Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:06, 20 April 2008

Hello, NIscroll! Welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions to this 💕. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Jonathan — Quality, not quantity. 00:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Misplaced Pages is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Some helpful hints

Before reverting anything by a bot or by an experienced user, make doubly sure you are right and it or he is wrong. Your reverting of a recent edit by ClueBot thankfully got undone. Many human editors will make similar edits and undoing them is counter-productive and can be mistaken for vandalism.

Also, when using user warning templates, you should almost always assume good faith on the first and even sometimes the 2nd or subsequent instance of bad editing, especially if the user hasn't had time to read your warning before he mad the 2nd or subsequent edit. There are exceptions of course - people replacing a page with curse words or blanking it are clearly at least at the "no faith assumption" level from the start. By far most anonymous-IP vandals will go away after a few hours or complaints from multiple users will eventually and naturally attract administrator attention without you having to do anything but provide a single warning and of course do the necessary reversions. Also, learn how to user the warning templates properly: Most of them have a way of including the article name in the template and some of them have a place for you to put your own personal message. Personal messages are sometimes but not always appropriate. They are most appropriate when used to guide not chastise.

On bots: Bots are computer programs designed to take care of routine chores such as date-tag fixups, repairing page blanking or other obvious vandalism, notifying users of specific events like approval or denial of a request, etc. They don't need to be thanked. The author of the bot needs to be told if his bot is malfunctioning, but other than that they can be pretty much ignored.

One more thing: It's probably not a good idea to ask for elevated privileges or ask for tools that can easily lead to mistakes until you've had time to get your feet wet. Give it a few weeks. When I learned to drive a car I didn't get on the highway my first week and when I started voting I didn't run for office in my first election - doing either would have risked disaster.

PS: Welcome back! davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 12:08, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Good faith edit reverted as vandalism?

Hello. Is there a particular reason you reverted this edit and marked it as vandalism ? As Cathy McMorris Rodgers is the correct name for the article in question, bypassing the redirect looks like a perfectly valid, good faith edit. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)