Meckese

Welcome to Wikipedia!
Welcome! My name is Sadads, and I'm one of the Online Ambassadors assisting students who are contributing to WikiProject United States Public Policy. We're excited to work with you, and we hope you'll stick around. If you haven't already, take a few minutes and check out the handy links below to start sharing your knowledge with the world. Welcome! Your class is part of a pilot project for bridging the gap between Wikipedia and the academic world; as you learn how to edit Wikipedia, we'll be learning how to better help newcomers. So it will be a fun learning experience all around! You'll find links below for leaving feedback or getting help. If you need anything further, feel free to contact me at my user talk page. And don't forget: have fun! Sadads (talk) 19:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Editing cheatsheet Forgot how that code worked?	Summary of policies and guidelines A quick reference for Wikipedia's "rules"
Find the page for your course Forgot the link to your course's page?	Choose a mentor Contact an ambassador to work with
Help with article assessment Help us assess these articles!	Starting an article Guide to starting your first article
Comments or suggestions? Need help?
Chat with us: Ask a question on the classroom IRC channel or on the regular help chat Are you on Facebook? Like Wikipedia on Campus for the latest news, photos, videos, and helpful tips

Language

In a recent edit to the page Hogwarts staff, you changed one or more words from one international variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use British English. For something related to the United States in the same way, use American English. For something related to another English-speaking country, such as Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you. Carl Sixsmith (talk) 19:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Welcome

Hey Meckese, nice to meet you. I'll happily help you out. I'd like to know a little more about your experiences on Wikipedia, editing articles, meeting users etc, so let me know how you've found it so far. I see you've been "warned" above. That's a really common thing on Wikipedia, particularly with articles which have a strong national identity. I guess, as a Harry Potter article, it was in British English (so had things like "realise" instead of "realize", or "axe" instead of "ax") and you changed it. It's not a problem, these things happen all the time and you will not be the last person to do the same thing. We'll get on to that sort of thing in due course, but in the meantime, welcome again, take it easy, and all the best. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:21, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Quick hello!

Hi Sarah. Just thought I'd pop by to provide some advice on some of your recent edits. I've looked at this "diff" (a "diff" is a difference, or a change between one page version and another, this "diff" shows all the changes from the seven edits you've made to that article):

• You've added a lot of text here, good work!
• You used edit summaries on all but one of the edits. Good work, but try to use edit summaries all the time. You can switch on a reminder in your preferences if you think that'll help.
• You say "claim ignorance to"... It may be a American English variant but I (being a Brit) would say "claim ignorance of"...
• The PDF link you've added is a dead link for me. Can you check it again?
• In the reference (well-formatted by the way, great use of the citation template, although possibly {{cite journal}} would be more appropriate...?) you have fully capitalised the author name. Just write it as you would normally, even if the source itself has it capitalised.
• You have "overlinked" the Knapp Commission. Usually it is not necessary to relink an article if you've recently linked it. It's a little subjective, but generally, if it's linked once in an article, that's all it needs.
• You appear to have repeated the same reference twice. To avoid this, if referring to the same ref in multiple locations in an article, use the <ref name=blah and <ref=blah/> tags.

Hope these help, let me know if you need me to explain anything else or give you any further advice! All the best, The Rambling Man (talk) 13:48, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Send me a message when you'd like me to look at your edits! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:18, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, if these need a subscription, we normally add "(subscription required)" in the reference. A better thing all round is to use references that are free (obviously!) but if there's no alternative, then yeah, add the note that you need a subscription... The Rambling Man (talk) 19:37, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Update

Hey Sarah, good to see your ongoing edits! Hope all is well with you. One thing to consider when you "wikilink" words (e.g. put the two square brackets either side of a word or phrase, e.g. [[prevention]], that the thing you're linking is really relevant. Take into account the fact that most English speakers already know what prevention means. Another thing to consider is that this links to what we call a "disambiguation page", a page where a word can mean different things. Most of the time there's usually a more specific link you can use. In this case, though, I'd suggest you don't link reasonably simple words at all. We tend to avoid linking things like "United States" as well, since most of the English-speaking universe knows that means!

With specific reference to Blue Code of Silence,

1. Look at WP:HEAD to see how we format headings, i.e. to avoid over-capitalisation of non-proper nouns.
2. See if you can expand the lead. WP:LEAD will advise you that it should provide a summary of the whole article.
3. Check your links. Back-up doesn't necessarily lead to the page you think it should.
4. Don't repeat links in the See also section that are already linked in the main article (e.g. Stop Snitchin')

Having said all that, good work! Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you need any specific information. All the best, The Rambling Man (talk) 17:37, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Edits

Hey Sarah. Just checking in to say hi, and to ask if you were getting on okay with your edits? I see you de-capitalised Blue Code throughout to blue code. Is that correct? Let me know if I can help out in any way. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter

Invitation from the Guild of Copy Editors The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in their September 2011 Backlog elimination drive, a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy editing backlog. The drive will begin on September 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and will end on September 30 at 23:59 (UTC). We will be tracking the number of 2010 articles in the backlog, as we want to copy edit as many of those as possible. Please consider copy editing an article that was tagged in 2010. Barnstars will be given to anyone who edits more than 4,000 words, with special awards for the top 5 in the categories "Number of articles", "Number of words", and "Number of articles of over 5,000 words". See you at the drive! – Your drive coordinators: Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02, and SMasters. >>> Sign up now <<<

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 16:46, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter

Invitation from the Guild of Copy Editors The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in their November 2011 Backlog elimination drive, a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy edit backlog. The drive begins on November 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and ends on November 30 at 23:59 (UTC). We will be tracking the number of 2010 articles (and specifically will be targeting the oldest three months), as we want to copy edit as many of these as possible. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who copy edits more than 4,000 words, and special awards will be given to the top 5 in the following categories: "Number of articles", "Number of words", and "Number of articles of over 5,000 words". We hope to see you there! – Your drive coordinators: Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02, and SMasters. >>> Sign up now <<<

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 01:45, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

GOCE newsletter

Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors Elections are currently underway for our third tranche of Guild coordinators. The voting period will run for 14 days: 00:01 UTC, 16 December – 23:59 UTC, 31 December. All GOCE members, as well as past participants of any of the Guild's Backlog elimination drives, are eligible to vote. There are five candidates vying for four positions. Your vote really matters! Cast your vote today.

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 11:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

GOCE 2011 Year-End Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2011 Year-End Report We have reached the end of the year, and what a year it has been! The Guild of Copy Editors was full of activity, and we achieved numerous important milestones in 2011. Read all about these in the Guild's 2011 Year-End Report. Highlights Membership grows to 764 editors, an increase of 261 Report on coordinators' elections Around 1,000 articles removed through six Backlog elimination drives Guild Plans for 2012 Requests page report Sign up for the January 2012 Backlog elimination drive! Get your copy of the Guild's 2011 Year-End Report here On behalf of the Guild, we take this opportunity to wish you Season's Greetings and Happy New Year. We look forward to your support in 2012! – Your 2011 Coordinators: Diannaa (lead), The Utahraptor, and Slon02 and SMasters (emeritus).

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 06:34, 2 January 2012 (UTC)