Welcome!

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Hello, Kmcphers128, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with Wiki Education; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply


Notes

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Hi! I have some notes for you:

  • Medium is not seen as a reliable source on Wikipedia, as it's a blog website that doesn't provide any true editorial oversight. Here's what the official consensus was: "Medium is a blog hosting service. As a self-published source, it is considered generally unreliable and should be avoided unless the author is a subject-matter expert or the blog is used for uncontroversial self-descriptions. Medium should never be used as a secondary source for living persons."
The author does have a good pedigree, but given that this is backing up a fairly general statement I would look for stronger sourcing. For example, this book would be an extremely strong source as it was put out by a reputable publisher and would likely have a lot of the information you need for the article. This was put out by the Virginia Humanities, so it would also be seen as a reliable source.
Now if you were just using it as a starting point (ie, get a general overview and research ideas) then that's fine, just be careful since we can't always guarantee accuracy of self-published sources.
  • You pulled a large chunk of information from another source verbatim. I think that this was likely for notes, but be careful since this poses a copyright issue. We can only use direct quotes when they're clearly marked and attributed as such, plus even then it must be used in context. There is a little wiggle room in the sandbox since it's seen as a workspace, but copyright still applies there. I've removed it for the time being.
  • I saw that you used the CVillepedia in the draft - was this just a place holder or were you thinking of using it as a source? If you're using it as a source, keep in mind that since it's a user edited wiki, it can't be used as a source.
  • For the pictures, I would recommend setting up an appointment with the librarian/archive to see if they can walk you through the process. This would also be a good idea in general since you want to make sure to verify the images' copyright status. This can be tricky, since public domain has some catches to it. This article gives a pretty good overview of this. Virgo doesn't look like it lists the copyright status of the images and the website's ToS states that some of the images are copyrighted, so it's important to verify the copyright status prior to any uploads. For example, these images were created in 1964 so there's a strong chance that they are held under a restrictive copyright that wouldn't be compatible with Wikipedia and Wikimedia Common's requirements. I have a little cheat sheet about copyright guidelines here. However if all else fails, if there are any buildings that still exist and you're comfortable photographing them, you can always take photographs of them and add them to the article. A photograph of the street where Vinegar Hill used to exist could be useful in the article as well.

I hope that this all helps! I also have to say that I'm really excited to see the final additions, as I do love local history! (I split my time between Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia.) If you're interested in this, I have a list of Virginian women that could warrant articles. I put it together while I was volunteering at the Library of Virginia and have some sourcing for each of the people in the list as well - although some of them definitely need more sourcing. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2020 (UTC)Reply