Hello, Irisa Dunner! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! SoWhy 06:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Getting started
Getting help
Policies and guidelines

The community

Writing articles
Miscellaneous
edit

Oh, and nice spot on the copyright infringement at Transmisiones Y Mecanicos. Keep it up :-) Regards SoWhy 06:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I really wasn't sure what I was doing, but I'm glad I guessed correctly. :) And thank you for the box--I always appreciate good reference material! Irisa Dunner (talk) 06:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Well, learning by doing works, especially on a wiki. =)
If you need any further help, feel free to ask me any time or use {{helpme}} together with a question on your talk page. Also, if you plan to stay with us for a while, your might consider requesting mentorship through our Adopt-a-User project. Last but not least, please remember to always provide an edit summary, even on your own pages. It's just easier for everyone that way. You can use My Preferences => Editing => "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" to remind you to do so. Regards SoWhy 08:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Changed that preference; thanks for the tip. Did add the searching-for-adopt to my user page; I'll harass whichever poor volunteer I get. I'm a little too indecisive to approach specific people, I think. Thanks again for the help. Irisa Dunner (talk) 08:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Just thought about it, since my other adoptees are mostly inactive at the moment, I'll offer to adopt you myself. If you only need someone to harrass with questions but not more complex, school-like classes (like some adopters offer), I can do that. I just prefer adoptees who don't need specific assignments to learn something, si if you think that's the style you expect, we can work together if you like. Regards SoWhy 08:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Sure, I'd appreciate it. (Apologize for not getting to this sooner; had to sleep sometime.) My first stupid question can be what to put on my page to that effect! Haha. :) Irisa Dunner (talk) 14:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
(Also, for my stupid questions, would you prefer I list them on your talk page or mine?) Irisa Dunner (talk) 14:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
No problem, it's not as if messages disappear overnight (not usually at least, except if some developer breaks the server  ). So then, welcome to my adoption program. You can use {{adoptee|SoWhy}} to tell the world about it =)
As for the questions, well, if you got them now, ask them here because we are in a conversation here already. If you have them later, it's probably safer to leave me a message on my talk page, else I might not notice your page in the 1800+ pages on my watchlist ;-) Regards SoWhy 14:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I figured your watch list was probably gigantic! I've been keeping a note file of things I'm not particularly sure about, so yes, I do have questions now. Creating a new section, because this doesn't really fit the copyright infringement of a page on a transmissions company anymore. XD Irisa Dunner (talk) 17:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Questions!

edit
  • I'm not sure how to make things line up properly on the user page; specifically, I'd like to know how the heck to make the boxes do what I want them to. :( Which is, preferably, sit quietly in a well-spaced vertical line and not step out of bounds. (Terrible schoolchildren comparison, I know.) Is there an instruction page for that kind of formatting, or is it a figure-it-out-on-your-own?
  • Do WikiProjects have guidelines for what should be included, and how do I find relevant WikiProjects? I created this account initially to add a page on a Hinduism expert, but I'm not sure what projects it might apply to. For example, does an expert on a particular subject apply to that subject's project? And, more importantly, if unsure, would I be better adding the box and trusting someone to remove it if it doesn't actually apply?
  • I'm on my college's network for the next week, until the semester ends. I read somewhere that for a public network, it might be best to put a notice on the user page in case someone runs a check (either for an IP's violations or because two or more similar IPs push the same issue). But since it's only for another week or so, is that worth the trouble? And furthermore, when I go back home and am consistently using the house's IP assignment, will comparisons to the school's IP range still be an issue for me?
  • The aforementioned page on the Hinduism expert is one I care about strongly, but I'm not sure how much more I should do with it since I know the guy personally. However, that also means that I can easily contact him to find, for example, an exact list of published articles to track down elsewhere. I've been careful in adding only what I can find online (fortunately, since I've never taken a religious course, I can't lean toward anything in that capacity; unfortunately, since I'm a computer scientist rather than a literature major, I have no idea at all how to find or use those article-look-up things), but I do care about keeping the article up at a standard that will prevent it from being deleted. I'm not sure how far to go, or to not go. I probably won't try to e-mail him for more references until this question's been answered. (Also, if I shouldn't touch the article much more, would it be more appropriate to ask him for more potential resources, post the links on the talk page of the article, and allow someone else to incorporate the material?) Related, if I do continue to bring it up to par:
    • Where can I find out how to correctly format the citations for web sites? How would I add multiple in-line citations to the same source?
    • Should the books and articles (which are arguably half the notability in themselves) be mentioned in the introductory paragraph?
    • Where should I ask about what kind of things I need to find out? Not every academic is the same, so other pages I've looked at haven't been particularly good examples.
  • Similar to above, but possibly with me being slightly more paranoid: concerning the modification of pages for places I was previously employed, is it just a be-careful situation?

Irisa Dunner (talk) 17:20, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Okay, let's see:
  • Yes, I noticed that. Some userboxes have strange formatting that makes them align in weird ways. I put them in a table for you. See Help:Table on how Wiki-syntax creates tables.
  • Most Wikiprojects have a "Scope" sub-section where this is detailed. I'd suggest, you go and find an article about a similar subject and look at its talk page which projects cover them. Wikipedia:WikiProject Hinduism is probably a safe bet in your example. And as usual being bold and just adding what you think right will not hurt a bit because a wiki means all changes can be reverted.
  • I don't think that's much of a problem, except your school-IP gets blocked without "anonymous users only" set. I think it's very unlikely that something like this happens, it would need another user to impersonate your style and be disruptive the same time. But on the other hand, there is no harm in doing so. It's just a few seconds to add something like that at your user page. After you are at home and use your personal IP, there should be no way to match school edits to your later edits, after all, IPs can change all the time.
  • A complex situation, true. Two pages on this topic should help: WP:OWN and WP:COI. If you follow these guidelines, you can be bold and incorporate the material you have into the article. If you manage to follow the NPOV-policy even if you know the subject personally, it's not a problem. After all, even the great WP-Overlord has edited his own article. It's not a problem, unless you use different standards on that article than on all others. As for the other related questions:
    • Wikipedia:Citing sources outlines this very well. You can activate the gadget "refTools" in My preferences => Gadgets which will add a new button to the editing window that allows easily adding correct citation templates. If you want to re-use a reference, you have to use <ref name="xxx"> instead of <ref> for the reference and then use <ref name="xxx" /> for each future use. Hope I could make that clear^^
    • Books are usually in a separate "Books" section, see Wikipedia:Layout#Works.
    • Depends on what you need to find out. Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography is probably a good place for help with biographical articles in general and aforementioned WP Hinduism on Hinduism-related articles.
  • As above, if you believe you can be neutral on the subject, you can edit them. If you cannot trust yourself to be it, better stay away from it.
Hope that answers all your questions, if not, please ask. Regards SoWhy 19:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Thanks so much. I'll be as careful as possible with articles I'm close to. :) I'll post on your talk page if I come across anything else I don't understand. Irisa Dunner (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
You are welcome. Happy editing :-)
A little usability tip btw: If you are participating in a discussion on a section of a page, you should use the "[edit]" link on the right of the section name rather than the one on the tab, that way people can easily determine what you replied to if you write "reply" and can use the "→" to navigate to that section from the history or watchlist. If you edit this section for example, you'll notice the edit summary is prefilled with "/* Questions! */", which creates the "→ Questions!:" in the history. Just add your edit summary right from it. Also, in a discussion with multiple participants, where you are replying to a certain user, you should indicate this with your edit summary, e.g. "resp to SoWhy" (not here but for future discussions), so people see it in their watchlist that you replied to them. Regards SoWhy 08:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Ah! How cool. I'll use this response to test. :) Irisa Dunner (talk) 18:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Funny enough I noticed that. Amongst the huge number of scripts I use to make Wikipedia more user-friendly for my needs (great stuff, you'll use some of them sooner or later as well) I got a script that highlights my username whenever someone types it, so I will be alerted to someone responding to me (or scolding me or such).   SoWhy 19:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Request to participate in University of Washington survey on tool to quickly understand Wikipedians’ reputations

edit

Hello. I'm part of a research group at the University of Washington. In April, we met with Wikipedians to learn what they would like to know about other editors’ history and activities (within Wikipedia) when interacting with them on talk pages. The goal was to gather feedback to help design a tool that could quickly communicate useful information about other Wikipedians. We have now created a few images that we feel represent some of what our participants thought was important. We would appreciate it if you took a few minutes of your time to complete an online survey that investigates whether or not these images would be useful to you. Your quick contribution would be very valuable to our research group and ultimately to Wikipedia. (When finished, the code for this application will be given over to the Wikipedia community to use and/or adjust as they see fit.)

We are particularly interested in feedback from new editors! We want to make sure this tool meets your needs.

Willing to spend a few minutes taking our survey? Click this link.

Please feel free to share the link with other Wikipedians. The more feedback, the better! The survey is completely anonymous and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. All data is used for university research purposes only.

Thank you for your time! If you have any questions about our research or research group, please visit our user page. Commprac01 (talk) 23:14, 12 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Additional details about our research group are available here.

Proposed deletion of Jeffery D. Long

edit
 

The article Jeffery D. Long has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Not notable. The sourcing of this BLP is extremely weak, consisting of a) texts by Long, b) the directory of his workplace, Elizabethtown College, c) a general link to FindArticles.com, and d) a non-critical review, or description, of one of Long's books, by "Elizabethtown College", which ends in a puff for Elizabethtown College. Trying to find some reliable secondary sources online, I could locate only a positive review in Swarajya (magazine), a somewhat notorious right-wing journal which is blacklisted on Wikipedia.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Bishonen | tålk 20:53, 8 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

Nomination of Jeffery D. Long for deletion

edit
 

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Jeffery D. Long is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeffery D. Long until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Bishonen | tålk 14:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)Reply