User talk:Rpgingmaster

Welcome
Hi, welcome to Microsoft Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the File:Win203logo.gif page.

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Happy editing, Sannse (help forum | blog)

Re: Adoption
Hey - generally the first step of an adoption is to attempt to contact the local admins. I do drop in here occasionally, just has been a while. I just saw that message I apparently left, not entirely sure how it ended up on the main page, clearly wasn't supposed to be there! Anyway - I'm happy to up you to admin and get things going on here again, if you're interested? Gboyers talk 19:27, August 27, 2012 (UTC)


 * I had already been keeping an eye on your edits - even though I don't edit much at the moment I do visit - and they're all good! This wiki definitely does need an overhaul - not sure if you know this, but it was actually formed by merging all the old wikias together (windows/microsoft/windows7 etc etc) into one big one. I'm committed with Grand Theft Wiki most of the time, but it would be good to give this a good overhaul, and stop it being just a copy of Wikipedia. I'm happy for you to take a lead on that, the adoption wouldn't be necessary. Do you have any admin experience? Gboyers talk 19:54, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Well I'd suggest withdrawing the adoption request (that's all you'd need to say, just remove your entry on the adoption page), and I will read through your edits and actively consider a promotion for you. I suggest we work together to form a plan for an overhaul of this wiki. What knowledge/expertise/interest do you have in Microsoft? Gboyers talk 20:40, August 27, 2012 (UTC)


 * That makes sense. To start off with, we need all the basic articles rewriting - like I've just done with Windows Server 2012. It's better to have a small, coherent article that we've written ourselves (with lots of links) than a huge massive mess copied from Wikipedia. The point of this wiki should be to provide simple information that's easy to find, navigate and understand - definitely NOT what Wikipedia specialises in. We can use the Wikipedia articles as a starting point, but there's no point just copying tons of articles and leaving them!


 * Obviously Windows (7 and 8), Office (2010 and 2013), Xbox 360 (and 720?), Windows Phone 7 (and 8), and Microsoft are the most important articles. Then we should start having each little program and feature have its own page (like I've done with Metro). These need to be clean, simple articles with plenty of screenshots and lots of links to other things. Once we start to get a handle on that, we can worry about the organisation of this wiki, with categories, and cleaning up everything through Special:SpecialPages (like wanted pages / unused templates etc). And of course - keeping a lid on vandalism etc. Sound like a plan? Gboyers talk 21:21, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Article Style
Hey, I have a few suggestions/recommendations about article style from the edits we've made so far: Just my thoughts on what we've been doing so far - let me know if you have any! Gboyers talk 18:41, August 28, 2012 (UTC)
 * Articles should have a few opening sentences. Not a horribly complicated one like Wikipedia (where they list pronunciations etc) but something nice and simple like I've done for Windows 3.1x and Windows Server 2012. They should cover the name, release date, major versions, and what the next version was. (These should be past-tense for old software, I think.) The bullet points you had aren't really enough to start an article.
 * For software products, the image at the top of the page needs to be a screenshot, rather than a logo or packaging. This is so that people can instantly recognise what we're talking about.
 * Images at the top of the page should be 200 or 250px. If they are 400px, it takes up so much width that the opening sentence is cropped every couple of words, and it looks messy.
 * For the sections within an article, the most important ones (at the top) should be versions, features and then an image gallery. Things like history, controversy and other lengthy topics should go lower down. If there's too much to go on one page, keep it as a simple overview of the topic (even just bullet points), and provide a link to the main subject.