User talk:Lippmare

HI! Lippmare (talk) 21:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hola! Sadads (talk) 21:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Mentor
Rebecca, Yes, I'm happy to help you. I see that you have access to a lot of tutorials on Wikipedia, and that you have started simple editing. I would point out that when you leave a comment on a talk page, you should sign the comment by leaving four tildes ( ~ ) at the end. This will generate your user name and the time and date. If you will look at my talk page, you will see where a bot has signed your comment for you. However, getting in the habit of signing your comments will show courtesy to other editors. I'm usually on-line more than one time a day, and I'll try to respond quickly to any questions. I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury 22:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Just a note to say hello. I see that you have made a few grammar corrections in articles. Just remember that if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my talk page (I am usually active on Wikipedia at least a couple of times a day). If you are using IRC, just ask on #wikipedia-en-classroom. -- Donald Albury 11:29, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Article choice
I've taken a look at State bar association (notice the capitalization, Wikipedia is picky about capitalization in article titles). I think it can be expanded, but it is sort of sandwiched in between Bar association and the articles about various state bar associations. I notice that there are no articles for the bar associations in over half the states. Oh my, now I see Bar (law). I expect that State bar association will be more interesting than an article about one state's bar association. You should keep in mind as you work how the article fits in with Bar association, Bar (law) and the articles on the bar in the several states. Something else to think about is how the article relates to the bar associations in US commonwealths and territories (i,e, Puerto Rico Bar Association). You should start looking for sources. If you are going to have trouble finding reliable sources, you want to know as soon as possible. However, I don't think that will a problem on this topic. Books and scholarly journals are usually the most reliable sources, but on-line sources that support major points can be helpful to readers who don't have access to large college/university libraries, or, in this case, to law libraries. I hope my thoughts here are helpful. -- Donald Albury 22:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Your Question
In answer to your question, I would do a bit of research to see if you can find a least four good sources about an individual state, and if you can't, go ahead with the broader term. Henni2me (talk) 17:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, if your article has expanded five-fold, I would go ahead and nominate it for DYK. Head over to the did you know page and scan through the process and look at the suggestions on how to write a hook. Once you think you've got one, head over to the DYK template talk page and add your hook in the current nominations section.

Also, your idea of adding a paragraph here and there sounds good; it is definitely a good way to improve Wikipedia and learn a lot in the process! I'd run it by Cindy just to make sure she doesn't want you to keep working on the same article first. Good luck! Henni2me (talk) 00:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry to disappoint you, but you did not expand the article five-fold within five days. Please see Did you know/Additional rules for more on how the rules are interpreted. I think it was perhaps asking too much to expect a new editor to negotiate the requirements for DYK on his or her first article. I might add that my first self-nomination for DYK was rejected, and that was years ago when the criteria were much less detailed. In any case, what is important is what you learn from this process (and, of course, how you do in your course). -- Donald Albury 13:44, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Citing sources
Rebecca, the Wikipedia guideline for citing sources is at Wikipedia:Citing sources. You can also enter the shortcut WP:CITE in in the search box to get there. Don't worry about mastering all the stuff in the guideline, at least for now. Citations in the text of an article are placed inside the wiki markup. You will also need the template near the end of the article, in a section named ==Notes== or ==Citations==. The double dash ( == ) creates the section header in the displayed text.

The citation itself can take different forms. If you want to cite a page on the Internet a single time, place the URL plus some plain text name for the site inside square brackets (i.e., [URL name]). If you want to cite the same web page more than once, you can define a named ref that allows cites after the first one to be abbreviated. I'll let that go for now rather than try to cover too much. For print works you can follow a citation style that you are comfortable with: MLA, Harvard, etc. If you have such citations, you need to put the bibliographic information in a section I call ==References==, although I have seen ==Bibliography==. Take a look at a relatively small article I've recently completed, New Georgia, Liberia, and then open it for editing. Look at what the wiki code does.

Don't worry too much about getting everything right at first. As long as you provide enough information to identify your sources, other editors will help with the formatting. You may also notice the various templates available for formatting citations. Don't worry about them for now. It is perfectly acceptable to format citations by hand. In fact, I do not use the templates at all. While they help to impose a uniformity on citation style, they are not intuitive, and are difficult to work with in edit mode.

I hope that gives you a start. Ask any questions you may have and I will try my best to answer them. -- Donald Albury 22:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

And I will brag just a little. It looks like New Georgia, Liberia will be on the main page tomorrow afternoon in the Did you know ... section. -- Donald Albury 22:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Budget and Accounting Act
I was just looking at Budget and Accounting Act. Looks good. There are some formatting issues that I will help you with. One thing, for now. You have expanded the article by about 3 1/2 times in 4 days. If you expand an existing article at least 5x within 5 days, it is eligible for the Did You Know section on the Main Page. If you can add more to the article today, say by filling in the General Accounting Office section to at least the size of the Bureau of the Budget section, the article should be eligible for DYK. Unfortunately, I think that would have to done by this afternoon.

Something else, were you aware of Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 (Good-McCormack Act)? It is unsourced, newer than Budget and Accounting Act, and there has been a proposal to merge it into Budget and Accounting Act sitting on the page for a couple of years (apparently the merge proposal was never added to Budget and Accounting Act). I'll take care of it. -- Donald Albury 12:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I just made some changes to the formatting in the article. Specifically, citations should immediately follow punctuation (usually a period at the end of a sentence). There should never be a space before. We use straight-up quote marks (") for both opening and closing quotes in Wikipedia. For block quotes it is usually best to use the template. Finally, I reworded the sentence about the term of the Comptroller General to eliminate the pronoun. While gender-neutral language is recommended in Wikipedia, the pronoun "it" is not appropriate for a person. Keep up the good work. -- Donald Albury 12:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I apologize for not being in touch. I've been distracted off-wiki. I'm sorry to say that you did not expand the article five-fold within five days. Article size and expansion for DYK purposes is measured on prose text, which does not include infoboxes, headings, formatting, citations, references or any of the items found at the bottom of an article. How much more do you expect to do on the article? I'll keep an eye on the article. -- Donald Albury 02:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Checking in
How are you doing? I see that you are still working on your article. If you are interested in getting feedback from uninvolved editors, you can try at Requests for feedback. You might also ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law. I can't guarantee that you will get a response from either source, but it wouldn't hurt to try. -- Donald Albury 12:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Just checking with you again. I corrected the links I left in my last post (sorry about that). The article looks fine. If you are interested in soliciting comments from other users, you can still try those links. -- Donald Albury 00:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter
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GOCE drive newsletter
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GOCE newsletter
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GOCE 2011 Year-End Report
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