User:Teratornis#Subpages

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Welcome to my user page. I haven't tried to make it fancy. While I have nothing against fancy user pages, I mostly use mine as a scratchpad and a list of links. If you're looking for examples of leading-edge user page design, see: WP:EIW#UserPage. I know a little more about Wikipedia than I did when I wrote some of what is here now, so I am gradually updating the old stuff to reflect my newer understanding.

I spend a big chunk of my Wikipedia time answering questions on the Help desk, trying to help other people with their problems. As of 04:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC), I seem to have had the most edits on the Help desk with: 3006.

As of 08:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC), most of my recent article edits are on the topic of Energy, especially topics relating to Renewable energy, Wind power, Peak oil, and Electricity generation.

= Useful searches =

{{Help desk searches|state=expanded}}

<span id="User sub-pages">Subpages</span>

Image:Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement.svg

These are my user subpages. They are in various stages of "completion" at a given time. Pages that will eventually end up somewhere else (such as essays) will be incomplete while they are here.

= Essays in fairly good shape =

= Essays in appallingly rough shape =

Peruse these at your own risk. You may find some ideas, but probably not presented nicely yet. These are scratchpad pages where I get my POV on.

  • {{FULLPAGENAME}}/Avoid jargon creep - this will be a futile plea against synonym disease, i.e., the overwhelming spontaneous human tendency to invent additional synonyms for canonical jargon terms we already have. (E.g., "mop and bucket" for "administratorship".) Synonym disease generates accidental complexity. (Of course by referring to the same phenomenon as "jargon creep" and "synonym disease" I'm guilty of it. However, "synonym disease" is more precise because there is a constant need to introduce new jargon terms to describe actually new things that the Wikipedia community invents.)

= Notes =

  • {{FULLPAGENAME}}/Mechanical turk - notes about the possibility of creating a human-bot hybrid to efficiently perform repetitive editing tasks that are too difficult for an unaided bot.

= Miscellaneous =

= Sandboxes =

These are pages for testing, usually things like templates, or when I want to see how some wikitext markup works.

= In case I missed any =

{{list subpages|Teratornis|User|caption=}}

New pages I started

The red links are to pages I have not yet started. If any pages I start get deleted, I'll remove them from these lists. I've concentrated much more on editing existing pages than starting new ones. As the lists show, I've started more templates than articles. I especially believe that almost every article on Wikipedia needs at least one navigation template, and many Wikipedia articles have none yet.

= Articles =

The red links are articles I have not started yet, but am thinking about starting. I've kind of leaned toward articles about Wind power, because I have some interest and knowledge about the subject, and because the articles aren't likely to get deleted.

06:28, 23 March 2010 (UTC): I could try the Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Wizard-Introduction. Not that I think I need it, but so I can see how it might look to the new users I advise on the Help desk.

= Redirects =

= Templates =

I started these templates, that is the ones whose links are not red:

  • Search templates:
  • {{Tl|Google custom}} - generates a link to a Google custom search form to search a specific site, or a subdirectory tree on a site.
  • {{Tl|Google help desk}} - derived from {{Tl|Google custom}}, to search just the Help desk and its archive.
  • {{Tl|Google wikipedia}} - derived from {{Tl|Google custom}}, to search just the English Wikipedia.
  • {{Tl|Google scholar}} - generates a link to a Google Scholar search.
  • {{Tl|Google scholar cite}} - generates a link to a [http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~ms609/Wiki/Scholar Google Scholar enhanced with the Wikipedia citation assistant] search.
  • {{Tl|Translate wikipedia}} - not exactly a search template, but a wrapper for {{Tl|Google translation}} which translates an article from a foreign-language Wikipedia to English.
  • {{Tl|Flickr free}} - search for photos on Flickr having a given set of keywords in their descriptions, and a CC-BY (attribution) or CC-BY-SA (attribution and ShareAlike) license making them suitable to upload to Commons using [http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/flinfo.php Flinfo].
  • {{Tl|Search subpages link}} - generates a link to a Wikipedia search on a subpage tree.
  • {{Tl|Search help desk}} - generates a link to a Wikipedia search on the Help desk and its archive pages.
  • Navigation templates based on {{Tl|Navbox}}:
  • {{Tl|Bioenergy}}
  • {{Tl|Electricity generation}}
  • {{Tl|Energy films}} (the deletionists destroyed this one: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 April 26#Template:Energy films)
  • {{Tl|Geothermal power}}
  • {{Tl|Ocean energy}}
  • {{Tl|Peak oil}}
  • {{Tl|Wind power}}
  • {{Tl|Help desk searches}} - a pseudo-navigation template that displays several search links that are useful for answering question on the Help desk (and to help with editing on Wikipedia generally), using {{Tl|Google custom}}.
  • {{Tl|Generating stations in Arizona}} - modeled after the already-existing {{Tl|Generating Stations in Indiana}}
  • {{Tl|Wikipedia template messages}}
  • Various utility templates:
  • {{Tl|Shortcut compact}} - a variation on {{Tl|Shortcut}} that fits on one line.
  • {{Tl|Energy templates}} - to add to the "See also" sections of documentation subpages of :Category:Energy templates.
  • {{Tl|Tmm}} - for making quick links to Wikipedia: The Missing Manual and chapters thereof.
  • {{Tl|All subpages}} - a template to display links to all the subpages of a given page, and their talk pages. But this seems to be unnecessary now that we can just say {{Special:PrefixIndex/pagename}}.

= Categories =

= Project: namespace =

A brief history of my wiki time

{{userboxtop}}

{{User Wikicommons}}

{{User WikiProject Cycling}}

{{User WikiProject Energy}}

{{User WPCincinnati}}

{{User help desk}}

{{User:One/Userboxes/User Peak Oil}}

{{user SUL}}

{{User notwiki}}

{{userboxbottom}}

  • I started editing on Wikipedia on April 28, 2006. Given that wikis have been around since 1995, and I've been using the Internet since the 1980's, I'm rather embarrassed to be so late to the wiki party. I'm still trying to figure out how I could have remained so unaware of wikis for so long, while learning HTML, building Web sites the "conventional" way, and so on. I had seen hints about wikis for some time, but I never quite "got" the idea, until somehow I had my "wikiphany."
  • If it wasn't against the rules to propose a neologism here, I would propose "wikiphany", as a portmanteau of wiki and epiphany, to mean the nascent comprehension of enough of the nature and function of wikis to generate a sudden realization that one is going to do many wonderful, useful, and perhaps even revolutionary things with wikis. As of 20:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC), google:wikiphany finds zero links, suggesting my neologism is novel (although I make no claim that it is). So maybe it's really a protologism, and I'm not supposed to mention it in articles (WP:NEO). So please imagine I did not just write this paragraph.
  • I slowly realized the usefulness of wikis in other contexts, such as at the companies where I work. As with most organizations I have seen, most of what we do is severely under-documented, and people waste time re-inventing things that other people have already figured out. We need more efficient ways for people who discover or create knowledge to share it. Traditional documenting tools such as Word, DocBook, and Help authoring tools are too difficult for casual use by non-specialists, especially while they are concentrating on solving some other problem (ideally, a documenting tool should require the least possible thought, so people can use it to document the other things they are thinking about). At the other extreme, an easy tool like e-mail encourages everyone to contribute, and archiving programs like MHonArc make messages permanently available as Web pages, but an archive of thousands of e-mail messages lacks organization, and may contain outdated information and errors that are hard to correct. MediaWiki appears to fill the gap between traditional documenting tools and e-mail.
  • 04:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC): I made an account on WikiBooks to make a few edits there.
  • 16:41, 27 June 2007 (UTC): lately I seem to have become addicted to answering questions on the Help desk. See my notes.

About my user name

Teratornis is Greek for

"monster bird". Teratorns

were large flying birds related to modern condors

which died out in the Pleistocene. I

picked this user name because

nobody else is likely to use it, even on a large wiki

such as Wikipedia. Other than that, my user name has no significance.

Plan

= Articles relating to [[Computing]] =

I also have interest in computing, both for work and recreation. When I see a way to improve an article about something relating to computing, I take a stab at it. I noticed that Wikipedia seems to have articles that define almost every computing concept and term. Many articles about software and so on seem to require the reader to have an extensive background in computing. I found that simply by hyperlinking every jargon term in such an article to the articles defining them, the article immediately becomes more understandable. Anyone lacking the background to understand the jargon in such an article can simply click a few links and go get it. I have not looked to see whether a WikiProject exists to go through all the computing articles and make sure all their jargon terms have sufficient definitive hyperlinks. If there is no such project, it might be useful to start. 21:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

= Energy =

I'm also interested in energy, specifically topics relating to Renewable energy and Peak oil. See my notes in User:Teratornis/Energy.

Existing articles I have edited

My early edits included:

  • Little Miami Scenic Trail -- needs more content to cover recent additions to the Trail at both the south and north ends. The existing article about the Trail has (as of 21:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)) the somewhat unfortunate title: Little Miami Bike Trail. The vast majority of references to this Trail on the Web, on printed maps, and in brochures from various government agents call it the Little Miami Scenic Trail. For example:
  • [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22little+miami+bike+trail%22&btnG=Google+Search Results 1 - 30 of about 333 for "little miami bike trail". (0.20 seconds)]
  • [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22little+miami+scenic+trail%22&btnG=Google+Search Results 1 - 30 of about 9,880 for "little miami scenic trail". (0.19 seconds)]

I made an article: Little Miami Scenic Trail, initially as a redirect to Little Miami Bike Trail. However, I suggest eventually moving the article content to Little Miami Scenic Trail and making Little Miami Bike Trail a redirect to it. I solicit comments from anyone with interest.

Some not-so-recent editing

  • 04:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC): Web mapping had a high ratio of jargon to links when I first read it. It's a survey article, so it briefly mentions many jargon terms which have Wikipedia articles. I'm adding links on as many jargon terms as I can find defining articles for.

Aphorisms

These are some aphorisms I have written. Generally they will suck. I don't know whether I am the

first to say any of them. I may never have had a truly original thought, for

all I know. It's a big world.

  • On Wikipedia's rules:
  • Whenever someone cites a rule to justify doing anything to any article, any number of other articles are simultaneously violating that rule.

To-do: add more as I think of them.

MediaWiki training videos

An administrator of a public wiki recorded some MediaWiki training videos,

to help people learn how to edit on his wiki:

  • http://www.learnprogramming.tv/wiki/index.php?title=LearnProgramming:How_to_edit_our_wiki

Most of the material in the videos applies to any MediaWiki site, including

{{SITENAME}}. The videos could be better, but they are not bad, and I

recommend them for wiki beginners as an easy way to get a quick overview

of how to edit on {{SITENAME}}.

= Hi-resolution .avi files =

You may prefer to download the video files to view directly rather

than from the wiki page in the previous section.

Here are direct links:

  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/001-intro.avi 001-intro.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi 002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi ]
    • Warning: the above video shows an example page on Wikipedia which contains a potentially offensive word in its title.

  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi 003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi 004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi 005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/006-wikitext-markup.avi 006-wikitext-markup.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/007-wikitext-markup.avi 007-wikitext-markup.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/008-wikitext-markup.avi 008-wikitext-markup.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi 009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/010-wikitext-markup-links.avi 010-wikitext-markup-links.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/011-wikitext-markup-links.avi 011-wikitext-markup-links.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi 012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi ]
  • [ftp://ia331303.us.archive.org/0/items/LearnProgramming.tv-MediaWiki/013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi 013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi ]

The above videos use the x264 codec (a

lossless codec which

reproduces screen shots clearly); to view the videos,

you may need to install one of these video players:

If you want to watch all the videos sequentially, you can download them to a

directory on your computer (for example, in Microsoft Windows: C:\JUNK), and make

a playlist file for VLC media player (for example,

C:\JUNK\mediawiki_video.m3u). In the playlist file, edit a

list of your video files in the order you want them to play:

C:\junk\001-intro.avi

C:\junk\002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi

C:\junk\003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi

C:\junk\004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi

C:\junk\005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi

C:\junk\006-wikitext-markup.avi

C:\junk\007-wikitext-markup.avi

C:\junk\008-wikitext-markup.avi

C:\junk\009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi

C:\junk\010-wikitext-markup-links.avi

C:\junk\011-wikitext-markup-links.avi

C:\junk\012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi

C:\junk\013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi

and then you can open your playlist file in VLC media player via the usual

File | Open... command.

= Low-resolution .mov files =

If you don't want to install VLC media player,

you can download lower-resolution (but still fairly legible) versions

of the videos in QuickTime format from Revver:

  • http://one.revver.com/find/user/brianwill
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91522.mov — part 1 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91446.mov — part 2 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91447.mov — part 3 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91448.mov — part 4 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91521.mov — part 5 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91450.mov — part 6 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91451.mov — part 7 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91452.mov — part 8 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91453.mov — part 9 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91454.mov — part 10 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91455.mov — part 11 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91456.mov — part 12 of 13
  • http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91445.mov — part 13 of 13

WikiProjects I have joined

{{WikiProject Cycling user}}

{{userpage}}

User pages on other wikis

  • Meta (wikiindex:Wikimedia Meta-Wiki) is auxiliary to all

    Wikimedia Foundation projects.

    My contributions to Meta include edits to the MediaWiki manuals

    and troubleshooting guides. I read the manuals to

    solve problems with {{SITENAME}}, and when I see a way to improve

    the manuals, I do.

  • [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki.org] (wikiindex:MediaWiki) is the

    official site for the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia

    (and thousands of other wikis).

    My contributions to MediaWiki.org include some edits I made originally

    on Meta to pages that later moved to MediaWiki.org -

    when those pages moved, my edits moved along with them. Thus my

    contributions on MediaWiki.org

    contained a number of edits before I had actually registered my username

    there (that seemed a bit strange until I understood what had happened).

    • mw:User:Teratornis

      contributions

    • First edit date: September 7, 2006 (edits that copied over from Meta)
    • Date of the first edit I actually made on MediaWiki.org: September 18, 2007

  • Commons - I've been categorizing photos of wind turbines by country, manufacturer, etc.
  • Wikibooks (wikiindex:Wikibooks (English)) is a wiki for creating

    books. It is a Wikimedia Foundation

    project. As of 15:07, 21 November 2006 (EST), I have made few edits on Wikibooks. However, it

    might be a good place to write at length about some computing topics.

  • Wikiquote (wikiindex:Wikiquote) is a wiki for publishing

    a vast reference of quotations

    from prominent people, books and proverbs, and to give details about them.

  • OpenStreetMap (wikiindex:OpenStreetMap) is a collaborative project to create

    free maps using data from portable GPS

    devices. I have some recreational interest in maps. I haven't actually

    done any map-making for OpenStreetMap as of 18:42, 20 November 2006 (EST), but I did some edits on

    the OpenStreetMap wiki, to categorize pages and so on.

    • [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/User:Teratornis user page] —

      [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Special:Contributions/Teratornis contributions]

    • First edit date: July 1, 2006

  • [http://www.bicyclingwiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page Bicycling wiki] (wikiindex:BicyclingWiki)

    is a small wiki about bicycling.

    • [http://www.bicyclingwiki.com/index.php?title=User:Teratornis user page] —

      [http://www.bicyclingwiki.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Teratornis contributions]

    • First edit date: July 20, 2006
    • 19:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC): the site seems to be defunct now.

  • [http://www.rationalwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page RationalWiki] (wikiindex:RationalWiki)

    is a wiki about science, rationality, atheism, and is pretty much the opposite of Conservapedia.

    • [http://www.rationalwiki.com/wiki/User:Teratornis user page] —

      [http://www.rationalwiki.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/Teratornis contributions]

    • First edit date: October 11, 2007

  • Appropedia (wikiindex:Appropedia)

    is a wiki about sustainable development.

You can learn more about wiki editing by joining a wiki in some area

of your interest. Thousands of public wikis exist, so you can probably

find some you like. See for example: