User talk:Dev920

Welcome

Hi Dev920. Welcome to English Wikiquote.

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Enjoy! —LrdChaos 15:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou...

for your welcome. I have just come over from Wikiepdia, and am unsure where to start editing. Any suggestions? Is there any specific page that details how Wikiquote differs from Wikipedia, so I don't trip up? Dev920 15:34, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's any page that details what's different between Wikiquote and Wikipedia, but the two major things are: 1) the subject matter, and 2) the size of the community. As the name suggests, we're all about quotes; we also have a much smaller community of active editors than Wikipedia, with maybe a dozen or so regular, long-term contributors (nearly all of whom are sysops).

In terms of resources, you might want to start with Wikiquote:About, which is a lot of links to other pages that you might find helpful. Once you start editing, you'll find Wikiquote:Templates helpful, as it provides format templates for creating or adding to articles.

Where to start? This really depends on you, and where your interests are (I find it's easier to work on things that I'm interested in). Look for a page for a person, film, show, etc. that you know, and get a feel for how things are laid out. If you have anything to add, or can provide a source for a previously-unsourced or attributed quote, you can add that. I got started here by reading through pages for TV shows I like and correcting obvious errors (like spelling).

There are also plenty of maintenance things that you might wish to attend to. There are lots of articles that don't have introductions, and plenty that , both minor and major.

If you have any other questions about Wikiquote in general, or about any specific bit of editing, or about why something was done, feel free to ask me, or to put the question on Wikiquote:Village pump, where other admins and editors can help out. —LrdChaos 15:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Sure, destroy my articles, why don't you.

Those articles collectively took me six hours to write and you want to reduce them?! It's not like I wrote out the script. Dev920 23:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, wtf with the unsorted dialogue template? You want something other than chronological order in a film? Dev920 23:55, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

First of all, Dev920, please identify what articles you are talking about in your posts. I make upwards of 100 edits on some days, and I don't always check to see who worked on what articles, as what I care most about is the content, not the author. In any case, it's good practice to link to what you're discussing if it's not on the article's talk page.

Second of all, there is no such thing as "my article" or "your article" here. Wikiquote articles are a collaborative effort. While many start with the considerable work of a single individual, no one "owns" them.

Third, I hope you realize that it is not my intention to "destroy" anything here. If you don't, you should review my other 25000+ edits here to see that I don't generally destroy articles. I would ask you to approach concerns about others' edits by assuming good faith, just as I assume (correctly, I believe) that your work here has been (and I'm sure will continue to be) very much in good faith. If you were being sarcastic, please consider that plain text is a poor delivery mechanism for friendly sarcasm. Nothing in your post suggested to me that you were being wry, just feeling angry.

Now on to the business at hand. Based on your mentioned of the {{unsorted}} tag I just created, I see you're probably talking about Latter Days and Proof (2005 film). They came to my attention when you added them to Wikiquote:Good entries, because I feel this will be construed by Wikiquotians as a list of articles that meet all the various policies and guidelines we expect of the best articles at Wikiquote. Because of this, I believe it's important to ensure they do in fact accomplish this, much as offering a Wikipedia article for Good or Featured status would encourge folks to bring it up to the highest standards there.

The main concern I had for these two articles was that the dialog segments were mixed into the character quotes. We have no format recommendations for this, and frankly, I think this is going in exactly the wrong direction. Character quotes are a commonplace thing in film articles, but as I'm sure you've noticed, what is commonplace is often sub-standard here at Wikiquote. The problem with character quotes is the same as identifying a literature quote simply by citing a book — it makes it effectively impossible to verify without spending several hours reading the whole work (or watching the whole film in this case).

The advantage of dialog sections is that chronological order, enhanced by terse scene-describing context lines, provide the next-best thing to timecodes, especially in the age of DVDs where people can skip through a film at high speed to spot the described scene. Because of this, we should always put dialog in the "Dialogue" section. If I had my way, we wouldn't even have character-quote sections because they're so ineffective for sourcing. (Or at the very least, the very few quotes from character sections would be repeated with proper sourcing context in the "Dialogue" section.)

With all this to consider, I moved the dialog segments to "Dialogue", but since there is (again) no sourcing info for them, and I didn't have the relevant DVDs to review, I placed the {{unsorted}} tag there to call attention to the fact that they were probably no longer in chrono order. It was, and still is, my hope that editors more familiar with the subject can fold these into proper order. (I and others do this all the time with TV-show articles like Mystery Science Theater 3000, which are far more challenging because they often have 100 times the source material to review.)

I apologize if I offended you, and I didn't mean to make light of the work you've put into these articles. But I hope we are all working toward the same goal — making each article the best it can be. This must be doubly so for articles we expect to present as "good entries". ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I apologise for coming on too strong, but that template which indicates you intend to cut down my article (which I use as a term for convenience, not ownership) is frustrating considering the amount I spent constructing it. I laid it out according to the template that existed when I first wrote them - I thought it was strange but who am I to argue? I will go put the bits you changed into order. Dev920 08:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hangon, why have you moved those individual quotes as well? That's clearly still Wikiquote policy to judge from the preloaded template:

== Other ==
* '''Character4''': (...quote...)

* '''Character5''': (...quote...)

Should they have been moved? Dev920 08:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I apologize (my turn again!) for the delay in responding on this. There are some discrepancies between the policy-by-template and practices that I still need to review to better respond to this. The short answer is, yeah, you were following the template both for "Other" and even with embedded dialog in the character sections. This is going to take even more work than just synchronizing the templates and Wikiquote:Guide to layout. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, what's happening with these? I'm reluctant to edit any more articles until I know the proper way forward. Dev920

I'm sorry, Dev920. I'm just not keeping up with everything that's going on. I have no moral authority to push any variations from the existing templates, regardless of the rationale, unless I'm willing and able to put a lot more time into them than I have right now. All I can do is ask that you consider how to provide readers with a fighting chance to identify where in the film each quote is. Otherwise, I need to get out of your way so you can contribute more material! ☺ If you'd like, you might take a look at The Man with Two Brains, which I think still follows chrono order, includes a scene context line for (nearly) every quote, and even includes some not-quite-standard poetry quoting from the film. The policy fixes and synchronization will just have to wait for more attention from more editors. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I can sure put in context lines, but I'm more concerned over this copyright tag at the top. What's wrong with the amount of quotes? They are all relevant. Dev920 16:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Relevance has nothing to do with keeping within "fair use" guidelines. However, because I am not prepared to deal with this specific issue right (I don't recall that we have any specific recommendations for film articles), I have removed the {{checkcopyright}} tags I added to Latter Days and Proof (2005 film). This should not be interpreted in any way as acceptance by Wikiquote or Wikimedia Foundation. But I'll have to leave such analysis and review to others for now. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcoming users

When welcoming new users, do I need to check that new users aren't vandals, or should I just welcome everyone without an offensive username? Dev920 06:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

That's your option. It's not such a bad thing to be friendly even in the face of vandalism or other rudeness. I usually just look up the new users and post a welcome to everyone who hasn't received a welcome message (even the ones who have posted something to their talk pages already, and the ones who have received non-welcoming communications from other users). After I do this, I use the convenient "User contributions" link to see what they've been up to. In rare cases, I've replaced my welcome with a block notice. But usually I like starting on a good foot, even if I have to immediately follow up with a "I'm sorry to see that..." post. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)