RealWorldExperience

Hello, RealWorldExperience! This user values third opinions and occasionally provides one. Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already loving Wikipedia you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Happy editing! Addhoc (talk) 19:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC) Getting Started Wikipedia Tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Pages needing attention • Peer review Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Mentorship Offer

Hello, I would like to mentor you. I have over 1800 edits, and thats not even including deleted ones. I am a very experienced editor, and it would be my pleasure to mentor you. User:Nothing444/a Nothing444 20:07, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Adoption

Hi, ive noticed you are seeking adoption. I would like to formally adopt you. If you would kindly accept/reject this offer on my talk page, that would be most appreciated. Thanks. Five Years 18:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Take this offer mate. Rgoodermote  01:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, but could be a little more specific please. I am not familiar with the heirachy here or how to effectivly pick a mentor so I am just starting with the first person that kindly responded to my request. I can't think of a fairer way. RealWorldExperience (talk) 01:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello, User:Nothing444 is not allowed to mentor people anymore. But would you like me to answer your questions?--RyRy5 (talk) 02:32, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

He was asking for some one to adopt him. Sorry for not being specific. As stated above Nothing444 is no longer allowed to mentor. So what I was saying is that you should go with Five Years suggestion and let him adopt you. He has over 19,000 edits and is a very experienced user. Rgoodermote  02:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

OK thank you for that update. I am curious why he is no longer able to mentor? I am concerned that power struggles are prevelant here. I am mostly just interested in contributing content to facilitate a broader understanding on subjects that I know well.RealWorldExperience (talk) 03:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I can vouch for Five Years personally. Re the carriage return, you need to hit two of them to get a line break, rather than one. I'm not entirely sure why that is, found it puzzling myself when I first joined. Orderinchaos 03:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Nothing444 was blocked I off hand can't remember why. Rgoodermote  03:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there a page somewhere that keeps track of all the demotions/promotions so that the community can know what happened? If I am to invest time here I would like to feel that there is a valid system of peer review for diputes rather than people playing "king of the mountain" I am still trying to grasp the concept of communication here. What determines the page we post on? You reply here, yet should I be replying on your talk page? Theoretically we could be having the same dialog on both pages I suspect. What is the etiquette? RealWorldExperience (talk) 03:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Different schools of thought on that. The tradition is that say if we're talking, you would post on my page, I would post a reply on your page and so on. OK if the matter's fairly easy, but horrendous to try and figure out a year later, or if more than one party is involved. My general rule of thumb is if more than two people are involved I'll reply where the third party last posted, then all replies tend to centralise there. So in short it's equally valid to post replies on your own talk page or on the other person's, but it's a judgement call as to which is best appropriate in the particular circumstances.

Re your post elsewhere - I sympathise with your predicament regarding the other editor. It's never easy when you're editing in corners of the encyclopaedia that few get involved in. I work in Australian politics articles and something which would get noticed right away and dealt with in a higher traffic article becomes a mountain to overcome on the smaller one. That's when calling in third opinions either through the WP:3O process or, as you get to know more people here, just asking others whom you trust and who are likely to be neutral and considered in their views (as opposed to simply agreeing with you - although they may well do if they conclude your argument has more merit) is probably the best way. Orderinchaos 19:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Communication

Hey, you wanted to learn more about communication on wikipedia. Most communication on wikipedia is done via talk pages (like we are now). We dont have an option for a "private message", but you can elect to Email people (providing that they have email enabled), to email someone, scroll down on the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen and there will be a link to "E-mail this user".

Posts on user talk pages should always start at the bottom, leaving older messages at the top, which just makes for easier archiving. Almost everyone archives their talk pages, some do it manually, some have bots that come by their talk page and remove sections that are older than X number of days. I do my archiving manually, by "cutting" comments from my talk page and "pasting" them into an archive. If you would like to have a look at my archival system, see here. You may also like to look at WP:ARCHIVE.

Another good page to look at is WP:USER, which deals with what you can and cant have/do in your userspace. If you have further questions, dont hesitate to contact me. Cheers. Five Years 03:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for that. So how/where is mentoring done? do we do it through a series of questions and answers here on my talk page or would you prefer your talk page? (BTW, how are you becoming aware that I post here? do you get a notification somehow?} RealWorldExperience (talk) 04:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I have your page on my "watchlist", which just tells me of recent edits to a page. To add a page to your watchlist, there is a tab at the top of the page which says "watch", just click that and it will be added to your watchlist. To view your watchlist, at the top of your page, there should be a link to "my watchlist". For further information on this, look at WP:WATCHLIST.

Five Years 04:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

OK Great, lets begin :) RealWorldExperience (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I am still not clear about how to insert a line break, meaning begin on a new line below the current line. If I use two carriage returns, I get a new line but with an empty line above it. How is this done?

Article Suggestions

Suggestbot is a program that looks at articles youve edited, and tries to suggest other articles that are similar, which you may like to edit. It will leave a list on your talk page for you to look at, and hopefully edit. Thanks. Five Years 03:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Am I missing something? I see no suggestions yet. Should I continue to wait?

It should be coming soon, your name is still at User:SuggestBot/Requests. In the meantime, you might want to look at some articles in Category:BASIC programming language family, which seems to be close to your interests. Five Years 08:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Have some

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User:Nothing444's adoption offer

It's a good think you didn't take his adoption offer. He is very inexperienced and has been blocked just yesterday. I hope you will be a very helpful contributer here, and if you do have any questions, just ask.--RyRy5 (talk ♠ wikify) 03:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes I Know. I am increasingly concerned about fair play here at Wikipedia and I would be very interested to see a review of this case, specifically what he did, why it was determined to be an action requiring banning and what the review process was. Could you point me in the right direction please?

I would like to feel that Wikipedia is not a forum for people seeking gratification in the smacking down of others on a whim. I would like to see some evidence somewhere that conflicts of real issues have a way to be fairly adjudicated by a body of peers, with an appeal process. So far the only source I can find of such, is the mediation cabal that in a recent dispute announced they were too busy to deal with it. RealWorldExperience (talk) 19:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Shortest answer to this is to skim User talk:Nothing444, where the comments by others show what the problems were. The block log also gives some idea (blocks, by the way, are not punitive but to protect the encyclopedia against damage).

I strongly advise that, as a newcomer, you read it primarily in a spirit of learning what Nothing444 did wrong to get blocked, and not to investigate whether you think the procedure was fair or what procedures exist to dispute decisions.

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and thinking of it in this way won't stand you in good stead (in fact, taking a quasi-legal approach in discussions is usually counterproductive, as it's very likely to be perceived negatively as "wikilawyering"). Most decisions are made on a "quick and dirty" basis, and it's more useful to watch those decisions; accept, for the time being, experienced users' views of how things work, and develop that same experience of what is acceptable and what isn't. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 18:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for linking the talk page and the block log. That helped greatly in understanding what happened to this user.

I am confused about your approach to the powerbasic article. You have indicated that you are working on finding printed material to meet the letter of the verifiability requirement, yet here you quote Wikilawyering defined in part as "Abiding by the letter of a policy or guideline while violating its spirit;" and suggest this is "likely to be perceived negatively".

Why don't you just declare the powerbasic material, that you deem appropriate, as valid and include it? I would agree that most of the information like "pointer indirection" etc etc is very valid. Since this is within the spirit of Wikipedias aims what is the problem?

This article is very instructional for me. I am not only gaining real world experience of the wiki policies in action, but am able to see the teeth of admins. I must say that with a few exceptions, I find it to be quite an aggressive environment where "summary judgements" are the norm. Attracting quality contributors may be difficult in this atmosphere. I am still not convinced that my efforts here would be worthwhile. Did you go through a phase like this too? RealWorldExperience (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I had a bit of difficulty at the start, but not in that particular way. People have many different problem areas: my main one was feeling annoyed (more than I'd imagined I would be) at having my work edited - even though the edit screen explicitly says this will happen. I also wasn't terribly receptive to WP:NPOV in some topics, where I'd rather it had followed WP:SPOV (still do, I guess it isn't going to happen).

I find it to be quite an aggressive environment where "summary judgements" are the norm.

It can be, but a lot of your encounter of that is reactive. You did, after all, sign up and embark on a course of edits with a pattern considered tendentious - focused on a single issue and apparently a grievance to put right, disputing core policies, ignoring repeated advice on the situation, heading straight into high-level dispute resolution procedures...

As with your mentorship, I'm not telling you this to improve your knowledge of Wikipedia to better argue your case. I notice since I told you about "wikilawyering", you've amended your Wikipedia talk:Verifiability question to use it as ammunition - but this is exactly the type of quasi-legal approach that I advised you won't help. Wikipedia:Wikilawyering is merely a useful descriptive essay on an editing pattern that is widely viewed as unhelpful, not a policy or guideline, so nobody's going to be remotely interested in the exact wording of what it states.

You'd do far better to just get on and edit something uncontroversial - serve your apprenticeship, so to speak - than worry away at this one issue. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 01:20, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

"...not a policy or guideline" Then I am confused. I used this as an argument as I thought it was policy. Is there a definitive way to determine policy? I have read many pages that I assumed were policy and I will now have to re-read them to determine first if they are policy and then if they are relevant to my contention that Wikipedias will need to start including computer code from online sources if it is to keep up with the level of technical information currently presented.

I take your point that I waded into a controversy immediately, but I did so knowingly. As I have stated a few times, this article is where the rubber meets the road for me in many ways. When you have a determined party with a conflict of interest, there is going to be a dispute. I knew that. I also picked an article about a subject that I am well versed. The outcome is largely irrelevant, but the process, policies and enforcement by wikipedia are not.

While I would like to believe that integrity and truth prevail for the better of all, I have lived in this world long enough to know that is rarely the case. Our politicians make a career out of lying and serving special interests, Lawyers who's job it is to present the truth, do anything but, and everyone you meet would sell their grandmother if they thought it would get them one more rung up the ladder. So forgive my scepticism, but I want to see how wikipedia resolves an issue like this for myself.

I don't know why Nothing444 started behaving the way he did. As someone on his talk page asked "did someone hijack your account?" I suspect he found that he was not in agreement with something (possibly the copyright issue). I try not to put myself in situations where I would become so disillusioned that I feel the desire to vandalize a great work like wikipedia. If I do not do my due diligence, I would only have myself to blame if I found out, down the road, that Wikipedia adheres to some policy that I totally disagree with. So while I will continue to contribute, I must make it clear that the powerbasic article is my due diligence, and I suspect many eyes are also silently watching.

I would appreciate your help in clarifying exactly what IS relevant policy in this case.

Is there a definitive way to determine policy?

It will say so explicitly in an infobox at the relevant page: e.g. WP:NPOV. Here's the full list: Category:Wikipedia official policy.

As to Nothing444, I doubt anyone cares much why. The theme of the criticisms was that he wanted to fiddle disruptively with the infrastructure here, but seemed uninterested in the business of creating an encyclopedia. That's the central business here, and useful editors have interests somewhere on a spectrum between creating the text of the encyclopedia and helping on the damage limitation side protecting that creation process (for instance, reverting random vandalism, or assisting the resolution of disputes).

I've put it in time to advise you because you're clearly an intelligent person and could be a useful contributor. But if your main interest is outside that spectrum - basically, prodding the system to see how it well it works for you ("The outcome is largely irrelevant, but the process, policies and enforcement by wikipedia are not") - it's a time-wasting irrelevancy. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 12:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

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Adoption by Diligent Terrier

I would like to adopt you. Please let me know if you would be interested. Thanks! - DiligentTerrier (and friends) 18:48, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you so much for your offer. At this time I am working with a mentor FiveYears. He is very patient with me and I am making progress in understanding what I can expect and what I can contribute here. RealWorldExperience (talk) 18:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I didn't know that. Well, if you're not interested in Adoption anymore, then you should probably remove that notice from your page. Anyway, it's a good thing you're working with an experienced editor, and remember I'm still here if you have any questions. Cheers! - DiligentTerrier (and friends) 19:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh I am sorry. I didn't think of that. Sorry to waste your time. I don't see where it is... perhaps you could delete it wherever it is?

 Done It was on your userpage. - DiligentTerrier (and friends) 19:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Good work

Hi, I've noticed youve started working on other computer-related articles. Keep up the good work, if you need a hand, dont hesitate to drop a note on my talk page. Cheers. Five Years 18:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Bayeux, Comet

Hi, I have seen you contributed to Comet, maybe your input could help in the current discussion. Cheers! - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 21:32, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, been on vacation... Just took a look at the discussion. I will need to digest this. There is a lot here! RealWorldExperience (talk) 18:22, 9 August 2008 (UTC)