User talk:RobHoitt/Archive 1

Re: Drax

I would humbly like to offer a suggestion to you in the future. When working with the articles that are written by others, I would suggest to you that you should consider being sensitive to those who contribute. While you are no doubt familliar with all the nuances of Wikipedia, not everyone else may be your equal in that arena. I suspect that some of the contributors may be more expert in the topics they are writing about then they are specifically in Wikipedia itself. This is where your positive leadership may be both beneficial and encouraging. I think that you'll find that the wanton deletion of content/photographs may actually lead to discourage participation from new contributors outright, which I would think is undesirable overall. Please consider explaining what changes or reequirements that you desire the contributor to add to their content before just deleting their content. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobHoitt (talk • contribs)

I'm sorry you felt I was insensitive in my handling of the image of Drax. But the plain fact of the matter is that one encounters so many images which risk copyright abuse to varying degrees — a vital concern in an encyclopaedia which is intended to provide free content — that there is simply not the time to fix every image file which is lacking, especially when one is not the uploader. Copyright is taken seriously around here; in the end, it's better to err on the side of caution, so I deemed removing the image from the article was the best course.

However, I would point out two things to you: A) as attested by your talk page, I left you a note with links to relevant guidance on what to do, which would give you ample time to make whatever file modifications needed to be made; B) the image upload page also provides you with stern warnings about what must be done, with links to relevant guidance on how to do it. Moreover, the latter also lets you know what can happen to non-free images for which the necessary rationales, etc, are missing (ie. they will be deleted). As such, it's difficult to see that you've been ill-served in terms of having information made available to you. Cheers. --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 07:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Mark, I am now at a loss. You have now marked my page as having questionable 'notability.' I have provided four specific sources in which the character of Drax has appeared. (The character of Harriet Jones for example has had half the appearances in the Doctor Who universe but (like Drax) because of her impact on the overall lore, has a page of her own.) Drax may not be as popular of a character in the modern lore, but popularity has never been a measurement, as far as I can determine, for eligibility for inclusion. RobHoitt 04:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Rob, the addition of a notability tag is not necessarily a crisis point for an article. It simply marks an article as lacking in certain respects, the proper response to which is to address those concerns so that the article doesn't remain vulnerable to being turned into a redirect or nominated for deletion, say. In particular, it has the potential to attract the attention of editors who are in a position to make the necessary repairs. Removing the tag doesn't help the article.

Now, allow me to explain why I tagged the article: characters of fictional works can earn their own articles if an encyclopaedic treatment of them would lead to the original work becoming too long (see WP:FICT#Fiction_in_Wikipedia). So, for example, there's a strong case to write articles about individual incarnations of the Doctor (leading characters with a ton of coverage in independent sources). The current problem with Drax is that there's currently little to say about him that couldn't be slipped into articles about the handful of stories in which he appears. And this is a key point: encyclopaedic articles about fictional topics need to be able to assert their notability via significant coverage in sources independent of the subject (ie. something reasonably substantial and exterior to those story appearances, whether it be media coverage, treatment in academic texts, being referenced in non-Who works, whatever).

And this leads me to a further problem with the article: as per WP:WAF#Real_world_perspective, an encyclopaedic treatment of fiction offers a real world perspective. There's currently little along those lines in Drax (Time Lord); it's written as a very brief character biography, with a couple of notes on spin-off appearances. There's nothing on character conception, the how and why of how the character was developed, production notes or anything that explores the aspect of Drax being the product of a creative process. If an editor could introduce properly sourced inclusions along those lines, that might go some way to justifying notability.

I've reintroduced the tag. Please don't remove it again; God knows, the article needs all the help it can get. --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 07:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia

Welcome!

Hello, RobHoitt, 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:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Welcome. We're happy you're here. SilkTork 10:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

A round of drinks

Nice one. I have been meaning to visit the US of A. I have a few beers I am interested in! I'll give you a shout if I come over and we can buy each other a round. Regards. SilkTork 16:58, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Assume Good Faith

I noticed this comment you made on SilverTork's discussion page:

Over the last couple days, Digby has been a busy person adding and revising the article, albeit nothing was really negative, so perhaps the communication to him to state I was concerened about deleting things without explanation was enough.

I can't help but think I've been somewhat misrepresented by the part in bold. All my edits on Drax (Doctor Who) have come with edit summaries; not only that, but when asked, I've taken some effort to explain things to you.

You might want to take some time to read this guideline: Wikipedia:Assume good faith. It can be an enormous help in Wikipedia transactions. Especially, for example, when someone does something you don't like or don't understand. --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 17:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Rob, you seem to see tones in my responses that simply aren't there. There's not much I can do about that, but I'd rather not be misrepresented in future. As for Drax (Doctor Who), how the article should proceed is quite simple: it needs some out of universe material (ie. real world stuff). You might want to start looking for something along those lines; without it, the article is vulnerable, for reasons I've already mentioned. --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 19:54, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

I'm really pleased! Thanks so much. SilkTork 23:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Home brewing

I do that as well. Mostly kit with a twist (using my home grown hops, etc). The most interesting beer I made was a kvass. Beer from bread! Amazing. If you do it, it's best to use bakers yeast rather than brewer's yeast. I was stunned that it was possible to make beer from ingredients that can be found in most people's home larder. Shows how simple and basic beer actually is. SilkTork 12:23, 14 August 2007 (UTC)