Uksnapper

Hello, Uksnapper! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Oosoom Talk 16:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Intuitive guide to Wikipedia Getting help 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 • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General • Spam • Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

No personal knowledge or experiences permitted

Hi Uksnapper. Thank you for your additions to the Swan Shopping Centre article. I suspect that you may be adding information from personal knowledge. This is fine if you can provide a publicly available source (book or reliable (non hobby) web site) to justify all the facts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and must have only information which can be verified by other editors. Un-sourced information is likely to be challenged and removed. See the guidelines under the first two points of Policies and guidelines in your welcome message above. If you find the tagging of references a bit tricky then just add them as free-form text and someone will format them in the proper way. Best wishes. Oosoom ^Talk 16:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Note

Welcome to Wikipedia. We welcome and appreciate your contributions, including your edits to Swan Shopping Centre, but we cannot accept original research. Original research also encompasses novel, unpublished syntheses of previously published material. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your information. Thank you. Brambleclawx 00:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Offer of help

Hi there.

I saw your comments on the West Mids Wikiproject [1] [2], and also looked at your edits to Swan Shopping Centre.

I'm offering to help - but, you do need to realise several important things about Wikipedia, otherwise your edits will keep being removed;

• Everything you add needs a reference to a "reliable source" - and the critical thing there is, that the reader should be able to check the information; that's the purpose of a reference. So, we cannot add information based on personal knowlegde (such as, those meetings you mentioned). I realise that, at present, the article has no references at all - but that doesn't matter; it doesn't mean we can add to the problem.

Good references are newspapers, or books. Some news websites are OK too. But, everything must be verifiable. That's the single most important thing to remember; you must give a reference where the information can be checked.

• We also must use "encyclopaedic language" - so we shouldn't write e.g. works are well underway or Tesco may have pulled the plug - instead, we state specific factual information.
• It is also necessary to format your edits better. There's lots of possible 'code', but please don't be put off; it's easier than it seems. In very brief;
  • To link to other wikipedia articles, put double square brackets around the word to link. For example, putting I live in [[England]] produces: I live in England.
  • You can also link when the text differs from the article title, like this: I am a [[Dentistry|dentist]]. produces: I am a dentist.
  • References go in the body text, and the system will automatically put a small numbered link like [1] in the references section. For example; Chzz is 98 years old.<ref> "The book of Chzz", Aardvark Books, 2009. </ref>
  • You can link to external websites within single square-brackets, like this: [http://www.google.com/ This is Google] - that will appear as; This is Google.

I'll give one quick example; we could edit the article and put this;

In June 2011, the [[A4040 road|A4040 Church Road]] in [[Yardley, Birmingham|Yardley]] was diverted to allow construction of a car-park.<ref>[http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2011/06/11/road-at-new-tesco-in-yardley-is-part-opened-97319-28858191/ Road at new Tesco in Yardley is part-opened], Emma McKinney, Birmingham Mail, 11 June 2011</ref>

That would look like this;

In June 2011, the A4040 Church Road in Yardley was diverted to allow construction of a car-park.

I'd be very happy to help you improve the article (or any others) - and lots of others can help you, too - but it is necessary to understand these basic requirements. You don't need to learn all this 'code' - we'll happily help with that; but you do need to understand that references to reliable sources are essential.

If you want to read more about these things, see;

• Wikipedia:Five pillars - the essential principles of Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources
• WP:CHEATSHEET - a quick-guide to some formatting. We also have Wikipedia:Tutorial.
• Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners.

You could also get ideas by looking at other, similar articles - for example, Trafford Centre, Bull Ring, Birmingham. I'm not claiming those articles are brilliant - they're not - but, notice that they have at least some well-referenced information.

The best way to contact Chzz is IRC (text-chat), here  · Second-best is my talk page · Third-best is email Chzzlive.co.uk

Please let me know what you think; you can also just reply underneath this message, and I will see it.

Just remember, that there is always plenty of help available - so, if you are not sure about something, just ask, any time. I sincerely hope we can work together, to improve the encyclopaedia.

Best,  Chzz  ►  14:13, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Posting to discussion pages

Hi, regarding this edit (and previous postings here and here) - when adding comments to existing discussions, please post at the end of the relevant section, not at the end of the page - the [edit] links to the right of the section headers are provided for this. The rule about posting at the bottom of discussion pages is for when you are starting an entirely new thread. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:32, 8 September 2011 (UTC)