Banjo edit

Dear 74.95.43.249:

The reason that you had trouble editing the Banjo article is that recently someone has been deliberately messing it up with obscenity and foolish comments, so we are hoping that if they can't do it for a while they will get bored and stop trying. I fixed the lead sentence; see what you think. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:24, 23 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

April 2014 edit

  Hello, I'm Materialscientist. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions to List of generic and genericized trademarks because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Materialscientist (talk) 04:36, 29 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

Your request at Files for upload edit

  Hello, and thank you for your request at Files for upload! I've looked over your request and left a comment. Please check the comment and respond at your request on the main Files for Upload page (not here). Your request will stay there for seven days and then it will be archived. Regards, Armbrust The Homunculus 22:57, 22 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

October 2014 edit

  Hello, I'm I dream of horses. I wanted to let you know that I undid one of your recent contributions —the one you made with this edit to Daisy Bell— because it didn’t appear constructive to me. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 23:35, 30 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

Good edits on Daisy Bell edit

Good edits on Daisy Bell. It's not set up to "thank" an IP contributor.

Google Books Library Project edit

Hello, I saw your recent contribution to Google Books Library Project. But unfortunately, most of the points you've raised have already been written about in the main article, Google Books, creating some unnecessary redundancy. Also, your text appears to be written with a highly passionate and non-neutral point of view. Sentences like The effect of these scan and OCR errors is to render the contents of these books into gibberish are unacceptable and do not comply with the encyclopedic style used on Wikipedia. Google has often replied to the criticisms raised against the project, and you need to include them. It would be highly appreciated if you could make some improvements to resolve these issues. Regards, SD0001 (talk) 07:50, 31 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Octopus unprotected edit

Hey there! I saw your comment on the Octopus talk page and successfully requested that the semi-protection be removed.

As a matter of curiosity, given your diligence and commitment to Wikipedia, what keeps you from registering an account? Even though it shouldn't be the case, the fact is that a registered account would stop busy editors from treating you dismissively, as well as allowing you to edit semi-protected pages. Your work is very valuable, and you deserve more appreciation than you're getting by editing anonymously. Please consider it! In any case, thanks for all the great work you do. A2soup (talk) 23:29, 17 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hi there, A2soup. As regards registering an account, well... it's a long story. When Wikipedia was still just a gleam in its founders' eyes, I was among a early group of Usenet newsgroup denizens that were solicited to write some of the initial articles for Wikipedia. In those days I hung out in beer and brewing newsgroups a lot, and I contributed articles in those areas. Mind you, this was before Wiki per se was set up, and the contributions were solicited and provided via email. I sent them out, and pretty much forgot about them for a while.
A few years later, when the Wikipedia structure had been established and everyone was talking about it, I went to check it out on the Web. I registered an account under my real-life name, and gave it a password. A very good password. I bopped around Wiki a bit, but didn't actually do any edits (I may not have been aware of this feature at the time). After a few months I wandered away, and didn't come back for another couple of years...by which time I had long forgotten my original password.
At which point I discovered that there was no way to recover or reset the password; I couldn't use my name to register a new account, since an old account with that name already existed; there was no way to delete the old account and start over. So the old account is probably still in there, somewhere, unaccessed now for at least 15 years.
I made several attempts to register new accounts, with variations of my name. Only to discover that every variation I came up with was already in use by someone else. So, I sent out some polite inquiries to various Wiki denizens as to whether there was a list of usernames currently used, so that I could be sure of creating one that hadn't already been used. I was told that there was no such list. Well, I made a few more attempts to register, each one occupying a lot of my time, and failed to come up with a username that wasn't already in use.
This didn't seem like a good use of my time, so... I just started editing, and creating articles, without logging in.
When I accidentally discovered that there actually was a list of all usernames, I consulted the list, created a new username, and registered. I made, I think, exactly one edit under the new username before the account was blocked, ostensibly because my name somehow violated the Wikipedia username policy. Several months of discussion with the blocker failed to elicit to my satisfaction exactly what the problem was with my username (especially since at least a hundred similar, but not identical usernames seemed to be in current use), or to get the account unblocked.
So, I went back to anonymous editing and other contributions. After a while, I made one more attempt to register, and that resulted in a immediate seven-day block on my DNS, so at that point, I figured that registration just wasn't worth the hassle. Note that I did read the policy on usernames, and none of my usernames were commercially oriented, misrepresentational, or obscene.
But, there we are. In theory, Wikipedia encourages users to register; in practice, not so much. Yes, I could have (as some users suggested) come up with some random-number username that probably would have worked, but I didn't want that. If I can't use either my real name, or a name meaningful to me, then I'd rather just be anonymous.
Plus, if I made up a random name, somewhere down the line I'd forget it, just like I forgot my first password, and be back where I started, anyway.
Thanks for getting the Octopus page unlocked; I'd forgotten about that one; it was about 6 months ago when I last visited there.
And thank you for your kind comments regarding my contributions; I hope to keep making them. ;)

74.95.43.249 (talk) 02:32, 19 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Jeez, what an ordeal! I'm glad you decided to stick around and contribute anyways, and maybe break down some anti-IP prejudice with your work. A2soup (talk) 19:44, 19 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
Heh. Just for grins, I went to the master list of Wiki users to see if that original account was still there. It is, although I find I exaggerated the length of time a bit -- it's only been sitting there, completely unused, since 2006. So, in the interests of accuracy, 9 years, and not 15.
I guess I can understand the anti-IP prejudice, just a little. After all, several different people could be accessing Wikipedia through one IP. But so what, if they're all innocuous or making good contributions?
Still... it does seem like there should be some way to delete an account that's sat unused for, say, more than five years, and which has no contributions directly linked to it, if only to free up some usernames, and shorten the list of users to actual users.
Oh well ... :)
Speak of the devil—an hour later, you get templated by a sysop reverting an obviously non-vandalism edit without discussion. It's a tough life for an IP, that's for sure. And people wonder why there are no new editors... A2soup (talk) 04:04, 20 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
NBD -- I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that Wikipedia is perpetually "in progress", and nothing I do is necessarily permanent. Most of my stuff seems to either "stick", or get genuinely improved upon. If a certain percentage of it occasionally "goes away," well, c'est la vie. But thank you for your support.  ;)
74.95.43.249 (talk) 21:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Sorry! edit

I see you've already cleaned up my erroneous warning, but I wanted to apologize for reverting one of your recent edits as vandalism. I use an automated tool to monitor vandalism on Wikipedia, and while it enables us to work quickly and efficiently, sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and click on the wrong thing when reviewing an edit. I've reverted the article back to your version. Thanks for your contributions! (ESkog)(Talk) 12:35, 20 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, ESkog, I appreciate that, and the notification. As I said to A2soup (above), it comes with the territory, so no big deal.
74.95.43.249 (talk) 21:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Irish bouzouki edit

Hello '74.95.43.249',  
I saw your comment at the Irish bouzouki talk page and replied to it, offering the evidence you were missing. I hope it helps.
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(guestbook) 09:36, 29 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

August 2016 edit

  Hello, I'm ThePlatypusofDoom. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Viola terceira, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 00:47, 10 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

  Please do not add or change content, as you did at Viola terceira, without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 01:03, 10 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.
Please do not revert edits in progress, before you have a chance to see whether references are being provided. It makes it a pain in the ass to have to search out the text to insert references, when the text is no longer where I left it, just seconds before.

12 Days of Christmas edit

Per wp:verifiability and wp:BURDEN, please wp:cite a wp:reliable source. I'm trying to have an accurate, wp:verifiable encyclopedia, not one filled with people's wp:original research. Thank you Jim1138 (talk) 01:40, 14 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

It is recommended to add a reference with your edit. It is difficult to know if someone will add a reference later. And keeping a log of which edits to look back upon is overwhelming. You can easily add a reference with wp:RefToolbar/2.0 which is in the browser editor. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 08:15, 15 December 2017 (UTC)Reply