User talk:Glacialfrost/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Mentorship

Hi Glacialfrost. The Wikipedia Co-Op project has allocated you a mentor - it's me. Hello. I see you've already stormed through the Wikipedia adventure, so you should already have a pretty good grasp of the basics - what do you want to do next? Yunshui ^雲_水 09:00, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I had a question on the teahouse page that might show my issues at the moment. And also I just want to know a little bit more about all the roles on the site as far as different tasks I can do, so to clarify, not roles like admin or bureaucrat. And also I just want to know a little more about editing, the spexifics specified in that teahouse question. Thanks ^雲_水. Glacialfrost (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, lots of questions there. Here goes...

1. ..."I looked at some of the pages that were marked with having issues like grammar and references and I didn't have enought knowledge on some of them to even make some of the simple edits ..."

   Generally, you don't need an in-depth knowledge of a subject to fix grammar issues, or even to locate references. Say, for example, you find the unreferenced statement in an article that, "Dentist Terry Todkins also owned a bicycle shop in Montana". You don't need to know anything about dentistry, Terry Todkins, cycling or Montana to punch the appropriate search terms into Google ("terry todkins" +cycle +montana) to see what comes back. After that, all you need to know is how to identify a reliable source (hint: try reading WP:Identifying reliable sources) and how to cite it once you've tracked it down (try my primer on the subject).

2. "Are there any other things to do on Wikipedia...?"

   Yes, loads, although they all work towards improving the encyclopedia. Basic article fixes - what you'll see referred to as wikignoming - is bread and butter to many editors; I myself don't do very much of it. My personal preference was article creation: tracking down something interesting and writing about it. Have a look at this essay for some pointers to get you started. The fundamental rule of article creation is that the subject must be notable - see the Golden Rule of Wikipedia for a simple explanation of what that means.

   As well as article creation, you could get into anti-vandalism (protecting articles from malicious edits; check out this essay for instructions. As you get more experienced, you could also consider getting into dispute resolution, reviewing draft articles, or taking articles up to good or featured status. There are numerous WikiProjects you can join, which focus on improving specific areas of the encyclopedia, and there are also plenty of noticeboards where the policies and processes of Wikipedia are discussed. Take your pick!

3. "... is there a easy way to figure out what isnt already on here?"

   Type it into the Search box. If we don't already have an article, Wikipedia will tell you.

4. "... how to I get the little rectangles on my page?"

   You mean userboxes? Just pick the ones you want from the gallery and copy the template code (e.g. {{User:UBX/CanLearnALot}} onto your userpage.

5. "... I dont understand what subpages are used for ..."

   WP:UP will give you some idea. To see what I use subpages for, have a look at the entries in Special:PrefixIndex/User:Yunshui/. Drafts, navigation, useful Wikipedia stuff, links to articles or polices - whack it all in subpages.

6. "... is there a article that explains how to color my signature?"

   See WP:SIG for the gory details, but basically you can customise your signature in your Preferences, using WikiMarkup. Colours can be achieved with something like <span style="color:purple;">Glacialfrost</span>, which will give you this: Glacialfrost.

7. "... I just want to know a little bit more about all the roles on the site..."

   You can read up on the available userrights, but to be honest I wouldn't worry too much about them for now; you won't be eligible for any of them until you've done a fair bit of editing.

I think that covers everything... Yunshui ^雲_水 21:11, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much Yunshui for writing out responses to all those. Thats a lot of good info to help me get started. Ill be sure to stay in touch as more questions come up and if any further issues arise so I can get suggestions for communication. Thank You. Glacialfrost (talk) 21:17, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:Pinging me by linking my username (as you did in the message immediately above) will get my attention, as will posting on my own talkpage. You won't get any more from me tonight, though; I'm off to bed. Yunshui ^雲_水 21:19, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Ok, Youll see this tomorrow and respond I guess. So does writing your name in a link form alert you then, could you explain that a little more. And by roles on the site, I meant as far as jobs to do like editting articles with grammar issues, creating articles, etc. If there are any more. I have heard vandalism mentioned, so like is there a job around that? I hope I clarifyed what I asked earlier. So this alerts you then?- Yunshui Glacialfrost (talk) 21:22, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Nevermind the comment above, I didnt read tour post too thouroughly before reading it and now, i noticed that you did in fact answer it. Glacialfrost (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate the helpful tutorial for creating articles on your user page. I read the signature page and factored in your code to come up with a colored signature. And I think I am going to work on creating redirects. I found out about them from the wikignomes article you suggested and found a page stuffed full of ones needing to be made. They seem easy enough and I think I might be able to get through 100, thats my goal so I guess well see tomorrow. Thank you for being a grest help so far. GlacialFrost (Talk) 05:21, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Oops. I messed up. I thought that I could just approve requests on that page and put in the redirects so I did for about 15 pages and then I found out that I had to be an official reviewer to do that and had to undo my approvals and had to figure out how to get pages deleted and then had to put the template on all the pages. A lot of work, but at least I learned from it and know to be careful on pages like that and how to make redirects. GlacialFrost (Talk) 06:27, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I think that tomorrow, I will toy around with those archive boxes because comments are building up on my page. Tonight, I might create an article even though its 11:30 my time. And tomorrow after figuring out an article or two, I think that I will look into the anti-vandalism stuff. If you have any tips for the archive box or anything extra than your essay for the vandalism stuff, please share any of that personal insight because I have the articles but some further tips are always appreciated. Sorry about all the updates, I just want to fill you in as I progress. GlacialFrost (Talk) 06:32, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I just created this article The Society of Arts and Crafts of Boston. I dont know how to add pictures , just how to insert them from wikipedia common. So I think I will also try to figure that out tomorrow. If you have a article on how to do that, that would be great but I can probably find it in like 10 min. tomorrow anyway. I came across the stub contest and might participate in that too. Thanks for exposing me to all these new things, now theres almost too much for me to do on here. GlacialFrost (Talk) 07:23, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I edited a stub and figueed out how to putt in a table and learned how to show a diff [1]. I submitted that one in the stub contest. GlacialFrost (Talk) 08:34, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Pictures? Yep, got an essay for that too: User:Yunshui/Images for beginners. Your new article has a more pressing problem, though; it doesn't appear to be sufficiently notable for the encyclopedia, since it's only sourced to the society's own website. Have another look at this, and then try and find some sources which meet those requirements. Otherwise, I'm afraid, it's likely to be deleted out of hand.

Regarding the AFC requests, it's not too difficult to become a reviewer; just hang around for a few months and make at least 500 article edits. These are far from insurmountable barriers; just keep editing and you'll pass the bar fairly soon.

IMHO, archiving is best done by a bot; just copy the following script and paste it to the top of this page:

{{User:MiszaBot/config
 |archiveheader = {{talk archive navigation}}
 |maxarchivesize = 70K
 |counter = 1
 |minthreadsleft = 4
 |minthreadstoarchive = 1
 |algo = old(15d)
 |archive = User talk:Glacialfrost/Archive %(counter)d
 }}
 {{archives}}

You can do it manually, but it's a hassle; better to let the bot do the work...

Nice work on the stub, but again, sources! Yunshui ^雲_水 08:42, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Ill work on more sources today. GlacialFrost (Talk) 18:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC) Yunshui, is there a way I can edit that code above to only put a certain number of conversations? I think I only need 10 or 15 per archive but how many does it normally do? And if it needs a second archive page, I obviously need to create that second page so what happens if you get what I mean. Thanks. GlacialFrost (Talk) 18:09, 14 August 2015 (UTC) K, I added another source to that Arts and Crafts page. Im gonna expand some stubs and maybe create another article.

Flying visit as I'm on my way to bed again (clearly we're in very different timezones, or you just stay up late). You can change the maxarchivesize value to set how large an archive should be allowed to grow before you start a new one; 70K is middling, for 10-15 conversations per archive you'd need a value of about 20k. I would recommend keeping it fairly large, though; it's much better to have a small number of large archives than hundreds of really short ones. You don't need to worry about creating them either, the bot will do that. Sleepy time for me now; I'll try and take a look at your edits tomorrow. Yunshui ^雲_水 22:05, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks I might make it in the middle at 40k then. Im in CA and do stay up till 1 sometimes. GlacialFrost (Talk) 22:10, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I just made another article at Daniel B. Burnett Jr. GlacialFrost (Talk) 03:32, 15 August 2015 (UTC) Hi Yunshui. Today I started some anti vandalism work. An Administrator below took notice and gave me some tips. They also confirmed me so I could enable Twinkle and figure it out. Once I figured Twinkle out, it made my job a lot easier and I caught a lot of vandals. Then, I found my way to the new users page and used twinkle to welcome a few of them. GlacialFrost (Talk) 04:27, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like we need to have a quick talk about how copyright works on Wikipedia. I have some pretty serious concerns with your Daniel B. Burnett Jr. article in this respect. Although a number of words and phrases have been changed, much of the text is still very clearly a close paraphrase of the Ryan Flying Reporter source. I'm guessing you copy-pasted the text from there and made changes to it before saving; generally, that's not a good idea. Close paraphrasing is as much of a copyright violation as directly copying the text; replacing words with synonyms and slightly restructuring the sentences is not sufficient to generate a new creative work, which is what you need to do in order to avoid infringing on the original author's copyright.

Now in this particular case, you might not have a problem; as with the images, it looks as though the text may be old enough to be public domain (which is the only reason I haven't deleted it outright). I would guess, though, (judging from the licences under which you uploaded the photographs, which have since been corrected) that you weren't aware of this - you need to be extremely careful when reusing text or images on Wikipedia that you aren't inadvertently breaking the law by trying to release copyrighted material under a free licence. If a picture or a piece of text doesn't clearly state that it is free to reuse without restriction (either by release under a free licence or by virtue of being in the public domain) don't use it on Wikipedia. Just a word of advice for the future.

Setting that aside, the article itself is a good bit of work; it needs more inline citations but other than that is pretty decent. Here's a trick to allow you to cite the same source more than once:

• The first time you use the source, replace the initial <ref> tag with this: <ref name="insert suitable reference shortcut">. For example, for the first reference in the Burnett article, you might use <ref name="jneaircraft">.
• When you want to use the reference again, instead of typing the whole thing out, just use <ref name="jneaircraft"/> (note tha slash at the end). This creates an inline citation to the same source.

Using this, you can cite the same reference for multiple statements in the article. Have a look at the first few references in Hu Zhengyan to see what it looks like in practice. Yunshui ^雲_水 07:36, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I actually didnt copy and paste it but I had it in aother tab and was choosing what I wanted to put in and I guess I didn't get too creative with the wording. So Ill change the wording and put in more references today. GlacialFrost (Talk) 17:26, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

There, I fixed the Burnett article. Are there any more changes to that that you think I should implement? GlacialFrost (Talk) 19:37, 17 August 2015 (UTC)