User talk:MarkWHowe

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Happy editing! Cheers, lavender &#124;(formerly HMSSolent )&#124; lambast  04:15, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Reverted, reverted, reverted
You added paragraphs of content to three articles without at the same time adding references to confirm the new content. For this reason, those changes were reverted (reversed). The content can be seen and rescued from View history. If you have references to support the deleted content, you can copy that content into your Sandbox, add properly formatted references there, then return the content and references to the articles. Wikipedia requires reliable source references. Learn more about that at WP:42. The same applies to your intent to create and submit a draft about IB Howe. David notMD (talk) 15:19, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

None of that
None of that can be accepted for an article. If you submit it, it will either be Speedy deleted or Rejected. In an article about a person, every fact statement must be verified by a published reference. Your content has no references! Please look at the example articles about other railroad civil engineers as examples of referencing. David notMD (talk) 00:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC)


 * But you said you cannot accept letters or magazine articles/ text.  Others here said they wanted more details so I posted them.
 * Several here have indicated it takes months to get acceptyed. I assumed there would be time to enter what documentation you will accept is availble.  Remember, this is from the very beginning of the CNW and there is very little lit. that IB Howe existed.  I am depending on you guys to help with what can be published. MarkWHowe (talk) 03:01, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * References are to be added at the same time content is added. When a draft is submitted to Articles for Creation for review, the review can take place any time between hours to months. There is a backlog of thousands of drafts but the system is not a queue. Rather, reviewers select what to review next. Teahouse Hosts are there to advise, not to be co-authors or reference finders. A collection of letters cannot be references. Ditto historical society newsletters and websites. David notMD (talk) 03:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * To my knowledge, [which is very limited,] I have not submitted antything to AfC as you call it. Am I allowed to 'play' in my 'sandbox' without risk of deletion?  Obviously it would be difficult to annotate 10000 words of text at the same time it is added to my sandbox.  Or is there a better way? MarkWHowe (talk) 14:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * kAnother thing, I have seen comments about adding a 'signature'; it looks like four tildas make a signature?? I have not done that, should I? MarkWHowe (talk) 14:19, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You can certainly play around with your sandbox without the risk of deletion. I can't help with much right now but I should be able to get some of these issues sorted out soon, probably next week. (Also, yes, four tildes makes a signature) BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:07, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! MarkWHowe (talk) 02:52, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Apologies for taking a bit longer than promised. I've been busier than expected, but should be able to take a look within a few days. I haven't forgotten about Isaac Howe! BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:08, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you; I have been working for years so another few days is nothing. :-}   I appreciate your interest. MarkWHowe (talk) 16:55, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Confirming that you can keep content in your Sandbox indefinitely. If you convert it to a draft and do not submit, there is a six month deadline if no editing is done to a draft. One point about your Sandbox is that it is invisible to external search such as Google and also to internal search within Wikipedia. The only reason people (me, others) are aware of it is because you submitted a query to Teahouse. David notMD (talk) 03:54, 27 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that is helpful MarkWHowe (talk) 05:18, 27 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I take exception to the claim that a personal sandbox is invisible to an internal search e.g. User talk:MarkWHowe/sandbox. Fabrickator (talk) 06:19, 27 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm available now. I took a look. Wow – that is a lot of information you put about Howe. A few thoughts. I'm afraid it'll need a good deal of cleanup and probably some significant trimming down (for example, the sandbox should focus more on Howe himself – I think it gets a little too off-topic at times), but I'm willing to work with you to get an article published. I moved it to User:MarkWHowe/sandbox and added an infobox with a picture. A significant issue is how much of the content is unreferenced – generally each paragraph should have a citation at the end like this: . Where exactly did you get all the information from (is it all from letters, some from other places, etc.)? Ultimately I don't think the much of the text of the letters will be able to be included (although if essential to explaining certain parts, they may be able to be used in a limited way – we'll see). Also, its a little difficult to go through the sandbox since the text talking about Howe and Howe's letters are intertwined: do you think you could sort them out? For now, the letters can be put into the formatting: "text of letters" . What do you think? BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:50, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes! and thanks! I have lots of references, many of which I have incorporated into edits of 'Galena and Chicago Union', 'Cedar Rapids and Missouri River', and 'first transcontinental' and 'George L. Dunlap'.   First I need to clean up the text area where it gets 'off topic'.  The quoted letters you think can be used in a limited fashion?  I was not sure.  To begin can you take a look at my edits and see what you think?  This would I think be helpful seeing how the wiki methodology works.  btw I finally figured out how to get a scanned document in; [CR&MR] does that work ok do you think??  Are the edits currently visible to the public or do they need to be vetted first?  Many questions...  sorry.
 * I need to do an extensive edit on Dr. Edward H Williams since he plays such a vast role in both IB Howe's story as well as railroading in general. Plus lots of references in unlikely places.  Thanks again.  ps.  I still haven't seen how to signature wth the 4 MarkWHowe (talk) 19:48, 11 May 2024 (UTC)  oops, just answered it.   :-)
 * From a quick look your edits look alright (although I'd recommend making sure the end of each paragraph added has a citation). I'm still a little unsure myself about the use of the letters – will try to read up more on that. The image uploaded looks alright (although I'd recommend putting it as copyright expired rather than as "own work"). It seems your edits to Galena and Chicago Union, CR&MR and Dunlap are all visible / published, but I'm not seeing anything added to first transcontinental unfortunately – make sure to always hit 'Publish changes' when you're done with an edit. Also, if you could add references to the sandbox on I. B. Howe that'd be great. Thanks, BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I have been adding references to IB Howe but it will take some time since there will be a lot of them.   My view on the letters is that they show what the person wrote rather than what they said is true, which would require other verification.  Also that letterheads are evidence.  Does that seem reasonable?  As you see, there are a number of famous persons that wrote the letters; governors, legislators, presidents of railroads, etc. //  I'm on a learning curve with citations; haven't figured out how to add page numbers and descriptions yet.  I seem to be able to copy and paste citations from other articles but have found a number of them that don't work.   //  I was surprised when my edits to 'First transcontinental' disappeared; I was not finished with it and had not had anything else disappear without first publishing and then an editor saying why they had deleted it. [all my original edits were deleted by editors but I had them backed up.] I often do my composing on notepad and then pasting when done; I should have donel that. //  re the photo box with data for IBHowe, is citation required for that, ie the Gregory source?  Can multiple offices be included?  I'll play around with it and you can advise.   // I will be on the road the next couple of days so may not be keeping up with this.  Thanks for the help.MarkWHowe (talk) 15:37, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think as long as the letters are confirmed to be written by important figures (such as governors and presidents of railroads you mention) they could probably be used in some capacity. There's several different ways to do citations – for a website, it can be done with the following format: (after the = sign the data must be entered, although it is not necessary to fill every parameter) – books can be cited with Template:Cite book (explained at the link), documents with Template:Cite document, journals with Template:Cite journal, etc. As for the infobox I added with Howe, the box itself probably will not need any citations. If there's any other offices that you'd like added, or if you need any more help with the citations, let me know. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:31, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, just got home and haven't gotten organized yet. Specifically re citations, I notice the urls are in normal blue underlined but the description prior is black and the page numbers after are also black but I haven't figured out how to add them later.  Also I couldn't figure out how to change the scan attribution from 'own work' [I scanned the document which had no copyright] to 'expired'.  Is it necessary to start from scratch?MarkWHowe (talk) 00:49, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * For citations, you can simply do basic cites (e.g. just the urls) and I can go back and fix them later. For uploading images correctly, I go to File upload wizard, and after selecting the image choose the option "This is someone else's work and is free to share." Then I click below "This work is not protected by copyright law and hence has no associated license" and choose "First published in the United States before 1929", then continue with adding the normal details such as title, description, etc. You could re-upload it if you like, although I don't think there's going to be complaints if you don't. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:49, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I will do that in future. So there is no way to go back and edit that part without starting over.  Hopefully I will get some done today. MarkWHowe (talk) 16:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I finally got up the nerve to do a bunch of cites etc. on 'Edward H. Williams'. Could you take a look and see how i did?  I also have a 'mentor' asilvering; should I bug him with this and give you a break since you are helping with IB Howe?
 * My issues are how to cite the book : as an example.  And  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Vermont#cite_note-33  since I am not using it as a source but simply to show how it fits in. MarkWHowe (talk) 01:49, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm fine looking at Williams also if you like. Looks decent, although one is not allowed to cite Wikipedia in articles. (Also, although the vast majority should be, not everything is needed to be cited. E.g. If you have a reference saying Williams attended VT Medical College (in Woodstock) then, generally, it is not needed to include an additional reference for the location of the college, as long as you know that he attended that one in particular.). The book citation you made looks decent, although, if there's no url, then there shouldn't be an " " at the end. Also, I'd recommend changing the "id=pg. 159; 172" to "|pages=159, 172"; not major issues, though. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:12, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks; very helpful! My issue on VMC is that there is no other acknowledgment in Wiki that VMC Woodstock exists; Castleton was incorrect.  Glad to hear I am now overciting rather than under.  And that I now see that repairs can be made.  I really appreciate your help!  MarkWHowe (talk) 03:49, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * FINALLY I got around to checking the edit history for Williams and saw what you did; thanks for that! Also, it appeared like a bot had been able to go thru' and clean up the citations; is that true?  If that was indeed a bot or not, I thanked it.  If that service is available I am grateful.  Learning little by little, day by day. MarkWHowe (talk) 22:20, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That's correct: 'Citation bot' is a bot that goes through articles and tries to clean up the references. It's a decent tool, although not always perfect. BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Isaac Howe story in Chicago Geneaologist
I have provided a link to the Winter 2018 issue of "Chicago Geneaologist", including the story about Isaac Howe titled "A Railroad Superintendent Visits Chicago".

I make no claims that this meets the criteria for a reliable source nor whether it would contribute to the notability of Isaac Howe. Fabrickator (talk) 21:22, 26 April 2024 (UTC)


 * WOW Fabrickator, what a treasure trove I didn't know about. Pfannkuche is the author of my rejected CNW Lines source.  I wonder if he has any other articles around.  What a shame he didn't know about Dr. Williams.  Thank you! MarkWHowe (talk) 01:48, 27 April 2024 (UTC)