UDWiki:Open Discussion/Welcome templates

• Never delete someone else's edits, comments, responses, etc. off community pages. To do so is considered vandalism.
• If you write a comment it's useful to sign it so that other editors will know who wrote it. You can write "~~~~" at the end of your comment to sign it, or there's this button on the top of the edit page that will sign for you if you want.
• You may want to know how your edits will look before they have been saved, to make sure that nothing is wrong. Use the "Preview" button before the "Save" button - it's your friend!
• If you're slow in your editing and there's an editing conflict, you might not understand the error that you get. The easiest way to overcome the edit conflict is to copy whatever you have been writing, go back with your browser, and then re-enter the edit page so that you can add your edits without deleting those made before yours.
• The wiki is a collaborative project, please do your best to work well with fellow editors.

Further help for editing the wiki can be found on the Help page.

Project Mentor has been set up to allow new wiki users to have a more experienced wiki veteran mentor them for the first few weeks. Visit its page for more information!

One of the great things about the wiki is that every user can have his or her own user page! These pages are located in the User: namespace — in other words, they all begin with "User:" (yours is User:Open Discussion/Welcome templates). The appropriate place to write about yourself or your characters is on your user page, or a subpage of that page (e.g., User:Open Discussion/Welcome templates/Your Character's Name). Please don't create pages about yourself outside the User: namespace. Those pages will be moved into subpages of your user page, and the original speedily deleted. If you want something to be deleted, use the speedy deletion page; that's why Criterion 7 was made.

Every user has a talk page, found by clicking the "discussion" link at the top of his or her user page, or by going directly to it (yours would be User talk:Open Discussion/Welcome templates). If you have a question for someone, or want to say something to him or her, his or her user talk page is the place.

However, many users on the wiki have established specific guidelines for how their user talk pages are to be treated — where new comments should go, how they should be written, what is or is not okay to talk about, etc. Be sure to look for guidelines on the talk page before you leave a comment.

If you don't see any guidelines specified, the assumption is that you should place your comment at the bottom of the talk page, under a level 2 heading. This can be accomplished by clicking the "+" link next to the "edit" tab at the top of the talk page, or by manually typing in your message in this format:

When replying to a comment already laid on the page, remember to indent it correctly: do it by inserting as many colons plus one to the message you're replying to at the begining of your message, like this:

We know that as a new user, you want to share your ideas with us. But a community as big as ours has already seen all kind of suggestions, and it's possible that we've already seen something very similar to the ideas you have. Follow these simple guidelines to make sure that your suggestion gets the respect that it deserves:

• First of all, read the Suggestions Page's rules.

• We strongly recommend that you read the Suggestions Dos and Do Nots and the Frequently Suggested Ideas pages so that you will have an idea of what kind of suggestions are likely to be accepted and what kind are ridiculous in the eyes of the community. The pages might look long and time-consuming to read, but you will find them entertaining and helpful.

• You might also want to look at the Previous Days Suggestions. These contain a record of all previous suggestions. Use the search function in your browser to search for keywords relating to the suggestion you want to make.

• It may be helpful to wait a few days to get a feel for the wiki and the other users before subjecting your idea to any possible criticism. If you're unsure, the Suggestions Discussion page is good neutral territory to suggest, gather feedback, and refine your idea before officially submitting it.

• Write your suggestion according to these steps. If it looks too complicated for you, ask for help.

• You can't modify a suggestion that you've written once it has been posted on the Suggestions page. You can withdraw and resubmit it with changes later, but only do that if people liked your original suggestion while requesting changes, not if it was Spaminated.

• If you get stuck at ANY point in writing your suggestion, ask for help. There's no shame in being new and after a few times, you'll get the hang of it.

If there's anything not covered by this introduction, you still have plenty of avenues to find some extra help. Project Welcome and Project Mentor are perfect starting points, but if you have something more pressing at hand, don't be afraid to get in touch with the administration staff.