Wikipedia talk:Avoiding common mistakes

message: I just tried to make the whole page less arrogant and a bit nicer to newcomers.   Thoughts?  (and what happened to the old Talk: ??  Aha!  found it.  reposted below.) +sj+ 18:48, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: For attribution purposes, the history of the old talk page can be found at . Graham87 08:17, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: First message

message: Temporarily Imperfect? That's a lofty goal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weatherman667 (talk • contribs) 07:02, 26 August 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Temporarily imperfect?

message: * Perhaps this should mention the meta:Right_to_vanish? -- Sy / (talk) 02:55, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting your User Talk page or removing text from your User Talk page. 

message: I removed this from the page for the time being:
"Creating more work for WikiJanitors, especially for pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Many well-meaning users will attempt to improve a process without considering that their changes will increase the workload for others. See: m:instruction creep."
In a word: huh?
# What's a "WikiJanitor?"
# "Many well-meaning users will attempt to improve a process..." How do these users attempt to improve a process? Give an example!
# "...without considering that their changes will increase the workload for others." How will their changes increase the workload for others? Give an example!
I'm sure this is trying to say something useful. Anyone feel like rewriting it?
- Pioneer-12 20:44, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creating more work for WikiJanitors? 

message: "Arming for war. Wikipedia is a unique community of altruistic and consensus-oriented people."
Really?  Then I'm in the wrong place!  Seriously, altruism is a particular ethical viewpoint which is not shared by all users.  I changed this to read "...unique community of reasonable and consensus-oriented people". Even though I'm sure the adjective "reasonable" also does not apply to all users, I think it is a much more accurate characterization of the vast majority. 
capitalist 03:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't be referring to "unselfish self-interest" any more than I'd be referring to "very short tall people", since both are contradictory.  If a person places correct information in Wikipedia, it may be for entirely selfish reasons such as wanting to live in a society of informed people who do things right.  For example, if I place information here about how to build a bridge correctly, it's not because I'm being altruistic; it's because I prefer not to drive or walk over bridges which collapse.  I'm expanding the knowledge  of others not for their well being (although that may be a result), but for my own.  capitalist 02:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And I prefer bridges built by trained engineers, not people who learned how to build them on Wikipedia. ;) --BlueNight 07:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Expressing a personal preference?  How un-altruistic of you.  Shocking!  ;)  capitalist 04:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedians are all altruists?

message: Would these classify as common mistakes?
Such as:
This is a paragraph.
This is another paragraph.
And:


Hi


?  -x42bn6 Talk 14:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple line breaks and HTML tables (instead of table markup) 

message: Now that anon page creation is disabled one of the most common mistakes by newcomers is writing about themselves or their company.  I think we ought to add that; if nobody objects I'll do it myself. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C]  AfD? 17:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. Put it under 'helping in the wrong way'. Link to appropriate policies. Stevage 20:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another good reason not to talk about your company, besides those listed, is that if you accidentally disclose intellectual property, you might get fired.  I'd add it myself, but as a new Wikipedian, I'm a little timid about editing such a visible page as this one :) --Jaysweet 20:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding a section 

message: Being a newcomer, I have no idea if this is common or not, but maybe something about checking for a deletion log when creating a new article should be added. I know I didn't do this for my first article, and, being one that had been deleted previously, it was speedily deleted. This almost convinced me to leave Wikipedia. -- VGF11 23:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree heartily with this one.  I've been a Wikipedian for years now, but I still don't know of an easy and intuitive way to find the logs for deleted articles.  I'll try to find it and put it in the article. Spalding 22:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How about this? 

message: There really are a lot of smart people here. I was highly amused with the internal links policy. (each word was cleverly linked, thrive linked to 'failure to thrive', while 'but' linked to 'butt') Nicely done. However, I was wondering if there was a wiki on avoiding common mistakes in Talk/discussion pages. I know you shouldn't incite flamewars, etc... but maybe something as complete, yet simple as this article. Thanks all -rocket —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.0.78.251 (talk • contribs) 05:28, 21 October 2006
:See WP:EIW#Talk. How's that for a fast answer? --Teratornis (talk) 09:01, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: About as good as this one. BreakfastJr (talk) 09:37, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Praise and a question 

message: This should really be marked out as a guideline --Barberio 00:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As per above comments, I think this new header is the best reflection. This avoids getting new policy material inadvertantly inserted via summaries like this. AndrewRT(Talk) 21:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Promote to guideline 

message: I was trying to parse the wikiquette and I wasn't sure about my situation. I'm a part-time volunteer for a non-profit and someone recently added an entry for the project I'm working on. Is it improper to edit it to reflect more accurate information about the project? Schear 22:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Read WP:COI, WP:RS, and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations. If you see an error of fact, but you have no reliable published source to support your personal knowledge, you could explain your position on the article's talk page and let independent editors work it out. If your knowledge about the organization is not in any reliable published sources, you could contact a reputable journalist and sit for an interview. The limiting factor for developing Wikipedia is often the lack of suitable sources on which to base our articles. --Teratornis (talk) 09:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  What About Volunteers? 

message: The similar page Wikipedia:Common mistakes was merged with this page following an unchallenged proposal at Wikipedia talk:Common mistakes. If you have any objections to this merge, please feel free to voice them. haz (talk) 16:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: Can we add a section about forgetting to add signatures in talk pages? When I first got on Wikipedia I don't think I knew about signatures at all. Then, after I first learned about signatures, I thought I had to sign with my actual name! Only after I made a relatively large number of edits did SineBot alert me that I was doing it wrong. --98.114.243.75 (talk) 23:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Signatures in discussions 

message: Minnesotans for the WRITE Choice -- (MWC) formed in early September 1990 in a statewide, grass-roots write-in campaign to elect Independent-Republican State Auditor Arne H. Carlson governor. The group formed shortly after Carlson's surprise Primary Election defeat to Jon Grunseth, a fellow Republican and abortion rights opponent. 
Before the six-week run up to Minnesota's gubernatorial primary, Republican Party candidates Carlson and Grunseth split sharply over abortion rights, popularly called "Pro-Choice." Pollsters predicted Carlson, a supporter of women's choice, would win. When the Republican Primary votes were tallied, Carlson had lost.
MWC was organized by pro-choice Democrats and Republicans to launch a statewide write-in campaign to elect Carlson governor, according to co-chair, Michael Dunstan. The 18-member MRC group included veteran Democratic Farmer-Labor Union(DFL) strategist Jim Goff, women's organizer and co-chair Sara Jahne and Dunstan, its sole Republican, and Minneapolis public relations agency owner. 
Beginning with a news conference at the Minnesota State Capitol, MWC saturated Minnesota news media promoting its Carlson write-in campaign. MWC organized campaign volunteers, mobilzed canvassers and printed more than one million stickers to be pasted on write-in ballots across the state.
While MWC campaigned for Carlson, news media dogged Grunseth over alleged sexual misconduct with minors in coverage that dragged on almost daily.
Two weeks before the vote, Dunstan and MWC supporters staged a pro-Carlson rally in front of his State Auditor's office in St. Paul. There Carlson announced his return as candidate for Governor before local and national news media. A few days later, Grunseth stepped down from the Republican nomination, enabling Carlson to ascend as the Republican nominee.
Carlson presented himself as a less polarizing leader than the incumbent governor, Rudy Perpich -- himself an abortion foe. Carlson won the general election by 3 percentage points and went on to serve a second term as Minnesota's 37th Governor, ending in 1999.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razorfish721 (talk • contribs) 08:28, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minnesotans for the WRITE Choice 

message: Wiktionary is mentioned in regards to dictionary definitions in this article. I don't have a problem with that, but I remember reading some other page about Wikipedia (I think it about what Wikipedia was not about) mentioning that what someone might think of contributing to Wiktionary might actually fit much better at a website like Urban Dictionary, as Wiktionary has its own requirements of notability and verification for words. I'm not really sure if something like that should be mentioned in this page as well, but I thought that others might have more of an idea of whether or not it belongs. Clovermoss (talk) 05:01, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiktionary  

message: An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Most common Wikipedia faux pas. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so.  –xenotalk 12:53, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Most common Wikipedia faux pas" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]