Ron wallman

Welcome!

Hello, Ron wallman, 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:

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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 need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  — Graibeard ^(talk) 09:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Lathe centers and other matters

Hopefully my explanation at the talk page, titled Live, dead and revolving centers helps to explain what was going on with our minor edit war, although war is an overstatement as while from your POV it may have seemed that your edits were being totally dismissed, in fact they weren't as I was making appropriate changes to the articles (reflecting our differing views) and putting out feelers in the edit summary for others to pick up on (eg: (British usage?) and google search strings.) I also took the discussion to a talk page when it seemed we were at logger heads.

I've put a welcome on your page, as I do for all contributors that are new to wikipedia and have the potential to add value to the metalworking pages. I encourage you to stay and improve the articles, but keep in mind that it is a collaborative effort and it will not always appear to be easy (as you're no doubt agreeing to at the moment). Wikipedia can be a tad overwhelming and seem mighty unfriendly in the beginning as one minute there appear to be rules and yet in the next they've gone, but it's worth sticking around. The metalworking area was a disorganised mess and has come a long way since Bushytails kicked off the WikiProject Metalworking. He's left (probably permanently) and while we have a long list of contributors not every-one is active, for whatever reasons, and we're advancing very slowly. We made a good pace initially, with huge improvements to cataloging what articles were already here.

You said on the above, linked talk page that If I can get the editor to read this... There is no one editor, we all are, and we do our best to fight the vandals whether they be blatant (inserting djkhfkahfkahlkfhalk in articles), sneaky (changing wikilinks to point to other, incorrect articles or images) or deleters (removing content, or whole pages). In between that we sometimes get time to expand an article, upload an image, or do something that doesn't make us sigh out loud. If you stick at it then at times you will no doubt get exasperated and wonder why you bother, you may even stop editing for a while, but hopefully you'll come back and continue to improve the wiki. But no doubt you're nodding your head again as you've just been through that process :-) Kudos to you for sticking it out and not giving up.

Further to that you say ...I could tackle other errors. If there are errors, they certainly need correcting, but as we have found they are not always errors. For one thing terminology differs between regions (and don't mention spelling differences - a true time waster). An area as old as the trades is bound to have variations, especially when you consider that communication (and knowledge) travelled as fast as foot (or horse if you were lucky). Any changes you make to an article, can also be made to your contributions, I've had editors correct my spelling, improve my grammar or blow away my edits completely - so be it, sometimes I revert but for the most part they are left as they are, improvements. Wikipedia caters to a very large audience and the boundary is the 'net not geography, so expect differences, even language problems, did I mention spelling? (Aluminium, Aluminum - jewellery, jewelry, jewelery)

I hope you continue editing and if you do, but have further difficulties, then make a note in the edit summary about taking it to the articles talk page, or contact the editor directly. We each have a talk page, and it is one of the many reasons why logging on is good, your profile (preferences and talk page) travel with you whereas if you don't login then it stays with your I.P. number at the time, which may change at each login. Also, when an IP address shows up in the edit history (especially if there is no edit summary) the edit is often flagged as potential vadalism and may attract more attention than it warrants, this isn't necessarily correct but when there are so many vandals to fight, assumptions are made.

Feel free to also contact myself if you have any queries about wikipedia and the way it operates (or doesn't). While I don't know the half of it, I've been here long enough to be somewhere near useful. — Graibeard ^(talk) 11:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)