LikeI'dTellYou

Welcome!

Hello, LikeI'dTellYou, 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:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! AshLin (talk) 02:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback

Thank you for your feedback. I confess it was a surprise to me that you thought my comments rude and unhelpful. I was under the impression that I was helping out. I was also under the impression I was communicating with a teacher who had a class full of young students, perhaps too young to edit independently. My deepest personal apologies to your teacher and your whole class.

I come from a different civilisation than yours. I am also unaccustomed to dealing with young American children. Perhaps I should get some knowledge on that. I do not understand your school system either. In my context, I spent time away from my hobby editing to welcome User:Geography&historyofworld, explained why I reverted his edits (I thought he was an adult), when he explained his circumstances I suggested a way of gradually bringing you into the world of Wikipedia by incremental edits and by first working on small local articles where you would pretty much be free to learn your craft without excessive interference from editors like me.

Later, I improved some material you put up in Egypt to display the following techniques to you -

• incremental editing (editing a sentance, fact, image or action at a time).
• showing the kind of encyclopaedic language expected, though not really expecting you to be able to write to that standard.
• cleaned up your references and showing how to add a properly templated citation using {{cite book}} and {{cite web}}.
• I found some information (United Arab Republic) you did not know about Egypt directly concerned with your topic and added it with a Google book reference.
• I added a meaningful image, making your section on Egypt more useful.
• I located words which coud be wikified and found appropriate articles on it and wikified them.

By doing all this, I demonstrated how your text could be improved and how editing is done.

I also pointed out his duty to get a little bit more involved in Wikipedia before plunging his students in directly - as an analogy, he would not take you to a museum before checking it out by himself earlier, would he? I'm sorry to hear that you percieved my actions as rude. The actions were in good faith, though I unintentionally hurt your feelings.

Wikipedia is the real world - like a subway in New York in American movies - you will meet all kinds of people. Most belong to your nation and are helpful and polite as per your standards. Others like me, live in the English speaking world but not in your culture. We have good intentions but believe things in a different way and have different values. Yet others are rude, vandals, insensitive or worse, by the standards of both your culture and mine.

I had taken time to help out, though very ineffectively I admit, because where I come from, not responding to your teachers first edits after reverting them, or giving no time, effort or consideration to help you is considered rudeness.

Similarly, I take time to explain my point of view to you. Hope this assuages your feelings. As a measure of my good faith, I am willing to teach you simple skills, which may take you longer to acquire otherwise, and provide general guidance.

Stick around editing, a small incident ike this should not prevent you guys from enjoying a truly thrilling globally participatory experience. Good day and happy editing. AshLin (talk) 03:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Could you please get in touch with me?

For lack of other means to contact you, I would appreciate if you would be so kind as to leave me a short note to let me know if we could exchange some ideas and information about your and your class most commendable effort here on Wikipedia. Discussion pages can be used, but you are very welcome to use my e-mail address, shown on my user page: vam@fct.unl.pt

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

vapmachado ^talk.cw 22:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)