User talk:Denise Tompkins

Welcome!
Hello Denise Tompkins, welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page contains a lot of helpful material for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place   on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. -- MST  ☆  R   (Chat Me!) 12:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Help request 1
I have added Candy Palmater to Stand up comedians, Canadian Comedians articles, as she is one of canada,s well loved comedians. I am trying to link to the external sources to authenticate and verify what I am doing, however help is required. Your guideline is not helpful.

In general, a person or organization added to a list, as on Stand-up comedy, should have a pre-existing article to establish notability. If you wish to create such an article, please confirm that your subject is notable according to Wikipedia's notability guideline. Thank you. -- MST  ☆  R   (Chat Me!) 12:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Help request 2
I have added Candy Palmater to Stand up comedians, Canadian Comedians articles, as she is one of canada,s well loved comedians. I am trying to link to the external sources to authenticate and verify what I am doing, however help is required. Your guideline is not helpful.


 * Hi Denise. I would be glad to help you get appropriate references into the article.  There's sort of two aspects to that.  One is "what does the Wikipedia community describe as an appropriate source/reference?", and the second is "what do I do to get it to show up the way people expect?"


 * The first part is a little more complicated. Generally we're looking for sources which are reliable (that is, not very biased or tabloidy), secondary and independent (that is, something that isn't connected with what's being written about.  In general for entertainers those sources usually turn out to be newspaper articles, magazine articles, or descriptions in books.  Most blogs or even other Wikipedia articles fail the "reliable" test; most press releases (even ones reprinted by a newspaper) fail the "secondary and independent" part.


 * Once you've got a good source, though, then the fun really begins. :)


 * So something like this would be an appropriate reference. Now, the way I'd usually put that into a Wikipedia article is a bit messy, but part of the work looks already done. Let's say that that article verified something we wanted to say in the article, such as that she's a comedian.  In that case, after in the text where it says she's a comedian, I'd add code that looks like this:


 * into the text right after the material that the Winnipeg Free Press article refers to. If I did that, a little [10] (or the same with some other number) would appear in the article where all the code I just gave you above would be, and then the actual formatted reference would appear in the References section down below.  I see that there already is a "Reflist" in the article on Candy, so you don't need to add anything to her article to get the new reference to show up, except insert the text I just gave you above after the material that the WFP article verifies.


 * I know that code looks messy, but it's not as bad as it looks. There's a button maked "Cite" you can press that will let you select between "cite web", "cite news", "cite book" and so forth that gives  you a little form to fill out.  That is, it'll have a blank for the author's first name, their last name, the newspaper, and so forth.  Just fill in those you know, leave blank those you don't. And the end, you'll press something like "insert", and all the code will be inserted into your text, that's how I entered the example above.


 * I've thrown a lot of information at you, and probably overlooked a few details, so please let me know if this is helpful, and how I might clarify further. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:46, 28 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I also noticed that you had attempted to add it to the List of Canadian Comedians, and make a fix there. To link from that list to the article on Candy, you need to enclose the article title in double square brackets.  If I say Candy Palmater or Candy Palmater when I edit, what shows up in the article is this: "Candy Palmater or Candy Palmater" ... you can see that the first is linked, the second isn't.  Hope that helps!  --j⚛e deckertalk 18:53, 28 July 2012 (UTC)