User talk:59Sharp

Your edits to Victorian Railways K class
You've made a number of changes to this article.

While the information is most interesting, I'm concerned that you have not cited any references for any of it. Can you please detail the source of this information as per WP:CITE.
 * Zzrbiker 14:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Most of my information is from individual people and records I have been actively keeping for a number of years. As such, no paper trail or literacy references exist.

Could you possibly point me into the right direction of how to cite these?

Thanks.


 * Wikipedia may not be the best place for some of this information. I would refer you to the following official policy pages: Verifiability (and in particular: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth"), also No_original_research (and in particular: "any facts, opinions, interpretations, definitions, and arguments published by Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable publication in relation to the topic of the article.")
 * The problem I have is that if you remove a piece of factual information for which a reference has been cited and insert new information which, although it may possibly be more up-to-date or correct, doesn't cite a reference, it can't be checked or verified. Anything going into an encyclopedia has to be verifiable. If anything, the VR locomotive articles already had far too many unsourced facts in them, and unfortunately in adding further unsourced material, you could be making the task of bringing these articles up to a Good Article standard even more difficult.
 * In many cases, the information you've provided should be verifiable. Eg, newsletters from preservation societies, reference books, etc. If you can retrace your edits and find supporting references, that would be appreciated. In other cases, you've made statements about things that "might be", such as J 541 going to the Victorian Goldfields Railway. In the context of a railfan site this information is great, but it's not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
 * Zzrbiker 15:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to go back and edit the bit about J 541 as it is most certainly going to the Victorian Goldfields Railway.

As for the rest...I wouldn't know where to begin as all of my information comes from various people who are involved in the Victorian Preservation movement (privacy laws plus general respect prevents me from citing them on wiki) and also from my own observations - ie site visits or actual involvement. Does this mean I should remove the information I have provided?


 * Can I suggest just holding off for now on making any further edits without citing references. I'll try and work through the edits you've already made and see what can be referenced.
 * My other suggestion, based on the assumption that you're new to Wikipedia, would be that rather than diving in and changing the articles, you suggest the change on the article's Discussion page. This allows the opportunity for others to comment, and means that when the change to the article is made it's less likely to be contentious and risk being removed. Zzrbiker 16:59, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem.

I have noticed quite a few errors on some of the pages which will need to be corrected at some point soon - I'd be quite happy to point them out to you, although I won't do it now as I am getting quite fatigued and need to hit the sack.

Cheers

59Sharp