User talk:Proteotopian

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Welcome!

Hello, Proteotopian, 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 messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome!
-- Lonewolf BC (talk) 03:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Signing in and signing posts

Greetings, again, Proteotopian.

Please log into your account when you are editing or making comments on talkpages. Also, as it says above, please sign your talkpage comments by typing four tildes at the end of them. Provided that you are signed in, when you save your post the four tildes are automatically replaced with your user-name, the time of your post, and so on. (If you are not signed in, the four tildes will produce your IP address instead of your user-name.) These things, signing in and signing your posts, are handy both for you and for other editors. If you sign in when you edit, then your editing history is readily available under your user-name, for you or another editor to review. This is much less easy if your editing history is spread out among various IP addresses. Likewise, it is useful to have post-times for your comments, and for them to be consistently under your user-name. I gather that you are a fairly new editor, and manually signing your comments with your user-name even though you were not signed in was a worthy try, but it is much better to be signed in and simply use the tildes.
Thanks. -- Lonewolf BC (talk) 04:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Just following on from the above, to clarify, the 4 tildes go at the end of your talkpage posts, not at the end of your edit-summaries when you edit the article. (Edit-summaries are sometimes given for talkpage posts, too, though generally not; in the event that you write an edit-summary for a talkpage comment, don't end the summary with the tildes, but only end the comment itself with them.) I mention this because you used the four tildes at the ends of your edit-summaries for your most recent edits to the Douglas article. I suppose you've likely realised for yourself that this was a mistake, but if not then there you are. I see that you used the tildes rightly to sign your talkpage comment associated with those article-edits. Thanks for that, and well done.
-- Lonewolf BC (talk) 19:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)