User:Wrp103

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Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates

My name is Bill Pringle. I was laid off by Unisys as a software engineer, and I used to teach part time at Penn State Great Valley.

I have a personal web site that has various things about me, and sample programs that were used by my students and others.

I also run a web site for singer/songwriter Cheryl Wheeler.

I have interests in computers, music, video games (mostly console-based RPGs), math, and religion (I started Catholic, went to agnostic, and then Mormon). My web site has more information about all of these areas.

I started reading science fiction, mostly from Baen Books. I recently read the Honor Harrington series, and have done some minor editing of that page. I also have started watching Doctor Who episodes, as well as Murdoch Mysteries.

Major Areas of Contributions
My contributions to Wikipedia have touched on all of the above topics, including:

Music:
 * Cheryl Wheeler - most of the content
 * Johnny Clegg (musician) - added reasonable content
 * Bruce Cockburn - various contributions
 * Music of Bulgaria - section on folk dances
 * Folk dancing - I created this page.
 * José Pereira (scholar) - I created this page about the father of a friend.

Programming:
 * C programming language - Dynamic arrays and arrays of structures instead of multi-dimensional arrays
 * Malloc (C Programming Language) - example of dynamic arrays in C
 * Linked list - example of generic linked list & variations
 * WikiProject Computing/Pseudocode - added my two cents several places
 * Debugging - I created the Basic Steps section

Religion:
 * Edits of several pages regarding various topics about the Mormon Church

Video Games:
 * Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Magic, etc.
 * Chrono Trigger, Radiata Stories (including wiki)

Misc.

I monitor changes to various topics of interest to me, including:
 * Underground Railroad, William Still
 * Caleb Pusey
 * Gorilla, Koko

Vandalism
Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates

While monitoring pages on my watchlist, I keep an eye out for vandalism. I really don't understand why people would choose to spend time defacing something, but there seem to be a lot of them out there. :-(

In general, if I see somebody that vandalizes one of the pages on my watchlist, I will add a template to their talk page, and usually watch their talk page. If they vandalize too much, then I request that they be blocked. If anyone contributes to a page on my watchlist that doesn't have a talk page (yet), then I will add a welcome message to their talk page as well.

On those rare cases when I have some extra time, I will check the recent changes page.

Useful links
Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates

Here are some useful links:


 * Templates for citations
 * User Warning Templates
 * Page to request blocking   (Alerts)
 * Criteria for speedy delete
 * How to mark a page for deletion
 * Administrators' reading list

User warning templates
There are a number of templates that can be used when dealing with new users and/or vandals.

This "User talk page" section identifies what should be added to the talk page to create a section for warnings. Warnings should be grouped by months, and the messages should be placed in a numbered list.

The "Common templates" section contain the templates I normally use for welcoming and vandalism warnings. You can copy and paste them into a page. Replace PAGE with the page name that they edited, and N (if present) with a number between 1 and 4, depending on how many times they have vandalized recently.

In general, this is how I deal with vandalism:


 * Copy the article name that was vandalized
 * Click on the user contributions link to examine past history
 * Click on the User Talk page and edit
 * At the bottom of the User Talk page, hit ENTER a few times, and then paste the article name for later
 * If the page was blank, copy and paste the "User Talk Page" section at the top
 * Copy the appropriate template from "Welcome", "Warning" or "Blocking" Templates and paste it into the page
 * Cut the article name at the bottom of the page, double-click on the "PAGE" part of the template and paste the page name over top
 * If a number is appropriate, change "N" to the appropriate number (based on past history and/or blatant vandalism)
 * If I want to add a personal note, then I click before the signature tag, hit ENTER, and then type the message.
 * Copy the template line and paste it into the Edit Summary box
 * Click on "Show preview" button and check it
 * Click on "Save page" when done

Since the templates are stored in a table, I can copy the template by triple-clicking inside the cell.

User talk page
Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates

Welcome templates
Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates

WP:WARN

Warnings templates
Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates

Blocking templates
Vandalism | Links | User Talk | Welcome Templates | Warning Templates | Blocking Templates