User talk:BenStuartCohen

January 2008
Hello. Please don't forget to provide an edit summary.  freshacconci  speak to me  18:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Reply/Warhol
There are procedures involved with including new information. Why not bring it to the Warhol talk page to get some feedback from other editors? This sort of info needs context--who was this other artist? what connection does he have to Warhol? It does not belong in the Warhol article, at least not at that early point. Starting an edit war is not the right way to go about these things. Two editors reverted your edits. This means that there is a dispute to the information. Bring it to the Warhol talk page and let others weigh in. Thank you.  freshacconci  speak to me  19:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Welcome
Hello, BenStuartCohen, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: Introduction The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Help How to write a great article Manual of Style

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Guide to referencing
Click on "show" to open contents. {| class="navbox collapsible collapsed" style="text-align: center; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em; font-size: 100%; background: #ffefd5;" ! style="background-color: #f90;" | Using references (citations)
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 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white;" style="text-align: left;" |

I thought you might find it useful to have some information about references (refs) on wikipedia. These are important to validate your writing and inform the reader. Any editor can removed unreferenced material; and unsubstantiated articles may end up getting deleted, so when you add something to an article, it's highly advisable to also include a reference to say where it came from. Referencing may look daunting, but it's easy enough to do. Here's a guide to getting started.

Good references
A reference must be accurate, i.e. it must prove the statement in the text. To validate "Mike Brown climbed Everest", it's no good linking to a page about Everest, if Mike Brown isn't mentioned, nor to one on Mike Brown, if it doesn't say that he climbed Everest. You have to link to a source that proves his achievement is true. You must use reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press, authorised web sites, and official documents. Blogs, Myspace, Youtube, fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable, nor is original research, e.g. your own unpublished, or self-published, essay or research.

Inserting a reference
The first thing you have to do is to create a "Notes and references" section (unless it already exists). This goes towards the bottom of the page, below the "See also" section and above the "External links" section. Enter this code:


 * ==Notes and references==

The next step is to put a reference in the text. Here is the code to do that. It goes at the end of the relevant term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers, and after punctuation such as a full stop, without a space (to prevent separation through line wrap):



Whatever text you put in between these two tags will become visible in the "Notes and references" section as your reference.

Test it out
Open the edit box for this page, copy the following text (inserting your own text where indicated), paste it at the bottom of the page and save the page:


 * ==Reference test==


 * This is the text which you are going to verify with a reference.


 * ==Notes and references==



(End of text to copy and paste.)

It should appear like this:


 * Reference test


 * This is the text which you are going to verify with a reference.


 * Notes and references



Information to include
You need to include the information to enable the reader to find your source. For an online newspaper source, it might look like this:



When uploaded, it appears as:
 * Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, 2005-10-27. Retrieved on 2005-10-27.

Note the single square brackets around the URL and the article title. The format is:
 * [http://URL "Title of article"]

Make sure there is a space between the URL and the Title. This code results in the URL being hidden and the title showing as a link. Use double apostrophes for the article title (it is quoted text), and two single quote marks either side of the name of the paper (to generate italics). Double square brackets round the name of the paper create an internal link (a wikilink) to the relevant wikipedia article. Apostrophes must go outside the brackets.

The date after The Guardian is the date of the newspaper, and the date after "Retrieved on" is the date you accessed the site – useful for searching the web archive in case the link goes dead. Dates are wikilinked so that they work with user preference settings to display the date in the format the user wishes.

References not online
You can use sources which are not online, but which you have found in a library or elsewhere&mdash;in which case leave out the information which is not relevant. The newspaper example above would be formatted like this:

When uploaded, it appears as:
 * Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, 2005-10-27.

Here is an example for a book:



When uploaded, it appears as:
 * Charmley, John (2006). The Princess and the Politicians. Penguin Books Ltd., London. ISBN 0140289712.

Make sure you put two single quote marks round the title (to generate italics), rather than one double quote mark.

Date format
These formats are all acceptable for dates:
 * 2005-10-27
 * 27 January 2007
 * January 27, 2007

Citation templates
You may prefer to use a citation template to compile details of the source. The template goes between the ref tags and you fill out the fields you wish to. Basic templates can be found here: Template messages/Sources of articles/Citation quick reference

Same ref used twice or more
The first time a reference appears in the article, you can give it a simple name in the

The second time you use the same reference in the article, you need only to create a short cut instead of typing it all out again:



You can then use the short cut as many times as you want. Don't forget the /, or it will blank the rest of the article! A short cut will only pick up from higher up the page, so make sure the first ref is the full one. Some symbols don't work in the ref name, but you'll find out if you use them.

You can see multiple use of the same refs in action in the article William Bowyer (artist). There are 3 sources and they are each referenced 3 times. Each statement in the article has a footnote to show what its source is.

Alternative system
The above method is simple and combines references and notes into one section. A refinement is to put the full details of the references in their own section headed "References", while the notes which apply to them appear in a separate section headed "Notes". The notes can be inserted in the main article text in an abbreviated form as seen in Harriet Arbuthnot or in a full form as in Brown Dog affair.

Further information
More information can be found at:
 * Citing sources
 * Citing sources/example style
 * Template messages/Sources of articles/Citation quick reference
 * Citation templates
 * Footnotes

I hope this helps. If you need any assistance, let me know.

Tyrenius (talk) 11:05, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * }

Dave Clark Five
Are you certain that it is appropriate to include www.daveclarkfive.com as a link on the page? I had originally deleted it because it seems to be more about Mike Smith and contains little beyond a portrait of Smith and a comment from his widow Charlie. The fact that you may own the site name doesn't necessarily make it relevant to the Dave Clark Five page, without more, in my view. The two linked fansites contain much more band-related content.

Dreadarthur (talk) 04:48, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have reverted your recent edited inclusion of a link to the above mentioned website. Dreadarthur's comments seem to me more than reasonable, but, more to the point, a link to the self same article is already included in the Dave Clark Five article. More than enough, surely.


 * Derek R Bullamore (talk) 22:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)