User talk:Tomhartung

Welcome!
Hello, Tomhartung, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Happy Editing-- IAm Chaos  23:18, 18 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I will be sure to check out those links before making more updates!!
 * Tomhartung (talk) 22:17, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Help me!
Please help me with... Hi,

I am recently retired and more recently re-ripped my collection of all 36 Grateful Dead Dick's Picks CD releases at high resolution (as opposed to Variable bitrate).

Having finished that - a project that led me to extensively utilize the pages for the releases here at wikipedia.org - I thought it would be nice to thank the community by adding brief descriptions of the enclosures that accompany many of these releases.

So far I've added sections to the pages for Dick's Picks Volumes 4, 8, 10, 11, and 15. I got a little carried away with the text I added for Volume 8, and got some useful and gentle feedback from user Mudwater. This prompted me to make better use of the Manual of Style, but I must admit there's a lot there!

I am learning, and referencing the Manual of Style regularly, but don't know everything yet! However, I am feeling more comfortable in making these additions, and plan to complete this project for all of the 36 releases that include enclosures.

Assuming these additions are welcome, I'd like to follow this project by adding entries for the Dave's Picks releases, of which there are 41 and counting. I subscribe to these releases and so have all of them so far, and so far all of them include enclosures which in general are more extensive than those included with the Dick's Picks releases. In the event I finish that project, each of the shows for the Dead's Europe '72: The Complete Recordings also include liner notes - most of which I have not even read yet - so it might be fun to do those as well.

Given that I want to continue this work, and have completed a few of them, I thought I'd ask for feedback at this point. I have some experience as a tech writer, and so feel I am not a full-on novice here. However, as mentioned I am really just starting out here at the wikipedia, and I know from experience that it's a lot easier to do things right the first time rather than have to go back and make changes.

It would be great to get some positive feedback, but better - at least in the long run, and I will admit to being rather sensitive - to understand the "best practices" used here! (Sorry for the "scare quotes," but I don't really care for that term, even though this seems like a good time to use it.)

Thanks in advance for your gentle feedback, even if it is simply a short bit of encouragement, so that I don't feel like I'm operating in a vacuum!! Tomhartung (talk) 22:49, 17 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi, Tomhartung! I'm IAmChaos and I saw your request for help. I'm glad that you found some help from Wikipedia in the past, and I appreciate your wanting to help the project. Everyone is welcome to help, after all, as you can see at the Main Page, we are the the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I understand being uncomfortable in your first edits, and I've posted a welcome message to the top of your talk page (this page). Some of the links there, such as the Introduction, or a game called The Wikipedia Adventure may help you learn a few more things to feel more comfortable with working around Wikipedia.
 * Since you are interested in music, may I recommend checking out the Music WikiProject? You can find it here: WikiProject Music. WikiProjects are groups of editors interested in the same types of article, and help each other out. You can also refer to the links at the top of the page for more information, such as the specific Manual of Style page, and a talk page for the entire music WikiProject. Happy Editing-- IAm Chaos  23:25, 18 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello. Thanks for you efforts at enhancing the articles about the Grateful Dead albums.  The write-ups are nice, but I'm still thinking that most of them are too long and too detailed.  If I get a chance, I'll try updating a few of them to be shorter and punchier, and we can see what you think.  Though certainly mine is not the last word on this.  Also, I'm not sure when or if I'll get to this.  For me, it's "so many internets, so little time."  — Mudwater (Talk) 21:00, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * FYI I appreciate your feedback and frankly get a little worried when I don't hear from anyone. I guess "no news is good news," as they say.
 * I certainly try to keep the descriptions short, but then I also want to do these enclosures justice. In other words, I want to ensure you that I spend quite a bit of time censoring myself, and am a teensy bit dismayed, but not totally surprised, that you feel you must do more of that.
 * I will continue doing my best to self-edit my contributions, with a goal of heightening my efforts, and with the hope that you will feel you can spend your time on more productive activities.
 * Moreover and however, if someone is not interested in this content, my thinking is that it is easy enough to skim past it. And while if someone wants more information than what is provided, and more importantly if they have somehow access to digital copies of the music but not the actual physical enclosures, then they have no similar option to dive into what Wikipedia or some other source does not provide.
 * I consider the people who do not have access to the enclosures to be my audience, because if someone has access to them, why would they want to read about them?
 * So I assure you that I spend quite a bit of time trying to balance these concerns. And I for one can't remember ever reading a Wikipedia page from start to finish, but rather it's my tendency to quickly skim for the information I am looking for while ignoring the rest.  But also I get it: why waste everyone's time, including my own, on a bunch of blah blah blah.
 * I am curious to know whether you have access to these enclosures, and can see the raw material I am starting with? Some of them provide very little additional information, but others include liner notes and newspaper articles, so I feel that expecting them all to be short and sweet may be hasty and even a bit unreasonable.  At this point, if I was going to change anything, I'd like to include selected scans of some of the images they contain, because it's sometimes tricky to describe them in words.
 * Anyway, FWIW my goal is to complete these contributions for the 36 Dick's Picks releases within the next few days, and then review them for consistency.
 * Thanks for at least demonstrating that someone out there cares about this project! Seriously these releases are around 20 years old by now, so I'm kind of surprised at myself for caring, but the Dead's music somehow has a very unique lasting quality! Tomhartung (talk) 22:57, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.  I get what you're saying, but I still can't help feeling that it's too much of a good thing, where too high a percentage of the article ends up being an elaborate and slightly subjective description of the CD enclosures.  If you look at other album articles on Wikipedia, it would be hard to find any that go into that level of detail about the liner notes.  On the other hand, maybe I'm being too uptight.  I'm not sure, and I'm also not sure if we should make more of an effort to solicit feedback from other editors.  They're unlikely to find this discussion, so I could start a new discussion where it's more likely to be noticed, for example on the talk page of the Grateful Dead article itself.  That said, it's sometimes difficult to get a lot of editors to discuss something around here.  So, yeah, I dunno.  Another point worth mentioning is that any scans of the enclosures would probably end up getting deleted.  There are rather strict guidelines about including copyrighted material on Wikipedia, though the album covers themselves are allowed under "fair use".  Anyway, I'm going to ponder all this further.  My friendly advice would be to have fun, but perhaps not be too emotionally invested in what you write.  It's entirely possible that other editors will take matters into their own hands.  And that too would be subject to further discussion and revision.  Try not to take it personally.  That said, it's also possible that what you write will continue to be viewable for centuries to come.  Who knows.  "P.S." If you have any questions, especially about more technical matters, feel free to post on my user talk page.  — Mudwater (Talk) 01:13, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I now have four left to do, and will finish them by Friday, if not before then.
 * Then I will review all of them for consistency, clarity, conciseness, objectivity, and of course minor typos. I plan to finish that process by this Sunday at the latest.
 * Thanks for your patience. Tomhartung (talk) 01:02, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello again. Here are some formatting tips for you. One point is that album titles should be in italics and song titles should be in quotation marks. That applies for article prose, and also when quoting written material. — Mudwater (Talk) 01:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi Tomhartung! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
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-- 22:20, Wednesday, February 23, 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi Tomhartung! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages

-- 22:22, Wednesday, February 23, 2022 (UTC)