User talk:Tediouspedant

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Tediouspedant, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Richard New Forest (talk) 23:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Tags and comments

Hi! I noticed in your edit to Plough that you'd put a query in the text in the form of a superscript comment; you seem to have done this in other articles too. While it's obvious what you intended, the Wikipedia convention is not to put comments in the visible text. What's normally done instead is to place a template tag after a contentious point, and, if a comment is also needed, to do this in hidden text after the tag.

The most common tag used is "citation needed", which may be done in several ways: as {{Citation needed}}, {{CN}} or (usually) {{Fact}}, all appearing as . Other common tags include {{Full}} (where a citation is incomplete) and {{Clarify me}}, appearing as and . Like references they all go after punctuation such as the full stop at the end of a sentence. Each of these query tags should be dated with the month and year, like this: {{Fact|November 2009}}. Queried statements standing for a while unreffed can then be deleted or corrected. If you don't date them, a bot will come along later and do it for you ("Smackbot"...). There are loads of other templates for use in various places: in-line, at the head of paras, and at the head of articles – for all sorts of purposes, such as for converting units automatically, proposing mergers and so on, and indeed for the standard welcome I've done above.

If hidden text is needed, it's done using the button with the red cross in it (above the edit box), which produces <!-- --> around the comment in the wiki markup text, but of course nothing in the article itself. Usually however an edit summary will do, or if the comment is too complex for that, it's often better to start a discussion on the associated talk page. Hidden text can also be used to guard against miscorrections: for example, many people are tempted to change the single link on the legal term "England and Wales" to separate links to the countries: "England and Wales" – a hidden comment explaining the difference can forestall such a mistake.

Good moniker by the way! Richard New Forest (talk) 23:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That's what I wanted to do but did not know how. The Plough entry says the Celts introduced the mouldboard plough into Britain around 4000BC, however Celtic culture only spread to Britain from 600BC onwards. No approximate date or location is given for the original invention of the mouldboard plough. --Tediouspedant (talk) 20:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Did you know

...that I have nominated an article you substantially expanded to appear on the Main Page?

Hi there Tediouspedant. I saw your post on User talk:Awadewit and decided to read American Enlightenment. I liked it very much, so I nominated it to appear in the Did you know section on the main page. You can check out the nomination at Template talk:Did you know#American Enlightenment. Please do ask me if you have any questions. Regards, NW (Talk) 03:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for your support, NW. --Tediouspedant (talk) 13:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't help you, I really only added the banner. I'm sorry. Hekerui (talk) 21:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's hilarious. Don't do it again...

[1] or I'll suspend your editing rights. Tom Harrison ^Talk 02:45, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your message - I saw I had a message and thought, uh-oh, I'm in trouble for something, but it was a good message. I don't know what to do about the bias, I was only arguing about one sentence which seemed POV to me, and the lead a bit. Sayerslle (talk) 11:35, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the Church in Central and South America, except again the arrival of Christendom there spelt disaster for the inhabitants..maybe I'm too biased , I tend to think The Church's history is pretty lousy evrywhere, Africa, Europe, the Americas, Australia..but there is Jesus. As he is in the Gospel of Thomas, not Paul's Jesus. That is something. I think I've got my work cut out on just the Spanish sentence for now. The Conquistador page seemd strange, like it had been translated with difficulty from the spanish or something, but I don't know much about the conquistadors.Sayerslle (talk) 16:53, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

You've mimicked the style well because it actually doesn't stand out too much from what goes before. I'd never read that section. Those poor Cathars. This is funny from Clive James - " Montaillou - In the old days the town's population was thinned by the Inquisition. They had called the Church the instrument of the Devil. The Church disabused them of this notion by toasting them over a low flame...".Sayerslle (talk) 23:48, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

double standards

Tediouspedant, let me get this straight. Pico without warning or any attempt at justification eliminates the sections of the lead that I contributed. My contributions had relieble refs. He replaced reffed material with unreffed material. Then when I requested refs he cites unreliablle refs like blogs and emags and other sources without page numbers. Then you give me a vandalism warning when I try to clean up his refs - notice that I did not replace text like pico did but I get the warning. Did you give Pico a vandalism warning for completely wiping out the lead? You, Pico,and Nefariousski all seem to enjoy the same double standard.Deadtotruth (talk) 21:14, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

You might want to see the edit on Deadtotruth's talk page, and read WP:Vandalism. I've also pointed him to WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA and WP:AGF, good reading for everyone. Dougweller (talk) 09:48, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. We'll see if it makes a difference! --Tediouspedant (talk) 13:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

ex nihilo

Thanks for the effort! We'll see what happens.EGMichaels (talk) 13:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Tedious -- I'm trying to keep this as balanced between the two as possible. We should be pretty balanced with my previous edit.EGMichaels (talk) 19:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Right -- I think we're both trying to present a NPOV list of options. We need to be careful not to put "may" on the one hand and definite statements on the other. You corrected one mistake I made and I corrected a similar mistake you made on the other side. Between the two of us we've neutered God pretty well.EGMichaels (talk) 19:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Tedious, although your supposition is possible with the consonantal Hebrew, the Masoretic pointing (10th century CE, Hebrew) and the Septuagint (3rd century BCE, Greek) both support creation ex nihilo and not pre-existent matter. Wenham also covers this in his commentary. Whatever the original writer may have had in mind, by at least the 3rd century BCE forwards, ex nihilo ruled the day. Young's translation is definitely in the minority here, near to being fringe. The best we can do is to leave the two possibilities open. There are actually 4 possibilities covered by Wenham, but 3 are just variations of pre-existent matter.EGMichaels (talk) 20:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello Tedious, I like your suggestion concerning creating two sections for the various info. Hopefully, Pico will agree also. Thanks for trying, Deadtotruth (talk) 00:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

You're definitely growing on me, man. I really appreciate working with you.EGMichaels (talk) 01:32, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

If you are not part of the solution...

With regards to this edit, it seems you made it with an intent other than the improvement of the article. That could be contrued as vandalism, but certainly is not with the best interests of the project in mind. Please refrain; that article and discussion is enough of a mess without pointy boundary pushing. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 02:58, 7 March 2010 (UTC)