User talk:Wolfpackfan72

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[edit] Welcome

Hello, Wolfpackfan72, 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! --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 20:20, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How?

You were asking how could your article have been discovered so quickly?

Matthew, it's impossible to make a change to an article on Wikipedia without having it instantly show up on the "Recent Changes" list. And it's impossible to make a new article without having it instantly show up on the "New Articles" list. And it's impossible to make a change to an article without instantly having your name (or IP) show up in the article history, even if you didn't sign your name; that's how we know you're the one who tried to vote anonymously to keep the "2048 Presidential Election" article.

We keep track of these things, Matthew.

You're welcome to contribute more articles, but don't be silly, okay? DS 18:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Signing your name

Ah, hey. Sorry if I hurt your feelings, Matthew - I was trying to be friendly, but firm - and just so you know, it's a good idea to always sign your name when you leave a comment. You do that by typing ~~~~ - that's the "tilde" symbol, four times in a row. If you're a registered user, that creates your signature. If you have IRC, you can join channel #wikipedia on irc.freenode.net and ask for someone to help you out directly; I'd go there to see if I can help you out in person, but I'm a bit busy right now writing some stuff on a deadline. DS 19:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia!

Don't be too upset about what happened to 2048 Presidential Election, it's not a big deal. You tried something, it didn't work. Don't try that same thing again.

Let me try to be clear about this. You can't write an opinion piece or a personal essay and post it to Wikipedia as an article. Not even if it's a very good opinion piece and you have solid backing for every opinion. You could publish something like that in a magazine, but Wikipedia is not a magazine.

Nobody knows who Wikipedia's editors are, nobody knows whether to trust us. I can't put something in an article just because I know it.

Wikipedia is a secondary source. That means that ideally everything that goes into Wikipedia ought to be from a primary source, a good primary source, and should have a citation saying where it came from.

So, you can't write a speculative piece on future events.

You can write an article about someone else's famous piece of speculation.

For example, James Fallows, a famous and respected writer, recently wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly called Countdown to a Meltdown. This article pretends to have been written in 2016 and looks back on events between now and then.

a) That article is fine for The Atlantic, because it's an opinion magazine, not an encyclopedia.

b) Fallows would not have been allowed to submit that as a Wikipedia article, because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

c) You could write something in Wikipedia about Fallows' article. What will happen in 2016 is guesswork. However, what Fallows wrote in The Atlantic in 2004 is a verifiable fact now, and anyone can check up on it by looking at that issue of the Atlantic.

(But, please, do not try to write an article about the Fallows piece! It would probably be rejected, but for different reasons: not because it's speculation, but because that article isn't really all that important).

Does that make things clear? Dpbsmith (talk) 02:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Atlantic Records

Thank you for experimenting with the page Atlantic Records on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and it has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you may want to do. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. --Chris (talk) 00:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The edit was mistaken for vandalism. Sorry about that. --Chris (talk) 02:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)