Welcome...

Hello, Skeptiker, 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:

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username 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 ask your question there.

Please note that while it's considered good etiquette to sign your posts on Talk pages, this does not extend to articles. As explained in the WP:Signatures guideline, "Edits on main Wikipedia article pages should not be signed—the article is a shared work based on the contributions of many people and one editor should not be singled out above others."

Again, welcome! Unconventional (talk) 15:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

September 2012 edit

  Please do not attack other editors, as you did to Talk:Younger Dryas impact event. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 03:15, 21 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

No Attack Intended edit

Thanks for not deleting my POV warning at start of article. This is evidence of a fair and noble attitude of you as an editor. BTW, I merely indicated my impression of the value of what you wrote concerning previous NPOV dispute. How is this an attack? hgwb (talk)

Talk invite edit

Thanks for message, but, to be honest, I have no idea what it's about. There is nothing in the history of this page indicating that I've ever left a message here. I rarely contact editors by email either Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

November 2014 edit

  Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. I am glad to see that you are discussing a topic. However, as a general rule, talk pages such as Talk:Dawkins are for discussion related to improving the article, not general discussion about the topic or unrelated topics. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. Note also that the Dawkins article is just about the surname "Dawkins". McGeddon (talk) 18:38, 24 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

  Please stop using talk pages such as Talk:Dawkins for general discussion of the topic. They are for discussion related to improving the article; not for use as a forum or chat room. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. See here for more information. Thank you. - DVdm (talk) 19:09, 24 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

  Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did to Talk:Dawkins with this edit, you may be blocked from editing. DVdm (talk) 19:29, 24 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

  You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you use talk pages for inappropriate discussions, as you did at Talk:Richard Dawkins. - DVdm (talk) 19:38, 24 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

Please Correct Decimal Digits of English Units edit

It is easy to get correct decimal digits for traditional English or US customary units. Check pages for ft and in. Simply take 1/.0254 and 1/.3048 for Nanometer in inches or feet. hgwb (talk) 08:35, 11 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

February 2017 edit

  Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. I am glad to see that you are discussing a topic. However, as a general rule, talk pages such as Talk:The Sopranos are for discussion related to improving the article, not general discussion about the topic or unrelated topics. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. Thank you. The Old JacobiteThe '45 16:50, 2 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

  Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. While we appreciate that you enjoy using Wikipedia, please note that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a social network. Wikipedia is not a place to socialize or write things that are not directly related to improving the encyclopedia, as you did at Talk:The Sopranos. Off-topic material may be deleted at any time. We're sorry if this message has discouraged you from editing here, but the ultimate goal of this website is to build an encyclopedia. Thank you. O Fortuna!...Imperatrix mundi. 07:27, 3 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Notice that discretionary sanctions are in effect edit

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding the Shakespeare authorship question, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Xover (talk) 07:37, 11 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

February 2018 edit

  Hello, Skeptiker, welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. Your editing pattern indicates that you may be using multiple accounts or coordinating editing with people outside Wikipedia, such as Kollauwanderer (talk · contribs). Our policy on multiple accounts usually does not allow this, and users who use multiple accounts may be blocked from editing. If you operate multiple accounts directly or with the help of another person, please disclose these connections. Since your edits using multiple accounts are to an area under discretionary sanctions, it is especially important to make sure you act in strict compliance with the policy on multiple accounts. Xover (talk) 07:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

No puppetry, you seem to be unaware that I needed an identity to edit German language Wikipedia when I created the Collauwanderer. Since then Wikipedia seems to hav internationalized identities which I believe was not the case, as I was unable to sign in to to de.wiki using Skeptiker. Please be careful not impugn my reputation as a careful editor who frequently has encountered ignorant or mistaken editors.~~~~


Talk page signatures edit

Hi Skeptiker,

See this guidance on what is meant by a "signature" and what "unsigned" means in the context of article talk pages on Wikipedia. Short version, use ~~~~ to sign your talk page posts (it will be automatically replaced by your username and the date etc. when you save the page), otherwise an automated process (a "bot") will add the "Preceding unsigned…" boilerplate. --Xover (talk) 13:10, 12 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Please look at Talk:Shakespeare authorship question and use the history tab at the top to see the reason the edit to your signature was reverted. The edit summary included: per WP:SIGLINK; please use four tildes (~~~~) to sign a message on a talk page. Policy requires that signatures identify the user, including a link to the user talk page or user page. Also, with rare exceptions, comments at Wikipedia should be in public and there should be no need to email me regarding WP:SIGLINK. Johnuniq (talk) 21:53, 12 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
If you have been using four tildes to sign, you need to fix the signature settings in your preferences. Customizing a signature is fine, but there are lots of requirements for what the result looks like (WP:SIG). The fastest way to fix Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-signature is to delete everything in the Signature box so a default signature is used. Please ask for assistance at WP:HELPDESK. Johnuniq (talk) 21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Original Research edit

While we are explaining to you how things work here: you seem to be under the misapprehension that Wikipedia is an outlet for publishing your ideas (for an example, see Talk:Shakespeare authorship question). But actually it can only repeat what has already been published in reliable sources. See WP:OR. This is a rule. If you try to ignore it, you will fail. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:12, 13 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Your signature or lack thereof... edit

Ok, I don't understand why you are insisting upon altering your four tildes signature, which basically ends up masking your signature. If you don't want this account-name, then how about putting in for a change? If you don't want your contributions aligned with your actual account-name why not just abandon this account and sign with an IP? I really do not understand why you refer to SineBot as a "user" and why you continue to insist that SineBot is somehow "exposing" your actual name:

  • "Some user falsifying my legal signature" here
  • "Corrected false editing exposing my username"here
  • "Corrected false editing exposing my username"here

You do understand that SineBot is an automatic bot and not an actual person? That signatures help keep a talk page on-track, that actual signatures keep the posts attached to the proper account so that other editors know who they are responding to?
At least in your previous edits when you altered SineBot's contribution you adjusted it to include a link to your actual account:

[[User:Skeptiker|hgwb]] ([[User talk:Skeptiker|talk]]) 09:09, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

When you simply delete the code, as you are doing now, you are also deleting the useful links, what you are posting as your signature now is:

hgwb 09:35, 1 March 2018 (UTC) hgwb 18:48, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

The version that you seem to prefer now, the bare hgwb posted above, is useless to other editors. Since there are no valid links within the signature you are now insisting on, other editors then have to look into the page's history to see who we are actually responding to. Why are you insisting that other editors need to do more work? Shearonink (talk) 19:56, 1 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

I have no idea what most of these comments are about partly because I am 83 years old and very busy on publishing research. My signature has been hgwb for many many years as long as Wikipedia exists practically and all of a sudden the Sinebot makes a mess out of it. Why was it ok for more than ten years and now it is not? Are you saying the signature must be identical with the username? If so, this was not apparent when I first coded the hgwb signature so long ago. ––– I am Kollauwanderer on de.wiki, the Deutsch language Wikipedia, which for years did not overflow into the English version. Then, one day the Kollwanderer identity had spread to the English Wiki. If you guys don't keep your system clean, don't blame me. ––– My Shakespeare comments were not new research, merely pointing out that the article oontained an error. BTW, the official denial of de Vere as author is simply laughable. –– Please take a look at the Neuroscience of Consciousness page where I complained long ago about somebody vandalizing my comment, making it appear that they preceded me in time. None of you guys ever corrected that. ––– BTW I am used to ignorant editors rejecting my knowledgeable corrections. Two (2) examples: (1.) Albatross is the accepted plural and singular. Albatrosses is deprecated. See the dictionaries (Webster). The guy wouldn't budge and talked to me in a disrespectful tone of voice, being obtuse and imperious as the general attitude of editors seems to be. (2.) The next example is more complicated. NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM is Latin for NEW WORLD ORDER. Again, the editor wouldn't budge. I will re-explain next, as a competent mathematician- linguist with superior education. The modern noun world is etymologically wer-old meaning man-age, with wer as in werwolf, Anglo-Saxon for man cognate Latin vir. So world =wer-old was the Teutonic translation of Latin seculum, Greek Aeon, an eternity compared with hours, days, weeks, months, years. The ancients had no concept of world = globe or universe or galaxy, they had the concept of all that happened in a very long stretch of time, a seculum, and aeon. The ancient Saxons did not either so they took seculum to mean the life-time of a man, wer-old-->>world, and the modern conept of world emerged only gradually. Therefore, the new world order meant for them the new arrangement of the ages. Thence we may infer that new world order and new order of the ages to the ancients meant the same thing, and to us moderns it should mean that both are adequate translation of the dollar bill's novus ordo seclorum. Guys should be teachable, but editors are uppity.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Skeptiker (talkcontribs) 10:51, 14 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

Your rules are too complicated for me at age 84, so try to be modest and respectful. When I learn to use 74.195.252.168 (talk) 20:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC) that seemed to be it, so why is it now necessary to add as in "~~~~ ~~~~"Reply

Invalid signature edit

See #Talk page signatures and #Your signature or lack thereof... above which tried to explain that your signature is not valid. That is why SineBot adds a valid signature. Your signature does not satisfy WP:SIGLINK because your signature is, for example, "hgwb 07:27, 10 September 2019 (UTC)". There are two problems. First, instead of "hgwb" it should identify your account (Skeptiker). Second, there is no link to your user page or your user talk page. Please follow the advice at #Talk page signatures to fix your signature. Johnuniq (talk) 10:21, 10 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Problem with your custom signature edit

You have a custom signature set in your account preferences. A change to Wikipedia's software has made your current custom signature incompatible with the software.

The problem: Your preferences are set to interpret your custom signature as wikitext. However, your current custom signature does not contain any wikitext.

The solutions: You can reset your signature to the default, or you can fix your signature.

Solution 1: Reset your signature to the default:
  1. Find the signature section in the first tab of Special:Preferences.
  2. Uncheck the box (☑︎→☐) that says "Treat the above as wiki markup."
  3. Remove anything in the Signature: text box. (It might already be empty.)
  4. Click the blue "Save" button at the bottom of the page. (The red "Restore all default settings" button will reset all of your preference settings, not just the signature.)
Solution 2: Fix your custom signature:
  1. Find the signature section in the first tab of Special:Preferences.
  2. Uncheck the box (☑︎→☐) that says "Treat the above as wiki markup."
  3. Click the blue "Save" button at the bottom of the page.

More information about custom signatures is available at Wikipedia:Signatures#Customizing how everyone sees your signature. If you have followed these instructions and still want help, please leave a message at Wikipedia talk:Signatures. Thank you. 18:03, 7 September 2020 (UTC)