User talk:Gordon Laird/Sandbox

I would appreciate any responses to the proposed article on David Lochhead. --Gordon Laird (talk) 16:40, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Some tips from PeterSymonds (talk · contribs)

Great start! Just a few pointers:

• Do not reference Wikipedia, as you do in the opening paragraphs. Because Wikipedia is a Wiki, and allows other editors to edit articles, it is considered unreliable for verifiability. Moreover, if you say that he's mentioned in a Wikipedia article, people will ask "so what?" because it's not a reliable source. Moreover again, you don't properly establish why his inclusion in that list of names is significant.
• Bold "David Lochhead" for the first mention of him in the lead (opening sentence).
• I would change "Brief biography of..." to simply "Biography" for the section header.
• When you have time, add a bit more to the bio section. Plus "untimely" is a bit POV and thus should be removed.
• You have a biography section, but under "Academic studies", you repeat his birth details. These only need to appear once in the bio section.
• A couple more wikilinks would be more appropriate, on the first instances of certain words. I'll leave that to your judgement.
• I know this is only a first draft, but you make some pretty bold statements that are currently unreferenced. If you know about in-line citations, and are going to put them in later, then fine; otherwise feel free to contact me about it.

Otherwise a great start. Well done. PeterSymonds | talk 23:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

All points well taken and will be utilized. Since "Guy" has suggested a move of my article to User: Gordon Laird/David Lochead is it OK if we move further discussion to the discussion page for that new location? Thanks. --Gordon Laird (talk) 16:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)