User talk:Yeltommo
November 2018[edit]
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, discussion pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at Talk:Marc Dutroux, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Even making spelling and grammatical corrections in others' comments is generally frowned upon, as it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. LinguistunEinsuno (Linguist111) 04:46, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Linguist111: Thank you. Good to know. You're referring to the fact that I corrected the spelling of "believers" and changed a comma to a semicolon, right? Thank you for reverting those changes. For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have let my editing urge get the better of me if the user hadn't 'retired' in 2010. And since the user is retired, I'm not even sure what the purpose of my comment was. I was sort of experimenting. This whole process, including your note to me here and this response to you, is new and strange to me. I added a colon before the "ping" you asked me to use. Am I responding to you correctly? (I'm not referring to the content of my response, but rather the format etc.) Among other things, I don't understand why it says "Preceding unsigned comment added by Yeltommo" after my comment at Talk:Marc Dutroux. I initially interpreted "preceding" to refer to the comment before mine, since I thought I signed my comment, but apparently I (yeltommo) added the unsigned comment--even though my identity is specified? I guess I don't know what "signed" or "unsigned" means. I thought that ending a comment with four tildes was equivalent to signing it. I'm *thoroughly* confused. Also, do I need to include an edit summary in this context, when I'm simply responding to you? Have I signed this comment? Yeltommo (talk) 03:56, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- (First of all, should I be pinging you again in this second response?) I just made a couple additions and minor edits to my first response to you. According to the description I've read of "minor edit," the additions weren't minor, but I have a hard time believing/understanding that the same standards that apply to edits made directly to a Wikipedia article should apply to edits I make to my own comments on a Talk page, let alone on my own User Talk page. The idea that a response to you should count as an edit in the first place is strange. Again, what sort of edit summary (if any) does it require? Yeltommo (talk) 04:08, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- Hello! I'm sorry for the late reply, but I'll try to answer your questions now:
- I tend to be a perfectionist sometimes, so I also sometimes get the urge to correct words that aren't spelt correctly etc. I don't doubt your edits were made with good intentions. If you click here you'll find a guideline on legitimate and illegitimate changing of other users' talk page comments. If you wish to experiment with Wikipedia syntax, you can use the sandbox.
- Yes, you have pinged me correctly, thank you. I'm guessing you read my user talk page notice. I generally prefer that, when I leave a message to other user on their talk page, they ping me when they respond to me so I get a notification that tells me they have replied to me. Pinging is not something one must do, but it is helpful. That notice is generally to teach new users about a practice that a lot of users prefer: keeping discussion on one page and notifying users when you reply to them. It is only optional though. The main reason I made that notice is so that new users will know not to write messages at the top of my talk page instead of at the bottom (because it would mess up the page's formatting) or mistakenly leave a message on my user page. You can find more info at WP:UP and WP:PING.
- About the "Preceding unsigned comment..." thing: usually, when a user does not sign their own talk page comment, an automated program (bot) signs it for them using a template called Template:Unsigned. It adds the text "{{subst:unsigned|User's user name|Time the comment was made}}" (which converts into "— Preceding unsigned comment added by User's user name (talk • contribs) Time the comment was made"). This way, anyone who reads the talk page will know which user made the comment. If the bot doesn't do this, a human user can use the unsigned template. I was the one who added it to your comment.
- Yes, you have signed your comment correctly (WP:SIGN).
- It is considered good practice to write an edit summary for every edit you make, but it isn't mandatory. See H:ES for more info.
- The same applies for using the minor edit marker. Except that it should only ever be used for actual minor edits (e.g. fixing spelling mistakes, page formatting and reverting vandalism). Examples of edits that should not be marked minor include adding a large amount of prose to a page or nominating a page for deletion. More info can be found at WP:MINOR.