User talk:Mcole13

Welcome!

Hello, Mcole13, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!

Also I am not sure what the article Operant hoarding is talking about. Could you please add to the article what CRF and EXT stand for? Happy editing! --Banana04131 03:56, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for edit summary

When editing an article on Wikipedia there is a small field labeled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

The text written here will appear on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history, on the diff page, and in the watchlists of users who are watching that article. See m:Help:Edit summary for full information on this feature.

Filling in the edit summary field greatly helps your fellow contributors in understanding what you changed, so please always fill in the edit summary field, especially for big edits or when you are making subtle but important changes, like changing dates or numbers. Thank you. – Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your edits on 'isomorphism'

Hi, Mark. Please see my comments on Talk:Isomorphism. There was nothing wrong with your material on the use of the term isomorphism in Gestalt Psychology...except that it basically belonged on its own page. I had created that page (at isomorphism (Gestalt psychology)) and moved your text over; but I probably should have made this clear on the discussion page.

I was in exactly your shoes recently with an update I made to isomorphism, where the mathematicians jumped on me and pointed out that this page was not a general discussion of the term, but a specific discussion about its use in math. I think your point about this being confusing to others is valid; but so was theirs about how fundamental and widely-cited the term is in math use. Anyway, I changed the link in Gestalt Psychology to point to the disambiguated page, so all should be well.

You definitely need not worry about conflicting with "the author of the article" on any Wikipedia page. You (all of us) can edit any page at any time. The reason your change got removed twice was (the first time) when they said "this belongs on the disambiguation page", in the update comment made when it was removed; and (the second time) when I did just that – rather than asking you to do so. (I find that I constantly use the 'history' page on articles to see why updates are being made. With straightforward issues, this is often simpler than adding comments to the discussion page.)

I hope you are comfortable with all of this. - Trevor - Trevor Hanson 22:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I feel much more like I know what I am doing here now, Trevor. Thanks. Mcole13 16:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's an incredibly rich environment, which means there is a lot to take in. I am still more or less a newbie here, and periodically get puzzled or surprised by points that crop up. Fortunately, there are a lot of helpful, experienced Wikians who step in and straighten me out when I stumble. There is a ton of information in the 'Help' section – too much, in my opinion, and not all consistent or well organized. But if you browse through some of those sections (such as Editing Wikipedia, Simplified ruleset, and How to edit a page) you will find plenty of detail on how to format text, create tables, enter citations and footnotes, etc. On the other hand, if you don't use all the bells and whistles, and just put in plain old unformatted text, one of the volunteer editors will eventually tidy things up, even to the point of fixing misspellings. (I do try to catch my typos, which are embarrassing. Fortunately Firefox 2.0 now has a built-in spell checker, so I'm better about that.) BTW, a volunteer editor is just another participant like you or I. There is no special status; it's just a question of whether you are wandering around fixing up articles or not. Anyway, I'm glad if you're feeling more comfortable. One of the key Wikipedia dictates is: "Be bold." Feel free to go in and fix what is wrong or missing. If others disagree, a polite discussion will ensue. I have run across only one semi-jerk so far. It's all quite collegial. Trevor Hanson 19:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]