User talk:Zerrakhi
From Almeopedia
Hiya, Zerrakhi... I like the subcategories; but could you keep the direct memberships in the People category? I like having one place where I can see all the biographies. Zompist 23:43, 28 August 2006 (PDT)
- Of course, your wish is my command ... it was just natural to copy the way things would be done on Wikipedia, where having all People on one page is a mind-boggling concept, and categories tend to be strictly hierarchical. Zerrakhi 00:06, 29 August 2006 (PDT)
No need to add the Game category to the Erruk pages, because I've added it to the Cyo template. As they are visited, the database will update. Zompist 23:15, 30 August 2006 (PDT)
- Merely visiting the pages doesn't update the Category:Game page - at least not immediately - so I take it there's some kind of page-updating thing that occurs at scheduled intervals or something? Zerrakhi 00:47, 31 August 2006 (PDT)
- Hmm, I assumed it was updating because the category was appearing correctly on the pages. Hold off on recats of the Erruk pages for a day or two till we can see if it's a cacheing thing or something that does get updated. Zompist 00:52, 31 August 2006 (PDT)
- Nope, doesn't happen automatically. Go ahead with the categories, if you like. Zompist 19:23, 1 September 2006 (PDT)
I very much appreciate your hard work, but I have a couple of cavils. First, I think I'd rather not have external links to Wikipedia. One reason is that I think it reduces the immersive experience; I'd rather visitors stay in-universe. Another reason is that I'd prefer the links to Earth, overt and covert, to be more subtle. Not everything should be spelled out for people.
Second, I'm a little uncomfortable with some of your edits to my writing. Over half the time they're fine, but in many cases I think you're just switching to your own stylistic preferences (like "although" for "though"). This is probably another not-Wikipedia issue: most of the articles are not a collaborative text, they're my own writing. Maybe I should just the edits that bug me; but it would probably save time if you ease up on the red pencil. :) Zompist 12:56, 20 September 2006 (PDT)
- Yep, I expected there'd sooner or later be something you wouldn't like: that's why I made a point of emphasising that as soon as I know what those things are, I won't do them. :-) Reasons for edits vary. Sometimes it is purely stylistic; in the case of Osör Ružeon I felt there were too many sentences starting with the same word (namely "he". I once had a teacher in primary school who insisted that in all written pieces we produced in her class, every sentence must begin with a different word; that's rather extreme, but it perhaps left me with a sensitivity to such things). In other cases, such as Pronel, it's because I found parts of an article difficult to follow at first glance.
- Things like switching though/although are not the reason to edit an article, but rather, if I'm editing an article anyway for some other reason, it's something I might do while I'm there.
- Editing does have secondary benefits, it should be said. Ideas for articles sometimes come while staring into the depths of articles already there, and I'd be less likely to stare that deeply while reading in non-editing mode. I wouldn't have thought of doing the alcoholic drinks article if I hadn't been editing other pages - it focusses the mind.
- The place where I regularly hang out on the Internet (alt.fan.pratchett) has been a bit quiet lately, or the biggest threads have been ones that don't interest me much (such as, discussing what the best popular music was in the eighties). So rather than sulk about the shortage of interesting discussion, I've been coming here instead. :-) Zerrakhi 13:40, 20 September 2006 (PDT)
- In the edits I'm about to make on Kebri, I'm trying a new approach - which is to mark all the edits I'd like to make in a word processor, and then go through and choose only the least trivial of these to actually make to the article. So for every edit I'm about to make, there are one or two others that I could. In particular, I've noticed that you have a rather idiosyncratic way of using semicolons (often before a conjunction); I intend to change a small portion of these idiosyncratic semicolons, but most of them I'll leave as they are.
- The non-verbal way to indicate that you disagree with an edit is of course to reverse it; fundamentally edits are just a subclass of suggestions, and I can take a hint. I try to observe what edits you don't like, and (very much like an AI bot) I learn from that. Zerrakhi 10:16, 22 September 2006 (PDT)
