The one and only JESSICA
Welcome!
edit
- Introduction
- The five pillars of Wikipedia
- How to edit a page
- Help pages
- How to write a great article
- Manual of Style
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. 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. Again, welcome! Rgoodermote 22:24, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
What Wikipedia is Not
editAs you can tell we have deleted your talk page. This is because you are underage and releasing info about yourself. But it also has to do with the fact that you are using Wikipedia as a social network. Wikipedia is not a social network it is an encyclopedia. You are however allowed to make friends while you edit. But it is encourage that you talk to them using your email and not your talk page or userpage. For more information please read WP:What Wikipedia is Not. If you need anything I am here to help. Rgoodermote 22:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Personal information
editHi. Please do not disclose personal info about yourself on Wikipedia —or for that matter, anywhere else on the internet— it's just not safe. Thx. El_C 22:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
What you can do as a user
editHi there. You asked on the "New contributors' help page" what having a user account lets you do, so I'll give you the quick rundown on the various kinds of access people can have here.
- "Anonymous" users, that is, people who haven't registered an account, can:
- Read articles
- Edit most pages, except those that have been protected or semi-protected
- In addition, anonymous users:
- Have their contributions listed under their IP address, so it is possible for anyone to perform a WHOIS and obtain a certain amount of detail about the person who made the edit. Also, since a single IP address may correspond to multiple people (e.g. on a shared computer), and a single person may have multiple IP addresses (e.g. if their ISP uses dynamic IP allocation), it's sometimes hard to definitively say that two anonymous contributions were made by the same person.
- Newly registered users (less than 4 days old) can:
- Do everything anonymous users can
- Create new pages, unless that's changed recently
- Users with accounts older than 4 days can:
- Do everything the above two groups can
- Move pages to a new title, unless they've been move-protected
- Edit semi-protected articles, but not fully protected ones
- Upload files
- In addition, registered users (most of this applies no matter how old the account):
- Have all of their contributions marked as theirs
- Can set personal preferences to control how they view and edit Wikipedia
- Can install "gadgets" and Javascript tools to simplify editing
- Have the IP address they use when editing logged for a period of time, but not publicly viewable
- Administrators (also known as sysops), who get their priveleges through a sort of election, can:
- Protect pages from being edited or moved
- Edit and move protected pages
- Delete and undelete pages, or individual edits of pages
- View deleted pages and edits
- Block and unblock users and IP addresses from editing
There are a few more access levels, including Oversight, Checkuser, and Bureaucrat, but these are the main ones you'll find yourself interacting with here. If you want to learn more, here's a little tip - a lot of the time, if you want to find information about something to do with Wikipedia, try typing a keyword into the search box with WP: in front of it - for example, WP:Oversight (if that doesn't work, try typing it in capitals). Failing that, the "Editor's Index" points to just about everything you could ever want to know, and if that's missed something there are two help pages - the one you found, and the "normal" Help desk, both of which have people used to answering the dumbest of questions without being nasty, so don't worry about looking stupid if you don't understand something. Hope that helps, and feel free to ask me questions on my talk page as well. Cheers, Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 23:16, 30 March 2008 (UTC)