User talk:D.M.N.

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Hello, and welcome to my talkpage!

Writing and stuff

Looks like you're getting some excellent feedback on PR from Pyrope and AlexJ. Pyrope made some good suggestions about reading work by good writers; I think his belief that good style transfers by a kind of osmosis is right. A more mechanical approach may also help: you could try looking at The Elements of Style. There're some guidelines in chapter 2 on how to structure paragraphs and sentences, which might be useful. 4u1e 09:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I think part of what he's getting at is that that particular GP is not especially important in itself - which makes it hard to write a truly good article on it, because there's not much to say (unlike say 1994 San Marino Grand Prix or 2005 United States Grand Prix. Or 1994 Australian Grand Prix). He may well be right, but it's your choice what you spend your time on. The flip side of that, as I've said before, is that you have to respect the fact that others may want to spend their time on things you don't think are important.

He's also making a point about patience. It took me probably eight months to get Brabham to featured status. I think the articles that Phill and AlexJ have gotten featured took similar lengths of time. They need time and varied input to mature. You can't do it by yourself - I make by far the greatest number of edits to the Brabham articles, but they wouldn't have got to where they are now without work from many others, including most of the regular WPF1 contributors and quite a few outside reviewers and contributors. That's why I always put articles through as many commenting processes (GA, PR, FA etc) as I can, to get many views and develop a well-rounded article, and take advantage of the skills others have that I don't.

I'm glad to see you're getting a lot of input on the Malaysian GP and are making use of it, but I would urge you to consider each comment in depth. Don't just fix the immediate problem raised, but go back over the article and see if there are similar problems elsewhere, even if they haven't been specifically raised by your reviewers. Developing an article isn't just a game of whack a mole, where you bash problems that others raise. You need to look for every opportunity to improve things: for example, if someone points out that you've used the same word twice in one sentence, don't just fix that sentence, but go through the rest of the article looking for any repeated words.

Anyway, I didn't mean for this to turn into a sermon! Good luck with improving the Malaysian GP article. You seem to be dealing with criticism of 'your' article calmly - well done.

I'll be on wikibreak for the next week or so, so BT19 won't be advancing much. I'm also waiting for someone at Flickr to get back to me about pictures (fingers crossed). If you want to see someone else's text criticised you could ask AlexJ (if he has time) to have a go through BT19 and see what he thinks. 4u1e 22:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

List of English football transfers Summer 2007

I have no doubt that you were performing the edits in good faith. However, there are so many transfers on that page that if you were to reference every single one of them using the cite news template, the page would exceed the transcluded data limit. I removed the references for a reason, and that was it. - PeeJay 14:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

When you add a template to a page, the data included in that template must be loaded from a separate page. That process is known as "transclusion". To prevent the servers from totally crashing, each Wikipedia article has a limit on the amount of data that can be transcluded onto it by templates. Therefore, we have to limit the number of templates we include on each page. - PeeJay 15:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment on Mark83's talkpage

I noticed your comment on Mark83's talkpage. I felt the points Pyrope made were valid and your reaction was unwarranted. He made it pretty clear who he was referring to, and wasn't hiding, or intending to hide anything by not naming specifically who he was talking about. Your negative attitude is flaring up again, an attitude which has already caused Pyrope (who I consider to be a very good editor and a great help to WP:F1) to leave the project once. He's not the only person to notice you ignoring advice given by others. I've seen it several times, and just looking at a recent comment on WP:MOTOR [1] shows we're not the only ones. Time and time again, people have said to you that it's a good idea to do a PR before taking an article to FAC and yet you still responded to such as suggestion recently with "It's not compulsory to do a Peer Review, is it?" People aren't saying these things because they're compulsory but because they're a good idea.

I was disappointed to read your comment on WP:F1 reacting to the failed FAC of 2007 Malaysian Grand Prix (titled "I'm pretty (or rather very annoyed....". You were very annoyed that with the Wikipedia community who had taken time to review your article and had decided it did not come up to the FA standard? Further on, you say "the article is missing a star in the top right hand corner. And that's no fault of my own." which to me suggests that getting the star in the corner, and the bragging rights on your user page matters more than the article being an example of Wikipedia's best work.

Both Pyrope and myself have spent a fair amount of time (I spent over an hour reading and doing my initial comments on MAL '07) giving you advice on how to improve your writing style as well as improving the articles but mostly you only carry out the recommendations just on the example given (things I've already effectively re-written for you). Writing FA's is an artform, not a box ticking session, and to pass FAC the general recommendations on how to improve are probably more important than the specific problems flagged up. Getting a fairly mundane event (and compared to example you give such as Japanese Toilets and the law banning homosexuality in Germany, this is mundane) to FA status is extremely hard because to compensate, the prose must be even better written for the article to be exciting and engaging (without it using cliches, hyperbole or excessive jargon). You can't just meet the minimum criteria for everything and just do the compulsory stuff. That's like doing enough to get a grade C. Unless you're a naturally talented writer, the only way to get A* is to go through all the optional improvements like PR and to take on board the comments and suggestions of others. Please, forget about applying for the star again for the moment and instead concentrate on improving the article. Aim to write the perfect article and then take it to FAC rather than aim to pass FAC. AlexJ 23:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Your comment on TJ Spyke's talk page

We are currently discussing the issue at Armageddon's talk page. If you would like to comment there then please do. TJ may have found an official source to cite from the WWE. The Hybrid 14:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Randy Orton

Well someone deleted Randy Orton from the GA Candidates page instead of listing it as "on hold" which is why I removed it from the overview. MPJ-DK 16:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

MAL '07

I'd take it to the LOCE. There's a good chance having another set of eyes (ones which might be unfamiliar with the subject) look over the article will improve it. AlexJ 21:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

My apologies if I misunderstood, my interpretation was that you were about to go ahead and do it not just suggesting it. However I don't feel my comment was uncivil, it was polite-but-firm and I felt it important to grab your attention prior to you making the changes (which I thought you were about to). Anyone who posted the same comment as you would have had the same reaction from me, I thought it better to provide a strong warning, than to let you go ahead to do what it seemed you were about to, and come in for much stronger criticism from multiple users. I also followed up "STOP!" with my rationale for using it. I'm not sure how else I could have worded it to convey the same immediacy. My intention is definitely not to drive an editor who makes mostly good faith edits from Wikipedia. I just get a little frustrated sometimes when I think someone's explained something pretty clearly to you, and you still appear to not follow their advice. There's no grudge, it's just if someone is involved in making high profile changes or submits their work at PR & FAC, it's likely they'll be challenged or receive some (hopefully constructive) criticism in the process. AlexJ 18:27, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Upg protection

All listed are infinite. Gnangarra 01:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

brian kenndrick

i know we have had our differance in the past but i don't think that we shouldn't have kenndrick and london as the tag champs. wwe hasn't confirmed it i think that cade and murdoch will deferat them for the titles at the next house shown in south aferica. i don't want to get in a revert war with you or anybody. i just hope that you and the others cleam up this mess once it all settles.User:Cowboycaleb1Cowboycaleb 17:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello. I have no idea what this dispute is about but even if you're 100% right on the issue, this is not necessary. I think it would be sensible for you to let others handle editorial conflicts with Cowboycaleb. Pascal.Tesson 19:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Just leave him alone. Besides, I'm not sure you should be criticizing his grammar when in that very message you write "you're level of vocabulary, is pretty low, and spelling mistakes are pretty high. You should retract that post, if not offer him an apology. What exactly do you hope to gain by insulting him on his talk page? Pascal.Tesson 19:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

hey just a suggestionUser:CowboycalebCowboycaleb 21:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		I, Zenlax award Davnel03, LaraLove, and Nahallac Silverwinds the Tireless Contributor Barnstar for applying the time to edit Randy Orton's article and making an effort to get it in encyclopedic form. The three of you deserve it. Enjoy. Zenlax 12:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The History Article

I did manage to use your reference on Controversy Creates Cash, and I just added it, putting into perspective his response to the event. I hope it was interesting to you too, because I appreciated you writing the paragraph for me.

Actually, if it doesn't bother you, I noticed you read "Are we there yet?" about wrestling superstars' travels (it's in the wrestling library article). I took an interest in the Randy Orton article recently, and I'm wondering; he was mentioned, along with his friend Mark Jindrak as being a player or at least, something of an aggressive guy when picking up girls in real life. See if you can spot something about him, because I know it's in there.

And remember, your help did not go unnoticed. Thank you!

--Screwball23 talk 22:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)