User talk:Mdebellis
Teahouse Users Can Leave Me a Message Here!
I'm a teahouse host and sometimes invite users seeking help to "leave a message on my talk page". I know that can be confusing the first time for new users so I set up this section of my talk page. If you want to leave me a message click on the "Edit" link about and edit this section. Just start typing at the end of whatever is already there. Don't worry about formatting.
meco (talk) 13:01, 28 June 2012 (UTC) I just wanted to say thanks for your comments but even this note to you was hard and most likely in the wrong place or written in the wrong way forgive me but I definitely feel that I'm in the deep-end of this pool and this wikipedia editting is not very intuitive or easy like email and is another world on the web I think I will just wait till a friend is free who understands this as I do not but thank you :)Davidofchicago (talk) 07:38, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
Parsons Paris Cont...
Good morning,
Just a friendly reminder that I have posted my response to your and User:Sionk remarks on the Parsons Paris (2013) talk page. mickeyallen 13:22, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Hello Michael, Friendly reminder to kindly revert to my response to that of yours - Topic: "Require help to get an article published" --Parmarvishalb (talk) 04:50, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
A belated welcome!
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Welcome to WP:Novels
Welcome to WikiProject Novels. We are a small project, with a handful of active people. Most of the project's work is in organizing the content around novels; however, those of us who are active also frequently contribute to articles about novels and fiction in general. If you set out to write articles about novels, make sure to check out Featured Articles and Good Articles related to the project so that you have good models on how to structure the information in the articles. If you have any questions or need any help, feel free to contact me at User talk:Sadads. Also, I see that you are already active in the Teahouse, which is a great opportunity for learning more about Wikipedia in general. Happy editing, and a warm welcome into the community, Sadads (talk) 19:36, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
- Currently at work, so haven't read the article thoroughly. You are correct in not using the 4 tildas in comments on individual edits, the tildas are only for talkpage use.
- Where you left the question on the plot on the talk page (Talk:The Little Sister) would be the appropriate place for content related questions. However, that being said there are tons of pages about novels and not a huge number of editors in the content area, so you may or maynot find help. The vast majority of content is written by one editor and then refined by other editors to make sure that it is concise, accurate and consistent. Most articles do not have multiple editors who contributed content to them. I am willing to give you feedback along the way and do some copyediting, so when I get off work, I will try to refine stuff (probably going to be from my phone because I am going to some events related to Wikimania 2012 in DC this evening.)
- My biggest general suggestion for new writers of Novels articles: focus on the content of the reviews, anyone can write a plot summary, but writing a concise summary of the scholarship surrounding a novel is much harder. If you have access to research databases try doing some searches in academic journal databases and newspaper databases searching the title of the novel. Also, try search google news and google scholar. A good example of an articles that employ newspapers and other reviews well are Quicksilver (novel) and The Other Hand.
- Hope all the thoughts help, and I will give some more specific feedback in the near future, Sadads (talk) 16:59, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
- In response to the question about referencing, here is a good handout that might be useful File:WikipediaReferencing.pdf, here is a reference sheet for the basic reference code File:RefCodeHandout.pdf and here is a video explaing how to use the citation tool available at the top of your editing window and what it does : File:RefTools.ogv. If those don't do it for you, there is always Wikipedia:Citing sources which gives you way to much information and way too many links to other resources, so I would suggest using the handful of handouts I gave you first. The best guideline for citing sources is: make sure all the standard bibliographic information is in the reference and that it is consistent. I would strongly advise using the citation tool that the video will demonstrate, it makes life alot easier and makes sure that you don't miss the critical bibliographic pieces.
- Also, just a small piece of Wikipedia etiquette, when you are following up on a discussion on a talk page where there are already comments and you aren't significantly changing the course of the conversation, don't start a new section, just justify your next comment further to the right by using colons (:) at the beggining of each paragraph (as I have been doing here). Hope the editing experience is going well :) Sadads (talk) 13:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
Teahouse!
Hi Mdebellis! Thanks so much for answering - and asking - questions at the Teahouse. If you're interested in answering questions extensively, I encourage you to check out more information about becoming a Teahouse host. To see if you're up for it, take a look and familiarize yourself with our host tips and the host responsibilities page. There you can learn a bit more about what makes us different - we greet each visitor (everyone likes to be welcomed when they visit a new place!), use as little wiki jargon and possible and keep it simple and friendly. If you feel up for the task, you can then add yourself to the host page. Then you're official, so to say :) Also, I encourage you to invite other editors to the Teahouse to find help. Right now we have more people answering questions than we do visiting, so we can use all the help we can get. Thanks so much for all you do on Wikipedia! :) SarahStierch (talk) 17:20, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Greetings!
Many thanks for the work you are doing on the article for Rory Gallagher. I spent a lot of time attempting to both add to the lead of the article (partly not knowing what I was even doing), and looking for potential editors to form a work group, but couldn't find enough. I very much appreciate the obvious difference there since I discontinued working on the article maybe a year or two ago. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 21:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for noticing. Do you have any suggestions for further improvements? I purchased the one and only Gallagher bio I could find on Amazon and read through it and was planning on using it to beef up the references but I'm sure there are other enhancements I could make and if you have any suggestions I would welcome them. Mdebellis (talk) 23:49, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
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Hello and welcome to the Military history WikiProject! As you may have guessed, we're a group of editors working to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to military history.
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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask any of the project coordinators or any other experienced member of the project, and we'll be happy to help you. Again, welcome, and we are looking forward to seeing you around! Anotherclown (talk) 21:00, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Greetings
Welcome again to the Wikipedia. You are correct; normally red links do not belong in an article. Generally, though, when an editor with some years of non-stop editing will leave them there if they see the article supporting an article to come will come in a timely fashion. Nice catch, but give it a couple of months, since when you see the separate page for Rory Gallagher's full discography you will find that the Irish Tour '74 is the next in line for work. If you prefer to disagree and wait, that's OK too... no harm no foul. BTW, I see you are a (relatively new) editor, and if you are interested in working on music-related articles, I'll be happy to assist you. My specialty covers biographies of musicians and photos for their pages. Cheers! --Leahtwosaints (talk) 20:55, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
- Makes sense. I've actually been doing a lot of editing on Gallagher's pages recently and I was thinking I might take a shot at creating the article myself some time soon. I just finished updating the corresponding album Irish Tour '74 Mdebellis (talk) 21:29, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
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WikiProject Military history coordinator election
Greetings from WikiProject Military history! As a member of the project, you are invited to take part in our annual project coordinator election, which will determine our coordinators for the next twelve months. If you wish to cast a vote, please do so on the election page by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September! Kirill [talk] 17:16, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Notable Chicago Blues Musicians
Please clarify. What criteria define a notable Chicago blues musician? Who is the decider of whether a musician is notable?--Wpwatchdog (talk) 11:53, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
- This is one of those questions that is clearly a judgement call and most people who know the topic won't agree about who exactly is notable and who isn't. There is a List of Chicago blues musicians that included RBB and that makes sense to me. But for someone to be mentioned in the actual article I think they should be not just a blues musician from Chicago but known for some major achievement, innovation, recordings, influence, etc. So Muddy Waters, Albert King, Junior Wells, etc. There is no way I think Ronnie Baker Brooks is in that league. I had never heard of RBB although of course I had heard of his father. I wouldn't say I'm an expert on the topic but it is definitely a personal passion. If you can describe some way that RBB is known for some major influence that I'm not aware of perhaps it's worth more discussion but what I'm trying to avoid is what happens a lot on Wikipedia, people edit a page and just add their favorite artist. Also, RBB didn't start recording until the 80's. By that point I think the Chicago Blues style was already very well defined. In fact it had been almost turned into a cliche it was bastardized, sorry I mean copied, so often by white bands, a few good many not so. Anyway, that was my thinking. I actually think some of the names that are currently in the article shouldn't be there either but until I have some time to do serious editing and get my hands on some reference books I didn't want to start editing but for now I think cutting down more bloat is a good idea but if you still aren't convinced let's discuss some more. One thing we have in common I'm sure is a love for this neglected form of great music :) RedDog (talk) 13:20, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
- One other thought, if you can find a reference in some credible book or prominent article that says something like "RBB epitomized the later years of Chicago Blues" or something else, something besides just saying that RBB was a Chicago Blues musician but that he was notable for some achievement, that would definitely settle the case as far as I'm concerned. Some references that I'm currently trying to get to improve this article are: Chicago Blues my Mike Rowe and The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues. A sentence or two in a book like that about RBB would be what I think is required. RedDog (talk) 15:07, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you for the clarification.--Wpwatchdog (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
- One other thought, if you can find a reference in some credible book or prominent article that says something like "RBB epitomized the later years of Chicago Blues" or something else, something besides just saying that RBB was a Chicago Blues musician but that he was notable for some achievement, that would definitely settle the case as far as I'm concerned. Some references that I'm currently trying to get to improve this article are: Chicago Blues my Mike Rowe and The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues. A sentence or two in a book like that about RBB would be what I think is required. RedDog (talk) 15:07, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
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Your new nickname used in your signature.
Hello Mdebellis! I see that you've chosen a new nickname to use in your signature. Especially where you are contributing to help pages like the Teahouse, I was wondering if you could further adjust your signature per WP:SIGPROB to not be confusing. I don't care how you choose to do that, and would be more than happy to help you come up with some ideas that would allow you to still use your new nickname, and be in compliance. Once option would be the way that Dodger67 does it with "Roger (Dodger67)". Another option might be to flip it "Mdebellis (RedDog)". I would also be happy to help with formatting techniques to improve the overall look of the signature like maybe "RedDog (Mdebellis)" or something of that nature. Ping me if you need some help with it. :) Happy editing! Technical 13 (talk) 17:49, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
- First of all I don't think it's accurate to say I have chosen a "new" nickname. I've been using this for months at least, possibly close to a year, and as far as I know it's never caused any confusion. Second, I have to be honest this issue kind of pisses me off. I think I've been contributing in good faith over the last year and yet I keep getting hassled about my name. First there was some user who was upset because I chose MadScientistX11 and it was similar to his nickname. I had no idea they were similar and at the time I thought it was rather ridiculous at a site this big to expect people might not have nicknames that are similar, I think his was AMadScientist. And the whole thing got elevated to some review group because I didn't respond fast enough when AMadScientist sent me a message about the issue. The review group determined I hadn't violated any policies and was just fine but I decided to change my name anyway because what the fuck difference does it make. Now this. Don't you people have anything better to do? Am I specifically violating any policies? In the mean time I'll just stop contributing to the Teahouse. RedDog (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)