User talk:Slambo/Archives/2010/July

Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works to TFA?

Hey Slambo, I was just browsing through FA pages and noticed that Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works is among the oldest current FAs to have not been featured on the Main Page. Would you consider nominating it at WP:TFAR, in the "non-specific date" slot? Regards, Dabomb87 (talk) 23:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be neat to see it there, but my first thought is "Ugh! Another solid day of monitoring one article's changes." So, while I wouldn't make an outright objection, I'm not so keen to nominate it myself. Slambo (Speak) 14:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I've boldly listed it at the requests page; please feel free to add a comment and tweak the blurb and/or picture. Cheers, Dabomb87 (talk) 16:40, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I see that it is now scheduled for July 8. I've left a heads-up note at WT:TWP to notify other rail transport editors about the promotion as well. I'll try to check in during the day to monitor the article for vandalism and fact-checking on new edits. Slambo (Speak) 15:00, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I will also check on the article periodically that day. Obviously, I won't be able to check the facts or substantial edits, but hopefully I can help filter out the clearly unhelpful edits. Cheers, Dabomb87 (talk) 21:09, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

• Hi Slambo. The article just got off the Main Page; fortunately, the damage doesn't seem to be bad at all, except for a couple inline cleanup tags: [1] and [2]. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:10, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Question/Comment

I have been dabbling in editing for some time, mostly anonymously as I have been in China (can't remember what the restriction is)... but I am now looking at getting a bit more stuck in. I happened on your User page to see what people are writing before adding one myself. I might be a little less adventurous to start with!

I just made a small edit on a normal page but now find that you are 'guilty' of the same offence. So please tell me if I am wrong! You use 2 acronyms without expanding them, NMRA and WORT. In the case of NMRA you use the full name later. In the business world where I did (recently retired) a lot of business/technical writing the standard was to use the full name in the first instance, with the acronym or common name etc in parenthesis. Thereafter, the acronym etc can be freely used. Is the standard considered to be irrelevant when it is linked to a full explanation as of course yours are? Pls comment as I will use it as guidance in future editing.

I didn't find your semi-political inclusion, unless you include your involvement in Associations as all seek to influence decision makers and to the students of politics are 'political'.

Apault (Paul Trundley) Apault (talk) 13:01, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, first of all if nobody has said it before, welcome to editing!

On the acronyms, I try to be aware of the appropriate guideline when I edit. There is some leeway in where the acronym expansion is placed and in how the first use is made within an article, and since userpages aren't really articles, most of the Wikipedia manual of style does not apply to them. In the case of my userpage, I wanted the page to look more like an article than a mindless collection of random thoughts, so the first use of NMRA is a link to the Wikipedia article about the organization. This organization is referred to more often by the public and the press through the acronym name than it is through the expanded name, so it could be argued that the expansion is optional here. I also linked the expansion of the acronym later on the page mainly because it was so far away from the first use, but I could have gotten away without linking it there. In all fairness, the expansion should be next to the acronym's first use in an article. The other abbreviation that you mention, WORT, is not really an acronym in the strictest sense of the word; it's a radio station's callsign. I'm in Wisconsin, which is to the east of the Mississippi River. In the US, radio and TV stations that are physically located to the west of the Mississippi River have callsigns that begin with K while stations located to the east all have callsigns that start with W. In Canada they all start with C. Some station callsigns are based on acronyms, such as WUWM in Milwaukee where the last three letters stand for University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, but others are not strictly acronymic, such as KROQ in Los Angeles, where the ROQ is a stylized spelling of Rock, which indicates the kind of music that makes up the station's regular format. Even though callsigns are based on word sounds and acronyms, they are generally accepted to be words themselves and the expansion is not needed except to fill in the article's infobox line about what the callsign stands for.

The userbox that I'm referring to that indicates a little bit of politics is the one about being an Eagle Scout. The moral values of conservative politics in America are sometimes associated with scouting. For example, there have been controversies in the past about having openly homosexual men as scout leaders. I remember hearing of one case where a scout troop had to be disbanded because the only adult who stepped forward to volunteer to fill the leadership role was gay. I do not necessarily agree with all of the moral statements that can be associated with scouting; in this example, my own belief is that it is none of my business what other people do in their bedrooms or who they choose to be intimate with. I really have no interest in participating in such moral or political debates, so I keep to the fact that I attained Eagle rank, and welcome the camaraderie of other scouts.

Slambo (Speak) 11:30, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Brill Tramway

If you get the chance, can you have a skim over Brill Tramway for any obvious errors, or things which aren't obvious to the non-UK reader? I've spent so much time on this one (and its various subpages) that there may be glaringly obvious problems that are passing me by. While it's quite long, I can't see any obvious place for cutting; the constant changes of ownership and rebuilding schemes, and the fact that it went from being a private industrial tramway, to a passenger railway, to (theoretically) part of an urban mass-transit system gives it a far more complex history than most minor railroads. The one significant removal I've made has been to remove the route diagram template; I think that in this case, the inkscape diagrams are more useful as they show the curves-and-branches more clearly than an RDT would.

Even though it makes the article longer, I've kept the de facto appendix of "Infrastructure". I think it makes more sense using this arrangement; that way, the technical details don't swamp the article text itself. I'm reluctant to move it off to a subpage; any subpage would need an explanatory summary-history of the line to provide at least minimal context, and thus actually add to the overall length. (Anyone interested in one is likely to be interested in the other, so will end up reading the same material twice.) The section only adds 800 words to an article that's 10200 words without it, so it's not having a significant impact on length. – iridescent 09:51, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a look through it probably next week when (I hope) I can set aside some time for it. Slambo (Speak) 11:05, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Disregard what I say above about an appendix; I've moved the technical side off to a subpage after all, as the article had got quite top-heavy and slow to load. – iridescent 18:57, 23 July 2010 (UTC)