User talk:Sanctandriensis

User wishing to provide online assistance in seral areas of expertise.
Good Morning,

I am looking for a way to contribute my knowledge and experience to users needing support. My PhD is from St Andrews, Scotland, and is in Theoretical Physics. This qualifies me to tackle any question in physics or mathematics. Now retired, I have spent a lifetime buried in books and study, collecting a huge number of books in Buddhism, all Natural Science, the works of the great scientists and philosophers from Thales of Miletus and Pythagoras, all the way through to Newton, Einstein, and Hawking. Most of this involves reading seminal papers by these great scientists.

On a lesser note, I have been studying Buddhism, Islamic science, the classics, U.S. and Western History etc. Perhaps I would be most useful speaking to Global Warming, having studied the current Assessment Report (AR5) from the IPCC, among other things. (My personal opinion is that, through foot-dragging and even stone-walling by our leadership, our planet is effectively doomed).

Anyway, I greatly admire the work you are doing, and it would mean very much to me if you were to utilize what skills I have in the service of (any part of) the project you have undertaken.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Please help me with...

Sanctandriensis (talk) 14:43, 18 December 2019 (UTC)James Standerfer (sanctandriensis@gmail.com)
 * Thank you for volunteering. There is an essay you should read that applies to people such as you describe yourself to be: EXPERT.
 * The thing to remember is that while we can't use your own knowledge directly, your knowledge of where to find proper sources and how to cite them is greatly valued. I know this can be somewhat jarring or frustrating when you are first starting off as a Wikipedia editor, but please stick through some of the initial disappointments (we were all beginners at some point). I hope you find editing Wikipedia to be an engaging and rewarding activity.  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 17:17, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy holidays
Thanks for your well wishes on my talk page.

I was hoping I would see some more contributions from you by now, or at least see that you've tried out the (perhaps too silly for you) Wikipedia Adventure.

 Hello, Sanctandriensis, and Welcome to Wikipedia!  Welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy the encyclopedia and want to stay. As a first step, you may wish to read the Introduction.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at my talk page – I'm happy to help. Or, you can ask your question at the New contributors' help page.

--- Here are some more resources to help you as you explore and contribute to the world's largest encyclopedia...

Finding your way around:


 * Table of contents / Department directory


 * The Wikipedia Adventure (a tutorial orienting you with Wikipedia)
 * The Signpost, our newspaper

Need help?


 * Questions – a guide on where to ask questions
 * Cheatsheet – quick reference on Wikipedia's mark-up codes
 * Wikipedia's 5 pillars – an overview of Wikipedia's foundations


 * Article wizard – a Wizard to help you create articles
 * The simplified ruleset – a summary of Wikipedia's most important rules
 * Guide to Wikipedia – a thorough step-by-step guide to Wikipedia

How you can help:


 * Contributing to Wikipedia – a guide on how you can help


 * Community portal – Wikipedia's hub of activity

Additional tips...


 * Please sign your messages on talk pages with four tildes ( ~ ). This will automatically insert your "signature" (your username and a date stamp). The OOUI JS signature icon LTR.png button, on the tool bar above Wikipedia's text editing window, also does this.
 * If you would like to play around with your new Wiki skills without changing the mainspace, the Sandbox is for you.

Sanctandriensis, good luck, and have fun.  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 05:31, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Editor's lack of progress.
Hello Jim,

As usual your reply is very concise and instructive. I will do my best to get my rear end in gear, make contributions, and reach out to other Wikipedia editors as well. But keep in mind:

I am not that fast on my feet when it comes to software like this. For instance: Why does a simple response require the construction of a new "section"? Why does Wikipedia recognize "Sanctandriensis" by telling me that the User Name already exists, but informs me that this User Name doesn't exist when I try to create a User Page or Talk Page? This is what is making me nervous about jumping in and making a mess.

Secondly, my main field of expertise has always been Theoretical Physics, in which every post 1950 theory is completely unverified and/or unverifiable. Thus there is no experimental evidence for the existence of quarks, gravitons, gluons, of Dark Matter. For example, the concept of Dark Matter was only introduced because the amount of detected mass in a given, rotating, spiral galaxy, is insufficient for the galaxy to satisfy two very ancient, classical laws: namely the Viriol Theorem and Kepler's Second Law od orbital motion. If that is even the correct solution, all scientists can assume is that this matter does not emit electromagnetic radiation (after all this matter IS 'dark'. As Dubya would say: "Duh") and is thus electrically neutral. Apart from that nothing is known. Hence there are as many theories on Dark Matter as there are researchers. Thus in citing ANY one once source, like a textbook or article, however good a source, as editor I would actually be putting forth my own opinion. Unless Wikipedia prefers literally pages of citations.

Anyway, thank you again for all your help! I'll pick up the pace, and have a merry Christmas!

James.Sanctandriensis (talk) 21:46, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
 * No need to create new sections, you can just reply underneath, indenting your comments with one more "colon" than the previous. But I acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount to master, which is why I suggested starting small with the silly Wikipedia Adventure. Unless you build a robot to make bad edits, it's quite hard to damage the encyclopedia and mistakes when first starting out are normal and accepted; we would rather you try things than hesitate until you are sure you are doing things flawlessly. There's a story about a pottery class where one group was instructed to make as many items as possible while another group was told to make just one very good pot. (It's a silly example, since no instructor would do this.) The "one pot" group struggled and struggled on their one pot and never got anything worthwhile. The "as many as possible" group started out making useless junk but soon found they wanted better results and worked out ways to get them. Do the Wikipedia Adventure. Then go to the Community Portal and select something, anything that you'd like to try. We can get to hard topics like physics and politics later. Set a goal of one mainspace edit per day or week and work up from there.
 * A user name is different from a user page or this user talk page. So you might get a "does not exist" for the user page but not for the user name. There are also peculiarities on case sensitivity. In almost all situations, the capitalization of the first letter of a user name or page does not matter. But every once in a while you run into a place where the software does care, but it's unlikely to be fixed any time soon.
 * And if I don't get back to you for a while, it's because my daughter and I will be taking a road trip to visit my mother. I can usually sneak some time to look at Wikipedia, but it's far from guaranteed.  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 07:25, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi Sanctandriensis! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages

-- 12:21, Tuesday, December 24, 2019 (UTC)

Not Global Warming
I STRONGLY advise against your attempting to do major edits to Global warming. Except for very new articles, no article has "an author." For this article, there have been over 20,000 edits by thousands of editors, the article has been elevated to Featured Article status, and is semi-protected (the star and lock, top right). Any changes to what represents a current consensus should first be proposed on the Talk page of the article. This differs from the standard editing advice, which is be bold in one'e edits, if reverted (reversed), go to discussion at Talk. David notMD (talk) 03:26, 28 December 2019 (UTC)