User talk:Ksnortum

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[edit] General Welcomes

Hi. My name is Leonard. I'm a relative newcomer to Wikipedia I think I've been tinkering for a month or so now) I was looking ath the use-define chain page. I have a comp-sci background too, and the page seems like it's really heavy on the algorithm and really light on explanation. I have some impulse to remove a lot of the algorithmic stuff.

What do you think? (I'm going to say this on the talk page for the page itself as well. Maybe you could reply there?

Best wishes,

Lcuff 17:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's a kind welcome from a Wikipedia newbie. Have fun editing!--mssever (Blog) 02:43, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Papa Stronsay

Welcome, and thank you for your edits to this article. The weblinks you have added are useful; I have reinserted the internal links as it seems likely that we will have articles on them at some point; having the red links will encourage people to write them. Warofdreams 28 June 2005 09:17 (UTC)

[edit] Frank Purcell

On the whole, I would much rather an article be well-referenced and in wikipedia than deleted. If you can dig up your references and save this article from the howling pit that is AfD, that would be great. :-) Captainktainer * Talk 21:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, done. --KSnortum 21:50, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
For the curious, the article was deleted. --KSnortum 23:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dave Kelly

"They" deleted our article about Dave Kelly (the web artist) despite his continued and prominent contributions to the web. He has several articles in Wikipedia where he is the primary or major contributor. Quite honestly, I don't get it. --KSnortum 00:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been away from Wikipedia for some time, so I was horrified and angered that the Dave Kelly artile was deleted. I understand there was sdome discussion about this and I'm sorry I didn't get in on it. Other web artsits have pages on Wikipedia so I'm baffled as to why Dave got "picked on". I understand vaguely that there weren't enough references or citations, but he has a significant web presence and there are several articles in Wikipedia where he is the primary or major contributor. I may want to restart the article but I don't want it to suddenly disappear again. Can you give me some pointers or a quick run-down on why the previous article was deleted so I can avoid those pit-falls again? Thanks --KSnortum 00:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello KSnortum - it was deleted via the result of a debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dave Kelly (artist). Please feel free to ask more questions about the rationales in question and how they were stacked up against one another. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

This pretty much sums up how I feel about it: [1]

I love it. Todd Goldman rips off the "non-notable" Dave Kelly and gets a page. --KSnortum 23:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stray page

Hi, in addition to your regular userpage User:Ksnortum you seem to have created the page User:KSnortum as well. Do you want to keep it around for anything, or can it be deleted? User:Angr 09:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

How odd. I didn't even know URLs could be case sensitive! Yeah, sure, blow it away! --KSnortum 23:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay. URLs at all Wikimedia projects are case sensitive, except for the first letter of a page name. Thus User:Ksnortum and User:ksnortum are the same page, but User:Ksnortum and User:KSnortum are different pages. (The exception is at Wiktionary, where, for example, wikt:Hut and wikt:hut are different pages.) User:Angr 07:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whiny Rant

I guess I'm pretty miffed about what feels like a bait and switch in policy by Wikipedia. If I'm objective about it, I can see the usefulness it in, but it still feels yucky.

The whole point, when I joined Wikipedia, was that you should Be Bold, make changes. Of course, don't add patent nonsense, but make a contribution. There were many requests for articles and (what do you know!) I knew something about them. I added something substantial to several articles.

Now a couple of those articles have been deleted. They were articles that people asked for, but now they're considered "non-notable." Many of my comments have been removed because there was no citation. In one case, I had first-hand knowledge of what happened, but this didn't matter.

I understand what Wikipedia is trying to do: become a more respectable and reliable source of knowledge. But if this was their original intent, it wasn't make clear when I join. Wikipedia still says it's "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit" and tells people to "be bold", but really they should be telling people to be careful. I don't add anything these days that isn't a minor grammar or formatting edit, or that doesn't have a reference.

Wikipedia often says that it's better than traditional encyclopedias in many ways, but in one way they will never be (because of these now policies). Traditional encyclopedias had articles written by experts. I mistakenly thought that these experts were being replaced by the collective knowledge of the Internet. I was mistaken. Wikipedia will only be a repository or knowledge gleaned from other sources. In this way two of its policies compete: that nothing should be added that isn't referenced and that nothing should be plagiarized. It it's not "original work", it comes from somewhere. Perhaps this isn't plagiarism in the strictest sense but it's such a narrow path to walk.

Bottom line: Wikipedia is still very useful, but not much fun. It could have been a lot more than it's shooting for.