User talk:Castlequeen

About your Everett High edit
Hi Castlequeen, thanks for your edit on Everett High School (Washington). I noticed you're a new user so I wanted to explain more carefully why I undid your edit. I was new at this just a few months ago myself, so I know what a pain it is when people correct your work and cite a bunch of rules you don't understand.

First of all, I wasn't sure but it seemed possible that the person you were listing was still alive, given the one date you listed. One of Wikipedia's strongest policies is that information about people who are still alive must have citations. I think this is because they're worried about issues of libel. You can read more about this at Biographies of living persons.

Second, the biographical information about the person you listed wouldn't belong in the article about his high school, anyway. Wikipedia has guidelines for identifying whether a person is "notable." If they are, then they merit a Wikipedia article about them and you could put a link to the name in a place like the list of alumni. If they don't meet the notability requirement, they probably don't belong on the list of notable alumni anyway. Those guidelines are found at Notability (people).

Before I reverted your edit, I did some Google searches on several variants of the name of the person you listed and couldn't find any secondary sources who wrote about him. If I had, I would have added the citation to what you wrote rather than just removing it. If you have some, even if they aren't available online (newspapers, books, movies, whatever: see Citing sources for help on that. You can even start a new article about him if he meets the notability standards: see Your first article for help on that.

The bottom line is, I wanted to explain why I reverted your edit so it wasn't just an unexplained bummer. More importantly, I wanted to let you know that your work is appreciated, and that you should keep editing even if you're not sure you're doing it right. Usually people will improve your work if they can, not just undo it. It's nearly impossible to break anything that can't be fixed, and I've found there are lots of kind people willing to help when I/you don't know how to do something. I'm happy to help if you have any other questions, too. Go to my talk page and click "new section" near the top to leave me a message. Thanks again for your edit; I hope I don't scare you off! Best, W.stanovsky (talk) 07:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)