User talk:ImperviusXR
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[edit] Welcome
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[edit] Adoption?
I noticed you put a message saying you wanted to be adopted on your user page. If that is still the case, I'd be happy to adopt you, so I've put {{Adoptoffer}} on your user page. If you would like to accept this offer, just leave a message on my talk page, and we can start. If you don't want to be adopted, or want to be adopted by someone else, leave a message to that effect on the same page as above. Cheers, Kakofonous (talk) 01:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Great! We can start working. Is there anything specific you'd like to know, or do you just want to get general information about Wikipedia? Kakofonous (talk) 18:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Okay. The first thing we should do is decide whose talk page we should be using to discuss adoption-related things, because having it fragmented between the two is not very helpful, as we'd have to go back and forth all the time. I would suggest using yours. After we decide this, I'll work on some stuff to show you (which may take 30–45 minutes). Kakofonous (talk) 18:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Ok, let's discuss this on my page, and thanks: your help and advice is much appreciated. ImperviusXR (talk) 19:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Okay. The first thing we should do is decide whose talk page we should be using to discuss adoption-related things, because having it fragmented between the two is not very helpful, as we'd have to go back and forth all the time. I would suggest using yours. After we decide this, I'll work on some stuff to show you (which may take 30–45 minutes). Kakofonous (talk) 18:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] First things you should know
I'll first give you a more ideological overview of the project, and give some more technical info later in the course of the adoption.
Probably one of the most important things that you will need to know during your (hopefully lengthy) time here at Wikipedia is the notion of the five pillars: a list of five principles that summarize what we are trying to do here, which I have summarized in turn:
- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which is pretty self-explanatory. It basically states that what is included must be verifiable, backed up by reliable sources. You might have encountered the phrase "extravagant claims require extravagant evidence" or something to that effect before, which is an accurate summation of the verifiability policy.
- Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. If you browsed the site before signing up for an account, you probably came across quite a few tags for neutrality on articles, meaning that some editor thinks the page has a point of view. Of course, true neutrality is almost impossible to attain, depending on how technical you get. But having articles present information that is not biased in its coverage or phrasing allows people to take the information and be informed by the facts, rather than someone's personal interpretation of those facts.
- Wikipedia is free content. All contributions are released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see the full text), which means that they are essentially free, with a few provisions. When you edit pages, you will always see "Do not copy text from other websites without a GFDL-compatible license. It will be deleted." This means that copyright infringement is (obviously) prohibited.
- Wikipedia has a code of conduct. You will often see references to "Don't be a dick" (sorry for the language, but it's a good essay). This sums up the idea of conduct fairly nicely. Essentially, the code of conduct instructs editors to be respectful and civil to each other, a (sometimes unspoken) rule in most projects or institutions.
- Wikipedia does not have firm rules. From this page: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." I can't really phrase it any better.
I know this is a lot to digest, and there is more coming, but once you get going here all of this will become more obvious, not just a ton of words and pages. Next, I'll tell you about some more technical stuff, like blocks, admins, signatures, etc. Cheers, Kakofonous (talk) 19:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Second things you should know
This is a list of technical bits that are useful to have in mind when writing articles and doing stuff around the 'pedia.
- Signatures. This is something that can get annoying if you don't do it, because, among other things, you'll get never-ending messages from this bot, saying
Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button
located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you!
It's easy. All you have to do, in most cases, is write ~~~~, which, for me, produces Kakofonous (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC).
Five tildes will only give the date and time—18:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)—while three only give links to your username and talk page—Kakofonous (talk).
- Headings. Headings on a page are made with equals signs. They decrease in font size and weight the more you put in. The top-level heading:
== Test ==produces
[edit] Test
=== Test ===produces
[edit] Test
- and
==== Test ====
[edit] Test
- Indents. On a talk page, discussions are usually written as follows, to avoid confusion. Note that paragraphs on articles are broken by a line space, not indents.
Blah blah blah blah, blah blah. Blah blah blah? Kakofonous (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
- Blah, blah blah, blah blah. Kakofonous (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
These indents are not made by simply typing spaces before the word or using the tab key, which results in a weird little box like this:
Blah blah blah blah blah.
which has the added obnoxiousness of not wrapping to the page's margins, causing it to go wider than the page and make everything look bad.
You simply puts a colon in front of the text you want to indent, like so: :Blah blah blah. which produces
- Blah blah blah.
Then use two, three, four… colons after to continue to indent the discussion.
- Blah blah blah.
- Blah blah.
- Blah blah blah.
- Blah blah.
- Bulleted and numbered lists. I've been using a bulleted list so far, which made the little teal/green squares to the left. This is really simple. One asterisk (*) produces one bullet:
- Blah blah.
Two asterisks produce an indented bullet:
- Blah blah.
- Blah blah blah,
And so on, exactly like the colons. To make a numbered list, substitute the asterisk for a number sign (#), and it works exactly the same, only now things are ordered by number:
- I like the number 1.
- I like the number 1.5.
- Bold and italic text. To make something bold, do this:
'''bold''', which produces bold. To make something italic, use two single quotes around the word/phrase instead of three: ''italic'', which produces italic. Bold and italic text just combines the two, like this: '''''bold and italic''''', which produces bold and italic.
And… I'm finished with this installment. If you have questions, write them here. I'll find them. Kakofonous (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Just a bit of a test
- do indented
- numbered
- lists
- always
- start
- with
- one?
- lists
- numbered
ImperviusXR (talk) 19:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Third (belated, and possibly last) things you should know
First off, sorry for my lateness in this installment. I've been doing a lot of stuff (both here and in "real" life), and I guess it just slipped my mind. Anyway, in this installment I am going to just give you some info about things I haven't mentioned before that fall somewhere in between the two categories I put the previous stuff into (technically and community-based).
- Consensus. This is an extraordinarily important aspect of many processes that go on here. The idea is that, when you write something in an AfD, RfA, RfC, etc., you are not voting, just commenting. This is why it is important to explain your position in one of these discussions with (hopefully, but it often doesn't happen that way) reasoning. The way one of these processes is closed is not by an administrator simply counting how many comments say, for example, delete or keep (in the case of an AfD). Instead, they determine the community's consensus on the matter, by weighing different viewpoints raised.
- Positions in Wikipedia. I mentioned the idea of an administrator above—this is one example of a position that can be held here. The position that everyone—you, me, him, her—holds is that of an editor. Without editors, Wikipedia wouldn't work. Simple as that. Every other position simply adds a few extra tools to an editor's arsenal, so that they may help the site in different capacities, besides just contributing to articles, reverting vandalism, etc.
- Rollbackers. The rollback feature is a tool that allows people with an interest in removing vandalism from Wikipedia to do it more efficiently.
- Administrators. Administrators, if they haven't requested it already, get the rollback tool, as well as a couple other capabilities. They can delete, restore, and protect pages, block other users, close AfDs by determining consensus, give other users rollback, and a couple other things. Administrators are given their tools as a result of successful requests for adminship.
- Bureaucrats. Bureaucrats have all the tools administrators have, and also have the ability to grant other users administrator, bureaucrat, or bot status. There are some other less common positions, like oversight and CheckUser, but I won't go into that here.
- Good and featured content. You may have seen the image at right in the top right corner of some articles (for example Wilco). This means that the article has gone through extensive review and is considered to be some of our best work. The featured article criteria page has more information on what this is considered to be. There are other types of featured content, like lists and pictures, each with their own criteria. Another classification of article quality (this one doesn't apply to other content) is the good article classification. Good articles aren't nearly as rigorously reviewed as featured articles—any editor can review and pass an article on the nominations page by comparing it against the good article criteria.
If there's anything else you want to know about in depth, I can probably give you the info (or at least point you to somewhere or someone that can)—these installments are meant as a brief introduction, and are by no means comprehensive. Hope they were useful! --Kakofonous (talk) 21:56, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Ethanol
Hi, I removed your edit because they are inappropriate. The IUPAC name for ethanol is simply ethanol. There is no ambiguity about the position of the hydroxyl group. See also "propan-2-one" and DHMO. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 13:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
