User talk:Sutherland4l

Hi Sutherland 41, Welcome to Wikipedia and the Opera Project! Great job on editing the purple prose in the Joan Sutherland article. Just a couple of things. I noticed that you've put the Opera Project banner on your User page. Actually, that's only for actual articles about opera-related subjects in the main space of Wikipedia, not for user pages. Adding that template automatically categorizes your user-page as an opera-related article. You'll find a selection of Opera Project user-page boxes here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/User and project boxes. Adding one of those will automatically put the page on the right category: WikiProject Opera participants. Also, when you add a comment to any talk page, either for an article or another user, make sure you sign your comment by adding 4 tildes (~), without spaces, after your comment, like this: ~~~~. That will automatically add your user-name (linked to your user-page) as well as the date and time of your comment. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Me again. I looked at the edit history of your user-page and saw that you were originally trying to add a user-page box, but the syntax wasn't quite right. I've taken the liberty making the switch for you. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Voceditenore, Thanks for the helpful info! Sorry about the confusion in icons et al and my anonymity. I've only had about 5 hours of experience as of now. I look forward to helping the project out as much as I can, even if it is only in small nit-picks. Talk with you soon. Sutherland4l (talk) 06:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Whoops! I forgot to add that if you want to change the background colour of the user-box, you can use one of these instead: {{ParticipantOpera2}} (beige background), {{ParticipantOpera4}} (plain white background) or {{ParticipantOpera5}} (lavender background). And don't worry, you'll get the hang of all minor the wiki-bits.;-) Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi and editing conventions

Hi, I want to second the above welcome to Wikipedia. It's good to have fresh blood working on operas.

As you're a new user, I want to explain some of my recent edits to Tristan und Isolde. I think you've made a number of improvements but I want to draw you attention to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English. This says that once an article has developed in one variety of English it should be left that way unless there is a very good reason to change. One such reason to change, taking your favourite singer as an example, is if the subject is, say, Australian. The Joan Sutherland article should use the language conventions common in her homeland. However, Tristan is not associated with any one variety of English and should be left in the one it started in, or at least the one at which the variety of English being used first became clear. As Wikipedia is a multinational effort, we don't want to be seen to favour any one particular group.

There were also a couple of points where I preferred the original phrasing. The early Karajan recording from Bayreuth was not official but pirated off the radio and therefore I prefer the EMI being described as his first official recording. Also the Manual of Style prefers literal descriptions - Barenboim was the conductor of a later Berlin recording, not it was "under his baton". And I do want to change one of your edits earlier on. I think it was more accurate to say that Wagner was inspired by Mathilde W and by Schopenhauer in his compostion, not that the composition was inspired by them. He was, I believe, already interested in the subject before he read Schopenhauer and before he met MW; but they inspired him to approach the task in a particular way. However, I can't make that change for now as their is a WIkipedia rule that you can't make more than three edits undoing someone else's changes in a 24hr period.

Any way welcome to Wikipedia and see you around.--Peter cohen (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 21:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info and sorry about the mishaps. I've reverted the language back, and I will also revert back to your suggestions. I'm very new to the entire editing process, and I'm sorry if I have stepped on toes in trying to find my way. I'll also revert my earlier edits to Joan Sutherland's article. I look forward to working with you, however, and the Opera Project! See you around! Sutherland4l (talk) 22:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you into wholesale retreat. People are entitled to different opinions about what should be in articles and on the way they should be presented. Although I was aware of your edits to the JS article, I haven't actually looked at them and so can have no useful opinion one way or the other on what you have done there. What I do know is that another editor was pleased by your work on that article.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's good to know, thanks for telling me! I changed a lot of the TuI based on your suggestions. Thanks for the help etc...! Sutherland4l (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]