User talk:"Chipotle" is NOT pronounced "chi-POL-tay"!

March 2015

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, talk pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at talk:Videotape, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Even making spelling and grammatical corrections in others' comments is generally frowned upon, as it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. See wp:talk for more info on talk page conduct. Also, btw, your username makes it difficult to write a meaningful edit summary. Jeh (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

If people are supposed to write correctly in the articles, then they should be practicing that craft in the talk pages even if it's not as necessary. So that's a silly policy.

Also, if you think my user name is "too long," then you should recommend to the programmers that they adjust the system so that it doesn't let someone have that long a name. But if you're not even an admin. and don't want to be one (which ought to include acting like one), then why did you step in as if you were one?

"Chipotle" is NOT pronounced "chi-POL-tay"! (talk) 06:13, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Silly rule or not, it's a rule and unlikely to change. And, my note re the length of your username was a request only. Non-admins do this sort of thing all the time. Jeh (talk) 06:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Why do you care how long my user name is if you're not even an admin. and don't want to be one? And if you don't want to be one, why do you go to the trouble of suggesting things that are more likely for admins to care about than the general population?

"Chipotle" is NOT pronounced "chi-POL-tay"! (talk) 08:27, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

*sigh* I care because I like to leave meaningful edit summaries. Most editors do. WP is edited collaboratively. Leaving meaningful edit summaries is part of that. For certain edits, WP prefills the summary with a pattern that includes the previous editor's username, repeated three times. With your username this leaves just 49 characters for my summary of why I was making my edit. Thus, leaving a meaningful edit summary is far more difficult than it usually is. That's all. Your username is not a violation of any username policy, but it's still annoying at those moments. If you think that bringing that to your attention (with a "btw" intro, putting it in the nature of an offhand remark) is "acting like an admin", well, I can't do anything about that. Note that the bulk of my first note here was a standard level-1 warning template approved by the community for ordinary users to leave on others' talk pages in these circumstances. That's not "acting like an admin" either; non-admins leave such warnings for others all the time; that's what they're for. My suggestions and comments were only intended to let you know about a couple of issues you may not have been aware of. Jeh (talk) 09:58, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

• Facepalm!

Well, if you don't like how long my user name is while you're trying to perform one of those editions, then just erase the stuff that the system leaves and you'll have your "precious" space back! By "acting like an admin.," I mean telling someone that they should not do something and then even reverting it according to the rule, as an admin. would normally do.

"Chipotle" is NOT pronounced "chi-POL-tay"! (talk) 20:34, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Non-admins do exactly that all the time. Jeh (talk) 21:42, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Why don't your people just leave the bossing around to the bosses?

Also, FYI, there's no sense in putting both an indentation and a space.

"Chipotle" is NOT pronounced "chi-POL-tay"! (talk) 07:23, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Hitting space after a colon is a long-standing habit here (think about it). It is harmless in this case as the space doesn't change the page rendering. So, thank you for the advice that could save me one space keystroke per comment paragraph, but I'll probably continue to insert the spaces.

There are not nearly enough admins to keep up with all the necessary cleanup, and that is not their primary role anyway. Being an admin means having access to some maintenance tools that ordinary users don't have (see WP:ADMIN). Meanwhile, ordinary users, heck, even nonregistered users, clean up after each others' mistakes and leave warning templates for others all the time. It is just not considered an "admin-level" function. WP is edited collaboratively, and part of working collaboratively is correcting mistakes where found, and advising others (especially newcomers) about policies and guidelines they might not have been aware of. If you insist on interpreting that as "bossing around", that is of course your prerogative, but it is not the spirit in which it was intended. Jeh (talk) 07:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

At first I thought that text that's right after a colon and a space would look like it was indented by 2 spaces, the same as if it were right after 2 colons, thus causing confusion between the 2 ways, but I can see now that it's not like that.

Duh, of course I wouldn't have been suggesting that regular registered users and nonregistered users shouldn't clean up other people's mistakes, because if that were the case, then the Wikipedia would quit being the place that (practically) anyone can edit. I'm just talking about the kind of action and talk like "You shouldn't do this [thing that's against the rules]" and rearranging something back because that person did "this" (that was against the rules). Well, regular users should certainly give others heads-ups like, "Oh, by the way, you might not want to do that [such-and-such a thing] because it breaks this [such-and-such] rule," but when they're allowed to use official-looking warnings, and then rearrange the stuff back after that, it looks administrative, and that's the area that seems wrong to me.

"Chipotle" is NOT pronounced "chi-POL-tay"! (talk) 23:21, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

The standard warning templates (such as the one I used above) are the result of lengthy discussion, trying to achieve a balance between officiousness, the risk of biting newcomers, and the need for the warnings to be taken seriously. But like nearly everything on WP they are still subject to revision should an adequate argument be made for that. Perhaps, if your sockmaster is ever unblocked, they can suggest changes that would make at least the first one or two levels seem less "administrative". In the meantime, you now have seen several examples of what administrative notices directed at you actually look like, so I doubt you will find this point confusing in the future. And that's all I'm going to say on this subject. Jeh (talk) 08:29, 31 March 2015 (UTC)