User talk:Pedant

Welcome to my talk page

Hi! welcome to my talk page, feel free to leave anything here you want me to see, or leave a link if that's easier. Everyting is welcome here on my talk page. If you need for some reason to speak to me in confidence, you may email me at drglenn"AT"dr.comPedant 04:30, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Robin Patterson thread

Comment on some English use

I noticed the disambiguation text on this wikipedia is in English. In case you haven'tPedant 13:30, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Robin's reply (not to be confused with musical piece "Robin's Return")

Kia ora and welcome, Pedant. Good to have you aboard.

As you have observed, some of the links ("hononga") and standard page features are in English. I'm hoping a fluent Māori speaker will "fix" them one day; but English is understood perfectly well by at least 99% of speakers of Māori, so it doesn't do any harm leaving them as they are except for purists who want it to be all Māori (and the solution could be in their hands).

You would be most welcome to complete the upload of your ant picture. And if you are good with tables you might be able to improve the look of the table I created at the bottom of the "1752" page comparing dates.

Now I must have a proper look at your ordinary English identity!

E noho rā. Robin Patterson 19:25, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Pedant gives as good as he gets and then some

Thanks for your nice welcome. Thanks for your nice welcome. I'm wondering if it is more appropriate to upload the ant picture, (which is also, at least yesterday, the mediawiki bugzilla logo) or to create a transwiki link. On the Simple English dictionary, I made the choice to upload the pic to that database for the reason: I think someone clicking on the ant picture, from 'simple' might end up unknowingly on 'not simple', as the logos are similar (identical maybe)... I'd hate to have someone that's looking for simple english to wander into the english wikipedia unknowingly. I think that some people will be using 'simple' who may have learning issues unrelated to language concerns, so.. well I'm sure you get it. I'm not at all sure what the policy is on uploading 'duplicate' material to the various language wikipedias. Maybe you have some advice?

I came to 'maori' through a link on a note you left in one of the CSB discussions. I had already decided to adopt another wikipedia, in a foreign language, as part of my efforts on the CSB project. I speak English only, but can read Spanish and edit it to some extent. My French is virtually nonexistent, and Latin takes a long time for me to even decode enough to get a general sense of meaning but no nuance.

I decided that an 'obscure' or at least smaller wikipedia might suit me well, one that had few people involved. I am utterly unfamiliar with the Maori culture and language, so when I noticed that it existed, and that an editor from 'maori' was working to Counter Systemic Bias, I thought, well, I'll give it a try. Frankly, at this point, I'm not sure what I can do to be useful, but I intend to do so. I am interested in Maori culture, at least, but all I really know about the Maori is that "they are a warrior culture" and I am sure that is either a misstatement, or outdated, or in some way inaccurate, so consider me a blank slate as regards the Maori.

I am willing to work hard, though, and I learn fast. If you can suggest any resources or anything I can do on maori:wikipedia or anything I can do to make myself ready to be of some service, please let me know.

I've barely gotten my feet wet on simple wikipedia either. I spent almost 4 hours writing

My user page on simple english wiktionary

and that's in my native language! I wrote it as an exercise in writing simple English, as well as an effort to make a page that, while talking about myself (or rather my username) might expose some of the structure and nomenclature of the English language to those who are learning to read English.

Since you expressed interest in finding more about me, I'll let you in on an idea I'm working on. It's inspired by the simple wikipedia, but as it seems to violate a basic fundamental rule expressed by Jimbo, I haven't mentioned it to anyone yet, and , well nobody really asked.

I like wikipedia. I like encyclopedias in general, I used to read them for fun as a child. (I'm in my 40s) I work with some home-schooling families to help locate educational resources that are suitable for children from 'learning-to-read-age' to about the early teens. As I am sure you are aware, it is unsuitable to allow a child free reign in their choice of internet sites. Even wikipedia has material that might be considerably more adult than I would want my young neice reading, and my idea is to

• translate some of the more appropriate parts of the English wikipedia, using a somewhat limited vocabulary, similar to that on 'simple wikipedia'
• include a limited set of cross-references
• avoid ALL external links, except for transwiki links to main pages of other projects, on a main page' (even a good link might have garbage on it at a later date)

The goal would be a set of articles, suitable for reading by and edited by children, with no content that might be considered offensive or unwholesome whatsoever... a "child's garden of wikipedia" so to speak.

Since this is in a literal sense, censorship, I know it would be contrary to the stated goals of our founder. I'm relatively new, though I edited sporadically for a while before I created an account (I'm not an admin on any of the projects) and I have been working entirely on my own on this project from the day I first learned about the simple english wiki. I intend to have a fairly complete version of the project ready to go live before I make the idea public. I'm writing offline and storing the pages locally as text files so when it's time to go , I can open the doors and let the kids in and not have them only have 3 articles to play with.

On the en:wikipedia, I've adopted the clown-and-circus-related topics as a miniproject, edit pretty widely on details of law, to bring the statements on the wikipedia more precisely in line with actual legal principles.

I also, daily, edit a random page, and anything that links to and from that page, towhatever extent I can. I am fairly active on the discuss side of quite a few widely varying controversial subjects.

I feel that I have stopped several edit wars, by helping to rewrite articles to bring the consensus view to light... with that in mind, I will often find an ongoing dispute and join in. On the other hand, where I have found myself in the middle of a controversy, I have several times simply left the controversy, and alerted 2 other editors that there is a need for fresh eyes on a given article. That often quickly yields results, when an argument seems on the verge of personal conflict.

I pride myself on my ability to see bias, and to have a neutral POV, however, I just recently became aware that for instance, many articles talk about people 'coming to' the United States, or people 'going to' somewhere else... and that that itself implies the POV of 'being in America'... so I guess I am still learning to recognise my own biases.

Anyway, that's enough about me and my wikipedia interests to get you started. Feel free to question me on anything.Pedant 04:30, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Robin finds that a hard act to follow

Most impressive explanation, my friend! I'm needing to go and catch a train in 10 min, so will comment briefly; maybe much more in coming days.

Not studied Simple English. I guess it differs from the 1000-word (plus) "Basic English" that one could write on a single sheet of paper.

Your Child's Garden sounds great.

Images valid on one Wikipedia seem to be perfectly acceptable on another if relevant. Your ant is relevant and would add to a currently sparse group of images here. Linkage from or associated with it could be specifically to Simple English or wherever. I'm not au fait (which is a French expression you probably do know!) with how to manage captions and links.

I don't bother with RandomPage - "Recent Changes" gives one a bunch of fairly random pages to choose from, with the virtue that someone is currently interested in them.

Help with WP Maori would be great - that Table Improvement I suggested could be right up your street. Other very plain tables can be found under Rārangi (ie "list[s]").

Ciao, see ya, so long! 6:14pm, must go home.

Robin Patterson 05:15, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Tūmanako

Nō te mea kua tae ngā tuhipānui ki te 600, ko te tūmanako kia tae mai ngā tāngata matatau ki te reo Māori o Aotearoa nei, mā tātou e whakapai te mātāpunenga nei i runga i ngā tikanga whakapai, kia tupu ake hei rākau whakaruruhau, hei Tōtara, hei Kauri rānei i te wao-nui-a-Tāne. Tēnā, whakaputaina ō whakaaro ki Wikipedia:Kōrero. Nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa Kahuroa 04:45, 13 Poutū-te-rangi 2007 (UTC)