User talk:PeaceMaker00

Welcome to Wikipedia

 * Let me welcome you and commend you on your enthusiasm and ability to follow instructions. The Wikipedia mantra is BE BOLD. For me at least, just making an account took a great deal of courage. The next logical step in your Wikipedia indoctrination is to energize your home page. It will serve as an excellent place to learn some of the basic wiki-codes without dorking up an article. Editing skills will require some experimentation and self teaching. The easiest way to start is to visit others and “steal” some ideas. By that - I mean click the edit tab and see their html codes which you can copy and paste into yours. CAREFUL --- don’t edit their page…. COPY not cut!!!!! You can then adjust it to reflect your own personal style. Feel free to be creative. Try to provide some insight into who you are while still maintaining your Anonymity. Personally I like the community’s use of user boxes to provide some insight into your way of thinking.  --JimmyButler (talk) 10:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)



User Page
User Page looks fine. You are off to a good start. --JimmyButler (talk) 16:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Your recent edits
Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment. If you can't type the tilde character, you should click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 22:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Levant Sparrowhawks
I notice that you have chosen the Levant Sparrowhawk as your subject for biology project. I thought you might be interested in these links which may be useful references. ,,. Good luck and feel free to ask me for help. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  23:36, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Writing about birds
Hi there, me again. I am here to offer to help mentor you through the scary world of writing about birds on Wikipedia. As you can see from my User Page I have been here for many years and have accumulated a number of Featured Articles, a couple of good articles and even a promotion administrator. I am also a biologist at a university in New Zealand studying the evolution of birds. If you are interested I can help you with some of the knotty problems of writing bird articles, or in fact the problems with writing in general. It isn't hard (or I wouldn't be able to do it), but there is a trick to it for sure. Breaking the writing up into manageable chunks, structuring the article in a logical fashion, evaluating sources of information, that kind of thing. I can also show you how to read seemingly impenetrable journal articles (a very useful skill for when you reach university).

I would also suggest you talk to your teacher about your choice of subject, however. You might find it very hard to find a lot of information about Levant Sparrowhawks. There are a number of hawks and other interesting birds that have more information available (at least in English, which you will need to cite in), these include species that are found in the English speaking world, The US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand and The UK and Ireland. Species outside these areas do have information, but it is better to pick the more well known species. Perhaps you could try the Shoebill, the White-bellied Sea Eagle, Cooper's Hawk, New Zealand Falcon, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Northern Caracara, or Baltimore Oriole. Your teacher will be able to guide you as well.

At any rate, good luck. I hope you do well and am happy to help you. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  03:53, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I thank you for the advice you've given me and I would appreciate it if you would be my mentor.--PeaceMaker00 (talk) 06:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If you would be my mentor, would you reply back so I can put you as my mentor at the project page?--PeaceMaker00 (talk) 06:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * No worries, consider yourself adopted. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  06:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much--PeaceMaker00 (talk) 07:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, I think I will change my article to Cooper's Hawk after consulting with my teacher--PeaceMaker00 (talk) 06:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I am glad. You will have a much easier time. Anyway, I see you have an assignment due by the end of the week. Insert one citation into an article using an acceptable template. Any article!. Since you are doing a hawk article, perhaps you'd like to add a cite to one of our birds of prey articles. We have lots of bird of prey articles, in fact we have one on every bird of prey. But rather than just add a citation, lets add a fact and then cite it. That'll get you extra credit! It is really easy. I'll show you how easy it is. Go to this link. It is run by the world's biggest bird conservation organisation, BirdLife International. They create the world's lists of endangered species. You'll see the list of species in one column, and the threat rating in the other. Each of those species has an article, but only the species that are vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered have really good articles. So I am going to scroll down a bit and find an article. Remember to pick one of the yellow, red or orange ones!


 * I've chosen White-necked Hawk. The Wikipedia article is currently a stub. If you chose an article that already has lots of content, try another one. You will be able to find one with information you can add. Anyway, there is barely any content in this article, just a bit about where they live. But the Birdlife Article has a bit of information about their size and diet which is not in the Wikipedia article, so I will add that. There, I've added a fact. But I haven't cited it yet. Fortunately Birdlife provides suggested citations at the bottom of the article that I can modify to use. So I will now cite the fact I just added. There, I've cited it. Notice that I have modified the citation a bit, and that I placed the reflist template in the citation section. You can choose which inline citation you wish to use at WP:CITE. But you know have everything you need to ace your assignment. Good luck. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  07:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice and I updated the Black Honey-buzzard--PeaceMaker00 (talk) 20:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Although I see you were also citing Archipelago as I was typing this tutorial, so you didn't even need my help! But I like all additions to bird articles. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  01:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Next deadline
I see that you have until the 18th of November to expand and submit this article to peer review. But don't worry, deadlines are good. You have some sources now, and I can help you find more. The next step for you to do is to add structure your article.

To help you, and other students working on bird articles, I have been adding my thoughts on article development to one of my sandbox pages. I am still working on this, but my thoughts on structure are already down. Have a look at that section here. I think you should try, say by the end of next week, to have a decent structure for Cooper's Hawk. I give one example of a restructuring in my essay, I'll show you another one here. Great Tit (yeah, hehehe) was a bit of a mess. So I editied the page, moving the cluster of images that were making it hard to read into a gallery at the bottom and adding subsections to the article. I didn't get it quite right, so I had to move another paragraph around on the next edit. On the final edit I split a section off and added a small amount of content. Slow and steady does it.

Good luck! I will watch with interest. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  03:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)