User talk:ZachMatthews

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[edit] Welcome

Hello, ZachMatthews, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Thatcher131 21:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


Hi Zach, sorry your first day has been a bummer. There are certain users who watch the creation of new articles and try to stamp out any that seem to violate wikipedia's guidelines. In part, this is a good thing becuase wikipedia articles eventually get copied by lots of search engine mirrors, and it is better to get rid of a "non-conforming" article before it gets mirrored. But it is also a bad thing because new users will be unfamilar with wikipedia's guidelines, style, and so forth, and stamping on new articles can violate the principle don't bite the newbies. (At the same time, since a user can create an unlimited number of accounts that are essentially anonymous, new junk articles could be the work of long-time editors who are having fun or creating mischief, so watching new articles is still a good thing on balance.)

You should probably take a few minutes to review some guidelines, such as those above on How to write a great article and How to edit a page. You may also want to look over what wikipedia is not, and the guidelines for notability; which topics are generally considered acceptable for inclusion. You might also want to browse the other articles nominated for deletion to get an idea of where people are coming from.

Regarding deletion, any other editor (we are all "editors") can nominate an article for deletion. You can remove the speedy delete and proposed delete ({{prod}}) tags yourself but it is best to write a quick explanation on the article's discussion page so other editors will see where you are going and maybe give you a chance. You should not remove the Article for deletion header since that is a much more formal process. The article will be listed for about 5 days and accumulate comments and votes. Decision is by consensus; there's no firm guideline but usually an article needs at least 60% deletion votes to be deleted. (Logging on as an anonymous IP user or under different user names to cast votes for yourself never works, by the way.) At the end of the process an administrator will close the nomination and either delete youor article or clear the deletion header.

You can continue to work on the article during the AfD process if you think you can make it better and change people's votes. You can comment on the deletion discussion although responding to every vote creates a bad impression. If the article is deleted you can appeal at deletion review.

Finally, you can watch articles you are interested in using your watchlist (see the tabs at the top of the screen) and find out when people make changes to things you are watching (like articles you have written, other topics you are interested in, or deletion votes :).

It does a little while to hang of things. Hope this helps, and have fun. Thatcher131 22:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

  • I'm sorry you feel like leaving. As far as I know there is no method to delete your account, and apparently its not advised due to some rather complicated copyright issues surrounding your contributions (not just to articles but to the discussion, too). Leave your account inactive and don't give out the password to anyone else and you will just fade away. Thatcher131 02:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
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