User:Rosameliamartinez

{{User:Aeon1006/Userboxes/User Pirate}}

Ahoy, me hearties! Before I be loaded to the gunwales let me spin you a merry yarn or two o' me sweet trade as a mighty buccanneer thar on board me furner, o' booty o'doubloons so grand no Jolly Roger squadron has e'er e'en layn eyes upon a fortieth share and o' legendary corsairs that now be feastin' with grog on Fiddlers Green. So brin'ye peg leg and ye parrot hither and let's partake some pretty grub until, By the Powers!, we must weigh anchor, hoist the mizzen and part to arms me lads.

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But I do beseech thee, for this lass is none of ye flirt-gills and can go swashbucklin' like any regular gentlemen o' fortune so don't come hither in ye fine ninja breeches you lily-livered landlubbers unless ya care to taste the cold steel of my hook or feel my cat o' nine tails on your mangy cur's anatomy, for I'll lay the black spot on ye swifter than yee can say,"Skuttle me Skippers!". So avast yer gob afore I keelhaul ye an' string yer bones from the crow's nest for I don't know as I recall askin' ye for yer thoughts, ye bilge-drinkin' scurvy scallywags. ARRRRR!

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:

Image:IlDivoBarnstar.png

My first and most beloved contribution to Wikipedia is the article about Il Divo, my favorite operatic pop band, including each of the divos' biographies. I was appalled when I tried to search for them at Wikipedia and I came up with a stub!

I also created the IL DIVO Barnstar, awarded in recognition of an individual's special interest or contributions to Il Divo related articles. It was introduced by me on March 12, 2006. List of users that have received this barnstar: Danielle, Peruvianllama, user 68.39.174.238, Noli, user 200.52.176.142, Monique Wuttunee, AzaToth, Vivaitalia57, Jay, Rellon and myself.Image:Il Divo Star.png

Thanks to AzaToth for creating the Il Divo Ribbon.

Image:Exceptional newcomer.jpg 07:28, 30 November 2005 (UTC)]]

My second contribution to Wikipedia is the article on the Vallenato Legend Festival. This is the most important festival of its genre in the world since vallenato music is native to Colombia. When I first read it, I found it was an awkward stub that had been directly copied from the official spanish website. I'm not a fan of this particular type of music but it's so popular here that it wasn't difficult to come up with something better.

Ahhh, sweet and colorful orange juice...my third minor contribution is also my favorite drink.

I created an article on this fabulous italian piano player. I saw [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqCEhmqsSnY his performance of Liszt's Totentanz] and wow...I mean...wow...he deserved an article at Wikipedia. I can't thank Louise enough for her translations from Dutch for this article.

I created the page on the Latin American musician Armando Manzanero. He is VERY famous in Latin America, a bit of an old timer...maybe that explains why he didn't have a proper page before. I'm really proud of this page as it's a personal milestone for me, it's the first page I've written using proper references and language usage. (Unlike Il Divo's articles where everything seems to be in a mess as I didn't follow many of the guidelines being a newbie editor). I just love how I've been able to work in this page without discussions or vandalism interference. It seems not many English-speaking youngsters are interested in Mr. Manzanero's work, which in this case is a good thing as that usually doesn't mean there will be more contributors to the page but more vandals instead.

That's the main reason why I have ceased to actively contribute to Colombia's article; it's just constantly under attack. Besides, most of the so called "contributors" basically copy-paste any information they find on the web without citing their source and without even caring for the style of the article as a whole or of what previous contributors have written. Thus, information is awkwardly repeated, percentages rarely sum up to 100% and I've even seen some major stupidity like claiming that Colombia has a festival for every day of the year.

===Antonio Ricaurte===

That doesn't mean I won't contribute with anything else that's related to Colombia of course. I created the bio on this romantic martyr of the Colombian Independence War. Antonio Ricaurte, a captain of Bolivar's army who blew himself up in a Spanish stronghold at the San Mateo battle to weaken the enemy. His courageous action gained him immortal fame and is remembered in the last stanzas of the National Anthem, "...in atoms flying "Duty before life!" in flames he wrote!"... "in atoms flying"...now there's a figure of speech for "being blown to smithereens"...

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|Image:Updated DYK query.svg

|On 9 May, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Antonio Ricaurte, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

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Image:Fakebarnstar3.GIFmsc award you The Asparagus Barnstar. Cheers! Dfrg.msc 03:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)]]

I've also worked a bit on changing naming conventions at Wikipedia, particularly this little phrase, "article naming should prefer to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize". I've discussed this at lenght in Talk: Waldemar Matuška and Talk:Mario López. The main reasons why I think it's necessary for Wikipedia to start the process of allowing native spellings in articles and redirecting any English users who search for an article using us-ascii to the article with the native spelling are the following:

• First, an encyclopaedia's purpose is to enlighten about subjects foreign to us, like foreign cultures and how they manifest themselves differently to our own culture, like through the use of a different language. Therefore, not using the native name constitutes a loss of information for all of us.

• Second, it's an issue of respect. By its very own nature, an encyclopaedia values foreign cultures, that's why it's interested in knowing about them (when you don't value something there's no reason to study and research it). Part of having esteem for a foreing culture is to respect its people's native name and not change it because it's difficult for you to pronounce it. The perfect example for this is one of Mr. Mandela's childhood anecdotes on how a teacher at his school changed his name from "Rolihlahla" to "Nelson" in apartheid time in South Africa.

• Third, it creates confussion unnecessarily. For example, wouldn't it be easier if all of us had to call the Deutsch language, people and their country by the same name? How come in English it is "German", in Spanish "Alemán" and in German "Deutsch"? Having to learn all of those variants is just a big waste of time and it makes it difficult for us to communicate with foreigners who as a rule are not (and shouldn't be) familiar with local terms.

• Finally, this does not constitute a "revolution in language", it's standard practice in other languages like Spanish for example (I only use it as an example because it's the only other language I profoundly know about, not because I want the English language to adapt to the Spanish language). Until a generation ago the Spanish language "Hispanised" foreign names so we had for example Benito Espinoza and Pepino el Breve (which was quite akward as "pepino" means "cucumber" in Spanish lol). This has changed since and now native spellings are recognized as desirable spellings, even if the process of adapting all "Hispanised" words is painfully slow and there's still a long, long, long way to go. At the end though, it's inevitable, as we will be forced to be more and more in contact with foreign cultures in the near future.

I was on wikibreak for four long years and my interests have widely varied— one might even say I'm a very different person now. I don't even know whether it's wise for me to become an active wikiuser again. While I give this matter some thought, I've done a bit of translation from the spanish Wikipedia. Also editing a couple of pages of Colombian political figures Gustavo Petro and Antonio Navarro Wolff which apparently have been hijacked by blind supporters.

Image:Michelino DanteAndHisPoem.jpg

I hereby condemn user 82.108.132.146 to burn in the eternal seas of fire of Wiki-Hell for adding external links to more than twenty articles pertaining to famous musical soloists and bands for the sole purpose of advertising sites where ringtones of each of the musical artists' songs were sold. This user is not only a spamvertiser but is also trying to use Wikipedia for fraudulent purposes as these sites claim to be "official", which is untrue. On April 3, 2006, I single-handedly reverted all of this user's "contributions" to a total of twenty-three musical groups' articles including Il Divo, Pink, Oasis, McFly and Westlife.

{{award2|image=WikiDefender Barnstar.png|topic=Defender of the Wiki Barnstar|text=I, The Halo, hereby give you this Defender of the Wiki Barnstar, in recognition of your hard work keeping musical artist's articles free from commercial links.Yours, The Halo (talk) 11:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)}}

{{Award|image= Bstares3a2.png|text= I hereby award Rosa the Esperanza Barnstar for such great work in the Barnstar Brigade! NauticaShades^(talk) 19:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)}}

Hey, feeling stressed out by all the nonsense going on with other wikipedians? After a heated discussion it's best to have a nice cup of tea and a sit down. It's really helpful and relaxing.

You may also join Esperanza and meet some fabulously nice people who will help you unwind.

Adiós, Rosa

Category:WikiProject Music participants