User talk:Silver Water

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Hello, Silver Water! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can 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 by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Worldbruce (talk) 12:59, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi Silver Water! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 22:22, Monday, March 6, 2017 (UTC)

Mission 1	Mission 2	Mission 3	Mission 4	Mission 5	Mission 6	Mission 7
Say Hello to the World	An Invitation to Earth	Small Changes, Big Impact	The Neutral Point of View	The Veil of Verifiability	The Civility Code	Looking Good Together

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About The Wikipedia Adventure | Hang out in the Interstellar Lounge

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi Silver Water! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 22:39, Monday, March 6, 2017 (UTC)

Mission 1	Mission 2	Mission 3	Mission 4	Mission 5	Mission 6	Mission 7
Say Hello to the World	An Invitation to Earth	Small Changes, Big Impact	The Neutral Point of View	The Veil of Verifiability	The Civility Code	Looking Good Together

Get Help

About The Wikipedia Adventure | Hang out in the Interstellar Lounge

I tried to improve the section headings in your sandbox......

because they had nowiki tags around them,,,, thus they did not appear as section heads. Regards, Ariconte (talk) 06:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Silver Water. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by AddWittyNameHere (talk) 23:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template.[reply]

I've answered again, in the same section where I answered before. (Your new question has also received an answer since then, albeit not by me) AddWittyNameHere (talk) 00:00, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hullo

Hello again. :) Out of curiosity, were you trying to send me a notification in your response at the Teahouse? That's called 'pinging' and looks like a simple @ in front of the linked username in read-view. However, it works by typing {{ping|Example}} (again, mind that you don't copy the nowiki-tags! ), where 'Example' is the username of the user you're trying to ping. No "User:"-prefix needed. For example, to ping you I typed {{ping|Silver Water}}; to ping me to your response, you'd add {{ping|AddWittyNameHere}}. Feel free to respond here. If you'd like, you could try pinging me to this page when you answer—though don't worry, I'll keep an eye on this page so even if it doesn't work, I'll see your response. :) AddWittyNameHere (talk) 19:21, 15 March 2017 (UTC) P.S. Pings only go through if done in the same edit as your signature, so if you forget to sign you also need to redo any pings you tried to send that edit.[reply]

@AddWittyNameHere: It seems complicated to remember all of the marks instead of simply the @ sign. But, I take it the @ does not work I have to remember @Xxx:? Thank you for your teaching. Silver WaterSilver Water (talk) 00:13, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Figured I'd let you know your ping worked. :) Yeah, a simple @ doesn't work. I know that on many sites, an @ is sufficient, hence why I figured I ought to let you know it doesn't work quite like that on Wikipedia. It can be a bit tricky to remember at first, but it really is just pretty basic template-stuff at the core that's mostly shared across templates.

The paired double curly brackets just signify "This here in between them is a template", the same way paired double square brackets signify "this is a wikilink", paired single square brackets signify "this is a hyperlink" and paired nowiki-tags signify "this text should be rendered as given, rather than call up any special tricks". (Notice how those things always come in pairs? That's because that's how the software can tell from where to where whatever you're doing should apply.)

It can help to understand why you have to use those specific symbols. Let's break it down:

The opening set of curly brackets signifies "here starts the template we're calling up".
The text directly after the opening set of curly brackets is whatever the name of the template you're calling is.
The pipe character | basically means "here ends the template's name".
Anything after the pipe character is a parameter, and if you have multiple parameters to call up, they're separated by pipes as well. This is the trickiest part of templates, because some template functions require you to also give the parameter's name, not merely contents. For the base function of ping, that's not needed, however. The template assumes that if you don't give a parameter name, then whatever you give must be the username of the editor you want pinged.
The closing set of curly brackets signifies "here ends the template we're calling up".

Now, as you're currently not using very many templates, that's a fair bit to remember. However, once you eventually start using more templates, it becomes pretty automatic at least as far as symbols go. To show you the difference, line by line, between pinging me and calling up the smiley

:

Open template	Template name	Pipe	Parameter	Close template
{{	ping	\|	AddWittyNameHere	}}
{{	smiley	\|	:)	}}

First row is ping, second is smiley. Not all that different, right? Eventually, all you'll have to consciously remember for basic templates is the 2nd & 4th column, or at least the 2nd column so you can browse to Template:whatever the template's name is to double-check what sort of parameter values were valid again. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:06, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much. Very clear. also helped to know my first ping got through. @AddWittyNameHere: Silver WaterSilver Water (talk) 00:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ping again successful, and looks like you're getting the smileys to work as well.

Glad to hear my explanation was helpful. I usually find that knowing what the parts are supposed to do makes it a lot easier to remember the parts involved and where they go--whether it's using a template or, say, repairing a wireless mouse. Want me to teach you a few more basic templates so you can try and see if you can get them to work? AddWittyNameHere (talk) 00:44, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the offer, @AddWittyNameHere: but not just yet. I've just finished what I set out to do. My next step is to see if it flies. I've asked a question in the Teahouse about how to proceed. Thank you so much for your kindness to me.Silver Water (talk) 01:10, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All right. Let me know when you want some more template help, or if there's anything else you need help with. I unfortunately need to log off at the moment or I'd head over to the Teahouse to see if I can answer your question; if, by the time I'm online again, no one has answered yet, I'll see about responding. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Silver Water. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by David Biddulph (talk) 23:35, 31 March 2017 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template.[reply]

Re: Joan Benson edits

Hello, thanks very much for the note. I'm glad I could help; it's good to know that Joan appreciated my changes. Graham87 04:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to hear that she's passed away. I've just updated her article to reflect that. My condolences to you and her family and friends. Graham87 04:32, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]