User:Wisdom89/Elluminate adoption page

This adoption page is for helping Elluminate who is seeking assistance and advice about using Wikipedia

I've had finals lately, but I should be on near the end of May. Elluminate (talk) 20:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, fair enough.  weburiedoursecrets  inthegarden  20:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

General topics of interest

 * Any type of history, I also enjoy pictures.
 * That's good, we have tons of history articles. One thing you may want to do is get involved in a Wikiproject such as WikiProject Council/Directory/History and society. If images are your thing, you may want to visit image policy. Do you think you'll be an uploader of images?  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 01:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Most likely. Elluminate (talk) 05:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * In that case, you most definitely want to read up on uploading images and what the proper license template to use. Usually the best thing to do is produce the image yourself, that way you can release it to the public domain under GDFL. Any image you find on the internet is most likely not free, or the copyright would be difficult to obtain or understand. (You'd have to contact the copyright holder and ask permission). The best place to start looking for articles that may require images would be at new page creation.  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 05:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Mainspace edits

 * No clue. What are they?
 * Well, what kind of articles do you like to edit?  weburiedoursecrets  inthegarden  21:29, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Any type of history articles. I'd like to expand articles. Elluminate (talk) 01:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The Mainspace pretty much refers to articles, portals, and images and their respective talk pages. user pages and their talk pages are in what is referred to as "Userspace", while things such as featured article candidates is in the "Wikispace".  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 02:02, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia namespace and admin-related areas

 * Per above and ffor clarity issues. By 'Wikipedia namespace", I mean any page with "Wikipedia" preceding it. Examples may include Administrators against Vandalism or Editor Review.  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 01:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * These can be bureaucratic areas such as WP:AIV, WP:RFPP and WP:UAA or editorially related, such as anything for deletion discussions, editor reviews, and the various Wikiprojects. Also, just bear in mind that our core policies of neutral point of view, no original research and verifiability, as well as general guidelines such as notability, fall in this "Wikipedia namespace" (sometimes referred to as "project space") category.  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 03:13, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Complicated. Oh goody. :) I got most of that. Kind of. Elluminate (talk) 05:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I apologize if that was too complicated. Was it my explanation, or simply what the terms refer to?  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 05:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Just the terms, although I'm starting to understand them now. Elluminate (talk) 16:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That's good!  weburiedoursecrets  inthegarden  16:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Vandalism
Are you at all interested in combating vandalism on Wikipedia?  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 05:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure. I've seen plenty of it, I just need to know how to get rid of it. Elluminate (talk) 16:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a very noble effort, wanting to prevent Wikipedia from being abused. In order to know what constitutes vandalism, I suggest you read WP:VANDAL. Now I'll give you a quick and easy list of obvious examples:
 * Insertion of vulgarity
 * Insertion of complete and utter gibberish more than a single time (the first might be an edit test)
 * Deliberately adding factual errors to mislead readers (this is especially important for biographies of living persons)
 * Page or content blanking which is obviously meant to disturb the article
 * Personal attacks on a user page
 * note - Content disputes are not vandalism. E.g edit warring.


 * Now with that said, if you see any of the above, the old school way of getting rid of it is to simply click on the history tab at the top of the page, compare two versions (last good one and new vandalized one) and click undo. That reverts back to the old version. Also, there are script based tools available such as WP:TWINKLE that aids in these functions. If you decide to use these, they are great facilitators, but they can be easy to get carried away with, so go slow in the beginning. I personally endorse twinkle. Also, if the user is new or an anonymous IP, the best thing to do after you have removed the vandalism is to WP:WARN the user. You start with mild warnings first, as they assume good faith and give the user in question time to adjust/change their ways. Once they get to a level four warning, you may report them to WP:AIV where an administrator will take a look at the user's activity and determine if a WP:BLOCK is in order.  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 18:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It might be worth pointing out that Twinkle only works on Mozilla Firefox and won't on Internet Explorer, so you may wish to change if you have the latter.  weburiedoursecrets  inthegarden  19:09, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have Firefox, and I got Twinkle. It works, I think. There are more tabs at the top. Elluminate (talk) 02:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, that's a sign that it's working. I'm assuming you edited your monobook.js page. Now that you have it running, I implore you to be careful when using it. It makes reverting and reporting vandalism easy, as well as nominating articles for WP:DELETION and speedy deletion, and requesting page protection. It's imperative that you understand these processes before actually carrying them out. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us here. Also, read over the twinkle page, as well as the links I have provided so that you know when it is appropriate to take action.  Wisdom89  ( T |undefined /  C ) 03:50, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

General questions & comments from other editors
I'm back. Elluminate (talk) 18:08, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Welcome back!  weburiedoursecretsinthegarden  18:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)