User:Laudaka/notesforself

Sandboxing

How does <code> work? And <code lang=sql>

for SectionOfNewspaper in Home Overseas Sports Politics
  do
  printf "The news about $SectionOfNewspaper is BORING :-( \n";
  printf 'Very Boring news in $SectionOfNewspaper it is!\n'; 
  sleep 0.5;
done

create user ''wikidb_user identified'' by '''wikidb_userpassword''' ;
select user, host, password from mysql.user ;
drop user wikidb_user ;

Practical Notes

US to U.S.

• US to U.S.
• But not U.S. in list of countries should then be Unites States in full (remember to keep longer lists alphabetical).
• But no periods if it's part of long abbreviations like USAF, USN .

Add to Edit summary:

[[WP:STYLE#Acronyms and abbreviations]]

And the same thing in a working link: WP:STYLE#Acronyms and abbreviations

British English dictionaries

(still has to be edited to link to the home page or the search page)

Cambridge Online Dictionary showing coordinated

Same, not recognising archaic spelling

Oxford Concise showing coordinated

Oxford Concise not recognising co-ordinated

TODO

Checking feedback

CHECKED FEEDBACK UP TO: May 31, 2005

I've made my first edits in January 2004. In May 2005 I had made between 800 en 850 edits.

I gave up to check most of my first 800 edits to check if people changed what I did because I made a mistake. I can learn in the future the mistakes I make when editing wikipedia.org and the worst mistake someone posted a private message. And checking feedback is rather dull to do. Moreover for the moment I'm not planning to do anything else than correcting typos and very clear spelling errors. (I'm not going to bother about American and Brittish English. I'm even not to add remarks about an article being POV.)

It seems much more sensible to use contributions for this. Because in that list only edits by me appear.

0. Check if it is an edit on one of your personal pages! 1. Check if the edit is by yourself. (This saves you from checking pages you've changed less than a week ago and talk pages you've only changed the that talk page of.) 2. Use the hist feature if you just want to check if anyone changed back spelling corrections. 3. Unwatch the page.

Spelling and punctuation problems

Encountering both American and English spelling in the same article

When English and American spelling are used in the same article if you change to either of the two you should check the whole article for the right spelling according to the official policy.

In favor of correcting those errors without leaving a notice:

• It is quite striking to use two different spellings for the same word in the same article. Probably much more striking than the use of American and British spelling for different words.

In disfavour of correcting those errors without leaving a notice:

• More words of the article might be in mixed spelling. In this way the chance this will ever be solved is rather slim.

I'm not sure but it seems likely to me people will notice mixed spelling of the same word more than of different words. And there is a chance there are no American/Brittish spelling words in the article, and I might even change it to the right spelling. Hmm, I think changing it is a good idea. A very careful editor would probably notice mixed different words spelling anyway.

For the moment I DO correct those errors. But I'm NOT leaving a notice. I'm just leaving a note in the Edit summary. I'm always correcting to American because the chance the remainder of the article is in American English is largest. I'm not interested to correct those errors in the future, but I might want to point this problem out to other people.

All corrected Brittish/American spelling problems should have (bramsp) in the Edit summary. (First one was marked with "ambrsp".)

Hyphen, space or write as one word

Articles with the problem include:

• ISO_639 two-letter word

For the moment I'm NOT correcting those errors. But I would like to bother about this problem in 6 months (that would be nov 2005).

I'm not really happy with this decision a few days later. For mixed American and English spelling I decided it was best to make it look less sloppy and to hide that there was still a little bit of a problem. I'm leaning towards the same choice for this. But there is a big but. If I start correcting those errors it is nearly impossible to spot them anymore except by checking every article with a spelling checker which is not likely to happen in the near future. (And then it still tricky with the spelling checker.)

The question is. What is better. Inconsistencies in the same article that look sloppy but that are easy to solve for the Typo Team. Or inconsistencies between different articles which don't look really sloppy but are harder to solve for the Typo Team.

My final decision is that the fact that it will be nearly impossible to solve is more important than the sloppiness of the articles. (This would be much harder to solve than the mixed American/Brittish spelling problem.) And also an important reason not to do it is that one task too much for me, and when I'm thinking that it might make matters more complicated for others of the typo team and myself in the future then I'm again choosing NOT to correct the words where it's unsure if there should be a hyphen.

Controversy: change everything to one spelling?

Would it not be better to change everything to the same spelling? This is more work for people correcting spelling. Maybe it is a little distracting to read articles with two different spellings but I don't think it is. At the other hand using two different spellings makes wikipedia.org more international and not only U.S.-centered. The only way to make sure an article has only American or only British spelling is to use a spell checker.

For the moment I'm NOT starting a discussion about this. I'm not interested in a discussion about this in the near future. I think the current situation is probably the nicest there can be.

Punctuation problems in lists

Many lists have some items ending with a period and others with nothing. List items that are no sentences often end in a period. I'm not sure what would be correct is some list items are sentences and others are not.

Among other lists this is a problem on disambiguation pages. It should be possible to find all lists with this problem with an automated search.

For the moment I'm NOT pointing this problem out to the Typo team.

Punctuation problems

When I'm not sure of punctuation I'm NOT correcting it. I don't have plans to do this any better in the near future, I would like to concentrate on spelling.

When the punctuation is wrong in a complete article I'm in DOUBT whether I correct it. I'm wondering whether putting it on the clean-up list would be helpful.

The most hard things not to edit other than spelling and punctuation

Those are in the order I'm finding it hard not to edit them.

1. On disambiguation pages: adding an article that is obviously missing on that disambiguation page (REALLY VERY HARD)
2. descriptions of webpages that look like this: www.csew.com/fe---
3. When an amount of money is written like this US$100M just don't correct it all. I wonder there shouldn't be any spaces. (no space between 100 and M would deviate from the normal writing of numbers and measures but you do write Y2K) Don't change the M to million, that's definitely improving readibility/style, not spelling. I wonder whether it is US$ or USD and whether it should be followed by a space or not. That is spelling and punctuation but I don't see the point correcting something into something else that is still a reader unfriendly style. (I would have to find out the right spelling and punctuation anyway, and for the moment I would like to find that out for aka and a few other common problem words, and I'm sticking to just that.)
4. When I'm unsure of the spelling of a word and it ain't in dictionary.com I sometimes look up how the article about that word is named. And I check if the spelling of the word in the article about that word is consistent. If it is I consider that as a clue the spelling of the article name is likely to be the spelling of that word and I correct the word in the other article. DON'T add a link to the article in that case. If I start adding links when I'm sure it's appropriate to add one I'm really deviating way of spelling and typos and this could be something that makes the temptation greater, and is something I shouldn't do anyway, even it hardly cost me any time. (I tend to add the link to prove to others my correction is right.)
5. two times a link to the same article in the same block of text (DON'T change those, concentrate on a narrow field, spelling and punctuation)

Here are some problems maybe I will tackle in the future:

Description of web page looking like this: www.csew.com/fe---

On Felidae on May 27, 2005 I encountered those weird descriptions of web pages: www.csew.com/fe---

• www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ht---
• www.itis.usda.gov/s---

Is this completely erratic or is it used among some communities of internet users to give this kind of descriptions of websites? (Maybe something from slashdot?) I'm pretty sure the girl/boy next door looking up something about her/his cat won't recognize it. Is it policy to remove this kind of descriptions?

For the moment I'm NOT correcting this problem any more. Not because I'm not enough sure I'm right about this but because after all it isn't spelling and punctuation. And I'm really only doing that just to make sure that I'm not doing too much, not only because I'm always sure my corrections are right.

Left unfinished

List of U.S. states by time zone

Funny vandalism

This is now spread over four places:

Wikipedia:Village pump

wikipedia:bjaodn, Talk

[[Talk:Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense/Funny_vandalism]]

Sputnik 4

Should the parentheses around United States be removed?

Talk:You have two cows

The Featured articles candidate notice can be removed on April 3, 2004.

Other notes for self

I like a very particular types of vandalists, vandalists with humour, I often watch on Discovery Channel programs about crime, space exploration, all programs about wars in the last century (1900-2000), I love to be very perfectionist, I hate websites and love books but hate going to the library (I allways bring my book backs weeks too late and spend a fortune on fines, so that's why I am considering the idea of making links that make you can read parts of Wikipedia as a book (just keep clicking the next links and you'll read all about a certain subject. The preceding and following tables are already close to this idea (but not quite) and I add them)

Notes for self about self-harm

Misspellings:

• self mulitation
• automutulant
• dash or no dash is a problem

Examples of easy phonetical writing

In wikipedia.org

Quetiapine

On the net

http://members.kaiserpermanente.org/kpweb/drugency/detailpage.do?bodyContainer=/htmlapp/feature/026drugency/content/202564b.html (page about Fluanxol=flupentixol)

Want to edit this

• Libre Society radical gives a very negative impression

Webhosting for Ron

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