W7632416

Welcome!

Welcome!

Hello, W7632416, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using 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 ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! — flamingspinach | (talk) 02:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Flamingspinach. I have completed the tutorial. I have read your Talk page and believe I saw therein your progression from new Wikipedian to Editor to possibly Admin. It's slowly dawning on me how things work around here, e.g., User page versus Talk page, editing a page to insert a reply, etc. It just seems strange to be editing my own page in order to reply to your welcome message. (So, correct me!) I'm a closet technical writer, so I cringe at abbreviations, jargon and acronyms in messages, but I'll adapt. I think this is going to be fun. What am I looking forward to the most? To receiving my first SuggestBot message, I think it's called (based on any edits I initiate). That will surely be a while, though. I'm not here to stroke my ego. I'm mostly just a user who can't stand bad grammar and incorrect punctuation. W7632416 04:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC) (P.S. How will you know that I've replied to your welcome message to me?) W7632416 04:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Heyo - there's no real way for me to know that you've replied to me, which is indeed a weakness in the system. Some people just reply to messages on the other person's talk page, but that causes conversations to become fragmented and difficult to read later. I happened to check my own user contributions list and noticed that my edit to your talk page was no longer marked (top), meaning that someone else (maybe you) had said something there, so I moseyed on over to see what was up :) By the way, use of a simple : is much easier than <blockquote /> and generally looks nicer. I fixed up your comment above, hope you don't mind. Some people also indent their comments using * instead, which creates a bullet point instead of just an indentation. Try to avoid using HTML in favor of the native wiki syntax if possible. For example, line breaks can be effected by simply inserting two line breaks into the source text, a method similar to that used in TeX, which maybe as a technical writer you are familiar with.

Yes, your user page is somewhat like a "home page" - it is meant to house a description of you as a wikipedia editor, and maybe some links to various of your favorite articles, or whatever. Some people feel their identity as a person is not important in the general scheme of things, and just redirect their user page to their talk page. Some people use userboxes to describe some of their personal characteristics, such as what languages they can speak, etc. You remarked on your user page that using the sandbox is difficult because people keep changing the text there. Note that you can use the preview button in the edit screen to see what your entered source text will look like when rendered before actually committing your changes. There's virtually nothing different between the preview and the real thing, so that shouldn't be a problem. :) If you want, you can change your default signature generated by ~~~~ by going to your preferences, turning on "raw signatures", and entering in exactly what you want the your signature to be - the part before the date, anyway :) I've only tweaked mine slightly but some people do quite fancy stuff.

If you're interested in the community aspect of Wikipedia, another place not listed in the {{hello}} template I dumped on the top of your page is the village pump, where people discuss various things - you can learn a lot about the process there. In general, any page in the namespace "Wikipedia" (i.e. whose page name starts with Wikipedia:) is not part of the actual encyclopedia but rather related to the underlying mechanism of the project. If you use IRC, you can check out the Wikipedia IRC channel, where many experienced editors hang out. If you're interested in fighting vandalism and frivolous edits, consider working with our counter-vandalism unit. Anyway, these are just a few pointers for now :) If you have anything you want to know, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer. — flamingspinach | (talk) 14:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

ALL GOOD to know. Thanks. W7632416 03:45, 29 October 2007 (UTC)