User talk:Kristal776

This user is a student in a course working with the Wikipedia Ambassador Program.

Course page: Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Courses/Environmental_Policy_spring_2011_(Gen)
Course talk page (for questions and feedback on articles): here
Instant help: Wikipedia classroom on IRC.

Student assignments should always be carried out using a course page set up by the instructor. It is usually best to develop assignments in your sandbox. After evaluation, the additions may go on to become a Wikipedia article or be published in an existing article.

Click the red text to create your sandbox: My sandbox page

Welcome

Hello, Kristal776! 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 excited about 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 when making edits to pages. Happy editing! My76 Strat 02:46, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Getting Started
The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image
Getting Help
Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests 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 Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism
Miscellaneous
Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Hi!

Hi kristal776, Derrick Coetzee (User:Dcoetzee) asked me to be your mentor this semester for the course PA/GEOG 776: Environmental Policy (and Wikipedia). Here's a quick bio: my user name is "fetchcomms", I live in the U.S., I've been editing Wikipedia actively since October 2009, and I'm an administrator (that just means I can lock pages from editing, block user accounts from editing, and delete pages; it's not any special status that gives me more authority in debates or anything like that) since July 2010. I work in both "behind-the-scenes" areas on Wikipedia but I also like to write articles when I have time to do research and stuff.

I think you're learning the basics of Wikipedia in class, but I'm always open to questions—don't feel like you're bothering me. There are a few ways you can contact me: my user talk page (the easiest and most common way to contact me; here is a direct link to the page for starting a new discussion thread), by email (usually only used for private conversations), and on IRC (AKA online chat; direct link; if I'm not in the chat room, there should be other mentors available to help). All these links are on a convenient box I put at the top of this page, right under the sentence "This user is a student in a course working with the Wikipedia Ambassador Program and WikiProject United States Public Policy".

Two tips on replying to messages on your user talk page, like this message I'm writing now: 1. To keep the conversation in one place, you can reply directly under this paragraph, but if you want you can reply by making a new post by clicking on that direct link to my user talk page as well; and 2. Don't forget to sign your posts so everyone knows who was writing the message! To sign, at the end of your message add four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~. It will automatically convert to show the time the edit was made and your username, plus a link to your user and user talk pages. (Here's my signature: /ƒETCH COMMS /.)

Lastly (sorry if this is so long!) the one thing I cannot stress enough is communication. Once you start on your course Wikipedia assignments and begin writing an article, you should log in and check this page at least a couple times every week. It's really hard to talk to someone who doesn't respond :) Also, don't be afraid to ask other people questions on either an article's talk page or on someone's own user talk page if you have a question about some edit they made. In short, communication is vital to success!

Again, if you have any questions, just see the box at the top of this page for links to contact me or another mentor. Happy editing! /ƒETCH COMMS / 01:29, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there fetchcomms! Thanks for the welcome note. I missed my last class, so I'm not sure if I'm doing things right. Our assignment for the week is to review an article and write on its Discussion page, so I'm going to get started on that now. I'll let you know if I run into any issues. Hopefully this is the right way to reply to your message...? Thanks! Kristal776 (talk) 04:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)kristal776[reply]

Yep, you replied correctly :) One little minor thing; you can look at the code of my reply I'm writing here, and see a colon (:) at the very beginning, in front of the "Yep, ..." part—this indents the paragraph, to make my post more distinguishable from yours and easier to read a long conversation. (If you want to reply to this message, add two colons [::] right before your message so it gets double-indented. See an example at this page.) Also, you don't need to write your name manually—see the "kristal776" sticking out after the date/time at the end of your response? If you do this signature thing with four tildes (~~~~) then your name automatically gets added. Cheers, /ƒETCH COMMS / 04:54, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, I think I got it. Thanks a lot! Kristal776 (talk) 05:29, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Article Review Review

Well done on your review, very good constructive criticism, and it looks like you are learning the mark-up very quickly. Maximilianklein (talk) 18:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kristal,

Just wanted to say hello. Have fun Wiki-writing!

Simone8855 (talk) 02:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! You were sitting next to me in class today, right? Just wanted to make sure ;-) This stuff is pretty interesting - hope you're enjoying it too. Kristal776 (talk) 06:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moved your article writeup from discussion page

Hi, you accidentally created your article on the discussion page User talk:Kristal776/Sandbox. When you create articles on discussion pages, people are unable to leave comments. I moved it to User:Kristal776/Sandbox. Just letting you know so you can find it! Dcoetzee 01:59, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're invited: San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon 2!

San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon 2! You are invited!

The San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon 2 will be held on Saturday, June 16, 2012 at the Wikimedia Foundation offices in San Francisco. Wikipedians of all experience levels are welcome to join us! This event will be specifically geared around encouraging women to learn how to edit and contribute to Wikipedia. Workshops on copy-editing, article creation, and sourcing will be hosted. Bring a friend! Come one, come all!

Sarah (talk) 15:24, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]