Talk:KatrinaTheLamia

• okay--I have issues with it not following the style guidelines. I made certain to read those before I posted this. I was unaware of what part I missed. Perhaps somebody could post what exactly I screwed up on? From what I saw, I followed the style guidelines as best as they possibly could. Unless I misunderstood something in the style guide. In which case--this may indicate a change is required to the study guide --KatrinaTheLamia 22:12, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

In general, the best way to learn is to look at other pages and see how they do it. As for this page:

• yeah--I looked around, I really had issues finding decent examples. So, I mostly just guessed. I mean--I looked at the site creator's page--and it really was... craptastic as far as profiles go. --KatrinaTheLamia 01:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Jeez, that guy. The trouble is, there's so little of interest to say! --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• You have level-one headers, which aren't typically used

• Fair enough. This was not a rule that I was aware of I do not recall anything about too many first level headers being a bad thing(TM) mentioned anywhere. Also--it does not help that most decent page creation software (MediaWiki is far from this IMO BTW) will set it up so the page title, such as in this case KatrinaTheLamia would be h1, and then any "first level" markups would be h2, so as to keep with the general topic layout idea on the page. Mostly just a usability issues here, I guess. Will fix. --KatrinaTheLamia 01:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

We have it in the style guide but it's not as strongly stated as it probably should be, given how the pages actually are. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• In general there seems to be a few too many headers - it would be better to condense the ones which just contain one short paragraph into sections of several paragraphs (this appears worse because the headers are larger than they would normally be due to use of first-level headers - compare Banrai)

• Yeah--will try to remove the first level heads to second level headers. See if that fixes it. However, I really have no idea how I would combine these sections and not break the styling issue I read about "not having sections be more than just a few paragraphs"... however--it would appear I simply misread another guideline.--KatrinaTheLamia 01:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, "more than a few paragraphs" is based on paragraphs being several lines long, not just one or two. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Going through what I did here, after I replied, I realised that my intend with these section headers was to follow the guideline of "making it easier to expand in the future". Hence the headers of the sections given. Generally designing it, that the NIMH Labs section can be split off from the rest of the KatrinaTheLamia over to a Furry Sites page. However for now, I do not feel it has its own content here. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• The article title is not bolded the first time it is used in the article

• Okay, I will fix that. However my issue was that was a section of the style guideline that I really did not get at all. I read over that section trying to figure out what you were suggesting I do and why. I mean--why does the section title need to be bold the first time it is mentioned? What usability feature does that add to the article? What readability does that add? I mean, I will fix it, but I generally find that sort of thing to look excessively tacky. --KatrinaTheLamia 01:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It's the title of the article that needs to be bold. It's there to draw the user's eye - and that of the search engine. The lede is the most important line on the page. Readers should read it first, rather than skip over it, which can happen if there are other distracting elements on the page. And search engines should likewise consider it more important than other text, including any italicised text above that may be there to redirect the user to another page for another usage. Google tends to prefer bolded text with the page's title for its search snippets. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Going to call bullshit here on the search engine part here. Just so you know. From what I gathered Google merely grabs its information based on the a tag. Not the em or strong tags. Unless I can be pointed to some article on the matter, I am going to go on the grounds tha it is merely a rumour. As per the title of the article... that is not the bolded text... that is the title of the page in large letters at the top of the page. You know, the stuff using the h1 tag? The one with KatrinaTheLamia in it. Perhaps I am a little older in how I do things, but I am more than likely to look at the h\d tags for my titles rather than seemingly random bold text. To go even further, I have seen enough pages that have the first bit in bold, that it honestly no longer catches my eyes anymore. In fact, my eyes skim over it. Again, I think you are confused on how Google works. As I am fairly certain it works on the a tag... not the em or strong tags. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

There's a whole bunch of known and suspected factors for ranking . . . but I'm not particularly talking about that, but rather which content from that page a search engine chooses to display beneath a selected link - the 'snippet'. Google uses body text for this, where possible. What we don't want is for that body text to be something like "This article is about the furry fan. For the species, see Lizard (species)." The bolding in the body text is a hint to avoid that and select the lede. And as for what people look at, yes, they'll get the title from the title, but we want them to start reading at the lede, rather than, say, skipping down to the next header (you'd be surprised how much people don't read . . .). Does it work for everyone? Perhaps not, but I always look for it. --GreenReaper^(talk) 07:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

While the bolding has not been confirmed, it certainly is high enough on the ranking, that I will note it. Read through those links, and a fair amount of it makes sense (myself, I gloss over bolded keywords as though they were distractions). Some of it is basic writing, such as start off with your point and build on it and to only have one idea per paragraph. Not going to get much for further argument from me here.

• There's a section called "locations" that appears to be for external links, but which isn't called "External links" and doesn't have the links formatted as other pages about people have them formatted

• Right, that is because I really do not like naming sections "External Links" that in my mind is on par with having a link titled "click here". And rather than point to a category that has several thousand people to look at--perhaps give a good example of what I should be looking for in a profile? I mean, I did nose around there a bit. And well--yeah, if my profile is any indication, I most certainly did not find any of these good examples tat are just laying around. --KatrinaTheLamia 01:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

That's why I gave you Banrai, above. And while not all of the other articles in that category are stunning examples, most are formatted in a standard way. In fact 2, The Ranting Gryphon appears early on and is one of the better examples, though there's a few things I'd change.

Oh right--it keeps getting more and more obvious everyday. That in a page article itself, I tend to ignore links that are not underlined. I get annoyed when I note that I missed a link simply because it was not underlined. I recall mentioning how silly the idea that links need underlines were when I read about it in 2000. The Ironing is delicious. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The point of having an "External links" section, in a standard format, is that it provides a consistent layout that helps readers process the information it contains, rather than spend time on the way it is presented. In fact, that's the point of a lot of style standards. Imagine how annoying it would be if you were reading a book and every other page was slightly different in some way. Maybe the text was a different size, or the section headers were right-aligned rather than left, or the meaning of italic and bold were reversed. It looks unprofessional and wastes the reader's time. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

We are not talking about having text all over in a rather odd mess. No where has anybody mentioned size, discrepencies in alignment, or the meaning of bold or italic. Please, refrain from the slippery slope in the future. In this case, I am saying that here, "External Links" has taken an approach that has been ignored by most users. Also, if the word "External Links" truly is part of the Style, it would be put in the sites CSS... not the wiki markup. Here, it is a section header that needs to be aptly named for the section it applies to. Nobody has mentioned going nuts with styling and what not. I am merely suggesting giving it an interesting title. Something that people will actually see and not skip over thinking all the articles information is gone. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It's quite possible that some of these specifics are not in our local style guide, but are mentioned in some of the resources linked from it. Feel free to update it to include them! In general, Wikipedia style is followed here for formatting. --GreenReaper^(talk) 22:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• Yeah--I try to avoid reading the official wikipedia guidelines. Mind you, it has been some time since I have made use of Mediawiki software--but I have generally found the help files to be, well a pain to grep through. And looking through the style guide there is more than a few sheer stylistic errors presented on there as official policy--or at least when I read them all those years ago. I dunno--maybe I will review them. Though, I admit the big thing I hate about Wikipedia based sites is it is a software based on everybody editting a page for data--but rather than doing so, they simply flag a page as "incorrect", then move it to be deleted if the original person who formed it did not do enough to fix it. With nobody lifting a finger to edit it after the "incorrect" flag is place onto the page. Generally just noting what is wrong on the talk page, when it normally is something very simple to be fixed that it would normally be easier to you know, fix it, than to simply talk about it on the talk page. I mean--I sometimes wonder if the users/admins of these sites understand what the point of wiki software is. Long rant short--I have generally found a few wiki communities (not just wikipedia BTW, plenty of others) to be made of fail. Figured I would try posting here. And I will still try to make it work. --KatrinaTheLamia 01:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, look at it from the perspective of a regular user - here's a page that doesn't fit in with the others, so why shouldn't it be up to the user who added it to fix it - especially if they're going to be editing other articles? They have to learn the house style sometime. I don't think that's necessarily what goes through their mind, but it's close. The majority of people really don't look at the style guidelines first. :-)

Ah right--I find this gets put onto me a lot. The majority of the people do it, so .'. I must be the same case as well. It gets annoying after a little while. And tends to lead to cases like on Christmas where I still have no idea how the glass butterdish came out entirely intact. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Normally if an edit is trivial, it will be made. But if there are several things that need fixing, or one thing that will take more than a minute or so, they may just tag it and move along. It's a division of labour thing - which is another aspect of the wiki experience. An busy editor's time may be better spent finding and tagging non-urgent problems than actually fixing them. That sounds elitist but it's true - or at least, true enough in their mind that it governs the contributions that they make to the site. Note that they also fixed up the category ordering (which is something we should probably mention in the guide; it's evolved over time). --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh right--that is a nasty habit I picked up for that sort of markup back in 1998 when trying to save bandwidth on various sites. Right. Though, I will note that the person who noted that the page title was not bolded could have easily made an edit. Just saying. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

And as for deleting pages . . . we're hesitant to do that unless the topic really has little to do with furry fandom. We sometimes merge pages that are unlikely to grow into even a short complete article. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:10, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, okay--well, I suppose that works --KatrinaTheLamia 06:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Removing the styles guideline template

Just wondering if there really is anything else that needs to be blatantly added to conform to the style guidelines. Or if the template saying it needs to be cleaned up can come down. About the only issue I can think of is lack of citations, and perhaps a few other parts of it can be made to be more wiki friendly.

Removing lazy tag

Right, the only tag is a style guildelines issue. Current violantions are:

• perspective issues.

I am removing the tag, and suggesting that sentences with this issue be tagged specifically So, as I know what the heck the person having an issue with this article is talking about.

Until they do something constructive other than just tag this article, and not fix it, I will just consider it lazy admins, and remove the template, as to be honest, they are not doing anything to cite why that template is there. Until they can cite the specific violations in the article, I am going to regard them as nonexistant. Thank you. --KatrinaTheLamia 03:49, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, first off. Anyways, the reason I added the tag is because there is a lot of POV in the article and there are no citations whatsoever. The sentences that are similar to "KatrinaTheLamia is known as a Game Designer, Artist and Writer" definitely require a citation. Other comments in the article, such as the "Not much" under Accomplishments is POV, along with titling sections "Drama Watch". Also, anything that is a quotation or is a "she says" type of comment needs a citation, minimum. Actually, almost all of the sections under Drama Watch are POV and seem to negative comments and attacks against others. In general, the article is written like a forum post and not an encyclopedia article. Silverseren^C 04:45, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Right. First off, if you are having issues with citations, post a citation request at the end of each line you wish a citation on.

Next, I would like to ask, how an article on a person's specific fursona and personaly profile would be done to make it seem like an encyclopedia entry. As from what I have read, in your style guides, what I have done here is just fine. It tries to take a mixture of biography and anthropology mix--which since we are dealing with a person here, I think how it is presented is fine.

Also, you will note, that this page is a lot more toned down than the vandalism I came back to see the page in: http://en.wikifur.com/w/index.php?title=KatrinaTheLamia&oldid=291918

I am going to suggest that the idea of saying "not much" is not so much a POV, as much as a fairly accurate assertion. Unless I can cite that I have done more than "Not Much" as a quick and easy summary into the article. The idea here, is give enough of a summary, that people can know that this section is skippable in the first sentence.

And okay, perhaps they are negative. This section, I would suggest we give a template suggesting that drama may be involved.

Also, anything that seems to be an attack on others, there are plenty of templates to put after those sentences. Look into those.

Your issue here is not a set of Point of View issue. It is more an issue on citations and neutrality involved.

Rather than pasting a link to the style guidelines that I have read, and in my honest opinion, think you are on crack for linking to that, show why and how I am wrong here--put using the proper templates, on the proper sentences. If you do not point out the sentences that you have issues with, I generally have no reason to believe they exist.

You will also note, that there still remain a few personal attacks on myself. Including one right in my general summary that refers to me as having a form of status like Nyarlathotep, Yoggesotheg or C'thulhu.

rather than flag the entire article, point out which sentences give you issues, that require citations or possible making more neutral. --KatrinaTheLamia 06:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)