User talk:Thescarletstorm

March 2018
Hello, and welcome to editing Wikipedia. I hope you have a successful time here. However, having read the sandbox page you have created, I think there are one or two things I can say that may be helpful to you in getting started.

I see that you are planning to create articles about "up and coming indie bands and games", and that you intend your "first project" to be creating an article about a signer from Long Island called Nick Russell. For a subject to be considered suitable to be the topic of a Wikipedia article it has to satisfy certain notability standards. Those standards are described in various guidelines. In my opinion there are far too many guidelines and policies in Wikipedia, and most of them are far too long and complicated, making it very confusing for a new editor, but the ones which are likely to be most relevant for you are the general notability guideline and the guideline on notability or music and musicians. I suggest having at least a brief look over those two guidelines, even if you don't read every word of them. However, the main point is that a subject is likely to be considered notable if it has received substantial coverage in significant published reliable sources independent of the subjects. Examples of sources which are not considered reliable are blogs, fan sites, and anywhere where anyone can post content, such as Wikipedia. Examples of sources which are not independent of the source of an article about a band are the band's own web site and the web site of a company which publishes or sells their work.

Experience over the years shows that when someone comes to Wikipedia and writes about what they call an "up and coming" subject, it virtually always means that it is a subject which is not yet notable enough to be the subject of an encyclopaedia article, but the person writing about it thinks it is going to become notable in the future. Unfortunately, the result of that is often that the new editor puts a considerable amount of time and effort into creating an article, only to see it deleted. I therefore warn you that writing about "up and coming" subjects is not a very good way to start editing.

I searched on Google for information about Nick Russell of Long Island. Many of the first hits were things such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and some others gave minimal mention of him, such as just giving the date and time of a gig, or just including a one sentence mention of him in a list of musicians. That is not the kind of thing I would expect to fill the first page or two of Google hits for someone who satisfies Wikipedia's notability standards.

I am afraid this may give the impression that I am trying to put you off editing, but in fact it is the opposite of that. What I am trying to do is to make sure you know a few things about editing so you won't be put off editing by putting a lot of work into something which is bound to be deleted, which is a very discouraging and disheartening experience. There are more things I could say that might help you, but that is all I have time for now. I hope it may be at least a little help to you. My advice to new editors is that it is best to start by making small improvements to existing articles, rather than creating new articles. That way any mistakes you make will be small ones, and you won't have the discouraging experience of repeatedly seeing hours of work deleted. Gradually, you will get to learn how Wikipedia works, and after a while you will know enough about what is acceptable to be able to write whole new articles without fear that they will be deleted. Over the years I have found that editors who start by making small changes to existing articles and work up from there have a far better chance of having a successful time here than those who jump right into creating new articles from the start. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 21:57, 21 March 2018 (UTC)