User talk:Mattrius

Hello, Mattrius! Welcome to Wikipedia! 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! --LAAFan 14:25, 30 May 2008 (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

October 2008

Welcome to Wikipedia. The recent edit you made to Duck has been reverted, as it appears to be unconstructive. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thank you. Monster Under Your Bed ^(talk) 11:14, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Considering proposals

(Reply to question on User:Richard New Forest)
Hi Mattrius -
Doesn't it depend on how polite you're being? A direct order would be "consider this proposal" (or even "do it now!"), but that degree of directness would be rude in most circumstances. Adding "please" implies that the reader has a degree of choice, so is more polite. Turning it into a question is I think a way of giving the reader more control, so is still more polite. Further degrees of abasement are of course possible: "I should be most grateful if you could take the time to consider..." etc. It's also possible to be ironic, parcelling up a demand in a nominally polite phrase: "Please consider this proposal, if it is not too much to ask someone as busy as you obviously are". Otherwise, up to you, it depends on the context. Oh, and come on, do brush up your spelling a bit ("sentance"). (Hope this is not too late for your essay...) Richard New Forest (talk) 16:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Personal statement

Not such a good idea to put lots of personal info on a public site – you never know who might be watching. Probably better to send a direct email.

One general thing: avoid so many half-hearted qualifiers like "fairly". What are you intending to do after college? Your subjects seem a bit broad – very good for general education, but not if you wanted to actually be a scientist, lawyer, psychologist etc, where you'd need to be a good deal more single-minded to get anywhere. Otherwise looks good. End of careers advice. Richard New Forest (talk) 10:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)