User talk:WeaselADAPT

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We're so glad you're here! -- Lost (talk) 06:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

While perusing the various Wikipedia help threads I have seen your name a lot and I appreciate very much your welcoming me to the community. I found your post to my page to be particularly helpful in that I do indeed have a few questions. Therefore, with an invitation from, and a link directly to, a person who I know to be helpful, I am able to avoid having my questions take up everyone's valuable time and only waste yours! Thanks. (If you would like to save time, skip to, "Ok, let's see...")

I was going to ask how to pull up a listing of all Wikipedia articles (so I could read through it from the beginning, like I might a real encyclopedia) but I have since stumbled onto the answer to that question while “Search”ing for something else.

I also found many answers to questions I would have asked on the Manual of Style page.

I suspect that having the answer to either of these next two questions would somehow bring forth the answer to the other, but: 1. is there a way to edit the introductory paragraph to (most/all?) Wikipedia articles? I don't see an edit link anywhere above that section... 2. how does one adjust the order of sections within an article? for example, in the article !, how would I put Baseball above Chess--

Heh, ugh. Nevermind, I just figured out those two, too; the, click the "edit this page" tab at the top.

Ok, let's see...

I had thought about tidying up the list of people who believe that addressing the Red Link issues is a worthy project. My initial thought was that some people may not have had either the know-how or the common sense to insert their name at the correct alphabetical place on the list, or how to make their name show up as a link. While I didn't want to totally brown-nose out and go find them all and tell each one what I had only recently learned myself, I thought I could build my experience by fixing it for them. But as I began the process of "correcting" their "mistakes" I considered that their out-of-orderness might have been a matter of style or a means of sticking out. Do you have a rule that you try to follow to help you weigh out the desire to have a clean, streamlined, intelligent looking website against another user's right to express him/herself?

two tech ?'s, please: 1. because I have a disability, I use keyboard shortcuts rather than my mouse as often as possible, like Alt-f to open the File menu on IE, but for some reason, on wiki, Alt-f goes to the search bar, and (somewhat more understandably) Alt-e goes to "edit this page", etc. I've not yet decided which set of shortcuts would save me the most time during my time on wiki, but if I decide that I want my menu shortcuts to preempt the site's shortcuts, will I have that choice; is there a way to override the site's "Alt-" shortcuts?

2. I've seen this mentioned in different questions and replies but not in a way that really spells it out: why do I have little square boxes in various places on the site? is there an adjustment to my browser (IE 6, SP1) or to Windows (W98) that I need to make?

about editing the encyclopedic entries themselves: 1. right now, there is a listing (in All articles) for "capitalim", which redirects, of course, to "capitalism." there is some way of getting rid of misspelled articles such as this, isn't there? is it something I can do? 2. is it too nitpicky to go around putting end-of-sentence punctuation marks, which currently follow quotation marks, inside the quotes where they're supposed to be? for instance, in the sentence above which ends, "capitalism." pretend I found the period outside the end quote and wanted to move it in. Basically, I'm asking, "do wikignomes get beaten up very often?"

five more for now, please: 1. is there a list of abbreviations somewhere to help decipher what is meant by AfD, CSD, etc.? 2. if you were to tell me to go to "wikipedia:csd" or whatever, where would i put that phrase, in the search bar or in my browser's address bar? 3. is there an index that lists all the Wikiterms (not the articles)? 4. how do I (for any of a number of reasons, like deletion or violation) tag (or bring to the attention of an admin.) an article? 5. what does it mean to wikify something? is it referring to adding the double square brackets around it?

thanks, that's it for now for questions.

I really don't know how to express how wonderful it is that Wikipedia exists. I recognize that you're not the founder/creator/brainchild behind it (or are you?) but you've reached out to me and, even if it's not much compared to other users, you, as someone with over 5,000 edits, appear to me, with only 4 days' experience here, to be an authority, a regular, a (dare I say it) administrator! As such, I know that you'll know what I mean when I get all weepy about the accessibility of all this information. I really feel like I could use this website to learn to do or be anything! Then, the fact that the people of the world are charged with its maintenance, that places the accountability for what must be the greatest single base of knowledge (aside from maybe the Library of Congress--or some other nation's library) on the common man/womon, which taps into another passion of mine: the idea that people will really only grasp responsibility when they are given something that they can be responsible for.

I really don't mean to keep going on about this but I'd like to share a more personal perspective. I was born with the disability arthrogryposis (which I just edited, btw--scratch that; i must have used that page to search thinking it would be there when I got back...another question answered) and cannot walk or use my hands very much at all. In fact I am typing this very message with a mouthstick or typing wand. Therefore, I consider Wikipedia to be a Godsend for at least a couple of reasons. First, because it is far more difficult for me to even read a book than it is for most everyone else (actually, the difficulty comes in pulling it off the shelf, holding it while I read it, holding my place while I write from it, etc.), traditional study and its benefits (jotting notes and building a thesis from two or three sources all open at once) are nearly beyond me. with computers and the internet I can now pretty easily have several sources open (multiple windows) and jot things down from each of them (copy and paste). right now, for instance, I have four separate windows open: two Wiki-article edits, this message to you and a Works document. so, with a beautiful little, always improving encyclopedia that I can actually access, my chances of competing with the rest of the world are greatly improved!

Another aspect of my real self that Wiki helps me express has been bottled up for a very long time. I'm the type of person who would pick up after litterers without much of a complaint, wherever I go, for the sole purpose of how good it makes me feel to improve the appearance of my world. Unable to pick up anything off the ground I've been unable to do that for going on 35 years. Finally, I have an outlet for this compulsion.

anyway, thanks for listening and thanks for your help,

the Weasel

P.S. I've been kind of chipping away at the article Range of motion (and plan to do more), trying to get it worthy, but it's totally a mess, should I bother? read what it was before my edits...

thanks again,

WeaselADAPT 16:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC) WeaselADAPT 11:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC) WeaselADAPT 00:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Re:Your message on my talk page
Hi WeaselADAPT, thanks for your message on my talk page today. I am so sorry for not replying before. Its better to put the helpme tag if you want to attract attention to your talk page. Alternately you can always ask at the helpdesk. I am running a bit out of time right now, so I will put the helpme tag for you. If noone else answers, then I will be back in a couple of hours and answer the questions myself. Sorry for the delay again. -- Lost (talk) 03:09, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Howdy WeaselADAPT! First: This is literally a goldmine of civility and intelligence, something rarely found so soon in a wikipedian's first few weeks. Go places :).
 * In answer to your questions: Generally, tidying up (WP:GNOME) stuff is acceptable. Alphabetacal order might be too much, as currently I assume they are there in the order by which they signed up, and chronological order might be preferable to others. I would link their names if some are linked, but if none are then I wouldn't. Keep it uniform or make it uniform :). Second question: Wikignoming is t3h r0x0rz. Please, any grammatical errors at all, fix them! You won't get beat up :). Tech Q #1: In preferences you can enable and disable short cuts. #2: I'm not sure what square boxes you might be refering to. There are frames to the left that have links (Navigation, Search, Toolbox) but more likely they are image boxes with no image. This looks like a browser thing; try it in firefox or netscape.
 * The "All Articles" listing is literally all articles; misspellings, redirects, et all. I wouldn't mess with it, but maybe find someone who knows more about it and ask if you could put (Redirect to example) after the article in the listing. Already answered your tidying up question :).
 * This last question can be complicated. There are a few namespaces in wikipedia: there is the Main namespace, where the articles are (No prefix). There's the User and the Usertalk namespace(User: and User talk:, respectively), where users hang out. There's the Main Talk namespace (Talk:), where articles are discussed. The Template namespace (Template:) and it's talk namespace (Template talk:) where templates are discussed, and finally: The Wikipedia namespace! Basically, every abbreviation there is on Wikipedia can be found by typing "Wikipedia:Fubar" into the search box. For instance, if you wanted to know what "AFD" was, you would type "Wikipedia:AFD" and it would redirect you to "Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion." All wikipedia namespace pages can have the prefix abbreviated to "WP:Fubar" and have it redirect to the proper place, so "WP:AFD" would go to "Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion." I hope that answers your question. I kinda answered your next question already so on to wikify :).
 * To wikify something is to turn the actual markup of the article into wiki markup. For instance, if you had a table using the HTML code for table, to wikify the table would be to change the markup to the wiki markup. For more information see Wikitext. It is considered better to have wiki markup than any other markup, as it takes less room and is more uniform.
 * Well, I hope I answered your questions to your satisfaction :). If you need help, drop me a line at my talk page User talk:GofG or Lost's, as I see you've already spoke with him. Vale! GofG undefinedundefinedundefined Contribs 03:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Some one please answer the questions asked above. I will be online in a couple of hours and will answer myself if the questions are not answered till then -- Lost (talk) 03:09, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Howdy Lost! GofG undefinedundefinedundefined Contribs 03:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you still have all these questions or have you figured some of them out? It's a lot of questions to answer... —Centrx→talk &bull; 03:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Howdy Centrx! GofG undefinedundefinedundefined Contribs 03:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Weasel! I have some ideas for you...
 * See Glossary to learn about terms like AFD, CSD or Wikify etc, or you can try "WP:AFD", "WP:CSD" in the search bar and hit "Go".
 * Keyboard shortcuts has info on the "Alt-" shortcuts. You can disable them if you like, or reassign them.
 * The square boxes are characters that Windows doesn't recognise. This website has some instructions on getting the required fonts. (I had this problem with Windows XP. You can enable extra fonts in the regional settings, pop in the XP CD and it gets fixed).
 * Redirects from misspellings are encouraged, they can help people find the article they are looking for.
 * Cleanup resources has some tags you can use to bring attention to an article. Or if an article should be deleted without question, Speedy_deletions explains the process.
 * Hope that helps a bit :-) --Commander Keane 03:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I see some very experienced people have answered the queries:). Weasel, please let me know if I can be of any help hereafter.. -- Lost (talk) 05:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

is it my computer's fault or Wiki's?
i have been trying to view answers to my question on the new contributors' help page but no matter how long i wait, it seems that the page will not completely load. that is, my question is #181 in the table of contents that lists 188 entries. however, my computer is not loading past #159! in fact, that entry seems truncated. is this a common problem, is there anything i can do?


 * It works for me. If you have a slow modem, your computer might have difficulty loading large pages, but I don't know how to help you. The reply is this:


 * EA/R is a good place to go for advice; it is biased towards assistance rather than just questions and answers. VPA is similar. The HD, on the other hand, is a lot busier and a stock reply along the lines of being bold is more likely (though that is not a criticism of those who monitor that page). Article discussion pages are a different matter, because the kind of page that requires a cleanup is more likely (broadly speaking) to be the kind of page that is not widely watched, if indeed it is watched at all. There is no particular phrase that would draw the desired attention. Questions of this nature are often better placed on project pages (such as this) anyway. Sometimes, questions appear on talk pages in project space (WT:V, for example) or in template space, but as with article space discussion, it is really supposed to be about discussing how to improve the associated page/article/template rather than asking questions. Adrian M. H. 00:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I hope that helps. --Sopoforic 21:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)