User talk:Shetlander57

Your offer of help
Thanks for your offer and..... welcome to Wikipedia. It can be a confusing place at first, but with a little experimentation you should get the hang of things. I'd be happy to assist if I can. If you need anything drop me a note at my 'Talk' page. The full address is User talk:Ben MacDui but you can also get there my clicking on the 'Talk' at the end of my 'signature' at the close of this message. I am sure your local knowledge will be useful on many Shetland related articles. I am sorry to say it is the Scottish archipelago I am least familiar with. Nonetheless, I began working on List of Shetland islands a while ago. (I don't think I would have bothered if I'd realised how many stacks etc. there were!). If you would care to take a look at it I'd be grateful. If you see any mistakes 'Be Bold' and fix them - and don't worry if something appears to go wrong when you do. It's easy to put things right. Good luck - and I hope you enjoy WikiProject Scottish Islands. Ben MacDui (Talk) 21:55, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if you spotted the message at the top of my talk page, but I have replied to your note there. Ben MacDui (Talk) 18:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shetlander57 - definitely appreciate your offer on Shetland. The biggest problem I've been having with Shetland articles, is the smaller islands, Holm of this, that & tother.... so local knowledge is a great help.

There ought to be a proper article on the history of Shetland, but there is already a Literature of Shetland one, which is a start. Anyway, if you're having trouble with wikipedia, why not start here -> Introduction? I appreciate that it takes some time to learn - it's also changing all the time for better or worse. Thanks again for your offer! --MacRusgail 15:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know much about history I'm afraid, although God knows I've read plenty of it. And lived it. I do know quite a lot about the layout of the Islands and can help with details about where things are in relation to others. Thanks to too much time spent poking around the coastline in boats looking for the ever elusive fish, I have come to know more about boats and the seashore than the older stuff.
 * I'll do a bit of reading on what you've got for Shetland, then maybe come back with any suggestions, if that's ok.

I'm fairly new to computers, (This is my mid-life crisis ;-). ), but I'm a quick learner. I've looked at the introduction page, and looked at some of your editing techniques, and I think I understand some of it. If I screw up, just tell me.. Cheers,Shetlander57 19:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, the local knowledge is definitely useful, but there's only one thing... if you can back it up with a reference from somewhere, all the better. This is partly because wikipedia has been choked up with basically cow manure (especially companies and politicians changing their own entries), and it's given it a bad name... so things have to be verifiable, even if you know them to be true yourself, if you know what I mean. --MacRusgail 15:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, MacRusgail. I've been spending a bit of time seeing how you reference material, and think I understand how to do a reference. And yes I know all about politicians and cow manure :-)) I have a lot of local books which should be able to be used as reference to confirm details. The only problem I see with that is it could be considered that I have taken the detail from those books, even though it is things which I know,, does that make sense? .. What I mean is, by giving reference to a book, will the details then be considered as copying from that book?? It's the line below this edit screen about copyright which worries me. I've tried to understand the 'verifiable' thingy, but it went over my head. Can you explain in simple terms please. Remember I was educated before the word 'Jargon' was invented ;-) Shetlander57 16:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

In simple terms if a book called Poets of Shetland says - "Vagaland was the greatest poet ever to come from South Walls. He wrote many memorable poems, the most revered of which is 'Da Sang O Da Papa Men'." - it would be quite wrong to simply lift this word for word unless it was obviously identified as a direct quote. On the other hand adding - "Vagaland's poem, Da Sang O Da Papa Men is one of his most memorable works. Vagaland was born in South Walls." would be quite acceptable, followed by an in-line reference to Poets of Shetland. It's a bit of a game, but it's the difference between interpretation and plagiarism. Obviously the more it can be 'in your own words' the better. Ben MacDui (Talk) 21:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Islands Project
Glad you have signed up - let me know if you need anything. You might find the Watch List page useful. I have been wondering if it was worth splitting into archipelagos, as it may not be very handy if you just want to watch Shetland islands. Ben MacDui (Talk) 20:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Yell
Hi S57,

Happy New Year & good to see you back online.

You might be interested to know that that Yell (island) (which I reckon should be moved to "Isle of Yell" or "Yell, Shetland"!) is this month's collaboration for an article, and I've managed to get some decent pictures of the place. The old article was way too short for such a large island. All the best --MacRusgail (talk) 18:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, and Happy New Year to you too. :-) Sorry, I've been offline for a while due to illness and family problems, but starting to get back to my pooter again. Yell, Shetland,,, definately. 'Isle of', isn't a term used in Shetland, (Unless on OS Maps). ;-) I'll have a look at the Yell page tomorrow and see if I can do anything to help. I looked into a fair bit of the Yell history years ago when I was trying to find a few odd branches on my family tree. Found that I lost a couple of relatives in 1881 when a storm caught a lot of boats by surprise in the Gloup Disaster, I wrote down a lot of notes about that tragedy, I'll see if I can find them again. BTW. When I added that link about that Sixareen building project, I noticed a few problems with the Sixareen page. Mainly because it was copied and some of the alterations made haven't really got rid of the things which only made sense on Shetlopedia. I'll also try to find time to sort that over the weekend. Cheers, Shetlander57 (talk) 22:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

WPSI Collaboration
WikiProject Scottish Islands: Collaboration of the Month Ben MacDuiTalk /  Walk  20:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland
I'm just dropping you a quick note about a new Wikipedian in Residence job that's opened up at the National Library of Scotland. There're more details at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:56, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The 10,000 Challenge
Hi, at The 10,000 Challenge we're striving to bring about 10,000 article improvements and creations for the UK and Ireland and inspire others to create more content. In order to achieve this we need diversity of content, in all parts of the UK and Ireland on all topics. Eventually a regional contest will be held for all parts of the British Isles, like they were for Wales and the Wedt Country. We currently have just over 1900 articles and need contributors! If you think you'd be interested in collaborating on this and helping reach the target quicker, please sign up and begin listing your entries there as soon as possible! Thanks.♦ --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Europe 10,000 Challenge invite
Hi. The WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest
Hi. This month The Women in Red World Contest is being held to try to produce new articles for as many countries worldwide and occupations as possible. There is over £3000 in prizes to win, including Amazon vouchers and paid subscriptions. Wikimedia UK is putting up £250 specifically for editors who produce the most quality new women bios for British women, with special consideration given to missing notable biographies from the Oxford Dictionary of Biography and Welsh Dictionary of Biography. If you're not interested in prize money yourself but are willing to participate independently this is also fine, but please add any articles created to the bottom of the main contest page even if not competing. Your participation in the contest and contributing articles on British women from your area or wherever would we much appreciated. Thanks.