User talk:Taikara

Welcome!

Hello, Taikara, 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:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Brianyoumans 03:10, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response

That's OK, I don't think your comments, at least as they are on the page now, are a problem. I'm really just a bystander here - I happened to comment on this "AFD" because I had posted something else to AFD, and whenever I do so I like to go and vote/discuss a few other AFDs. I looked at the nomination, looked at the article, did a small amount of research, and voted. I came back and made the comment about possible "sockpuppet" problems (although I didn't put it that baldly) only because it seemed fairly evident, and no one had mentioned it. (It is obvious that you are a new account because you haven't set up your user page yet, and therefore it shows up red, as a dead link.)

These discussions can be kind of ugly when there are people on each side who are dedicated to either keeping or deleting the article, and others who are trying to Do the Right Thing for Wikipedia without having a deep knowledge of the subject matter or the history of the article. (See for instance the AFD for Jihad Watch, which I have contributed to.)

Good luck! --Brianyoumans 21:23, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you do decide to stick around - the Wikipedia can certainly use help. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge, really. I tend to go through the "Verify" listings and either verify the articles or propose them for deletion. There are others that need language cleanup. Etc. Etc. It is of course an endless task, but it can be kind of fun to make improvements. --Brianyoumans 03:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advice

About the guy arguing with you on the AR deletion discussion page: Post something saying, basically, "I think we've said everything we need to say - we will have to let the Wikipedia community and the closing administrator decide whether or not to keep this article." And then stop responding. I know I stopped reading it all after a while, myself - it wasn't very relevant to deciding whether the article was to be kept, the guy obviously had an axe to grind, and you were obviously a supporter of the site and the article.

As to what to do and where to get started... well, there is a welcome template that is supposed to go on the talk pages of new users, I'll drop one on yours, if I can find it. (I can copy it off my own talk page, if necessary.) And there are lots of ways you could help out - it depends on what appeals to you. The Community Portal (see the sidebar to the left, near the top) has links to long lists of articles that should be written, articles that need to be verified, articles that need to be cleaned up, etc. Or, you can just hit "random article" on the sidebar until you see something that could be improved or that needs to be done. Or, you can go look at articles on things you feel like you know something about - your home town, your favorite sport, your favorite computer programs or websites - and see if you can improve them. Try something, and if you find it boring or not to your taste, try something else. And feel free to ask questions on talk pages - mine, other people's, the talk pages of articles. And have fun. --Brianyoumans 03:07, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More advice

In response to your comments on my talk page: I think it is certainly a bit pushy to try to merge an article that just survived AfD. I don't think it would be out of line to point out that the article did actually survive AfD, and that the idea of merging was suggested in the AfD discussion and evidently rejected. Of course, proposing that something be merged, and actually merging the articles, are different things. If you and others object to the merger, and then he goes ahead and does it, that's not kosher.

I think your article on A Land Remembered is a good start. It might have been better to start with an article on the author, rather than the book, but that's fine. For improvements, I would suggest getting some more specific info on the book's notability - perhaps a link to a site listing the Pulitzer nominations for that year, information on exactly what weeks it was on the NY Times bestseller list and how high of a sales rank it got to, etc. After that, probably just a little more of a summary. I haven't written an article on a book before; you could probably look at some articles on well-known recent books to get an idea of what a typical Wikipedia book article is like.

Thanks for the congratulations; fatherhood isn't leaving me a lot of time for Wikipedia, but it's great, nonetheless! --Brianyoumans 00:56, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]