User talk:Chris Ducat

Hi there, Chris! Welcome to Wikipedia. When you get a chance, drop us a note at Wikipedia:New user log to introduce yourself.

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You should also feel free to drop me a question on my talk page.

Happy editing, LUDRAMAN | T 19:30, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Hi! Thanks for your note on the new user log. Glad to have you here. If you want ideas for what to write on, you can always check out Wikipedia:Requested articles. There's a big collection of ideas there.

By the way, I'm merging your info from Munfordville into Munfordville, Kentucky. Yes, amazingly, we did have an article on it already, thanks to a 'bot that automatically generated a ton of articles on US towns from US census data a couple years ago. There's no real user-entered information there yet, so yours will be the first. Isomorphic 04:28, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 sig 2 number of contributions 3 Vandalism 4 Calcutta -> Kolkata name change 5 Grey Yoghurt

sig

Hey, how's it going - actually, I just found out about that a few weeks ago... I found the info on some random metawiki site, but anyway, here's how it works. First, you change your sig in your preferences. The sig I have is Spangineer]] [[User talk:Spangineer|∞. The software fills in the rest... so you just have to type in your user name, and then the link to your talk page, and the symbol you want. You can play around with it too - add symbols between your user page and your talk page, for example. Let me know if you have more questions, and have a good one! Spangineer ∞ 01:24, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

number of contributions

There's really no way to easily check the number of edits. The way I do it and the way I've seen people do it is to change the link for contributions. For example, when I click "my contributions," the link I go to is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Spangineer. To see my edits at 500 per page, the link is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&namespace=&target=Spangineer&limit=500&offset=0 . But to see if I have made 1000 edits, for example, I change that link to reflect an offset of 900 and a limit of 100 - that is, I want the offset and the limit to add up to 1000. (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&namespace=&target=Spangineer&limit=100&offset=900) If there is a "next page" link at the top of that list, then I know that I have made over 1000 edits. So then I go in and change the offset to 125 or something and keep changing it until I find the number where I don't have a "next page" link. Sorry if that's a bit confusing. I'm pretty sure that that is the only way to calculate it... I remember seeing an explanation somewhere, but of course I don't remember where. --Spangineer ∞ 04:08, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I found something while looking over the village pump - it's an easy to use edit counter (http://zwinger.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits.cgi). Enjoy! --Spangineer ∞ 03:04, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

Please stop adding nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

In all seriousness, I understand the point you were attempting to make (and please see my response). However, I would encourage you to direct your efforts towards improving Wikipedia, and not create further work for others. The goals of Wikipedia are positive, and thus are best served by positive efforts. Mackensen (talk) 05:26, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There are four mechanisms for detecting vandalism on Wikipedia, that I am aware of:

1. Recent changes patrol consists of many users, including some anons, who take a break from their normal activities by looking at the Special:Recent changes page. There isn't an organised roster, and not enough people do this, so not every edit gets scrutinised. If an edit is made by a logged in user, it is less likely to be checked, and more so if the user has something on their user page (so their name doesn't appear as a red link). If a user makes a doubtful edit which isn't obviously vandalism, then I check the user history; if they've made lots of good efforts in the past, then I'll let the edit go. I have been known to revert perfectly good edits (as it turned out) because I didn't understand them, and I've apologised to the user when appropriate. Your edit to carrot got past either because it wasn't checked or the checker decided you seemed genuine.
2. Most vandals go on to edit more pages, and the chances of being picked up by RC patrol increases with each edit. When vandalism is picked up, it's standard practice to check other recent edits for vandalism. I've noticed that some people start with very subtle vandalism, then get more blatent. I've reverted even seemingly innocuous edits when they've been closely followed by blatent vandalism by the same user or ip. Since you only made the one bad edit, this mechanism didn't apply to you.
3. Some proportion of articles, possibly most of them, are on someone's watchlist, and that someone probably knows a fair bit about that subject (not always, I have pages on my watchlist solely because I saw someone vandalise them in RC patrol, saw that they've been vandalised before, and so watch them in case of any recurrence). It's possible that no one is watching Carrot, but it's also quite likely that they were asleep or on holiday (especially at this time of year in the Southern hemisphere) when you made your edit. If you'd waited 24 hours, maybe they'd have checked their watchlist.
4. Finally, other people will eventually read the article, possibly in the process of editing it. I've very rarely come across month-old vandalism because I'm adding a category to an article. I note that someone did exactly that after your edit, but they either didn't read the article in detail or didn't realise that your edit was false. I see that Evil Monkey has edited it since, possibly because of your post on Village pump, but possibly because he's active on New Zealand topics. He's a sensible user; the chances are good that he'd have noticed your edit. Indeed, his edit is correcting false information added earlier to the article, probably not with bad intentions but by someone who didn't express themselves well.

Wikipedia gets a couple of dozen edits a minute, and less than 10 percent are destructive edits. Almost all of these are easy to detect vandalism/user tests. I think it's most unlikely that we have many users who have gone to the trouble of building up a decent edit history and then used that credibility to slip a false fact in. There are greater problems with POV pushers and people who don't understand the subject they're writing about.

I hope this puts things in better perspective, and maybe even inspires you to do some RC patrol yourself.-gadfium 23:59, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks bernlin2000 ∞ 06:16, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

Calcutta -> Kolkata name change

Hi there. I noticed you voted in the Wikipedia:Naming policy poll to keep the Wikipedia policy of naming an article with the most familiar English name. You may not be aware that another attempt has begun to rename the Calcutta article to Kolkata, which is blatantly not the most common name of the city, whether it's official or not. If you want to vote on the issue you can do so at Talk:Calcutta. Cheers. -- Necrothesp 13:52, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Grey Yoghurt

I suggest that you modify your request on both WP:RM and mirror of the words on Talk:Yoghurt to include a mention of how the "Primary Author" spelt it. I think you will summon more +ve interest from WP:RM readers.

See Talk:Grey#Requested Move: (There and back again...) for the type of wording I mean. BTW I had written the article I would have spelt it Yoghurt, but I pronounce it Yoghurt just as I do not use a hard C when saying "schedule" but do when saying "school". Philip Baird Shearer 09:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)