User:Fabartus/getting up to speed fast

I was thinking on how I could extend wikisociety according to Frank, but really think I've given you the key already with the Ten+One 'Snooping' links. We have a holiday down here, and I want to get down the road to a fencing meet--my youngest is having his first contest-- so I'm just going to catalog some other practices and/or information resources for you to tap.

I've always advised the youngsters to browse 9X more than they edit the first couple months, and that is still sound advice. I should really follow it myself more often--at least now and again. Another good 'society' glimpse would be to read through the various essays. See for example the nascent WP:Wh (Case matters much in shortcuts, and be sure to set up a hierarchical set of bookmarks organized in folders and sub-folders for yourself in your browser to file away the occasional page which is a nexus (Category:shortcuts and Category:Wikipedia administration, Wikipedia:List of lists, for some examples) to finding other things, Key policies and guidelines (The XfD's will cite those, sometimes cryptically, so easy to identify) . Add Community talks of interest to your watchlist, etc. and just snoop a lot and edit some. Make it fun.

If you monitor those Xfd pages, and perhaps especially the various WP:AN (WP:AN/I!!!) pages, and track references back and forth, even participate some you'll have your share of alphabet-soup references to master, but those that are unlinked which you cannot grasp the meaning of in context can be inquired about with someone that seems friendly. Make yourself a few reference sub-pages and build some lists of contacts. The table of such links I have on my pages can be a model if your memory is as poor as mine, and then there is always using offline text files as a storage medium. Make sure your browser has a status line enabled so you can ascertain by hovering over a link whether to follow it or not, and you should be fine.

The heart and soul of wikipedia in some ways are the personal talk pages, so identify a few people you relate to and have dealings with and snoop away, follow one sided conversations and solitary posts over to the posting users talk, and browse those, to build whole threads, etc. and eavesdrop shamelessly. About half of the links I have on my quicklinks are power admins, and virtually all will take a question and not give you a brush off. (Check back on it soon, or watchlist the source page... I'm way overdue in making some adds there.)

If you snoop some, you will find in short order who are the thoughtful and knowledgeable resources, and who are abrasive, rash, and such. Make sure to check a users contribs over several weeks when visiting personal pages, and you will quickly develop a sense of what different people are about and who are those you may have things in common with and relate to well, etc. fairly quickly. I can think of other things, but this is stuff I wish I learned or adopted much earlier, so should be helpful.

When in doubt or confused, or lost, etc. drop me a note. I'm always glad to help. The cream of the editors here match me, even if they don't make newcomers a specialty area. Oh-- another good trick would be to learn to use special pages. You should have a button for your own pages, but you can learn to adapt the syntax nearly anywhere in wikipedia.

A couple of others you may find useful to contact are Quiddity, another academic from up your way and a real information source. Pmanderson, also a social sciences academic. Ditto TantilumTelluride and Valentinian. They should all have links on my cheat sheet. CBDunkerson and Omegatron are system knowledge resource experts, for template questions and or general admin questions. Have fun.

ttfn

Frank