What wiki writing style do you prefer?

[Al_G]

Keith,

I find your style of writing very difficult to follow. There are many grammatical errors that seriously detract attention from the content.

I tried to follow this topic because of its significance. There's several issues. One is the format of document on the Wikipedia site and accepted standards. Second is the technical content of article. Third is your objection to anyone changing your instructions. Forth is the opinions that you are soliciting from your three friends.

Anyone reading Wikipedia pages will be expecting a certain layout and format that is typical of such pages. There are recommended standards that everyone who contributes articles should respect.

I defer to your knowledge with respect to the technical aspects of what is written because I have no experience with MM skinning. I did, however, get really confused in trying to follow what you had written. Even if Steegy's version was inaccurate, I, and probably most skinner noobs, would have a better chance understanding his version.

The point of the Wikipedia is to allow for communal effort in creating and maintaining pages on a given topic. If you see inaccuracies in Steegy's version, just correct them, but don't be offended (or surprised) if someone comes along and corrects your grammatical mistakes.

I'm not sure what your friends are suppose to contribute. Are they editing your page? If so, unless they are also skinning experts, they are likely to make the same types of errors that Steegy made.

Your posting style is very informal, which is OK on the MM forum given the nature of the interaction between members. The Wikipedia site is much different. Standards exist for a reason, which all contributors should follow in order to maintain a minimum level of accepted quality.

[DaledeSilva]

...and the headers may do that DaledeSilva but you agreed with me when you wrote that statement.

with the headings, however, a user who has done most or some things already but doesn't know one particular thing

that is an advanced user / skinner

that is not only an advanced skinner, it's anyone who has done part of the job and needs to do another part that they don't know how to do.

and the headers may be skipped rovingcowboy but you agreed with me when you wrote that statement.

but as a newbie to some other programs i just skip the headers cause they don't tell me a thing because i need to know what they are talking about first,

The headers are easy to skip, recognise that; because they're formatted differently to the body text... therefore, anyone who wants to skip them can, and anyone who wants to read them can.

...And in partitioning it off in sections, the whole document is easier to read. It's like the node tree in MM... if all the nodes were left aligned it would be too hard to interpret different what nodes were inside what. But since subnodes are indented, you can then easily see the relationship to the other nodes..

- likewise, with this, seperating it into sections teaches the Newbies the relationship all of the actions have with the whole process.
It also makes it easy to follow and keep your place visually - while still maintaining the same logical order your document set out.


rovingcowboy, all the changes are for the better. The changes fix many grammatical errors, add bold and italic to highlight important names and words, and lays out the information in a way that is easier to read and search through... AND yet it still keeps your information in there in it's logical order. There is no reason you should complain. It's only an improvement.

[junglemonkey]

okay al_g,

what really is upsetting is that i ran that through the spell checking and the grammer checking of the open office suite.
before i posted it. so something did not work if it is so messed up in grammer. but i did check it an let the thing change what it said was wrong.

sorry for your not understanding it even as a newbie.

the people i asked were just asked to read it and see what
they could do better for it. they don't know any of the skinning so that is why i asked them i figured they were a good choice that way. i did not tell them what to change or anything they just are trying (if they are?) to make it a better article.

roving cowboy / keith hall

[junglemonkey]

anyway this should be in the off topic forum now.
please mods move it to off topic.


and since you were here in ths poll answering.

why not go take my poll in the off topic forum.?

[Steegy]

Probably you now all understand why I used "stubbornness-induced confusion of tongues" in the first post...

We could discuss this soooo much further, but it would pe pointless and a huge waste of time. So please RovingCowboy, don't mail me about this again.

Thank you

[trixmoto]

There's no way that a grammar checker did not pick you up on the lack of uppercase characters!!

[rovingcowboy]

well i did use it trixmoto so it must have missed that?
not sure why unless it is not set up right. or an old version bug i just seen a new beta version is listed the other week so i guess i need to update mine.



sorry i had clicked on check spelling. then i clicked on fomat thinking that would check grammer it does not. sorry.