User talk:Sara-rockworth

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Your recent messages at User talk:JamesBWatson
First of all "You're not near as awful as I thought". No, I'm not, really. Honest. It is very easy for a new editor to get the impression that others are attacking when in fact they are really just trying to explain Wikipedia's methods. When I first started editing there was one editor who I was convinced was reverting my edits for quite unacceptable reasons to do with a conflict of interest. I now realise that in fact that editor was acting completely impartially, and doing much the same as I would now do in the same situation, now that I know more about how the system operates, but at the time I found it frustrating. I can well believe that you have found even greater frustration, as you had put in the work of writing a reasonably sizeable article, whereas I started by just making minor edits to existing articles, so I had less work to lose. I think that doing little edits at first is probably the best way to learn how Wikipedia works, holding back from writing whole new articles until you are more experienced, but understandably many people come here and write whole articles which are either deleted or savagely edited. This often causes frustration and anger, and many such editors unfortunately then get put off Wikipedia for ever. I am glad that you evidently have whatever it takes to come through a bad early experience and still carry on. Your willingness to turn to editors you have had disagreements with and ask for help is rare for a new user, and it is, I am convinced, one of the most useful personality traits for someone who is going to get significantly involved in Wikipedia, as one is likely to come across conflicts from time to time.

Your barnstar attempt failed, but I was touched by the thought: thank you. For future reference what you needed to do was copy and past Your message here ~ into the talk page. The "subst" is an instruction to the Wikimedia software to substitute the correct text for the barnstar in place of what you have typed. It looks as though you tried copying and pasting a ready-made barnstar from someone else's page, and this led to two problems. Firstly, you included someone else's signature, which presumably you didn't mean to. Secondly, you missed out the code which tells the software when it has reached the end of the barnstar, so it treated everything further down the page as part of the barnstar. Using "subst" to get the job done automatically is much better. You will find a full list of barnstars at Barnstars if you ever want another one. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:04, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Barnstars
You did it! See, not so difficult, once you know how. (Oh yes, and thanks, too.) JamesBWatson (talk) 19:02, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ahh, after writing the above I saw the continuing problems you had before finally getting it right. Perhaps I should explain (in case you haven't worked it out for yourself, which by now perhaps you have). I placed  in the text I wrote when editing to make the software display for you the actual text you needed to copy and paste. If I had left out the   then it would have actually translated the text into a barnstar instead, which was not the idea. This means that you had to copy the test as you saw it when reading this page, not the text you saw when editing this page. Does that make sense to you? If not sorry for not expressing it clearly. (In addition, you missed out the   at the end which is what tells the software to go back to translating what it reads. Then you tried to put it in, but missed out the "/".) Finally you got it right. Confusing? Yes. I found editing Wikipedia hopelessly confusing when I started. So how long does it take before you know it all and never have any problems? I don't know, because I'm not there yet. It does get better, though. Now I occasionally have problems, instead of frequently. Do feel welcome to ask me if you need help with editing, if you like, but be prepared for the possibility that my answer could be "I don't know". Somewhere there's a help page on all this. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

thanks
Thanks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Okip#Comment.2FFeedback

that was nice. I edit wikia now (35,000+ edits), key word is "edit" instead of endlessly bickering with bullies here.

you seem new. I hope they don't eat you alive. Okip  22:11, 1 September 2010 (UTC)