User talk:Papist

Wolfeboro Pioneers
Hi. Welcome to Wikipedia. I just thought that I'd say a few words, rather than using one of those awful templates that a lot of people toss about.

First of all, it is hard to be a newbie here. People here are very suspicious of newbies. One reason is because of sock puppets, which are people who create new accounts to impersonate or to vandalise or to otherwise disrupt Wikipedia.

As a result, a proportion of Wikipedians will go out of their way to attack new users. They do not assume good faith (WP:AGF is a policy of Wikipedia) and instead assume that all new users are trouble makers.

A good way to get around this is to work your way slowly through Wikipedia. Start off with a few minor edits. Find a topic that interests you and make small changes. Participate in votes for deletion. See: Articles for deletion. Go around to the various discussion pages. Go to the Wikipedia:community page. And create new pages when they are requested to be created, or when they are linked to another page that has an empty link (a red link).

It is all very challenging and quite scary. I imagine that you, like most newcomers, think that this is just a place to write, a bit like a collaborative web page. Whilst a lot of people believe that it is, there is an element that do not, and the official viewpoint is that WP:NOT Wikipedia is not a place for just any old thing.

What you might want to do, as a tip, is to create a part of your user page to write about Wolfeboro Pioneers. You can create a page just by going to it. For example, click on this link here: User:Papist/Wolfeboro Pioneers. Then copy and paste all that you have written in Wolfeboro Pioneers and move it over to there. You can do this kind of thing as much as you like. In this way, you are not disrupting anything, and people will think of you in a better way.

Like all societies, there is a form of mob rule that takes place, but there are also rules and guidelines to assist with this. You can take some time to go through them. Wikipedia runs a bit differently to most online communities, and you will find that rather than popularity winning through, or how funny someone's jokes are, it is more the case of intellectual snobbery that wins through - and an absence of errors. In other words, most Wikipedians are sheep.

Anyway, that's my welcome message. As I said, I would welcome some nice friendly messages in my user page. Most people who write in my user page say something nasty, so it'd be good to get some nice things. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 10:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I thought I would let you know that since you made the claim of notoriety, a lot of people are changing their vote to keep the article that you wrote. However, they are asking you to provide some definitive sources that prove that it is one of the few remaining independent scout groups.  Would you be able to do this?  And congratulations for arguing your point well.  Many people have commended you for your good behaviour and eloquence. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 01:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)