User talk:Tylerjet

Welcome to Wikipedia!
Hello, Tylerjet, 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 Eija-Liisa Ahtila article. Unfortunately, your additions can't be allowed to stand, as they are, because of several of Wikipedia's polices.

Please don't be discouraged by that; this is true of everyone's first few contributions, almost without exception, and much of what you wrote can go back in, if rephrased. You've done a really nice job, actually, and have started out here in a much stronger way than most new users do. 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 can "stick", so to speak.

Just for your own reference, your additions made up until the timestamp of this message you're now reading can be found in this archived 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'm now in the process of copying your additions to another page, in what might be called a "work space", and formatting your references and such, so the result can be re-added to the actual article. That formatting ( and copyediting ) will probably take me another 30 to 45 minutes. Once I'm done with that I'll point you to that "work space" page, and you can see what I've done, and make any additions and adjustments you want, before putting your work back into the article in a format that will allow it to stay there.

As I said, what you wrote represents a really strong first effort; very few new users get it anything like so nearly right, or take the trouble you obviously have to try to format references properly. But there were a couple of small problems that you should know about, too, with the additions you made:

First, and most important, our articles have to be written in our own words. We are allowed to use brief quotations from writing in newspapers, journals, and other reliable sources, but we have to make it absolutely clear that we're actually quoting something that someone else wrote. We can't give the impression that something someone else actually wrote was written by one of our volunteer editors, in other words, so any straight copying you do always must be clearly attributed to whoever wrote it, and enclosed in quotation marks. Our readers need to know with certainty what we've written, and what someone else wrote, elsewhere.

The best way to write content is to read the sources ( news stories, articles, and such ), to get a clear impression of what they say, and then stop looking at them, and write about the subject in your own words. Once you've done that, you can cite the sources you read via a footnote, to support the statements you've made in your own words. I'll just add that it's very important to have your facts straight, and to write from a neutral point of view about the topic, regardless of your own opinions, whether positive or negative. This is especially important for biographies of living persons, about which our policies are really quite restrictive, that way.

Second, you need to be very careful that the statements you make are exactly correct. Please don't feel bad about it, but I noticed that you wrote, for example, "The video begins with the Manhattan sky and the actress playing the role of Jessica Lange." The review which that evidently refers to said only that the actress playing the character looks like Jessica Lange.

Assuming you're still at your keyboard, you might like to consider taking a break, for just a short while, to give me time to finish the copyediting and formatting process I've been working on for the last half-hour or so. I think doing so will be the most efficient use of your time, since what you add subsequently probably won't have to be reverted and rewritten.

I'll post another update here when I'm finished, soon. To reply to these comments, by the way, you can just add your thoughts right below my "signature". I've put this talk/discussion page temporarily on my "watch list", so I'll be sure to see any response you post here. Of course, to see any replies I might make, back to you, you'll have to click on your browser's "reload" or "refresh this page" button. Best regards, –  OhioStandard  (talk) 07:58, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

More about the Ahtila article
Hello, again! I'm sorry it took me much longer to get back to you here than I intended. Thanks for your patience.

I've posted the version of your additions that I copyedited to your user "sandbox" page, which you can access by clicking here. An editor's "sandbox" is just a work space reserved his or her use, a place you can use to create new content before you add it to an article. It's a great place to try out different ways of formatting text, and you can also save "intermediate" or "savepoint" versions of content you're developing there, without affecting the main, publicly visible pages of the encyclopaedia. It's sort of like a "scratchpad" for development of content that you will eventually add to articles.

If you're interested in finding sources about Ahtila's other works that have been exhibited at MoMA, these search results may be of use. Too, if you have the interest, you might also enjoy adding a couple of sentences on Ahtila's work to the film section of our article on melodrama. They'll be more likely to "stick" if you also include a reference citation, of course.

If you have any questions, you're welcome to post them below, and I'll try to get back to you here within 24 hours. If you want a faster answer to any question, a better choice would be to post a question to our help desk volunteers; they're a great resource to keep in mind. You can either post a question there, which will usually get you an answer within 15 to 30 minutes, or you can request help right on any talk page, including this one. To do that, you would just type the eleven (with the space) characters at the bottom of this page, click on "Save page", and a volunteer should show up soon to try help you here. Of course, you'll need to click on your browser's "reload" or "refresh" button to see that. Happy editing! – OhioStandard  (talk) 14:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding copyright violations
I see that after editing the Ahtila article, you began adding to the Piero Manzoni article. I can see you meant well, since you are carefully including references, but I'm afraid these new additions, like your additions to the Eija-Liisa Ahtila article, can't be permitted. The problem is the same as I described above: You can't copy writing from other sources and paste it into Wikipedia articles, even though you give a reference to the place you copied it from. You have to write in your own words. It's not allowed to copy anyone else's writing into Wikipedia articles.

This is a critically important policy on Wikipedia, one that must be understood and closely followed to contribute here. Please look at this section on one of our many pages that discuss copyright matters. One of the reasons it's so important to pay very close attention to this is that if we were to allow copying of other people's writing, Wikipedia would quickly be shut down by lawsuits from copyright holders. If you have any questions, please ask here, or at the help desk. But please don't copy and paste any more content from other web sites or journal articles into Wikipedia. Cheers, –  OhioStandard  (talk) 14:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)