Dana.lynn.3367
Joined 5 January 2020
Latest comment: 4 years ago by Ian.thomson in topic A summary of some important site policies and guidelines
Welcome!
editHello, Dana.lynn.3367, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Ian.thomson (talk) 01:25, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
A summary of some important site policies and guidelines
edit- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. All we do here is cite, summarize, and paraphrase professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources, without addition, nor commentary.
- We have a tutorial, The Wikipedia Adventure, if you would like to learn more about editing Wikipedia.
- Please sign your posts on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~, found next to the 1 key), and please do not change others' comments. New comments go at the bottom, under the comments they are responding to.
- We do not publish original thought nor original research. We're not a blog, we're not here to promote any ideology.
- Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources. Real scholarship actually does not say what understanding of the world is "true," but only with what there is evidence for. In the case of science, this evidence must ultimately start with physical evidence. In the case of religion, this means only reporting what has been written and not taking any stance on doctrine.
- We do not give equal validity to topics which reject and are rejected by mainstream academia. For example, our article on Earth does not pretend it is flat, hollow, and/or the center of the universe.
- Reliable sources typically include: articles from mainstream magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards. User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided. Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
- Wikipedia is not a social media network. The primary purpose of user pages is to let other users know about areas you might be interested in contributing in, not creating your own personal website.