Welcome and introduction

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Hi, Russell1889. This is NOT some automated message...it's from a real person. You can talk to me right now. Welcome to Wikipedia! I noticed you've just joined, and wanted to give you a few tips to get you started. If you have any questions, please talk to us. The tips below should help you to get started. Best of luck!  Chzz  ►  19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

 
ようこそ
  • You don't need to read anything - anybody can edit; just go to an article and edit it. Be Bold, but please don't put silly stuff in - it will be removed very quickly, and will annoy people.
  • Ask for help. Talk to us live, or edit this page, put {{helpme}} and describe what help you need. Someone will reply very quickly - usually within a few minutes.
  • Edit existing articles, before you make your own. Look at some subjects that you know about, and see if you can make them a bit better. For example, Wikipedia:Cleanup#2009.
  • When you're ready, read about Your first article. It should be about something well-known, and it will need references.

Good luck with editing; please drop me a line some time on my own talk page.

There's lots of information below. Once again, welcome to the fantastic world of Wikipedia!

-- Chzz  ►  19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Getting started
Policies and guidelines
The community
Writing articles

Further to our conversations

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Hi there - Welcome to Wikipedia. Thanks for your patience in sorting out the problem viz. thebaptisttemple (talk · contribs).
  • Before working on an article where you have a conflict of interest, I very highly recommend that you edit some other articles - on any subject at all. You'll soon learn more about the way Wikipedia works, and you'll be in a much better position to then deal with the tricky business of COI.
You could join WikiProject Christianity perhaps. There's plenty of articles that need work - Wikipedia:Cleanup listing|try here]], for example.
  • Please read the business FAQ - this applies to all organizations, whether for-profit or not.
  • When you do want to make a start, create a user-space draft, and work on that - seek help with it, and ask us to check it over.
  • Articles have to meet requirements for "Notability", which has a very specific meaning on Wikipedia, and we define it as, "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the source". Please look at that link - that is the key to the whole thing, it really is. For any subject - be it a person, a company, a band, species of animal, or any of the other thousands of subject types - the requirement is the same. What it boils down to is, the need for several reliable sources, such as newspaper articles, books, magazines, etc - with substantial information about the specific thing the article is about.
A 'reliable source' is something with a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", something with "editorial control" - and, to show notability, it needs to be independent too.
  • Please, do be careful. We strongly advise against writing it yourself, and for quite good reasons. It is very, very hard to be neutral, and to stick to verifiable facts from reliable sources - there are so many things that you, naturally, just know are true - but sadly, we cannot accept claims that we can't check - which means we need references.

Please talk to us live, with this link, any time. It's often easier to explain things 'live'.

I certainly hope you'll help us make Wikipedia better, and I'll do everything I can to help you. Hope to speak soon. Chzz  ►  19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply