Welcome!

Hello, Mamawrites/archive1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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!  Ken 12:09, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Rabbitsfoot clover

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Thought I'd better let you know, I've moved this to Hare's-foot clover as that is the normal common name (the USDA is hopelessly bad at getting names of European plants wrong - never trust them!!). I've also rejigged the page and changed some info (e.g. 'very common' overstated its abundance) and added more details - MPF 22:53, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

"If you don't mind checking over the editing of my translation of the plant's appearance to make sure I'm not turning any technical terms into gibberish, I'd be grateful" - Will do! - MPF 23:17, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Slender leaves - they are slender, I suspect you've mis-read cm and mm? :-) - MPF 13:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
PS well done on the cleanup of all that archaic 1911 stuff at clover! It's really hard work ploughing through that arcane verbosity - MPF 14:00, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Vache

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Hi Sandy,

Welcome on the wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions.

On the fr:Vache problem: in theory, when adding links to the French wikipedia, you're supposed to follow the French rules. Which means that (when creating wikilinks) you would have to know the rules of all the wikipedias...

In practice, you should probably just add the most useful link. In the case of fr:Vache, I'm not sure either what to do. The French article is about all female animals of the species Bos taurus, not only those bred for their milk. Perhaps the best link would be cattle, which refers to all animals of that species.

You probably should not add links to languages that you do not understand enough to know if they are correct. As you saw with the cattle problem, even if the other links were added in good faith, and correctly, there is no guarantee they are appropriate for the English article. There are people who systematically check articles to see if there are inconsistencies in the language links, so those extra links can be added in the future by people who do speak those languages.

Finally: if you want to create subpages in your own user space, just add a link to them in your main page, like so: User:Mamawrites/subpage, and follow it. -- Eugene van der Pijll 10:31, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Request for article citations supporting adding disclaimer more prominently

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Contributers supporting adding the disclaimer more prominently on Wikipedia pages please cite articles and sign at Wikipedia:Proposed_update_of_MediaWiki:Tagline#Contributers_and_articles_that_support_adding_the_disclaimer_more_prominently. Thank you for your help! -- Sitearm | Talk 13:43, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

The proposal has been updated:

  • Leave current top-left text as is ("From WikiPedia the free encyclopedia.")
  • Add new top-right text ("All articles are user-contributed in a collaborative effort.")
Interested contributors please comment here. Thank you for your help! -- Sitearm | Talk 02:15, 2005 August 12 (UTC)

(This is already announced on Pump and Rfc but I'm adding it here because I know you're interested.) -- Sitearm | Talk 04:52, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

Please see responses to your comments here. Thank you for your help! -- Sitearm | Talk 08:51, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

Cleveland historical population source

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Thanks for reminding me. Turns out, several other cities (including Chicago and Philadelphia) I forgot to cite the same source (the U.S. Census Bureau's tables of the 100 largest cities per census from 1790). They're all fixed now, and I'll try to remember the source on the cities I have left to do. Dralwik 20:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: Congratulations

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Thanks. I do feel that way, even though I kind of hoped to get a few more points. But I know quite a few people who didn't get the diploma at all, so it's certainly demanding. And even though Finland purportedly has one of the best education systems in the world, I find the IB still a lot better. And I'm definitely proud of being an IB graduate. - ulayiti (talk) 13:50, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Free encyclopedia

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Thanks, but actually it was User:Lotsofissues who spotted it, and posted about it at Talk:Main Page while asking that it be taken off the Main Page, which I have done, for reasons explained there.--Pharos 13:56, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed for main page

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Thanks for the info and link. Seems like there would be a way around the bandwidth issues, but that's whatever. At first glance, the scraper link seems to be grabbing any links from a subset of the page, but I'll have to delve in a little farther, maybe on Google too. Failing all that, maybe I'll write my own. :) Thanks again. --RobertDaeley 21:54, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome

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You're welcome! If you ever have a question regarding Wikipedia, don't hesistate to ask me. I would be happy to answer it for you. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 23:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello Sandy, thanks for your gentle attention to the Michel Saloff Coste article, which I tagged for speedy deletion. I am also rather impressed by how you were able to turn the "plain-text" CV into a nice wikipedia article in a single magic edit! :) By now, the speedy tag has been removed by another user (User:Sietse), who considered "speedy" inappropriate because of the person's demonstrated notability.

I acted on the grounds that this is clearly a vanity page, as it is an auto-biography/résumé of the article's sole creator (Wikipedia:Vanity_page). I have to admit to my strong dislike for blatant self-promotions like this. At this point, I am not disputing notability of Monsieur Saloff Coste, I am no expert in the field; however I did go through quite a few Google hits for the person and failed to find any considerable material published by others: all I saw on the first pages that google search returned, appeared to be self-published bios, entries for the conferences, or what's on M. Coste consultancy's web pages (in multiple incarnations.)

Of course I realize that vanity policy is a soft policy and a disagreement on the VfD is very likely should I proceed along that path. So I'm not sure how far my awkward action would go (most probably, nowhere: I am not a fighter and there are better things to do...) but I wanted to explain my actions in better detail to you. Kind regards - Vera Introvert talk 03:01, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I like it! Simple, clear, and references its sources :) I did add one key suggestion on the talk page.

I think this is a very useful page and moves things forward. It would make an excellent add to the Help page list of information and resources for contributers (right there along with the new "Simplified Ruleset fast start for new editors"). -- Sitearm | Talk 16:51, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

I changed the sources sentence and added a section. Hope it's ok but feel free to change back if it's not in the spirit. -- Sitearm | Talk 22:33, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

Comments left on the talk page, copied here below:

I like the idea of the page. However, let's address the technical issues first- I'm not sure we admins can edit the navigation and toobox margins- are those part of MediaWiki? (If not, we would have to get a developer). About the actual page- IMHO, I feel that we do need a non-legalized page about Wikipedia. The current revision looks decent, though it could be improved. (For example, I feel we need to mention vandalised articles- explain to readers who might click George W Bush and see a vandalised version, for example...) I'll look it over again when I have some more time... In the meanwhile, I do suggest (if you haven't done so already) that you post this proposal up at bot WP:VP and WP:AN to gain more input. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 23:47, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it's ready to use now and would like to see it linked from the Help page. If you're holding out for getting it directly on the navigation bar, I think the odds are slim to none. -- Sitearm | Talk 02:53, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

The new page looks great on the Help page. Thank you for your contribution! -- Sitearm | Talk 04:45, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

Who writes Wikipedia & lazy ol' me

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Mamawrites: I really dropped the ball on the "Who writes Wikipedia" project. Sorry & thanks for picking up the slack. Your work looks good. — Nowhither 01:28, 27 August 2005 (UTC)