Dear Tim, Since you appear to be the Tim Parks who is the subject of the Tim Parks article I'd like to offer you a personal welcome to the Wikipedia project. I have attached a couple of standard welcome messages below . I should also draw your attention to Wikipedia guidelines on the editing of articles where there may be a conflict of interest.

Graham Hale (Lumos3 (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2018 (UTC))Reply

Welcome new user edit

Hello, Tim Parks, I see you've opened an account and begun to make edits to the encyclopaedia. You are most welcome and thank you for the many constructive edits you have made .

I'm Lumos3, one of the numerous editors here. I voluntarily work as a welcomer to newcomers.

Wikipedia encourages new members to jump in and make corrections and contributions to articles themselves. I'm posting below a standard welcome box with lots of useful links. I hope you get pleasure from editing and making Wikipedia an even better resource for the community.

I found the Be bold guideline particularly encouraging when I was getting started. I also found the Wikipedia:Cheatsheet a useful quick reference for editing the source text but our new VisualEditor makes editing much easier (This needs to be turned on in your user preferences under beta features).

I myself have come to the conclusion that editing or watching a topic is a great way to learn about it in depth and stay on top of current developments in a field. If you have any questions about the project don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page here :- User_talk:Lumos3.

Happy editing, I hope you continue to develop and improve our encyclopedia.

Lumos3 (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2018 (UTC) , Wikipedia Welcoming Committee.Reply

"... rather gloomy picture" edit

You could, for a start, find someone with a camera who has photographed you at a conference or something, but looking less gloomy; and ask them to upload the picture to wikipedia commons by clicking on the "upload file" instruction listed on the left of the page here and doing what it says. That seems to be what the english (and other) politicians do, mostly with the same rather sickly grimace and a wimpy blue background. Both of which you probably should not wish to copy. Actually, though, .... having had the shocking experience, while visiting Italian rellies, of unexpectedly spotting you uttering thoughtful thoughts on one of those endless group discussion programmes on the RAI a few years ago, I have to say that the picture currently adorning "your" wiki entry looks to me rather a good likeness. But of course we all see different things in a face. Success Charles01 (talk) 17:24, 13 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

" I must say I appreciate receiving messages from Charles01, but it would be good if I could reply in some way" edit

The usual way to "reply in some way" is to reply on the talk page where the message originally appeared. Here f'rinstance. At the top of this page there is a "tab" with "edit" written on it. Click there and towards the bottom of the page a window will become available where you can find the text you were looking for and then, directly below it, type away to your heart's content. Below that window is a "button" with "Publish changes" written on it. So you do that. Sometimes the thing insists you click on the "show preview" button first. Which is doable, tho' I always find I've left the odd typo behind first time round how ever much I try and check what I wrote via the "show preview" button. Most wikipedia contributors simply learn how to add stuff by copying the way other people did it. The thing is meant to be "intuitive" and up to a point it is. Though inevitably, as in any field, there are many committed jargonistas among us - frequently in other respects fully paid up members of the human race - who like to make things look more complicated than they needed to.

All of which you may already have figured out for yourself, but if some of it is nevertheless helpful I am glad of it.

Or you can leave a message on someone else's talk page by clicking on the word "(talk)" directly after their user name at the end of the message. Though for those of us who are easily confused and short on patience, it usually makes sense simply to continue a "thread" below the message to which you are responding, rather than some place else.

Alternatively, where the emailing option has been enabled, you can simply go to the user's own page by clicking on the user name where s/he (they...) signed his/her contribution, check out the list of options down the left side of the page on which you landed, and click where it says "email this user". However, that only works where you are trying to email someone who hasn't programmed their email to send anything unexpacted from an unknown email address directly to the spam bucket. Generally, if you want to discuss a wiki-article, it makes more sense to do so either on the talk page linked to that article or on the talk page of the wiki-contributor in question. According to me. On which subject, I agree that the replacement image of Tim Parks on that entry is a much more interesting portrait than the one it replaced.

Sorry I never mastered succinct. But at least I am living in England, so I know that you should always apologise for everything. Whether you mean it or not. Especially if not. Regards Charles01 (talk) 22:06, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

PS: Also, since I am a picky bastard, and today short on self control, I will not resist the temptation to add that someone appears to have written that the three children of Tim Parks and his wife Rita divorced in 2017. But no doubt someone knew what he was doing and / or I'm missng something obvious. Still looks gratuitously ambiguous to me. But maybe he wanted us to read that line twice .... I'll get back in my box now.

This would be a good place to reply. BUT absolutely NO NEED on my account that you should do so.

Welcome Timparks!

Now that you've joined Wikipedia, there are 47,472,824 registered editors!
Hello, Timparks. Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions!

I'm Lumos3, one of the other editors here, and I hope you decide to stay and help contribute to this amazing repository of knowledge.

Some pages of helpful information to get you started:
    Introduction to Wikipedia
    The five pillars of Wikipedia
    Editing tutorial
    How to edit a page
    Simplified Manual of Style
    The basics of Wikicode
    How to develop an article
    How to create an article
    Help pages
    What Wikipedia is not
Some common sense Dos and Don'ts:
    Do be bold
    Do assume good faith
    Do be civil
    Do keep cool!
    Do maintain a neutral point of view
    Don't spam
    Don't infringe copyright
    Don't edit where you have a conflict of interest
    Don't commit vandalism
    Don't get blocked
If you need further help, you can:
    Ask a question
or you can:
    Get help at the Teahouse
or even:
    Ask an experienced editor to "adopt" you

Alternatively, leave me a message at my talk page or type {{helpme}} here on your talk page, and someone will try to help.

There are many ways you can contribute to Wikipedia. Here are a few ideas:
    Fight vandalism
    Be a WikiFairy or a WikiGnome
    Help contribute to articles
           
    Perform maintenance tasks
    Become a member of a project that interests you
    Help design new templates

Remember to always sign your posts on talk pages. You can do this either by clicking on the   button on the edit toolbar or by typing four tildes ~~~~ at the end of your post. This will automatically insert your signature, a link to this (your talk) page, and a timestamp.
The best way to learn about something is to experience it. Explore, learn, contribute, and don't forget to have some fun!

To get some practice editing you can use a sandbox. You can create your own private sandbox for use any time. Perfect for working on bigger projects. Then for easy access in the future, you can put {{My sandbox}} on your user page. By the way, seeing as you haven't created a user page yet, simply click here to start it.

Sincerely, Lumos3 (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2018 (UTC)   (Leave me a message)Reply