BlackGator

September 2015

Welcome to Wikipedia. At least one of your recent edits, such as the edit you made to Help:Reverting, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at the welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make some test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page.

Discuss on talk page before altering a lead of a wiki/help article.

☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 16:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Hello, BlackGator. Welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks for your contributions. My name is Howicus, and I've been an editor here for some time. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

• Introduction and Getting started
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

If you're working on creating a new article, you should take a look at this page on your first article, and use the article wizard here to get started. Also, this page has instructions on how to cite sources, complete with videos.

If all this Wikicode is a little overwhelming, this cheatsheet may help untangle it.

If you're looking for a tutorial of sorts, The Wikipedia Adventure is a good option.

And if you need more help, I'd recommend getting live help at the Wikipedia help chat channel: click here to join. Additionally, you could ask me on my talk page, try the Teahouse (a help page for new users) or click here to ask for help here on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you here shortly

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. Again, welcome, and have fun editing! Howicus (Did I mess up?) 15:47, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

By the way...in situations like this, when the issue is something like plot length, please consider trying to fix the issue instead of simply tagging it. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 15:47, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Plots

Please see WP:TVPLOT "As a rough guide, summaries for episode articles should be about 200 to 500 words." Therefore, please only add {{plot}} if it is longer than 500 words. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:50, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Updating tempates

Please stop 'updating' templates with new dates. This is neither helpful or required. You rationale that updating them makes them "stand out" more is based upon a false premise. In fact, templates with older dates draw the attention of editors more because it indicates that a problem has been outstanding for some time. This has been explained to you on several occasions, yet still you persist. Your actions are now becoming disruptive and I would recommend that you consider taking a different approach before the community starts thinking in terms of resolving the problem by blocking you from editing. (Originally posted 86.174.107.27 (talk) 17:59, 9 October 2015 (UTC), reinstated after blanking by recipient) 86.174.107.27 (talk) 09:03, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

*sigh* These templates are no use and must be permanently updated! BlackGator (talk) 23:31, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

The templates are indeed useful. They tell editors that a problem exists in an article and how long that problem has existed. Changing the date that a tag was added, as you've done here misleads readers and editors alike into believing that a problem has not existed for as long as it has. This is unhelpful so please stop doing so. Dates should only be changed if the problem type changes. --AussieLegend (✉) 00:53, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

In agreement with AussieLegend. The real contributions you could make to the project would be to correct misspellings, to find valid references in keeping with WP:RS, to flesh out citations using our various {{Cite}} templates, to spot and remove copyright violations, and so forth. Changing dates in templates simply because the dates are "old" is pointless, and can actually harm articles. If an experienced user goes to an article for the first time and sees an Original Research maintenance template that's from 2012, s/he might be motivated to either find a reference or delete the content. If these templates are constantly refreshed with new dates, the severity of the problem is no longer obvious, and the content might linger for even longer. "Hm, this is from October 2015. I guess I'll wait a few months and see if anyone fixes the problem." I will further stress that with 108 edits under your belt, you're not as familiar with normal editing standards as Aspects (169,000+ edits), AussieLegend (124,000+ edits) or myself (a paltry 53,000+ edits) are. I urge you to strongly consider the friendly guidance being provided, as the guidance is coming from very experienced editors who understand the Wikipedia culture. Editing against community norms is typically considered disruptive. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:45, 11 October 2015 (UTC)