Hipal is busy and is going to be on Wikipedia in off-and-on doses, and may not respond swiftly to queries.

Picture of the day

The cinnamon teal (Spatula cyanoptera) is a species of dabbling duck found in western North and South America. It is a migratory species, travelling to northern South America and the Caribbean during the Northern Hemisphere's winter. The cinnamon teal lives in marshes and ponds, and feeds mostly on plants. It has a typical length of 16 in (41 cm), with a wing span of 22 inch (56 cm) and a mass of 14 oz (400 g). The male has bright reddish plumage with a duller brown coloration on the female. The bird feeds predominantly by dabbling, with its main diet being plants and sometimes molluscs and aquatic insects. This cinnamon teal was photographed at the Parrot World animal park in Crécy-la-Chapelle, France.Photograph credit: Clément Bardot

Archive – More featured pictures...

This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know.

This user is a participant in WikiProject Spam.

This user has been a Wikipedian since 31 May 2005.

The majority of editors are here to create and maintain an encyclopedia. I'm one of them. I'm assuming we're a majority. We're not so good at dealing with those editors that are here for purposes detrimental to creating and maintaining this encyclopedia. We don't always agree on what's detrimental, and we've found the need for trade offs between what we create and how we maintain it all.

And then there's the drama of all these editors trying to work together with some harmony...

{{subst:welcomeg}}
==A lengthy welcome==
Welcome to Wikipedia. I've added a welcome message to the top of this page that gives a great deal of information about Wikipedia. I hope you find it useful.

Additionally, I hope you don't mind if I share some of my thoughts on starting out as a new editor on Wikipedia: If I could get editors in your situation to follow just one piece of advice, it would be this: Learn Wikipedia by working only on non-contentious topics until you have a feel for the normal editing process and the policies that usually come up when editing casually. You'll find editing to be fun, easy, and rewarding. The rare disputes are [[Wikipedia:Dispute resolution|resolved]] quickly and easily in [[Wikipedia:Consensus|collaboration]].

Working on biographical information about living persons is far more difficult. Wikipedia's [[WP:BLP|Biographies of living persons policy]] requires strict adherence to multiple content policies, and applies to all information about living persons including talk pages.

If you have a relationship with the topics you want to edit, then you will need to review Wikipedia's [[WP:COI|Conflict of interest policy]], which may require you to disclose your relationship and restrict your editing depending upon how you are affiliated with the subject matter. Regardless, editing in a manner that promotes an entity or viewpoint over others can appear to be detrimental to the [[WP:NOT|purpose]] of Wikipedia and the [[WP:POV|neutrality]] required in articles.

Some topic areas within Wikipedia have [[Wikipedia:General_sanctions| special editing restrictions]] that apply to all editors. It's best to avoid these topics until you are extremely familiar with all relevant [[WP:PAG|policies and guidelines]].

If you work from [[WP:RS|reliable]], [[WP:IS|independent]] sources, you shouldn't go far wrong. [[WP:RSP]] and [[WP:RSN]] are helpful in determining if a source is reliable.

If you find yourself in a disagreement with another editor, it's best to [[WP:TALK|discuss]] the matter on the relevant [[WP:TP|talk page]].

I hope you find some useful information in all this, and welcome again. --~~~~

I'm trying to find better ways of dealing with Tendentious editing, Disruptive editing, and the all-too-common bullying within Wikipedia. I'm doing this in response to my own involvement into the events surrounding the Ilena and Fyslee arbitration. I feel the arbitration should have never have taken place, and that it did only because numerous editors let the problems get so very out of hand for such a very long time that there was no other choice. I'm looking for some preventative measures. First and foremost in my mind is getting editors to be more respectful of each other by being more respectful of the numerous policies and guidelines related to civility. (originally written for my talk page -- 21:28, 9 April 2007(UTC))

It was a big lesson for me, trying to resolve disputes where multiple editors were working together to edit articles in bad faith (and against COI's in a few cases). It was such a huge mess when I arrived that there was already a strong consensus to allow coi-editing, personal attacks, and BLP violations. All that had to change, and more.

I see similarities with these Weston Price discussions. Editors working incredibly hard to defend their personal opinions, rather than finding, evaluating, and incorporating more and better sources. It's the focus on sourcing that resolves these disputes. Eventually, the editors will learn this. Hope it doesn't take years. -- 18:34, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

One thing I've tried with a great deal of success is to stop assuming that editors will be civil. Not that I don't ask them to be civil, I just don't want to be pulled into drawn-out discussions about it. Wikipedia does very little to enforce civility, so we should all expect that some editors here will be incivil. -- 23:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

User:KillerChihuahua#Soapbox | WP:COOL | WP:GRIEF | WP:FANATIC | WP:DGAF | WP:CHILLOUT | WP:TROUT | WoW | WP:HERE] | "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" | User:Durova/The_dark_side | WP:GIANTDICK | meta:Don't be a dick | There is no cabal, and certainly no Spanish Inquisition, so please just try to get along with fellow Wikipedians | Vexatious litigation | WP:SOUP | Piety | So what? | Send in the clowns | User:Dmcdevit/On_edit_warring |User:Antandrus/observations_on_Wikipedia_behavior| WP:OWB | WP:Civil_POV_pushing | WP:FOC | WP:AVOIDYOU | WP:CGTW

"It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."

Time to find some simple ways to show my appreciation to those editors that are civil and cooperative make an effort in some way to help Wikipedia, where they aren't obviously disrupting or vandalizing it at the same time. The easiest way is to simply tell people that their work is appreciated whenever possible...

The key to reducing disruption isn't to go back and right old wrongs or to deal a slew of warnings. Digging through old contributions doesn't "reduce disruption", it re-opens wounds. "Reducing disruption" isn't about righting great wrongs, it's about lowering the temperature.

Of course, if you really want to reduce disruption, it's important to approach the matter fairly. Guettarda (talk) 16:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC) [1]

User:WLU/Generic_sandbox | WP:TMM | Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure | WP:Tutorial |User:Jytdog/How

Please build your own case, base it upon evidence, address others' concerns, and do so in a way that it looks like an attempt to work cooperatively with others

Please help further the current discussions... If you feel the need to repeat past arguments, please refer to the previous ones...

• Solicit feedback and ask questions.
• Keep the discussion focused. Concentrate on a small set of related matters and resolve them to the satisfaction of all parties.
• Focus on the subject rather than on the personalities of the editors.

Thanks for taking the time to contribute to the discussions in ARTICLETALK. However, I hope you aren't offended by my reminding you to please explain your viewpoint, rather than just agreeing with another's. Please see WP:VOTE and WP:TALK for more information.

• Solicit feedback and ask questions.

The images you're adding across Wikipedia tend to be poor illustrations for the articles, have dubious claims in the captions not supported within the article, and appear to be intended to promote...

I'm in the process of cleaning up (link) links, and noticed you added one (diff) here. If you've added others, or think that these links are appropriate, please let me know. (link) u

Neutrality is difficult to accomplish, and there's a huge amount of guidance in Wikipedia on how to go about it. When it comes to articles about living people, it's even more difficult because of the higher standards expected from such articles. At the risk of oversimplifying how to approach these problems, I suggest finding sources that are both independent and reliable that demonstrate the information/event is important with respect to the person's entire life's work.

Please note that blogs and whitepapers are not considered reliable sources and that repeated use of the same blogs can appear to be promotional in nature.

Also, please review WP:COI in case it might apply.

...because the source you've repeatedly used is self-published and not considered a reliable source. Further, the repeated use of the same source can appear to be promotional...

Here on Wikipedia, we're building an encyclopedia. We don't try to "balance" what people would like to believe with what they don't understand.