Lilipatina
Welcome to Wikipedia edit
Welcome!
Hello, Lilipatina, 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
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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!
By the way, a handy hint for easy formatting of references is to use this tool which fills in the title, usually, and has the option of extended fields for author's name, date of publication etc. There's a different format for use with harvard referencing, but even then the tool gives handy information to transfer to the other template when it's being used. Your assistance is greatly appreciated, .. dave souza, talk 00:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Be bold! edit
As it says below every editing window, you can expect your writing to be edited mercilessly. The main thing is to be bold and have a go! There's lots of guidance about, but ettiquette is simply a matter of being polite – you should have no difficulties there.
You've started well, and a page for On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects would be terrific, so go right ahead. The title on the spine is Fertilisation of Orchids, and Freeman also uses that title, so that's a pretty good name for the page. Let me know, and I'll add it to my watchlist, and help out if you've any questions. It doesn't seem to me that Variation under Domestication [1] is a bigger priority, you're welcome to tackle that article first if you prefer, but the first priority here is to have fun. No point in slogging away if you're not enjoying it!
You may already know this, but the main policies to get to grips with are neutral point of view, as expanded in WP:NPOV/FAQ, and verification together with no original research. No need to learn them by heart before editing, in a nutshell make sure you're working from references which you can cite and not introducing your own ideas or interpretations, and describe competing views proportionately in a neutral manner. Don't worry too much about formatting etc., someone will always help with details like that. Hope that helps, don't hesitate to ask if you've any questions. . . dave souza, talk 10:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Call for help edit
Buckminster Fuller edit
Welcome to Wikipedia. It might not have been your intention, but your recent edit removed content from Buckminster Fuller. When removing text, please specify a reason in the edit summary and discuss edits that are likely to be controversial on the article's talk page. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the text has been restored, as you can see from the page history. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia, and if you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. —EncMstr (talk) 17:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
- To answer your questions on my talk page:
- Your explanation is a good one, and solidly backs removing the material. Thanks. It was not something I could easily figure out by looking at the diff. Even by reading the article it would be non-trivial to deduce your reasoning. I track 5000+ articles, as do many other long-time Wikipedia editors. So etiquette strongly favors explaining such actions briefly.
- When deleting material, a brief explanation of why you are making a change is appropriate in the edit summary to a) confirm that you intend to remove material, b) verify that you aren't recklessly vandalizing the article, and c) explain your rationale for why your edit is an improvement.
- If the change is too complex to summarize in 100 characters or so, then enter an edit summary which says see talk and then add an explanation to the article's talk page.
- Many editors track article changes through their personal watchlist, and the most useful information included is the edit summary. After watching thousands of articles over many years, experience is that the edits which are most suspicious and in greatest need of further investigation are those without edit summaries.
- Editors which take the time to summarize their reasoning are collaborating. Thanks for asking. Regards, —EncMstr (talk) 05:24, 8 September 2009 (UTC)