User talk:BlankVerse/rants

My Rant and suggestions

I guess I get to inaugurate this page. I seem to be doing some of that on a fair number of talk pages. I'd be emailing this, but you seem to have discouraged that. At least this will be discrete for a time, a non-page isn't on many watch pages, I suppose. I'm contacting long standing and high ranking wikipedians with my rant— and a few constructive suggestions. I've been editing (literally some days) 'round the clock' in a now vanishing bubble of free time I'd have normally spent boating or such— call it a man-month and more.

In that time, in rough numbers, I've logged 700+ quality edits, albeit 90% on Talk pages, and have been caught in the cross fires of a multiuser/multicause edit war that logged over 300 edits with very little growth to the article. I used May 13th as my touchstone date, and comparisons with 10-12 'reverts' near that date, and another similar sample at the time (June 15-17th (?)) indicated only my added text in the lower end had evolved the article, neglecting 'niggles' i.e. one or two word or punctuation changes. Hence a huge waste of time and especially talent (Mel Etitis/JMBell).
The talk page grew, but nothing was resolved. Unlisted in your rants, mine includes a new class of problem, the adolescent overreacher; I suspect this class of user is more common as a deliberate vandal, but when you mix bright+POV+inexperience+culture clash+English as a second language+Multilingual, the matter gets real tedious. Here's my Rant— mostly on the link given.
You are formally invited to try to do something with Mr Tan (See also RfC on same), in particular, and the other juveniles flexing their hormones on Talk:Tsushima Islands. After a day or so reading my efforts to reason with the boy User Talk:Mr Tan, perhaps in your copious spare time you could take a look at Fire Retardant which has an idea or two on flamewar suppression— a matter I've become all too familar with trying to mediate in the one referenced.
If you can get somewhere with him, when Mel, and SlimVirgin and JMBell and I have all failed to do so, I'll send you a nice present.
After that miracle, I'd appreciate an explaination (email prefered) as to why this sort of unruliness (and worst, lack of output— see second link halfway down on versions and growth) is allowed to continue in an era when Wiki is rapidly becoming known worldwide. Are you folks in the old guard failing to adapt? You've got to be seeing expotential use (hits) growth with all the buzz in media of everykind. Not to mention just from google. Overworking enthusiastic and dedicated Admins like Mel Etitis isn't going to do you much good if 4 of 5 get up and leave in disgust. Just trying to help! User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 3 July 2005 06:02 (UTC)

fabartus@comcast.net

Well, you get the long version, for not accepting email. 'yanwisbib'— 'Yet Another Night When I Should Be In Bed'...

The germane facts covered in 'Flame Retardant' is that ethnicity and culture clash are threats to Wiki; A second risk is in allowing somewhat talented youngsters without the skills of researching and no sense for what is a good source, which are likely credible, which are not (You echo this, though without the juvenile alarm bell); Add in the diminuation of reading as a pass time, or at least book reading, and WIKI is also loosing contact with older historical contexts referenced by many an author. At least half my edits (articles) have been to correct or augment such underlinkage, where it's exacerbated by the new style naming of places such as morphed the Peking of my youth into Bejing today. JYolkowski has suggested I put together an RfC for posting on that issue, and I'll do that sometime this coming month.
I'm babbling, so I'm going to bed!

User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 3 July 2005 06:02 (UTC)

Diacritics

originally added to User:BlankVerse/rants#Diacritics

And you could submit your résumé to the café and get a job as the maître d'hôtel. (I popped over because of your comment on my talk page, and as a computational linguist whose job revolves around writing systems -- I like to joke that my job has taught me more about the Unicode Standard than anyone should be forced to learn -- I felt I needed to offer a hearty thank-you for this rant.) Rmharman 18:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]