User talk:Ebakunin

Welcome, Ebakunin, to BattleTechWiki!

Thank you for your contributions; you seem to be off to a good start. Hopefully you will soon join the army of BattleTech Editors! If you need help formatting the pages visit the manual of style. For general questions go to the Help section or the FAQ. If you can't find your answer there, please ask an Admin. If you have any more questions after that, feel free to ask me directly on my user talk page.

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*******Be Bold*******

You can find me at my user page or talk page for any questions. Happy editing, and we'll see ya 'round.

--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 10:34, 27 July 2008 (CDT)

Images

Thanks so much for adding images of some of the most famous BT characters. If you want to keep helping out with biographies, you may wish to join Project Biographies. --Scaletail 19:48, 30 July 2008 (CDT)

Just wanted to add any encouragement; you've done phenomenal work, both in breadth and scope. Good work. I hope you noticed the attribution on the front page. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:17, 7 August 2008 (CDT)

I have information that I need to put up for Doug Chaffee from February that I haven't gotten too. Let me know if you want to help and I can email it to you. BTW, I liked what you did with the artwork for him. Locis 06:38, 12 November 2008 (PST)

Clan ranks

Hi there! Do not get me wrong, I really appreciate the work you are doing. But I have been wondering if the Clan ranks should not be merged into a single article, possibly into Clan military structure. Frabby 07:05, 4 August 2008 (CDT)

Hello. The idea behind keeping the entries separate is simple ease of use for the viewer. The various military ranks are among the most common links in the wiki. You'll see a mention of Star Colonel Aidan in one article, Star Commander Ranna in another, etc. In my opinion, when a viewer clicks on the rank link they want to quickly see what it means, as opposed to a long, detailed article about the entire Clan military structure. In addition, we might want to put examples into the entry – something like "It took ristar Aidan Pryde xx years to become a Star Colonel, during which he commanded yy warriors and was responsible for planet zz". Including an example is something I'll still ruminating about.

BTW, I always appreciate constructive criticism. Thanks for your interest! --Ebakunin 16:12, 4 August 2008 (CDT)

I love the new clan rank template!! I think there should be one for each of the clans. Very cool!! Locis 06:37, 12 November 2008 (PST)

Blake Documents

Should we be using the "Moratorium" tag for the Blake stuff? I JUST bought it Wednesday and I'm DYING to put stuff up, but I feel like the moratorium should be more like 6 months not 2 months. What do you think? p.s. It's TOTALLY Hallis... Locis 21:39, 28 November 2008 (PST)

You need to contact Scaletail. He's the admin the instituted the policy and he's the one that would need to change it. --Ebakunin 21:50, 28 November 2008 (PST)

Just a general Thank-you

...for the immense amount of good contributions you have made so far. I think a big pat on the back is in order. Very impressive, and of course immensely helpful in bringing this wiki forward. Keep up the excellent work! Frabby 02:53, 30 November 2008 (PST)

WikiProject Military Commands

I created a new WikiProject to encompass all military commands. Since you've done a lot of work in the past with them, please come over and sign up so that we can improve the coverage of all units. --Scaletail 14:18, 14 February 2009 (PST)

Moratorium

On the 3076 article you added information from a recently published source. While you are not required to undo the edit you made or remove the reference, please be aware that this is in violation of the moratorium policy. This policy places a moratorium on using sources that have been published within the last two months, except in special circumstances. Thank you for your contribution to BattleTechWiki, and please keep this policy in mind when editing in the future. --Scaletail 16:53, 23 March 2009 (PDT)

Sorry, this was just me being stupid. I've commented out the information. Working on getting a brain upgrade now. --Ebakunin 19:05, 23 March 2009 (PDT)

Yearline & Graphics

This look great. Seriously, good idea and great job. It really helps to improve the visual experience, provides information and adds a touch of style and consistency that improves the BTW experience. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 11:09, 15 June 2009 (PDT)

Liberator

I took the liberty (no pun intended) of changing your last edit to italics, which is what I presume you had intended (you used double quotes, which are not read by mediawiki the same way as two single quotes). If I presumed wrong, please let me know. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 11:44, 18 June 2009 (PDT)

I thought the BT convention is to put named ships in quotes, while ship classes are put in italics (much like 'Mechs). Am I wrong here? Thanks. --Ebakunin 11:55, 18 June 2009 (PDT)

Let me say that I'm uncertain. If there is a policy or stated convention here, please point me in that direction. However, based on my own interest in things naval (I'm a naval officer), I lean towards italicizing ship names. Scaletail and I generally lean towards the adoption of Wikipedia policies on areas where we haven't yet adopted a similar policy (especially in regards to references and copyediting). I don't have the time just now to find & check their policy, but this article tells me they lean towards italicizing. Quotes just seem to be an odd way of highlighting a ship's name. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 12:02, 18 June 2009 (PDT)

You're absolutely right. I was basing quotes vs. italics on CBL's conventions, which I was mistaken about. I took a look at Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents where the Invincible WarShip is in italics. My bad. Won't happen again. Thanks for pointing out the problem :P --Ebakunin 12:17, 18 June 2009 (PDT)

No, not a problem. You've actually given me another reason to write a Manual of Style for the wiki. This is a good one. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:05, 18 June 2009 (PDT)

Wiki experience

Hey, Ebakunin. It's clear to me that MediaWiki doesn't scare you. What kind of experience do you have with it? --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 12:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Dash or Code

Xoid once tried to explain this to me, but it went over my head. Why do you prefer to use the code –, instead of a dash? --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 03:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

And why didn't nowiki not work here? --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 03:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Usage:

There's three type of dash entities (letter-like symbols), each slightly longer than the previous:

- (standard hyphen)
– (–)
— (—)

In general, the short dash is used for hyphenated words, the long dash ("mdash") for connecting sentence fragments, and the "ndash" for everything else. For example:

• (standard hyphen) "Teaching a pre-teen to drive is a bad idea."
• (–) George Washington, February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799
• (—) "Sarah, no matter what he said—and I know he said a lot—I promise you they were all lies."

Browser interpretation:

Here's where it gets complicated. A "character" is basically a number, letter, or entity the can fit in one letter space. For example, "K" and "Æ" are characters since they take up one space, but "AE" is not. Since there are a lot of characters (©, ¥, ñ, etc.) and a limited number of keys on the keyboard, each character has an HTML character entity reference so the browser knows what to display. It has to be something weird so no one will accidentally type it and get confused, which is why – gives you – and — gives you —.

All the entities I've mentioned are perfectly valid letters/symbols that just don't show up on an American English keyboard. Therefore they are not HTML tags like <div> and <nowiki> won't work on them.

Because they are entities, you can also cut-and-paste them just like any other letter. They're not readily available on my keyboard, though, which is why I type them out the long way. If BTW had a symbol insert list like Wikipedia offers (the one that lets you insert ©, ¥, ñ, etc.) I would use it instead.

That turned out to be a rather long winded response, but I hope it helped :) --Ebakunin 04:52, 7 July 2009 (UTC)