Wikipedia: Bryan Derksen

I'm just some random guy who has become mildly hooked by Wikipedia, and who recently dragged Alex Kennedy down with me.

Some of the pages I've contributed to significantly are:

Acetylene Actaeon Amino acid Anthropomorphism Callisto Carbon chauvinism Charybdis Clanking replicator Circe Cruithne Daedalus Dyson sphere Edmonton Exon Exxon Freenet Genetic code Greek mythology Grue Intron Jack L. Chalker Lincos Lycanthropy Muppet Nagasaki Neoteny Pan RNA Sampo Scylla Sidehill Gouger Solar system (and practically all of the planets, moons, comets - whew!) Victor Von Doom Werewolf

"Discussion board" section of my homearticle:

Brian, please do me a favor and don't use the unicode symbols for the number sets throughout. This locks out people who haven't updated their fonts unnecessarily, since C works just fine and is understood by everybody in the field. How about if you just mention the character once, like I did on rational number? --AxelBoldt

Allrighty, I was just momentarily overcome by the fun of putting exotic characters into pages. :)

: Even once is not good, unless you add a note explaining that it probably won't display correctly and what it would look like if it did display correctly. Since there's really no point to doing this, I'm just removing them. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 9

: Actually, I think I've got to disagree with this. Mathematicians often use these symbols, and so I think it's important to show people what they look like when discussing these topics if at all possible. I'll put in notes explaining that unicode doesn't display properly on all browsers, but other than that I can't see any good reason not to include them. -BD

Thanks for your recent welcome on my page. I look forward to collaborating with you in areas we both find interesting -- such as mythology. As a newbie, may I ask a couple questions on wikitiquette?

When someone offers a welcome on your personal page, do you respond on your page or on theirs?

: I have no idea. I don't think there's any sort of formal standard, so I guess put it wherever you think the other guy is most likely to see it, or wherever it looks like it fits best. I responded to my greetings here on my own page, for example.

When you add comments to a /talk page, do you add to the top, bottom, or middle (if relevant)?

: Again, I don't think there's much of a standard. I think most people add to the bottom of the page, though, except when they're responding to some specific point that someone made in which case they add it indented directly below the point in question (like how newsreaders often display threaded usenet posts).

: I'm not a very prolific wikipedian, though, so I'm probably wrong. :)

Thanks! I appreciate your responding. Let me beg your indulgence for one more. Is it appropriate to add literary analysis to entries on creative works? For example, see my Leaf by Niggle page. I was pondering adding to the Dune page (Why Dune is like High Fantasy), but I'm not sure it's appropriate.

-- Cayzle

: Hm... I have even less certainty about this one than I do about the previous questions. :) I think that there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but that one should be careful going about it. One possible pitfall is that literary analysis is often strongly rooted in opinion; I'd suggest making sure that you're either sticking to factual statements (pointing out objective similarities between Dune and other works of high fantasy, for example) or making sure to couch it in terms like "many scholars believe <blah>."

: This may be covered in the various faqs and Wikipedia policy pages that are scattered around, I haven't done much searching. But another way to find out the general consensus about whether such things are appropriate is to just do it and see whether anyone complains. :)