User talk:Bruce W Sims

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Korean swordsmanship, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Wakou (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Hmmm.... thats the second time I did that. I was wanting to reference the article on the "Wakou". Is the article I referenced not an actual article? Help? --Bruce W Sims (talk) 15

49, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I get many similar messages from bots, and I think I finally figured out what this one is talking about:

You improved some article by adding square brackets around the word "Wakou".

But this bot (and computers in general) are pretty dumb: if you click on the link Wakou, you can see it's not a normal article -- it's is a disambiguation page listing many more-or-less unrelated things that happen to be spelled more-or-less the same. The computer isn't smart enough to figure out which one you meant.

Humans, on the other hand, spell the same thing many different ways -- potatoe, potato, etc.). I like to think it is because we are creative and handle ambiguity well, although some argue that it is because we're no good at spelling :-).

To fix this, go to the article it mentioned,

and change "Wakou" to "Wokou" (leaving the square brackets around it).

Thank you again for improving Wikipedia. --DavidCary (talk) 03:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, David. As you might probably guess, the single biggest stumbling-block for me is the matter of foreign language and terms. This is especially problematic for those cultures as in the case of Korea where the conversion of spoken and written language for them (IE Hanja; Hangul) has gone through as many as 6 revisions; each with its upside and downside. I have been a great fan of M-R romanization for years despite the need for diacritical markings. Quite recently there has been yet another romanization system that is quite popular in Korea, primarily because it is of their own construction. For we English-speaking editors, consistently using the same system as Korean editors can be rather challenging. For instance, a current article may use the single latest romanization policy, but earlier resources may be in M-R and before that something else again. I had thought that one way of dealing with this would be to put the Hangul behind a given word, but it would be more productive to have Korean editors weigh-in on this. Thoughts? --Bruce W Sims (talk) 12:41, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello, thank you so much for your improvements to the Korea under Japanese rule article. You have added a lot of useful information and straightened out the article. But I notice your additions have a bit of looseness in style. Don't forget to use citations, because every fact seems to be disputed by someone these days and it can make work for other people to go hunting down the sources you used. Also, don't CAPITALIZE foreign words or names. It's like SHOUTING!

Finally, keep paragraphs reasonably short, and focus them on specific topics, so that they can be skimmed by readers in a hurry. Shii (tock) 02:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so very very much. I'm very new to this editing and to learning the "WIKI Way" of doing things. Your comments really help. I am working on about 5 articles that are somewhat separate and yet related and have started to go back and review the very things you mentioned. Concerning the inclusion of non-English terms---typically Korean, Chinese or Japanese language ---I have tried a couple of things. One was the capitalization you mentioned, while another was to bold and/or italicize, put them in parentheses or simply include the term and put a literal translation in parentheses immediately after. I've looked at other articles and can't find a consistent approach and have not found any guidance in Help area. I could use some help there.

Concerning the "looseness" you are absolutely right. The APA (American Psychological Assn) approach would have me using footnotes on just about every declarative sentence. OTOH I have seen some articles with practically no citations at all. Right now I am working to make sure that I identify as many nouns as I can with double brackets (IE links to other articles) and to generally support my positions with published resources. (One small point: Since this is an English Language WIKI, what is the policy on citing Korean or German language sources if people are suppose to be able to run those resources down for themselves??) I guess I am trusting that the "powers-that-be" will catch me up and let me know where I am not being specific enough with one of those nifty "citation needed" (cn) flags. Am I expecting too much oversight? Help? Thoughts? Best Wishes. --Bruce W Sims (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Bruce, the standard for foreign words here is italicizing, and having a translation in brackets also works. More and more articles are getting citations in every sentence-- I recently had to add a citation to the middle of a sentence for an editor who couldn't find the footnote at the end of the same sentence, but we shouldn't go that far. It is okay to cite foreign language sources if that's what you are using. Shii (tock) 21:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Many Thanks! Italics it is! And just because I'm feeling generous....I'll throw in that literal translation in parentheses behind - fer free!! I don't see me putting a citation in the middle of the sentence.... but I'll probably revisit the idea of using citations on the more emotionally charged declaration, if you know what I mean. BTW: I notice on one or two of the articles I am working on a number of banners for various Korean groups. Do you know anything about these? There seems to be some sort of grading system and a number of discussion groups. Sounds like fun!! Best Wishes,--Bruce W Sims (talk) 22:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, those are WikiProjects... but I don't like to get involved with them, there are too many articles that need fixing these days! Cheers and thanks for your work! Shii (tock) 22:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

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