Gadget850

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BSA article improvements October 2005 January 2006 March 2006

deletions

Ed, when you have something not used anymore, like an empty cat, I've found you get about a one day turnaround if you use Deletebecause instead of the other method. Randy, Rlevse 17:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It appears you like the archive thing. Took me a bit to figure it out. --Gadget850 ( Ed)

==Welcome to VandalProof== Thanks for your interest in VandalProof! You've been added to the list of authorized users, and I will do my best to notify you once a download becomes available. AmiDaniel (Talk) 17:21, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

A Download Is Now Available

I just wanted to let you know that a download of VandalProof has recently been made available. AmiDaniel (Talk) 09:49, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for the tips on the pages/deletions Ed from William

Thanks for adding a signature, I'm still learning how to do all that.

User:The Frog

Tools

Ed: Where is that list of tools you once showed me? I can't find them now. Randy, Rlevse 14:29, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

From my user page just click on Wikipedia links at the top. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:20, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Tks. I've linked to it from my toolbox page. See my new user, talk, etc pages. I stole the idea from Naha. It really helps organize your stuff. Check out About me for all the places I've been too. Rlevse 21:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

VandalProof 1.1 is Now Available For Download

Happy Easter to all of you, and I hope that this version may fix your current problems and perhaps provide you with a few useful new tools. You can download version 1.1 at User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof. Let me warn you, however, to please be extremely careful when using the new Rollback All Contributions feature, as, aside from the excessive server lag it would cause if everyone began using it at once, it could seriously aggitate several editors to have their contributions reverted. If you would like to experiment with it, though, I'd be more than happy to use my many sockpuppets to create some "vandalism" for you to revert. If you have any problems downloading, installing, or otherwise, please tell me about them at User:AmiDaniel/VP/Bugs and I will do my best to help you. Thanks. AmiDaniel (Talk) 06:45, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Ed: I was never happy with the manual way to revert those scumbag vandals and only thought admins/vandal patrollers could revert using a program (not sure why I thought that). Then I saw you used VandalProof and registered for it and just installed the new version. I love it! I haven't rv'd any vandal yet using it, but so far I'm impressed. I added a bit on using the My Watchlist function (prob use it more than "recent changes") to the help page. Pls let me know of any tips you discover. Rlevse 12:18, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Scouting article work

If you are getting this, it is because you do or did work on Scouting articles (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Scouting#Participants_and_primary_areas_of_interest).

As the Scouting WikiProject has been formed since early January 2006, we've had many great improvements made in this area of Wiki and I want to personally thank everyone for their help. We don't always agree on things, but we keep moving forward. YIS, Rlevse 22:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC) EXTRA KUDOS FOR YOU ED!

VandalProof 1.2 Now Available

After a lenghty, but much-needed Wikibreak, I'm happy to announce that version 1.2 of VandalProof is now available for download! Beyond fixing some of the most obnoxious bugs, like the persistent crash on start-up that many have experienced, version 1.2 also offers a wide variety of new features, including a stub-sorter, a global user whitelist and blacklist, navigational controls, and greater customization. You can find a full list of the new features here. While I believe this release to be a significant improvement over the last, it's nonetheless nowhere near the end of the line for VandalProof. Thanks to Rob Church, I now have an account on test.wikipedia.org with SysOp rights and have already been hard at work incorporating administrative tools into VandalProof, which I plan to make available in the near future. An example of one such SysOp tool that I'm working on incorporating is my simple history merge tool, which simplifies the process of performing history merges from one article into another. Anyway, if you haven't already, I'd encourage you to download and install version 1.2 and take it out for a test-drive. As always, your suggestions for improvement are always appreciated, and I hope that you will find this new version useful. Happy editing! --AmiDaniel (talk) 02:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Page loading

A bunch of Wiki pages won't load right now, inlcuding the Eagle article. Do you know what's wrong?Rlevse 15:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

WP has been broken for a bit. I was just now able to pull up my talk page. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Keeler

The Keeler entry his my watchlist on the Eagle and DESA lists. Since I can easily verify DESA guys, I did. See the Eagle list talk page. Rlevse 20:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Richards Miller

Do you know enough about him to write an article? Doesn't he live near you? He's the only one on our DESA list without an article. YIS, Randy, Rlevse 10:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking on that- I have enough to start a stub. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 11:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

OK: stub started. Woof! --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

New Webe article

Ed: See this...Portal_talk:Scouting#Webelos. The guy was obviously trying to be helpful. I'll support whateve you want to do with this stub. My suggestion would be to merge it into the main Cub article (if there's anything to merge) and afd the stub. Let me know. Rlevse 10:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I saw it. I've been mulling it over. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 10:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Eagle Scout Peer Review

Ed and Wim: I'm going to list the Eagle Scout article for a formal peer review in a few moments in the hope in about 2 weeks to list it as a FAC. Based on my experience with other FACs and one of my own successful FAs, I think there are two things people may object to: a) is the lead long enough? and b) are there too many lists? Please think these issues over. Thanks for all the help, Randy. YIS, Rlevse 11:46, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I just don't like the lead-in. The first paragraph needs work as well. I'll leave some comments on the talk page. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Right now I think the article is almost ready for FAC. But there's one thing I know will get pinged: the lead in. While there is not set length, many reviewers will feel this one is too short. The requirement, Wikipedia:What_is_a_featured_article?, says "a concise lead section that summarizes the entire topic and prepares the reader for the higher level of detail in the subsequent sections;". Do you have suggestions to make it fit this better? Rlevse 14:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Large scale merging

Please try to avoid large scale merges w/o discussion. I have restored the BSA rank articles... --Cat out 19:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge tags were placed on each article on 16 Mar 2006. No objections were made on any of the individual articles, thus the merge was made 7 days later on 23 Mar. Discussion did take place, specifically on the Scouting portal and at Talk:Boy Scouts (Boy Scouts of America)/Archive 1. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC) And at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/RulesStandards. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow- you've been busy today! --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Not quite. My busy days have several hundered edits per day.

I created all of those articles merged. Since my creation they were somewhat expanded (I was couting on someones eagle project covering the topic).

The 7 day rule doesn't mean anything to me as I have thousands of articles on my watchlist. I think it wouldn't have hurt to inform me.

I feel the individual rank articles have a potential to expand given time each rank has a history after all (see eagle article). A merge is unnecesary.

--Cat out 20:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The discussion you talk about is between two users, one being you. That is not exactly concensus... --Cat out 20:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

CC:Your one man reversion campaign is even less of a consensus and avails no one of any opportunity whatsoever if you'd watched the articles closer. Rlevse 20:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Also at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/RulesStandards. Several of these talk pages have been archived now. I really wish you had joined up at the Scouting Portal and discussed this. From my point of view, it appears that you are accusing me of doing something without consensus or reason. And in turn, there is the appearance that you are doing a lot of reverts without consensus. You created those articles in Aug 2005 and have not touched them since. It appears that you only became aware of this when Rlevese alerted you to the change in the Eagle userbox. In the past few months, we have gotten a Project together and created standards. I can't answer for why you haven't been aware of this, but the reverts and edits of today aren't helpful. You obviously saw the merge tags when you reverted the articles since you then edited them out. I really don't know what to make of this, but it's neither friendly or courteous. Ah well, I have Scouting to do tonight- enough for today. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 21:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• While you were gone...

The Scouting WikiProject started some months back. Everyone who had been active in editing Scouting articles at the time was invited to join, and Rlevese was selected as the co-ordinator. Since then, we have been on an active campaign to standardize and improve the Scouting articles. We feel that every article should have the potentiol to become a Good Article, and the best should be pushed to become Feature Articles. Early on, we worked on the seperate ranks, and I initially campaigned to keep them separate. The consensus that I eventually joined was to merge them. We looked at the rank articles and decided that as they were, they did not stand alone, except for Eagle Scout (and possibly Webelos- that's in discussion now). If you will look, you will see that we split the BSA article into Boy Scouts of America and Boy Scouts (Boy Scouts of America), thus creating a separate article for the troop level program. Once we did this, the ranks fit neatly into that article. One of the decisions we made is to NOT list all the requirements for a rank or award, but let the reference do the work, with an overview. We still have a lot of work to do, but there is a logical framework in place. We have to remember that we are writing this for non-Scouts, or for Scouts from other programs. BSA Scouts aren't going to be using this as an in-depth reference.

I really feel that a merge notice for 7 days is quite reasonable. It's been well over two months since the merge tags were added, so I'm really not sure where you are going with that. There was quite a bit of discussion that is now rather scattered since pages were split and talk pages were archived. I also don't get the Eagle project reference: you were expecting a Scout to take this on? Even after 30 years at this, I've learned a lot of new things about the program in the last six months.

So- instead of jumping to a conclusion without checking to see how this is put together, how about a presumption of good faith? The folks in the Scouting WikiProject have been working as a team here, with people coming and going- all are welcome. The articles you created were a good start, and parts of them do remain, but they aren't YOUR articles, nor are they mine.

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:02, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

BTW: All of the images in the rank articles, such as Image:BSA Star Scout.gif were retagged around tha same time. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

In the spirit of scounting...

I am sorry I caused stess on you guys... As inexcusable my action is, I apologise. Ok, let's talk about it as I feel both of us have calmed down from the unpleasant encounter we had. I will take the liberty on explaining my actions.

I believe every scount rank has the potential in growing into a complete article. If you take a look at the history section on Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America), you'll see the history of the insignia alone has enough information to prompt an individual article. Also, each rank insignia has a meaning of its own such as the loop visible on second class, first class, etc.

In my view merging all of the ranks into one article limits the potential and reduces them to being 'meanagless scout ranks'.

--Cat out 17:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I offer my talk page as a single point for this discussion. Rlevse 17:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick Hello...

From another old Pershing guy. Bravo Battery, 1/81st FA 1983/85. Dipics 14:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the Military history WikiProject!

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Image at Template:Infobox WorldScouting

I'm not sure of the purpose of this infobox, but you might want to switch the image to "Scoutsgreengoldnoscroll.png". --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Done, Ed, and what I intend to do (though it doesn't yet look right) can be seen at Afghan Scout Association. Chris 01:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Infoboxes don't work for everything, but I'm curious to see how it goes. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:00, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Military history WikiProject Newsletter - Issue IV - June 2006

The June 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. Kirill Lokshin 05:55, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

In the scouting's interest, would you care to respond to FAC for Baden-Powell House

Hi Ed, as an active member of the Scouting wikiproject, would you care to respond to the wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Baden-Powell House. Any comment, either supportive or suggestions for improvement and similar feedback will be appreciated. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 16:10, 1 July 2006 (UTC).

Venturing Uniform

There is some discussion of the appropriateness for a Venturing crew to choose the khaki shirts (as is commonly done in our neck of the woods) on the Uniform talk page. I still haven't had a chance to ask knowledgeable scouters about the "official" policy on this. Hopefully, I will have a chance in the next couple weeks. Good idea to keep the {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) in the articles. --NThurston 17:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Main Page

I put up the Eagle article for the main page on 21 Aug (94th anniv of Eldred's BOR). The write up at: Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests#Eagle_Scout_.28Boy_Scouts_of_America.29 needs to be what is shown on the main page, if it makes it there. I you would like a chance to wordsmith it. Rlevse 12:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Eldred

I know you're working on the Eldred article, but one of the last few edits leaves a gigantic white spaced (most of a screen, on IE at least) and only two lines of intro. Pls check it out. Rlevse 14:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Already fixed. I didn't close the ref tag properly, so the following text got stuck in the reference section. --Gadget850 ( Ed)

na. problem still there, there's a footnote alone in upper left corner and Eldred's pic has no text beside it at all and the lead is still only two lines long. I just looked. Send an email to fname.lname@je.jfcom.mil and I'll send a screenshot. I can't recall your email. Rlevse 15:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Now the display is ok, but the lead is only 2 lines long. I think it should be nearer to the length it was before. Rlevse 15:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks like you can't put cites into image captions. Not a big problem, as the images really don't need a ref. The lead is two lines at the moment- it does need work, but I thought some of the stuff didn't belong in the lead. I'm going to add some comments in the text so I can remember where I was. I'm feeling rather crappy at the moment and might just go home early (this miight also explain a few dumb mistakes I made in editing. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

History compare

Do you know why the comparing of verisions button doesn't appear on any article for the last hour or so? Seems a system wide wiki problem. Rlevse 15:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Bronze Honor Medal

Eldred's medal is Bronze Honor Medal, which is what the system was back then from what I understand and that's what his refs refer to it as. Nice work today.Rlevse 18:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this is probably as good as it gets. It's a bit shorter than it was, but I chopped out the section on the formation of Troop 1, as it's really not releveant.

You know what's weird: I'm re-reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Two recurring elements are Arthur Eld (a sort of King Arthur figure) and a red rose (sort of a Holy Grail analog). --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

J.E.West

Could you post the information about where the grave is located? --evrik 22:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

• Found it buried in the photo section! --Gadget850 ( Ed) 00:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I just copied that comment to the talk page. --evrik 03:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:WBFAN

I've added us at Wikipedia:Featured_articles_nominated_in_2006#Nominated_in_January_2006 so we'll show up at WP:WBFAN.Rlevse 14:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

January? It was nominated on 18 June and made FA on 23 June. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC) OOPS, mine was Jan. I'll fix.Rlevse 14:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Kinda figured that :-) --Gadget850 ( Ed)

Commissioner Service

How's that for paraphrasing from the Commissioner Fieldbook for Unit Service :-) ? CQJ 21:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Military history WikiProject Newsletter - Issue V - July 2006

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Gulf War name change

Not to say a separate article titled Liberation of Kuwait would not be interesting. I'm sure a lot of interesting facts and views would come up.

History BSA

Are you going to link BSA and Boy Scouts (BSA) to the history article? Rlevse 13:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes: see the series box I just added to the BSA article. --Gadget850 ( Ed)

Aha, I like the box and that it's to the right of the TOC, it may be good to do that for all the articles in the box. Nice work. Rlevse 13:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to make this a template. What else do we want in the series box?

The basic programs are there. Perhaps Eagle Scout, esp since it's an FA. I'm not sure about putting Exploring in, I think if it's linked from one of the articles in the template, that'd be okay.Rlevse 14:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

User:NThurston did a lot of cool updates to the template. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

We should probably add a few more articles to the infobox template, especially those that are exclusively BSA-oriented. Let me know what ideas you have. --NThurston 16:34, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

If you don't want to put in the Eagle Scout article, how about Advancement and recognition in the Boy Scouts of America? It's at least as important, if not more so, than history. Rlevse 16:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

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Maintained

I know you use the maintained tag some. Just a friendly suggestion that you may want to put it on the Boy Scouts of America, Boy Scouts (BSA), and History of... articles. I made a list of the ones I've put it on at User:Rlevse/maintained so I can track them. I collect MBs (have over 1100 of them), that's why 3 of them are MB articles-;) Rlevse 01:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

Not a problem, my good Scouting buddy, you more than deserve it. BTW, when you are ready to put the two BSA articles up for FA, let me know. The history has potential too, but I think it's a tad behind the other two.Rlevse 11:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Life has been busy lately, so I've been sluoghing off here a bit. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Gilwell photo

I did a lot on Gilwell Park today. I've having a very rough time finding a good photo for it, especially free of copyrights. Do you know of some? If you have input on the article, let me know. It was a stub, now start class, not far from B-class. Rlevse 18:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I finally found some on flickr and they're all public. But if you come across better ones, let me know.Rlevse 11:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, they're not public after all, but I did contact the person who took them.Rlevse 13:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't have anything. I know someone who did go to Gilwell sometime ago, but I seem to recall that it was a rainy day and nothing was going on. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Tangerine Dream

Thanks for your recent work at their related articles. They are my favourite band, but I am not working much on them becouse I am mostly an "advanced expert" of Pink Floyd. Should anyone be willing to plan to delete articles such as the Tangerine Tree, please contact me immediately, becouse I have found a remarkable example that shows that artists are not always against (any kind of) bootlegs.--Doktor Who 19:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

As noted in the article, TD has sanctioned the TT releases on a non-profit basis, so I think there should not ba any issues. I do welcome your input on the look and feel of the article. I know it's not as visual as the PF articles, but the sheer number of graphics would be overwhelming. I think I'm going to include sample images for each era. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

The Keep (novel)

Thanks for the headsup about the article. Unfortunately, the text reads like marketing copy and is verbatim from Wilson's own website — not a single word changed. I've posted a copyvio banner. It's not likely I'll get a chance to re-read or research the book anytime soon, so you might want to take a crack at a new article. Canonblack 11:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah- I really hadn't read the article as yet. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC) BTW- All you really have to do on a copyvio is cut the offending text. If no one fixes it in the next week or so, the article gets deleted. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Poland (album)

The CSD tag was a troll. Tyrenius 20:47, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I figured as much, but gotta go with the flow. Looks like User:63.23.13.114 has been busy today. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 21:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Scout Commissioner

Thought you may be interested in this article, noticed you hadn't edited it.Rlevse 03:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

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