Shell Kinney

I work with WP:OTRS which sometimes leads me to make strange looking edits. Please ask if you're not sure why an edit, deletion or block happened. I will be happy to discuss the issue with you as far as I am able and can assist you in having other OTRS members review the change as well.

I also assist other editors through Adopt-a-user and Admin coaching. Before you ask me to be your mentor in either program, please understand that I do not have concrete lesson plans that I follow, nor do I write long essays about doing things on Wiki English. I won't follow you around or check-up on your edits unless you ask me about something that's going on. I will be available to discuss Wikipedia with you whenever you want; my goal is not to teach you a set of rules, but to teach you to think -- I will try to show you the whys of things instead of the hows. However, if what you want is a structured learning program, you'll be much happier with a different mentor.

I am happy to help with any legitimate request, however, please be sure you offer support for your request. If you are requesting an action regarding a specific user, please use the {{user|Username}} template. If your request involves utilizing restricted permission (for example, protecting a page or blocking a user for more than three reverts), there is probably an established process for making your request.

If you're here to email me about a block, please make sure you include your user name and IP address. If I'm not the blocking admin, you'll also need to include that information and the reason that you were blocked (in fact, I hope you've tried talking to the blocking admin first). The easiest way to do this is simply to copy the message you get when you attempt to edit. If you don't include this information, there's nothing I can do to review your block.

I used to come here every so often to look things up, but honestly, it never occurred to me to edit something until one day a little red link next to requests caught my eye. I started a stub at New York Women's House of Detention -- it took me two hours to finish because of all the time I spent through the Manual of Style and other tutorials. I hope I've come a long way since then.

I tend to be more of an eventualist when it comes down to it. There's exceptions like vanity and nonsense, but if an article has merit, I'd much rather fix it than wipe it clean and start over. A good example is Citrus production -- makes sense as an encyclopedic article, but was so poorly done that it was afd'd. When I stumbled across it as a short page, I decided that it could be easily fixed up, even by a corn state girl with almost no knowledge on the subject.

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Wiki: WikiProject Dog breeds
Wiki: Cleanup process
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