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User talk:Opus

From Bloomingpedia

My wonderful welcome to this project

Opus, what are you trying to do with this Opus the Penguin picture? Please explain or you may be blocked. -- Mark 19:37, 16 March 2006 (GMT)

  • Gee what a nice welcome. And just what would be your grounds for blocking me? Not that you guys can't make up your own policy, but threatening to block me after my very first few edits here seems rather short tempered to me. Not a very good way to improve your userbase. I certainly hope you don't "welcome" other new users in a similar manner.
  • I properly sourced the image. It's in the public domain under Creative Commons. The first version of it had a yellow strip down the right side. So, I uploaded a version without the yellow strip (artifact of my playing around with the cropping). That version had him facing right. Since I wanted the image on the right side of my user page, I wanted it to face left. So, I flipped it and re-uploaded it again. Also, please remember to include ":" after the double [[ when inlining an image. You transcluded the entire image to my talk page rather than just the link to the image. I've fixed it above. --Opus 19:44, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Sorry about that. I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't submit your image, but I wanted to see if you could respond with some information about how it relates to Bloomington. We've had trouble with wiki spammers and I wanted to make sure you weren't one of them. Please, by all means submit information to Bloomingpedia, but please keep it on topic. Thanks and thanks for the tip on including links to image pages. -- Mark 19:52, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Just give new users some patience please. Waiting a few minutes to see what they are going to do isn't going to kill the project. I didn't come here to submit off-topic information. I'm well aware of the troubles that wikis face with vandalism. I run two other (fledgling) wikis myself, and am an administrator on en.wikipedia.org (under a different ID than this one). A well-meaning new user can often look like a vandal. If you work with them, you can foster their development into a fantastic contributor. Not everyone that comes here is going to know everything wiki at the outset. I have considerable experience with wikis, and was doing something entirely normal for a wiki. I was rather shocked and surprised at the welcome you gave me. I'd hate to think the welcome a new well-meaning user who is fumbling about would receive. Apology accepted, but please be less abrupt with new users in the future, ok? --Opus 20:01, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Well, I'm used to people adding a few articles to the wiki before they create themselves a user page. I wasn't expecting it to be your user profile picture. If you're really an admin for wikipedia, I think you can understand our concern and desire to keep things under control. If anything, you jumped to conclusions as well. I simply asked you how it relates to Bloomington. You could have simply said that you were going to use it for your user profile picture. Nuff said. I wouldn't have questioned that. Next time I question something like that I'll try to be nicer in my approach. -- Mark 20:14, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Well we're just getting off to a smashing start aren't we? Tit-for-tat, implications that I might be vandalizing, my rejoinder that you should be nicer to newcomers, your return that I might be lying about status as an administrator on Wikipedia. Oh joy. :) I hope we get along better than this. --Opus 20:17, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Opus, I think Mark is just trying to explain why he jumped to (an incorrect) conclusion and was so curt. Don't think we don't appreciate your work today. We're glad to have you on board! Thanks for all the articles today. Hope this little exchange hasn't soured your interest too much. Just one of those little misunderstandings that happen on the internet sometimes. Cheers! -Chrobb 21:22, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Hasn't soured anything. That's why I made the "Well we're just..." comment. I've been on the net for >20 years now, and I'm well aware of the shortcomings of text based communications. I haven't really been put off by the exchange. I would be put off if I'd been blocked, since I'd done nothing wrong. --Opus 21:29, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
Ok, that's good. One thing I should explain is that I did have a good reason for suspecting unreleated content. About a month ago we had a bunch of students from an IU class come to Bloomingpedia, most of them not understanding what the point of it was. Several people added content that was unreleated to Bloomington and Chris Robb and I had a heck of a time keeping ahead of the changes that we were making. We ended up blocking all of IU's IPs so that we could stop the madness for a few hours. I got ahold of the professor and ended up going to speak with the class about Bloomingpedia. After that they seemed to understand better, but I think the whole event kept people from coming back. Today I noticed that two of those people who suddenly came back to make edits. This time they made legitimate edits. But when you posted the penguin I thought that maybe you were from the class as well or something. Obviously from your point of view, it was if you had walked into a convience store and had the clerk pull a gun on you for buying wiper fluid because he had been robbed the day before. ;-) Sorry for that. -- Mark 02:54, 17 March 2006 (GMT)
Something like that, yes :) No worries. I understand the position you were in better now. Thanks for sharing! --Opus 13:06, 17 March 2006 (GMT)
Cool! Well, welcome to Bloomingpedia. :-) I hope we continue seeing contributions from you. -- Mark 13:35, 17 March 2006 (GMT)

Long time...

...no see. Welcome back to the wilds of Bloomingpedia. :) Chris 15:01, 20 July 2006 (EDT)

  • Wait wait wait...something's wrong! Nobody tried to kick me off bloomingpedia in this latest talk message! Aaaaiiieeee! I can't handle this reality! ;) --Opus 13:01, 24 July 2006 (EDT)
harharhar, I guess we'll never live that down. You going to be at the celebration tonight at the Encore Cafe? Chris 13:32, 24 July 2006 (EDT)
  • No, I couldn't go. I had a prior commitment at the county fair. --Opus 08:30, 25 July 2006 (EDT)