User talk:Watcher4200

So, is that my picture?
No, that picture is not of me, but a couple "Mad Scientists" whom I have great respect for... Are their names lost on other contributors to this wiki? It matters not, I know who the picture is of. If anyone would like to try to identify them them here, I'll respond to your guesses. Watcher4200 00:15, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

What am I doing here?
I came here looking for a forum to discuss Doctor Who and Torchwood issues and episodes. I was initially very intrigued by the "Plot Holes and Discontinuities" pages, which are somewhat difficult to distinguish from the "Talk" pages. In any event, I'm very impressed by the amount of work that has gone into this site (but less so with some of the recent updates, or lack thereof).

I plan to add a few things, to figure out how things are done...

After adding a few, I seem to be "moving up" on the list of contributors - which I find a little disconcerting since I don't consider myself a "serious" contributor. Watcher4200 00:07, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

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Lynn Peterfield edit:
I have a tendency to go through article and chop out superfluous words. The change you cite falls into that category almost every time because, as I am sure you have noticed, most people here do not write precisely. I can see a very slight and subtle shift in meaning in your construction and if you actually intend that, by all means, shift it back.

I am here to help, not to beat up on people. I know that watching one's writing edited is a traumatic experience. I still recall the tears I held back, oh, thirty-eight years ago, when a competent copy editor blue-pencilled an article he had requested from me and handed it back as advice, with the suggestion that if he had missed anything, I should make the revisions myself. What was worse was that he was right in every particular. It was a humbling and helpful lesson. But I also learned that when I was right and the editor was wrong, a simple /stet/ would serve. There are rules in writing that should almost invariably be observed, but may be intelligently broken. Your version is not a mistake, but, as I have said, usually it is used as a sense-free bit of extra verbiage.

I should warn you that, judging by most of the people who contribute, the difference will be unnoticed, but it still behooves us to do a job as well as we can. I offer my apologies for any trauma, and hope that you can do something with the word "rendition" while you are at it. I haven't seen the series yet -- I'm waiting for it to show up on dvd in the US so I can get through it as fast as I can. In the meantime, it looks like the wrong word, although, of course, viewing the episode may provide a precise meaning -- which should be explained.

In the meantime, I appreciate the punctillio of your note, which speaks of your respect for yourself and of me, even if the latter is not always deserved. Boblipton 01:48, September 8, 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand and agree. As someone who has my own professional work "peer reviewed", I think that I understand the benefits and pitfalls (and inevitable personality conflicts) inherent in such a process.  I fully recognize that "I speak differently than other people" and it is certain that I don't have a monopoly on correctness.  I welcome your (indeed everyone's) input, and I hope my articles are interesting enough such that you can find problems in my writing in the future (you know, because then my work would have fewer errors).


 * In this particular case, I had chosen a "clunky" phrasing in order to draw attention to what I think is (hmmmm) contrived script writing - my "peeve" is with Doris Egan. I didn't want to just revert (Flame war) to my own work especially since it seems like an innocuous simplification.


 * As for Rendition vs Rendition (TV story) (I notice that I linked the wrong one in my "talk" on your page) I made a small attempt to improve the phrasing (that sentence wasn't one of mine) there, but I wouldn't presume to remove the flag unless you felt my edit was an improvement. --Watcher4200 17:23, September 8, 2011 (UTC)