Ka01851

This class is pretty cool right? TyreeshaEvans (talk) 21:46, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Welcome!

Welcome!

Hello, Ka01851, and welcome to Wikipedia! This is one of the most popular websites in the world, and it's only through the contributions of editors like you. And Wikipedia is not just a collection of articles, it's an active community. The real fun here is contributing to Wikipedia, but don't feel hurt if some of your first few edits get removed, as there are some central guidelines you may not be familiar with.

Some good advice: be bold in your editing, and use the talk pages to discuss with other editors. Be kind to others, because there's a lot you can learn from them, and there's lots they can help you with.

There's lots of resources to help you become a great editor, from our basic introduction to our in-depth manual. But if you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. And if you haven't done so, tell us a bit about yourself. Oh, and please sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing ~~~~; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

Glad you're here! Sophus Bie ^(talk) 14:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Cultural Reflection

1) I have only used Wikipedia for general information on topics. I have never edited on Wikipedia prior to taking this class. I was always told that Wikipedia was not a reliable source for the simple fact that anyone can alter the imformation on the pages. I never knew how many rules were used for Wikipedia, and how quickly vandilism is detected.

2) I don't think I have made enough contributions to be considered credible in the Wikipedia community. I have very few changes made to pages on Wikipedia, and my changes were not very big.

3) I believe I can become more credible if I was to contribute more often to different pages. I could also make changes that are well written with credible sources.

Don't worry about "credibility", it's really not important here! Consider doing something like joining the typo team, fixing up minor erros and so on, to gain more confidence and find your way around. Something which may make you feel more confident, as well, is to use Reflinks (see below) to help with clearing up the backlog of articles whose citations need a bit of cleanup, researching for sources for articles which need this work. These are all t hings which are vitally important for Wikipedia, and will help you to learn your way around quickly, improve your confidence, and make you feel much more at home with us. We were all new once, and it can seem a bit daunting! But seriously, unless you do something really bad here, don't worry, just ask for help and advice. Anything you;re not sure how to handle, put a {{helpme}} message here on your talk page, outline what you need help with, and someone will be along to help you fairly soon (on the whole!) I'm going to put a few useful tips here on your talk page, so you can find them again easily. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Some tips to help you out!

Hi Ka01851, I thought I'd drop a few notes on your talk page with some help on writing articles :o)

First of all, it may be best for you to do a bit of reading, starting with the Wikipedia manual of style, which will give you a lot of information about how Wikipedia prefers its articles to be written. It's not as hard to follow as it might look; quite a bit of the information there probably won't be vital for you at first.

Second, I recommend you make a user sandbox - which is just an area you can use to practise in, and to make notes in, and to get things ready in. If you click this red link: user:Ka01851/Sandbox, that will let you create that page (it gives you an edit window to start work in). Anything, anywhere, on the help and information pages which gives you an example, try it out in your sandbox until you're familiar with it.

For your article, the next thing you want to do is start collecting as much information as you can about it. Google searches (particularly in Books and Scholar) will be your best friend for this! Once you've found the information, the next most important thing is to start writing up each fact in your own words (very important, this), and make a note at the same time of exactly where that information came from. Build in the references as you go along; I'm going to copy in, down below this, a whole heap of help on doing references, which was produced by one of our best teachers (Chzz).

Here's another place that you'll find incredibly useful - citation templates which you can copy and paste into your sandbox, between <ref></ref> tags; you just fill in the blanks from your sources into the template, and you'll end up with nicely formatted inline citations :o) It all helps. Remember to add a references section to your sandbox (make a new line, and put ==References== on it, and type {{reflist}} on the next line, so that you can see how your citations look as you do them. Remember to save your page often! You don't want to lose your work.

Hopefully this will give you a good start and make life easier for you.

One last thing to keep as a motto: "It's better to write one good, well-referenced, nicely-presented article than it is to create fifty unreferenced one-line stubs!" Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

How references work

Simple references

These require two parts;

a)

Chzz is 98 years old.<ref> "The book of Chzz", Aardvark Books, 2009. </ref>

He likes tea. <ref> [http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com Tea website] </ref>

b) A section called "References" with the special code "{{reflist}}";

== References ==
{{reflist}}

(an existing article is likely to already have one of these sections)

To see the result of that, please look at user:chzz/demo/simpleref. Edit it, and check the code; perhaps make a test page of your own, such as user:Ka01851/reftest and try it out.

Named references

Chzz was born in 1837. <ref name=MyBook>
"The book of Chzz", Aardvark Books, 2009. 
</ref> 

Chzz lives in Footown.<ref name=MyBook/>

Note that the second usage has a / (and no closing ref tag). This needs a reference section as above; please see user:chzz/demo/namedref to see the result.

Citation templates

You can put anything you like between <ref> and </ref>, but using citation templates makes for a neat, consistent look;

Chzz has 37 Olympic medals. <ref> {{Citation
 | last = Smith
 | first = John
 | title = Olympic medal winners of the 20th century
 | publication-date = 2001
 | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]]
 | page = 125
 | isbn = 0-521-37169-4
}}
</ref>

Please see user:chzz/demo/citeref to see the result.

For more help and tips on that subject, see user:chzz/help/refs.

Here's a little bit of magic which can save you an awful lot of time and effort!

You might want to consider using this tool - (tools:~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py) - it makes your life a whole heap easier, by filling in complete citation templates for your links. All you do is install the script on Special:MyPage/common.js, or or Special:MyPage/vector.js, then paste the bare url (without [...] brackets) between your <ref></ref> tabs, and you'll find a clickable link called Reflinks in your toolbox section of the page (probably in the left hand column). Then click that tool. It does all the rest of the work (provided that you remember to save the page! It doesn't work for everything (particularly often not for pdf documents), but for pretty much anything ending in "htm" or "html" (and with a title) it will do really, really well all by itself. For those it can't do by itself, it gives you a pull-down (or up) menu of templates to choose from, which you can then fill in manually. Often the problem is "No title found" - sometimes the title is obvious (especially if it's a pdf), bit, if not, just open the page yourself and choose something appropriate if there's not already a clear title there. Happy editing! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

{{helpme}} I am doing the Contingent Self Esteem page. I was wondering if anyone can figure out what is wrong with my citations and reflist. I am getting an error message Thanks Ka01851 (talk) 22:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. You were mixing named citations and grouped footnotes in a way I've never seen done and I don't think exists (I am not being categorical because there are now so many citation methods, templates and add-ons that I can't be sure). Anyway, as far as I can tell all you need are regular old named references (as Chzz describes above), to which I have converted all your uses.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:21, 30 November 2011 (UTC)