User talk:Henry Flower

For rants from yesteryear, see Archive1, Archive2, Archive3, Archive4. Thereafter I stopped archiving - it's all in the history.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, I'll reply to everything on this page rather than your talk page. Boilerplate messages will be responded to with the same consideration and attention with which they were left. :)

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Anne Sinclair

Hello. I have restored the request for citation about the "American-born" part in the intro paragraph, that you had removed previously. I have also detailed my rationale on the article's talk page. I would be very grateful if you could give more details before removing it again. Regards. olivier (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I'm not excited enough about her birthplace to re-revert; I'd just note as an aside that "American-born" does not mean what you think it does. ;) Henry^Flower 09:52, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's OK, thank you. Not sure you know what I think. olivier (talk) 10:08, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Tibetan naming conventions

A while back, I posted a new proposal for Tibetan naming conventions, i.e. conventions that can be used to determine the most appropriate titles for articles related to the Tibetan region. This came out of discussions about article titles on Talk:Qamdo and Talk:Lhoka (Shannan) Prefecture. I hope that discussions on the proposal's talk page will lead to consensus in favour of making these conventions official, but so far only a few editors have left comments. If you would be interested in taking a look at the proposed naming conventions and giving your opinion, I would definitely appreciate it. Thanks—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 20:50, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Research into the user pages of Wikipedians: Invitation to participate

Greetings,

My name is John-Paul and I am a student with the University of Alberta specializing in Communications and Technology.

I would like to include your Wikipedia user page in a study I am doing about how people present themselves online. I am interested in whether people see themselves in different ways, online and offline. One of the things I am looking at is how contributors to Wikipedia present themselves to each other through their user pages. Would you consider letting me include your user page in my study?

With your consent, I will read and analyze your user page, and ask you five short questions about it that will take about ten to fifteen minutes to answer. I am looking at about twenty user pages belonging to twenty different people. I will be looking at all user pages together, looking for common threads in the way people introduce themselves to other Wikipedians.

I hope that my research will help answer questions about how people collaborate, work together, and share knowledge. If you are open to participating in this study, please reply to this message, on your User Talk page or on mine. I will provide you with a complete description of my research, which you can use to decide if you want to participate.

Thank-you,

John-Paul Mcvea
University of Alberta
jmcvea@ualberta.ca

Johnpaulmcvea (talk) 22:04, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, that would be fine. :) Henry^Flower 00:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you for agreeing to participate in my study

Thank-you for agreeing to participate in my study, entitled “Online Self-presentation among Wikipedians.” I appreciate it.

As I indicated before, here are five questions that I would like you to answer. Please be as brief or as thorough as you like.

5 QUESTIONS

1. Are you a member of social networks such Facebook or MySpace?

2. In addition to maintaining a user page in Wikipedia, have you also written or edited articles? If so, about how many times?

3. What are the key messages about yourself that you hope to convey with your user page?

4. Have your Wikipedia contributions ever received feedback, such as being edited by others or commented on? Have you received a message from another Wikipedia user? If so, do you think your user page positively or negatively affected what other people said and how they said it?

5. Do you see your “online self” as being different from your “offline self?” Can you elaborate?

Please indicate your answers to these questions on your talk page, or on mine. If you like, you can email your answers to me instead (jmcvea@ualberta.ca).

Thank you again : )

Johnpaulmcvea (talk) 23:40, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

INDICATING CONSENT

By answering these questions, you indicate your agreement with the following statements:

• That you understand that you have been asked to be in a research study.

• That you have read and received a copy of the Information Sheet, attached below (“Additional Information”).

• That you understand the benefits and risks involved in taking part in this research study.

• That you have had an opportunity to ask questions and discuss this study.

• That you understand that you are free to refuse to participate, or to withdraw from the study at any time, without consequence, and that your information will be withdrawn at your request.

• That the issue of confidentiality been explained to you and that you understand who will have access to your information (see “Additional Information”).

• That you agree to participate.

ADDITONAL INFORMATION

Background

• I am asking you to participate in a research project that is part of my MA degree.

• I am asking you because you have created a user page in Wikipedia that other people can use to learn about you.

Purpose

• My research is about how people present themselves online.

• I will look at how people present themselves when presenting themselves to the Wikipedia community.

Study Procedures

• With your consent, I will analyze the language of your user page and gather basic statistics such as the count of words, the frequency of words, the number of sections, and so on.

• I will also read the text of your user page, looking for elements in common with ads posted by other people. I will note whether you include a picture, or links to other content on the internet,

• I ask you to answer my five questions, above. This will take about ten to fifteen minutes to complete. I will ask you to answer the questions within a week, and send your answers to me.

• Throughout my research, I will adhere to the University of Alberta Standards for the Protection of Human Research Participants, which you can view at http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/policymanualsection66.cfm

Benefits

• There is no direct benefit to you for participating in this research. You may, however, find it interesting to read my perspective on how you present yourself online.

• I hope that the information I get from doing this study will help understand how technology affects the way people come together into a society.

• There is no reward or compensation for participating in this research.

Risk

• There is no direct risk for participating in this research.

Voluntary Participation

• You are under no obligation to participate in this study. Participation is completely voluntary.

• You can opt out of this study at any time before October 10, 2011, with no penalty. You can ask to have me withdraw any data that I have collected about you. Even if you agree to be in the study, you can change your mind and withdraw.

• If you decline to continue or you wish to withdraw from the study, your information will be removed from the study at your request.

Confidentiality

• This research will be used to support a project that is part of my MA degree.

• A summary of my research will be available on the University of Alberta website.

• Your personally identifiable information will be deleted and digitally shredded as soon as I have finished gathering data about you.

• Data will be kept confidential. Only I will have access to the computer file containing the data. It will be password protected. I will not be sent by email or stored online.

• I will always handle my data in compliance with University of Alberta standards.

• If you would like to receive a copy of my final report, please ask.

Further Information

• If you have any further questions regarding this study, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Stanley Varnhagen, my research advisor for this project. If you have concerns about this study, you may contact the University of Alberta Research Ethics Committee at 780-492-2615. This office has no affiliation with the study investigators.

Thank-you again!

Answers

1. Are you a member of social networks such Facebook or MySpace?

Not actively; I do have accounts on several, but do not really see the point of them (for me).

2. In addition to maintaining a user page in Wikipedia, have you also written or edited articles? If so, about how many times?

Many thousands of edits by now, I think, though I don't know the exact number.

3. What are the key messages about yourself that you hope to convey with your user page?

None that I'm aware of; I don't think that user pages (or texts in general) are usefully construed as having 'messages' beyond what is explicitly stated. The closest I can say to what I think you're getting at is that I try to give an impression to other users of the kind of person I am and who they are (if they choose to) interacting with.

4. Have your Wikipedia contributions ever received feedback, such as being edited by others or commented on? Have you received a message from another Wikipedia user? If so, do you think your user page positively or negatively affected what other people said and how they said it?

Many times, on both counts. The last part of the question seems ambiguous; I can think of cases, for example, where people's comments have made hostile references to my user page, which in one sense is of course negative; on the other hand, that told me straight away that these people were not ones I was likely to interact with productively, and that knowledge was positive. On the whole though, such explicit reactions as there have been have been overwhelmingly positive, most often by establishing common ground between myself and the other users.

5. Do you see your “online self” as being different from your “offline self?” Can you elaborate?

I acknowledge that it is, but I try to keep it as little different as possible. In particular, I do recognise in some of my online interactions occasionally greater argumentativeness/aggressiveness than I would allow in 'real life' (a tendency which I think is extremely widespread online).

Do let me know if you think any of my answers need further clarification. Henry^Flower 16:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Henry Flower,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the communityHERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your nameHERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chlopeck (talk • contribs) 22:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Doupi

hi, i am going to re-creat Doupi, a local dish from Wuhan, Hubei, China.