User:Hersfold/Adopt/Eoag

This section is transcluded from User:Hersfold/Adopt/Eoag.

Welcome to Wikipedia, Eoag! I'm glad you registered to join and am looking forward to us working together to get you to be a top-class editor! This page is what I call my Adoption HQ, and it's where I'll post most of the information in relation to this program, such as assignments or lessons for you. I'll try to give you an update on your talk page whenever I change anything here, but try to check this page fairly often anyway. If you ever need to get in touch with me about anything quickly, post it here or on my talk page - I'll be notified immediately either way. If it's really urgent, you can send me an email by clicking on the "Email this user" link to the left of the page. In order to do that, you'll have to activate your own email address if you haven't already - go to Special:Preferences and add your email address to the box, then save the page.

Here's how I hope things will work out here. This is just a sort of general sketch, and is by no means set in stone, so we'll change things around as needed. And again, if at any point you need to contact me with questions, concerns, or suggestions, please let me know! I've learned things from my adoptees in the past, and I'm sure there is more I can add to the program. Feel free to let me know! Glad to have you here. :-)
 * For a couple days, I'll let you go edit pages based just on what you already know. I see that you've already made some good edits, and have participated in some discussions on talk pages - that's pretty good! While you're out editing, I'll watch what you're doing and provide some pointers as you need them. This also lets me figure out what you already know how to do, and what you still need to work on.
 * Once you're fairly well settled here, I'll start posting some lessons every few days for you to look over and work on. These lessons will introduce to you some new ways to do the things you've been doing, some new tasks for you to try out, and some really neat javascript tools that can make your editing a lot easier. Some of these lessons you'll be required to take - five in all - and I'll also ask that you choose three of my optional lessons to complete. This is just to make sure that you're a good, well-rounded editor that doesn't focus too hard on any one thing. A specialty is good, but you should have a general idea of how everything works around here, just in case.
 * Once the lessons are done, I'll keep working with you to try and improve your editing skills as needed. The lessons can give you general knowledge, but it's experience editing that is the important part. We'll work to fine-tune any problems you may still be having, and work on some more advanced details that aren't covered in my lessons.
 * When I feel you've learned about as much as I can teach you, and have a full grasp of everything a good editor needs to know, I'll set up your exam and send you the link to the page at which you can take it. The exam is a week-long period in which I will assign you a series of tasks to complete, as well as some questions that test your knowledge of policy and procedure. It's not required, but I would really really really like it if you took it - doing so lets me know you do in fact know what you need, and you get a fancy award out of the bargain.

Getting started
Like I said above, so that you can get started off, go ahead and start making some edits to articles. I don't care what articles, I don't particularly care what you do (although don't vandalize, I'd rather not block you ;-) ), just do something; whatever takes your fancy. You may want to start with articles that you're particularly interested in - I notice you've already joined a WikiProject (well done!), so that should give you a head start. Here are some other suggestions you may want to take up on: And if you have any questions, just post them below - I'll get a notice that you've edited this page and will try to respond as soon as possible. If I'm not around for some reason, though, you can get help in several other ways: So off you go! Best of luck to you, and happy editing!
 * Copy-edit an article
 * Cleanup an article
 * Most anything listed at Community Portal, although keep in mind I'll be giving you some lessons for the more involved processes such as deletion.
 * The Wikipedia Help Desk
 * The New Contributor's Help Desk
 * You can add helpme to your user talk page
 * If you have an IRC client, you can join #wikipedia-en-help on freenode.net for live assistance (I may also be lurking there even if I'm not online here)

Questions

 * How do I change the border colour on my user box (or even better what is the userbox formatting cheat sheet page)?
 * You'll have to make your own "look-alike" userbox by using userbox (Click that link for the cheat sheet). You can steal the original settings from the user box page (for example, Template:Adoptee) and tweak it to however you want. For example...


 * What types of semi-protection total protection can I add to my pages please see my pages of interest user:eoag/PoI and pages of reference user:eoag/PoR for reference. Specifically can I protect a page so that only I (or an admin) can edit it or, even better, can I protect everything but one or more (selected) heading(s) on a page?
 * The protection policy is very specific about what kinds of protection can be applied in various cases. In general, it's only to be used when needed, such as to stop vandalism or force discussion on a content dispute. Semi-protection, which prevents unregistered and new users from editing articles, can be applied to user pages at the user's request, but only when they're subject to vandalism. You can certainly make a request at WP:RFPP, but I'm not sure if an admin would be willing to grant it (speaking as an admin myself, I don't think it's needed).


 * Do you have a compilation of cheat sheets like this one Cheatsheet for things such as userbox formating etc. if not is there a project to do so, if not why not and how do we start one?
 * Not really, except for the template documentation whose link I gave you above. Some of my lessons, you'll find, do help explain things better (for example, ParserFunctions, which are sort of "advanced templates"), and I'm sure other users have some as well. But, I don't believe there is any sort of coordinated project on this. As to how to start one, that is an excellent idea, but let's get you started off before we get too far. ;-) If I forget in a while, remind me and I'll help you get one started.


 * Is there a way to create something to single key or combination reference so that things like my personal text colour(note the proper spelling of colour I'm a northwesterner to the core and a Canadian only every so slightly less) don't require a copy paste thingy?
 * Nope. That's done deliberately, and I don't know of any easy way to change it for your personal display, without affecting others. We try to use the spellings that are most appropriate to the subject - for example, United States uses American English (and the proper color) and United Kingdom uses British English. In the event something is ambiguous, whatever the article is originally in is what gets used, to help avoid edit wars.


 * And finally for now could you look here JTF2 and tell me how I make the first reference to David Pugliese the only reference (ref 3 is from my addition but ref 6 is the same book. I should have put a page reference then the seperate bibliography would at least have a justification but that can quickly make a bibliography unweildly, it is not supposed to be a list of footnotes. However it would clutter the encyclopedia to have: Yada and crew did this on this date whatever (p.43-12)[3] so there are two questions here 1) can I make a ref. to a number that already exists without the formatting nightmare. 2) is there a way of creating a reference hierachial list (sub numbers, letters, etc.) for each or any ref. or is it not necessary because the ref. are just included so that if there is a real question of validity it can be taken up with those with the time to search for these kind of things (slight bitterness in my dialog is sometimes an indication of guilt with me, in this instance that I didn't add a page ref. you would have to have know my grade 9 english teacher to understand, she was somewhat militant on ref.

***note for me***
 * My Wikimarkup lesson, which I've posted below, even though you seem to have a good grasp of it, contains details on how to do this. Basically, you have to name each parameter you want to use more than once (and it's often helpful to name all of them anyway) by adding name="RefName" to the opening ref tag. That first instance of the reference will be typed as usual, with  . Every point thereafter where you need to use that same reference, though, you can just call the reference by name, like this:  . The software will handle the hierarchy itself, as you'll see below. However, it is a good idea to include page numbers despite whatever your English teacher said, and so you may need to include multiple citations to handle that.


 * The reason I sometimes post when I am not logged in is that I usually wiki with 4-8 instances open and when I have tried to log in more than once it won't let me. If there is a way around this it would be cool to know.


 * That's strange. I regularly edit with up to ten tabs open at once, and as long as I log in to one of them and don't close my browser, I'm usually ok. What internet browser are you using? (I'll need to know for something we'll do later on, so we might as well get it over with)

Wikimarkup 101
So by now you know how to edit pages, one of the most important features of Wikipedia. The interesting bit, however, is getting things to look, well, interesting. There are a number of different bits of code that you can use in your editing to create different effects when the page is saved - they can be as simple as bold text or italics, but different bits of code can be combined to make a very appealing layout.

I should warn you that in most cases, special formatting is frowned upon in articles. It should only be used in certain situations, and when it is necessary to illustrate a particular point. Aside from those cases, text in articles should be just as you see it in this sentence - plain black, with only the occasional wikilink to spice things up.

Here, I'm going to show you what each of the buttons on your editing toolbar does and how to use the particular bit of code it produces. There are rather a lot of them, so what I'm going to do first is show you where you can go to test all this out while you're reading. There are two places: you can go to the main sandbox that everyone uses at Sandbox. This is a special page that is cleaned out every hour automatically, that gives editors a place to play with new code and vandals a place to vandalize other than our articles. The only problem with the sandbox is this: Whatever you save there isn't likely to stay for long, and there is a high chance of you getting hit with a few edit conflicts. So, to avoid that, you can create your own sandbox! On Wikipedia, you are able to tack "subpages" onto your main user page to use for testing things out, writing new articles, or other projects like what we're doing here. This page (User:Hersfold/Adopt) is a subpage of User:Hersfold, and the source of this lesson (User:Hersfold/Adopt/Wikimarkup) is a subpage of that subpage. You can create user subpages by searching for the page you want to create in the search box. It won't find it, of course, however a red link will appear at the top of the page. Click on that, and edit away! For example, try searching for User:Hersfold/Example and creating it.

To make your sandboxes, we're going to skip a few steps. This is a handy little box that we can use to start making a new page. Replace the word "YOURUSERNAME" below with your user name ("Hersfold", for example) and click the button. It will bring you to your own personal sandbox, which you can start using right away.

Now that you have somewhere to test all this code out in, let's start showing you what all it does. Here we go!


 * Table syntax is complicated, and we'll cover that later on.
 * This is a table.
 * Like I said, we can cover this in a separate lesson if you want. It's not something I'm going to require.
 * rowspan=2| [[Image:Button reflink.png]]
 * Add a reference (footnote)
 * blah blah
 * Two "ref" tags around the reference text.
 * blah blah
 * rowspan=2| References are displayed using the code
 * Level 2:
 * Level 3:
 * Level 4:
 * Level 4:

Good luck going on patrol! Please let me know as soon as possible if you have any questions. If you are ever in doubt about what action to take in this situation, just don't take it. On patrol, there is always a more experienced editor just seconds behind you, so it'll be taken care of. As you do patrol, you'll become more and more confident about what it and what is not vandalism, and our next lesson on vandalism deals with those other kinds. Until then, happy editing as always.

For more information on vandalism patrols, see WP:CVU, headquarters of the Counter-Vandalism Unit, an unofficial, volunteer group of editors who spend some time roughly every day on patrol.


 * FF=

How to revert
'''This part of the lesson is designed for use with Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino, and other similar browsers. If you use Internet Explorer, please let Hersfold know. Do not attempt to install the script mentioned on this page if you use Internet Explorer.'''

Now that you know how to recognize vandalism, we're going to have you start actually taking action against it. First I'll show you how to do it the "old-school" way of doing things, manually reverting each edit. Since this is rather slow, I'm also going to have you install a tool which can help you do all of this quicker. The reason I had you tell me your browser is because the tool I prefer to use these days works with everything except Internet Explorer. If you're interested, I can show you how to install the tool used in the IE portion of this lesson, however the tool we're going to work with here works much better for vandalism and other similar tasks. Moving on now...

First off, and it's important that I show you this first, we're going to cover manual reversion. The definition of "revert" is (according to Wiktionary, our sister project) "To turn back, [...] or, to change back." That's what we're going to do. It would take an horribly long time to remove vandalism if we had to re-write each article every time it was vandalized. Since we have a record of every edit ever made, however, it's very easy to simply "turn back" to a previous version. Let's try this out.

So that we don't risk messing up any articles, or having things not work, we'll be doing these tests in my sandbox, at User:Hersfold/Hersfold's Sandbox. Go ahead and open that page in a new tab. Once there, go to the page history. You'll see that I've made a few nonsense edits to get things ready for you. This is what we're going to revert. Follow these steps carefully to make sure you don't miss anything:
 * 1) Click on the top most "(last)" link. This will bring you to a diff screen, showing you the changes I last made.
 * 2) On the right side, next to "Current revision (timestamp)", you'll see two links: (edit) and (undo).
 * 3) Click on "undo". You'll be brought to a screen that looks like a combination between a diff and the edit screen. This shows you what changes you're making, and allows you to make other changes at the same time, however this is not recommended.
 * 4) Go down to the edit summary and enter a reason why you are making the reversion after the pre-loaded stuff. Usually "vandalism" will do - other variations include "rvv" for "ReVert Vandalism" and so forth. Even though this isn't technically vandalism, go ahead and enter that here and save the page.
 * 5) You're done! The page should now look as it did before I made that edit. Well done.

The problem with the undo button is that it does take some time to do. You've got to go through extra pages, click extra buttons, and so forth. Chances are, someone else will have beaten you to the reversion before you are able to complete the action, resulting in either an edit conflict or you inadvertently re-adding the vandalism by reverting the reverter. So, to help out with that, we're going to have you install Twinkle.

Twinkle is a user script designed and largely maintained by User:AzaToth, an administrator with a knack at coding scripts such as this. Twinkle allows a user-friendly interface that can automatically do a wide range of tasks, as well as providing non-administrators with admin-like tools. Chief among these, and the feature we're going to be using here, is "rollback", a reversion method that can undo multiple edits by a single editor at once. Rollback will undo all edits by the same editor, to the last revision made by a different editor. So, if Bob edits a page, then Vandal comes in and makes two edits, then you come in and rollback Vandal's edits, the article will be restored to Bob's version. This is different from the "undo" button, which can only do one edit at a time.

Until very recently, the official version of rollback was available only to administrators, due to its ability to undo a large number of edits with a single click of a button. As of January 9th, 2008, admins have been given the ability to grant other users the "rollbacker" permission mask, which allows non-admins the use of this feature. If and when you are given this permission, it provides an extra "[rollback]" link next to the undo button in page histories and diff pages. Long before then, however, Twinkle has allowed a similar version of rollback, with added compatibility for the other features offered by the script. Since you're new to the site, it is unlikely that an admin will be willing to grant you the permission - such tools are granted as a matter of earned trust and demonstrated knowledge of policy - so we're going to use Twinkle, which also lets you do other stuff anyway. It's really no big deal - I have been granted rollback permissions, but don't plan to use the button too much as Twinkle is more efficient.

Before we go on, I am not going to force you, by any means, to use Twinkle. I use it on a regular basis and enjoy the features it has, but that's just me. If you decide you'd rather not use it, you have no obligation at all to keep it. You can remove the script by following the installation steps in reverse.

Here's how to install Twinkle. Go ahead and do this now, so that you can follow the tasks further on: If the script installed correctly, you should see a bunch of extra tab buttons at the top of the page. This is Twinkle.
 * 1) Open Special:Mypage/monobook.js in a new tab. This is where you can install Javascript codes such as Twinkle. (NOTE: This assumes that you are using the "Monobook" skin. If you have selected another skin in your preferences, please let me know, as you'll have to go to a different page.)
 * 2) Copy the code below into the monobook.js page.
 * 3) Save the page.
 * 4) Bypass your browser's cache by following the directions for your browser here.
 * 5) Go to Main Page.

Each of the tabs you see allows you to take a different action on the page you are viewing. For the most part, we're only going to deal with one tab right now - the other function we'll be using is reached through the diff screen.

Go back to my sandbox and click on the page history. Now we're going to revert things the Twinkle way.
 * 1) Click on the top-most "(last)" link. This should now correspond with the edit you made to the page a few minutes ago.
 * 2) In addition to all the usual stuff you see on a diff screen, now you've got more buttons! These buttons are the Twinkle version of rollback. On the left, you'll see a brown "Restore this version" link. This will undo all edits back to that edition of the page. This shouldn't be used too often, although may be necessary if multiple vandals hit a page all at once. The ones you'll be dealing with are on the right side. There are three forms of rollback within Twinkle. All three work essentially the same way, and identically to the actual rollback feature I mentioned before. The difference between the three is the edit summary left by the script. For what you know is vandalism, click the red button only. If you're pretty sure the editor made a genuine mistake, but it still needs to be removed, then click the "AGF" button (stands for Assume Good Faith). The blue button in the middle generally won't be used, but it goes neither direction (does not assume good or bad faith).
 * Now, to revert your edit, click the red button (we'll be treating you as a vandal just for this demonstration). A page will load and begin spitting out a bunch of lines of text, telling you what the script is doing.
 * 1) Sometime during the script's running, it will open a new tab or window. This new screen will have your talk page open for editing. This is so that you can give the vandal (in this case, you) a warning.
 * 2) At the top of your talk page (in the new window), you'll see a small tab that says "warn", which should appear right next to "watch/unwatch". Click on this now (don't worry, you won't be giving yourself a warning!)
 * 3) A blue box should appear. This form allows you to select a warning message to issue to the vandal. After you vandal-revert someone, the form will have some information already filled in for you. Leave this alone. What you are interested in are the two menus up top. The first one allows you to select the level of warning to issue. For a first-time vandal edit, you should usually select a "General Note (1)" warning. If the vandal has been given warnings previously, you can go to the next highest level they haven't been given yet. (If the last warning was a level 2, the next should be level 3, and so forth). In the second box, choose the most appropriate reason for the reversion and warning. "Vandalism" is rather general and vague, but sometimes is the best to issue. DO NOT CLICK SUBMIT. When you are done looking around, close the menu by clicking the red X.

Other functions of Twinkle allow you to report vandals to administration for blocking, mark or propose pages for deletion, request protection of a page, and more. We can get into these more later - the reporting function will be handled in the next vandalism lesson.

When using Twinkle, be very careful about what you are doing and why. Twinkle is a very powerful tool, and because of this, it creates a great potential to cause great damage. Misuse of this tool, intentional or otherwise, can and will result in a block. You should not use the functions of this script until you understand how to do so. These will be explained to you in time. Even for those functions you do know how to use, if you are ever in doubt about what action to take in a situation, just don't take it. On patrol, there is always a more experienced editor just seconds behind you, so it'll be taken care of. As you do patrol, you'll become more and more confident about what it and what is not vandalism, and our next lesson on vandalism deals with those other kinds. Until then, good luck going on patrol! Please let me know as soon as possible if you have any questions. Happy editing as always.

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