User talk:BookBard

BookBard here! As you may have guessed, I love books, and my quest is to bring book info that is missing here to Wikipedia. I have found a few books in the past through this site that I would not have found otherwise, usually through articles on historical people. Inspirational fiction and historical fiction are my passions, so I hope to use what I have learned (and will learn) to make Wikipedia a better place. I hope I will be able to provide information to book lovers such as myself and direct them to new treasures.

That being said, I am very new to Wikipedia and am still trying to figure things out. I'm writing this on September 10, 2012 and hopefully at some later date I can change this paragraph. However, if I do make mistakes, please be patient with me. I figure the only way I can really learn is to start editing.

Now I am off to make the world a better place for book lovers :)

BookBard (talk) 17:26, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Hello!
Hi BookBard, thanks for getting in touch! I think it's awesome you're thinking of contributing to literature articles, a subject that is really very overlooked as a whole. Unfortunately, the Novels/Books/Literature WikiProjects are rather stagnant at the moment, so I don't know how much help they will be to you. I would suggest, depending on what you'd like to write about, start with the guidelines and go from there. There are different types of articles, such as lists (List of novelists by nationality) or standalone articles about works of literature (The Red Badge of Courage), and each has their own style guideline as well as the Wikipedia Manual of Style to follow. Style guidelines like Manual of Style/Novels are mostly suggestions for how an article should look, but it helps create a standardized framework if you want to create an article from scratch or else expand it. I'm not too familiar with writing lists, but I'm sure there are guidelines out there for those, too; most of the time I just search for something using the default Wiki searchbox, and usually there's something out there!

If you have questions about whether or not an article should be created, I suggest posting to a similar article's talk page to ask for opinions. For example, if you're not sure that an article for a specific book should exist based on notability guidelines, you can post to the talk page for the author. The important thing is that the subject is notable and can be verified by reliable, third party sources. If it is and it can, then I would say create away! And if you're not sure about how an article should look, then there's always the style guidelines. I hope this helps. If you have any other questions, let me know. :) María ( yllo  submarine ) 13:45, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly! I hope I am replying correctly . . .  I am sad that there aren't more people working on literature, but I guess it is an extra good thing then if I'm doing my part?  I'm not quite sure how WikiProjects works, but I was thinking it was to see if an article was of interest and look to see if there was help needed in a certain area.  I was also thinking that an article had to be approved by a group, but I'm not so sure about that one now.  The one article I wrote, I ended up putting in the wrong place so I kept looking at the list of submissions and wondering why mine wasn't on there and getting closer to the beginning.  Luckily I figured that out yesterday!


 * When I read through the guidelines, sometimes I'm not sure if I'm understanding everything correctly. Would you mind if I double checked with you if I got it right?  I was looking through notability guidelines, and since I'm wondering about lists in particular, I thought the section "Stand-alone lists" was the area that would tell me what works and what doesn't.  Am I understanding it correctly that if I link to an article about the list of books, that qualifies as citing/notability?  I posted something at the bottom of Portal talk:United Kingdom (I hope I linked that right?) when first looking for groups before I realized a literature group would be better.  It made a nice little box for me and I didn't even know it would do that!  Anyway, using that as an example, if I linked "Henry II","Eleanore of Aquitaine", etc. to their pages and kept them in the heading of the section, does that work with the notability guidelines?  I would still want to write a blurb at the top of the list/article about historical novels and England using outside sources if I could.  Right now, this is my major goal as far as my historical fiction side of me goes.


 * Then for my inspirational fiction side, would you mind looking at the article/biography I wrote and telling me what you think? Let me see if I can link this right Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Julie Klassen.  I did as much as I could and from looking at other author's edit history, it looks like other interested people would jump in.  I tried uploading a picture (there is a promotional one on the publisher's website), but when I had to defend my reasoning for why it was okay to use it, I was really confused and thought that could wait for later when I had figured out pictures.  Anyway, I'm not asking you to push it through (I don't know if you can even do that?), but more asking if I'm on the right track?  Do you have any suggestions?  If I put something like this together for other authors would it be better if I did/didn't do something?


 * Thank you again for your help! Please let me know if I'm being a pest or breaking etiquette!  BookBard (talk) 21:18, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're definitely replying correctly, and no worries about breaking etiquette or anything -- it's good you're asking questions! I'm going to take your questions in parts, if you don't mind:
 * "I was also thinking that an article had to be approved by a group, but I'm not so sure about that one now." New articles don't have to be approved at all.  Anyone with an account can come in and create articles on any number of subjects, including books and bands and species of turtles.  Of course, that also means that anyone can come along and propose the article for deletion if they think it doesn't fulfill notability guidelines.  It's usually the responsibility of the article's creator to prove the topic is notable enough for inclusion on Wikipedia, which is why a good grasp of reliable sourcing is so important.
 * I see you're using WikiProject Articles for creation which I'm not too familiar with, but it seems that it gives newish users the opportunity to test the waters of article creation and perhaps seek feedback about their work. I'm not sure how it works in practice, or if it's even truly that helpful -- but the article you "created" there (Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Julie Klassen) doesn't exist in the mainspace, which means that it's not actually an article yet.  It needs to be reviewed, most likely by someone from the WikiProject, after which (I guess?) someone will move what you've written to its own article at Julie Klassen.  Then it will be an article.  You are 100% allowed to simply click on the red link that says Julie Klassen and create an article from scratch -- anyone with an account is free to do the same!
 * "Am I understanding it correctly that if I link to an article about the list of books, that qualifies as citing/notability?" Not exactly.  Notability means that there are external, reliable sources (news or journal articles, books, films, etc.) that prove the topic you're writing about is notable.  Notability must be verifiable, which means that an article usually can't exist "just because".  So for example, were I to create an article for my (non-existent) indie band, I would have to prove that the topic -- my band -- is notable.  I could do this by linking to local newspaper articles that mention my band winning an award, a nationally-recognized magazine article that mentions our newest album, and so on.  I can't just link to our official website while trying to prove notability, because that isn't a reliable source -- the website is not third party, so it's not reliable.  Any doofus can create a website for their crappy band, right?
 * "It made a nice little box for me and I didn't even know it would do that!" Haha, that box is there because there are spaces in front of your text, which Wiki doesn't like:

See? :)
 * As for your idea about the List of historical novels about British monarchs, I don't think notability will be an issue. It's a great idea.  I have never written a list myself, but it usually works that for each item on the list you need to prove that it belongs there.  So for historical novels about Henry VIII, you could include Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, including the links to the Wikipedia articles as I've just done, but you could also include the bibliographic information (author, publisher, ISBN, etc.), a brief description, and references that prove the books are historical novels that heavily feature Henry VIII.  Because these books are rather notable, there are tons of sources.  It may be more difficult for lesser known works, but even links to book reviews would be helpful in creating a great list.  The idea is to cover all bases so someone doesn't come along and remove information nilly willy.  It's also helpful for that when someone wants to add information that doesn't belong (like the film The Lion in Winter) -- if every other item is reliable and notable for inclusion, than bad additions will stick out like a sore thumb.
 * I hope I covered it all. Let me know if something needs further clarification! María ( yllo  submarine ) 13:03, 25 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you SO SO SO much!!! You have been so helpful and you have answered so many questions and I don't feel nearly as lost as I did a few days ago!  I'll probably feel lost again when I get to formatting, but I just need to keep working on that since I'm not familiar with it ;)  I'm going to get that article out of the draft section and see about putting it "live", then study lists.  Again, thank you SO much!  You have been so helpful and I really appreciate it :)  I'm not sure if there's anything I can do for you yet, but if you do need help in the future, please let me know :)  BookBard (talk) 20:45, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Julie Klassen
Welcome!

Sure, I tagged the article for multiple reasons, however I don't think any of them are severe, merely things to be improved upon.

I think some of the wording is not written from a neutral point of view. (As well as a few other concerns I listed on the article)

Feel free to remove the tags at any time if you feel the concerns have been addressed. If you don't feel comfortable doing so, you can ask me or another experienced editor to take a look at it to remove the tags.

Let me know if you have any further questions, LegoKontribsTalkM 01:57, 26 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for getting back to me! I'm glad it wasn't anything serious and I didn't "break Wikipedia"!  It's a little overwhelming at first.BookBard (talk) 16:47, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You probably will never "break Wikipedia" at this point in your Wikipedian career. Content changes are easily fixable, because every page has a Help:Page_history. If you ever get access to changes on the software (which is a very small group of people, maybe 3-4 dozen on English Wikipedia) then you will have that power, but for now, remember, its all about Being Bold!Sadads (talk) 17:28, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Re Bibliographies
Bookbard,

Lists of books (Bibliographies) are much different than any other list on WP. First and foremost, the topic of the list should be notable and meet the criteria in WP:NOTESAL. It is a simple criteria--has a reliable source discussed the items in the list as a group (ie a list). In the case of bibliographies, has someone discussed the list of particular books as a group? In your request you mention Right now, the biggest list I would like to make is of novels/fiction books based on the lives of English royals or having them as a character in a book. Another idea I had was novels/historical fiction that are significant as far as a state's history (similar to the list of fiction by country, but just by state).

I would say that the proposed topics are most likely notable. In other words you should be able yo find sources that say discuss historical fiction of [state] as a group, ie a list of those books.

As you get started on this endeavor, I would suggest starting draft articles in your user space so I can look at them and advise as appropriate. It is generally easy to start articles in user space to play around with the bits and pieces. Once complete, they are easy to move to the article space. If you know how to get started, start one of you lists and send me the link. If you don't know how to start drafting an article in user space, let me know and I'll help you get it started.--Mike Cline (talk) 11:29, 9 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much for getting back to me! I talked with someone earlier and she thought the list of books on English royals was notable, so I am glad to have two people think so, especially since lists are your specialty.  I actually have something I started in my user area: User:BookBard/List of historical novels about British monarchs.  I haven't added any books yet because I'm still trying to figure out the headings.  I wrote this all out in paragraph form, and since this is about lists after all, I think I'll ask my questions in a list to make it easier.

1. There are some significant royals who didn't rule, and I wasn't sure where to add them. Maybe a better way to phrase that is that there are some significant novels on royals who didn't rule. I also wasn't sure which list to use.

2.A lot of people start counting at 1066, but there are books on royals before the Norman period. Also, there are some rulers who were only declared rulers and I wasn't sure how far to go as far as them being on the list or not. I used Wikipedia's list for most of it, but I left out some people.

3. One big question I have is if there is a way to have hidden headings? I would rather have too much information than too little, and I want it to be easy for people to add to this list. In the two author bios I have made so far, I used an info box template, and if I didn't fill out a category, it didn't show up on the viewing page. I will be able to have a book for every ruler from William the Conqueror (1066) until Queen Victoria (1901), but I know I won't have any for some of the rulers before and after.

4. I'm not sure if it would be better to have them as headers to signify that they did in fact rule or to not have them there at all.

5. Another thing is what to do as far as relationships. Henry VIII is definitely gets a special way of doing things, and each of his wives have their own heading (no pun intended). Some rulers had significant mistresses, friends, etc. Do novels about them get included? It almost seems as though I would need a separate list for significant people during X's reign!

6. Then also, if there is overlap, do I list a book more than once? Eleanor of Aquitaine played a significant role in more than one reign, but she was the wife of only one English king. Do I mention a book about her more than once on the list then?

7. Which brings me to another question: as you can see, I have the wives listed with the husbands, but should I separate them if there are a significant number of books focusing on the wife (have more headings like Henry VIII's)?

8. Cromwell ruled but wasn't a royal. I don't know if he should be included. I personally wouldn't want to include him, but I'm not sure that is neutral.

I guess what I'm looking for is how to keep this clean, consistent, and easy to read. I have been trying to find rules that would apply to this list, and so far I'm stumped. What I thought would originally be an easy list to make turned out to be more complicated than I thought. Is there precedent for something like this that I can follow, or will I get to make it up? I was hoping to get your opinion since you have so much experience with lists. BookBard (talk) 20:00, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Novels
Hello BookBard. I noticed you're interested in the WikiProject Novels. I joined the project today. Apparently there are sections of the project which have gone inactive, and which need to be revived. (Much of the regular activities like newsletters have gone defunct.) Would you like to work on reviving these areas of the project? We could try and pull together a team from recent active contributors. Bubka42 (talk) 11:11, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Julie Klassen (September 12)
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