User talk:Jack Schmidling

Hi. I admit I could be wrong on this. My thought is that there are a number of different sites offering home cheesemaking recipes and advice, and Wikipedia isn't supposed to be Google or Yahoo and list all the good ones, so it shouldn't list any of them. Plus, judging from your user name, you are adding these links in a self-promotional manner, which is frowned on around here. If you think you have pages that offer a valuable resource and adhere to the guidelines in External links, can I suggest you mention the links on article talk pages and allow other editors to add them to articles if they find them appropriate? Thanks. &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:51, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

This may be an exercise in futility but it is not obvious at all how to respond to this. I see nothing like a reply or respond button so before I take the time, consider this a comcheck.

js


 * So far so good. You can sign by typing four tildes ( ~ ). &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:38, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

............

I am still winging it.... to respond I do "edit this page".... not very intuitive.

What do you mean by signing and the tildes?

OK... so I read the guidelines and agree I am in error because I own the sites involved but helping people do stuff that took me months or years to learn is hardly what I would call self-promotion.

Just so happens that most of my hobbies generate entrepreneurial adrenilin but none of my how to pages include any more than links to my products.

Cheers,

js


 * I understand. You can kind of see how it is for us, though -- we have to encourage a culture of discouraging people from simply adding links to articles, and instead cajole them one way or another into adding content :-) And Wikipedia places incredibly high in Google pagerank, so it's always a bit of a battle against people who just want to get their sites higher-rated on Google. Anyway, here's a "standard" welcome massage for you, with some helpful links and hopefully a better explanation of the four tildes. (If you enter four tildes, when you save the page, they "automagically" get converted into a signature: a link to your userpage and a timestamp.) Yes, it's weird -- the talk pages on Wikipedia are just fully-editable pages like any other. You get used to it in a few days. The only thing that prevents you from editing or deleting other people's comments is common sense, etiquette, and the fear of being accused of vandalism. Anyway, here's that canned welcome message I was talking about:

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
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