User talk:Jessicalipnack

Your submission at Articles for creation
 Doron Weber, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created. The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article. You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer. Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia! Alexrexpvt (talk) 16:13, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk.
 * If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider.

Your submission at Articles for creation: Doron Weber
 The article you submitted to Articles for creation has been created. You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer. Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia! Jessicalipnack (talk) 05:36, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk.
 * If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider.

I'm uncertain what I'm supposed to be writing here but I've put in a lot more citations. Is this sufficient to upgrade this article? Jessicalipnack (talk) 05:36, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi - thanks for all the help on the article, including adding citations. I really appreciate this as this piece is my first time out. I referenced multiple sources for the assertion that Weber has "pioneered the synergistic use of media and the arts to translate science for the public" -- linking to plays, TV, and films that he's supported. He is quoted or named or pictured in all of them. Will those do? Re: the citation for the Century Club -- I don't think they publish their membership so what do I do about that? That's it for now and thanks again for the quick and thorough work. I'll likely blog this experience at endlessknots.netage.com.Jessicalipnack (talk) 6:38 pm, Yesterday (UTC+0)


 * I've reverted some of the good faith changes you made to the Doron Weber article. As the article's already in mainspace (i. e., has already been created), it's not necessary to resubmit it to Articles for Creation. There are also some formatting issues you should be aware of: according to the Manual of Style, external links shouldn't be used in the body of the article: I've removed them, and converted the external links into properly formatted citations. References should generally be formatted as inline citations (though there are exceptions), and come after rather than before punctuation. I've fixed some of the wikilinks you re-added; and I've removed the  tags, which aren't needed. You should also try to avoid removing maintenance tags such as   unless you've fixed the problem that's been highlighted. You might find this guide to referencing useful. If you've any questions about editing, feel free to visit the Teahouse,  which is a friendly forum for new editors. Alexrexpvt (talk) 07:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, I just saw this and hope that I haven't messed things up again. I left you a message on your Talk page asking some more questions. I apologize if there's anything that needs to be fixed again. My bad.

I'm afraid I don't understand everything here like or good faith.

IN any event, how can I get the status of this article upgraded?


 * To keep everything together, I've moved your first comment from my talk page to yours: I hope that's all right.
 * Don't worry about the formatting: I think you may have pasted an older version of the page over the newer, and inadvertently undone some of the citation formatting, but I was able to revert it, then incorporate the new information you'd added.
 * I presume when you say upgrade it, you'd like to move the article from start-class to, say, C or B class? The best way to do this is to look first at the relevant article criteria, in this case the B class (although it doesn't hurt to look at the good article criteria); check systematically that the article meets each of the criteria and improve it where it doesn't; then submit the article for peer review, which you can do here. You can look through some of the other nominations for peer review to see what you can expect from the process.
 * Looking again at the article I can see certain improvements that could be made fairly easily:
 * 1) The lead section should summarize the rest of the article, but at the moment it includes some information that's never mentioned again, such as Weber's education and former jobs. It might be better to move this to a separate "Biography" or "Life" section.
 * 2) The biographical information could be expanded a little bit, e. g., you could give the exact date and place of birth.
 * 3) The article says that he studied at the Sorbonne, but it doesn't say which part of the Sorbonne, for example, the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris-Sorbonne University, or the Pantheon-Sorbonne University.
 * 4) The link to the Century Club goes to a disambiguation page at the moment, do you mean that he's a member of the Century Association, the literary club? Or the Travelers' Century Club? If you can't verify information about a living person, it's usually better to leave it out.
 * 5) The sections on Immortal Bird and his work at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation are fine for a start-class article, but as you move up through the assessment criteria parts of them become problematic. The section on the book, for instance, comprises a brief summary of the subject, a list of awards, and the expected publication date of the paperback. Generally, information about upcoming events isn't included, because Wikipedia isn't a newspaper. Lengthy lists of awards without any supporting context can appear promotional, rather than encyclopedic. It's very important to maintain a neutral point of view. Ideally, coverage of a book includes information about the book's reception and cultural impact: book reviews, discussions in scholarly journals or monographs, and so on. (I appreciate some of this may simply not exist in this case).
 * 6) The "pioneered" bit will always be tricky: to pioneer is literally to mine or clear a path, and generally implies being the first to do something: merely giving examples of work he's sponsored doesn't prove that he was the first to do it, or that he made other work in the field possible. It would be better if you could find a profile of him in a reputable newspaper, say, that specifically discusses his work and describes it as "pioneering" (or something synonymous).
 * 7) The Awards section is problematic for similar reasons: in the first sentence, for instance, it says that the Sloan Foundation received an award from the National Science Board, which "cit[ed] Weber's program", but the source given doesn't mention Weber at all, only Ralph P. Gomory.
 * Apologies for the inordinate length of this post, but these are the sort of issues that'll be flagged up at peer review. Of course, Wikipedia is a work in progress, you don't have to labour heroically to get the article to Featured Article status today. It's fine to take your time, wait for other editors to get involved, take advantage of the peer review process, and spend time getting to know Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and the Manual of Style. Alexrexpvt (talk) 09:02, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Afterthought: It's worth reading the Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons. Unsourced or poorly-sourced claims about living subjects are very likely to be challenged or removed. Alexrexpvt (talk) 10:38, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

And...THANK YOU, ALEXREX, for this incredibly clear and helpful response. I'm the kind of person who learns best from other people so your taking the time to be this precise is more than appreciated. I wish you'd been here last night when I was trying to reset the fire alarm system which actually required my reading all the directions.

I'm packing up all these suggestions to pull out as I can address them. It would be quite an achievement, it seems, to get this to FEATURED ARTICLE status.

I particularly appreciate your closing, which is that there's time to improve. It's not like the article has an expiration date. I can also see how time consuming this could become, how even a single article can become a project of its own.

Will you always be the person responding on this article? And why did it come to you to review it in the first place? Is there a pool of articles that editors can choose from or do you just take the next one on the conveyor belt when you have the time?

Finally despite what I say, I will indeed read the links you recommend. Even if it is extremely painful :) Jessicalipnack (talk) 18:55, 20 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, because I approved it at AfC, I had the article on my watchlist, and saw the changes you made, but I won't always be the one to intervene. Since no one owns Wikipedia articles, editors generally come and go: sometimes there are flurries of activity, sometimes articles lie dormant for years.


 * New articles generally end up in one of two places: those created by registered users end up here, and those created by unregistered users end up here, though some registered users choose to submit their articles to AfC. Anyone can review submissions in either place, and there are certain checklists to go through. Because it's completely voluntary, it's a matter of luck what sort of reviewer you'll get: some actively edit and improve the article, some add maintenance tags, some decline (and keep declining) the submission until it meets certain basic standards. Newly created articles quite often end up being nominated for deletion; and since it can be very discouraging seeing your hard work being deleted because it doesn't meet some policy or guideline, I try to leave articles that I review in a decent state to discourage other editors from nominating them for deletion.


 * Featured articles are pretty rare: out of the 4,148,541 articles on Wikipedia, only 3,783 are featured. The problem is not just compliance with various policies and guidelines, but finding enough reliable sources. It's easier to write a featured article on Tchaikovsky or Shakespeare, both of whom have been the subject of countless books, articles, documentaries, and films, than it is to write about a subject that's received only a few passing mentions in newspaper articles. Alexrexpvt (talk) 10:18, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, very informative. This is a far more populated and complex universe than I could have imagined -- and I've actually been paying attention for a number of years. But reading about and participating in are quite different. May I ask why, if you recall, you chose to work on my article? Was it just the next on the list, or you like biographical pieces, or ... ?

BTW, I get what you're saying about making it to the .1 of 1% here (do I have that right)? Very few. That said, I'm a writer and now I have a new goal. Maybe not this piece but one, someday... Jessicalipnack (talk) 04:12, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I was working very unsystematically from the back of the queue through the newer submissions, mostly looking for copyright violations and the like. Weber seemed to satisfy the notability guidelines and the submission was in a fairly good shape. Many of the articles that come through AfC are completely unsourced, promotional, or copied and pasted from somewhere else: it's nice to come across one that's not. Alexrexpvt (talk) 19:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)