I welcome myself, since nobody else did --Zeerus 21:31, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
Welcome!
Hello, Zeerus, 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:
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! PS: There you go, I'd usually use my bigger one, but I'm afraid it will screw up your layout. :) Hexagon1(t)09:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I love your main user page, it looks great! Since you obviously have some skills with CSS, might I encourage you to visit the Template standardisation proposal and possibly submit your own design? Thanks! Talrias (t | e | c) 19:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The grey menu at the top was actually an adaption from another user's page, but I changed it around to make it work better and conform to standards. I am experienced with CSS though, and I would be happy to submit it and any other things I can make. by the way, are you a sysop? --Zeerus 19:23, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
Oh, okay. I had seen your threat to ban a IP user, so I thought you were one. Anyway, you might want to read the message I put on your talk page about the open source forum project. I'd love to help. --Zeerus 19:57, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
I attempted to send you an email through Wikipedia (see the E-mail this user link in the toolbox). Mine definitely works, so if you don't get my email, please send me one. Talrias (t | e | c) 20:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hi, Zeerus, and welcome. Beautiful user page, by the way. I just saw your RFA for Minghong, and I wanted to remind you to sign your nomination. Also, might I suggest that you not include an external link in your signature? It's up to you, of course, but signatures are mainly to identify you and provide access to relevant Wikipedia areas (and to give you a bit of individuality)—some people may object to promoting external sites in your signature. You are free, of course, to link to them from your user page. — Knowledge Seekerদ 20:29, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the tips. I changed around my signature completely. By the way, Texttonic is the name of my new blog I am currently designing. I think my sig looks nicer now anyway. And yeah, I signed my nomination. I had forgotten to click the little signature button up top, which is surprising, because I'm always messing around with it. --texttonic 13:06, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
you're welcome. I hope Coffee Roll wins. It looks that way so far. I'm currently having a laugh reading about the Wikipedia is Communism vandal. You sure do have a lot of enemies. I would think people would just give up. Why continue vandalizing, it's just a waste of time. Anyway, good luck with that too. texttonic 14:53, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Welcome, Zeerus, to Esperanza, the Wikipedia member association! As you might know, all the Esperanzians share one important goal: the success of this encyclopedia. Within that, we then attempt to strengthen the community bonds, and be the "approachable" side of the project. All of our ideals are held in the Charter, the governing document of the association.
Now that you are a member you should read the guide to what to do now or you may be interested in some of our programs. A quite important program is the StressUnit, which seeks to support editors who have encountered any stress from their Wikipedia events, and are seeking to leave the project. So far, Esperanza can be credited with the support and retention of several users. We will send you newsletters to keep you up to date. Also, we have a calendar of special events, member birthdays, and other holidays that you can add to and follow.
In addition to these projects, several more missions of Esperanza are in development, and are currently being created at Esperanza/Possibles.
I encourage you to take an active voice in the running of Esperanza. We have a small government system, headed by our Administrator general, Celestianpower, and guided by the Advisory Committee comprised of KnowledgeOfSelf, JoanneB, FireFox and Titoxd. The next set of elections will be in April, and I would be glad to see you vote, or even consider running for a position.
If you have any other questions, concerns, comments, or general ideas, Esperanzian or otherwise, know that you can always contact Celestianpower by email or talk page or the Esperanza talk page. Alternatively, you could communicate with fellow users via our IRC channel, #wikipedia-esperanza (which is also good for a fun chat or two :). I thank you for joining Esperanza, and look forward to working with you in making Wikipedia a better place to work!
thanks, I looked around the page and couldn't find the info, but didn't bother to check the revision comparison page. thanks for your help. --Zeerus (ETC) 16:20, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Kevin, thanks for the note. Someone else had already written that bit about Bam at TMI, but had put it up in the top section. I felt it was too tangential for such prominence, and so started the "Popular culture" section. TMI has caused a lot of American cultural references, so I don't doubt that more items may begin to fill that section. Kevin Forsyth17:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
somebody wrote it before me? As far as I was aware I was the first person to add that note about the Bam episode. anyway, thanks for straightening it all out. --Zeerus (ETC) 17:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Major events and places are of course featured in many, many instances of "popular culture". Think of how long the section would be for Three Mile Island if every instance of it being mentioned in a television show or movie was compiled -- it would be longer than the description of the accident itself. As such, I think that the only things which should be included in a "popular culture" section are things which really do enhance your understanding of the article itself. I looked into that episode reference and it didn't seem to meet that qualification at all. An example of popular culture enhancing your understanding of a main article is the article nuclear weapons in popular culture -- the general trends and appearances of nuclear weapons in popular culture have gone a long way in shaping and reflecting attitudes towards nuclear weapons. The appearance of the reactor in one episode of a reality show does not seem to do that -- at best it reflects in a very minor way that some people are still apprehensive about the reactor, which is not very much.
I understand that people feel differently about this, though, but my goal here is to have a useful and respectable encyclopedia. I don't think adding the MTV reference enchances the TMI article. Obviously the page on the MTV show should have a link back to TMI -- so that a reader who wants to know why they were on that island can find out what it means, if they don't know -- but I don't see any reason to have TMI making a link back to the show. So if you can come up with a good justification -- I don't think the mere inclusion of the island in an episode is noteworthy enough -- then I'll be all ears. As for whether the section should "grow" -- I'm happy to have a "in popular culture" section that is full of noteworthy references, but this one is not, in my opinion, one of them. Hope that clears things up about why I removed it; I'm happy to talk about this further. --Fastfission17:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your response, I now understand exactly why you removed it, and I do agree now that the minor inclusion of the island in that particular episode is not extremely significant. Up until the time that episode had aired, however, I had never heard of Three Mile Island, and upon seeing it on the main page today I said "oh, that's that island from Viva La Bam". In my eyes this was significant, as it's a pretty popular show, but I'll gladly leave it out now that I've heard your opinion. Thanks for discussiong this in a calm manner, your diligence in handling this situation is much appreciated. --Zeerus (ETC) 17:43, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, thanks Zeerus! I'd be more than happy to help out with your user page design. Is there anything more specific you'd like (color scheme, font, etc.)? Nice meeting you. :) Regards, Sango123(e)04:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've allowed edit links for individual sections and implemented a new talk page design to match your user page. Just one thing: it's completely up to you, but I'd be deeply grateful if you gave a bit of credit for the design somewhere. Thanks! And no, you haven't been bothersome at all. :) Regards, Sango123(e)11:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Barnstar Brigade is a new program aimed at giving more very deserving yet unappreciated users barnstars. It will officially start on 2006-04-09, but signing up is encouraged before this date:
"Here in Wikipedia, there are hundreds of wikipedians whose work and efforts go un-appreciated. One occasionally comes across editors who have thousands of good edits, but because they may not get around as much as others, their contributions and hard work often go un-noticed. Sadly, these editors often leave the project. As Esperanzians, we can help to make people feel appreciated, be it by some kind words or the awarding of a Barnstar. A project the size of Wikipedia has thousands of editors, so there are plenty of people out there who deserve recognition, one just has to find them. The object of this program is not to flood editors with Barnstars, but to seek out people who deserve them, and make them feel appreciated."
The Stress alertsprogram aims at identifying users who are stressed, alerting the community of thier stress and works in tandem with the Stressbusters at trying to identify causes of stress and eliminating them.
Information
Welcome to the second issue of the new format Esperanza Newsletter - we hope you still like it! This week, it was delivered diligently by our new dogsbody. MiszaBot (run by Misza13): any execution complaints should go to him. Content comments should be directed at the Esperanza talkpage. Thanks!
The current process for accepting proposals for new programs has been deemed fine. All Advisory Council members and the Admin Gen are to endevour to be bold when viewing discussion. If they feel that consensus has been reached, they will act accordingly.
A plea from the editor...
The propsed programs page is terribly underused! Please leave any comments, good or bad, on the page, to help us determine the membership's thoughts on the ideas there.
Hi, I never came to thank you for the message you left for me a month ago when I stepped down from being a bureaucrat. Thank you for the things you said, it's good to know there are still plenty of good people about in this project. I do not see myself standing for bureaucrat again anytime soon though who knows what the future may bring! Thank you once again. -- Francs200009:39, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Administrator Coaching program is a program aimed at preparing Wikipedians for Adminship or helping them understand the intricacies of Wikipedia better. Recently, changes have been made to the requirements of coachees. Please review them before requesting this service.
This would be something like the Welcoming Committee, but for people who have figured out the basics of editing articles; they're not newcomers any more, but they might want some help in learning new roles. Some might like suggestions about how to learn vandal patrol, or mentoring on taking an article to featured status, or guidance with a proposal they plan to make at the Village Pump, for example. In this way, Esperanza would help keep hope alive for Wikipedia because we would always be grooming the next generation of admins.
The Stressbusters are a subset of Esperanza aiming to investigate the causes of stress. New eyes on the situation are always welcome!
Note from the editor
As always, MiszaBot handled this delivery. Thank you! Also, congratulations go to Pschemp, Titoxd and Freakofnurture for being elected in the last elections! An Esperanzial May to all of the readership!
Posting logs of the Esperanza IRC channel are explicitly banned anywhere. Violation of this rule results in deletion and a ban from the channel.
A disclaimer is going to be added to the Esperanza main page. We are humans and, as such, are imperfect.
Various revisions have been made to the Code of Conduct. Please see them, as the proposal is ready to be ratified by the community and enacted. All members will members to have to re-confirm their membership after accepting the Code of Conduct.
Referendums are to be held on whether terms of AC members should be lengthened and whether we should abolish votes full stop.
As you may have gathered, discussions have been raging for about a week on the Esperanza talk page as to the future direction of Esperanza. Some of these are still ongoing and warrant more input (such as the idea to scrap the members list altogether). However, some decisions have been made and the charter has hence been amended. See what happened. Basically, the whole leadership has had a reshuffle, so please review the new, improved charter.
As a result, we are electing 4 people this month. They will replace JoanneB and Pschemp and form a new tranche A, serving until December. Elections will begin on 2006-07-02 and last until 2006-07-09. If you wish to run for a Council position, add your name to the list before 2006-07-02. For more details, see Wikipedia:Esperanza/June 2006 elections.
The Esperanza To-Do List is a place where you may list any request, big or small, for assistance. If you need help with archiving your usertalk, for example, all you need to do is list it here and somebody will help you out. Likewise, if you need help with some area of editing on Wikipedia, list it here! Again, any matter, trivial or not, can be placed on this page. However, all matters listed on this page must not be of an argumentative nature. You do not need to be a member of Esperanza (or this program) to place or fulfill requests on this page. If you don't have any requests, consider coming by and fulfilling a few! This program has not been very active, but has lots of potential!
What's New?
In order to help proposed programs become specific enough to make into full-fledged programs, the In development section of the proposals page has been created. Proposals that are promising, but need to be organized in more detail are listed here. Please take a look at what is there, and help the proposals turn into programs.
To improve both the layout and text of the front page, in an attempt to clarify the image of Esperanza, the front page is going to have some redesigning take place. Please take your creative minds to Wikipedia:Esperanza/Front page redesign to brainstorm good ideas.
Many thanks to MiszaBot, courtesy of Misza13, for delivering the newsletter.
In order to make sure all users who join Esperanza are welcomed, a list of volunteers who are willing to welcome new Esperanzians is at Wikipedia:Esperanza/Members#Esperanza_welcomers. Please add yourself if you are interested; we want to make sure all new Esperanza members are welcomed!
The In development section of the proposals page has been created.
Proposals page: Some proposals have been moved to the aforementioned "In development" section, some have been left as a proposal, and others have been archived. For those proposals that were a good idea but didn't necessarily constitute a program, General Esperanzial Actions has been created.
Two small pieces of charter reform will be decided on in a straw poll at Wikipedia talk:Esperanza/Governance. One involves filling the position of any councillors who may leave, the other involves reforming the charter.
Until cooperation with the Kindness Campaign is better defined, it remains as a proposed program.
Although having the newsletter appear on everyone's userpage is desired, this may not be ideal for everyone. If, in the future, you wish to receive a link to the newsletter, rather than the newsletter itself, you may add yourself to Wikipedia:Esperanza/Newsletter/Opt Out List.
Here in Wikipedia there are hundreds of wikipedians whose work and efforts go unappreciated. One occasionally comes across editors who have thousands of good edits, but because they may not get around as much as others, their contributions and hard work often go unnoticed. As Esperanzians we can help to make people feel appreciated, be it by some kind words or the awarding of a Barnstar. This is where the Barnstar Brigade comes in. The object of this program is to seek out the people which deserve a Barnstar, and help them feel appreciated. With your help, we can recognize more dedicated editors!
What's New?
September elections are upon us! Anyone wishing to be a part of the Advisory Council may list themselves as a candidate from 18 September until 24 September, with the voting taking place from 25 September to 30 September. Those who wish to help with the election staff should also list themselves!
Appreciation Week, a program currently in development, now has its own subpage! Share your good ideas on how to make it awesome there!
The Esperanza front page has been redesigned! Many thanks to all who worked hard on it.
Many thanks to MiszaBot, courtesy of Misza13, for delivering the newsletter.
The September 2006 Council elections will open for nominations on 18 September 2006. The voting will run from 25 September 2006 until 30 September 2006. If you wish to be a candidate or a member of the elections staff, please list yourself!
The new Esperanza front page design has but put up - many thanks to all who worked on it!
TangoTango has written a script for a bot that will list new members of Esperanza, which will help those who welcome new Esperanzains greatly!
Although having the newsletter appear on everyone's userpage is desired, this may not be ideal for everyone. If, in the future, you wish to receive a link to the newsletter, rather than the newsletter itself, you may add yourself to Wikipedia:Esperanza/Newsletter/Opt Out List.
As a current or past contributor to a related article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject University of Florida, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of University of Florida. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks!
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