User talk:Johnpedia
Welcome!
Hello, Johnpedia, 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
- How to edit a page
- Help pages
- Tutorial
- How to write a great article
- Manual of Style
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! --Justanother 14:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Cool
There are very few knowledgable Scientologists editing here; a good number of dedicated critics; and a lot of less biased editors that have none-the-less been influenced by misrepresentation of Scientology on the internet and have no positive experience of Scientology to balance that with. I seriously recommend that, before tackling Scientology articles, that you edit in other non-controversial articles that you are knowlegable about until you see how things work here. Also learn to use a watchlist (you can set your preferences up to watch every article you edit in). Follow the guidelines in the welcome message. Do not add or remove material without citing sources (or lack of sources after a good-faith attempt to find one yourself). Stay polite and never get personal. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into personal battles because someone attacked you first. Do not engage in edit wars. Many Scientologist editors have been banned from this site for breaking the rules; don't join them. See my page for general tips and a link to a "hat writeup" that may be helpful even though it is a very rough draft. Feel free to ask me anything. --Justanother 16:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
- I'll second all of that. Telling people they are wrong and then walking off isn't going to get anything changed, all it does is make you feel better and confirms the belief of your opponents that, in this case, scientologists can't discuss anything with 'outsiders' because they are 'crazy culties'.
- Further advice would be to read the Talk:Scientology archives. You may well find that some of the specific points you want to raise have already been discussed at length, that there is a lot of information that you are not familiar with. It will also bring you up to speed on who's who, there are some editors who have been here for a while and will not take kindly to being told they are wrong, again, by someone who hasn't troubled to check the facts.
- There is a lot wrong with the Scientology articles on Wikipedia. This is not, in my view, a conspiracy against Scientology, just the inevitable result of the content being written by critics with little or no input by scientologists. Wikipedia articles always appear on the front page of Search Engines, and at present they are a major disaster for scientology. --Hartley Patterson 23:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Mind here are 2 blocked user accounts that were trying their way to help wikipedia improve: User:Terryeo, and User:Highfructosecornsyrup -- Jpierreg 18:08, 03 January 2006 (GMT)
- Terryeo is a Scientologist who was eventually banned from edited Wikipedia. Reading the user log on his now deleted User page will explain why. The editors of the Scientology pages were IMO reluctant to throw him out because he was for a while the only Scientologist editor; it was higher admin that banned him. --Hartley Patterson 23:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Editing
Below the editing screen theres a small box that lets you write a note on why and what you edited to make it easier for other users to understand your edits, please try to use it. Joneleth 09:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
RE: why did ...
"why did u remove my note about brandy taking scientology courses?"
- don't take it peronsal, but the sentences you added don't fit to the rest to the text. write a sec tion like "brandy & church" to include your informatin on scientology. - Noboyo
Got your message.
Thanks for your kind message. --Messenger2010 02:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)