Oasisoftheheart

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Oasisoftheheart, 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 and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

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 on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Brangifer (talk) 03:46, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Seth Material

Oasis, thank you for the supportive comments that you made on the Seth Material talk page recently.

If you are truly a new editor, there are some things you need to know. Wikipedia's rules governing editing and the behavior of editors are very poorly written. They encourage people who have nothing else to do to spend hours and hours on the site each day. However, once an editor has exhausted his knowledge, any contributions he makes after that are of dubious value. The result is that there are contingents of what I call "Wiki-addicts" who make little positive contribution to the encyclopedia, but who make a lot of trouble for other editors. They generally call themselves "skeptics", and they spend hours each day attacking articles they don't like. They fancy themselves to be guardians of neutrality, but their edits are rarely neutral. They also fancy themselves to be Wikipedia experts, and consequently they are rarely willing to collaborate. Generally, they are atheists, right-wing Christians and political conservatives, and they attack articles on topics that are not in the mainstream, especially in the area of religion. The Seth Material article has suffered from such attacks since it was created a couple years ago. Recently, several "skeptics" ganged up on me and got me kicked off the article. The editors who are now in control of it have no knowledge of the Seth Material whatsoever, beyond the fact that they don't like it, so the article is now controlled by editors who would prefer to delete it altogether. They have already cut out portions of it. If you want to see the most complete version of the article, look for the version edited by "Itsmejudith". You'll find text in there that has since been deleted.

Basically, my message to you is that Wikipedia is a hostile environment, especially if you are interested in topics of religion or spirituality. If you have things to say in those areas, it is best to do it on your own web site. With so many editors on Wikipedia intent on censoring information they don't like, it is very hard to make contributions in those areas without getting into non-stop edit-wars.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 06:58, 5 April 2010 (UTC)