Liz Sterling
Welcome Liz Sterling!
| Some pages of helpful information to get you started: | Some common sense Dos and Don'ts:
|
| If you need further help, you can: | or you can: | or even: |
Alternatively, leave me a message at my talk page or type {{helpme}} here on your talk page, and someone will try to help.
There are many ways you can contribute to Wikipedia. Here are a few ideas:
|
|
Remember to always sign your posts on talk pages. You can do this either by clicking on the 
button on the edit toolbar or by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your post. This will automatically insert your signature, a link to this (your talk) page, and a timestamp.
To get some practice editing you can use a sandbox. You can create your own private sandbox for use any time. Perfect for working on bigger projects. Then for easy access in the future, you can put
{{My sandbox}} on your userpage.Wikipedia and copyright
edit
Hello Liz Sterling, and welcome to Wikipedia. All or some of your addition(s) to American Thinker have been removed, as they appear to have added copyrighted material without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues here.
- You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
- Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify the information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
- Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
- If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a legally designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. Understand, though, that unlike many other sites, where a person can license their content for use there and retain non-free ownership, that is not possible at Wikipedia. Rather, the release of content must be irrevocable, to the world, into the public domain (PD) or under a suitably-free and compatible copyright license. Such a release must be done in a verifiable manner, so that the authority of the person purporting to release the copyright is evidenced. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
- In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are PD or compatibly licensed) it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, the help desk or the Teahouse before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
- Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you must follow the copyright attribution steps in Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate. See also Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.
It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Doug Weller talk 08:47, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
American Thinker
editBesides the fact that you copied straight from the site, which was a copyright violation, that same page says "Please support the site and help a strong conservative voice." It's hard to understand why you disagree with that. There are of course times when organisations misrepresent themselves to be more acceptable to their target audience, and then we use other reliable sources to describe them, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Doug Weller talk 08:49, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Hello Doug
editSorry. I did change the wording some, but it was a short sentence (with a reference), and I was wanting their basic description of themselves. I will be more careful when writing descriptions in the future. Also, I didn't see the sentence you referred to at the time, but I don't think it's a good idea to label, unless all--in this case news websites/magazine--are labeled. That's why I deleted "conservative." It was an opinion with no reference. 04:31, 10 April 2018 (UTC)Liz Sterling (talk)
- Horses for courses, there is no one size fits all. The American Thinker isn't exactly a news site, it's an advocate site - as my edit summary said, the about page on its website says " Please support the site and help a strong conservative voice". That seems to be a pretty basic description of themselves. There are times when we might not accept a self-description at face value, but with reliable sources saying its politics are different (eg perhaps "alt-right") there's no reason not to call it what it says it is. We would call the Daily Worker a Communist newspaper, for instance. Doug Weller talk 12:59, 10 April 2018 (UTC)