User talk:Ashleylmack
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[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia
Ashleylmack, welcome again to Wikipedia. Thank you for helping to improve our online encyclopaedia, and sorry for all the psychodrama of the past few days. Despite the occasional excitement, helping to build and improve Wikipedia can be a rewarding hobby or occasional pastime. The links you added to the IUPUI Digital Archives were all high quality, and I hope you continue adding such links as carefully as you did those ones. As I said earlier, I have reviewed every one of your contributions, and found them all to be valuable additions to our project. Thank you and please keep up the good work.
But there's more you can do to help. When you look things up on Wikipedia in the course of your studies of work, you will inevitably come across errors, or just things that you think could be written better. Perhaps something as simple as a misspelling, or perhaps a relevant fact you know that isn't there. When you do so, just log in and fix it. If you're unsure, and think perhaps the Wikipedia version is correct after all, check the Discussion page, and see if it's already been raised; if it hasn't, raise it there, and see if anyone else has a good source to determine the facts.
If you come across something really weird, that can't possibly be right, the first thing to check is the History. Often you'll find that the oddity that caught your eye was only put there a few minutes or hours ago, by some kid who thinks it's funny to say that the War of 1812 was fought between China and Olympus Mons, and ended in 1736. That happens often at Wikipedia, but it usually gets fixed pretty quickly, because readers like you find it and fix it. That's how we get an encyclopaedia that, outside political articles, is more accurate than the Britannica. And you can be part of making and keeping it so.
Thanks again, and good luck. -- Zsero (talk) 05:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
- No, I'm not an admin. Ordinary users keep tabs on things, as they notice them. Mostly casual users, who go to look something up, notice something that seems wrong to them, and follow it up. If I see something that looks not just mistaken but idiotic or malicious, I'll check what else that user has been doing lately, and how valid all their other contributions are. Then there are people who, when they have some spare time, check "Recent Changes" (it's on the left side, under "interaction"), which shows what has just been changed on Wikipedia. Anything that looks like it might be wrong, they check out and decide if it should be allowed to stay or be reversed. At least, they're supposed to check and decide, not just reverse blindly. But some are too enthusiastic and just reverse if they even suspect it might be wrong.
- You can do this too, by the way. Just click on "Recent Changes" and click on one of the entries to see what someone has done. Odds are it will be a valid change, but sometimes it won't be, in which case you can click "undo" and change it back, giving a reason in the "Edit Summary".
- By the way, when you make a comment on a talk page you should sign it by putting four tildes (~) at the end. That turns into a signature, like so: Zsero (talk) 17:05, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Just wanted to quickly say that I appreciated the links you added as well. If you ever have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I certainly don't mind, and I'm sure Zsero doesn't either. Thanks again, R. Baley (talk) 20:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
- In case you were interested, I thought you might find this link helpful . . .
