle along and contribute around here, even when I'm not playing admin.  The best way to contribute and actually enjoy it is to not take it too seriously, accept the many flaws that are found everywhere here, and accept making small improvements here and there.  We like people being WP:BOLD (and following WP:BRD), as long as they can politely discuss the changes afterwards. It won't be easy, but you might be surprised at what you can learn by conforming just enough to get along around here. Dennis Brown - 2¢  © Join WER 19:28, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Those were some interesting, yet disturbing, links! Wow.  Total reverse academic snobbery.  Why WOULDN'T they want, say, people like me who could write the history of the English monarchy or the Wars of the Roses without so much as opening a book?  And an *expert* must have a PhD & be regularly published in scholarly journals?  Yeah, like THOSE guys are lining up in droves to get in.  People with PhDs usually come from money, have flourishing academic careers, teach, lecture, attend symposiums, publish books & articles, etc; like they have time or desire to give it away for free in a place where they'd definitely be sneered at.  Having a master's degree in history brings down enough scorn on one's head.  Posting suggestions for changes to articles to be discussed by any interested parties seems to be a no-no, which is insane; are you just supposed to play *revert the edit* after the fact & end up on the disciplinary carpet along with the territorial pisser?  I thought it was only polite to propose before touching things, but evidently that translates to *rude* here!  Between that & the mind-bending code, I'm beginning to think this was a bad idea.  Not a Rules Girl, especially when they're upside down & discombobulated like they are here!  I do appreciate your assistance, though :-)
 * I did do some mostly grammatical edits on an article about one of Edward IIIs grandchildren just now (waiting on Self-Proclaimed Queen of Wikipedia to revert them back to incoherent copy/paste sentences with zero punctuation & awkward phrasing, as they were). Changed the content of one awkward sentence for better clarity & would like to source the wee bit of new info I added regarding Philippa's son's demise, if I could just figure out that footnote tut.  I also want to organize it into sections, adding a bit more info, & that seems to be over my head as well.  Man, I miss FrontPage.  It practically did all the HTML for you.  Whatever they're using here boggles the brain & I'm fresh out of animals to sacrifice.  And here I thought I *wasn't* techinically impaired.  Well, off to review the WOTR in someone's sandbox.  He did the whole thing in a single article, which is rather impressive, but I bet he gets people telling him it's too long & deleting 90% of it once he publishes. (Always be prepared for the worst; then you can be pleasantly surprised if all goes well.) ScarletRibbons (talk) 09:13, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Another point: There's a hell of a lot wrong with a hell of a lot of Wikipedia articles. The thing to do is to spend whatever time you are willing to spend editing here putting some of them right, not spend the same amount of time explaining what changes you think need making but not doing it, and telling us how contemptuous you are of other people who have not put them right. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Another point? Where was the first one?
 * Look, James, I'm not going to tread on territorial toes by jumping in to edit & revise, & then getting mired in one of the infamous *edit wars* I've seen on many talk pages & on my whistle-stop tour. Some people want to bite your arm off if you so much as correct a typo on *their article*.  I'm going to test the waters before diving in.  I can just imagine the furor had I actually edited anything.  I loathe dissemination of historical misinformation, this joint seems to be lousy with it, I wasn't responsible for it, & I'm not going to have people whinge at me for touching their preciousss when they can't even take seeing a critical comment.  Why bother doing an article at all if you're not going to do it up right, & then fight to the death to keep it a piece of crap?  Yes, I *am* contemptuous of that sort of attitude.  I've had crap hurled at me that makes me want to shove articles where the sun don't shine & take a hike out of here.  What slays me is the paranoid unwelcome wagon who deleted my first comment, who's obviously put me on a watchlist so she can follow me around to sign for me if I forget the squiggles & edit things from the *hysterical diatribes of yet another self-proclaimed "historian"* that she deems worthy, was asking for help on a stub not long ago, so I looked around (kill em with kindness), & it's pasted word for word from Rootsweb.  I mean, the whole article, not just a sentence; either way, I thought that was a no-no.  You want to be helpful, James, tell me how to report that sort of nonsense or ask for it to be deleted, because I can't find a page to do it & the tuts are crap as well.  Definitely re-thinking this impulse to create an account just because I couldn't stand looking at an horrific article.   ScarletRibbons (talk) 18:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Get yerself some WP:TW, then you can go around slapping warnings on her ...like this...

April 2013
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would ask that you assume good faith while interacting with other editors. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. ENJOY!!! Basket Feudalist 08:37, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey, what did you do there? Show off!  I wish.  I can't even figure out the stupid coding yet.  [[Image:Misc-tpvgames.gif|20px]]  What I need is a Sorcerer's Apprentice!  Got one of those? ScarletRibbons (talk) 09:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi! Another unfamiliar person sticks her head in ... WP:Emoticons. [[Image:Face-devil-grin.svg|20px]] Actually, talking about an article on a talkpage is good, too. But the tried and true way is being bold and starting in on a fix. Especially welcome if you have references to hand. People with either good home libraries or good library access are gold here. As to pictures, I see the link to WP:New contributors' help page included above, but they've redesigned it to offer a lot of initial options, sigh. Basically, [[Image:Filename of image|thumb]] or Filename of image makes an image appear on the right hand side at non-humongous size. Try Picture tutorial for more info. (I am not a techie - Dennis' advice is excellent too, copy code from someone else's page [[Image:Wink.png|20px]].) You may also just possibly find this useful; it's aimed at scientists but a lot is applicable to academics/experts of other stripes: Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. Beyond that, feel free to ask me a question on my talkpage and I will do my best to help; although I should add the caveat that today I really must do my taxes so there will be patches when I am offline. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * TYVM, unfamiliar person :-) Are you Scandinavian, or just like playing at it? ;-)  I own an enormous library of everything from Cheddar Man through the Stuarts, & have at least a dozen more history books in my TBR pile with an Amazon gift cert burning a hole in my pocket.  That giant box full of links wasn't there when I created the page & commenced whinging on it, so I had to tour the hard way & didn't understand half of what was on those tuts.  Have they never heard of screenshots?  (And who ate *reply* buttons?  Took me forever to figure out *edit* was it.)  Usually I can get the hang of a new site pretty quickly.  Wasting all this time & still not getting most of it is starting to feel like work & not fun.  Maybe tomorrow, I'm WPd out at this point.  Appreciate the kind offer of assistance :-) ScarletRibbons (talk) 18:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the brownie!!! 'Fraid I can't tell you what I am, a lot of us are mysterious like that. Thank Dennis for the slab of links, he got here first. (Yes, everything is "edit" here. Kind of like the Windows "Start" button.) I'll put you on my list to ask to look up refs. As to the problem page, here are the recommended steps to take, but note that it is pointed out there that sometimes the other site has copied from us. In any event, it sounds as though that article, whatever it is, badly needs rewriting with good sources. And now I must go make myself some coffee. See you around, I hope :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 23:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Not a prob, I enjoy being a woman of mystery myself ;-) I tried the page you cited...alas.  It wanted the link to it, for starters, & spun round a while, & told me the internal page didn't exist LOL (it does, I bookmarked it for future reference & it's still going there even though I purged my cache thinking it would make the widget acept the link).  I smell tinkering behind the scenes this week making things go wonky.  Techies & their toys.  The Rootsweb page pre-dated the article by yrs, so I'm reasonably certain it's a paste job.  There are no other sources for it online because it's an obscure medieval personage who probably shouldn't have an article at all.  What do they call that round here, notability, right?  She isn't.  Oh, well.  TYVM for being a nice, welcoming personage yourself :-)  Hope to see you around as well!  ScarletRibbons (talk) 09:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Your comments
My reason for deleting your comments was that they made a dog's bollocks out of that page as well as other talk pages in which you have visited. They were left there in a rambling fashion as you snarled out your version of the facts as if you were reading the Riot Act. I did not create either article but have edited them. I really don't care whether you have a degree in history or Quantum Physics; you must learn how to state your suggestions for improvements on the articles' talk pages in a coherent, concise and organised manner.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know why I get surprised when I run into rude random internet people who lunge & snarl like a rabid cur from the get-go, but I guess I must have a little more faith in people employing their nicest manners than most. Dog's bollocks?  Really?  How charming & pleasant a turn of phrase you have.  I can only aspire to such depths.  Let me hazard a guess...Geordie?
 * Monarcho-Gothic fan of Lee Harvey Oswald from Cali, I believe... Basket Feudalist 11:02, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * You're supposed to tell people you changed things when you do it, not when you can be arsed to try your hand at a smidge of pot-stirring a few days after leaving a snarky remark as the *reason* for your *edit*. In point of fact, it would have behooved you to politely explain whatever position it is you have, & left it to ME to *edit* rather than delete with a bad attitude.
 * Those weren't *my* version of the facts, Sunshine, those *are* the facts. You must read up more if you can't recognize that.
 * If you're not the *creator* then you have no dog in this fight you're obvs salivating to have, do you? You merely want to play Obsessive Boleyn Fangirl or something on the Shelton article, since you so graciously *allowed* my comments on the Philippa article (that's singular, not plural as it is in your reality) to stand...so far.  (Revert those edits, & I'll have you in dispute resolution well before you can grab something age-inappropriate off the rack at Forever 21 to swan over there wearing.)
 * I think you do care about my academic credentials. Don't deny it.  Embrace it.  You do keep bringing them up each occasion you deign to speak to me (or around me), after all.
 * Your education system has failed you if you could not comprehend my comments. It's plenty *coherent, concise, & organized* to copy a slice of the article into my comment, set it to bold italics to signal *new suggestion coming* loud & clear, & then address it directly beneath before moving on to the next bit.  I did inquire if your preference was for me to break it up into smaller bits after you deleted my very first WP comment with your lovely insults (which are against the rules, but I reckon those don't apply to you, do they?), & your response was to delete yet another comment.
 * Now I don't give a rat's arse what your preferences may or may not be. You've proved yourself to be...well, I ought to just stop my fingers right there, hmmm?  I shall just, as Dennis recommends above, *be bold*, & edit what I please where I please, rather than suggest in advance before doing so.  Or perhaps I might still suggest.  Not up to you, is it?  You're a sad little nobody with an extra button as far as I'm concerned, & if you continue to use it on me just because you can, expect the usual consequences for running amok drunk on the power you think that button gives you.  You don't intimidate me one whit & I think it's high time you ceased trying.  It's pathetic, really.
 * Quit following me round & go find some other noob to take the piss out of; you're getting tedious & predictable. I see your little *ignore the troll game* didn't quite work out as well as you hoped, as you had to come over here to try yet another tactic of provocation to get some attention when deleting my posts didn't compel me to wade through your MySpace clone & go off on a tear there.  I'm not the person designated to give you the instant gratification you crave this week, sorry.  Rude random internet people are very low on my to-do list.
 * Get me off your watchlist & get off my back. Bother me again, & I'll erase your bad attitude right off my page (that means *don't reply*; I thought I ought to spell that out since you seem to have issues with my prose).  You don't get to decide what & where I post or how gloriously TLDR it gets.  I do.  Don't like it, then stop stalking me.  Surely you can go find another noob to reduce to a quaking, gelatinous mass of aspic in fear of She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed.  I'm not that person.  We're done here.  Do go away. ScarletRibbons (talk) 10:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm going to take this opportunity to gloat & say *nyaah-nyaah* like a 6 yo :-) You know those comments you deleted?  They just got restored.  They were valid.  You were overruled.  You were wrong.  (Did I mention you were rude as well?)  I trust this interesting development means an end to this irksome relationship?  Buh-bye.  ScarletRibbons (talk) 12:00, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Kennedy Family Cancer Cluster
You posted a comment at Talk:Edward_M._Kennedy_Jr.. Assuming you are correct, that cancer is over represented in "one small branch of the family", then the answer is oncogenes. They are now quite well known. Nick Beeson (talk) 16:24, 4 April 2020 (UTC)


 * That was interesting! I know you were here like 6 mos ago, but I was kinda busy in April....


 * Learning how to walk all over again. Long story short, weird illness dramatically escalated itself into massively invasive surgery, blood transfusions, + heavy-duty antibiotic "cocktails" to kill the pre-surgical sepsis resulting from dramatic escalation before it killed me. When I got a look at myself in a mirror 10 days after surgery, I was the whitest white girl EVER. I've never seen anyone THAT white who actually WASN'T dead. Add all that to being WINCHED out of bed & whisked off to PT, & we're talking fun times.


 * But I digress. I didn't want you to think I didn't have nicest manners by not thanking you for taking the time to amble over to my talk pg w/ that info. So....TYVM! :-) ScarletRibbons (talk) 05:58, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Unblock me!
. Have you recently changed the physical location at which you use Wikipedia?(I don't need to know where specifically) Are you using a VPN? 331dot (talk) 08:49, 10 October 2020 (UTC)


 * But I haven't installed anything during that time frame! As I said, not a tech whiz. I'm not really sure what a proxy or webhost IS. I always thought a webhost was something along the lines of, well, Wikipedia, somewhere you could create pages. I have the same stuff on my laptop as I had on Oct 8th. I've added nothing new. What do you want me to look for, when I haven't changed a thing? So the answer is simply NO, due to some tech glitch over which I have no control? The notice said I was banned till January! What happens then, more banishment? Because I have no idea what is causing this, so I can't fix it.
 * I have not changed my physical location recently, either. I've been living where I'm still at since 2018, and was capable of editing after I moved. I have no idea if I have a VPN. Internet comes with my apartment. It's the same connection I've been using since I moved in as far as I know. Also highly doubt, since it's in working order, that anyone would be tinkering with it on a weekend day.
 * I have not even been editing on Wikipedia since January 2020, because I almost died that month, spent a long stint in rehab after being discharged from the hospital, and have had a very lengthy recovery process from what nigh on killed me. Oct 8th was the 1st time since I got home that I've had a Wikipedia look-in. I tend to edit in spurts due to ill health in general, and then ignore Wikipedia for a while.
 * I am sorely disappointed in this decision. I generally keep to myself, fixing spelling/grammar errors, once in a while revamping an article that needs it. It's a nice little hobby. I'm so not a tech whiz, I don't even understand the block appeals process, and if I did, how am I supposed to do that when I can't edit anywhere but my own talk pg? ScarletRibbons (talk) 20:07, 11 October 2020 (UTC)


 * PS> Just for the heck of it, I re-checked & my IP is apparently static & has changed. It also no longer says MaxiHost (whatever that is) but the correct ISP. Does this means I'm now magically unbanned? ScarletRibbons (talk) 20:34, 11 October 2020 (UTC)