User talk:Jessdonohue

Welcome
 Hi Jessdonohue, and Welcome to Wikipedia!  Welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy the encyclopedia and want to stay. As a first step, you may wish to read the Introduction.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at my talk page — I'm happy to help. Or, you can ask your question at the New contributors' help page.

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Adding references to Tolkien tourists to other articles
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add promotional material to articles. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" is strongly discouraged. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Michellecrisp (talk) 00:12, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Improving the article
To answer the question at your blog entry, no, a blog isn't the right place to get answers about improving Wikipedia - Wikipedia is the right place to post questions. The welcome section, above, has lots of links for where to get help. And for information on writing new articles, see the "New articles" topic in the editor's index.

Now to be specific: When you write an article (or add content to an existing article), you should always work from sources. Your goal should be to add absolutely no facts to Wikipedia unless they come from a reliable source, and to always cite that source (ideally, in a footnote), so that other editors can verify it as well as use the source to expand the article further. Footnotes also point readers to sources of more (detailed) information.

So, to point out the obvious, the article Tolkien tourist should, given the limited number of sources cited, be much shorter - or you should find more sources. Sentences like "The phenomenon of media-driven tourism is one that has escalated in recent decades, directly tied to the predominance of the internet as means of communication and the increased availability of travel" absolutely cry out for a source - because if what you're writing is your opinion/supposition/best guess, it's a violation of Wikipedia's no original research policy. Or "Tourists travel across the globe hoping to catch a glimpse of Middle Earth as it was portrayed on-screen." (Though that may be simple puffery - one tourist from North America, one from South America, one from Europe, and a couple from parts of Asia coming to NZ to look at the scenery would technically make the sentence true - and, since Wikpedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, also inappropriate. Hopefully the sentence isn't just taken from an tourist promotion site, but actually comes from a good source, though I'm doubtful.) -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 15:12, 9 April 2008 (UTC)