User talk:Nepaheshgar/General comments on Wikipedia

My general impression of Wikipedia is that suffers too much from ethno-nationalist writing with regards to history and social issues. But it is an excellence resource for scientific purposes. Countries that have had a short existence and are under dictatorial regimes will try to create romantic and fantastic national-identities which are not grounded in historical facts and are usually full of anachronism and nonsense. This is specially true with Near Eastern and former USSR countries that have territorial conflicts and whose existence are recent. Probably articles with regards to politicians might suffer the same fate. The other articles in Wikipedia, specially those about sciences are very useful. I have personally always tried to bring reputable sources for any claim.

Here are some useful materials that are drawn from my own experiences.

To cite
(Note you can use the cite tag in Wikipedia if you do now want to follow these formats) And see this also: CITEWIKI

If you want to cite a source, make sure the following lines are in the article without quotes: "==Notes== "

citing books
You can use the following guidelines although there are no set guidelines. You must put the citation between the " " tag.

-for books: Miller J. (2005), The Title of the Article in Italics, edition, Editor.

If there are two or more authors:

-for books: Miller J., Ralph M., Simpson K. (2005), The Title of the Article in Italics, edition, Editor.

comment: there are other formats. If there is a specific statement that is contested I use:

Miller J., Ralph M., Simpson K. (2005), The Title of the Article in Italics, edition, Editor. Excerpt from pp. 7-12:"X is smaller than Y while Y is less than Z."

citing book chapters
-for a book chapter: Miller J. and Ralph M. (2002), Title of chapter without quotation marks, in Aubert D. (ed.) Title of the Book in Italics, edition, Editor, pp. 133-167.

comment. If there is a specific statement is contested then you add an expert:

-for articles: Monnier J. (2006), Title of the article in quotation marks, Title of the Periodical in Italics, Place of edition if the editor is not national, volume, pp. 7-14. excerpt: "X is smaller than Y while Y is less than Z."

I usually recommend excerpts for contested stuff.

citing articles
Miller J. (2006), Title of the article in quotation marks, Title of the Periodical in Italics, Place of edition if the editor is not national, volume, pp. 120-140.

citing internet articles
Taken from here: and slightly modified.

“Becoming a Meteorologist.” Weather.com. 12 Nov. 1999. The Weather Channel. Accessed: 24 Nov. 1999 ."

"Hamilton, Calvin J. Views of the Solar System. Accessed: 12 Nov. 1999 . "

"United States. U.S. Census Bureau. Poverty in the United States: 1998. Sept. 1999. 12 Nov. 1999 Accessed: . "

Citing Encyclopedias
Quality Encyclopedias with authors who are specialists are classified as secondary sources. General popular encyclopedias (like Britannica) are considered tertiary sources. This means that secondary sources have more weight (more on this later) in writing articles.

Quality Encyclopedias with authors
Quality Encyclopedias usually have an author and an editor and are associated with the best universities of the world. Two examples in the field of Iranian and Islamic studies are the Encyclopedia Iranica and Encyclopedia of Islam.

Here is one format that is usable for online Encyclopedias.

"Dick Davis (January 6 2005), "Vis o Rāmin", in: Encyclopaedia Iranica Online Edition. Accessed on April 25, 2008."

Other Encyclopedias
The Encyclopedia Britannica should be avoided when possible, since neither the authors or editors name are known and it just contains a lot of amateur errors and mistakes. Its ranking is a tertiary source (more on this later).

Here is one possible format: "Ḥāfeẓ. (2009). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved January 24, 2009, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/251392/Hafez "

Ethical rules
There are several rules that should be followed in terms of ethical behavior. 1) Do not create more than one account for use in Wikipedia. If they catch you from the sampe ip using two different accounts, then you will get banned.  See:  Sock puppetry

2) Do not break the Wikipedia 3rr rule WP:3RR or else you will get blocked for 24 hours. And everytime you do it, the hours will increase and can evetually lead to your banning after 10 or so of these blocks.  Make sure you understand how to revert (use the edit page tab and then press save).  But if you have an argument, you cannot revert more than 3 times.

Dealing with hotheads
Read these first: WP:SOAPBOX and WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND and WP:NPA.

There is a lot of hot-heads specially from former Soviet union countries or places with high degree of ultranationalism. In this regard, as soon as you see them report them to the administrator board. []

Or admins that have experience with these hotheads like this good admin: [].

An example of the hotheads (due to their own countries hothead media which will ultimately produce hotheads) and its effect in Wikipedia is the following Arbcomm: [] [] Some of these policies can be extended to Iran related articles (those dealing with Iran and the typical fascists from some of these countries trying to spread the ethnic-hatred venom from their USSR era to other regions).

So as soon as you see one of these fascists who are typically from few regions attacking Iranians, Persians and etc. or any group, do not reply them. Immediately report them them to [] and here: [], and cite the Arbcomm rulings here: [] [] or other places.

No original Research and Synthesis
The WP:NOR, WP:SYNTH, WP:RS, and WP:NPOV are four important Wikipedia policies. Probably the most important thing drawing from these is the following:

"Our policy: Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from secondary sources. Articles may include analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims so long as they have been published by a reliable secondary source."

Make sure to know what a secondary source is and also make sure to read WP:RS. You can delete primary sources that contradict secondary sources from articles. There are other policies of course, but these are the ones I thought are the most important when writing an Encyclopedia.

Google Books
Google books is a very important resource.

For example:

Note the quotes help you find the exact phrase. Other times, it is better to find your material without quote:

[] 

JSTOR
JSTOR is another important resource and usually most good universities have access to it. See here: [JSTOR].

For Iranian and Islamic topics
The Encyclopedia Iranica [] and Encyclopedia of Islam. The Encyclopedia of Islam can be found on CD format but also online. Usually good universities have subscription to it.

Note USSR sources are not reliable including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE) and etc. Usually English sources should be used in Wikipedia anyhow, but the USSR Russian sources are seen now by many experts to have been written for the process of nation building. So they have no value and should be seen as a nationalistic source when it comes to Iran/Islam related topics. The Great Russian Encyclopedia (GRE) might be better, but again Western sources are preferred. Similarly should be said about sources published in former USSR countries or countries with a high degrees of ultra nationalism or authors affiliated with nationalistic countries that write from their own countries. Also authors whose expertise is not in the field of history but say sociology and then try to make up nonsense about history due to tribalistic/nationalistic reasons.

Free books
There are lots of sites now that offer free books. Both from universities and from general public places. Make sure the author is a general expert in the area and then quote them.

Don't be afraid
Don't be afraid to e-mail academics from various universities and get their opinion on controversial matters. This might not be acceptable Wikipedia evidence (usually), but if validated, it can definitely be a reason to have a dispute sign.

Blurbs
Blurbs of books (which are not independent reviews) which are different than reviews of books in independent journals are not accepted anymore as valid sources.