Wikipedia:Tip of the day/June 21, 2006

Please read department instructions

Some pages are active departments with their own set of instructions. It may be tempting to skip reading them and go straight to making edits or leaving messages. But this just clutters those pages and creates unnecessary steps for the volunteers of those departments. This happens a lot at the Help desk, the Wikipedia:Reference desk, and at Articles for creation. For example, many users ask general knowledge questions at the Help Desk rather than at the Reference Desk, because they didn't read the instructions at the top of the page. If you visit those pages, please take the time and read the instructions before making use of those helpful departments.