User talk:Schooner1892

Hi Schooner1892

Welcome!
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!
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

Regarding your post on Contact us/Contact a user:

I've removed your question from the page you posted it on since it doesn't really belong there, but I hope I can help you with any questions or problems you might have, including what you posted there. If you need more assistance, feel free to ask me on my talk page, User talk:BlastOButter42 (click the "+" symbol next to "edit this page" to add another entry), check out Help desk and ask questions, or place on this page and people will help you out.

You can really use anything you want as a signature, as long as it's not offensive or objectionable or anything like that. You can use your username, your first name, a nickname, or anything you want. I use my first name, Robert, as my signature.
 * You asked "Is it advisable to use my first name as my signature or nick name? What are guidelines for picking out a signature?"

You usually won't receive email notifications about much of anything, although if you enable email in your user preferences you can be contacted by email by other users. If you want to keep track of articles' changes, you can add them to your watch list by clicking the watch tab at the top of the article, and then keep track of changes by clicking "my watchlist" on the upper right of all pages. If you're involved in a discussion about an article or topic on the article's talk page, some users might contact you by leaving you a message on your talk page, but mostly you will have to return to that page to see if others have responded. You can also add an article talk page to your watch list to monitor changes. If you ask a user a question on his or her talk page, some users will respond on that page, and some will leave you a message on your page; it depends on the person. If you were participating in a discussion and you forgot where it was, go to "my contributions" on the upper left of the page and you will find a list of all the edits you have made, and see if you can find the page in there.
 * You asked "Do I receive email confirmation or notification when discussions or topics I am interested in change or are edited, or when a response to this query shows up? How do I get back to this place where I have posted these remarks?"

Leave a message on his talk page by going to his user page and clicking the "discussion" tab on the top left of the article, and then click the "+" symbol next to "edit this page" and leave your message.
 * You asked "As I perused Wikipedia looking for a place to ask these questions, I decided to try to speak to an individual. Completely at random, I picked out a user named ‘Kjkolb’. While I couldn’t figure out how to contact or how to post to one of his discussions, I saw by his biography that his interests in alternative energy very much coincided with mine. I’d like to contact him or get onto his discussions."

You're absolutely right, and that's why you probablby shouldn't use Wikipedia as your sole source of information if you are trying to learn about a topic. Many articles have external links at the bottom that you can look at, or references and other resources that aren't from Wikipedia. Also, vandalism is a serious problem on Wikipedia, since many people seem to enjoy deleting content, posting obscenities, and the like. However, it might interest you to know that a 2002 study by IBM found that most obscene edits and page blanking on Wikipedia was reverted in five minutes (see http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/. Of course, Wikipedia has grown exponentially since then, both in anti-vandals and vandals, and there is no recent study. You might also want to have a look at Replies to common objections, since that topic is also addressed there.
 * You asked, "I have occasionally looked at Wikipedia as it has come up on Google in response to searches I have made. I find I have shied away from Wikipedia search results because I understand that any topic on Wikipedia can be edited by just anyone who has something to say, whether an opinion, a guess, a fantasy...anything that comes off the top of the mind of a person who might not have a clue what he is talking about. To me this differs greatly from a reliable canon found in an encyclopedia, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, in which the entries (and granted, they themselves could be right or wrong) are nevertheless written by authorities in their fields."

I hope that answers some of your questions, but if it doesn't please do not hesitate to post a message on my user talk page at User talk:BlastOButter42, check out the help desk at Help desk, or place on this page. Once again, welcome, and I hope you become a happy user of Wikipedia like so many other people have. --Robert 08:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)