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{{adoptme|date=January 2020}} |
{{adoptme|date=January 2020}} |
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: {{ping|Gaurarjun}} Adopters are usually experienced editors. I'm not Maryanne Cunningham, but if either of you are interested in adoption, taking a look at [[Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user/Adoptee's Area/Adopters]] and contacting people on that list is usually much faster than waiting for someone else to contact you. [[User:Clovermoss|<span style="color:darkorchid">Clover</span><span style="color:green">moss</span>]] [[User talk:Clovermoss|(talk)]] 01:08, 9 January 2020 (UTC) |
Revision as of 02:20, 9 January 2020
Untitled
What's a talk page when it's at home? Am I talking to anyone? Is anyone going to reply? I would just like to point out that these instructions are incomprehensible. I haven't got the faintest idea what I'm supposed to do in this Sandbox thing.
Maybe what I'm typing is being spied on by somebody. Well best of luck, this must be the most boring spying session you've indulged in.
This whole thing has to have been written by a man. Can't SOMEONE put up some instructions that actually tell you what you need to do to edit something, rather than presenting me with a load of stuff I don't understand?
Hopeless.Maryanne Cunningham (talk) 22:34, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
- You might find this helpful and informative Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure. Theroadislong (talk) 20:26, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
- Although your message here is a couple of weeks old, I just wanted to say: don't worry! It took me multiple attempts over the years to even understand how to do basic things here on Wikipedia. It's very unintuitive and the tutorials are written by people who are so experienced that they have forgotten how unintuitive Wikipedia is. You sort of just learn by adding well-referenced text to article, and being corrected when you make errors. Let me know if there's something in particular that piques your interest. I personally found fighting vandalism to be a fun way to get into editing. – Thjarkur (talk) 21:16, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
Welcome!
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Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!
- Hi Maryanne Cunningham! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
-- 20:52, Tuesday, January 7, 2020 (UTC)
Adoption, learning and getting started
Hello Maryanne. Although I replied at the Teahouse, I thought it might help if I were to repost my comments directly on your talk page. The reasons is that the Teahouse is so active that most posts get archived within about three days, and can be hard for a new editor to refind afterwards. It also gives me a chance to expand a bit further.
First off, welcome to Wikipedia and congratulations on nearly completing The Wikipedia Adventure - just two more badges to collect to get all fifteen! Like you, when I started 10 years ago, I didn't have much of a clue what I was doing, and just stumbled my way along, all on my own, just making small edits at first, learning in small steps as I went. I discovered little bits, and wasn't aware of any of our basic help resources - nor our rules - for ages. Nor did I know I could get help 24 hours a day, any day of the year from editors here at the Teahouse. In fact, I don't think it existed when I began, and adoption was the only option. But I did't know about that either! To be frank, for a complete newcomer, I recommend The Teahouse over Adoption any day. You'll get much quicker answers to your questions there from a multitude of editors. Speaking for myself, I tend to recommend Adoption to slightly more experienced editors who have already demonstrated they have committed to sticking around and to editing across a range of topic areas, and who now need more complex answers than we can give at the Teahouse. But if you do go down the adoption route so soon, you might like to put together a little list of some of the things you'd like assistance with, as adoption takes commitment on both sides, and the adopter really needs to know your needs, and whether you can both work together with a shared interest. In fact there's nothing to stop you putting a list together on your userpage of things you find confusing here, and then popping over here to ask someone to look through it. (They will answer on your talk page, though, but you can then delete the bits you have now come to understand)
Did you get an answer to how to use your own personal sandbox? - it's reached via a link at the top of every page when you're logged in, and you can use it to either draft a new article, or simply to practice editing, playing with adding references and all sorts of stuff you might worry you could mess up if you try to do it on a live page. You can have more than one sandbox if you wish. You can also try out either of our two different editing tools - Source Editor (which you'll have used on the Teahouse page, and Visual Editor which is more 'WISYWYG -'what you see is what you get' - but not so powerful when it comes to certain tasks. Most long-term editors much prefer using Source Editor - but it's totally up to you.
I do hope the apparent complexity and plethora of help pages doesn't put you off, as we not only need more articles about women here, but we also need more female editors too. (Confession: I'm white, middle aged and middle class from middle England - sorry). Did you know we even have a project focussing on creating more articles about women - just follow the link to The Women in Red Project to find out more. In fact we have innumerable 'Projects' to bring editors together who are interested in working in specific topic areas. Some Projects are very active; others are a bit moribund. But it only takes a couple of keen people to liven things up again. You might like to check out WP:WikiProject King Arthur; WP:WikiProject Beer or WP:WikiProject Languages. You'll spot some colourful but complex looking tables in each project page. These tabulate al the articles linked to that Prohject, lsiting them by quality and importance. Should you ever get stuck into one of these Projects, that table can be a great way to find articles to work on and improve. Another way is for me to point out that every article is sorted into 'Categories' which are shown at the very bottom of its page. If you click on f them, you get a list of all other articles within that category, so it's a great way to find related topics to read or work on.
I read your talk page, and you're right - it's all too easy for us to write guidance from the perspective of someone who already knows what to do. You'll find when people reply to you they'll include links (often as abbreviated letters, mostly starting "WP:xxx") - these are meant to be logically-named shortcuts. So if you click H:GS you get taken to Help:Getting started - a page full of links to lots of other help pages! So may I suggest you visit Wikipedia:Tutorial and follow the different Tabs there to find out more things for yourself?
Should you find that you can't find a female editor to work with, and yet you still want longer term support, do feel free to pop over to my own User talk page in a few weeks time and ask anything you need. I don't know if she would want me to, but I'm going to 'ping' Clovermoss into this thread. She is a young female editor who recently 'graduated' from adoption with me, and might have some experiences she can share of starting out knowing nothing here. It is terribly easy to make mistakes here - well-intentioned ones are quickly forgiven, and serve as a great learning curve. Someone will undoubtedly pop over to your talk page and explain if you've done something wrong - it happens to the best of us. So please don't be put off if this happens at first. the other person might come across as harsh, or leave a 'templated' message for you. All i would say is don't take them to heart - it's so hard to put any feel or compassion into text messages. So someone might sound a bit sharp, when there's absolutely no intention of sounding nasty. If you're ever unsure of anything, pop back to the Teahouse and seek advice about it, or go directly to the other person and ask for further explanation. Most people are collegiate and nice here; a handful aren't. But then that's just a reflection of life I guess. Anything we can do to support you as you learn - don't be afraid to ask. I hope I haven't bamboozled you to with too much information or advice! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:39, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi, welcome to Wikipedia!
I noticed that I was pinged by Nick Moyes, so here I am. I'm Clovermoss. I started editing here in September 2018 and I remember what it was like to be new. Something I found really helpful when I was starting out was the Community Portal - if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see a massive table called the Editor's Index. The Wikipedia help pages don't have everything and can be confusing to navigate, but it's one way to try and figure things out for yourself. There's also the Teahouse, where you can start new discussions whenever you have questions about editing.
Part of what helped me feel more involved with Wikipedia was joining active wikiprojects, so it might be worth considering if anything in this directory matches any of your interests. An example of one of the Wikiprojects I was interested in was WP:Canada since I'm Canadian. Anyways, I tend to be around fairly often (and am also a host at the Teahouse where questions are typically answered more quickly), but feel free to contact me directly on my talk page if you ever want my input or help. Clovermoss (talk) 03:44, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi: I'm new to wikipedia editing, and am desperate for some human interaction. Would you like to adopt me?
You are right, this whole thing has to have been written by men. How about being able to hear a voice of fellow human being when stuck in this Legend of Wiki.
--Gaurarjun (talk) 00:57, 9 January 2020 (UTC)