User talk:Daveryan

Daveryan,

welcome to wikipedia, I hope you like it here.
I see you start making a Kanji reference which looks like a lot of work considering the number of Kanji. Since this is such a huge project you might consider starting a project at Wikipedia:WikiProject for it where you define the general format so others can start contributing to it in a well defined fashion.
You might also find that there will be some resistance to put every Kanji into Wikipedia since this is the English version and your project might be more appropriate in the Japanese wikipedia. Anyways, good luck and keep up the contributions
cheers, --synthetik 13:00 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

Actually there is some debate about a kanji reference. I proposed such a project but there seems a enough number of opponents. I set up a wikiproject. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese characters. Anyway welcome to wikipedia. I wish you will enjoy contributing. Cheers!

Daveryan 14:45 May 4, 2003 (UTC) - Thanks for the suggestions. I started this because I looked at the Kanji article and noticed there was no Kanji reference of any kind there or linked into it. I only aim to cover the basic 2,000-odd official characters - the ones that you see regularly. Of course, anyone else who wants to add kanji outside of the base 2,000 (or contribute some of the base 2,000 and save me some effort!) is more than welcome to do so. I also feel it is a good idea for this to be in the english section because the average Japanese person isn't going to have much need of an online reference to their own language and this is a 'Kanji for gaijin' type reference, with translations, english instruction on stroke order etc.

Should be ok, but you want to look at the broader picture and go with something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese characters where you can cover the full range of CJKV rather than multiply the effort for each language. cheers, --synthetik 14:54 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

I completely agree with your idea and I don't intend to stop you from contributing anything some people may complain though. I believe the decent encyclopedia should cover any sort of knowledge and Chinese characters are apparently such one. If we cover each character from the Simpsons, why not Chinese characters? Besides, yes this kind of reference is more useful if it is written in English. I believe a lot of people who wants to know about kanji can learn a lot from this sort of reference. Only what I need to tell you is please not go too far. I mean please do not go to make hunderds of kanji articles on your own. Wikipedia is a cooraborate project and if you coordinate with other people, we can do a great job! Particularly I am thinking of using a bot that converts useful information about code from unicode.org. If there are tens of kanji articles, it is possible to change the format or add new information by hand but if the number is hundreads, using bots to keep the format and accuracy is more useful for us. I will probably add much more to Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese characters as soon as possible so please take a look at it and participate the debate over there. -- Taku 15:38 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

I guess I'm one of the detractors here, in that I don't see the point of incorporating what are essentially complete textbooks of potentially infinite subjects into Wikipedia. That fact that there isn't a sufficiently useful guide somewhere else isn't justification.

Apart from that, could we put the space back into the title? What's wrong with "Kanji Reference"? That'd be more likely to get search hits.

Lastly, good job on the Chobits entry. I think it might need some trimming to remove a bit of opinion in there (see Neutral_point_of_view). Would you mind having a go over to remove the review parts? In particular:

The manga is both very funny and quite insightful. [etc]

- mib 00:16 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, I've removed the paragraph beginning as above and replaced it with something more opinion-neutral. Also, the japanese title of Chobits doesn't have a final extender character (neither the Japanese or English version of the manga have the extender when they show the Japanese name). - Daveryan 08:44 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

And I've also moved everything from KanjiReference to Kanji Reference - Index - Daveryan 09:25 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, looks great! I did wonder about the extender since it didn't fit the pronunciation, but I didn't have any of my chobits stuff to check until I got home. Keep up the good work! Do you think there needs to be some more information about the anime? C.f. Fruits Basket (not a perfect example as it's a bit light-on for manga details). I have the first DVD but it might not be enough to base an update on. -- mib 09:44 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Also, WRT the Kanji Reference, it might be worthwhile to consider some automated conversion from the [KANJIDIC] reference file. Could save a boatload of work. -- mib 09:53 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

I've had a look. I might be able to use it to look up character codes and the like, but it has a license on it limiting it's free use to personal use only. That said, some sort of automated option would be good, to save on manually creating thousands of entries. How would I go about doing this? PHP & MySQL tables combination? How would I implement it, how would it be updated and who would be able to update it? - Daveryan 12:55 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Also, I'm due to get some chobits DVDs soon, so as soon as I've watched them I'll do an update. - Daveryan 12:55 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

As I said before, we can probably use thonsands of good entries at unicode.org. Anyway, please Daveryan participates in the debate at wikiproject. I am afarid but your efforts need to be reverted in the future. For example, nameing of each entry is not easy. There are a lot of characters sharing the same sound so we probably need a different title currently you are using. In wikipedia, we don't use a namespace-mimic title like Kanji Reference: hoge. That needs to be changed. I know you rendered each character on your own but probably we should first discuss what fond we use. And there are a lot of many stuff needed to be done before we actually start adding entrieis. So please please first discuss. As you see, no one but you is contributing kanji reference because people are afraid kanji reference will be completely removed in the future because of it's lack of coordination. I don't mean to scare you but if you keep this, you will be banned. (I've got banned before because I went too far.) That is what either of us wants. I appreciate your efforts so far and completely agree with your argument that we should cover kanji but the problem is there are still some forces that oppose to it then we've got to convience them to make sure kanji entries remain in the future. So please take a look at WikiPedia: WikiProject Chinese characters. -- Taku 13:11 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Just so you didn't think I'd really gone the extra mile, I haven't rendered each character - what you see at the top of each Kanji's page is the kanji in the standard browser font, but made xx-large by a style section in a paragraph tag. - Daveryan 14:23 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

I think you'd need to talk to someone about automated uploading (its known here as "bot" entries). Try the Village Pump. The license on Kanjidic does look untenable. Ah well. -- mib 12:59 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

There is already discussion about use of bots. See talkpage at wikiproject.

Daveryan, just to let you know your Kanji reference pages are listed on the Votes for deletion page. --synthetik 13:57 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

I see you haven't edited in a while, but I have a question for you, should you come upon this message. On the yen page, how are you calculating the exchange rates? Are they an average over the month, or perhaps the value at the beginning or end of the month? A clarification would be helpful. Thanks, Minesweeper 03:45, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)