User talk:NYScholar/Archive 10

Show preview function

Having noted that you edited one article over fifty times in seven hours I must ask that you please begin using the show preview function. — Athaenara ✉ 06:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

"Saving the same article a large number of times in quick succession makes it harder for people to check what changed, and clogs up the page history." — (from Help:Show preview)

Sorry--I do use the show preview function with almost every edit that I make in Wikipedia. But even using show preview, I see typographical problems later, especially when editing citations and references in lists that were haphazardly placed in Wikipedia by other editors with a lot of items out of order (alphabetically) or lacking full citations. In terms of that particular article, it was a very difficult editing job involving small details in citations that are very hard to perceive in show preview each time. I used show preview function for each change that I made. If you compare the material as it was before I worked on that section of the article (external links) with the material afterward, you will see the complexity of that editing process. Recently, after taking a lot of time to edit parts of another article, I lost all my changes prior to show preview due to a glitch in a source's website which froze my computer; so after that, I tried both to use show preview and to save the changes that I made very frequently. I also tried to work on restoring the lost material offline first (in my word-processing program), but the word-processing program that I was working in and the Wikipedia site conflict in very small details of coding and punctuation (e.g., apostrophes in quotations from various sources), leading to many small edits. I'll keep what you say in mind, but please know that generally I do use the show preview function for even very minor changes; I just don't always see all the punctuation and other [typographical] errors, especially in citations in notes, when working in a section edit, because notes do not show up at all in the show preview function in Wikipedia in section editing. One has to return to fix errors in notes when in the whole article editing mode. Again, I will keep what you say in mind. Thanks for the alert. (I will be archiving this comment later.)--NYScholar 17:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC) --Even using show preview this time, I missed a "t" in "citations," which I just added. (Note: I make typographical corrections [tc] to my own comments and edits in Wikipedia; and I add clarifications in brackets (e.g.: "typographical" in brackets). That is my editing practice. In my view, it is better to be correct than incorrect (cf. Jimmy Wales on the importance of "getting it right") --NYScholar 17:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Archived from "N.B." in my current talk page

• Re: Help:Minor edit: Due to the fact that many of my editorial changes in Wikipedia are minor typographical, format, and presentational/syntactical corrections ["tc"; "tc (format)"], I have "minor" selected as the default in editing mode. I am trying to be careful to remove the check mark for "minor" when my changes do become more substantial as I work on them. Sometimes I miss removing that check mark before a change posts. For such past and perhaps future oversights, I apologize, and I am trying to be more careful in my subsequent editing in Wikipedia. [My editing history summaries generally describe my edits fairly thoroughly.]
• To those kind-hearted souls who have provided some degree of support during the Wikipedia nightmare some call "administration": Thank you.
• To others who have been its victims: I am sorry that you have had to experience it. Take heart. There is much valuable work to be done in the world of academic scholarship, and most of us academic scholars can put our time to better use outside of Wikipedia, where it is both better understood and better appreciated and where scholarly conventions prevail.

....

• Additional note: I have recently updated my user boxes. Unwarranted and outlandish claims ongoing in a frivolous arbitration request have, unfortunately, led me to do so (at least temporarily). Personally, I am not a religious person; but I am of Jewish parentage (both father and mother) and Jewish descent; my immediate and my extended family are Jewish and, although I am not religious, some of them are, and I have great respect for them. Continually being accused of antisemitism and/or so-called "Yellow badging" for providing reliable and verifiable sources of encyclopedic information in some articles in Wikipedia is enormously distressing. I believe that there needs to be ongoing administrative vigilance and serious administrative action to deal with those who repeatedly engage in making such personal attacks against other Wikipedia editors. Those unchecked attacks damage this community and whatever albeit-already weak credibility Wikipedia may have in the wider community of knowledge. [Updated. --NYScholar 10:30, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]

[Updated archive. --NYScholar 22:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)]