User talk:Russell Joseph McCann
Welcome, and thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test on the page Programming language worked, and it has been reverted or removed. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment further, please use the sandbox instead. Thank you. Tedickey (talk) 14:37, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
Programming language
[edit]Hello, sir! I see you are a novice editor here in Wikipedia who is knowledgeable about programming languages. Thanks for being willing to contribute to improve Wikipedia. First of all, have in mind that I agree with you about the specific change you did to the "Programming language" article some revisions ago, which was reverted by an editor who didn't understand the rationale of your change. Don't get frustrated, since such reversions are common here in Wikipedia: sometimes both editors have good faith, but one does not understand how the change proposed by the other can contribute to the article. This is more a problem of consensus in human collaboration than a fault in Wikipedia per se.
Fortunately, there is a way that often works to eliminate such conflicts, which has worked for me and I recommend. Before performing a change in a given article, discuss it in the corresponding talk page. (In the case of the "Programming language" article, the talk page is here). This way there is a very high chance that your change proposal will not be misunderstood by other good-faith editors. A change proposal which is first discussed in the talk page will only rarely get reverted.
It is an unfortunate fact that the "edit conflict problem", with an unexplained reversal, causes frustration in novice users. The reason of that frustration is that the culture of discussing new edits in a talk page before performing them is an "unwritten rule", and a novice rarely discovers that "hidden culture" by himself and ends up leaving Wikipedia with hurted feelings, without understanding why other editors "prevent" his edits. I think this is a fault of good-faith veteran editors who think everybody knows the Wikipedia's "hidden" culture, not of novice editors.
I am willing to help you contribute to the articles. It takes some time till someone fully understands the implicit culture of editing articles here. In order for you to get a better feeling of how this different place works, I'll let you try again by yourself to perform the change you want to the "Programming language" article. Discuss it first in the corresponding talk page, and I am sure that your change proposal will be accepted by the other editors. If you need some help or have some doubt, please let me know. In a short time, you'll also be a veteran editor here. Regards. --Antonielly (talk) 17:28, 22 January 2009 (UTC)