User talk:Bwan

Belgium

As IP 78.23.203.87 I noticed you reverted other users on this article. Revert wars are a big NO-NO. For that I am going to impose a one day ban for that IP and this user name you are using here. What you added to the article wasn't all bad in my view but it would help next time if you got a regular user to oversee what you are doing as a new user. Thank you. --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 13:49, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Not the best start...

But consider it a learning curve. You won't know all the ins and outs of this site at first, and you'll make mistakes, and you may get a slap on the wrist as a result. As Romartus says, your edits aren't all bad, but if I - or Frosty, or anyone else - reverts an edit of yours, there is generally a reason. With my edit to what you were doing there was a superfluous sentence that killed the flow, and huge walls of text are a bastard to read.

While you're in read-only mode, have a look at BGBU, which is our beginners guide. This is a bunch of stuff about behaviour here and what is acceptible and what isn't. There's probably domething in there about reverting stuff.

Also check out HTBFANJS, which is a style guide of sorts. It has a lot of tips on how to improve your comedic writing to get the best possible audience.

Anyway, welcome to the site. If you want to know why your edits were reverted, best to go through to the person that reverted them. In this case it was User:Frosty, and you can talk to him at his talk page, User talk:Frosty.

For my part - I looked at the edits, and some of it was good, but some of it was trying to push a particular viewpoint relating to Dutch/Belgian relations. While that could be funny, it has to be written in a way that the funny comes out. Also, great big blocks of text are ugly. If you are changing from one point to another, add in a paragraph break occasionally. I was half tempted to revert those edits myself as while they had some promise (hence my invite for you to join) they had issues as well. When you get back on I'll give you a hand to work them up to scratch. We'll start them in your user space as User:Bwan/Belgium so you don't have someone undoing your work.

And welcome aboard! Nominally Humane! 02:10 27 Aug

User:Bwan/Belgium There you go. It's in your user space so you can feel free to edit without worrying about reverting. Also I'll go through this tomorrow my time (It's about 12:15AM my time at the moment, so going to sleep shortly) and give you some extensive feedback. One thing I will say about getting feedback that I should warn you - not all feedback is nice, but it should all be constructive. My focus will be to get as much funny out of this as possible. All I know about Belgium I learned from "Asterix in Belgium", so I know hardly anything about the topic. I know a bit about writing funny though. Edit the version here, rather than the one in main space, and once it's considered to be an improvement over the current version we can move it back. Nominally Humane! 02:19 28 Aug

Thanks. I've improved one little segment of the article, and will continue tomorrow.--Bwan (talk) 16:13, August 28, 2012 (UTC)

I ran out of time today to do a decent review on this. Tomorrow, assuming it's a little quieter than today has been. Nominally Humane! 10:36 29 Aug

Still not done with this article. But I haven't got much time and now I'm gonna travel for one month, so I think my next edits will only be for October. So it'd be nice if this version could already be placed online. Otherwise, there's the risk that someone edits the online version while I'm not done with this one yet. So please give some feedback soon.--Bwan (talk) 19:42, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

Feedback

Overall

The article lacks a clear concept, other than a random collection of "facts" about Belgium. By pulling back from just trying to find everything funny about a subject, just choose a number of different factors that are funny, and expand of these. Have a look at the old version of India and compare it to the featured version. The way this was improved was by stripping the article down to the bare bones, and keeping in the funniest parts of it, and then adding in stronger comedic sections. Go through your article with a fine tooth comb.

One trick to do this is what's known as the "traffic light" technique. Grab your article and copy-paste it to a word processor. Take each sentence and section one at a time. If the section doesn't add to the humour of the article, or is repeated without adding any more funny, or is just stupid, then highlight it in red. If the section is rolling on the floor laughing, then highlight it in green. Whatever is left is the stuff which is good but nor fantastic, highlight that in yellow.

Whatever is red, delete it. Whatever is yellow, rewrite it so that it's funnier. Whatever is green, leave it as it is, unless you can see an easy way to make it even better.

Also choose what you want to use as your major concepts in the article. For India the major thrusts were the religion/superstition, the politics/history, the over-population, and finally Bollywood. These are the things that people outside of the country know about the country. There are a few other one-liners in there as well, but they are broken down into minor parts amongst the larger whole. With your article, I'd strip it down to the following main concepts:

• Cultural confusion: The stuff you have with the Flemish/Dutch is fantastic, as well as the influence from Germany, France, and Netherlands. This is your main source of humour. Having this as the central theme to your article, and adding in a History and Geography section (split down into cities) to take advantage of this would be the best way to kick into the article. Then from there you get into your Demographics, Language and Communication
• Science/technology/invention: Bring these together so they run from one to the other. Having it read with a logical flow from one topic to the next makes it easier to read rather than being broken up all over the place. From there you can move into your Urbanisation stuff. I would incorporate your road quality into this as it doesn't work as a section on it's own.

What I'd get rid of is the Famous Belgians section (and just have them as links in the See also section), and the True Metal section (which makes no sense to me as an English speaker, and doesn't add anything funny). I'd also remove the references section unless you have references that you want to add.

This is just a brief overview to start with. When I get more time I can go through each section a little at a time, as one of the other problems is that this is written by someone who's not an Anglophile (ie, English isn't your strongest language), and clean that aspect up. But that should give you an idea of how to structure this which will make this doubly effective.

This is how to add a reference, by the way.

Nominally Humane! 06:18 30 Aug

Ok, thanks for the feedback. Yeah I'd love to throw the unfunny shit away, but I've always been kinda afraid to tear some other person's work down. That is why I made such needlessly huge paragraphs. I'll extremely shorten the "inventiveness" paragraphs, because fundamentally Belgium isn't very inventive at all. The focus could be on Belgium's obscurity, complexity, mystery, language and its relations with other countries, and also the Adolphe Sex - chocolate - afrodisiacum - sex lives - mixed race - thing could be useful and funny. I will also create a paragraph called "Complexity" (with the subparagraph "Belgian political complexity"), which will be incomprehensibly complexly written. Universe domination will be shortly mentioned as Belgian mythology. Oh and still, due to lack of time and travel plans, my next edits will only be for October. So if any section could already be put online, it would be great. Cuz there's the risk of someone editing the online version, creating two diverging Belgium articles. And you can always comment my English language mistakes on my talk page, if you want. Just create a new header. See ya ladah--Bwan (talk) 18:19, August 30, 2012 (UTC)

Hi PuppyOnTheRadio. I'm back from travel and have worked a bit on my Bwan/Belgium page. I'm still gonna change it but you can already take a look at it if you want. Also, we're gonna need some more visual stuff on the page.Bwan (talk) 23:40, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

Ban Lifted

Your ban was lifted an hour or so early. Got no idea why I am being generous here but there, the deed was done. Don't get into revert wars again. Talk to the other user next time. --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 13:34, August 28, 2012 (UTC)