User talk:ModernTwist34

Welcome to Wikipedia!
Hello, ModernTwist, and welcome! I'm just another volunteer editor, like yourself, although I've been contributing here for several years, now. I wanted to say that I was impressed with your writing at the Fredrik Gertten article. Unfortunately, your additions couldn't be allowed to stand, as they were, according to Wikipedia's polices.

Please don't be at all discouraged by that; that happens to everyone's first few contributions, almost without exception. Wikipedia is, indeed, "the encyclopaedia anyone can edit", but it just takes a little bit of learning about the process to make sure your contributions "stick", so to speak. Just for your own reference, your additions can be found in this previous version of the article. Don't try to edit that saved/archived version, though; any new additions would need to be made to the current version.

I agree, of course, that the article about Fredrik Gertten does need to include more information about him; it's much too short. But the problem is that we're not permitted to just add content to Wikipedia based on our own thoughts, impressions, or opinions, however valid they may be. This is especially true for biographies of living persons about which our policies are really quite restrictive, that way.

What has to happen, in order to any significant content to an article, is that one needs to find what we call reliable sources about the subject in the news media, in books, & etc. In this case, we'd need to find sources that have covered Gertten or his films, and write based on what they have to say, using our own words to avoid copyright violations. Then we have to reference or "cite" every source we use for the text we add. It's a bit of a chore to do that, but I think you'll find it's fun, too, to research what you're writing about. If you're unsure how to cite references, you can ask the other volunteers at our help desk ( a great resource for any question you have about anything here ) or you can look at the "wikitext" for other citations present in the article already.

Probably the simplest way to do it to just enclose a web link between the square brackets in the following a sequence of characters, filling in the correct information where indicated:

John Smith and Jane Doe are the place holder names of the story's authors, of course. There are a lot better and more sophisticated ways to do this, and if you stick around, you'll learn some of them as you go. But this method is certainly good enough for starting out. You'd place the above text, properly substituting the correct details for the news source you're citing, of course, just after the last sentence of the text or paragraph(s) you add to an article. Doing so will generate a corresponding "footnote" in the "references" section on the article's page. – OhioStandard  (talk) 09:14, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

A source, and a pre-formatted citation for you
Let me just offer up one "reliable source" that you could use as a basis for adding content to our articles on Bananas!*, on Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, and probably to the Fredrik Gertten article, as well. Like the Gertten article, the Big Boys article is just a "stub", essentially, a very short article that needs to be expanded to be useful to the reading public.

The source I was thinking of is an mp3 audio file of a radio programme I actually heard myself, this last Saturday. It was produced, in English, by the Radio Netherlands' The State We're In programme for World Press Freedom Day ( May 3rd ), and broadcast on 28 April 2012, in the United States, via NPR stations. The audio file of the programme can be downloaded from this web page; its actual file name including it's full URL path is:


 * http://download.radionetherlands.nl/rnw/smac/cms/en_tswi_big_boys_gone_bananas_20120428_64_44_2.mp3

You'd need to listen to the mp3 of the radio program, and write content based on what it says, as opposed to your own thoughts or opinions, which our no original research and verifiability policies prohibit. Of course, it might be simpler, starting out, to find print sources in the media. I did take a quick look for those, btw, via Google, and didn't really find much. My very brief search led me to suspect that the films, and Gertten himself, might have been bypassed to an extent by the mainstream media. A more thorough search might very well prove me wrong, however.

I mentioned above that there are more sophisticated ways to cite a source than the example I provided. I won't try to explain it, since citing a radio programme and mp3 file is a bit more complex. I'm no expert, either; no doubt someone who's studied the details of "best practices" for citing sources on Wikipedia could provide better guidance, but I've included some pre-formatted text below that you can copy-and-paste to cite the Radio Netherlands source I've described here. It uses the cite episode template that we employ here for both video and audio programs. Here's the effect it will generate:

... In a radio interview produced by The State We're In for the 2012 World Press Freedom Day, Gertten told how California's statutes against so-called SLAPP lawsuits eventually allowed him to prevail in a lawsuit brought by Dole that sought to bar distribution of his film, Bananas!*. He said that he never considered giving up ... blah, blah, blah.


 * References

You can't see the actual text to copy to make the reference appear until you're in "edit mode" for this talk page, of course, but I've left you "hidden text" notes above, about what text to copy, i.e. notes that only appear when you're actually editing a page, as opposed to just viewing it.

The nice thing about formatting the reference the way I've shown above is that when you need to indicate that a given passage you've added to the article depends on this radio programme for its source, you can "re-use" the citation you created, anywhere in the article, by just adding the text after the passage you've written. But note the second-to-last character in that is a "backslash". You don't use that backslash the very first time you define a reference anywhere in the article, but you do need to do so for subsequent re-use.

Again, if any of this seems too complicated, just ask for assistance at the help desk. If you ask nicely, someone there will probably just add the citation in the way I've indicated here to the actual text you've written that's based on it.

You might also like to have a look at the "labor relations" section of our article on the Dole Food Company. It includes a fair amount of material that's not in any of the articles about Fredrik Gertten or his films, and should be very useful if you want to add to them. – OhioStandard  (talk) 12:50, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

A few more things
If you'd like to reply to any of my comments, you can do so here; just add them below my "signature", after whichever of my posts you're responding to. I've temporarily added this page to my "watchlist", so I'll be sure to be alerted to any response you make. I admit that I don't keep up with my watchlist as well as I might, though, so I can sometimes be a little slow getting back to people. If it looks like I've forgotten about you, please feel free to add a note to the bottom of my own talk page. You'll find a link you can click on at the end of my "signature" below, that will take you there.

If you want a faster answer to some question, do remember the help desk, where you'll usually get a reply to any basic questions within 20 minutes or so, depending on what time of day you add your question there. Alternatively, you can just type the eleven (including the space) characters at the bottom of your talk page, and click on the "save page" button. After you do, use your browser's "refresh" or "reload" page repeatedly, and you'll find a message within (usually) a few minutes from a help desk volunteer who'll have a chat with you right here on your talk page, to try to assist you with whatever questions you might have.

In closing, let me just once again welcome you here. I'm glad you showed up, and I hope you stick around. You'll be contributing to the production of the largest and most widely accessible encyclopaedia the world has ever known, you'll get to communicate with interesting people from all around the world - some of them experts in their fields, as well as loads of well read, intelligent amateurs - and you'll generally just have fun.

You'll also inevitably encounter the occasional 14-year old brat, or, more regrettably, some adults who act like one, but please don't let that trouble you. If any problems of that nature arise, remember the help desk. The volunteers there tend to be quite experienced, and will be able to help you deal with any such annoyance. I'm not a site administrator, by the way, but you'd also be welcome to leave a note on my own talk page if you're unsure about how to deal with any problematic situation that might arise.

I'll also mention that you might like to create your own "sandbox", a test area to experiment with this "wikitext" stuff, e.g. to try out how to format references and such, away from an actual article. Most editors have one; they're pretty useful. I won't try to explain how to set one up here; it's really pretty simple, but I'd suggest you ask for help. You'll need a reflist template at the bottom of your sandbox page, for example, in order for any references you try out to actually show up once you click "preview" or "save page". Cheers, and happy editing. – OhioStandard  (talk) 12:50, 1 May 2012 (UTC)