User:Ian (Wiki Ed)/notes/other/boilerplate

Welcome
My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I'm glad to see you back again this semester.

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Hi. I work with the Wiki Education Foundation, and help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment. If there's anything I can do to help with your assignment (or, for that matter, any other aspect of Wikipedia) please feel free to drop me a note. ~

Hi. I work with the Wiki Education Foundation, and help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment. If there's anything I can do to help with your assignment (or, for that matter, any other aspect of Wikipedia) please feel free to drop me a note. ~

If there's anything else I can help with, please let me know. I hope you enjoy contribution to Wikipedia, and keep it up after the class is over. ~

~

~

Group account names
== Group accounts ==

The name of your account includes the word "Group", and this may cause concern for some people, since Wikipedia does not allow shared accounts. To avoid misunderstanding, I strongly recommend that you rename your account to one that does not include "Group". Please use Special:GlobalRenameRequest to request a username change. Thanks. ~

Thank you
Thank you for your contribution to the article.


 * 1) Bear in mind that Wikipedia articles are integrated into a whole. For article sections, this means the article itself - there's no need to explain or repeat things that a reader should have encountered higher up the page. They're also connected to other articles by wikilinks - if there's some term or concept that the average reader may not be familiar with, provide a link to the article where they can learn more.
 * 2) Don't forget to break your text up into paragraphs and use inline citations to link to your references. If you use the inline citation template available in the edit box (the place you write text in Wikipedia) not only does that keep the reference close to the place you cite it, it also makes it difficult to forget to include the actual source from which the citation came.

Refname
instead of repeating the same reference over and over, you can name the reference. When you first use a reference, structure it as. Then, the next time you use that same reference, just time. That way you save the trouble of writing the whole reference over and over, and you also produce a more compact set of reference.

It is also useful to use citation templates. If you look at the top of the edit window (the place you type text after you hit 'edit') you should see the word 'Cite' on the toolbar. Click on that, selected appropriate template from the drop-down menu, and fill it in as best you can. Doing that creates a better formatted reference, and one that it easier to maintain in the long run.


 * 1) I noticed that you cite the same source (Barish 1981) over 40 times in the article. Normally, you can combine repeated references to a single use by naming the reference (i.e., when you first use a reference, structure it as . Then, the next time you use that same reference, just time  . That way you save the trouble of writing the whole reference over and over, and you also produce a more compact set of reference). Unfortunately, you are referencing different page numbers each time. There's a way around that, and it involves using the rp template. Each time you use a named reference (let's say you named that reference "Barish1981") you would type  (if you were referencing pages 3-11). The result would be your normal numbered reference followed by page numbers, something like this: [1]

DYK
Nice work on the article. I wonder if you would like to consider submitting it as a candidate for the "Did you know...?" feature. DYKs (as they are commonly called) are short snippets taken from Wikipedia's newest articles and, if approved, appear on the Main Page. You can learn more about this by clicking on the image to the right to access a nice pdf outlining the process.

According to the DYK tool, your article was created on [ ], and since you only have a week to submit the article, you should do this as soon as possible. Assuming, of course, that you're interested.

Nice work on the article. I think it might be a good candidate to submit for the "Did you know...?" feature.

Wikilinks
Thanks for your additions to the article. I noticed that you did not add many wikilinks to other articles. Links like that are useful for readers, since they allow them to learn more about topics they may not be familiar with. It would be helpful if you could add links to terms like these. Thanks.

I notice that you haven't linked to other Wikipedia articles. Wikilinks are valuable to readers, since they allow them to learn more about the topics discussed in an article.

Nice work on your |article draft. I just had a couple stylistic comments about how you might improve things. I notice that you haven't linked to other Wikipedia articles. Wikilinks are valuable to readers, since they allow them to learn more about the topics discussed in an article. For example, most people won't know what "..." means, but if you link to the ... article, they can click through and find out more. (You could format that link as ... .) You might also want to link to the article on .... Adding links like these help integrate your article into the rest of Wikipedia, making it more useful to readers.

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Please don't forget to add links to other articles ; this helps to better integrate your article into the encyclopedia. They help readers by allowing them to learn more about topics they may not be familiar with.

Unreferenced, but...
I noticed that your addition to the article was removed. This was due to the fact that your addition cited no sources. It's obvious from your sandbox that you have supporting sources, but that isn't apparent from your edit to the article.

Thank you for your additions to the article. Although you have sources in your sandbox, you cited no sources in your additions to the article. Please add citations for your additions. Thanks

References & Reference templates
Your article lacks inline citations - this makes it very difficult for readers to know which content is attributable to which source. Your citations are also formatted as Bare URLs. This makes the actual source unclear, and makes it hard to maintain the page in the long term (since URLs often change). Both of these problems can be solved by using citation templates. If you look at the top of the edit window (the place you type text after you hit 'edit') you should see the word 'Cite' on the toolbar. Click on that, selected appropriate template from the drop-down menu, and fill it in as best you can. Doing that creates a better formatted reference, and one that it easier to maintain in the long run.

Thanks for your addition to the article. However, your reference was simply a bare url. For a variety of reasons, bare urls are less than optimal ways of referencing a source. (See this explanation.) When adding references, I strongly encourage you to use a citation template.

If you look at the top of the edit window (the place you type text after you hit 'edit') you should see the word 'Cite' on the toolbar. Click on that, selected appropriate template from the drop-down menu, and fill it in as best you can. Doing that creates a better formatted reference, and one that it easier to maintain in the long run.

Medical articles
When editing articles related about medical-related topics, please bear in mind is that the standards for citations for these is higher than the general standard for sources in Wikipedia articles. Focus more on review articles and less on the latest discoveries. While we encourage the use of secondary and tertiary sources in general, this is especially important in medical-related topics.

Findings like these are very difficult for a non-expert to put in the proper context without synthesizing a whole body of research literature.

The editor who reverted your addition mentioned that it was not WP:MEDRS compliant. While I don't know precisely what he had in mind, I see two problems with the addition - the source was 25 years old, and it did not appear to come from a high-quality peer-reviewed source. In medical areas, so much research is going on that anything more than five years old is likely to be out of date. The other problem is the source itself. The Journal of Pesticide Reform appears to have been a short-lived journal, and there's no way to tell if it was subject to rigorous peer review. So it would be an iffy source even if it wasn't a quarter century old.

When editing articles, please keep in mind that Wikipedia articles should be based on recent, secondary sources. Studies which report preliminary findings, or which suggest a relationship between things, should be avoided. Single studies should be avoided - instead, we should focus on review articles that look at a large number of studies. A single study is a starting point; finding a correlations between one thing and another may provide a starting point, but it's a long way from indicating that there actually is a causal relationship. Many studies pointing in the same direction, on the other hand, makes such a relationship more likely. So stick to review articles, preferably ones less than five years old, especially in areas related to health and medicine.

Case studies and other primary source material
Hi. Thanks for your additions to the article. However, as you might have noticed, ... removed part of your contribution] because it was based on a single case study on one person. Remember that Wikipedia articles should be based on secondary sources (please see the booklet I linked to in the previous section). A study that looks at a single subject is, by its very nature, preliminary.

Rather than discussing individual studies, you should base your information on secondary sources, reviews written by experts that put individual studies, like these ones, in context.

SYNTH
When you're adding material, please try to work from secondary sources which actually discuss the issue of how these compounds affect the environment. Simply adding safety information from a source about the safety of the compound isn't the best way to do this; for one, it can end up being original synthesis, which is not allowed in Wikipedia articles, and for another, there's no guarantee that the impacts a compound has on humans (say, in a close room) are the same that it might have once it makes it into a watercourse. So stick to sources that address environmental impacts directly.

Other sourcing
Hi ... Thanks for your additions to the article. While adding content to the article is good (especially since it's mostly just a few quotes and an "in popular culture" section) please keep in mind the importance of both citing appropriate sources (and citing them appropriately) and of writing in an encyclopaedic style.

Encyclopaedia articles are written in a formal style. "Causes of this type of Amnesia is it's a result of brain damage..." - causes, being plural, shouldn't be pared with the singular noun, "is". "It's" and other such abbreviations are fine in informal writing, but are rarely appropriate in formal writing. Second person ("your memories and your emotions") is good for conversational writing, but again, doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia entry.

You also need to be careful with your sources. Cite them properly - Prezi is a piece of software, not an author (citing it is like citing Microsoft Word); the actual author listed is xxxx xxxx. Which raises the second question you need to ask of your sources - why should we trust xxxx xxxx (or any other random person on the internet) as a reliable source for this information. The handout I linked to in the previous section discusses the importance of using high-quality sources in articles - preferably recent secondary sources which have been published in reputable, peer-reviewed sources. In addition to that handout, you might want to read Identifying reliable sources.

Part of the fun of contributing to Wikipedia is the fact that your edits are visible right away. Having your edits reverted is no fun. The better the quality of your edits, the more likely they are to stick around. And maybe, you'll see the definition you added to Wikipedia cited in an article on a major news source one day. But the key to that is adding good content that's backed by the best sources available.

Thanks for your additions to the ] article. I did, however, have a question about whether the source you used was appropriate for the article. xxxx.xxx appears to be an advertisement for public speaking seminar. Wikipedia articles should be based on high-quality peer reviewed sources - things like journal review articles and textbooks, not ads. Always make sure that the source you're using is reliable (see [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources ); generally you should seek to use the highest quality source you can find.

Thanks for your contributions of the article. I have a few concerns though about the source you used, and how you linked to it. While xxxx might be a useful resource for people with xxxx, I'm not sure that it meets the standards of a reliable source in keeping with Wikipedia's policies. Wikipedia articles should be based on high-quality peer reviewed sources - things like journal review articles and textbooks. While articles written by people with the xxxx might be useful to link to (e.g., in the External links section) non-scholarly sources are not the ideal sources for articles.

Tables
For a simple way to get started, you might try the Excel-to-Wiki converter. Check out Help:Table for more detailed instructions on how to make a table.

Disappearing section headers (and text)
That's actually a pretty common problem (and one that baffled me when it first happened to me). I'm guessing what happened is that you left a ref tag open somewhere. The most common way that happens (in my experience) is when you type tag. And the next couple sections disappear, despite the fact that you can clearly see them in the wikicode of the page.