User talk:Alexissheridan



Hello, Alexissheridan, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like this place and decide to stay.
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 * If you have a question that is not one of the frequently asked questions below, check out Questions, [ ask me on my talk page], or click the button below. Happy editing and again, welcome! sonia ♫  23:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Heidi Kole Book edits
Welcome to Wikipedia! We're thrilled to have your help. However, I'm a bit concerned about they edits you've made. You've posted almost the exact same thing - a link that is selling a book, with a short description - to six different pages. In order for what you've added to not be deleted as spam, please clarify why this person is notable enough to be included, and if at all possible use third-party sources - that is, sources like the New York Times that don't have any financial connection to the book. Thanks! Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * How do I add third party sources? And how do I protect against not being marked as 'spam' - as I'm certainly not ; )


 * I'll address your second concern first. The first thing is, it has to not be spam. WP:LINKSPAM and WP:PROMO should give you a good idea of what is and isn't spam. Your edits were made in good faith - that is, with the intention of improving the encyclopedia rather than explicitly promoting the book. However, they fall into a grey area. Neither "The Subway Diaries" nor the author Heidi Kole are by themselves notable; I find little to no coverage in any reliable news sources. You posted almost the exact same text - a link to a site selling the book - to six different articles, including one - Busking Day - that it is completely unrelated to. Unless you provide relevance in the text as to why this specific book is important, it will be removed. In the case of the New York Subway article, it is not worth mentioning unless the singer is discussed in official MTA literature (as is the kora player mentioned in the article) or the singer is world-famous herself (which she is not).
 * I am going to remove and reformat some of the links, where they are in inappropriate places. If you feel that adding information about "The Subway Diaries" would be relevant, important, and able to be supported by third-party sources, then I suggest you discuss it on the talk page of the article where other people can weigh in.
 * I would also suggest that you make a bit more effort to use proper grammar, and to keep external links in external links sections - these stylistic considerations will help your edits from being auto-tagged as spam.
 * As for your first question: for general information, Google and Google News are often very helpful for finding sources; Google Scholar, Arxiv, and PubMed for scholarly articles. Reliable third-party sources include books from major publishers and university presses, government and university websites, and newspapers like the New York Times. Just citing "The Subway Diaries" would probably not be sufficient. Proper citations use either tags or special item-specific citation templates to properly cite sources.
 * One final note: When you make an entry on a talk page, it's considered polite to sign with four tildes, like this: ~ . Cheers! Pi.1415926535 (talk) 02:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)