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Hello, I'd like to be the first to welcome you to WikiProject St. Louis Cardinals! I recently noticed you joined the project's participants list, and as such it's wonderful to see another Wikipedian that's interested in improving articles related to what I think is one of baseball's greatest franchises. In particular, it was really cool to see your interest in doing some copyediting and such to the Ozzie Smith article. Copyediting and other minor details have been a tough thing to get straightened out on this article in particular, so it's awesome to see someone willing to step up to the plate and work on the nitty gritty stuff.
That said, I did want to take this opportunity to explain why I modified a few aspects of your first edit to Ozzie's article. For instance, I modified additions to the sentence about the '85 World Series that read, "...by coming from behind over a demoralized and collapsing Cardinal team in Game 6 and blowing them out in Game 7." There are several reason I did this. First, the reference I had to support that sentence didn't talk about how the Cards were "demoralized and collapsing," so I wouldn't feel comfortable adding in those statements without something to back it up with. Second, Wikipedia stresses a policy of neutral point of view (NPOV) in articles, part of which reads, "NPOV requires views to be represented without bias." I totally agree the Cards were demoralized after Denkinger's blown call, but I like to present the facts and let the reader draw their own conclusions, instead of inserting adjectives that would influence the reader one way or the other. Third, I think it's beneficial to keep the article focused on Ozzie, so avoiding delving too deep into the Denkinger thing is one way to accomplish that. Still, I agree it's a good idea to mention the effect Denkinger's call had on the team, so I'm going to look for a replacement reference to help facilitate that.
Like I said before, your copyediting is invaluable, and I know a bunch of Cardinal player articles that could use the same once-over. I know it took me a while to get the hang of NPOV and other stuff on Wikipedia, but the cool thing is there are always a bunch of fellow editors around to turn to on discussion pages and WikiProjects if a user ever has a question or needs help. If you have any questions, or if I can offer any assistance in the future, feel free to drop a note at my talk page or on the discussion page of WikiProject St. Louis Cardinals. I look forward to your future work on Cardinals-related articles; happy editing! --Monowi (talk) 23:16, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
