User talk:Theklabast

risk in editing from own material
I liked your recent contributions I saw, but a potential problem is looming: When citing your own writing elsewhere as a source, which is good because you know whether you can copy what is copyrightable, you risk being perceived (and tagged) for a conflict of interest. In a comparable situation, where I was not specifically in a CoI situation but could be perceived as such, I announced my intention and explained my grounds over a week ahead of time, awaited responses, and, finding none, edited accordingly. The article has stayed stable on point so far. In addition, be especially neutral on such matters in WP and you stand a better chance of your content staying up. Best wishes. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:41, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you very kindly.


 * WP is Wikipedia.


 * For this, see if anything happens. For future edits, if your work elsewhere would be a significant part, ask/announce, but if it's minor enough that you don't care if it gets edited out (e.g., if for one fact you cite four sources of which yours is one) and if there's no actual CoI issue (just a perception of it) then put it into an edit and let whatever happens happen. If someone criticizes you, answer, but you'll know what standard to apply. Sometimes critics misunderstand and you can correct them.


 * Best wishes. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:10, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

removing tags from Thealogy
In response, I'm not clear. I haven't had a lot of experience with that, I'm in a contentious situation on one tagged article, and lots of tags seem to last long, so there may be a tendency for tags to stay. But maybe most editors just don't try. For this article, the tags are not new, but religious topics tend to be controversial, so I would go slowly.

Tags (other than for HTML programming) are more formally called templates.

Pick one tag only, starting with the tag that is least discussed now on the talk page. So I'd do them in this order: the copyediting issue first, the NOR (no original research) issue next, the insufficient-sourcing issue next, and the merger issue last.

See if the article can be improved in the way indicated by the tag. If it can be, try to do so yourself. In some cases, fixing for one issue may coincidentally fix for another issue. For example, a reference should not be given within a sentence but rather in a note, and yet still be inline. The paragraph:

Carol Christ used the term more substantially in "Laughter of Aphrodite" (1987) acknowledging that those who create thealogy cannot avoid being influenced by the categories and questions posed in Christian and Jewish theologies. :(Carol Christ 1987 :xii) In "Rebirth of the Goddess", Christ establishes some guidelines for method suggesting that thealogy begins rooted in women's experience. :(Carol Christ 1997 :31-49). She then sets out to develop a systematic thealogy of the Goddess, the first to do so.

should be copyedited to something more like:

Carol Christ used the term more substantially, acknowledging that those who create thealogy cannot avoid being influenced by the categories and questions posed in Christian and Jewish theologies. Christ establishes some guidelines for method, suggesting that thealogy begins rooted in women's experience. She then sets out to develop a systematic thealogy of the Goddess, the first to do so.

which will display as:

Carol Christ used the term more substantially, acknowledging that those who create thealogy cannot avoid being influenced by the categories and questions posed in Christian and Jewish theologies. [1] Christ establishes some guidelines for method, suggesting that thealogy begins rooted in women's experience. [2] She then sets out to develop a systematic thealogy of the Goddess, the first to do so.

== Footnotes ==

1. ^ Christ, Carol, Laughter of Aphrodite (1987), p. xii.

2. ^ Christ, Carol, Rebirth of the Goddess (1997), pp. 31–49.

This has the additional benefit of adding two footnotes to the bottom of the article, and does so as references that are inline with the main text, thus the copyediting may reduce the complaint about insufficient sourcing, because the sources will be visible in their usual place.

A cheatsheet for WP has basics useful for copyediting.

Specific copyedits here include commas; replacing quote marks around book titles with italicization marks so the book titles will display in italics but not quoted; and also that in the page range visible to the reader the hyphen is replaced by an en-dash. (The page range is used invisibly, too, in a ref tag; the tag continues to use the hyphen.)

There seem to be hard spaces. I don't recommend those. If you need them, type

& nbsp ;

without spaces between the ampersand and the semicolon. That's an HTML character reference (an indirect representation) for a nonbreaking space.

One of the opening reference tags has the name="" attribute. This is not needed if a footnote will be referenced in the main text only once, but is needed when the same footnote may support more than one point in the main text. In this case, if you want to refer more than once to the reference named Rebirth-31-49, use this tag without the other information and put it in all the additional locations in the main text: The name in the name attribute should have letters, numbers, and hyphens only, without spaces. If two tags have the same name attribute, the display will look like this:

2. ^ a b Christ, Carol, Rebirth of the Goddess (1997), pp. 31–49.

If you happen to look into this post's source code via the edit link you'll see nowiki tags. That's so you'd see the inline references without their being interpreted by the Wiki software. You wouldn't be likely to copy the nowiki tags themselves into the live article.

I'd also rename the References section to Bibliography, rename the Footnotes section to References, create a new section titled External links (in section titles only the first word is capitalized except for proper names), move Web addresses now in the bibliography (now called References) into the external links section, and reformat the Web addresses so they work as clickable links. To make links, surround non-WP URLs (Web addresses) with single brackets and surround WP URLs (the ones that begin in your browser's address bar with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ) with double brackets, like this: and Feminist_theology Note that the external URL starts with the http protocol but the WP URL omits the beginning. Even more appreciated is to use humanly-sensible descriptions in place of the URL, so the URL is still there but the reader doesn't see it but instead sees a clickable description you supply, like this: List of schools teaching thealogy and Feminist_theology Note that for an external link the URL and the description are separated by a space but for a link within Wikipedia they're separated not by a space but by a pipe character, which is probably on your keyboard as a vertical line, maybe on the same key as your reverse slash. The reader won't see the URL or the pipe, although with effort they can discover the URL without visiting it.

Copyediting is not only about right and wrong grammar. It is also about clarity within readers' expectations. If something would look like bad grammar to many readers, consider a more popular grammatical structure that's still correct.

My copyediting above was not based on much knowledge of thealogy or the cited books. If there was a substantive error, I probably wouldn't have known enough to catch it.

Next is the ban on original research. Be harsh and look for items that significant numbers of readers would dispute, even if your colleagues would not. For each one, get a cite for it. If it's not citable, take the statement out. Or you can ask other editors to search for a citation by adding this template (a template being any text surrounded by double braces) into the main text exactly where a footnote should go: or whatever the month and year are when you add it. Note the pipe character. Maybe in a month or two, if no one has replaced the citation-needed template with a source, take the unsourced statement out yourself.

The fact that Tuesday is followed by Wednesday does not need a source. If a statement's veracity will be doubted even with a cite, consider citing a few sources or consider citing a more credible source.

Citations must be verifiable. There's a preference for sources that can checked online for free, but I've responded to some complaints of inaccessibility by suggesting the complainant get a pubic library card, since that often provides access to paid databases for free. That may not work worlwide.

If sourceless information really should be in the article, consider publishing it elsewhere and then citing that in this article. If doing so, take into consideration both the conflict-of-interest policy and the general ban on self-published works as authority for other than the speaker. Pat Smith's website is authority on Pat Smith but not on Pat's favorite other subjects when better-quality sources are available. A source is of better quality when, for example, it was edited by someone other than the author and when the source has a reputation for quality.

It can be hard to take unsourced statements out when they seem necessary to the article. But if they're probably controversial, take them out and write without them. Then make a hobby, time permitting, of trying to prove or disprove the statement and finding a cite for it. Then you can put the statement back in.

On merging, if there's no consensus to merge, there should not be a merger.

With some things, asking for help on the talk page is not necessarily a burden on editors. For example, suppose another editor wrote a confusing quotation from a book and it's vital to the article, so you don't want to delete it, at least not yet, but you can't find the book, so you can't make the correction yourself. In that case, go to the Discussion or Talk page and start a new topic. The subject should be succinct and attract people interested in that particular issue. Here's an example.

Once the work suggested by the tags is done, start a new Talk topic for each tag (maybe not all at once). Don't combine the discussions into one, since the issue isn't tagging in general but each specific tag. A subject might be:

Copyediting done; propose to remove tag

Then explain that you've finished copyediting, ask if anyone (not just a tagger) has suggestions for any further copyedits, and that you plan to remove the tag if no one has any objections. If there may be a lot of controversy, do the Talk in two steps: one topic just on having finished copyediting and asking if there are more suggestions and then, if and when that appears to be resolved, start another topic to say you plan to take the tag down.

If there's any reply, consider doing whatever it suggests. Don't stonewall, since the encyclopedia is collaborative. If the suggestion is awful or indefensible, don't carry out the suggestion but do explain why. Assume the suggestion was in good faith even if it's stupid or hostile; only obvious vandalism can be ignored. (I recently responded to someone's suggestion that pedophilia be accepted as a sexual orientation; to me that's horrifying, but I addressed the person seriously and it's a bit soon to be sure but, so far, that seems to be working.)

If there's no reply in a week or more, reply yourself and announce that you plan to take that particular tag down unless there's an objection. (If the subject line only mentions the work done and not the tagging because you were going to start a separate discussion on tag removal, then start the new topic, instead of adding it into an irrelevant topic.) A few days to a week after that, if there's still no reply, delete the tag in an edit in which you do nothing else, in the edit summary say that the such-and-such tag is deleted per the Talk, and see if anyone complains or puts it back. If nothing happens in a month, you've probably achieved stability. I assume you have the page on your watchlist, so you'll know if it's changed whenever you log in and visit Special:Watchlist or click the My Watchlist link.

If disputes persist and seem unreasonable or worse, and communications with the objector are fruitless, there are ways of getting other people involved.

Best wishes. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:13, 29 August 2010 (UTC) Corrections and added re book title italicization: Nick Levinson (talk) 09:01, 29 August 2010 (UTC) Corrections and rewording re burden: Nick Levinson (talk) 09:25, 29 August 2010 (UTC) Corrected failure of paragraph breaks: Nick Levinson (talk) 09:36, 29 August 2010 (UTC) Corrected failure of paragraph breaks: Nick Levinson (talk) 09:44, 29 August 2010 (UTC)