User talk:Porthos

Welcome to Memory Alpha, ! I've noticed that you've already made some contributions to our database – thank you! We all hope that you'll enjoy our activities here and decide to join our community.

If you'd like to learn more about working with the nuts and bolts of Memory Alpha, I have a few links that you might want to check out:


 * Our policies and guidelines provides links to inform you on what is appropriate for Memory Alpha and what is not. Particular items of note are the and  policies, the, our ,  and guidelines for proper.
 * How to edit a page includes a basic tutorial about how to use our special wikitext code here on Memory Alpha.
 * Naming conventions provides guidelines on how to name a new page that you may want to create.
 * The Manual of Style is an overview of the basic guidelines for how to format and style your articles.
 * How to write a great article is a list of suggestions that can help you put together an article that might end up on our Featured Articles list someday.
 * See the user projects page for current projects of our archivists, or help us to reduce the number of stubs.
 * Look up past changes you have made in your contributions log.
 * Keep track of your favorite Memory Alpha articles through your very own watchlist.
 * Create your own user page and be contacted on this page, your talk page.

One other suggestion: if you're going to make comments on talk pages or make other sorts of comments, please be sure to sign them with four tildes to paste in your user name and the date/time of the comment.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in our Ten Forward community page. Thanks, and once again, welcome to Memory Alpha! --Alan del Beccio 22:51, 22 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Oberth reverts
Porthos, what would be wrong with waiting a couple of days for a few more archivists to reach a consensus about how information could or should be added to an article? An admin decided to revert your edits, but I feel this is over the arrangement of the article, since a lot of data is covered by the edits in question. I believe the admin might've been concerned over keeping the previous flow of the article, and its structure, and wanted the information added in a way that didn't unbalance the various subsections (for example, our suggests that a large background section could be divided into short italicized, indented, paragraphs, and placed throughout the article, so that individual citations of episodes could be associated with each individual data point -- but a large mass of connected text that doesnt require multiple citations could be added in a single subsection as background info).

Memory Alpha operates in real-time -- our most knowledgable contributors might only sign on once a day. For example, i worked a shift today and missed the entire Oberth discussion, but I would have loved to have taken part -- and help to pattern your edits so they fit in the article in a manner befitting the  and. We operate by consensus here -- and if someone wants to call for a consensus about an edit's viability, i hardly think 8 or 9 hours is enough time to discuss a large article like the Oberth one.

I think that by spending time questioning the validity of the reversion, you are hurting your case towards getting the article filled out with the information you want to add. Most of the involved in the discussion are defending Shran's right to revert -- and his right to be here, which you have brought into question. In the meantime, none of the information is getting discussed and prepared to be included in a well-structured, community-approved, version of the Oberth article. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk


 * I only questioned his behavior as admin. If he had not been one he won't have the ability to protect a page, so he has to discuss it. Instead of this he used his admin rights to make his opinion the right one without discussion first. That's a misuse. --Porthos 22:52, 24 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Not to fan the flames or anything... but I did exactly what I was supposed to do. I only protected the page after you threatened to revert the page and initiate an edit war instead of discussing it further. As an admin, it was my job to prevent that. It was not to prove that my opinion was the correct one; it was only to get you to do the right thing and discuss it. Had you been able to wait a little while for my head to clear up from whatever funky cold I had, I would have been able to better explain myself -- not that i needed to, however, since Enzo did it perfectly. Anyway, before making further edits, I highly suggest you familiarize yourself better with our policies and guidelines in order to prevent these conflicts in the future. --From Andoria with Love 03:33, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * You should familiarize with them. As long as I'm not vandalising, you have to discuss it before reverting. As you can see on the talk page, I'm willing to do so. But not if I'm treated like a vandal... --Porthos 18:17, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Woah, calm down Porthos. Here's how, I think, things went down:
 * 1. You added your information to the article.
 * 2. Shran took the info out and placed it on the talk page, which he has done to numerous other articles, and is normal procedure to open up discussion on the info's veracity.
 * 3. You reverted the article back instead of discussing it.
 * 4. After Shran reverted it back and pointed you to the discussion, you threatened to revert it again.
 * 5. Shran protected the page to stop it before the edit war grew overboard.
 * Please tell me if I got anything wrong, as I was not present during the "proceedings." As I see it, it is both you (Porthos) and Shran's responsibility to convince the community (me and everyone else) to go for either side. Once a community consensus is determined, then the page can be unprotected and the page either a) changed to include your info, or b) not changed to go from Shran's POV. I could go either way, so perhaps opening up some kind of vote on the Oberth talk page so the community can express their opinions is pertinent.--Tim Thomason 19:09, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * As I said before, I did what was supposed to do. As Tim explained, it is standard procedure to remove excessive amounts of info from the article to the talk page for discussion before it can be inserted into the article to stay. My case was pretty much presented in the Oberth class's talk page, although I will admit the majority of it had to be done through Enzo and Alan, which I apologize for, but I just didn't have the mental energy to deal with it. As for treating you like a vandal, I am sorry if you saw it that way, but I really don't believe I treated you that way. Edit wars occur not only between an archivist and vandal, but between archivists as well, and to prevent chaos, I protected the page so we could discuss it. I did not remove the info because I thought it was vandalism or incorrect or unimportant... I only removed it because I found it questionable considering its great length and speculation based solely on f/x errors and felt it was in need of discussion (and, judging from what I've seen from Alan, I was right :)). Anyways, that's pretty much it. I hope this clarifies things, my dear Porthos. And for what it's worth, I hope you had a great holiday weekend. :) --From Andoria with Love 05:13, 26 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I also apologize if I offended you in any way Porthos. Having been in Memory Alpha for about a year now, you gain a sense of correctiveness (it's one of those things where you 'know' what is right here and wrong). As I mentioned prior in the Oberth class talk, you'll probably gain this sense after sometime (and, if you continue striving to make good articles, will become a great contributor. Shoot for your skills!). Basically, everything that can be mentioned has been mentioned by my pals above, and I hope this issue doesn't create a rivalry. But please, feel free to nitpick about Trek issues in your User page (Take a look at mine, I added an interesting nitpick about alien foods and drinks. As it's your user space, it's acceptable), it's your space, get creative ;) I also would like to wish you happy holidays, and a happy New Year! (Going on LOA) - Adm. Enzo Aquarius 21:34, 26 Dec 2005 (UTC)