User talk:Doc Winston

Welcome[edit]

Welcome!

Hello, Doc Winston, 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 Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --TeaDrinker 20:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank You[edit]

Hi TeaDrinker. Thanks for the welcome and the offer to help. I've been reading through all the info and FAQs about how to edit and revert vandalism. I've been randomly clicking on "Recent Changes" and going through the "diff" links looking for obvious vandalism (obvious to me, at least). Already I’m come across something I’m uncertain how to edit. The entry for the city of “Ekron” was changed and it now includes information about a band of the same name. The IP number also changed a few other entries, two of which I believe I’ve fixed. I’m wondering what is the best way to handle this particular edit as well as what to do about the IP number. Thanks.

Doc Winston 21:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea to look over recent changes (some folks even call it "recent changes patrol"). The Ekron page would normally be handled with a disambiguation page (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation), so a new article would be created with a title like Ekron (band). In this case, however, the band does not appear to meet criteria for creating an article (see WP:BAND), so I simply reverted the addition. I left the note {{nn-test}} on the user's talk page. Let me know if there is anything I can help with, keep up the great work, and again, welcome! --TeaDrinker 22:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy! Regarding vandal apps, some people use popups to speed their work. User:AmiDaniel also recently created an application called vandalproof, although 250 article edits are usually needed to be granted access. Although I have been here for almost a year, I have not adopted either. Partly out of lazyness and partly to try to stay focused on my goal here, editing content. I do, however, keep a bunch of pages on my watchlist and check changes on them. I also use templates to warn users on their talk page, usually {{test1}} through {{test4}}, sometimes {{vw}} and {{bv}} or {{test4im}}. Generally, if someone continues to vandalize after four warnings, I'd put a note on WP:AIV.

As far as places to ask for help, the quickest is usually putting {{helpme}} on your page (in my experience, most are responded to in a few minutes). Alternatively, writing a note on someone's talk page works, but they may not be at their computer (in fact I would have been faster but for being in a meeting for an hour). General questions can go to Wikipedia:Questions. If the question is about a specific article, you can put it on the article talk page, although low traffic articles may not garnder a quick reply. Most users are pretty friendly, and admins (see Wikipedia:List of admins) are usually happy to help. Putting a question on your own talk page is often pretty slow to generate a response (although may with enough time).

For the band and disambiguation, I would, had the band been notable, created the page and added {{Otheruses4|city|band|Ekron (band)}} (which is Template:Otheruses4) to the top of the article (since there is only one such page, I would probably not bother with a disambiguation page). If there were more than one page needing a link, go ahead and create the disambiguation page. The the most important thing, be bold. Everything is reversible (usually with a few keystrokes) so do your best and don't worry too much about making mistakes.

Let me know if you have more questions, and keep up the great work! --TeaDrinker 00:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to move the questionable text to the talk page (that is revert it, then discuss the change on the talk page, maybe even provide a link to the diff from history, see below). Alternatively, you could add {{fact}} following the addition, although I would probably go with the first method.

To provide a diff link, go to the history and select the difference between your version and the previous version. Then cut and paste the whole url in brackets, as you would do for an external link. This gives the reader of your comment context to judge the legitimacy of the addition. Hope this helps, --TeaDrinker 00:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

helpme[edit]

How may I help you? SynergeticMaggot 18:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I just started editing/reverting the other day. One of my first changes were to some "Crystal Method" albums that had a subtle date change. I realized that the IP "68.100.231.108" had been changing many items like that. Being new, I wasn't sure the best way to handle things. The IP was clearly vandalising most every entry it visited. Thank you for the help. -Doc Winston 18:52, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if the anon is actually willing to discuss the matter theres is WP:DR. But if they are not willing, and it is in fact vandalism, then you want to go to WP:AIV, and just to let you know, there is a three revert rule, which can be addressed here: WP:3RR. SynergeticMaggot 18:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you just need conveninet ways to handle that type of thing informally, you can use the WP:TT templates and as an escalation option, WP:M exists. Thank you for remaining level headed. -- ∞Wirelain 19:04, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both for the help. From the looks of everything the anon did, he/she was clearly out to do very subtle vandalism, perhaps so it would not be as noticable. The thing I'm stuck on are the changes made to a children's book. All the other changes I already knew were wrong or I could look up to check that they were, in fact, wrong. But the changes to the children's book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" aren't something I can readily check to prove they're wrong, even though I'm fairly certain they are. So, I didn't want to revert anything I couldn't verify. -Doc Winston 19:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, when done with everything on this page, should I deleted it or keep it? What's the general practice for talk pages? -Doc Winston 19:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That would be talk page archiving. Move it to a sub page to maintain the history and start a new talk page that links to the old. Look around for how it's done (not that I actually have any). Ah, there is the link Wikipedia:How_to_archive_a_talk_page, googling site:wikipedia.org is your friend. As is using google directly -- ∞Wirelain 21:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent links - thanks! -Doc Winston 00:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Henrik's google search[edit]

You appear to have User:Henrik/sandbox/google-search in your monobook.js. It now seems to work in the new Vector skin, should that be of use to you. If so, load the updated code from Henrik's page into your vector.js page, clear the cache, and you should be away. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]