Jahalverson

I am very interested in editing and expanding the page for Alexander Afanasyev (the Russian folklorist) but I have a few questions: 1) the sources I have are in the Russian language and have not been officially translated. Can these be used? 2) I can translate the Russian page into English. Is that acceptable, but again the problem of the Russian language sources?

Thank you.Jahalverson (talk) 06:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)Jahalverson

Hi Jahalverson. Whilst English-language sources are preferred here (and if you can find some, I'd recommend adding them to the article), foreign-language sources are perfectly acceptable. Where possible, you should add, as part of the reference, a translation into English of the relevent text from the source. Foreign sources still have to meet the requirements for reliability, but if they do, there's no reason you can't use them.

As regards translating the existing Russian article: yes, you can certainly do that. Instructions on best practice for doing so can be found here: Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate. Thanks for helping to improve Wikipedia! Yunshui ^雲_水 08:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I apologize for the new questions. I have been working on the above mentioned translation offline. Is the sandbox where I can work on it online so I can be certain it looks correct with regards to code and links before posting? Also is there a certain protocol with regards to completely replacing an existing page with a translation? I am not wanting to ruin anything.

Thank you, I'm sorry for being such a newb.Jahalverson (talk) 20:54, 22 January 2015 (UTC)Jahalverson

Yes, certainly, you can make yourself a user sub-page like User:Jahalverson/sandbox or User:Jahalverson/Draft article. Just click on either of those "redlinks" and you can start editing the page. See WP:USERSUBPAGE for more detail. Don't worry about being a newbie - everyone started that way. Here are some other pages that you might find helpful:

• Introduction to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

Welcome to English WIkipedia! JohnCD (talk) 22:35, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Please note that we already have an article on Alexander Afanasyev. It's generally preferred (for a bunch of reasons ranging from licensing via more technical issues to the basic fact that Wikipedia is a collaborative project) to improve the current article instead of writing an all-new draft to replace the current article with. Huon (talk) 22:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Asian 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Asia/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge and Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like South East Asia, Japan/China or India etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. At some stage we hope to run some contests to benefit Asian content, a destubathon perhaps, aimed at reducing the stub count would be a good place to start, based on the current Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon which has produced near 200 articles in just three days. If you would like to see this happening for Asia, and see potential in this attracting more interest and editors for the country/countries you work on please sign up and being contributing to the challenge! This is a way we can target every country of Asia, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant! Thank you. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 04:53, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Europe 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 09:09, 6 November 2016 (UTC)