User talk:Marthallius

Hello, Marthallius! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Accounting4Taste:talk 17:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Accounting4Taste:talk 17:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed you applied the (hangon) tag to your article. You may wish to look at WP:WEB, which gives the criteria that an administrator will use when deciding whether or not to delete the page in question. Other pages that you may find useful are WP:Notable and WP:Verifiable. If you have any questions about Wikipedia policy, feel free to leave a note on my talk page. Accounting4Taste:talk 17:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Please don't remove any material from other people's talk pages; it's very strongly discouraged by Wikipedia policy. I can appreciate that you felt it was no longer required, but it's up to me to decide what to do about it, just like it's up to you to decide what to do about material on your talk page. Thanks for understanding and, if you have any questions, you can leave me another note. Accounting4Taste:talk 17:58, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

In-universe articles

Hi there: And thanks for your note, I'm happy to help however I can. I'm sorry that I can't give you a really definitive answer, and "it depends" is the best I can do. It depends on whether a whole bunch of other people have edited the article, or whether it's pretty much the product of a very small number of people. You can tell by looking at the tab for "page history" just who edited the page when, and by looking at the "diff", you can tell exactly what they did. As a general rule, in a collaborative enterprise like Wikipedia, it's a good idea to try to work collaboratively with all the people who have edited a page. (There's another Wikipedia policy that says "Be bold!" but in this case I recommend going carefully.) The way that *I* would go about it is, I'd leave a note on the talk page of the article saying, roughly, "I think this is written too much in the in-universe style and contains too much detail, and I'm planning on re-writing this like (giving details of your plans); if anyone objects, leave me a note here." Then I'd wait 48 hours or so to see what happens. It might be that someone feels like they "own" the article, which is definitely against Wikipedia policy but is one of the things that leads to "edit wars". Telling people what you're going to do, then waiting a little while before you do it, is a very good way of defusing possible controversy in advance. But if the article is the product of a bunch of different people -- which is a little unlikely for an article that's in "in universe" style -- it will be easier to achieve consensus, since it's unlikely that anyone will object. If there have been lots of editors, it's less likely that anyone will assert "ownership" of the article. If someone does assert their "ownership", there are ways to deal with that and you can bring me into the situation (I'm an administrator here, and it's my responsibility to make sure that things are done according to policy). You might look up the three-revert rule to know what the boundaries are, roughly speaking, between disagreement and edit war.

Thanks for your questions; it's a pleasure to help a new user who bothers to find out how things work before going ahead!! If there's something more I can offer, just leave a note on my talk page. Accounting4Taste:talk 20:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)