User talk:Wburny

Creek, Brook etc.
You have made a number of edits to water based articles such as Creek, Brook, Stream etc. and give as evidence your membership of an American based organisation of Pond Professionals. I am sure that your edits are well intentioned but they seem to have a particular American resonance which isn't reflected in the rest of the world. There has already been much debate about the nature of Rivers, Stream, Creeks etc. and it would be worth re-visiting these debates before editing further. I trust you won't be offended by my reversions of some of your edits.  Velella  Velella Talk 16:47, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Your recent edits
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Please assist me - reply
Re your request on my talk page; I would of course be very happy to assist you and ensure that information that you have gathered in your professional life are included in Wikipedia. I am away from home at present and will provide a fuller response early next week when I return home. However in the meantime it might be worth checking out the Wikipedia Guide to editing (noted above) - as an example some of your edits were to introduce text into Disambiguation pages such as in Brook. These pages simply provide a brief index to a number of pages which share similar or almost the same name. Including verbatim text is not appropriate in such pages.

As to the apparent Americanisms, the definitions of size of brook, stream creek, river are a particular view from a particular place. I am sure they are fine in the States but the definitions don't work in the UK or New Zealand (as examples). These sizes of watercourses have also been debated at some length over the last few years in Wikepdia with a consensus that there is no range of sizes of watercourses that everyone can agree on. Perhaps the most contentious issue was the inclusion of almost the same text in several different articles. There is no problem with including appropriate text in one article but if it needs to be repeated several time it suggests that it might best sit in an article of its own such as Water feature with references to that article in the "See also" lists.  Velella  Velella Talk 17:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * To complete my response, the other issues that I have are:
 * that although you are very probably exactly what you say you are, a respected professional and member of a high level committee of an esteemed professional body, regrettably that cuts little ice in Wikipedia without appropriate references to back up any assertions made.
 * definitions made by a professional body for its own professional purposes, rarely translate well to the rest of the world and into other uses. Thus although your meaning may have great resonance with Pond professionals and those associated with water features, they are not the commonly agreed meanings of the words in the wider population. Even if they are the agreed set of definitions within a particular professional sphere and are thus worthy of inclusion in an appropriate article, there would be need of further references to confirm that these definitions were widely accepted in the English speaking world including Australasia, the Indian sub-continent, the UK, the English speaking Caribbean, Canada etc.
 * I hope these comments help, and I would, of course, be happy to assist in editing relevant article(s) to include appropriately sourced and referenced information.  Velella  Velella Talk 18:44, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Adoption request
Hello there, Wburny! I'm Netalarm and I've been around on Wikipedia for quite some time now. It appears that you've indicated that you want to be adopted on your user page. While you can wait for an adopter to come forward and offer to adopt you, I would highly recommend that you also actively seek an adopter. From the cases I've seen, I've noticed that it is often much faster if the adoptee also actively participates in the matching process.

When choosing an adopter (click here for a list), there are a few things you'll want to check. First of all, you'll want to check if they are available. The column with the label "Adoption status" will tell you if they are able to accept more adoptees. You may also want to choose an adopter that has similar interests, which are indicated in the "Interests" column, though it is not required you do so. Once you have found an adopter you want, you may message them on their talk page and ask to be adopted. If you have any questions about this process (or about Wikipedia in general), feel free to message me on my talk page.

Click here to view a full list of adopters

Once again, welcome to Wikipedia! Netalarm talk 22:00, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Template deactivated
Hello Wburny. A few weeks ago you requested adoption through the adopt-a-user program, a program that requires the participation and effort of both sides - the adopter and adoptee. Since you have not edited in a few weeks and have not actively seeked out an adopter, I'm afraid I'm going to have to deactivate the request template from your user page. Of course, If you become active again, feel free to message me or post on the main talk page for adopt-a-user and we'll see if something can be worked out. Thank you for your understanding. Netalarm talk 03:59, 22 November 2010 (UTC)