User talk:Zappatoromano

Adoption offer!
I saw that you had asked to be adopted through adopt-a-user! I'm fltyingpig (AKA pluma). I will give you a few fun tasks to do to help you learn to use Wikipedia and I will also answer any of your questions. If you wish to be adopted by me, please tell me on my talk page. Happy editing!  pluma  Ø  01:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikimarkups 101
Here is your first task. If you think this assignment looks big, don't worry. This will be your biggest assignment. If there is anything you want to know in particular, please ask me on my talk page whenever you think of something.

Introduction to markups
The most important element of Wikipedia (in my opinion) are wikimarkups, so we will start there. To create your sand box page, click User:Zappatoromano/sandbox, where you can make test edits. Please complete the task there. When you have completed the task, I will give you another one.

You already know how to edit pages. The interesting bit, however, is getting things to look, well, interesting. There are a number of different bits of code that you can use in your editing to create different effects when the page is saved - they can be as simple as bold text or italics, but different bits of code can be combined to make a very appealing layout.

I should warn you that in most cases, special formatting is frowned upon in articles. It should only be used in certain situations, and when it is necessary to illustrate a particular point. Aside from those cases, text in articles should be just as you see it in this sentence - plain black, with only the occasional wikilink to spice things up.

What I'm going to do first is to show you where you can go to test all this out while you're reading. There are a few places: you can go to the main sandbox that everyone uses at Sandbox. This is a special page that is cleaned out every hour automatically, that gives editors a place to play with new code and vandals a place to vandalize other than our articles. The only problem with the sandbox is this: Whatever you save there isn't likely to stay for long, and there is a high chance of you getting hit with a few edit conflicts. So, to avoid that, you can create your own sandbox! On Wikipedia, you are able to tack "subpages" onto your main user page to use for testing things out, writing new articles, or other projects like what we're doing here. Your sandbox page (User:Zappatoromano/sandbox) is a subpage of User:Zappatoromano. You can create user subpages by searching for the page you want to create in the search box. It won't find it, of course, however a red link will appear at the top of the page. Click on that, and edit away! For example, try searching for User:Zappatoromano/sandbox and creating it. Another place you can make test edits is in my sandbox in the guest area.

Markups
Here we go! These are the basic wikimarkups. You may know how to use some, but others you may not know.

This section is very basic. For more detailed information, see Help:Wiki markup

desired text The pipe character (|) can be typed with shift+\. text you want in bold. Bold and italicised text . To search for pictures, click the magnifying glass in the search bar to enter the search bar. Uncheck all of the boxes in the "Search in namespaces:" section other than the one for file. Then search for what you want a picture of. To upload your own picture to the wiki, click on the "upload file" link in the toolbox section on the right side of the window under the Wikipedia logo. Once you have clicked the link, just follow the instructions they give you. . " ". [Page'sURL desired text] If you are wondering why the above examples have the text for markups, but aren't doing anything, it is because I placed nowiki markups around them. Nowiki markups, when placed around a markup, make the markup not work. To place Nowiki markups, type Markup you don't want to work. Nowiki markups will be rarely used.
 * In order to make an internal link, type the page you want to link to and place two brackets on either side of the text. Example: for a link to the page dog, type " dog . If you wish to make a link to one page where you wish to type something other than the page name, write
 * This isn't really a wikimarkup, but in order to make a carriage return, you must type enter twice for it to work. There are some exceptions to this, though.
 * The main exceptions for the above are bullets and numbering. To place a bullet, type an asterisk (*) at the beginning of a line. An indented bullet is two asterisks. You will not have to press enter twice to make a carriage return. To place numbering, type an octothorpe (#) at the beginning of a line. An indented number is two octothorpe. You will not have to press enter twice to make a carriage return while using numbering, either.
 * To indent, use the colon at the beginning of the line. A double indent is two colons.
 * To place bold text, type
 * To place italicised text, type text you want in italics . Note that there are three apostrophes for bold text and two for italics.
 * To place Bold and italicised text, use five apostrophes on either side of the desired text. Type
 * To insert an image type:
 * References! To sit your source, type
 * If you think their is text somewhere that needs a source, type
 * When you make a citation, your citation will show up not where you cited it, but at the bottom of the page in the references section. If you are the first to site a source on a page, make a references section at the bottom of the page (==References==), then below the heading, type
 * External links: To use external links, type:
 * Last one:

Assignment
Use all of those wikimarkups at least once on your sandbox page (it doesn't have to be remotely coherent). I will check on the page and give you another task. If any of my instructions don't make sense, please tell me so that I can clarify.

 pluma  Ø  18:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Talkback
Talkback messages let you tell other Wikipedians that there are messages for them on other pages. To place a talkback message, type on their user talk page. If there is no section in particular you want to link to, just type Onto their talk page. Happy editing!  pluma  Ø  08:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

License tagging for File:ZScrsh101011.png
Thanks for uploading File:ZScrsh101011.png. You don't seem to have indicated the license status of the image. Wikipedia uses a set of image copyright tags to indicate this information.

To add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia. For help in choosing the correct tag, or for any other questions, leave a message on Media copyright questions. Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 09:08, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Lesson 2: Vandalism
Unfortunately, not everybody edits Wikipedia in a a good way. When editors make edits that are not appropriate, we call this vandalism. To counter vandalism, there are many tools one can use to revert it, or remove it.

Introduction to vandalism
To start off, let's get some background. Wikipedia is, as you have probably figured out by now, a wiki, meaning anyone can edit virtually any page. This is both a blessing and a curse, however, as while it does allow a wide range of information to be added and shared, it also allows people with less than benevolent intentions to come in and mess around with stuff. It requires a fair amount of work during every hour of every day to ensure that this vandalism does not run rampant and destroy the project. Fortunately, with a near-endless supply of volunteers across the world, this doesn't really cause a problem. The addition of various tools help aid our cause and make the "reversion", or removal, of vandalism happen within minutes (sometimes seconds).

What we define vandalism as is "an unhelpful or non-constructive edit" to an article or other page. Most commonly, these are pretty blatant - replacing a whole page or section with curse words, simply removing entire sections, and so forth. Occasionally, it's less obvious, like changing key words in a section to completely alter the meaning. Basically, anything that can't be helpful at all to the article should be considered vandalism, however you should always remember to assume good faith for questionable cases.

Special:RecentChanges
The most commonly used, and arguably the most critical tool in this respect, is Special:RecentChanges. Recent Changes is a special page that lists every edit made across the project within the last few minutes. You can find a link to it in the toolbar to the left in the "toolbox" section. The page is formatted similarly to a page's history, with a few differences. Here's how a standard entry generally looks:


 * (diff) (hist) . . Shigeru Miyamoto‎; 14:32 . . (+28) . . 201.152.102.192 (Talk) (→Competition with Sony and Microsoft)

So that you can know all the terminology (which in some cases will be used across the site), I'm going to explain what all of this means. Feel free to skip this if you've already clicked the links.

A "diff" is the difference between two revisions. Wikipedia has a special feature that allows you to compare revisions to see exactly what was changed. This is particularly useful when on vandal patrol, as this is the best thing available to tell you if the edit was or was not vandalism. Clicking on the link above will only take you to the help page on diffs, unfortunately, however an actual diff link will bring you to a screen that looks like this one, an actual diff of another article. Content removed appears in red text in a yellow box on the left; content added appears in red text in a green box on the right. The "hist" link will bring you to the page's history. You can click on the "hist" link above to get to the help page for this feature. A page's history lists all edits ever made to a page, something which is required under the terms of the GFDL, Wikipedia's licensing. The next link is the article that the edit was made to. The time stamp will indicate when the edit was made. The time will appear in your time zone, as you have it defined in your Special:Preferences. Note that this is different from signature timestamps, which are always in UTC/GMT time. The green or red number after the timestamp will tell you how much was added or removed to the article in the edit. A green "+" number shows the number of bytes added to the article - a red "-" number indicates the number removed. In general, the number of bytes is equal to the number of characters, however this is not always the case: Certain special characters can contain more than one byte, and templates can completely mess this number up. Templates will be covered in another lesson later on, however you will be using some in your patrols later. This number will be in bold if a very large number of characters were removed, which is usually a good indicator of vandalism. The next part is the name of the user who made the edit, which will link to their user page. In this case, an IP address made the edit, so the link will instead go to their contributions. Since most vandalism comes from these anonymous editors, this serves as another convenience to those on patrol. The user name is followed by a link to their talk page. The last part of a RC report is the edit summary. When editing a section of an article, the title of that section will automatically be included in the edit summary, as you see above. Other special edit summaries include "Replaced page with..." and "Blanked the page". In general, these last two are dead giveaways for vandalism edits, however you will occasionally see an editor blank his own user or user talk page, so be careful about that.

Types of vandalism
There are 20 recognized types of vandalism, but the following are the ones you will run into the most frequently. The complete list can be found at WP:VANDTYPES.


 * Blanking, illegitimate
 * Removing all or significant parts of a page's content without any reason, or replacing entire pages with nonsense. Sometimes referenced information or important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary. However, significant content removals are usually not considered to be vandalism where the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary.
 * Blanking that could be legitimate includes blanking all or part of a biography of a living person. Wikipedia is especially concerned about providing accurate and unbiased information on the living; blanking may be an effort to remove inaccurate or biased material. Due to the possibility of unexplained good-faith content removal, uw-test1 or uw-delete1, as appropriate, should be used as initial warnings for content removals without more descriptive edit summaries.


 * Page creation, illegitimate
 * Creating new pages with the sole intent of malicious behavior. Includes blatant advertising pages, personal attack pages (articles written to disparage the subject), blatant POV pushes, hoaxes and other intentionally inaccurate pages. New users may sometimes create test pages containing nonsense or even autobiographies, and doing so is not vandalism, though such pages are normally speedily deleted. Also, creating a page on a topic that is simply not notable is not vandalism.


 * Silly vandalism
 * Adding profanity, graffiti, or patent nonsense to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously unencyclopedic pages, etc. However, the addition of random characters to pages is often characteristic of an editing test and, though impermissible, may not be malicious.


 * Talk page vandalism
 * Illegitimately deleting or editing other users' comments. However, it is acceptable to blank comments constituting vandalism, internal spam, or harassment or a personal attack. It is also acceptable to identify an unsigned comment. Users are also permitted to remove comments from their own user talk pages. A policy of prohibiting users from removing warnings from their own talk pages was considered and rejected on the grounds that it would create more issues than it would solve.


 * User and user talk page vandalism
 * Unwelcome, illegitimate edits to another person's user page may be considered vandalism. User pages are regarded as within the control of their respective users and, with certain exceptions, should not be edited without permission of the user to whom they belong. See WP:UP. Related is No personal attacks.

Undoing vandalism
Undoing vandalism is fairly simple. When you see something in recent changes that could be vandalism, click on the diff link. You will then see two columns. The one on the left will be yellow, while the one on the right will be green. If the one on the left is vandalism, click on a link to the side of the green sections heading that says (undo). Check carefully before undoing an edit, though, because some edits that appear to be vandalism are not vandalism.

Homework
Go to Special:RecentChanges and find five places where there is vandalism. If you find vandalism, undo it. Pay extra attention to IP edits, for vandalism is done almost exclusively by IPs. Try to be very lenient on sort of bad new pages (these will be distinguishable in Recent Changes by the giant N next to the entry). If you don't see three examples of vandalism in one set of recent changes, just refresh the page and look for some. Please tell me the names of the pages you cleaned up on my talk page, as well as telling me why they are considered vandalism. Good luck!  pluma  Ø  02:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

 pluma  Ø  02:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Don't know
Is Alan Fudge dead? []I tried to see the news on the l.a.times, but there isn't... Here it's 8.12 in the morning: I suppose it's still the 10th in L.A.

Lesson 3: Fun stuff
These are things you can do on Wikipedia that may be fun for you, for other users, or just things that aren't completely necessary.

User boxes
Userboxes are ways to add pizazz to your userpage. They are somewhat controversial, for some think that they aren't appropriate for wikipedia. However, no one will get mad at you if you use them (I even got an award for my userboxes). All userboxes can be found here. Please do not add userboxes to any pages but your userpage and its subpages.

Userpage design centre
The userpage design centre is a place where one can learn how to design your userpage by adding subpages, menu's, backgrounds, et cetera. The instructions are pretty easy to follow, but pay most of your attention to the style section and the menus and subpages section.

Edit count
To get to your edit count, click on the "my contributions" link at the top of the page to the left of the "log out" button. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you will see a link that says, "Edit count". You will see statistics for your account. In the month counts section, it will ask you to create User:Zappatoromano/EditCounterOptIn.js with any content. Please do so, for it will be necessary for the homework.

Wikilove
Wikilove is a systems of awards, mostly called barnstars (don't ask me why). They are ways to show appreciation to other editors. It may be more fun to get them than receive them, but no one would get them if people didn't give them. All barnstars can be found at Barnstars, but you can also get a Wikilove button on your toolbar to more easily give barnstars. To install this button, go to your preferences page, click on "editing", scroll down to "Labs features", and check the Wikilove box. When you go to any userpage, there will be a picture of a heart next to the "view history" button. Click on it and follow the directions to give barnstars. If you want to uninstall this button, just go back to your preferences and uncheck the Wikilove box.

Service Awards
Service awards are a way to document the number of contributions you have and how long you have been editing. To see the service awards, go to Service awards.

Userbox homework
Add at least three userboxes to to userpage or to your sandbox page.

Userpage design centre homework
Use at least three elements from the design centre on your userpage or sandbox page.

Edit count
Tell me how many total edits you have, how many months you have been editing, and what percentage of edits were to talk pages.

Wikilove homeowork
Give barnstars to three different people for legitimate reasons. Two easy ways to find people to give barnstars to is by looking at the recent changes, or if you've interacted with another Wikipedian that qualifies for one, you can give it to them.

Service award homework
If you want to, you can give yourself a service award.

Tell me when you are done on my talk page. Happy editing!  pluma  Ø  23:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Adoption page
I have created a page that contains all the adoptee tasks here. If you have any questions, let me know, and happy editing as always!  pluma  Ø  19:39, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

RC Patrol-related Proposals in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey
Greetings Recent Changes Patrollers!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about technical proposals related to Recent Changes Patrol in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:


 * 1) Adjust number of entries and days at Last unpatrolled
 * 2) Editor-focused central editing dashboard
 * 3) "Hide trusted users" checkbox option on watchlists and related/recent changes (RC) pages
 * 4) Real-Time Recent Changes App for Android
 * 5) Shortcut for patrollers to last changes list

Further, there are more than 20 proposals related to Watchlists in general that you may be interested in reviewing. (and over 260 proposals in all, across many aspects of wikis)

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Note: You received this message because you have transcluded User wikipedia/RC Patrol (user box) on your user page. Since this message is "one-time-only" there is no opt out for future mailings.

Best regards, — Delivered: 01:12, 8 December 2016 (UTC)