User talk:Armycaptain

Welcome!

Hello, Armycaptain, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
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• How to write a great article
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Katr67 21:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Badge of Military Merit

Hi, I just want to let you know I appreciated your efforts on behalf of the other soldiers who recieved the award, my ancestor included. I think your additions were well written, but unfortunately as Husnock pointed out on the article's talk page, Wikipedia needs everything to have reliable sources. I have no doubt what you wrote was true, but we need to have everything properly cited to make sure it is not original research. I like Husnock's suggestion about doing the rewrite on a temp page and moving it over. Let me know if you need help with this. Here is an article on subpages to get you started. Oh and just a friendly reminder, when editing pages, it is helpful for everyone if you use the show preview button instead of saving a series of edits. What I do sometimes is actually copy and paste the text I'm working on into a word processing application (like MS Word) if I'm worried about losing my text. Good luck and happy editing! Katr67 21:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I currently work with military records and know someone who has an interest in military history and has a few connections. I'll see if he has any advice. Katr67 21:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I am attempting to respond to you on this talk page. Thank you for your help. I have done extensive research at the Military History Institute at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, the David Library of the American Revolution at Washington's Crossing. the Historical Society of Philadelphia and other sites. I redid an edit today at a level that I felt comfortable understanding and working with. I ask that only the material not meeting Wikipedia requirements be reverted. I ask that you monitor this.

I apologize for not using the Preview feature and saving all the little edits! I didn't catch that in your message until it was too late. I will remember this next time.

Hello again.... I tried using the Preview feathure and it kept reverting my edits each time I tabbed over between article, discussion, etc. So , unfortunately, I had to save my changes each time. Also, I added my footnotes on the article source section. I didn't even know that was there until just now. Beofre, i saw the footnotes in the Discussion section and thought that was where the footnotes went. I hope I am getting better with this...

I'll take a look at the Badge of Military Merit page. I can't really stop other editors from reverting your edits, but since you are making a good faith effort to play by the rules, hopefully that won't be a problem. See also my response on the article's talk page. Are you keeping more than one browser window open at a time? You shouldn't be losing your edits if you do that. One for your article edits, one for the talk page, one for google, etc? When I'm editing I usually have at least a dozen windows open! And I finally switched to Mozilla Firefox as a browser--it seems much less apt to crash than Explorer. OK, I see you get the references thing. Disregard what I said on the other talk page. :) Katr67 21:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have many browsers open simultaneously. I am still getting used to this! ThanksArmycaptain 12:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages

Hello again Armycaptain. To reply to an individual user, click on his or her username (like the blue link "Katr67" below in my signature), and look for the tab near the top of the page labeled "discussion". (Some users also place a direct link to their talk page in their signature.) At the top of my page is a link for starting a new section for your comment. You can always reply on your own talk page as well. Various users use different ways of communicating, some preferring to keep the discussion all on one page, some perferring to go back and forth between pages. Here is some more help. If you would like to indent your comment to make the thread easier to read, type a colon (:). And be sure to sign your posts using 4 tildes (~~~~). I hope that helps! Katr67 00:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I want to thank you for all your help. I can see you cleaned up things that I am technically am not able to do at this time, such as add footnotes and format the references properly. You have made this much easier for me to share my information! I also want to thank you for your topic about my unsourced material. It is helping me as I do my research. .

Hello

Regarding my less than perfect answer to your question on the 'help' page, if you have any further queries, you could post them on my talk page if that would be convient. Thanks, Addhoc 15:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I am still a bit mystified by the "my talk page." I am still a Wikipedia Klutz. Thanks again. Armycaptain 21:19, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

118th Pennsylvania "Corn Exchange" Regiment

First, thanks for starting this article.

It is not necessary that you know how to wikify and categorize (although it is something you should learn how to do as you become more comfortable with editing articles in Wikipedia). Tags such as the ones that have been applied to the 118th article are not directed at you personally; rather, they are directed at the article itself. Any editor, including you, can address the problems pointed out by the tags. These tags are also extremely helpful to other Wikipedians who specialize in work such as wikification and categorization, as many such tags automatically put the article into categories of articles needing more specialized attention.

Wikipedians who really enjoy doing such work can then easily find articles upon which to work, and — voila! — the work gets done and the article improves. No one on Wikipedia is good at everything, so we all try to do the best job we can with articles we edit. In fact, most people are only good at a few Wiki-tasks (e.g. creating stubs, copyediting, verifying refernces, formatting, categorizing, etc.). Likewise, most Wikipedians are only truly knowledgeable about a small subset of human knowledge. We all rely on some random (and probably unknown) person within the Wikipedia community to come along after us and (hopefully) improve upon our efforts.

On the whole, the system works very well, as the overall quality of Wikipedia continues to improve. However, on the level of individual articles, the process appears to be extremely chaotic, with progress often only intermittently made (and sometimes even lost, as in the case of vandalism or very poor editing). The whole process is a lot like certain elements of quantum physics, in that one cannot really be certain of improvement of a particular article at any given moment, but the system as a whole is constantly improving due to the seemingly random actions of millions of individual editors.

For many people, collaborative/collectivist work environments (such as Wikipedia) can be very confusing at first, as most people (especially we highly individualistic Americans) are used to working completely on their own. Wikipedia can be even more confusing because of the semi-anonymous nature of the effort. Hang in there.

• Don't take edits (or tags applied) to "your" articles personally — because once you click the "Save page" button, they aren't "your" articles anymore.

• Do read the tutorials, policies, guidelines, etc. and learn by watching other editors.

• Do take pride in community ownership — in a sense, you "own" approximately one two-millionth of Wikipedia. You helped the project by contributing something, and you (should be able to) recognize the efforts of other people doing the same thing. If you can improve an article within the context of community policies (see Wikipedia:Five pillars), then do so! And expect others to do the same.

The goal, after all, is to have the best damned encyclopedia the world has ever seen! But with more than 2.4 million registered editors, we all have to work together, each contributing small pieces.

Happy editing! — Twisted86 - Talk - at 18:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, thank you for your help with this! Without any guidance, it looked like someone was trying to play "stump the chump" with me and it wasn't a good feeling. There was a clear lack of communication; people tagging articles without explanantion and no answers to my help questions. The process can be improved by making tags, etc. and offering an explanation. I see you and others have stepped in and really helped the article. And I am fully aware that the article becomes collaborative or "community" property when submitted to Wikipedia. Thank's again! Armycaptain 21:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I did a little touch-up on this article, adding some links and tweaks. I removed the reference to Camp Curtin, as this was in Harrisburg. regards! 8th Ohio Volunteers 17:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Great work all of you! Armycaptain 22:27, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Black Watch

How far back did you revert the article Black Watch?!?

I have undone your reversion. If you think some useful information has been lost since the earlier version, please copy-and-paste it into the current article rather than just reverting several months (?) of changes. FiggyBee 23:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

After my revert I found that there was another Wikipedia article called "42nd Regiment of Foot." I did not know this other article existed and now I do. So I left your (or should I say, the "Black Watch") page alone after I saw your re-revert. I really think these Black Watch articles need a lot of work. There are no citations, sources and some blatent vandalism on the "Black Watch" article that persists. For example, the crap about Freud and Superego is clearly vandalism and nonsense. Freud's psychoanalysis wasn't formulated for another 150 years after the origin of the Black Watch. I wish you good luck in your article. I have done a lot of work on this regiment and my ancestor served in it. I would like to contribute to it but am a bit wary with the lack of Wikification (lack of sources, blatent vandalism, etc.). If it is cleaned up, I may change my mind. Incidentally, I feel the bifurcation of the Black Watch into two separate articles was a mistake as they are the same organization at different times. Again, thank you for your message and good luck.Armycaptain 00:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello. Yes, I know that the stuff about "Freud and Superego is clearly vandalism and nonsense", but it's on the talk page, not in the main article (I previously removed similar content from the actual article). Stuff on talk pages tends to stay there unless it's really offensive or off-topic, as it's a record of what has gone on with the article in the past.

Black Watch is not "my" article, but it is an article that I watch, pun unintended. Perhaps if you feel the article needs copyediting or sourcing, or if you think 42nd Regiment of Foot should be merged into it, you could tag the articles, and/or post on the talk pages, and see what other editors think (or perhaps you could get in touch with User:Hammersfan, who split the 42nd Regiment of Foot sections off from the article in the first place)? I myself don't really know enough about the history to be able to offer an opinion. FiggyBee 01:20, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, btw, I agree with you that the article needs referencing, and have tagged it as such. FiggyBee 01:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)