ITellComputerYes

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Rupert Shortt (September 2)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by DoubleGrazing was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Rupert Shortt and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
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DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:19, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick review @DoubleGrazing. This is my first newly created article, I tried to read as much as I could. I can see it needs more independent and reliable sources. The ones I found in academic journals seem to all be behind paywalls. What is the best way to handle that (both for reading and citing? Am seeing if I can read more of them on JSTOR.

Also, I'm a little confused because I come across quite a few pages that seem to have much less or more confusion information e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Hitchens ITellComputerYes (talk) 13:41, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi,

You will need to show that this person is notable either per the general WP:GNG or the special WP:AUTHOR guideline. And you're right, the former especially requires independent and reliable secondary sources with significant coverage of him. The latter requires reliable evidence that at least one of the four criteria in the guideline is met.

Sources can be behind paywalls, that's not a problem.

It is true that among the nearly 7m articles in the English-language Wikipedia there are many with very poor sources, and probably even some with none. Those may have been created back when our notability and referencing requirements were more relaxed, or it may be that they started out okay but over time sources have been deleted. As this project is based on volunteers, who do what they can when they can, many problem articles remain in the 'pedia unnoticed, sometimes for years. (If you have found articles that don't meet some of our requirements, you're very welcome to improve them or at least highlight the issues with maintenance tags for others to improve.) In any case, the existence of sub-standard articles is no reason to create more; all new articles must comply with currently-applicable policies and guidelines.

HTH, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:52, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello, ITellComputerYes! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:19, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, ITellComputerYes. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for article subjects for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{edit COI}} template)—don't forget to give details of reliable sources supporting your suggestions;
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest § How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam § External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicizing, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:59, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your message @Jimfbleak. I am not sure how or where to respond. Here or "talk to me?" I wanted to create an article for the first time, thought I could submit and then improve it, misunderstood the process for that. I wish I hadn't spent a day showing the process or person that rejected it after one second that it was worthy and there were more reliable references. I don't know how to prove I don't the person and am not being paid for it or benefitting financially. I'm not. But I cannot think how I could possibly prove that to you now. ITellComputerYes (talk) 11:34, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Reply

You don't have to prove you are not the person, unless there is reason to do otherwise, we assume good faith. I asked because you wrote what seemed to me to be a promo for the author. A list of publications should normally have no references at all, and adding more than a dozen reviews as "references " for the existence as the books looks spammy, especially when you write some of the titles in the references in full caps, which looks shouty. Of the rest of the references, some are self written or likely to be so (www.vhi.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk.) and the rest are yet more reviews. Oddly, his editorship of TLS is not referenced, although that might establish his notability.

Now you have answered the COI query, I think there is a case for restoring, and I'll clean it up. Please don't edit for an hour or so after this message to give me time. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:19, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

OK, I've restored and cleaned up the draft. For ISBNs, use the format shown here {{ISBN|978-1-444-78743-6}}, shows as ISBN 978-1-444-78743-6. I made these changes, ask if you are not clear about any of them Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:39, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Jimfbleak sent the last message before I'd seen your new one. Will follow ISBN format, couldn't work out the visual editor "Cite" ISBN part, sometimes it found books, but mostly it didn't. And will look at your changes and learn. ITellComputerYes (talk) 13:54, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Jimfbleak, I am sure it can be hugely improved. I tried to find good templates, but there didn't seem to be one style for biographies and where to put their works, articles etc.

It would be great if you could point to some biographies that you / more experienced Wikipedians think are best practice - or where to look / ask. I've seen some discussion and general rules, but when I look at established pages they are quite different. I am going to work on another one, because I've already spent far more time on this one than I wanted to.

- His TLS editorship is in one or more of the reviews and I meant to add it to that line in the biog. I think I ran out of steam. But I agree the VHI is a really poor reference and if I was re-editing, I'd remove the dates. They were only place I could find them after a search.

- It seemed natural to put book reviews with the book they were reviewing. And I suppose I didn't feel I was expert enough to summarise all the arguments and it was just longer, which seemed disproportionate at the moment, and probably belong in other articles on e.g. Persecution of Christians. But I am going to stay away from that because I am not an expert and I want to rediscover some joy.

- I didn't put full caps on knowingly, so sorry for that, I completely agree, and it's like shouting. Most of the references were added by visual editor "cite" tool (although for some reason it couldn't work with some links), could that be creating full caps?

Thanks again ITellComputerYes (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

You could obviously look at WP:FA and WP:GA for bios that should be of a decent standard (check the promotion dates). Bios of dead people are probably easier, but it may not be what you want to do. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:53, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Jimfbleak really helpful. I also found the Teahouse and there were some suggestions there.

@ITellComputerYes Welcome to the Teahouse. We have a manual of style with general guidance for biographies: see MOS:BLP. If your subject is alive, then it is important to also read the policy at WP:BLP, in particular the bit about inline citations. In general, you should use articles rated good or featured as models but these are unlikely to be short ones. Note that your main task is to show how the person is wikinotable. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply][reply]

Makes me think I should have chosen a different / better new article (but everything else on my list already had a page). Also, that I should have asked more questions.

And with regards to reliable sources and notability, I suppose I was mistaking book reviews for notability and citing them, when references needs to independent discussion of the person's life and work to pass the notability test.

Will try a biog of dead person if I can find an undone notable one. Thanks. ITellComputerYes (talk) 16:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Just a note Jimfbleak that, for authors who do (unusually) inherit notability from their notable books via WP:NAUTHOR, it's actually often recommended to show notability via book reviews as the references on a list of works. You can see I did it myself at Suzanne Conklin Akbari. It's a natural space to stash the sources when the article is short, and 2+ RS reviews each on 2+ books is evidence of notability. ITellComputerYes, usually the advice is also to stop at 2 reviews per book and choose just the really impeccable sources to make the process clearer to your reviewer, though I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with adding more if they might be useful to expand the article in future. Thanks both of your for your thoughtful work here! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh and ITellComputerYes, to jump in on the all-caps issue, the automatic cite tool does often put titles in all-caps. (It has to do with how it pulls the title info from the source.) After you use the auto-citation tool to create and insert the citation, if you click the little footnote number it adds you should see an "edit" button on the footnote info. That button will bring you to a detailed editing interface where you can fix problems like the capitalization. If you have problems with that process, feel free to ask me for help. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:50, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @LEvalyn, good tip and will incorporate that into my editing. ITellComputerYes (talk) 09:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the guide @LEvalyn I will go back through the reviews and only add ones that pass that impeccable bar. Thank you to you and @Jimfbleak for taking the time here. ITellComputerYes (talk) 09:24, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Rupert Shortt has been accepted

Rupert Shortt, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

Congratulations, and thank you for helping expand the scope of Wikipedia! We hope you will continue making quality contributions.

The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on its talk page. Most new articles start out as Stub-Class or Start-Class and then attain higher grades as they develop over time. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

Since you have made at least 10 edits over more than four days, you can now create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for creation if you prefer.

If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk. Once you have made at least 10 edits and had an account for at least four days, you will have the option to create articles yourself without posting a request to Articles for creation.

If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .

Thanks again, and happy editing!

~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Welcome!

Welcome!

Hello, ITellComputerYes, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Below are some pages you might find helpful. For a user-friendly interactive help forum, see the Wikipedia Teahouse.

• Introduction
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Simplified Manual of Style
• Your first article
• Discover what's going on in the Wikimedia community
• Feel free to make test edits in the sandbox
• and check out the Task Center, for ideas about what to work on.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to ask me on my talk page or place {{Help me}} on this page and someone will drop by to help. Again, welcome! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:33, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks for the welcome, advice and taking the time to review @LEvalyn And for the cookies! I'm going to learn how to send them. The Teahouse has already proved equally welcoming. Looking forward to being an improving Wikipedian! ITellComputerYes (talk) 09:21, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, being stupid @LEvalyn, but I couldn't work out how to ask a question on your page. I've been trying to edit and have asked questions, but I am either not being clear enough or getting only exhausting answers (possibly both).

I thought best to avoid outside links, so was going to put the original Daily Mail column in References but clearly in the context of the Private Eye story pointing out what he has left out of it.

I posted this in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Is adding a citation of a Daily Mail column by Richard Littlejohn as evidence permissible?:

Is adding a citation of a Daily Mail column by Richard Littlejohn as evidence permissible?

Private Eye has reported on his £50 fine for "bloody affray" and includes an admission quote from Littlejohn (Private Eye, August 30, No. 1631, p.10). It is relevant to the Eye story because Littlejohn is writing about the "milksop" modern teenagers in contrast to his own early years and how they should not expect "safe spaces" and does not mention his conviction for violence as a young man.

I think his Daily Mail article should be cited for reference of his words and can be said to reliable in this context, but the citation tool has lots of warnings on it about this. I am an inexperienced editor and I am not sure how to verify best practice here, so I am asking for guidance.

It would also help more generally to know if this has been answered somewhere, or whether it is simple a case-by-case justification for inclusion of unreliable sources. I can see there are several discussions where the view of some is that either unreliable and deprecated sources cannot be said to represent the views of the apparent author and can see the reasoning for that. ITellComputerYes (talk) 14:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Don't call yourself stupid, ITellComputerYes, Wikipedia is really different from other sites so it can take a while to learn the ropes even for "basic" tasks! You're learning well, and I value your persistence. Let me help a bit:

• To send cookies, you can use this template. "Using a template" means finding the words in {{curly brackets}} and copy-pasting the curly-brackets bit to where you want the resulting content to go. Wikipedia will transform the template into something more complicated.
• To ask a question on my page, click the "talk" next to my signature anywhere you see it. There should be a blue "add topic" button in the top left corner that will let you add a new section. (You can also click the edit button and add a new section manually by typing a header, but I just use "add topic"...) It's also fine for us to talk here on your talk page!
• Regarding the Daily Mail in general, you asked at the right place for it. That noticeboard is where people make case by case decisions for exceptions to policies like 'never cite the Daily Mail'. You can also see how people think about particular sources at the perennial sources list. That also explains what people mean when they say the Daily Mail is "deprecated".
• It looks like someone mentioned "RS" in that conversation without explaining -- that refers to WP:RS, aka Reliable Sources. So, because the Daily Mail is not considered a reliable source, the encyclopedia won't repeat what the Daily Mail says.
• Regarding this specific use of the Daily Mail, I think in principle citing a person's own words in his biography is the sort of thing we make exceptions for. (i.e., we wouldn't be repeating what the Daily Mail says as if it's encyclopedic fact, we'd just be reporting that the Daily Mail article existed.) But I'm actually not fully clear on how you're hoping to use the article, and it does sound a little like your proposed additions might qualify as "original research". (Reading a bunch of sources in order to write up a wiki article is of course research, but wikipedia considers it "original research" or "synthesis" if you start putting together the pieces to say something new that wasn't in any of the individual sources.)

So with all that in mind, maybe a good next step here would be for you to use your sandbox to write out exactly the sentences you think belong in the Richard Littlejohn article. Your sandbox is a designated place for 'test edits' and other things that should be in the main encyclopedia, so you can safely try out a possibly-controversial edit. Once you've done so I am happy to take a look and see if I spot any problems, or you could also link the sandbox at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard conversation.

That was a lot of information, but I hope you found it helpful! Feel free to keep asking questions as long as you have them-- that's how learning works. And thanks for your efforts to add information! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:32, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@LEvalyn very thoughtful of you and a lot of great information and never ending cookies here. I got some advice on citations within citations on the Reliable Sources noticeboard (probably a better way of linking this I know :)

Have tried that out in my Sandbox as you advised. It's not original research, and I think the context makes it ok? I can't get the citation to work properly though, the first half seems to keep reverting. Do you know how to do this. ITellComputerYes (talk) 21:07, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I see the edit you made, and we can work out the citation (it’s a tricky one!) if needed, but to my eye right now this looks like classic WP:SYNTH: the sandbox draft takes two independent pieces of information (here’s one article by him, here’s another article by him) and sticks them next to each other in order to imply a new meaning that isn’t present in either one (these two articles contradict). Unless the Private Eye source explicitly makes that connection? Can you link directly to the Private Eye source? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

There isn't a link to the article, because they only publish most things in paper in Private Eye, but it's a good source (although not sure how to check it here because it is well used but doesn't seem to be on the lists or Reliable or Deprecated sources or red, green or anything). But there short articles explicitly makes this point of what Littlejohn is leaving out of his article whilst criticising modern teenagers. I could send scan, but I don't think that will work here). ITellComputerYes (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

OK, if the Private Eye source directly says that Littlejohn is leaving things out of his own articles, then it's not WP:SYNTH or WP:OR for the wiki article to say so, though it might be WP:UNDUE. That also means that you don't have to cite the Daily Mail at all: you can cite the Private Eye, and focus on summarizing it in a zoomed-out encyclopedia-style kind of way. For example, "Private Eye has criticized Littlejohn for judging modern teenagers harshly with no mention of his own teenage behaviour." (Though frankly, in my own personal opinion, if he's criticizing modern teens for being delicate snowflakes, and he himself was a violent and troublemaking teen, that seems completely internally consistent to me! It would only seem hypocritical to me if he complained about Kids These Days being violent hooligans...) To cite Private Eye even though it's not online, use the "Add a citation" button > "Manual" > "News" and describe what you can about the Private Eye source (e.g., date, issue, title of article, etc).

To be super-duper thorough, you could include a quote from Private Eye in the footnote. That can be helpful if something is a little contentious but the source is not online, since it makes it more possible for people to 'check' the source. If you want to do that, when you're addinging/editing the manual citation, in the left pane of the citation-adding popup you can use "Find field" to add a field for "Quote". Check the box for it in the left column and it will add a place on the right to type in a few relevant sentences. If you decide to go for it and have any trouble, just give it your best try and then ping me, and I can try to fix it and assist. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:45, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Also @LEvalyn, thank you again for the warm welcome and referenced advice because it was quite a lot to take in all at once on some of the pages and hard knowing where to look sometimes for the Wikipedia way. The more I go on I can see there is a lot of healthy wrestling with issues. ITellComputerYes (talk) 11:09, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Learning wikipedia really can be like drinking out of a firehose! But to mix metaphors, there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. And luckily this is a collaborative project, so you don't have to master everything before you can start making contributions. If you like doing the research-y bits and are looking for places to contribute, you might take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles -- a lot of those articles are in very bad shape, but that also means it's easy to improve them and hard to make them worse. Happy editing, and feel free to keep asking as many questions as you have! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)