User:1013-josh/questions

An archive of questions asked at user talk:1013-josh

References Section Formatting (Whittney and Shannon)

Hey Josh, I wondering if we have to have footnotes? I also feel that my sources will be redundant because my footnotes will be the same as my references and external sources. Thanks 1013-whittney 00:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Footnotes (aka in-text citations) are used for specific pieces of information that come directly from a source. They should always be used for quotations. They should generally also be used for statistics and other facts drawn directly from a single indentifiable source. If you are using sources only for background information -- i.e. if the information is common knowledge or is shared among your sources -- then you just need to put the source in the references section (aka bibliography). So you have to decide where footnotes are needed and where they aren't. Footnotes differ from the entries in your references section because they are formatted differently and also because footnotes appear in the order in which information appears in your article, while references appear in alphabetical order. This may not matter so much in an article like yours, where you have few sources and where the alphabetical order doesn't vary much. So you may decide you don't need both sections. However, before you decide to do away with one of them, read this rationale for keeping both a footnotes and a references section. You don't need an external links section if those links are in your references. 1013-josh 03:15, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Josh - Im just wondering how specific you want our references area to be? Someone came in and changed how mine is set up - probaly because it was pretty redundant with the external sources, footnotes and references sections. Just wondering if my new format will be ok? 1013-shannon 21:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Yours will be okay in its new format. Wikipedia doesn't have a standard citation format, and different editors like to do things different ways. No need to be too particular about it, as long as the references are complete and the necessary information is presented in a straightforward way to the reader. The rationale for separating footnotes and references is at Wikipedia:Citing sources. As articles grow, it is often useful to have references (where the information is in alphabetical order) separated from footnotes (which are organized in order of first appearance in the article). Footnotes and references are also formatted slightly differently, per the Hacker handbook. However, in your case, all the references were websites, and they happened to fall roughly in alphabetical order, so I can see why the editor made the change in formatting. As long as your references were formatted correctly (following my guide) before they were changed by another editor, you don't have anything to worry about. It's your call as to whether you accept the change in formatting. What about the movement of those other references to the external links section. Do you think that was the right call? 1013-josh 21:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Copy Edit (Andy)

Josh, you wrote on my Talk page something about a copy edit particulary towards the bottom of the CLNWR article.... um, what exactly does a copy edit mean? 1013-andy 05:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the jargon. Copy editing is a term used in magazine, newspaper, and book publishing that means proofreading for grammar, punctuation, spelling, and house style. There were some errors toward the end of your article that caught my eye: "offsrping," "McClartchy-Tribune," etc. 1013-josh 06:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks. 1013-andy 02:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Disappearing Content (Isaac and Shishi)

Hey Josh- My reference and see also section disappeared. It is in the editing page but when I go back to the main article it is nowhere to be found. Do you know how to get it back. 1013-Isaac 02:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. You forgot to close the <ref> tag with </ref>, so that Wikipedia got confused. 1013-josh 02:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

i know you told us in class that this would happen but i dont know how to fix it. i added a footnote after one of my paragraphs under grants, but its not showing up and everything underneath it is gone...help please...1013-shishi 03:21, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the refs and left a note on shishi's page. -Ravedave 03:33, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

thanks, Ravedave. 1013-josh 03:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

hehe...i figured it out too, i think we were doing it together becuase when i tried to save it, it said there was an edit conflict, anyways its fixed now. thanx1013-shishi 03:57, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding Categories (Alex and Shannon)

Alex & Shannon had a question about how to create category tags. Here's the simple explanation:

Step 1. Identify a category tag you want to add to your article.
- You could look at similar articles to see what categories they are in. The categories are listed at the bottom of the page.
- You could check Wikipedia:Categorical index for relevant categories.
Step 2. Add the category tag by placing a code at the bottom of the page. The code looks like this: [[Category:Rivers of Minnesota]], or [[Category:National Historic Landmarks of the United States]] . If you have any question about what the code should look like, visit a page in the appropriate category, hit "edit this page," scroll down to the bottom of the edit window and check the source code. You can copy and paste from there.

If you have any questions about categories, see Wikipedia:Categorization or ask follow-up questions here! 1013-josh 02:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Citation (Shae)

Hey Josh, I separated some of my topics to organize my paper better. I have a heading for general information and one for recent studies, but most of my information comes from studies. How do I choose where to put what information? Also, do I have to state where every piece of information comes from by using references, for example, according to? Or is it okay to just put that in the bibliography section? I just don't know how to differentiate where info should go. Thanks, 1013-shae 20:02, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shae, You can organize your material however it seems most logical to you. The answer is going to be different for every article. When I see what material you have, I might have some ideas about how to organize it, and your colleagues may be able to help too. For now, I think it's fine if much of your information falls in the "studies" section, with the intro paragraph used to provide a definition and brief history of the term.

We're going to talk more about citing sources on Monday, and you don't need to worry about citations in this first assignment, although you will need to worry about them for your rough draft. All I need to see at this stage is a working bibliography of the sources you are considering using in your research.

If you want to get a head start on citation, the basic rule is that you should be footnoting every piece of information that comes directly from a source. However, you don't always need to use the "according to" phrase in the sentence. Let's take your example, "According to Tim Garrett, an assistant professor of meteorology at the University of Utah, midlatitude cities contribute pollution to the artic, and it mixes with thin clouds, allowing them to trap heat more easily." If TG is the person who discovered that phenomenon, you might write, "In a 2004 study, TG at the University of Utah found that midlatitude cities contribute pollution to the arctic, which mixes with thin clouds, causing the clouds to trap heat more easily" (footnote to his study). On the other hand, let's say this information comes from somewhere else, but you read about it in an article by TG. In that case, you might just say, "Midlatitude cities contribute pollution to the arctic, which mixes with thin clouds, causing the clouds to trap heat more easily" (footnote to TG's article). You probably wouldn't mention TG's name. Finally, if this is common knowledge among scientists, then you may feel you can use it without directly citing a source. In that case, you wouldn't need a footnote, you would just need books about the subject in your bibliography. 1013-josh 22:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Citation (Shishi)

hey josh, ok, we're suppose to write 300-500 words about our topic due friday right? are we suppose to integrate our sources into our paragraph things? or just list them on the bottom? also, if i found something on lexisnexis,how should i put in the sources found, like just the website of it, or the website of lib.umn.edu? 1013-shishi 18:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shishi, Good questions. Your 300-500 words are due Monday so I was planning to cover this in class on Friday. You don't need to include citations in your first 300-500 words, although if you do, I certainly won't complain. I am looking for a bibliography of sources at the end. You should include all relevant bibliographic information (author, title, publisher, date, etc), as you would for any research paper. Hacker MLA-4b (which we read earlier in the semester) covers documenting sources, although for now I don't care if your formatting is not exact. Just get all the information down there, and then we'll worry about getting it properly formatted. If you find a newspaper article on LexisNexis, you should be citing the newspaper itself and not the website. 1013-josh 18:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Internal Links (Christi)

Hey Josh, how do we title an internal link, like instead of the link being a number with a symbol it is a word. For example a link to windmill page and the link is the word windmill. Christi

We covered this on April 16 (after Christi asked her question). See notes from the April 16 class for a reminder.

Time Stamp (Andy)

Hi Josh, I was just wondering if you know about the time stamp deal with our homework. It's about ten minutes to midnight right now and I "signed" my name in the Homework section of my user page and it says that I stamped it at 4:25 April 16 (today is the 15th)... is that supposed to happen? Andy 1013-andy 04:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's normal. All signature are stamped with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is five hours ahead of Central Time. Not a problem. 1013-josh 05:05, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks Josh. Actually, I went and figured out how to change the time of my stamps to correlate to "our" time. I clicked on My Preferences and then clicked the tab Date and Time Settings and than clicked the button that said Fill In From Browser and then I clicked Save. Then it changed the time settings to be set at the midwest time. Just in case anyone else wanted to change it, thought I'd let you know. 1013-andy 05:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

So in response to my last comment, just wanted to let you know that the time will never change for when you post comments or articles... it only really applies to times of e-mails sent and other things. It wont ever change the time stamp in the signatures. Correct me if I'm wrong. 1013-andy 05:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You're right. You can change some other options, but there's no way to change the signature timestamp, which is the same for everybody. 1013-josh 10:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox (Andy)

Does anybody know how to make a sandbox? Or do we just create one... 1013-andy 17:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You can make one at User:1013-andy/sandbox. You can make any page you want, just by putting a slash after your user page name, i.e. User:1013-name/x. It's called a "user subpage." I've established a user subpage for all of you at User:1013-name/draft, which you can use for drafts of your research article. You can link to it from the "project draft page" link in the box above. More info on user pages and subpages here: Wikipedia:User page. 1013-josh 21:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Underlining/Italics (Andy)

Hey Josh, I was wondering, how can I underline a word or phrase without it being a link? Like, for the title of a book or heading of an article, are we supposed to just put "quotation marks" around the word/phrase? 1013-andy 02:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Italics are the equivalent of underlining, and you can generate italics with the formatting toolbar. Underlining is an old typewriter convention, and in the digital era it is becoming obsolete. It's much more common to use italics for book titles, etc. Quotation marks have a specific use and should never be used to replace underlining. Examples: "Article Title," Newspaper. "Chapter Title," Book Title. "Song Title," Album Title. Please remind me in class that we should talk about when to use quotation marks and when to use italics. You can also see the Hacker handbook for this distinction. 1013-josh 02:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

To avoid confusion, don't normally underline things unless they are actually hyperlinks. Use italics instead.

For headings use ==equals signs==. ===Subheadings=== and ====subsubheadings==== use more equals signs.

If you have 4 or more headings, mediawiki will automatically generate a table of contents for you.

--Kim Bruning 15:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Pictures and Tables (Andy/Whittney)

If my stub has pictures or tables, am I allowed to take those tables and pictures and put them in my article? Or is that "illegal"... 1013-andy 20:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Not only are you allowed to do that, you SHOULD do it. Pictures, tables, text, existing bibliographic information, category labels, everything. Take it all. You are part of the collective authorship of Wikipedia, and so you can use everything that's already been produced by that collective. There is no "your article" anymore. 1013-josh 22:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

How do I add pictures to my page, from other wikipedia articles and from external links? 1013-whittney 20:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Whittney. That's part of our project for next week, and we'll go over this in class on Friday, but if you want to get a head start, Nmajdan's links below should get you pointed in the right direction.1013-josh 23:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

To add an image to your article, you add the following code to your article where you want the image to be placed [[Image:Image_name.ext|thumb|Caption]]. This places a thumbnailed version of the image on the left of the article with a caption. See Help:Image for more information. As far as external images go, they cannot be placed inside Wikipedia articles. All images must be uploaded to Wikipedia and all images must conform to Wikipedia's image use policy. Basically, they must be free images (released under a public license; any image you just find on Google is probably not allowed). Feel free to ask me, your instructor, or at this discussion page if you have any further questions.↔NMajdan•talk 20:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay Josh. I uploaded some pictures and they showed up in a gallery form. I go back and check it four hours later... and they're gone. Problem is, I don't have history of it going away... so what happened? I call a friend and asked him to check my draft page. He used his computer and saw those four pics in the gallery. I can't. Why is that? AndyC 02:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I see them also on your draft page. Must be something with your computer. What browser are you using? 1013-josh 02:45, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm using Mozilla Firefox Ver. 2. But I also tried Explorer... that didn't work either. So I don't know what's going on. But if you can see them, great! AndyC 02:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)