User talk:Bill3

Recent moves
You recently moved the articles MLB: Twins defeat Orioles 7-4 in season opener and Twins announcer Herb Carneal dies at 83 to pages having something to do with "American football", well I'll have you know that Major League Baseball has nothing to do with any kind of football. Zachary talk 13:13, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Bill3, please be careful when renaming articles. You seem to have confused football with baseball. --SVTCobra 13:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That's OK, you had good intentions. I do try to keep titles international (note: I did not write the stories in question, in fact, I try to stay away from the sports stories). --SVTCobra 13:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you deliberately mis-naming articles? That could be considered vandalism. --SVTCobra 13:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Any mis-naming is accidental. When I rename stories, I am aware that I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject to avoid mistakes, but I get it right most of the time, and the other times usually remind the original story author to make the title more informative in future or at least my change motivates a follow-up change that is correct.
 * For some reason, sports articles are the most commonly problematic. Two nicknames joined by a colourful verb produces titles such as "Socks rampage on Wings", which leave readers lost.  The second most problematic are important national politicians "Brown says no to Iran".
 * These headline styles copy the style of people's local newspaper, and they are fully meaningful to a person in that locality who knows who "Brown" is, what's happening with Iran, who "Wings" and "Socks" are and what sport they play together, but in a global context, the readers in most countries are lost. Bill3 11:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Confusing China with the United States is a good one though. If you are "not knowledgeable enough about the subject to avoid mistakes," you should leave a note on the discussion page requesting that the article be renamed and refrain from doing it yourself. --SVTCobra 18:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That sounds like good advice, but I tried and it fails in practice. People don't change their headlines.  Did I confuse China with USA?  If I did, the headline must have been meaningless.  I make an effort to be accurate, but I can't be right all the time when the original author hasn't made an effort.  Sometimes I even read whole articles and still don't know what continent is being talked about. Bill3 15:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Somehow you sound less than sincere. --SVTCobra 15:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * My informal tone isn't meant as a sign of insincerity, it's resignation - that you're right that in a perfect community, a note on the Talk page is all it would take, but I'm not new enough to think WikiNews is that close to perfect (I don't mean to imply that you are; each contributor sees and experiences different sets of problems, and this is one I've seen, and you'll have seen others I haven't). Bill3 17:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I think that a note on the Talk page will show a higher success-rate than doing it yourself when you are "not knowledgeable enough about the subject to avoid mistakes." But perhaps, you are just on an unlucky streak.--SVTCobra 18:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The number of mistakes you've seen only looks like an unlucky streak when you don't see the number of times I've gotten it right :-) I've tried your talk page approach and it doesn't work.  There is either no response, or someone debates the point for long enough for any action to then be almost pointless.  This is a hurdle that WN faces that WP doesn't - in WP, if a problem sits somewhere for 3 days, that's often no problem.  On WN, every story gets on the front page, and every story only lasts for 3 days, so any serious quality problems need to be fixed in a timely manner.  So unlike WP, ensuring that something gets fixed is not enough, we have to ensure that things get fixed quick enough for it to matter.  Talk page requests can get story titles fixed, but not fast enough for it to make a difference. Bill3 14:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)