User talk:Pestergaines

Welcome!

Hello, Pestergaines, and welcome to the Mises Wiki! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay.

Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, ask me!

DickClarkMises 01:17, 5 November 2010 (CDT)

Linking

What do you think about using red links instead of links to Wikipedia? We don't want readers who find us to go off to Wikipedia--we want them to stay here. Even now, red links are allowed on WP (see WP:RED), but when Wikipedia was younger and less developed, red links were strongly encouraged, because they helped new contributors find an article to create. For these reasons I think it makes more sense to use red links as much as possible. Sure, Wikipedia's article on Tennessee will be more developed than ours ever will, but we can at least shoot for a simple stub that gives readers the basics, with an external link at the bottom to WP's article. --Forgottenman (talk) 07:32, 9 November 2010 (CST)

Good question. My take is, that this page is in many respects more focused than Wikipedia - on specific topics, it will provide more information, and specifically biased information - on many others, it will provide less information (at least in volume) with a specific spin or focus. On a great many topics, there will be no page at all.

For an example, I see no need for an article or Tennessee - unless there is a reason for it. So in that case I would link to Wikipedia. (Or even not link at all!) I have actually linked very liberally to WP's articles and consider it a strength, not a weakness - it points to more resources and (possible) alternative viewpoints, both of which make a resource richer IMO.

I will raise this in the mailing group, since it is an interesting strategic question, and deserves to be addressed by others as well. Thanks! Pestergaines 07:55, 9 November 2010 (CST)

Book sources and other crazy WP stuff

I managed to figure out what the issue was with Special:BookSources. The pages to change are MisesWiki:Book sources and MediaWiki:Booksources-text.

All the citation stuff is in place except for that dumb cite journal template... I just can't figure out why it refuses to accept a link-free work. --Forgottenman (talk) 14:36, 16 November 2010 (CST)

See [1]. Especially: "links regarding the book according to the contents of the page "Book sources" in the project namespace." So MisesWiki:BookSources isn't doing anything. --Forgottenman (talk) 14:41, 16 November 2010 (CST)

Thanks! Pestergaines 14:42, 16 November 2010 (CST)

Anniversaries

I've been using past tense for the anniversary pages, in order to distinguish their entries from those of the "current events" box. --Forgottenman (talk) 09:33, 9 December 2010 (CST)

Right you are, thanks for fixing my first attempts! Pestergaines 10:31, 9 December 2010 (CST)

On the International Project

A bit of discussion here.  :) -- RayBirks 14:20, 8 January 2011 (CST)

Check-in

Not much to report here. --RayBirks 11:03, 24 February 2011 (CST)

Vandals

I did some research and found that our spammers are using open proxies, i.e., fake IP addresses that change constantly. Wikipedia blocks such proxies as fast as they appear, so I don't think there's any issue with blocking the IP addresses that the accounts use. --Forgottenman (talk) 07:48, 11 March 2011 (CST)

Thanks for the research - and good work keeping those bastards out! Pestergaines 03:12, 12 March 2011 (CST)

Decided to go with it

This was the idea: The Trail of interventions. -- RayBirks 05:19, 10 April 2011 (MSD)

edit summaries

What does "+res" mean? --John James 16:11, 1 June 2011 (MSD)

:) "resource" Pestergaines 16:29, 1 June 2011 (MSD)

I would have never guessed that. Do you ever use a different abbreviation? I think that may get too easily confused with "response". I guess that may not really matter, but if we're using the summaries, it would make sense for them to be understandable/distinguishable. --John James 02:24, 2 June 2011 (MSD)

I made my way through all sorts of variations of "link added" and similar, but 'link' doesn't always seem like the best characterization of the page linked to, so I finally stuck with 'resource' and it eventually shrunk to 'res'. Seems pretty conclusive, and isn't hopefully confused for a response (which is used on a Talk page anyway). So it should be fine. Pestergaines 17:17, 6 June 2011 (MSD)

Quick notes

Technically, you're counting articles...not pages ;) --John James 05:40, 18 June 2011 (MSD)

You do have a point sir, substitution performed. (Thanks!) Pestergaines 14:24, 18 June 2011 (MSD)

Hello

Thank you for the welcome. Would you happen to know if it's possible for me to edit my username so both words are capitalized? I submitted it as "stephanie_herman" and ended up with "Stephanie herman" on screen. Stephanie Herman 00:01, 16 September 2011 (MSD)

Hi Stephanie, that will require a bit of tinkering. I've requested the necessary functionality to be installed, hope it will be around fast. Best regards, Pestergaines 02:34, 16 September 2011 (MSD)