Contents 1 Adminship 2 Aloha and hello 3 Your RFA 4 Quotations in cite templates 5 Youse RFA 6 Your RfA 7 copy editor needed for Kirkcaldy article 8 Congratulations 9 Holm 10 Your recent RfA 11 hello

Adminship

Hey there. I know I haven't corresponded with you on your admin coaching page in about a month, but what do you think about running for RfA in the next few days/weeks? I think you're ready. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 12:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'll create and write my nomination statement at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ben MacDui. If you were offered to be nominated by anyone else in the past, you can ask them if they would like to nominate you now. After that, you can answer the questions and transclude the RfA at WP:RFA. Be sure to answer the questions thoroughly and make sure you have a thorough understanding of administrator-related policies. See WP:ADMINGUIDE, WP:PREP, and WP:GRFA. I'll also be emailing you shortly, so check your inbox. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 13:31, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I have had such offers in the past, but I trust the individuals won't be offended if you simply proceed as suggested above. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 15:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Ignore what I said in the e-mail. I've put up the nomination. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 17:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Now live - pls let me know if you see any obvious glitches. Many thanks. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 19:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good. Best of luck! Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 19:31, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Aloha and hello

I was wondering if you were "C Henderson" as noted(?) here: Image:Kiwi Crag on Rubha Fiola.JPG. You have listed the image as a self created image (released under the GFDL), but stated that C Henderson "equaled" the author. If there is some sort of misunderstanding, please let me know. Mahalo and thank you. --Ali'i 20:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Apologies - this is a little unclear. I am not C Henderson, who is a friend and offered the use of the image. I will arrange for them to send a 'permissions' email to the wikimedia.org, (unless you have a different suggestion). Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 20:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Please do. That should be sufficient. You can find more at Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission#Declaration of consent for all enquiries (including the type of email your friend should send and where). Thanks! --Ali'i 20:48, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

This has now been requested. I will let you know when I have confirmation that the declaration has been emailed to Permissions. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 18:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Good luck on your request for adminship. --Ali'i 21:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow... that seems like so long ago. Thanks for being on top of things! Mahalo. --Ali'i 17:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Your RFA

Best of luck for your RFA -- TinuCherian ^(Chat?) - 10:02, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for a detailed and thoughtful answer to my question in your RfA. I am sorry that my question turned out to be more complicated that I myself anticipated. My own reading of SDC is that speedily deleting a user page would not be warranted in those circumstances. (If a copyvio article is blanked, it might still sometimes be appropriate to speedily delete it, e.g. if there was no salvageable non-copyvio content. In the case of a userpage, if the user blanks the page and removes the copyvio material, the immediate problem is resolved, it is clear that the user is trying to solve the problem and it is likely that the user will put some other content on their userpage later.) However, I am quite impressed with the detailed, well-argued and thoughtful nature of your answer. That is exactly what I would like to see in an admin: someone who will, on one hand, be able to plot a reasoned course of action in dealing with a complicated situation and will not freeze out and, on the other hand, will not make rush judgements or decisions. I have added my vote to the support section and wish you the best of luck with your RfA (which I am sure will succeed) and with being an admin. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 18:22, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks to you both. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 18:26, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just picked up on your RFA, 69/1 looks promising. If you do the birds of Scotland bit (and you're on the way with the fauna article), let me know if there's anything I can help with. jimfbleak (talk) 12:37, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Will do. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 12:58, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Quotations in cite templates

Hi MacDui, I see your RfA is going well - congrats. The {{cite web}} and {{cite news}} and probably other templates now put quotation marks around titles automatically. I removed the quotes in Larrys Creek here, more to do. Thought you might want to know, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:11, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I know Tony was in favor of abolishing the wikilinked dates as he is against too many links in articles and the links were used just to diplay the dates consistently (and by user preferences). It is OK to either link all dates OR link no dates. If all dates are linked, the dates should still be consistently formatted. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Full_date_formatting. I have an article with all dates linked at FAC now and no one has even mentioned it. Take care, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I spoke too soon - Tony himself delinked all of the dates for the article I currently have in FAC (then supported it!). See diff. Off to answer his points and another's too, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Youse RFA

Congratulations, I'm pleased to let you know that I've closed your RfA as successful, and you're now an administrator! May I suggest you visit the Wikipedia:New admin school to get a few ideas on the best way to start using your shiny new buttons? If in doubt, feel free to give me a shout! Well done and all the best, The Rambling Man (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Congrats! Consider taking a look at {{admin dashboard}}, it should help you settle into your new role and give you plenty of things to do with your new (shiny) buttons. –xeno (talk) 19:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations MacDui on a nearly unanimous RfA! I wish you the best of luck as an administrator, and feel free to contact me whenever you have a problem or need consultation. Regards, Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 19:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Echoing the above, congratulations, and My apologies for not making it to your RFA - I would have Strong Supported as well. Also, on an unrelated note - we have an admin dashboard? Why does no one tell me these things? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, congratulations on your successful RfA and good luck! Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 19:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I missed your RFA - you would've had my full support. Congratulations on the new buttons! --Jza84 |  Talk  20:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks folks. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 20:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that I missed your RfA, but congratulations on your success. Warofdreams talk 22:46, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Best o' luck! Bearian (talk) 00:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations! Let me know if I can ever be of help - I did find the Admin school exercises to be useful practice. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations,Ben MacDui on your successful RFA. Have fun the 'power buttons' a.k.a the mop. You may occasionally delete the main page... :) Just Kidding... Best wishes -- Tinu Cherian - 04:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh no, Don't delete the main page! UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations and all the best! --Bhadani (talk) 16:57, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Your RfA

Congratulations on your successful RfA. You seemed like an outstandingly qualified candidate, and I believe that you will be a top-notch admin. Cosmic Latte (talk) 14:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Good luck with the buttons fae a fellow Scotsman ;) weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 15:59, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Congrats! Ecoleetage (talk) 20:24, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Many, many congrats! All the best, Lradrama 21:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The admins' T-shirt.

Congratulations on your successful RfA! Do everything you're supposed to and nothing you're not! :) Make sure to check out the new admin school. Good luck and feel free to ask me if you have any questions. GlassCobra 16:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I send my belated congratulations as well. I've been meaning to write to say that although LoCE has collapsed, I haven't (yet). If you should ever desire a bit of copyediting, just send me a note. I really appreciated your help with Basin, Montana, especially the question about its history before 1850. That question led to improvements not only on the Basin article but on several others I've worked on. Finetooth (talk) 17:21, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note Ben, congratulations! Use the mop well! Steven Walling (talk) ^{formerly VanTucky} 18:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Cheers for the note, and best wishes in your admin work. ;) Congratulations - Ncmvocalist (talk) 19:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem, congratulations on the success! -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 19:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

A well deserved success. Very best of luck, not that you'll need it. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:14, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Congrats :D I'm sure you'll be a wonderful admin! NuclearWarfare (talk) 19:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It was my pleasure, and congratulations! Jayjg ^(talk) 21:49, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Well done Ben! Great work! Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:33, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

copy editor needed for Kirkcaldy article

i recently undertook a huge revamp of the Kirkcaldy article, but it needs a lot of help with copy editing since my own wording has caused a bit of concern from the use of sources. are you able to help with this, MacDui! link is provided below:

Main article: Kirkcaldy

Kilnburn (talk) 21:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be happy to help although I am a bit stretched at present. If I haven't had a look in say a week give me a shout. Ben MacDui 21:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

just me, here to remind you to do some copyediting work if you can on the Kirkcaldy article.as recent as yesterday, i put the article under a peer review (although i have still to get feedback) one user has advised me on areas of weakness which include: to shorten the introd; cutting down the number of sections (i knew this would be a problem, maybe you could help) and getting someone if you can to give the article an overall check across all sections. although i'm very pleased with my work, i do think a certain weakness lies in the last paragraph of Growth and Development starting: "During the 20th century" which could be better addressed, i basically summed up several points into one short paragraph. if you can do this for me, then it will be much appreciated. Kilnburn (talk) 01:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations

All the best for your success...Modernist (talk) 16:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Holm

Hi, Ben, and thanks for your edit & reasoning on the Saint's ladylove; it wasn't a great choice on my part and there's a pretty good chance your approach is the better one.
On the other hand, there are three problems with the Holm (small islet) entry:

1. The simple one is that you can't have two blue lks in a Dab entry. There may be a clever workaround involving two entries, but i suspect that would just make the more complex 3rd problem stand out more like a sore thumb.
2. A Dab entry can't be piped unless it targets a section within an article rather than the whole article.
3. Dabs are neither articles nor lists, and a Dab-page entry that coincides with a dict-def almost always reflects a misunderstanding of what Dabs are for.

   Dabs are not articles bcz a Dab's purpose is not to present information: rather -- when a user comes to its title, bcz it could reasonably have been the title of the article on the topic they seek (subject, of course, to the special condition that it is at least roughly as reasonable for that title to be the title of at least one other article instead) -- the Dab's purpose is to get them to that article as quickly and effortlessly as feasible.
   Tho they look a bit like WP lists, that's not what Dabs are either: a list pg presents a compilation that is the list's reason for being, while a Dab merely accomplishes a navigational task that can't be efficiently done w/o a compilation whose text has roughly the same layout as a list. A user has to be really unlucky to reach the end of the Dab, unless they are playing, have never paid attention to what the Dab template says, or are there to clean up the Dab.
   Dab entries are almost never dictdefs bcz the purpose of any entry is not to inform the user about the topic, but to enable them to quickly rule out the entries that are not on their topic of interest. Thus link-only entries like The Grapes of Wrath (film) are applauded bcz no more information is needed by those who are seeking it, and those who are looking for the novel can rule it out. The situations that call for seeming exceptions are like

   * The Grapes of Wrath, novel

   which is valuable, lest those seeking the film hesitate over the possibility that two editors titled (via various possible mishaps and circumstances) the articles on two identically titled films The Grapes of Wrath (film) and The Grapes of Wrath.) Likewise, if we had an article Spy-catcher on the memoir by Oreste Pinto, Spycatcher (disambiguation) should probably include (assuming no movies)

   * Spy-catcher, 1952
   * Spycatcher, 1987

In light of all that, i'm undoing that part of yr two-edit session.
That being said, how else can the relevant information on those two pages be made more accessible? In a sense, the most obvious answer to that is that if the information on the topic of holms in those two articles is worth a Dab entry, then it is worth a page that distills that info into an article or list. (I don't think i'd ever say "If you think it is, then you should write it." But i don't think the fact that no one has done it can justify lks that implicitly mean "you could dig out the small percentage within these articles that applies", any more than we tolerate ext lks whose URLs are Google searches for Web pages.)
If someone should have sufficient interest, it's not inconceivable to me that an article Holm (islet) could be written; its entry on the accompanying Dab might end up in a context like this:

* Holm (islet), Scottish sense
* Holm (island), Danish sense

Much easier, but more awkward to title would be Scottish islands with holm in their Scottish names, since "islet" is too vague to draw the line about which are included, and List of islands of Denmark includes at least Bornholm, big enuf that i could almost spell its name correctly from memory, and some of them probably have Holm in their Scottish names. (But one could probably at least start Islands with holm in their Scottish names by putting, in one section the Ork. and Shet. ones, and in another, one such Danish island plus an {{tl:expand}} tag.
--Jerzy•t 05:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for taking the time to provide such a clear explanation. I can't disagree - I think I was hoping to have found a way to WP:IAR. I presume if/when Holm (islet) is created, it could become a "See also" at Holm and vice-versa. Incidentally, I have been idly thinking of a way to cause consternation by proposing a new 'Featured disambiguation page' (or perhaps more realistically a 'Really quite exemplary dab page') :). My colleagues and I at WP:ISLE are rather proud of Linga (disambiguation) for example. Your eagle-eye would be welcome if you want to take a visit - especially as it could be a template of sorts for 'Holm (islet)'. Ben MacDui 10:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
  • PS I have started Holm (island). Ben MacDui 12:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
    • I went thru, rem'g lks that are there, but are not for the could-have-been articles that the users seeking Holm are looking for; IIRC there used to be a vague "unless needed for..." clause about extraneous lks by way of clarification, but even then it needed very sparse use, and i think the new language reflects far too many editors having wanted to apply it as a means to get more content on a topic, anywhere they could. As with the "dictdef" lead sent, remember that the Dab page is for navigation to, not provision of, information.
      On that same theme, i started lk-ifying text-only entries (starting at the bottom!), before realizing how many there are; the proper approach is red links for those for which articles are reasonably feasible, and omission of the rest. (Eponyms of the kiwi is my effort to preserve information that would otherwise have been lost in a Dab cleanup, and the deletion discussion (in progress) is far more interesting than the article. In particular, look at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Set_index_articles which falls somewhere between Dabs and lists; i'm heartened (even tho it's off-topic in the point of view of most of the discussants) that no one is arguing that either a Dab or a list with the same "base title" would exclude the other's existence.)
      There is some brewing controversy about whether a Dab can have a Dab-suffixed title, but IMO you shouldn't pay any attention to that, in this context.)
      The ability to mention items that have no articles is one of the reasons that i suggested articles and lists; i'm inclined to defend a version of Holm (island) where there are no text-only entries, as a Dab, but you may want to keep thinking about something besides a Dab, that can be more complete. (I presume you know how to get the markup for a previous version, rather than starting from scratch). I'll leave those text-only entries alone for now, in case you find yourself moved to pick out & rd-lk the likely future articles.
      --Jerzy•t 23:28, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
      
  • Thanks for saying so; i usually worry that i'm saying way too much.
    As to IAR, its not widely applicable and much safer than it sounds, bcz it applies when there's a good reason, and most of the rules are pretty good reasons in themselves. In this case, i'd stand up for the reasons-not being better ones, along with the availability of alternatives.
    --Jerzy•t 23:28, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
    
    • I've got the logic - except at the top and tail. "Holm may refer to" - but it may also refer to entities other than islands, so wouldn't it be better to state "Holm in an island context may refer to:" and why isn't it helpful to add Holm to 'See also'? It is very difficult to know which of the numerous small Holms might have articles in future, so I think I'll just delete the black links except in a few cases. There are quite a few more blue links to add. Ben MacDui 09:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
      • I agree with you about the top; i've used similar language, and at the moment i can't think of a better wording. As to the tail, my logic is that no one comes to Holm (island) unless they're looking for islands. On the other hand, what you're suggesting logically parallels the practice of putting a HatNote Dab on articles where the title has a dab'n suffix. Many of us are sure it's clutter, but there's no consensus for that, and somewhere it says there is none. My advice is don't do it, but knowing you've thot abt it, if it's there or you add it, i'm probably going to remember not to revert that particular one!
        --Jerzy•t 05:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
        

Your recent RfA

Hi Ben MacDui, congratulations on your recent promotion to adminship. :) Anyway, I just wanted to say that I was going to support your RfA, but by the time I was going to support it, it had closed. Consider this a "post-closure" support from me. :) Best wishes. Acalamari 18:46, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Cheers - your kind comment entitles you to a free doodlesack. Please feel free to help yourself to this now deprecated extravagance here. Ben MacDui 19:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC) PS I wonder if you are familiar with your evil cousin, the Despair Squid.

Yep, I know him. He's been swimming in the prat part of the sea for the last four years; set a record doing it. :) Acalamari

hello

Hello, congratulations on your RFA. I only saw you when looking on Le Grand Roi's talk page. I usually don't look at RFA. Sorry for not voting for (or against) you. Spevw (talk) 23:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)19:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)