Turkeybutt JC

User tock:Turkeybutt JC

Hmm... it seems to me that Wikipedia is allowing me to use the source thing to edit again. :) --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 17:44, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

I guess all I have to do is just click the Save page button at least twice to get it to confirm my edit... --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

All I have to do to get my edits through is to click the Save page button a few times. --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Duh, you already told us, like, about two times already, we get it. --Someone else (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, no need to tell him so sassy-like. --John Doe's imaginary friend (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

potato --I forgot how to exist. (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

What's with all the socks? --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Just to remind you, please stop misusing your userpage and making sockpuppet accounts. It's against the rules. --FakeEnWikiAdmin (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

But those aren't mine! --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me? --FakeEnWikiAdmin (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Alrighty then, that's enough with all this nonsense. Just remind me below if I make any mistakes or messes that you think make me blockworthy. I learn from mistakes and I want to be a better contributor. I can't edit on EnWiki until August 28, 2016. But that should be no guarantee of me being blocked for goofing off. I'll just go goof off and clown around in my own sandbox. Otherwise, please just laugh at how long the title of this subject header thing is. I just want to see reasonable and considerate admins provide me guidance on how to contribute to Wikipedia and explain to me if I make any mistakes or messes on accident. I don't want to be that proverbial bull in a china shop. Or we can just talk about clocks over at my tock page.

Quick deletion of Simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Turkeybutt JC/sandbox

The page you wrote, Simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Turkeybutt JC/sandbox, has been selected for quick deletion. If you think this page should be kept, please add {{wait}} below the line {{QD}} and say why on the talk page. If the page is already gone, but you think this was an error, you can ask for it to be undeleted. You can find more information about the reason here. J991 18:43, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

How do personal user sandboxes work?

{{helpme|How do I make a proper legitimate personal sandbox of my own? --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 19:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)}}

It looks like you got one created. Let me know if you need more help with it. Do you have any ideas about what kinds of things you want to help with here? --Auntof6 (talk) 21:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Also, I see your tried to create the URL. Although you seem to already have one set up, you can make one if I am wrong. Laptop Fizz (talk) 00:00, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

It turns out I finally made my sandbox after two attempts. The first one was suggested for speedy (quick) deletion. The second one I asked to be deleted. On the third try I finally got it right and got a legitimate sandbox page. --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 00:10, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Quick deletion of User tock:Turkeybutt JC

The page you wrote, User tock:Turkeybutt JC, has been selected for quick deletion. If you think this page should be kept, please add {{wait}} below the line {{QD}} and say why on the talk page. If the page is already gone, but you think this was an error, you can ask for it to be undeleted. You can find more information about the reason here. J991 19:23, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Removing weasel words, etc.

I applaud you for wanting to clean up weasel words and such -- we certainly can use a lot of that kind of work. However, please be careful when you do this. In one case, you removed part of a sentence that had the problem words, and the part of the sentence that was left wasn't a complete sentence. When you remove words like important, try to replace them with something specific. For example, instead of saying that a city is an important city, say something about what makes it important: maybe it gets a lot of tourists, maybe it has its country's biggest port, maybe it contributes more than other cities to its country's economy, or it might be something else. In most cases, doing that would be more helpful than just removing things. If you find something where you're not sure what would be a good replacement, let me know and I'll see if I can think of something. In any case, please din't just cut things out without considering what is left. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:38, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

I tried editing again, but I put the airport and harbor into the same sentence-list. (not a bullet-point list, an A, B, C, D, and E list) I don't know what makes them important. Important means it is needed, necessary, mandatory or required for or by something. Important is subjective; Maskman the superhero is important to Joe but it isn't important to Bob. The Wallace Tower is important to Bob but it isn't to Joe. Wikipedia wants its articles to be written from a neutral point of view. I don't know if the airport or harbor are the biggest. And we would need a reliable source to cite to support that either has the most average daily visitors or that it contributes the most to the economy. A 65 year old person would almost be considered a senior but a 65 year old park wouldn't seem old for a park because it is created closer to the Y2038 Unix Millennium Bug than to the US Civil War. I was told that debates can be healthy as long as no one personally attacks eachother so I think we should feel free to have those kinds of debates. I wonder why peacock words are discouraged on EnWiki but taken for granted on Simple EnWiki? --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 23:15, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't think they're taken for granted. I think we have just had editors here who weren't aware of these issues, and the things they wrote reflect that.

I still have issues with the changes you made on Christopher Columbus. I'll give you some specifics when I'm back on my laptop later. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:23, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh, right. Wikipedia doesn't seem have any policies or guidelines on whether the articles should tell readers whether something is absolutely wrong or correct. And I wonder why all the double-spaces in between sentences. I think that the article could say Columbus wasn't the first European to discover the New World instead of It is often wrongly thought that Columbus was the first European to discover the New World. 'historians think' is unclear. What historians think such things? 'what is now'? What if Cuba stops existing? We would need to update that. 'Unfortunately' is subjective. What is unfortunate to Bob can be fortunate to Joe and vice versa. It wouldn't be unfortunate to a people who don't care about gold. And it could be fortunate to people who are inflicted with gold intolerance or are allergic to gold itself or have goldiphobia (I don't know what a fear of gold is called, but you get the point, right?). I'll let you post a list of examples of where I went wrong when you get back on your laptop. --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 00:17, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Articles should be accurate. Sometimes it's not possible to accurately say that something is absolutely true or false.

As for having two spaces between sentences, Wikipedia has no policy about that. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Spaces after the end of a sentence for more information.

If you don't like saying "historians think", you could find a dated reference where a specific historian said something about the subject.

As for the possibility of a country ceasing to exist, that has happened many times (Yugoslavia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc.) so that would be taken care of if it happens.

I agree about removing unfortunately. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:19, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
OK, here are some things I think weren't good changes in Christopher Columbus.

• You changed "people often say that Columbus discovered America" to "many people thought that Columbus discovered America". Those don't mean the same things. Just because something is often said, that doesn't mean that it's many people saying it. It might be true that many people thought (or think - present tense) that, but you've changed the wording to something that should have a reference.
• You changed "Columbus is often wrongly considered the first European person to have discovered the Americas. This idea is wrong for many reasons." to "Columbus is considered the first European person to have discovered the Americas". Your version no longer conveys the idea that it's wrong to think that Columbus was the first. When you say "Columbus is considered the first European person to have discovered the Americas" in a sentence by itself, that implies that it's true. A better changed would have been something like "Columbus is sometimes considered the first European person to have discovered the Americas, but this is not true."
• You changed "Historians think that the largest ship, the Santa María, was only about 60 feet (18 metres) long, and about 16 to 19 feet (4.8 to 5.8 metres) wide." to "the Santa María, was about 60 feet (18 metres) long, and about 16 to 19 feet (4.8 to 5.8 metres) wide." (forgetting to use an upper case "T" on the first word of the sentence). These don't mean the same thing. When you say "Historians think", that means that they don't know exactly; it's probably their best guess, but it's not a definite statement. Your sentence is a definite statement that is probably not supported by the references. I don't actually see the reason for changing this sentence anyway: nothing in the original sentence is a weasel word or anything similar. This same issue is in the change you made to the sentence about the other two ships.
• You changed "The Spanish conquistadors first settled on the islands of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba, and Puerto Rico" to "The Spanish conquistadors settled on the islands of Hispaniola; the Dominican Republic, Haiti), Cuba, and Puerto Rico" (forgetting to take out a right parenthesis after Haiti). Besides being incorrect grammar (a semicolon separates two complete sentences), this changes the meaning to something incorrect. The original sentence said that the conquistadors settled on three islands: Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Your sentence seems to say that they settled on four different islands that belonged to Hispaniola, but two of the things in that list are actually countries. The island of Hispaniola holds the countries of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, whereas Cuba and Puerto Rico are each on separate islands.

I hope this gives you an idea of how careful you have to be when you are simplifying or removing objectionable words. Feel free to ask any questions you have. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:09, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

But as a Wikipedia editor you have the right to fix typos. "Nothing in this sentence is a weasel word." Historians think is a weasel word. See WP:WEASEL. And I should've put in a semicolon so it'll suggest that those three islands are part of Hispaniola. Or something else, oops. People often said is a non-precise statement. Why would anyone take non-precise or relative time/place statements for granted on Simple EnWiki but discouraged on the regular EnWiki? English is my first language and ironically I can't use the right punctuation mark. The word 'now' isn't necessary. I could've said that they sailed into three islands of Hispaniola; Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the same island. Cuba and Puerto Rico located on their own respective islands. --Turkeybutt JC (talk) 20:34, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but my point was that Cuba and Puerto Rico are countries that are their own islands: they are not "islands of Hispaniola". Hispaniola is one island. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are countries on that island.

As for the non-precise statements, you are right that they should be removed. Just be aware that you have to pay attention to the effect that removing them has on whatever is left. Sometimes those sentences have something in them that is referred to later. It might help to think of it as needing to remove the problem language with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:50, 22 August 2016 (UTC)