Wikipedia talk:Co-op/Grokjtrip

Welcome to the Co-op! We have a mentor for you.

Hello, Grokjtrip! Thank you for your interest in the Co-op. You've been matched with Theonesean, who has listed "writing" in their mentorship profile. Your mentor will be contacting you soon to get things started. HostBot (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

@Grokjtrip: Hey there, I'm Jethro, a mentor and coordinator here at The Co-op. It looks like Theonesean is not available right now, but I can step in and help you out. Welcome to Wikipedia, and thanks for joining us. I saw you were interested in editing articles about open-source software, and have already made your userpage, and a suggestion on Talk:Comparison of single-board computers. Did you want to start with that article, or did you have another article in mind?

I also noted you were interested in learning about citations. These can be put in manually, but it's a pain in the neck to do it that way, and there are better options available to you. I'd recommend the refToolbar, a nice little javascript tool built into the editing window which adds in properly formatted in-text citations. If you click on that link, there's some good instructions on how to use it. The only other thing you'd need is to produce the actual list of references at the end of the article. In existing articles, this is usually there already, but if it's not, you'll want to add the following code:

==References==

{{Reflist}}

So, that should get you started for citations. But enough of me rambling-- what can I help you with? I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 21:50, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

@I JethroBT: Hi! thanks for reaching out to me! Yeah if we could just dive right into it that article is a good example of where some of my questions come from. I think I understand the idea of the talk page as a good way to discuss changes but I'm curious about the formatting and etiquette. Does the reply on the talk page I made make sense and seem polite? is it ordered/formatted correctly? Should all changes start as a discussion on the talk page? I would suspect small fixes like typo correction doesn't need to be discussed but is there a common place that line is drawn? Grokjtrip

@Grokjtrip: You're welcome. Let me answer your questions:

Does the reply on the talk page I made make sense and seem polite? is it ordered/formatted correctly?

Your reply seems sensible to me and is polite. You might be wondering why you haven't gotten a reply yet-- it may be because that particular article doesn't have many editors active watching it on their watchlist. You seem to have picked up on the threading system we use on talk page for replies-- you basically put an additional colon on the first line to reply to a previous comment. Nice job on formatting here. :)

Should all changes start as a discussion on the talk page? I would suspect small fixes like typo correction doesn't need to be discussed but is there a common place that line is drawn?

Your suspicions are correct. Editors should be able to fix typos and do copyediting without consulting other editors on the talk page. As for more substantial or controversial changes, there are a couple of approaches you can take:

1. The bold, revert, discuss cycle. We encourage editors to be bold (but not reckless) with their changes to articles. You can start by making the change right away without discussion, but be prepared for another editor to revert it if they are concerned or find the changes inappropriate. If your changes are reverted, you should engage with the other editor on the talk page to understand their concerns (and so they can understand your reasons for the change), and discuss about how to proceed until you and others reach an agreement.
2. Alternatively, you can pitch your idea at the talk page first, and see what other editors have to say. Sometimes, you won't get any replies, which is an indication that you should just go ahead and make the change.

As for the particular idea, tables are a little tricky to work with. Could you explain to me what this "open hardware" column means and what information would go into it? Is it simply a yes/no sort of thing, or something else? Are there sources you would use to reference the info for that column? I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 22:43, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

@I JethroBT: Great, thanks for the clarifications. I've used the simple/static tables before but not the sortable fields. The Open Hardware column would be used to denote if the board is open source hardware. It would probably be best to be specific and make note of exceptions, so it would have to be more than a binary flag. It might be good to do one similar to another they have where they categorize the Linux Support which there is brief discussion about as well. So maybe a small list of values like 'All licensed as: X', 'closed/proprietary', 'X except Y'... and that will depend on the data... I'm aware of some of it and I think I could find sources. But I'm not sure about all of it, and might like a hand collecting it. Would it be okay to proceed with say half the data and hope the other interested parties will assist, or do more myself over time? Oh and is type of post/conversation the reason why I want to create a signature?

@Grokjtrip: Sounds like a good plan! I think if you had half of the data to start with, that should be sufficient. The other cases can remain blank or you can fill them in with N/A or something else appropriate. A nice mantra we have here on Wikipedia is that there are no deadlines, which means that articles can more or less be in a "work in progress" state. If there are going to be other cases besides yes/no, it's important these other terms are easily understood by readers, even ones without a background in computing. This might mean detailing what those terms mean in the section containing the table or using a descriptive title for the column. And you guessed right with regard to signatures-- you generally want to sign your comments so that anyone can see 1) who wrote the comment, and 2) when it was written. Signatures, as you've seen, always provide a link to an editor's userpage, and editors generally agree this is a good convention. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 02:18, 5 April 2015 (UTC)