User talk:Slaurel

Welcome!
Hello, Slaurel, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created, such as MUSH (e-mail client), may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines, and may not be retained.

There's a page about creating articles you may want to read called Your first article. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type helpme on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! RadioFan (talk) 14:51, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Starting an article
 * Your first article
 * Biographies of living persons
 * How to write a great article
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial

Proposed deletion of MUSH (e-mail client)


The article MUSH (e-mail client) has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * No indication of how this might meet notability guidelines. Lacks citations to significant coverage in reliable sources.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. RadioFan (talk) 14:51, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of MUSH (e-mail client)


The article MUSH (e-mail client) has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * No indication of how this might meet notability guidelines. Lacks citations to significant coverage in reliable sources.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. RadioFan (talk) 14:52, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

(First time using Talkback, since it's the first time I've received a comment) Understood. I'll see about adding more reference material before it gets deleted. Since MUSH was a going concern as an email client from at least 1993-2003, and still provides the only way to solve (through automation) certain needs, I think it is noteworthy. As an aside - is it acceptable to trim the duplicate Proposed Deletion above? Slaurel (talk) 20:55, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

On mush, fun and reliable sources
Hi Slaurel,

First, welcome to wikipedia, and I'm sorry you're having such a rocky start. I think I can help.

First, as to potential sources. Google books reports The Z-Mail Handbook mentions mush on 67 pages. Looks like you can pick it up used for $0.01 at Amazon (plus shipping) or you might be able to find a library nearby. You might also want to grab Ken Rosen's Unix System V Release 4: An Introduction and Linda Lamb's Using Email Effectively:  both have at least a paragraph devoted to mush, and both would be considered reliable, independent third-party sources.

After you have those three books in hand, create a page in your sandbox and recreate the article. I'm happy to take a look when it's ready, or you can ask the folks at the teahouse for an opinion. If they're telling you you're good to go, then move the page out into mainspace see how far you can get up the Did you know?-Good Article-Featured Article hierarchy.

(You might be wondering why I still prefer the article be deleted in its present state. Basically, until you&mdash;or someone else&mdash;has those books in hand I can't know if they're of any use.)

You had also asked an excellent question at AfD: "[D]o articles really have to be noteworthy to the general public, or is it sufficient to be noteworthy to experts in the relevant field?"  Notability varies hugely by topic area and reflects the current consensus (or lack thereof) of editors who are active in that area. The relevant guideline here is WP:NSOFT.

And that brings me to another comment you made: " If it's going to feel like a war just to get a new page established then it's not going to be enjoyable to try and participate."  Yes! I've dropped out myself because of just this issue. Here's what I've learned (and I still have bumps on my head from the process):


 * 1) Don't write marginal articles. The very best articles in wikipedia have gone through an intensive peer-review process before being granted the status of "Featured Article".  Read the featured article critera as well as a few of the commentaries.  If you start out aiming for that and you fall a little short, you still have a really good (and deletion-proof) article.
 * 2) Start with the sources, not the topic. It took me a while to figure this out, but it's really frustrating to start out with a really cool idea for an article, only to realize after several days of searching that there's just not enough in the way of reliable sources to make the article interesting (or even very good).  Having someone delete your best effort compounds the annoyance.  Instead, if you start with a source (or even better, a source with a bibliography), then someone else has already done the hard work for you.  At that point, you just have to figure out how to write the article well, rather than figure out how to prevent the article from being deleted.
 * 3) Learn from the mistakes&mdash;and successes&mdash;of others. Hang out in WP:AfD as well as WP:FAR, WP:RS, WP:FTN, and even WP:ANI. Read everything posted in the WP:TEAHOUSE and, as you learn, try contributing there first.
 * 4) Find a small chore to do and do it well. I like fixing hyphenation errors (when I'm not writing massive bibliographies. Fixing the hyphenation of ad hoc across 20 articles doesn't take much effort, but the world is a (slightly) better place for it, and that helps to smooth out the rougher edges.
 * 5) Enjoy the rewards. My first DYK garnered something like 10k page hits (which, as far as DYKs go, is good but not great).  That's orders of magnitude more than all of my published academic writing combined.  So I'm back for more.

And with that, I'll shut up already, except to say that I'm happy to help with the mush article once you've gotten your hands on those sources, or with anything else you've decided to work on.

Hang in there!

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:23, 4 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Just saw the article was deleted. If you still interested, let me know when the books arrive from Amazon and you've started in on the new draft.  If you haven't already, you can ask an admin to put a copy of the article into your userspace so you're not starting from scratch.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 10:16, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Putting this here as a placeholder while I wait for Userfication of the mush page. Slaurel (talk) 05:07, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Slaurel, just a heads up: Your userfied page is ready. I'd like to second Lesser Cartographies hints about surviving the process: once you learn Wikipedia's idiosyncrasies (and there are many), you may find it quite enjoyable. The rewards can be nice too... my first DYK way back when was a mess, but it really felt good to get the notification that something I wrote was on the main page. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:50, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Slaurel, just wondering if the zmail book ever showed up and if you were still interested in redoing the MUSH article. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 08:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I've replied here.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 06:51, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I've had a chance to look the article over and make comments. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 21:04, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Lesser Cartographies, I have scanned the book covers, but when I try to upload them, it won't let me because the page they will be used on doesn't exist (outside of userified-space), so... catch 22, I can't ask for the article to go live without the backup corroboration of the images, and I can't upload the images without the page going live.Slaurel (talk) 20:02, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Mapper orientation for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Mapper orientation is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Mapper orientation until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Xurizuri (talk) 12:42, 20 January 2022 (UTC)