Welcome to Wikipedia!
Hey there, Murphy2010! I'm glad you decided to register a new account here on Wikipedia. We're always looking for new editors to help improve the project, because believe me, there's always something to be done! Wikipedia often seems very large to newcomers (it did to me, at least), so I've put together this little guide to help you get started. I hope this helps, and as always, happy editing! Hersfold (t/a/c) 03:53, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some Quick Tips Don't be afraid to make mistakes - Be Bold! That's how things get done, and there is always someone around to help you out if you need it. Remember to sign your posts on talk pages, like this one. You can click this button on your editing toolbar, or just type in four tildes (~~~~) That way, people know who they're talking to and who to go to if they have a question for you. Take some time to read a few of the help files, especially if you're new to Wikimarkup. Knowing the basics can save a lot of time and frustration down the road. I've provided some of these pages, as well as some common policies, at right. If you ever have a question, there are plenty of places to ask! You can come talk to me, add the code {{helpme|your question}} to your talk page here, post a question on the talk page of the article you have a question about, or post something on the Help Desk or Reference Desk. Check out the ways to get involved below - each of these suggestions are good ways for a new editor to get involved in the Wikipedia project. Most importantly, get out there and edit! Thanks again for signing on!		Important Links to Remember Wikipedia Tutorial The Five Pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Using images on Wikipedia Important policies and guidelines: Neutral Point of View, or "NPOV" Verifiability Citing Sources What Wikipedia is NOT The Manual of Style, or how to format a good article Copyright policies (VERY IMPORTANT) Vandalism on Wikipedia and how to prevent it Assume good faith Civility and Etiquette
Some things you can get started with: Articles needing cleanup ↔↔ Fighting vandalism ↔↔ Join a "Wikiproject" ↔↔ Adopt-a-User ↔↔ Starting your first article ↔↔ The Community Tasklist

A bit late, but since you've never been officially welcomed... See you around, and happy editing! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:53, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure I can trust you with this, and if I can't, you'll be hearing about it. So here's the boilerplate message:

I have granted rollback rights to your account; the reason for this is that after a review of some of your contributions, I believe I can trust you to use rollback correctly by using it for its intended usage of reverting vandalism, and that you will not abuse it by reverting good-faith edits or to revert-war. For information on rollback, see Wikipedia:New admin school/Rollback and Wikipedia:Rollback feature. If you do not want rollback, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Good luck and thanks. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 07:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, sorry I haven't responded until now. There's actually a better outcome than deletion; since the section is almost exactly the same, it's very likely someone tried to merge the pages together, but forgot to redirect Biodiversity and evolution. Since the history of that article needs to be kept to show who did what in that section, I'm not going to delete the article, simply redirect it to the duplicate section. This is the ugly copyleft stuff that gives us admins headaches when crap like this happens; in many cases, we have to do this incredibly messy fix that involves deleting, moving, and undeleting pages to get all the histories to merge together correctly. I probably should do that here as well, but I'm afraid if I delete Biodiversity (which unfortunately is the one that has to be deleted in this process), I'd melt the servers and cause the site to crash for half an hour. Big pages tend to do that, and they won't even let us delete some of the really big ones for just that reason. This is more-or-less sufficient anyway, and it allows you to continue to work on Biodiversity and evolution, using what was there as a starting point. Hope your break's going well! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 15:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Biodiversity doesn't have to be deleted; I was talking (in very little detail, sorry about that) about a process through which administrators can merge the histories of two pages together, which we sometimes have to do when somebody makes a mess of things. It goes like this:

1. Editor A wants to move (rename) Original to New page. They're either new or haven't done a move before, so they copy the contents of Original and make a new page at New page.
2. Editor B comes by later, notices the mistake, and points it out to Admin. Admin bashes his head on the desk, leaves an irritated but usually helpful pointer at Editor A's talk page, and gets to work.
3. Admin deletes New page temporarily under CSD G6, citing "cut & paste fix" as the reason.
4. Admin (correctly) moves Original to the newly vacated title at New page.
5. Admin then restores all the revisions he deleted during step 3, and rollbacks him/herself as needed to make sure the most recent version of the article is showing.

The reason we have to do this is that the GFDL requires all edits to an article be properly attributed to whoever made them. When someone makes a cut & paste move like this, they're effectively claiming the collaborative work of a group of other editors entirely as their own; this can sometimes be averted by noting the source of the content in the original edit summary ("content copied from Original"), but that only works in a limited number of cases. This situation with Biodiversity and Biodiversity and evolution is one of those cases; since the content of B&E came from Biodiversity in the first place, redirecting it back there won't leave any questions about who wrote what; it all obviously came from Biodiversity.

It's an ugly and confusing mess, but fortunately all a moot point since, as you said, everything is fine now. I'm just babbling, and complaining about janitor work. :-) Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty good, just got back from vacation, so now it's back to this and other work I need to get done before the new semester. Bleah. See you around. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 18:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, it's no problem. I took a look at the article, and it doesn't appear to be getting vandalized badly enough for protection to be necessary right now. All the vandalism from the last day or so has been coming from two IP addresses; if they do keep it up, we can just block them. Plus, vandalism was rather high last night and some today all over the project because of Tuesday's Featured Article. If it does get really bad, let me know and I'll take another look, or you can drop a request at WP:RFPP (probably faster response there unless I happen to be online). We don't protect pages pre-emptively except in extremely rare cases. Anyway, see you around. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your user page hasn't been hit yet - if it starts getting attacked heavily, let me know, but we don't protect pages pre-emptively. Sorry. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. Read through the policy if you get the chance, might help some. See you later tonight. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 00:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let me remind you that when you mark an article for deletion, you must specify so in the edit summary. It helps us overworked admins identify the edit. DGG ( talk ) 04:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Science lovers wanted!

Hi! I'm serving as the wikipedian-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution Archives until June! One of my goals as resident, is to work with Wikipedians and staff to improve content on Wikipedia about people who have collections held in the Archives - most of these are scientists who held roles within the Smithsonian and/or federal government. I thought you might like to participate since you are interested in the sciences! Sign up to participate here and dive into articles needing expansion and creation on our to-do list. Feel free to make a request for images or materials at the request page, and of course, if you share your successes at the outcomes page you will receive the SIA barnstar! Thanks for your interest, and I look forward to your participation! Sarah (talk) 01:02, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. You may be interested in participating in the African Destubathon which starts on October 15. Africa currently has over 37,000 stubs and badly needs a quality improvement editathon/contest to flesh out basic stubs. There are proposed substantial prizes to give to editors who do the most geography, wildlife and women articles, and planned smaller prizes for doing to most destubs for each of the 55 African countries, so should be enjoyable! Even if contests aren't your thing we would be grateful if you could consider destubbing a few African wildlife articles during the drive to help the cause and help reduce the massive 37,000 + stub count, of which many are rated high importance. If you're interested in competing or just loosely contributing any article related to a topic you often work on, please add your name to the Contestants/participants section. Might be a good way to work on fleshing out articles you've long been meaning to target and get rewarded for it! Diversity of work from a lot of people will make this that bit more special. Thanks. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 04:56, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!