User talk:DavidB4

Feel free to post any questions or comments here. If you don't hear back from me, try e-mailing me instead.

block quote

To make a nice quote with huge quote marks, do

{{cquote|blah blah}}

which comes out looking like

“

blah blah

”

I have a small collection of useful stuff like this at the bottom of my user page. SamHB (talk) 12:11, 24 December 2015 (EST)

Thanks! I knew I'd seen it somewhere! DavidB4 (talk) 14:31, 24 December 2015 (EST)

elements!

I see you are working in this area. It needs it. Someone who was working on this in the past got banned on a false socking charge (this sort of thing doesn't happen any more), and the topic has been largely a ghost town ever since.

But I'd like to suggest that you try to make the "vital statistics" material either in the template or out of it, but not duplicated or semi-duplicated. You've been adding some information in the text, about such things as uses and discoverer, that are also in the template, and sometimes inconsistently.

I'm not saying one place is right and the other is wrong, or that your approach is wrong. You are obviously putting a lot of work into this. But I'd like you to consider how this issue should be addressed. Is the template a bad idea? Does the template need to be expanded. Does putting stuff in the template rather than in the text mess up the flow of the article? What's the right way to do this? It would be really good if you could put together a vision of how element articles should be handled in general. And then make that vision a reality. If you think the template:element should be changed, say so. Templates are normally protected (because a vandal could mess up a huge number of pages if he could get his hands on one), but I'm sure that, if you request a change, you would be accommodated.

Keep up the good work.

SamHB (talk) 20:47, 26 December 2015 (EST)

Yeah, I noticed this area is lacking. I don't have any specific ideas for changing the template, I just need to say inside it better. I didn't want to undo the work already put into them, but some of what I'm finding is different than what they wrote, or ever worse (for me), I sometimes find they said something I can't find info about, either for or against. Sometimes, too, I have a problem where the info isn't as clear-cut. In Ruthenium, for example, there where three different people who worked on discovering it. In another, two different people discovered it independently.

I was thinking I could expand upon the template info in the article, but you're right, it does get repetitive. I don't exactly know what else to put down, though, other than this and a few other scraps of info. I can't even include a picture of the molecule, since only admins can do that, it seems.

It is a bad idea to restate but expand upon the info in the template? If so, what should I be doing instead?

DavidB4 (talk) 9:31, 28 December 2015 (EST)

OK, I thought about this some more. I think the guideline should be that the infobox has extremely concise material. In many cases we don't have anything more to add to things in the infobox—"X was discovered by Y in year Z". In many other cases there are interesting things to say about it, and that should go in the main body. For example, the discovery of Radium is a fascinating topic, given that this discovery was the gateway to atomic physics. (I just looked; the Radium article just has the infobox. It needs a lot more.) What we say in the infobox of course has to be consistent with the expanded material in the main article. SamHB (talk) 17:10, 28 December 2015 (EST)

That makes some sense, but here's my problem with that: Perhaps I should not compare this site to wikipedia, but it's hard not to. Take Xenon for example. It's perhaps a minor element, right? Therefore you're thinking I shouldn't write any article about it. But if you look at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon) You see a huge article--much larger that the side table, which is also much larger that ours. If I write something, even if it does restate some info, at least it's a foundation for others to add to. Maybe they never will, so I shouldn't though--I don't know. (DavidB4 (talk) N.D.)

My advice: Do not worry about the fact that our articles are less extensive and "encyclopedic" than those at Wikipedia. If you do, you will just give up in despair. WP's articles, especially in math and science, try to be "world class encyclopedic references". Just look at them! WP is the place to go if you really want to see a 38,600 character article on Quantum Chromodynamics. But if, like many people, you want to know what Hafnium is used for, a less grandiose article is the thing. The Tin article says some interesting things about it. That's the sort of thing you should aim for. SamHB (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2015 (EST)

I suppose that makes sense. I can be discouraging! I was hoping to provide a good amount of info, like WP, but not bore the reader to death with how this guys best friend's brother had a girlfriend who's mother stubbed her toe. I'll see what I can do, anyway. DavidB4 (talk) 9:30, 31 December 2015 (EST)

Citations

I have a general question to anyone looking at this. I don't know who to ask, so I'm asking you. What format should I enter citations? On Wikipedia, people seem to use APA, or perhaps Terabian. Here, however, the official rules say that a citation is "generally a web address or book title." That doesn't seem very professional, but is that what I should be doing (as I have been lately) or is ALPA/MLA better? Thanks!

DavidB4 (talk) 9:39, 28 December 2015 (EST)

You're worrying too much about this. We're extremely informal about such things. Look around, and you'll see. Just put in citations in whatever format you think is natural. A web address or book title is usually just fine. SamHB (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2015 (EST)

You are probably right, but I don't want to give the opposition reason to attack. One complaint about this site has been "Articles are either uncited or come from unscientific sources such as right-wing opinion articles and creation science websites, rather than anything even remotely peer reviewed" (https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/conservapedia.com#page-1). Having peer-reviewed articles is probably not very likely, since most of them are littlem ore that liberals sharing mindless liberal drivel. Some are actually good enough that if we really worked, we could use them, but this would take so much time, I don't think many people try. At the very least, however, I'd like to see plenty of citations from reasonably reputable sources. DavidB4 (talk) 9:40, 31 December 2015 (EST)

Interest to user

Maybe this article will be of interest to you. U.U (talk) 21:52, 28 December 2015 (EST)

Thanks for pointing it out. I've added some info, and tried to make a bit of structure. If I find more info, I'll try to come back and add it. Of course, feel free to add to it as well, or reorganize. Do you suppose we should try to get an admin to include a screenshot of the program? DavidB4 (talk) 9:16, 29 December 2015 (EST)

Sure. Although I do not have plenty of time, I will try to help if I can. You can tell me on on my talk page if you need help. Thanks for your efforts. U.U (talk) 19:06, 30 December 2015 (EST)

I have gone ahead made the request [1]

Thanks! I'm happy to try to help, but I'm not perfect. Feel free to improve anything you want! DavidB4 (talk) 9:41, 31 December 2015 (EST)

Thanks and some input/feedback

Thanks for all your contributions. We very much appreciate having fellow conservatives involved in our project.

Second, make sure you add category tags to all your articles plus have another page or pages link to your new article. Otherwise, the articles will never be found or added to. For example, add a category tag or tags to the bullet article. Have the gun article link to your bullet article.

Next, as far as length of new articles, you want the articles to be like an encyclopedia in length as far as your new articles and not like a dictionary. A basic rule of thumb is to avoid stub articles. You don't want to disappoint an encyclopedia reader with a stub article. It is better to create one encyclopedia length article than create many stub articles. And as as added bonus, you will get more people to read your content as non-stub articles are often listed by the major search engines.

I hope these suggestions help.

And again, thanks for all your efforts. Conservative (talk) 18:51, 30 December 2015 (EST)

I also thank you for your work. But I'd offer slightly different advice. (Cons, you know what's coming!) Put in categories, but you don't need to fill your articles with lots of incestuous links, the way the above author does. If someone wants to read more on a related page, he will click on the category and see what's there. It's that simple.

Also, don't use "plus" as a conjunction, the way Cons did above. I've complained about this to him on several occasions. The sentence should have been "... add category tags to all your articles, and have another page or pages link ...". It is a compound sentence. "And" is the correct conjunction. And, since it is a compound sentence, there should be a comma.

As far as stubs, write articles as you see fit. Don't worry about what will be noticed by search engines. If it's in the category, people will find it.

One complaint: Whenever you see "it's" with an apostrophe, say "it is" to yourself. If it doesn't sound right, it's wrong. "It's" is a contraction of those two words. I've complained about this many times to various people. It's not that hard to put each apostrophe in its proper place. Another pet peeve: You're (you are) going to be more successful as a writer if your (possessive) apostrophes are properly used.

SamHB (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2015 (EST)

Note: Cons put in a note here in which he said the Richard Dawkins article got 700,000 views, that Richard Dawkins liked it so much that he has invited Cons over for "tea and trumpets [sic]" at his house, and that said house was built on the backs of slaves (because some of Dawkins' ancestors were slaveowners). He then vaped that note, as you can see in the edit history. I'm replying as though the note were still present.

Trumpets, huh?

Do you really think the people making those views were sympathetic? Do you have evidence for it? Have you read this, for example?

@David: Congratulations, you have arrived as a full-fledged editor of Conservapedia. Complete with a dispute involving Cons. Cons and I have been giving each other a hard time for quite a while now, notably on my talk page, AugustO's talk page, and EJamesW's talk page. And now yours. You're in the big league now.

Enough of this. Let's all get back to work. SamHB (talk) 21:18, 30 December 2015 (EST)

SamHB, the Richard Dawkins article has received about 700,000 page views (The counter got reset). I also jokingly said that I heard that Dawkins wanted to extend such an invitation.

Anyways, Dawkins doesn't nearly have as many fans as he used to have and people with unfavorable views of him have soared in number. Many people view Dawkins as a cranky old man whose bitter that: feminists prevailed over him, creationism is growing fast in the world and that Muslims are pouring into Europe and the UK. Conservative (talk) 21:28, 30 December 2015 (EST)

The above graph shows the monthly website traffic to Richard Dawkins' website as of June 22, 2015 in terms of unique monthly web visitors. As you can see above, in 2012, Richard Dawkins saw a very large decrease in web traffic.

The website traffic is measured via Quantcast which directly measures Dawkins' website traffic via embedded code on his website.

Well, Thanks for you input, Conservative and SamHB. I have mixed feeling on large vs. small articles. Is it better to find a small article, or no article? I guess that depends on opinion. I'm leaning in the direction of more smallish articles, but more than three or four sentences. I don't really care about search engines, I just want ti improve things here. Also, I do try to keep my contractions in order, but feel free to give a yell if I mess up, as you did already at least once. (I guess I'm an official criminal not, huh?).

oh, and @SamHB, I see what you mean. I like the welcoming committee--thanks...I think.

Got the screenshots

I got the screenshots for VLC and Mozilla Thunderbird. Check out the articles. We can even make them better and more informative. U.U (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2016 (EST)

Nice! Thanks for requesting them. I'll see if I can improve the articles. I have limited knowledge about Thunderbird, but I'll see what I can do. On a side note, how did you request the images to be added? Or more to the point, how might I request this in the future?

Thanks again!DavidB4 (talk) 8:42, 4 January 2016 (EST)

I've added a table of keyboard shortcuts to VLC. Do you think that's too much or off topic? DavidB4 (talk) 9:15, 4 January 2016 (EST)