Welcome to Wikipedia, Fleadarling! Thank you for your contributions. I am Dismas and I have been editing Wikipedia for some time, so if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You can also check out Wikipedia:Questions or type ((helpme))
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Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that will automatically produce your username and the date. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Dismas|(talk) 03:58, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Honestly I don't even get how to get help on Wikipedia... how to use these talk pages. I have written an article on Jo Boaler and I would like to begin to post the article, but the citations are confusing--both the requirements and how to actually do it. I thought the guidelines said that I had to add citations for every detail that I had in my article, but when I look at other Wikipedia articles, I notice that they just put a link to a related part of the article. FOr instance if I say that Jo Boaler is a professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education... by the look of some articles, I just add a link to the SGSE. According to my interpretation of the Wikipedia guidelines, I should actually find some sort on citation on the internet that specifically shows that she is actually a professor at the SGSE. Which is it? Plus, I have already written the article in what I think is an acceptable format for Wikipedia, and I have what I think are the links required, but I am very confused about how to input the citations. Felicia Darling 01:31, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. When you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion (but never when editing articles), please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either:
This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when.
Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 04:20, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi Fleadarling. In writing a Wikipedia biography article on Jo Boaler, [1] you can save yourself a lot of grief if you follow a few basic steps. First, don't use information from Jo Boaler herself to write the article. It's opposite of how people think Wikipedia works, but the coverage used in the Wikipedia article should be from reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Try to footnote each sentence, except for the lead of the article, and put each footnote in Template:Citation, such as:
Use one of the articles at Category:FA-Class biography articles as a framework for the article on Professor Boaler. Look over Tips for writing biographies. As for source material, start off using the following: [2], [3], [4], [5] Also, see [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30] A biography article basically includes 1) Lead, 2) "Early Life" (through college), 3) "Career", 4) Selected publications, 5) References, 6) External Links. Since you mentioned that she is your professor, you may want to read over WP:COI to see whether that applies to your situation. -- Jreferee (talk) 07:05, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.
Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!
nonsense ferret 20:20, 17 December 2013 (UTC)