User talk:Wxthewx99/Archive

Portal:Baseball/News
I don't yet see your talk page comment relative to your reversion, but I imagine that you'll suggest that we ought to enumerate all inducted players, and I expect that's true. I've returned, then, the delineation of players but retained my formatting, which I think properly to fit with the news section and the fashion in which portals are generally maintained. Should you think me to be wrong or should that otherwise not work for you, you should, of course, feel free to write me at my talk or to discuss the issue generally at Portal talk:Baseball/News. Joe 05:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't excise most of your text; I simply reformatted it in order that it should be encyclopedic. I'm sorry if you've inferred any malign motive from my edits, but you should be assured that none of your work was lost.  I returned your enumeration of the 2006 class and simply reworked your text; I also moved the trade section in order that the Abreu deal should be added.  If you are interested in contributing frequently in portal space, you may do well to read WP:PORTAL, viz., Portal/Guidelines.  As to the maintenance of the portal (see Portal/Directory), I replace the selected bio, article, image, quotations, and DYK every two weeks (they've about nine days left now) and update the news section where appropriate.  It is common practice across portals (and, for that matter, the main page) to list only the most significant events (even if in trivial detail), and broader work ought to go to 2006 in baseball or Current sports events, at which much help is needed.  I'm altogether happy you've decided to help with the portal news section, though, and I hope you won't mind others' editing your work, especially in order that it should comport with gneeral practice.  If you should have any questions, please feel free to write.  :)  Joe 05:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I replied to you at Portal talk:Baseball/News. In sum, though, I think we've gotten off on a rather deleterious foot and that we ought to start again.  I certainly didn't mean to foreclose the possibility that we ought to change the fashion in which news is formatted at the sundry sports portals, only to suggest that the fact of such formulation represented some sort of consensus about a change of which one ought to talk.  As to stylistic issues, perhaps I untowardly altered some of your text (although, to be sure, I made no substantive deletions), for which I'll apologize.  In any event, though, I hope we can start over; it is certainly to the project's benefit that others should involve themselves in the baseball portal, and I look forward to editing with you in the future.  :)  Joe 05:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Jocular was, I think, in reference to your trade edits; slugging, blockbuster, and major here were inappropriate per WP:NOT, WP:RS, and, more generally, the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and uses formal, academic language. With respect to your BBHoF edits, my concerns were as to grammar more than as to syntax; here you misspelled notably, used a plural verb with a singular subject, used the present perfect simple where the simple past ought to have been favored, omitted a hyphen, and omitted a few internal links that likely should have been included.  I mean this parsing not to reflect some vindicative condescension but rather to illustrate the reasons for which your edits were, at least to me, off-putting.  My edit to your HoF addition was as to style rather than as to substance (save for with respect to the Abreu and Lee trades), and I suppose I can't elucidate precisely why I reworked your text, except to say that my version, you will surely concede, is more stilted than yours; whether such change is good is a wholly different concern and one on which I'll not touch at the moment.  Where editors have different styles, there is no clear means by which to resolve editing disputes, except generally to defer to the editor to have crafted a given text first (as we deal with disputes as to what geographic form of English we ought to use); here, though, inasmuch as the rest of the news section is written in a certain style, it does not, I think, make sense to format one particular item differently&mdash;of course, as items fall off, a new style surely can be essayed.  To be entirely frank, there is really no need for more than one editor to work on the baseball portal with any frequency; the body of the work is undertaken twice monthly and consumes only an hour or two (I undertake to rewrite articles before transcluding them on the portal, but others don't).  If you should like to assume some responsibility for the portal, then, that would be great, and so if you'd like to take care to update the various sections in a week or two, I'd be altogether happy.  I hope that, at the very least, you'll consider my formulations, though. Joe 06:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Toronto Blue Jays
Whilst looking at your userpage a few days ago, I noticed that you'd created some article apropos of the Blue Jays as subpages of the main article (or at least titles in view of which the mediawiki software would understand them to be redirects). Because, for content intended permanently to be part of the encyclopedia, subpages are deprecated, I moved each of the pages you created to appropriate titles, such that they should no longer be subpages (although each of the former subpages still redirects to the new pages); Toronto Blue Jays/Managers and ownership, for example, has been moved to Toronto Blue Jays managers and ownership (although the former remains a redirect to the latter).

FWIW, and since you inquired at Talk:Toronto Blue Jays team records as to the encyclopedic worth/character of the articles, I think each, with the possible exception of the broadcasters article, which I'd likely merge with the overarching article, to merit inclusion here, and, notwithstanding that a few editors might think otherwise, I think your proposal that we craft similar subpages (especially relative to team records and awards won) for each Major League team to be spot-on, and I'll help wherever I can; you should, of course, feel free to be bold and begin such pages whenever you've time. If ever you want a space in which to work on such pages (or others), which I imagine take a bit to format and might not be finished in one editing session, you may create a sandbox subpage of your userpage (e.g., at User:Wxthewx99/Sandbox) at which to work on shizz (my apologies for consuming your time if already you knew this; I know that you've been here for quite some time but contribute&mdash;at least while logged in&mdash;rather infrequently, and so I'm not sure how conversant you are with wiki syntax and policy.

Your work seems to be stellar&mdash;there are certainly a few WP:NPOV, WP:OR, and WP:RS concerns with respect to the Managers and ownership subpage (phrases such as realize their dream, cleaning up Johnson's mess, and axed are inappropriately informal, while intimations such as poor trade for Mike Sirotka [notwithstanding the self-evident nature of that proposition to you and me, it nevertheless seems to reflect an unsourced point-of-view])&mdash;so I look forward to working with you in the future.

Please don't infer malign motive or animus from my moving the pages you created and commenting on some less-than-encyclopedic treatments therein; I mean not to be incivil and, indeed, write because you seem to be altogether sensible and knowledgable and are an editor from whose presence Wikipedia surely benefits. If you should think me to have made an editing error where our paths have crossed (e.g., at Portal:Baseball), I'll cordially thank you in advance for your raising the issue with me.

One other thing to note: it's usually not a good idea to pipe links in the See also section of an article, lest the reader should not readily appreciate the page to which he is taken (even where the piping properly conveys the subject of the latter). Feel free to drop me a note if you need anything... :) Joe 03:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)