AlysonDutch

Welcome!

Hello, AlysonDutch, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! DES ^(talk) 02:05, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, AlysonDutch. You have new messages at Help Desk's talk page.
Message added 05:29, 9 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

FloBo A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 05:29, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

The above link is wrong. The messages were never there and are now at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 August 9#refs. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia: check out the Teahouse!

Hello! AlysonDutch, you are invited to the Teahouse, a forum on Wikipedia for new editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia, and get support from peers and experienced editors. Please join us!

I, and the rest of the hosts, would be more than happy to answer any questions you have! SarahStierch (talk) 00:53, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Sources

Hi Alyson. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia and I'm excited to see that you are a new user joining our ranks. I'm a member of WP:RETENTION, which seeks to make a deliberate effort to (among other things) introduce and help new editors in a friendly way.

After reverting your edits to public relations, I noticed there was a habit in your editing of adding information without "reliable sources." Reliable sources are things like media, books and scholarly works that Wikipedia trusts to be accurate and neutral. The most important part of adding new information is citing where the information came from. You can do this just by adding <ref>insert your citation</ref> at the end of a sentence.

Let me know if you need help and there's always the help desk.

User:King4057 23:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Media Event

Hi Alyson. The media event page you created was deleted, because there is already an article on Media Event (an article which desperately needs improvement). If you like, I would be happy to work with you on improving the Media Event article. User:King4057 23:58, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Just for clarity's sake: Media Introduction Event wasn't deleted, just redirected to Media event. Given that most media events are introduction events (speaking with my tech journalist hat on), I didn't see a need for two articles. One really solid article sounds like a great plan! Dori ☾Talk ☯ Contribs☽ 00:52, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

To be fair Alyson posted elsewhere that a "Media Introduction Event" is something different, something more sponsored/paid for. Paid Marketing > PR sort of thing. I am a PR professional, so I'm familiar with media events, but not the concept Alyson is discussing. However, I am generally in favor of consolidating multiple articles on similar topics. User:King4057 01:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button or located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when they said it. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 00:33, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, AlysonDutch. You have new messages at DESiegel's talk page.
Message added 02:06, 28 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Extensive response to your comments awaits. DES ^(talk) 02:06, 28 August 2012 (UTC) You might also want to look at the links in the new #Welcome section above, also. DES ^(talk) 02:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

More on Media Introduction event

This is a modified version of the response to your comments on User talk:DESiegel#Media Introduction Event and Public relations, posted here to make it more likely that you will see them. Note that you apparently posted your comments without logging in, which means that they aren't actually confirmed as being yours. There are also comments from other users on my talk page on this subject.

I did receive your note, as i think you will see if you read my talk page. I do have email, and you can use the "Email this User" feature if you so choose. However I much prefer to conduct any Wikipedia business on-wiki, and if you email me I will quite likely post the contents here unless they are confidential. (In fact I get an email notice for each edit to my talk page.)

Please read the links in the "welcome" section above. It is generally considered unwise to post an email address on a wikipedia page, and most editors will remove it as soon as they see it.

Please learn to sign your posts on talk pages such as this one with four tildes (like this: ~~~~). the wiki software will convert this into a signature and timestamp.

To have the article you drafted on a "media introduction event" remain live in the article space, it will need to be supported by citations to independent reliable sources -- that is, to published sources with reputations for accuracy and fact checking. (Books published by major publishers, mainstream magazines, and reputable newspapers are often reliable sources, blogs and press releases are generally not. See details at WP:RS) This is essential, and is the major problem in the draft you posted. Can you supply such published sources? They do not need to be online.

I hope this is helpful. You are "doing this right" as far as successfully posting on my user talk page, which is the best way to communicate with me on wikipedia subjects. You do need to learn to sign your posts and preferably to indent them (done with leading colons), but those are comparatively minor matters.

Above all you need to learn how to provide sources. The details of formatting citations can be left to others at this stage, but you need to provide the information on where a source can be found that supports statements made in an article. DES ^(talk) 14:41, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I recieved the following note by email on this topic:

"THANK YOU for emailing me. I'm not sure how the "talk" feature works, as it seems I'm "adding to a page?" as opposed to having a conversation with a person. It seems, however, that you are miraculously getting my notes."

"OK, I understand the citations concept. What I don’t understand is now to hyperlink them. My article is filled with links, all "Wiki-approved" kinds of articles from mainstream publications, like Forbes and professional associations like the Public Relations Society of America, etc. I guess that I did not hyperlink or format them correctly. Is it just a matter of putting the right code in front and in back of each citation (like a hyperlink in an email?). -Alyson"

I responded to this as follows:

"The talk page concept is that a page is a record of a conversation (or often of several different conversations), You add a message to the conversation by editing the page to add the message. Then the other person (or people) interested read it and respond by editing in turn to add additional messages. The advantage is that the conversation is available for anyone to read, and is preserved indefinitely, whereas email is neither."

"I will look again at the draft article you wrote and posted. My memory is that it did NOT include any citations to sources at all, but i will confirm this. Note that every version of every article is preserved in the wikipedia history, for anyone to see at any time in the future if they so choose."

"The formatting of cations is a secondary matter -- if the information is there, more experienced editors can and will do the required formatting. What is essential is to provide information on what specific source supports a given statement: what publication, on what date, by what author or entity. An internet link is very useful but by no means required -- many wikipedia articles are sourced to books or newspaper articles that are not available online and must be looked up in a library to verify them. Read the page on citing sources I linked to in my previous email for details."

"Do try using the talk page if you can -- many wikipedia editors will not respond by email and will ignore any request to do so and will not provide their own email addresses."

I will note further that the formatting of citations has two separate but related parts. The first issue is how to format the citation data itself. This can be done manually or by means of Citation templates. Either method is acceptable, but it is useful if a given article is consistent in such formatting. The second issue is how to link a citation to the statement in the articel which it supports. The most common method is with Footnotes using the <ref> tag and the {{reflist}} template, but there are several other acceptable methods, including parenthetical or "Harvard" citations (see this section). But again, the details can safely be left to others at this stage, provided the basic information is there. I will return to this page and make further comments later. DES ^(talk) 16:43, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I have now again reviewed your draft of Media Introduction Event, which can be seen here and with a few technicall formatting errors corrected, can be seen more fully here It included many uses of the ref tag, which had a technical error in formatting. the ref tag is supposed to be used like this:

<ref>Details of the citation here</ref>

You placed the slash after rather than before the closing ref tag and in at least one case omitted the opening angle bracket (<). Those are minor formatting issues which could be (and in fact were) rapidly corrected by another more experienced editor. The real problem was with the "details of the citation". In most cases what you put was simply the name of a topic -- perhaps you intended to link to a related wikipedia article. this is down with double square brackets, not with ref tags. For example, if I wanted to write in an article "A Media Introduction event is a very important tool in public relations." and to link the words "public relations", I would code that as follows:

A Media Introduction event is a very important tool in [[public relations]].

and the text would appear as follows:

A Media Introduction event is a very important tool in public relations.

But that is NOT a citation in the Wikipedia sense. Another wikipedia article is never considered a reliable source and can never serve as a citation. There are several reasons for this. One is the dangers of circular citation, where article A cites articel B an B cites A, and nowhere is there a sound indication of where the information actually came from. There are other good reasons for this rule as well. In any case, Wikipedia citations must be to independently published reliable sources, and must be specific enough that a reader can verify them, possibly after going to some trouble. Some of the "citations" in your draft were to what might be outside sources, such as The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. But they did not include the needed specifics. If this is a book, the page number is essential, and the author, date and publisher are also needed. At the very least enough information that a motivated reader could find the specific passage you rely on in a library is essential. Suppose, for example, i wanted to cite my example sentence above to an article in the (invented) Journal of Public Relations Professionals. I might format the citation as:

{{cite journal |last1=Jones |first1=Jane |last2=Smith |first2=Fred |year=2011 |month=June |title=An Anatomy of Media Introductions |journal=Journal of Public Relations Professionals |volume=28 |issue=7 |page=69 |publisher=Megadyne Publishing |url=http://megadyne.com/JPRP/28/7/Anatomy.html |accessdate=29 August 2012}}

which would appear in the article as

Jones, Jane; Smith, Fred (2011). "An Anatomy of Media Introductions". Journal of Public Relations Professionals. 28 (7). Megadyne Publishing: 69. Retrieved 29 August 2012. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

(Please note this is an entirely invented example). To make it into a footnote I would place this at the end of the text that it supports, wrapped in a ref tag, like this:

A Media Introduction event is a very important tool in [[public relations]]<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jones |first1=Jane |last2=Smith |first2=Fred |year=2011 |month=June |title=An Anatomy of Media Introductions |journal=Journal of Public Relations Professionals |volume=28 |issue=7 |page=69 |publisher=Megadyne Publishing |url=http://megadyne.com/JPRP/28/7/Anatomy.html |accessdate=29 August 2012}}</ref>

this would appear in the article like this:

A Media Introduction event is a very important tool in public relations

with the citation below in a notes or references section. But the important thing is not the precise formatting it is supplying the bibliographic information which would alow a reader to find the precise reference you are citing and to verify that it does support the text for which you cite it.

If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask them here or on my talk page or at the help desk. DES ^(talk) 18:00, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Notes

This sub-section is here to show how the example (fake) citation abovbe would display in an article. DES ^(talk) 18:00, 29 August 2012 (UTC)