User talk:Drycha/Archive 1

Contents

Welcome

Hello, Drycha! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already loving Wikipedia you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Happy editing! Viriditas (talk) 09:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC) Getting Started Wikipedia Tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Pages needing attention • Peer review Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Help requested / Not urgent

{{helpme}} Greetings.
1) After adding a topic in a discussion page, i noticed i forgot to sign. Then i made multiple mistakes editing my signature, plus i forgot to explain what i done. In consequence it took me 7 edit-attempts to have the final result. is it considered a 'bad' thing to edit the same page many times in the same half-hour ? is there a way to explain what i done to the page if i forgot to fill the Edit summary box at the first edit ? 2) i noticed that the content of a page isn't the same in another language. where may i find more info on language/content 'equilibrium' edit/translate, what-to-not-do, the standing of wikipedia on the subject, active projects...3) may i freely delete topics in the 'my talk' page? Most kind for your incomming help. (:
Best Regards
_'Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. ERM'_ | (talk) 12:00, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

:This will take a short time to answer, so I've cancelled the helpme while I write, to avoid duplication of efforts. I will answer in a few minutes...  Chzz  ►  12:09, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

1. Editing pages many times is not a problem. 7 times in half an hour is certainly not a problem; sometimes pages are edited 7 times in one minute. Having said that, it is a good idea to use the 'preview' button to check your edits before saving, which avoids these problems. Also, remember that you can click on the 'history' to see your edits, and it is possible to undo the last edit, or indeed to restore an older version of the page, so don't worry too much about making mistakes; anything can be 'undone'. See Help:Page history for more information on that.

You cannot change the edit summary once you have saved, so if you wish to add a further comment in the history, the only way to achieve that is to edit the page again, and add a blank line or something, so that you can add a fresh edit summary.

2. Each language Wikipedia have their own policies and guidelines, and they are all very different from the English Wikipedia. In brief, the English Wikipedia is more 'strict' in terms of verifiability, ie the use of good reliable sources. Adding translations is no different to any other addition to Wikipedia, in terms of the requirements. Therefore, if some text is translated and copied from Japanese Wikipedia, for example, it would require references to reliable sources. Wikipedia itself (whether English, Japanese, whatever) is not a reliable source, because it is a tertiary source. Therefore, translated information requires a reference. If the other language wiki does not provide references, then the text cannot be added to the English Wikipedia unless an appropriate reference can be found.

Some information on translation is given in WP:TRANSLATE. The important things to remember are, a) all information should have an appropriate reference to a reliable source, not the other language wiki, and b) to comply with the WP:GFDL licence, you should state on the articles talk page that some or all of the information came from another wiki. You can do that using the {{Translated page}} template - click that for details.

3. You can remove anything you like from your own talk page, although archiving is preferred, ie cutting out old things and saving them into an archive file. Feel free to remove anything 'trivial' though, and of course any personal attacks or other uncivil comments.

I hope that this has answered your questions. For more help, you can either;

• Leave a message on my own talk page; OR
• Use a {{helpme}} - please create a new section at the end of your own talk page, put {{helpme}}, and ask your question - remember to 'sign' your name by putting ~~~~ at the end; OR
• Talk to us live, with this or this.

Best wishes,  Chzz  ►  12:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

P.S. As the above is a bit long, I just wanted to emphasize that...

*Editors are encouraged to be bold

Everything can be 'undone', so don't worry about making mistakes. Cheers!  Chzz  ►  12:30, 12 October 2009 (UTC)