User talk:66.65.102.180

Hi, 66.65.102.180. I saw the edits made from this IP to Princess Marcella Borghese and its talkpage in July 2012. It's a dynamic IP, so I'm not sure the right person will read this message. Please just ignore it if you haven't edited Princess Marcella Borghese.

But if that was you in July, I have some points to make. I was sorry to see that you apparently gave up editing the article after your addition of family history was reverted with a reference in the edit summary to the article House of Borghese. The revert is shown here. No doubt your material was removed because you didn't give any references for it. Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia anybody can edit", and for that reason it has to be very fussy about references and reliable sources. I'm sorry, but it's not enough to say, as you did on the talkpage, that you're her grandson and know her history very well. I don't doubt it, but you realize that's not a verifiable kind of sourcing.

Are you still interested in adding family material? In that case I have a couple of suggestions: please try to provide reliable third-party sources for the information. This link might work for some of it, and perhaps other sources in the House of Borghese article.

I realize you're probably not familiar with the techniques of providing inline references in article text. Here's a simple way (well, as simple as it gets) to make a footnote:


 * 1. Type at the end of a sentence. That will show up as a little superscript number in the text.


 * 2. Replace the current notation, which you will find below the header "Notes" at the foot of the article, with the magic code  . Your informational footnote, and any other footnotes you create, will now appear under that header.

Looking at it I realize it's not any too simple at all... :-( You could also just add the information you have about the source — author, title, year, page reference — or a link to a source on the web — at the end of the sentence where it goes, and I'll magic it into footnotes for you. (Please drop a note on my talkpage in case I don't notice your edits.)

Secondly, I think you should shorten the material a little. Some of it is already in the House of Borghese article, so it can be covered by simply wikilinking to that article. This, by the way, is the version of the article where you can find your own original text.

Finally: you should feel free to remove material that's inappropriate to a biography, per your comment on the talkpage. But it's important to do so conservatively, and above all to provide an explanatory edit summary, or your removals will risk being treated as vandalism. I think that happened in July.

Happy editing! (Unless by now you're fed up with all the Wikipedia red tape.) Bishonen &#124; talk 20:13, 24 April 2013 (UTC).