Russell1889

Welcome and introduction

Hi, Russell1889. This is NOT some automated message...it's from a real person. You can talk to me right now. Welcome to Wikipedia! I noticed you've just joined, and wanted to give you a few tips to get you started. If you have any questions, please talk to us. The tips below should help you to get started. Best of luck!  Chzz  ►  19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

ようこそ You don't need to read anything - anybody can edit; just go to an article and edit it. Be Bold, but please don't put silly stuff in - it will be removed very quickly, and will annoy people. Ask for help. Talk to us live, or edit this page, put {{helpme}} and describe what help you need. Someone will reply very quickly - usually within a few minutes. Play in your user area. For example, create User:Russell1889/test. Edit existing articles, before you make your own. Look at some subjects that you know about, and see if you can make them a bit better. For example, Wikipedia:Cleanup#2009. When you're ready, read about Your first article. It should be about something well-known, and it will need references. Good luck with editing; please drop me a line some time on my own talk page. There's lots of information below. Once again, welcome to the fantastic world of Wikipedia! -- Chzz  ►  19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Grade sources • Cite sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists • Best articles Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Pages needing attention • Peer review The missing manual

Further to our conversations

Hi there - Welcome to Wikipedia. Thanks for your patience in sorting out the problem viz. thebaptisttemple (talk · contribs).

• Before working on an article where you have a conflict of interest, I very highly recommend that you edit some other articles - on any subject at all. You'll soon learn more about the way Wikipedia works, and you'll be in a much better position to then deal with the tricky business of COI.

You could join WikiProject Christianity perhaps. There's plenty of articles that need work - Wikipedia:Cleanup listing|try here]], for example.

• Please read the business FAQ - this applies to all organizations, whether for-profit or not.

• When you do want to make a start, create a user-space draft, and work on that - seek help with it, and ask us to check it over.

• Articles have to meet requirements for "Notability", which has a very specific meaning on Wikipedia, and we define it as, "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the source". Please look at that link - that is the key to the whole thing, it really is. For any subject - be it a person, a company, a band, species of animal, or any of the other thousands of subject types - the requirement is the same. What it boils down to is, the need for several reliable sources, such as newspaper articles, books, magazines, etc - with substantial information about the specific thing the article is about.

A 'reliable source' is something with a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", something with "editorial control" - and, to show notability, it needs to be independent too.

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:Russell1889/reftest and try it out. Named references Chzz was born in 1837, <ref name="MyBook"> "The book of Chzz", Aardvark Books, 2009. </ref> 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.

• Please, do be careful. We strongly advise against writing it yourself, and for quite good reasons. It is very, very hard to be neutral, and to stick to verifiable facts from reliable sources - there are so many things that you, naturally, just know are true - but sadly, we cannot accept claims that we can't check - which means we need references.

Please talk to us live, with this link, any time. It's often easier to explain things 'live'.

I certainly hope you'll help us make Wikipedia better, and I'll do everything I can to help you. Hope to speak soon. Chzz  ►  19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)