Added Some Stuff to TinWiki

Re wrote the Callapse of WTC7, Also added a few bits and bobs to a few other subjects

Callapse of WTC 7

[edit on 19-9-2008 by StarTraveller]

Article on the USS Libery Added.

Tinwiki USS Liberty



[edit on 19-9-2008 by StarTraveller]

Done some work in here today:

Fairies

I saw that it was marked for being sorted so hope I have done okay in the changes I have made.

Chris/StarTraveller,

Here follows a reply that's a bit long, and heavy -- 'ton of bricks' like -- but if it sounds too much like a rant, then I want to say immediately that the thoughts here are largely general thoughts, and aren't only specifically about the Fairies article or your edits.

This is a reply written from my perspective on tinWiki article creating and editing, which isn't a perspective I expect everybody else has, and so I absolutely both understand and really expect it if you consider that not everything I say makes sense... I also speak from thoughts that I've had about other edits in the past, and so, then, much of what I say here is general thoughts, and not only directed towards you personally or your contributions now to the Fairies article.

So, then, I'd say that some of the editing you did is something I might have perhaps done differently. The Fairies article did have the Fix banner on it, which means the article was considered to have some kind of problem or other. There's a lot more content in the article now, but some of the changes were perhaps a bit 'much'. (You'll also see comments in the article discussion there, which I wrote before coming here to this thread.) I realized only after looking at your signature here now that you are probably the owner of Atlantic Photography. Sorry about the leg and the theft, if so. So that means the new image isn't a breach of the copyright of that website's owner, or so I assume.

I still got a couple of concerns, though. When editing an article, my view is that the existing article should be adjusted and added to, not replaced entirely, which it seems happened here. Not least the image that was in the article would probably have been nice to keep, since it was offered for use on tinWiki by the artist, ATS member Zaimless from the ATS Art forum. Deletions, text especially, should, in my personal opinion, always be accompanied by some kind of comment given in the article discussion. Other users may wonder why the content was removed, and the user(s) who wrote that content may be particularly interested in knowing why it was removed. Remember that tinWiki is an information site, and removing information is therefore a fairly special act; it's also a collaborative site, which means that communication and offering information on what's going on, is also of special importance.

It seems the new article text is based largely on this article, with a few verbatim pastes, as well, which might not be entirely acceptable by the )owner there, where it also says very clearly that she doesn't allow reproduction of the text, unless a written permission is given.

Minor style and formatting comments: every article should have an introduction, which is a paragraph or two appearing before the first header, to give a summary or 'compact' presentation of that which is the topic of the article. Also, I assume that an encyclopedic writing style means that sentences should always be full sentences, and not begin in the header and continue under it. If the header formatting of the first word in the article was simply removed, the introduction would be quite good, immediately, since the article text's beginning is a good introduction text. As for the header formatting in itself, it should use two equal signs on each side, not just one, for the highest level header used inside the article text.

(continues below...)

My view is that you should maybe give it a second try. Read the sources you want to base your writing on, and then look at the existing article, and add what you want to add, or make changes that are based on the existing article and what you, personally, consider should be done to improve the article. So, don't take another, better, let's say, article and try and make the tinWiki article look like the other, better, article. That's basically plagiarism, and also isn't how articles in this collaborative wiki should be developed. Your image should, as I see it, have been added to the existing one instead of replacing/deleting the one that was there. I say this particularly with regard to that the original image was given especially to tinWiki, and so I feel that should be treated with extra respect. Also, any image displayed in a tinWiki article must, and this isn't optional, even if some people seem to ignore it, be listed in the image description page, where it shall be signed by the user who enters it, and the copyright status shall be named under it. Shall and must...

The particular situation in tinWiki is that images are not permitted to be uploaded to tinWiki itself, unlike what's the case in Wikipedia, and unlike how the wiki software seems to be 'intended' to be used as far as image use, which means in tinWiki images don't get their own pages automatically. Therefore contributors have to do the listing of images in this way, on the image description page. But it's fairly important that this is done, because as tinWiki grows, it's simply no good if people have just displayed images in this and that article, 'all over the place', and there is no practice of keeping track of where an image comes from and what the legal sitaution is as far as publishing or displaying it in tinWiki. As I see it, it's important to try and build tinWiki in a way that's solid, so sysops don't have to end up spending hours finding illegally published images and text because tinWiki is in danger of becoming a scrapbook of copyright protected material simply pasted illegally from wherever on the web someone found something nice. The best way to create tinWiki and its content, is to write original work and to publish original or otherwise legal images. It's very possible that the image descripton page should have been explained and pointed out much more clearly and in a better way than is being done in tinWiki so far, but I would think it's quite important that it gets used. Mentioning it here in the thread may be at least a little step. :-)

A last comment would be, use the article discussion pages a lot, whenever it can seem a comment should be made to clarify an edit. Communication makes it much more sensible for the others who also read and write the articles you yourself work on, and one of the important things in tinWiki must be that the place seems like a sensible and nice enough place for people to want to hang around and contribute. Without the contributors, that's you and all the others who do about the same as what you do, there simply isn't any tinWiki...

Again, though: I'm saying lots of stuff that are general thoughts I have about editing and writing in the wiki, and so this reply does not address just your edits or the particular post here you wrote about your Fairies article edits. I have some views and opinions and impressions just generally, and took this opportunity to express some thoughts, and since I think this reply may have seemed somewhat 'strict' or such, I want to specify fairly clearly that these are general thoughts more than they are about just your edits. :-)

Optimist

Hi Optimist,

I am so sorry mate, I didn't realise half the stuff you have mentioned. I have reverted the fairies article back to how is was before I messed with it.

Again, will read through your advice and implement it from now on.

[edit on 21-9-2008 by StarTraveller]

For what it's worth: I, for one, say 'no prob'. :-) Looking forward to seeing your improvements of the article. I think the whole Fairie topic is quite interesting. It probably also has a number of aspects to it that relates to other topics that are relevant in the tinWiki encyclopedia. Like, for example, I guess some people have that thought that creatures of folklore might be aliens or extraterrestrials. Then you have this Prince Nicholas de Vere von Drakenberg person, who I came across some article about, some months or perhaps it's more than a year ago, now, who has some rather interesting thoughts about a number of things, and among what he seemed to say was something about the real origin of the notion of fairies and elves and so on. So, anyway, in addition to them simply being 'mystical creatures' as such, and the 'novelty' of that, I think it's probably obvious that they also, as a notion, are related to lots of cultural and mythical stuff that could be quite relevant in tinWiki... And of course the whole mystical type thing is still interesting, or that's what I guess I have mainly thought was fascinating about the subject, ...that 'other world' thing, where they say some can see these and others can not.

I read in one fairie site by some lady, I think it was her own site, that she claimed very seriuosly that fairies lived in her garden, and she'd seen them sometimes near a little stream she had there, and I think she also said they had invited her to their world, however that works, but she had decided she wasn't ready and so didn't go. I think that last part was from the same site. Pity I haven't collected bookmarks more neatly over the years, should have perhaps had something like del.icio.us back then, or is it the google toolbar which people use to keep bookmarks online in, now? Well, this is a digression, but I'd like some extremely much more simple way of collecting bookmarks... I think I literally have thousands... lol In various browsers and on various computers, user profiles, and so on... It's pretty much a useless mess, ...but at least it feels good to know that I have that or that interesting page bookmarked 'somewhere'... To really digress, my ambition is to use some kind of bookmarks server I found and downloaded, but I haven't installed it, yet... I guess that would mean the computer would have to be on, though... Perhaps some usb key, or what it's called would have been good... Alright, I'll stop with the digression. It would have been fun to find again that page with the lady and the garden with fairies, though. :-) Maybe I'll find it in the tinWiki article in a while. :-)

Optimist