elcome to Wikipedia SailinStuff, from WP:WER
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Again, welcome! Go Phightins! 02:45, 9 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Offer of adoption

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Hello, SailinStuff, and welcome to Wikipedia! I'd like to make you an offer of adoption.

Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, visit Wikipedia:Teahouse or ask me on my talk page.

As a side note, I think you should know that any personal information you put on your user page or anywhere on Wikipedia (such as your email, which I see you have already put up on your user page) is forever public. See here for more information. You may delete it, but it remains in the record. Just something to note.

Again, welcome!  Penguin2006 (talk) 13:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi and thanks so much for your gracious offer! I would love to be mentored if you are willing. I'm not sure about adoption. Doesn't adoption involve kind of taking a course in being a Wikipedia editor? I really don't think I would be a good candidate for a general Wikipedia editor. I have a couple of areas of interest. As I said on my page, I signed up to correct some specific factual errors. If you are interested in helping me with that project, I will be very grateful. Thanks again! SailinStuff (talk) 16:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
No worries. I'm certainly not a 'general Wikipedia editor' either. I'm not sure there is such a thing. I keep to my own little corner and tinker away on what particularly interests me. If you have any specific questions I'll just try to answer them. That's all, so that you hopefully don't feel Wikipedia is too faceless.
I wasn't intending on putting you on some kind of course. I know some adopters do that, but I didn't fancy it, and I'm glad you don't either.
I'll have a look at the discussion you're having on the talk page and see if anything leaps out, in terms of advice I can give.
Nice to hear from you. Penguin2006 (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
I had a read of Talk:BDSM and it was pretty interesting. I was impressed by how the discussion remained constructive, and for the helpful way you cited references to support your argument, and how you took a step back when you admitted you were letting passion rise. I learnt a lot. Penguin2006 (talk) 14:44, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Request for Help on Swarm's Talk Page

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Hi SailinStuff, I just saw your request for help on User_talk:Swarm. I tried to look over the discussion you mentioned. I think I've never seen an etymology discussion (or, any discussion) so thorough. Anyway, do you still need help on the discussion? I've only skimmed through it, and it seems you were indeed making good progress, even if slow. Consensus can be hard at times :-)

By the way, you don't need to put your email address on your user page to allow others to send emails to you. Log in, go to "preferences" in the top right corner, and then, at the bottom of the page, tick "enable email from other users" and click Save. You can then remove your email address from your user page - but to be really sure that no one gets it (particularly, no automatic spammers and such), ask an admin to delete the previous revisions of your user page that still contain your email address (previous revisions are conserved on every edit, see "view history"). This way, your email address will stay confidential and you can still receive emails from other users. Se'taan (talk) 07:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi and thanks for your great message. I think that discussion is over, at least for the time being. An improvement was made to the BDSM article and that is good. The article still contains misinformation, so that is not good. The basic, underlying problem with that entire article is, I think, that it gets edited/written by people who have a horse in the race. That is to say that people with an interest in presenting the topic in a certain way are the people who wrote/edited the article. I'm not saying that is true of every word in the article. I'm just saying that is, demonstrably, a very big part of the origin and maintenance of the article. It's like when Sarah Palin's supporters tried to rewrite the Paul Revere article to match Palin's inaccurate statements - if you remember that Wikipedia episode that was reported in the national news. (If you like, you can read about it here: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=paul+revere+palin+wikipedia&oq=paul+revere+palin+wi&gs_l=serp.3.0.0i22i30l4.4157.5122.0.7365.3.3.0.0.0.0.102.270.2j1.3.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.yRs7ot7Ps9o&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&fp=7cbf777642222258&biw=1031&bih=498 )

Unfortunately, the BDSM article does not get the kind of attention from the Wikipedia powers-that-be that saved the Revere article are not so interested in the little BDSM article. When writers/editors are emotionally invested in presenting an article in a certain way, I do not see how it will be possible to ever achieve consensus. If you have any suggestions to offer, I am all ears. As I said, the article was improved somewhat and I am not ungrateful for that improvement.

Thanks for your kind message!

Hi SailinStuff, emotional involvement is hard to handle, for both sides. To be honest, I have too little experience to give you valuable tips, I hope Penguin and/or Swarm have some ideas.
You might want to look into WP:Dispute resolution, it points out a few options in its nutshell and head paragraph (so you don't need to read the whole page). To get help on a specific edit, you can ask WP:Editor assistance, and to raise awareness of a specific Wikipedia community, WP:RfC (you also find other options there, like asking for a third opinion). If you need help finding reliable sources on a topic, you can ask at the WP:WikiProject Resource Exchange. If things get out of hand, you might refer to WP:Edit warring, and in severe cases to WP:Arbitration, though that is really the last resort. I've discovered most of these just recently (some as I am writing this!), so I can't tell you which works best or is most active. RfC has worked once for me. Sorry I can't give you better tips.
Anyway, you've done a lot of impressive work on that BDSM discussion. Don't let it drag you down, particularly not in real life, if something here just doesn't work out. You've picked a difficult topic to start with ;-) Se'taan (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

To contact an admin

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If you want to contact an admin to remove your email address, type {{Help me}} on this talk page. Spam email is such a pain. Click here to get more information on making a 'help me' request. For any other questions where I'm not about, again I recommend the Teahouse where there are lots of helpers. Penguin2006 (talk) 00:11, 24 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi and thanks for your great message and info! Actually, I was aware of the possibility of spam when I put my email on my page. I knowingly took a calculated risk. I haven't received anything more than the usual spam that I never even see that goes to my spam folder since I posted my email address. If it becomes a problem, I'll refer to your excellent instructions re how to remove my email from public view. Thanks again! SailinStuff (talk) 16:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Great, that makes me feel better that you were aware of it all the time. Penguin2006 (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2013 (UTC)Reply